 That's the that's the title of my book. It's called Just Aspire So if you have the aspiration, you will succeed is my view and that's how I wrote this book around Aspiration of a person aspiration of a company aspiration of a country. It's all about aspiration and later on when I You know studied in Michigan. I discovered my guru Dr. C. K. Prelad and he used to always say a is greater than r So if you have the aspiration resources will happen now looking back to when we started HCL It comes through totally. We didn't have any resources, but we made it happen because we had the aspiration So that's what it's all about our entrepreneurship is all about aspiration Actually, it's a very broad Peace it is when you say technology could be any technology, but let's say we are talking about Software and hardware as far as it is concerned now in that we have traversed a lot of distance in services Right services was important for us to get going because that wasn't that was an easier entry point Then we moved from services to making software products in India that start that journey started about 10 15 years ago now The strategy for a country has to be from going from low value addition should go to higher value addition So services Margins are lower Moment you go to products the margins are double So your value addition increases if you are in the product business That's the journey that the software industry has gone through the hardware industry started with products and Then went into manufacturing and services and repairs but over a period of time a lot of changes occurred in the hardware industry where Value addition kept reducing and Manufacturing kept increasing last five to seven years. You've seen scale in manufacturing But the value addition doesn't exist Value addition is us 4% 5% 10% So what is required in this country is that we have to now move from Manufacturing to product We should design our own products and then manufacture them if we design our own products Then we are going to have higher value I see that More and more software product companies are getting born and created In the last four to five years, there has been movement towards hardware product companies also Okay, there's a very large incubator that where I've been mentoring is Located was located in Delhi University. It's called the Electro Praner Park They have created 40 odd products and they've got about 40 odd patents Now that Electro Praner Park has moved to Fripple IT Delhi But it is with it sitting inside a Education Research Institute. That's where it should sit The same thing is going on happening in many parts of the country where there are incubators who are creating products But it is still very very minuscule We need to have a very large movement towards products So I have been advocating to the government that we should work towards making India a hardware product nation And I gave a white paper to the government six months ago. It's done the rounds with different departments Then the meti decided to adopt it And they have now set up a task force to look at what we should do to make India a product nation Many many of them, but I think one of the most important ones that I picked up was that if you want to be a CEO of an entrepreneur company The most important skill you should have is salesmanship And salesmanship is essential if you want to be successful Because I meet a lot of startups where CEOs don't know how to sell And I find that those companies don't succeed You know, you may have the best product in the world If you don't know how to sell it, it gets you nowhere You may actually have a second level product or a third level product, but if you're a great salesperson, you'll still be able to sell it So that's the one skill that's absolutely essential for an entrepreneur The second skill that is essential for an entrepreneur is that They should combine their organization and founders should have a mix of the right people So maybe one person is a salesperson another person is a finance accounts person. The third person is a techie fourth person is a leader Now when you start any startup, you should decide who's the leader not everybody is equal If there must be at one captain of the team, you can't have Team successful if there is no single captain right the third critical aspect I have learned is that as an as a person And as an entrepreneur If you you should have a worldview And I call these kind of people as rangers People who have a range of interests Don't just be focused on area that you know, let's say, you know food. You only know food. That's not good enough You should know a lot about many other things as well 60 70 directly through the Indian angel network and then of course Many through the funds because Each of the funds I've invested in 30 40 companies So quite a lot actually My maybe 200 plus The word startup didn't exist in the vocabulary then So when you went to a bank or you went to anybody to talk about we've just started this company We never use the word startup. I'm in my company. Churu career. That was the way we used to talk about And that we are absolutely new in this whole area. We are coming with a lot of experience earlier, but we started this company so The other major challenge that time was that there were no funding available. So there was nothing called angels or vcs or Banks never gave any money banks still don't give money without collateral So all those issues were there. So it was a tough time to start The second thing is that we were starting in the exact year when emergency was declared 1975 so again, that was a challenge The third area was that if you wanted to start a computer company and design and manufacture computers in India You needed a license So it was a license right? So all these problems were there at that time. We overcame those problems The license we didn't we couldn't get on our own We looked at who had the license we took out a list from electronics department Figured out that up government had a license Approach them and said would you like to join up with us to do a computer company? They agreed and that's how hindustan computers limited was born. So you had to do a lot to get it going The are today if you look at it today if you want to start a computer company or anything You don't need license for anything Right funding is easily available. There are angels. There are vcs And even there are loans available through the startup scheme of the Indian government But small amount of loans, but at least it's available So there's a whole lot available today and the ecosystem is completely changed where startups are recognized as a very important part of the economy Those days nobody knew the word startup. So that's really where from where we have traveled to now Today there is solid government support in terms of startup India. They're very nice programs They have so much promotion that they do for startups. So all that has changed See when I invest in any startup The first thing I look for is the team If I feel comfortable with the team then only will I invest Second of course is the idea Idea is very important and I like to see ideas which are differentiated If somebody is doing a copy of somebody else, it doesn't really interest me But if they are doing a copy with a serious differentiator, it would interest me So I'm always looking for that spark of differentiation You keep learning You keep seeing what's happening. You see where people make mistakes And you avoid those mistakes again and again. So naturally you need to see that, you know, you don't invest in companies where You don't find the commitment of the founders to that great You need to see that passion. You need to see that fire in the belly Then only startup succeed because they go through a very tough period in the first five to six years They're struggling. They're trying to find their feet. They're producing products. Sometimes products work Sometimes you just don't work, you know, sales are not happening. Sales are happening. All those things happen He has his own way of looking at things. I have my own way of looking at things and it's a nice combination Because I come from a hugely technical background. He comes from a very solid finance background So that makes a nice combination. He comes from a strategy background also And I come from a sales and marketing background. So that helps Always keep looking for the next Don't sit back and say I have achieved what I had Keep looking Then only can you be successful