 Hi there, good evening and welcome to the latest edition of DREAMers and Unicorns show. And so today we have really not just a DREAMer, not just a Unicorn but one of the market shapers. And I say it in the sense that we have with us Maroche Kohli who is of course now the country head of Softbank and it is not just this element but I'm going to sort of go back to his career over more than four decades and those four decades have been spent across many different industries and sort of really moved across sectors in a fairly strategic way if you look at it prior to this he has worked with you know telecom where you know his work with Airtel he was really the person responsible for its gigantic growth and massive sort of expansion so that's really going to be the focus but before that also Maroche has got an extremely super impressive resume so I'm going to sort of say that Maroche I think only you can do justice to your resume just tell us the benefit of our listeners what are the sectors you worked in and you know some of the things and then we'll take it on from there thank you so much for joining us today it's such a delight to have you. Abhijit thanks a lot I'm grateful for your invitation and before I come to myself let me compliment you for your book your book is our dreamers and unicorns is very insightful and I think it should be read by all the investors as well as all the entrepreneurs how they go through ups and downs and how is the journey like and how you can succeed so so thanks for writing that book because not many people have done that thank you thank you so much no no no thanks I think it's all your hard work so I I'm about to complete my 42 years of my industrial experience about 16 years were in manufacturing at various parts of India and the world and then 20 years in telecom and about last six years in in soft bank and now I am supporting more than 20 portfolio companies all digital startups which are growing very well and and and are creating disruptions in many many industries and providing great products and services affordable products and services and high quality product to customers in India and in many other countries of the world. Perfect thank you thank you very very much I mean you sort of toned it down much more than what I would have wanted but anyway that's great we'll we'll get a chance to talk about some of those things as well so just in terms of for the benefit of the viewers and listeners whenever you are joining us from we are going to be taking questions focus pretty much on leadership talent and culture which are some of the pieces which you know we are going to focus on today but just from the point of view of the kind of companies where Softbank is invested to just name a few and Ola, Oyo, Paytm, Lenscard, Grofer, Snapdeal, Weaver, Delivery, Inmobi, Unacademy, Uber, my god that's a really you know the who is who of the startup world and the who is who of the unicorns. The question I have for you is really going to focus around why doesn't every startup scale what goes wrong? You know the great thing about any business whether it's a startup or even an established business is not the idea but the execution of the idea and I believe very very firmly that if the execution is not proper, is not systematic and orderly, is not done with full passion and with an integrated approach. It is very difficult for a business to scale up. So I believe that's the execution gap and that's why where I am supporting many of these entrepreneurs, many of these founders to scale up because scale up from one X to two X is not the same as one X to five X or 10 X or 20 X. The complexity of scale up grows very fast and a lot of people may be underestimated that complexity and that's where I think one has to be more careful. For example in Airtel when we scale from the entrepreneurs in both aspects. Hello. Hello. Hello. Abhijit, can you hear me? Abhijit, can you hear me now? I can hear you. Yes, I can. I can't hear you. Please go ahead. I'm so sorry I missed your answer. I'm going to request you to repeat for me. No, I was just giving example of Airtel which was also a startup starting from zero ground zero going up to 400 million customers in 20 countries. The complexity went up and up but luckily our team Airtel team was a star team and team looked at every aspect and was so proactive about scaling up whether it is brand, whether it is distribution, whether it is regulations, whether it is network planning, marketing, financial management. Every aspect of it compliances because you can't let anything go. Everything is important at the end of the day. You may be a great company but if you sleep on even one of these seven great things it will pull you down. So Manoj the question would be twofold. One is that you know could one argue that Airtel was in such a business which would have grown any which way because there was such a massive demand. So there was a huge product market fit so it would have grown or would you say that whether there were many other companies nobody grew like Airtel and it was leadership, talent and culture which sort of you know I always tend to look at it with that frame. What would you say? I firmly believe in this LTC formula. I'm firmly a big believer of LTC formula because in Telecom as an example 20 to 30 companies started and how many have sustained. Today we have three companies in Telecom and on the way many more companies joined maybe a total of if you add up from 94 to now maybe more than 50 companies joined the race and out of 50 only three are left. Now there has to be something good about these three companies. How did they sustain? Why did they sustain? That is the real question and that answer lies in LTC. It's leadership, it's good talent and it's great culture and leadership which is not only proactive leadership which is not only engaging with all the stakeholders so well but leadership which is which gives a sound long-term strategic direction and that is very very critical because businesses need sound long-term high quality strategic direction and every employee every stakeholder looks for it and if leadership doesn't provide that or is not able to provide it definitely businesses suffer. So there is a difference I mean a market may be easy, market growth may be easy because the market is there India there's 1.3 billion people so obviously you can say market is there for everything but why are some companies able to outpace significantly many other companies which are smaller which are good companies nothing wrong with them but they can't sustain. So sustainability test is only passed by companies which have LTC. So leadership talent and culture become the three drivers is there a warning signal that you can sort of you know when you read about a company and it's not I'm right now I'm not talking about your portfolio of companies but let's say if you look outside if you just open the newspaper and you see some something written about an organization what would you look for as a warning sign that if I read something like this you know it's a early warning signal that there is something which is going to go wrong and it would find difficulty in scaling what would that be? No sometimes the momentum growth momentum slows down sometimes there is a huge leadership attrition team attrition sometimes there is a major problem with government or regulations sometimes there is a major market share drop or decline due to a product failure so there can be many many problems my single consideration is that many of these problems can be inflicted upon any company in the world it's not that one but which company sustains one which company is proactive it can predict the problem secondly even if you can't predict the problem can the company face it and resolve it fast and come back to rails stand up again start running and that is what is the strength of management strategic strength execution strength and most importantly resilience. So you know when somebody decides to join a startup especially in the early days you know there is no way of a person who is joining they take a bet because you know the founders have a vision and that vision could be inspiring but are there things that somebody who's joining say fresh out of college or you know in the early stages of the career what should they be looking to say that maybe this is not the right space for me what would you look for? It's three four key parameters of success number one of course leadership is the leadership committed is the leadership passionate is the leadership ethical very very important number two funding capability is the funding happening at the right time is the funding ready for growth aspirations of the company number three is is the business model profitable that's also very important if the model is not profitable the probability of success is low number four is the product at service has to be appreciated by the customers if the product or service is not great then you need to first make it great because if the product yes you can if it is great you obviously will have to do continuous improvement over the next 200 years so I'm not talking of continuous improvement that you can keep on improving but the basic need of the customer has to be fulfilled and the customer has to feel satisfied that this is right from look at uber look at ola look at lens card look at policy bazaar and look at zomato look at swiggy I mean I'm saying look at any company they're satisfying a very important need of a customer and they're satisfying it in a very consistent fashion because one is satisfaction other is satisfaction consistently like you ordered today then you order tomorrow then you order you order every day for a month the service has to be good otherwise customer is will not tolerate weak service so so so the systems processes behind the service and that is my last point the systems and processes behind the product and service have to be so powerful so robust that they are able to give consistent good consistently good experience to the customer so these are the four five things now obviously when you join at the early stage all these four five things are not settled they're not embedded but they're on the way and you can feel it you can feel that this is happening you can check you can do a due diligence of the company and the brand and if you are miles away 70 80% satisfied you should take a chance is it better that you take a chance in a startup at the early stage of your career or which should you go for a established organization which is you know got everything said what would you recommend I will recommend a startup to all the youth of this country because of two reasons number one that the hunger which this country's youth have can only be satisfied by a startup not by established company and not that established companies are not good they are fantastic established companies but that hunger of new growth hunger of outpacing the existing brand hunger of really doing remarkably well at the global stage can only come from a high quality startup number two I believe that if you want to be entrepreneurial and a lot of youngsters today I mean I feel it guys you are 25 27 the millennial generation is entrepreneurial not only hungry but entrepreneurial so that entrepreneurial experience can only come in startups because startups empower you they give you a lot of open there's a lot of openness flexibility they empower you and and you feel that you are an entrepreneur of its part of the business of a small portion of a business which is fantastic there have been a number of perfect advice I think I would agree that you know some of the things that you talked about and we'll come back to this question in a minute time just for the recap of those of us who have joined a little late I think you know we are talking to Manoj about what is it that makes a startup scale and of course if I were to just summarize a couple of things you talked about leadership talent and culture become very important but he's also talking about the fact that it's not just one department or something it's all of them that have to come together so therefore I guess that's the talent part of it you can't just have great talent in engineering and survive or you know so even and every single day the culture of consistently delivering high quality service have I summarized all the ideas and on talent one point which is very important and even the talent should understand that I won't all the youngsters should understand because they're hugely talented I mean Indian youth is the most talented youth in the world that I can bet bet they're fantastic they're hungry they're talented they're great engineers they're great software builders they're great app builders but most important thing for a startup he's a star team not a team of stars what's the difference what's the difference is that you can get big stars in your team but they may not coordinate or collaborate with each other and it's very very important and I'll never forget that 1975 hockey match which India won against Pakistan in World Cup and I saw that I was a youngster then and what happened was we were leading till we were leading in the second half and and then and of course Pakistan team is also good and they were trying to attack and but you know this half three halves were in the scene Harmeek Singh Ajit Palsing Ajit Palsing was the captain captain yes he kept Ajit Palsing and were in the scene and Harmeek Singh they kept the ball with themselves for last 15 minutes they didn't let the ball go the teamwork was fantastic the the ball stuck to their hockey stick and and they nobody could take it away despite the fact that the other team was also fantastic so the point I'm making is teamwork makes the difference to win teamwork wins you can have huge stars but but for stars to collaborate is most important so I will actually go for teamwork not huge stars I'll go for talent which is maybe a bit less on ability but higher on teamwork higher on working together that talent will deliver much more output and it was very heartening for you to you know for me to hear that you rate the Indian talent so high because you know you worked in so many countries and so many continents just to keep it simple you worked in China Japan Europe and so various places I had you know Africa you were responsible for the air tail expansion into that country so when you say that you know it has great talent it's very very heartening I mean so thank you I think I wanted to just put a question that we have from some of the listeners is there that you know the question I guess so Jata wants to know is in an established company is it that the company gets into a comfort zone therefore it's an issue or is it that hierarchy is the issue what would you think is the issue at the early stage what comes the two serious problems in in in established companies and not that they problem cannot be overcome they can be overcome one that if it is a successful established company company then management gets a bit defensive about losing success whereas I I think they should not let an outsider disrupt the business they should disrupt the business themselves themselves and come out bigger winners for a temporary period of one year to a there could be a problem because you're disrupting the business but later they'll become bigger leaders than today so self disruption for established company is better than somebody letting somebody else do it and destroy your business when you look at it needs a lot of courage I know that but still it's a better path so that that is one second is secondary problem is that the hierarchy is is is too too strong sometimes and and the openness and flexibility is low and there's a trained incapacity sorry that's my word trained incapacity of doing what is that way or doing the things in a way which is right this is the way to do it this is the way to do business this is the way to behave this is and and you know all these startups and again a teller wherever I work I mean the openness transparency and flexibility of communications of working of empowerment is the most important cultural issue and if you if you give that to the the millennial culture millennial talent average age 27 they love it they'll prosper they'll become owners of the company they they will take the company to great success so these are the two areas where all established companies should really think deeply because if they don't think deeply and take a courageous call on both these aspects then they will they are giving an invitation to a new startup or multiple startups to come and take away their business or and their good people so rather they somebody else doing it to you it's better that you do it to yourself or you change things you make the company far more youthful and far more culturally right for millennial talent and then you will win and which is what you started with that leadership talent and culture the leadership allows that kind of a thing to prosper the culture sort of you know encourages that and talent of course has to make the most of that we have a question from Karan who says that is providing discounts to capture market share a good strategy or is it better to build a profitable business from the word go technically discounts are not the way to build a great business but but tactically tactically you can do it but not not it should not be you can't discount your brand i've seen many brands and i don't want to name them they've discounted themselves by making giving too much discount i have always been a proponent of keeping some premium even if it is a short small premium because then premium gives a feeling to the customer that this is the aspirational brand it is a better brand i wear it on my chest with pride you know and and and if customer feels that then he will be the biggest ambassador of the brand to somebody else so discount can be used technically here and there but not not consistently Manoj i'm going to sort of i'm going to ask you a question which is generic and then going to come back to your specific example because i'm really very intrigued by this whole phenomenon that and i've seen it in multiple scenarios somebody who is very good at say managing five people doing a great job and then you add a six person to the team and the entire thing collapses or if you can say that you know somebody manages one department really well you know is doing that you add a second or a third still does well you add a fourth and the guy collapses how does one predict that this person's ability is only to manage 15 people or 17 people no more this one can manage three no more how do you assess that because you've obviously you have had to do it multiple times and all these businesses there's no other way you could have scaled it up so much what do you look for as the science that this person will scale up no this is not a science this is not a science it's an art and and i think the management's have to test the waters continuously test the people continuously because i am i am confident people stretch beyond their abilities and i have been surprised by many many people because they stretch beyond my thought if i'm thinking that he stretched to 100 actually he stretches to 130 140 and he's able to do that he or she is able to do that with with the bit of bit of stretch but i never thought he or she would do it so so but people do need two kinds of support one they need continuous feedback on where to improve what not to do and what to do consistently i think that feedback is very important a lot of times you don't give feedback or we give feedback on a very structured way why why it's structured i mean my way has been that if there's an issue good or bad give feedback spontaneously because that is the right time to give feedback rather than waiting for three months or a quarterly or a half yearly reviews those those things are overstructured i think we should keep it spontaneous a second thing is that the the if you notice a weakness in a in a manager and everyone has weaknesses i have weaknesses all of us have weaknesses then that weaknesses need that weakness needs to be plugged proactively for example i've i've had CEOs with me who are very very bright but they may be weak in one area for example somebody is weak in finance so i'll always put a very strong cfo under that ceo because i know that he can do a great job in marketing great job in branding great job in service or etc etc but if he has a strong cfo then he or she will really do much better because then he doesn't have to be worried on that right and i don't have to be worried on that so i think these are the two things which management has to do should do closely but that management can do if you closely observe the person if you observe the habits and behavior and you know strengths and weaknesses of the of the manager you know a sort of follow-up question to that is sometimes you know the people managers they hesitate to really tell you how bad the thing is they will say you know there's a little bit of improvement needed so you can you know maybe you can fix it they really sugarcoat the entire thing because the worry is if i tell you that this is really one out of ten and you know then in which case the person will say okay then i don't have no future he'll quit so i'll lose whatever little is happening at least that one out of ten is happening i'll lose that that is a real fear that a lot of people have how do you get over it no i have always operated differently and i think there is a better way and the way is that firstly you should be open and candid very open and candid but you should not be diplomatic you should be respectful but not diplomatic because if you are being diplomatic then the message may not reach give me an example of where where you've done it with diplomacy i mean without being diplomatic you've been very candid give me an example of where for example there's some terminations i've done with law of respect and you have to give the bad news but bad news doesn't mean that you make it personal it's a professional thing sure nothing nothing and the same guys who are terminated i out i have helped out place in some other company where the fit better where the fitment or matching is better so the point i'm trying to make is it's better to be open and candid frank with feedback spontaneous with feed not make it personal keep it professional keep it very respectful because you're not going against the person you're saying that okay you're great guy but these are one of the things which you need to tweak and i help you tweak it i help you strengthen them and if you can't overcome still you're a great guy i'll get you a manager let's say in the example of cfo i gave i'll give you a cfo who's very good he'll plug that weakness of yours and you'll be a great guy so i'm saying you have to convince that person that you're not being personal you you want success of that manager you want him or her to succeed so if that that element of trust and faith is not there then obviously he'll be upset but if the trust and faith is there then he or she will feel yes he's thinking about me so manoj i'll add one more thing which comes to my mind when i hear you that you know somebody it's only someone who's got a genuine interest to develop people who can be candid and who can do it with you know respect and sensitivity and all of that so i think that to me is the interesting element i want to ask you that and as i told you that i'm really obsessed to find out you know what is it that you did to build scale in yourself because perhaps when you started your career you know at no point of time would you have said that at some point of time whatever time it was i will be managing not one or two or three or four or five or ten you're actually managing more than 20 companies today right so when you look at that what have you done at different inflection points for yourself i'd really love to you know learn about that for me that is really one of the big drivers which determines career success that where do you end up do you end up being the manager of two person team or two companies or 20 companies you know i think there's a big difference in that so i think i was taught few important elements of success by my parents so let me start with that uh four edge first and foremost honesty beyond okay okay dishonesty doesn't pay and doesn't last okay number two hard work i mean you can't do anything but hard work hard work includes smart work it's not hard work physical work it's also use use of your intellectual capability number three humility whatever you are you might be the top of the world keep yourself grounded and be very very respectful to people all levels of people first name let them be first name with you and you be first name with them sure and last but not the least hunger hunger to learn everything new and learn fast and after 50 i turn 50 hunger to unlearn because you know great because i started my career when i was 20 and obviously at that point i was in sugar sugar dollar sugar works etc so at that point i may have learned many good things which were good for that time very pertinent very relevant but they are obsolete now why should i carry it here i should instead i should replace that with new technology with ai with machine learning with new apps new way of working you know millennial way of working so i have to replace this capacity i've got capacity of let's say hundred so out of that if 20 is obsolete i've removed that 20 old learning obsolete learning which is good good experience but not useful today and replace that with new 20% left of something which is futuristic something with technology focused so so that was where i started and i think i followed these principles quite consistently through the career and i've had many successes and many failures and and both have taught taught me so much what is a better teacher success or failure of course failure failure is a fantastic teacher it's a it's a it's a staircase to success next success because the real thing is that you fail you stumble you fall and then you get up and then you regain confidence and then you say i'm going to run again that is real success real successes are not to succeed without a failure real successes succeed after a failure and many of our entrepreneurs have told so many time but they've succeeded finally which is fantastic i think that is real resilience willpower persistence and these are the qualities which actually will will sustain you in this marathon because it is not a sprint it is a marathon sure sure when you look at you know companies when they are sort of scaling up you know and you look at the organization from being a dreamer to a unicorn to a market shaper you know the organizational complexity grows quite dramatically yeah and so we have a question here from one of the listeners in the audience he sort of wants to know that when you have a direct involvement in a company there is a certain way in which you can ensure compliance etc but when you are an investor what is your method to ensure that that compliance is taken care of so that's a question from Navanil Roy what is it that you would do you know for all the major investors globally including sort bank ethics corporate governance and compliances are the foundation of success so these are no negotiations not negotiable areas because we are very clear because we work in multiple countries multiple regimes multiple regulations multiple policies and policies keep on changing and our objectives are to be 100 person compliant always not an idea 100 percent because if we have to focus on business and growth and value creation then we can't get into problems of non-compliance we can't it'll it'll take away a huge amount of time and attention of the team of the entrepreneur so it is better that we do 100 person compliance in letter in spirit sure and then focus completely on business focus completely on the consumer and that will bring bigger success so no short cuts Compliances may be long cut but we love it perfect when a number of times when you look at the startups you know the investment that they have let us say in human resources is a really minimal they have somebody who manages to payroll and do a little bit of hiring but where do you really at which size of the organization do you think it's you know important to have a proper HR function that builds for the future what is the size of a number of employees where you would say that if you haven't got that by now it's too late so there is no scientific formula here because we at sort bank we we only invest at a late stage when the startup has already reached to certain scale and at that stage definitely HR requirement is very very important but but let me also share with you that HR is not the people driver all managers are people drivers I've always believed in that that every manager has to drive his own family that somebody has a family of five somebody has a family of 10 somebody has a family of 20 HR is only an assistant assistance to the manager line manager and if if if line manager does a great job and HR assists very proactively I think that's a that's a fantastic success and that's the golden mean but but if if one of the two fails that is where the problem arises so I am a very firm believer of uh line managers being the first HR managers and HR to be a very strong business support function business support not just a function HR has to appreciate business complexities environmental problems future business issues which are going to hit us in next six months 12 months so that they can get people ready mentally and intellectually and support the line managers fully so that's the way it's a very spontaneous very integrated way what do you look for when you hire an HR person I mean not necessarily now but in the past when you've done that to you what are some of the early indicators that what this person is going to be a good HR person what would you look for today today I started my career by the way as HR I know that's why I'm asking you manager is very different today the need is very different one the first characteristic of course that he has to be social which means people should trust him him or her if if people don't have faith in this person HR manager then he can't operate so that means he has to build that trust and faith in himself by being honest by keeping promises etc etc number two he or she has to understand business very deeply and business dynamics and environmental emerging environment very deeply if it doesn't then you know he won't be able to really connect with the problems and stresses of people and third issue is he or she now in this regime in this new era has to understand tech technology especially digitization very deeply so that he or she catalyzes the organization for with digital experience digitalization of business all processes systems and also including for HR so that you know the speed of HR responsiveness is better is faster because you know your people may be spread over 20 towns 20 countries you need to still engage with them very deeply and very responsibly and without any delay so digitization knowledge will be great for HRP so these are three of I'm talking about modern HR person do you think that the early stint that you did in HR you know impacted the leadership style that you had over the years because you sort of moved into a business role and you grew in that particular pace did that have some kind of a shadow on your style did it make you too soft did it make you sensitive did it make you you know did you struggle with the pieces it did give made me very very sensitive it did improve my observation skills it did give me better judgment on people and their capabilities give me an example of observation skills I find that fascinating no because you think you can observe the behavior and predict how this employee will do because if there is an employee who always comes back with some excuse for some reason which doesn't sound too reliable once twice then you understand that there is some mindset which needs to improve and and and hence you prove proactively go back to the now can you please take care of this proactively rather than come back to me later by saying that this has so so so there are many such things but I feel that once I made that foundation in the first seven eight years of my career then I decided that if I'm good at this let me not do this I mean I'll do it at my second nature subconsciously anyway let me focus on finance let me focus on marketing let me focus on branding knowledge etc etc so I really completely took away my mind to other important functions which I had to learn and gain some degree of expertise so that also helped because then I could learn fast because I knew that at least on the people side I can manage myself well so in some sense it's really you know the image in my mind when I hear you say that it's almost like saying that I know how to write with my right hand if that's my dominant hand let me try to learn to write with my left hand now you know say it's a little bit of that is yeah and you're right because because you should I always always focused on my weaknesses always focus on my developmental needs because that's the only way demoralizing that's demoralizing that you're focusing no that is very enriching that is very enriching that is very inspiring for example I when I joined telecom I learned I attended an online AT&T course of telecom basics of telecom and I learned it in those 90 days I think so much and as soon as I joined I signed an agreement of $400 million that was my first agreement in telecom without understanding many areas in it and and and I didn't like it so I went deeper and deeper and within six months I learned so much about it hands on so becoming forcing yourself to be hands on forcing yourself to learn fast appreciate details talk to many people meet many people who are concerned is very important so what is your style of learning how do you suppose you say that I'm going to learn about for argument sake e-commerce so what is your method of how do you go about doing it if that's a brand new area I'll give you some yeah one example is when I went to Africa rather than depend on advisors I went to each country there were 17 countries we had each country myself met the government met the customers dealers distributors employees all key stakeholders personally because I wanted to feel them personally and understand the difference country by country personally rather than second hand or third hand right which took me about six months then I when I came to renewable energy I learned solar and wind industry by personally taking two weeks off of my personal time and I believe I went to US to learn large solar plants large wind plants understand what are the issues key issues I would take care so the point is that you need to have hunger to learn a lot because you can't manage if you don't understand and if you don't understand the special issues not the general stuff the special issue give me an example of a special issue I mean just so that I understand that for example in the first example I gave Africa each country Nigeria for example is a is a tough place complex place DRC Congo is a tough and complex place I understood that met so many people understood what complexity how to overcome it how to manage it similarly in in in in renewable energy the second example land is a very important issue transmission is a very important issue which delays many many projects 80 90 percent of the projects are delayed either because of land or because of transmission and if you take care of these two aspects proactively which we did in our first project and that's why we we we launched that commission the first project 50 days before time because we were able to take care of these two things which normally delay all the projects so the point I'm trying to make is learn the special issues which could be on critical path and hence you will do better rather than get a surprise later I'm curious to know that you know we are coming towards the end we've got about 10 minutes I would like to really understand from you something about your personal habits you know what kind of you know do you like reading do you like you know traveling of course I seem to understand that you really enjoy going to a place meeting people and doing that so that's an obvious one but what do you enjoy reading or do you read at all I am assuming no I read a lot I read a lot of business papers I need economics I'm originally a student of economics I love economics read about business economics global trends especially technology trends new businesses which are coming up across the world fantastic new ideas innovations of Silicon Valley Israel Korea Japan you know so much to read so much to understand what's happening across the world so I read that very very deeply so do you read a little bit every day I mean how much time do you spend reading and you know is it something you do on a weekend do you read when you travel what's your reading couple of hours every day couple of hours every day a weekend of course will be more and if you were to sort of divide your day like a pizza you know slice it up and what would those pizza slices look like how much you know what are the big chunks I mean a typical one the very important slice of fitness is one hour at least sometimes over the weekend it is one and a half hours because I believe a fit body leads to fit mind a calm mind a thinking mind and another very important part of that pizza is good sleep deep sleep how many hours do you sleep it depends it could be six or seven hours you know it depends on good and never put an alarm because I think alarm is bad news it wakes you up suddenly and your mind is not calm when you get up so you should get up yourself and I normally get up plus minus five minutes from when I want to get up so that's also part important part of that and balance of course I either I am working or with my family because I'm a family man as I love spending time with family so when you you know when you were going through different choices in your career you know you worked across some really interesting sectors I mean if I sort of really look at it all of them played a very critical role yeah if you were to go back and do a big picture view of your career what are some of those moments and inflection points that you think about that really shaped your style I mean what were those you know because you worked in you know I would think from sugar to telecom to you know finance and the works I mean so tell me about that so you know everything shapes you I mean I like sugar shaped me it taught me how a very tightly regulated business works why tightly regulated it's the most regulated business whether you purchase sugar cane or whether you sell sugar or whether you operate the factory how many days so much of regulated business then I went to Calcutta and I ran a engineering company and one there I learned a lot about people about unions about how to manage productivity how to get get the best out of people in a difficult situation then I went to Hyderabad and managed another engineering company and where I understood how technology works how US, Korea, Japan technology should come to India and India should benefit from these new technologies and how you manage a large plant manufacturing plant and build new bridge new new manufacturing plant there also so I learned project management also then of course telecom telecom was my I'll say most thrilling professional experience and my first love so as to say and and that that really was learning and applying learning and applying cycle every every day learning applying it was application of every management learning for example I I learned French in school I never thought I'll I'll use French and when I was in Africa there were eight French countries francophone countries are with me and I used to use a bit of French when I used to go there and they used to be a bit surprised that this guy knows French so everything I used everything I learned in my management in my law education in my commerce education which is fantastic you know and and applying your knowledge applying your education is great and then of course soft bank soft bank is the most unique institution in the world business institution and most entrepreneurial I'll say and and very very tech focused very long-term focused and and with the environment with the working environment which is so open so entrepreneurial so flexible and and people are owners of what they do and the supervision is not like many old established companies it's it's very left to you and you you run so it's a very very enabling culture very different from other companies many other global companies so I think I have learned from each of these experiences and also tried to contribute as much as I could there is a question you know from a from a listener here and the question really is that you know there are lots of people who are in their midlife career and they're looking for a change and there seems to be a lot of reluctance in startups to give an opportunity for somebody who's considered to be from a different generation from let's say the founders or something what is your view on that no it's a it's a genuine problem I think what what is being shared is is a genuine problem uh but I still believe age is not important physical age is not important it's a mental age it is your attitude if your attitude is youthful if your approach is youthful then I don't think there'll be a problem you you you will definitely be welcome in a startup so so I think one has to do a self analysis I mean it's not about gray hair it's about great thoughts so one has to rejuvenate thoughts and ideas make them as youthful as possible as millennial as possible as tech focused as possible you know and then you'd be acceptable in every environment one of the questions I had is when you started your journey at etel how large was the company and when you left it how large was it just give me an idea of the scale of that etel was a couple of million one and a half to two million when I joined customers and when I left in 15 it was close to I don't know 360 or 380 million customers so you added about 380 million customers I don't know exactly yeah okay all right that's not important important is that it is scaled up to be a multinational important is that it's scaled up to be a company which is sustainable even if you see last quarter results it has really done so well even last quarter which means that the organization is hungry it's strong it's muscular it has good systems good culture and of course leadership is good during this time did your focus shift as the thing was going let's say million customers versus a 10 million 100 million 200 million did the compass of your attention shift from function to function so initially you start focused on product another time you focused on finance third time was it like that or was it a consistent method all through we never we never expected it to be such a large company it happened we one million was big news five million was a big goal 10 million was a great goal 25 million was very big and then 50 million was big then 100 million was dream and then luckily we went all our team went to Beijing to for an annual con conference and we invited the china mobile chairman to address the opening and he gave us a bigger dream because china mobile is number one in the world sure so we then had but you're right i think we we kept on enhancing our dreams we kept on enhancing our aspirations we kept on enhancing our focus on the market on the customers on service on network on expansion on quality on rural market for example and in that time i must have gone to thousands and thousands of villages personally so whichever was the new theme we the entire management team focused on that theme because when rural was the theme we focused on that when satellite tv was launched which was very new product for a telecom company we focused completely on digital tv and make it a leader in the company so so that way i think we were able to succeed and and keep it a sustainable success um you know we are sort of really at the end of our time and i must tell you i found it really fascinating in terms of uh you know when i think about your ability to simplify a lot of things you know we've had a number of guests on this show but i really am taken up by your ability to synthesize a number of things and simplify it you make it sound really easy but i know that it would not have ever been easy ever uh you're just going by the sheer gigantic scale you know my mind boggles but it's really been a privilege to have you here thank you so much and uh you will see from all the comments a number of people have had a number of questions to ask there are more but hopefully we'll get you back another time and ask the rest of the questions that we have thank you so very much much appreciate it all the very best i'm grateful to you and uh it's been really a pleasure talking to you because um i think the questions you asked and the way you asked them is also very simple and enjoyable thanks a lot thank you so much again bye bye bye