A Visit to IIM Amritsar (followed by the Golden Temple)
A stunning E-summit (5th Edition) by IIM Amritsar this Sunday, followed by my first visit to the Golden Temple!
It was a pleasure being invited to judge the startup presentations, as well as interact with amazing panelists including Vikram R Singh, Shivi Singh, Manoj Dhanda ☁️ and Rajiv Mukherjee.
My key takeaways from the conversation, spanning everything from the ever present work-life balance conversation to leadership and the role of education:
- The common themes across Vikram, Shivi and Manoj were amazing levels of humility, and a background from smaller cities and humble origins (possible correlation!)
- Vikram was one of the most charming fun moderators+panelists I've met. Having lost his father at an early age, he left school post 12th to support his family. Despite this, he never lost his hunger for learning.
He set up his 1st business ~2004, scaling it individually ~2010, focusing on web design. From there, things clicked and he began scaling up his development teams, with a 700 person set-up today in Antier Solutions's beautiful office building in Mohali, focused on supporting Web3/Blockchain companies globally in building their infrastructure.
- Manoj started his career as a web hosting provider, building well across 2010-2018. ~2018 is when he saw the clear shift towards the Cloud. He began questioning why the big cloud providers charged what they did, realizing that AWS, Google Cloud and Azure were basing off global pricing, charging HUGE premiums, unaffordable for Indian customers.
He set up Utho, a cloud solutions company, working with the EXACT same data centers as the Big 3. He estimates customers shifting over can expect 40-50% reductions in their cloud spending.
- Shivi followed the traditional path for a smart small town boy. MBA followed by a job at a top bank, joining HDFC. The funny part though, he hated it.
Following an MBA professor's advice, he joined a NON-PROFIT program run by Warby Parker (American Lenskart/ClearDekho, started first).
Visionspring was a brilliant initiative, supporting poor people across India get access to lenses, glasses, corrective surgeries and more.
Having learnt the ropes managing supply chains for the real India, he started ClearDekho, focusing on tier 3 cities across the country.
The key themes discussed were:
- Founders HAVE to work all-out in the beginning, first 3-5 years, there's no other way to build a business. Post that, life can be balanced based on how fast you want to grow
- Successful companies are ones that prioritize the Customer Support call over the New Sale call. Everyone else will struggle and die (Indian 'Startups' REALLY need to learn this lesson)
- The best team members they've had are early employees who have scaled into leadership roles. Some have been shop assistants, warehouse staff
- You either build processes, or business breaks you. There's no other option
Post this epic session, I got to visit the Golden Temple, and it increased my respect for the discipline and humility of Sikhism.
Vikram spent some time on stage explaining the concept of the ‘Sikhi’ which means ‘learner’ or ‘truth-seeker’.
The core tenets are anchored around Honest Living, Sharing with Others and Belief in God.
I’m leaving the last point out of discussion (highly subjective for folks), the first two are such beautiful beliefs, completely on display at the Golden Temple.
Starting with the concept of Seva, there are folks who take your shoes for free and keep them in storage. These folks may be poor, ridiculously rich, young, old, every Sikh tries to give back through service.
Once you enter, it’s almost unrecognizable from most other Indian religious activities.
There’s no pushing or shoving. There’s no fighting. Sure, I met two touts who tried to suggest they could ‘expedite’ our darshan (prayer), however they backed away peacefully when we said no.
It’s so serene, you can spend hours just sitting there listening to the Kirtan and the birdsong.
