 Namaskar. I'm Professor Devdi Purkayastha from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Welcome to my course, Business Fundamental for Entrepreneurs, Part 1, Internal Operations. As part of the course, I'm very happy to welcome a very illustrious guest, Professor Rajan Jaswa, to tell us and share with us a few of his experiences and learnings. Before I hand over to Professor Raj Jaswa, a couple of lines of introduction. Professor Raj Jaswa passed out of IIT Bombay for his undergraduate in 1975. He went on to do his Master's in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and then he went on to do his MBA from Stetson University. He went to become a serial entrepreneur and he actually founded three companies in different capacities and one of the companies went public with a huge multi-billion dollar valuation. He also volunteered to serve on Thai, which is one of the largest network of Indian entrepreneurs across the world and he served as the president of the Thai chapter in Silicon Valley and then he went on to become a global trustee. He is also a young faculty at IIT Bombay's own School of Entrepreneurship and he has been teaching, mentoring and stimulating entrepreneurial students for the last seven to eight years. So it is my pleasure now to hand over to Professor Raj Jaswa for his module. Hi students and future entrepreneurs. I'm so happy that I've been invited to be a guest speaker on this business fundamentals for entrepreneurs course. Entrepreneurship course is something that we started here in 2014 at IIT Bombay and we had the dream that one day all students aspiring entrepreneurs would have a chance to learn the fundamentals of entrepreneurship from what we are teaching at IIT Bombay. So we started this program in 2014 and it's almost 10 years now, a decade and now we are ready to take all our entrepreneurship material and get it to students across India and hopefully one day across the globe. So today I've been given a very interesting topic and just for me this is a natural which is how did I make my journey from just an engineer to an entrepreneur. Now you would say that IIT engineer is a very special thing you know it's a special entrepreneurship special engineering degree and yes IIT engineers are regarded as the creme de la creme you know across the globe today as you know the most wanted engineers anywhere in the globe by any team so but the opportunity for an engineer IIT engineer or any engineer to move on to becoming an entrepreneur is a privilege and you will see that you know once I made the leap from being a engineer working for the best companies in the world general electric cooperation, Intel cooperation when I made the transition or the jump or took the plunge to become an entrepreneur there was no going back I would never ever want to go back to just being an individual contributor in in you know for for any company now I wanted my ideas and my vision to take life and that's what drives entrepreneurs to have their idea their vision take life and start helping people do the job better live better solve their problems better so that's what motivates an entrepreneur and it took me almost 15 years to take the plunge to jump so let's take a look at you know why did it take me so long when it is it's so rewarding to be an entrepreneur and let's then see like what is it that holds people back what helped me back in my journey to becoming going from an engineer to an entrepreneur so basically I'm going to talk about a little bit about my story and tell you how over the last 40 years I I've transitioned from being an engineer at some of the best corporations in the world to then becoming an entrepreneur for 25 years and then share with you kind of the journey what does it take to prepare in order to be a successful entrepreneur somebody that can actually build companies that take a life beyond them right so the whole goal of entrepreneurship is to is to develop a come up with a company and that let let that company which is your creation take a life of its own right so we're going to talk about four important things four important things that every entrepreneur when you have the luxury of having somebody else or working for somebody else what is what are the four things that you need to pull together or the skill set that you need to develop so we're going to talk about the hard skills you know what are the hard skills that you need to develop that are going to be absolutely essential for you as you progress on your entrepreneurship journey what are the soft skills how do you make it easy for people to do business with you how do you make it how do you make yourself somebody that people want to do business with you the art of the deal so what are the soft skills and then we are going to talk about how do you become the master of what of your market the mark the niche market that you want to go ahead and bring brilliant solutions to so we're going to talk about how you become craftsman focused on getting that pot designed perfectly right right so you how do you become that craftsman and then finally you know it's a one-way journey once you jump and take the plunge you can't jump back there is no looking back once you take the plunge and we will talk about the challenges and then we'll talk about about how do you take the plunge and be excited about being on the journey to being an entrepreneur okay so what's my story essentially IIT's hard to get into did a lot of preparation did my agarwal classes we all have to study beyond our normal curriculum in order to become be invited to be an engineer who's going to be educated by the great IITs of India and IIT Bombay is one of the premier premier IITs also so got my BTEC in electrical engineering in 1975 and then decided that you know I needed to get a little bit more specialization and some more advanced education and picked up a master's in doubly at University of Toronto in Canada and a few years later then I started working at GE and concurrently I decided to get an MBA because I decided that you know I wanted to be more than just a engineering contributor in the companies that I worked for I wanted to get the business side of it under my belt so I picked up an MBA and GE generously funded my MBA education which was pretty nice so I was a design engineer GE and picked up an MBA at the same time with my MBA in my under my belt I was ready to move into marketing and I got in I got a job at Intel Corporation in California and I was a product manager for some of Intel's microprocessors for the next six seven years then worked at a small company called Chips and Technologies and I'll share with you in my journey as to what can you learn at a big company what can you learn at a medium size in a smaller company small companies will give you a lot more well-rounded experience because remember as an entrepreneur you're starting from a small small small company right so you need to know what it takes for a small company to come together and then you know took the plunge and from being just an individual contributor even at the managerial level moved on to starting the first company called Optias Semiconductor Company just four of us no experience starting a company no formal education in entrepreneurship that all of you are getting and we just jumped in so many things we did not know and you know we obviously did it better in our future companies but this company what we did have is a lot of excitement and energy because you know there was so much new learning about what it meant to start your own company and run your own business so we ran Opti for seven years we took it public imagine starting a company with no funding and taking it public four years later for a four hundred million dollar valuation and becoming the largest chipset vendor in the whole world in a span of four or five years and one out of every four personal computers used our chips and that was a heck of a achievement and I'll tell you what kind of skill set it took in order to get there then after seven years you know maybe time to try something new internet was coming along Java was coming along the world was excited about this new disruptive technology called the internet and you know met this IIT Kanpur student and we started Selectica and Selectica was a AI startup AI is the buzzword today 20 years later but we were one of the earliest AI companies and we started Selectica and you know we basically built it up to be very significant company in the AI business software business intelligence area on the internet platform and you know took it public for five billion dollars ten times more value than Opti and took it you know to take it public for five billion dollars in that day and age is probably equivalent to taking a company public for 50 billion dollars today you know so heck of a success we were regarded as the white hot startup of the day so that was a heck of a run ran that for seven years and then became the president of Thai for four years and then got back into entrepreneurship and started a video streaming company called Dino ran that for five years and then I decided that you know time to start teaching students across the in India first in the US and then in India what is this entrepreneurship all about is it really just black magic is it something that just happens by luck or is it something that can be taught and clearly right now we feel that entrepreneurship is something that can be taught and at IIT Bombay we experimented and we cried so many things and I believe right now we have put together a phenomenally effective teaching program experiential teaching program to help shape the next generation of entrepreneurs as very very right off the bat and we've been doing that for nine years and so you know from being a engineer at IIT Bombay full circle round to back to IIT Bombay but now I'm on the stage at IIT Bombay and I'm teaching the next generation of students entrepreneurship and now through this NPTEL platform hope to have you know tens of thousands and as I hear you know the expectation is maybe hundreds of thousands of students will get educated in entrepreneurship using the IIT Bombay NPTEL entrepreneurship programs okay so what does it take how do you prepare what are the hard skills that are needed and when I think back I think the number one thing that you need to become is an inveterate problem solver as an entrepreneur you face problems of all types small problems large problems different kinds of problems business problems entering problems customer service problems all kinds of problems is what you face you are a problem solver but that as an engineer or somebody who's going through school what should you do how do you become a problem solver how do you become a person who can solve problems night and day and not get exhausted solving problems the reason why I say this is because as an entrepreneur believed or not you'll be solving problems night and day so you better love the job of solving problems night and day so what can we do when we are at school I would say the number one thing is be the best engineer you can be and the best engineer is somebody that not only goes to class and studies the theory but also tries to put those learnings into practice you know go to the lab go after the classes are over go to the lab think of things that you can make with all the education that you've got or the academics that you've got make something out of it you know fool around with all the equipment that is there in laboratories and other incubators and so on and be the best engineer you can be the reason why I'm saying is that be the best engineer that you can be at a school during your school days is that guess what learning to be the best engineer is actually a luxury it is not work it is an opportunity it is not something that you work that you have to do because the professor gave you an assignment it is something that turns you on because it's a luxury you are privileged with all the resources and all the hopes of the country that you will design great products for your companies and then ultimately for your own company and this is the time for you to be the best engineer that you can be learn to be the best engineer that you can be while you're learning to be the best engineer you have to learn to think out of the box because you know when you go into the real world the professor who gave you the assignment to do did not have the answer already figured out when you go into the real world you'll find that for every problem there are a n number of solutions and any of them will do the job but the question is which one will do the job right from a business angle not which one will do the job right from just a technical angle or just from cost angle or whatever but from the total business angle so you have to learn to think out of the box when you face any problem and this is something that you want to experiment and practice while you're at your engineering school or in your other university and essentially you know all of us as one-track minded people so we can think this is the only way to solve this problem but you find five people and tell them how would you solve this problem and you'll find that five people actually figure out five different ways to solve the same problem and then you learn that you know any problem actually has n number of solutions and just because you thought of one way to do it is not the only way to do it and so learn to think out of the box and then how do you develop this personality that attracts problems you want to have a personality that attracts problems and the reason why you want to attract problems is so that you can solve them because you love like there are people who love doing crossword puzzles and you some people it's a lot of work but for the person who loves crossword puzzles it's joy it's happiness it's it's satisfaction so the same way we have to figure out how to attract problems and how do you attract problems volunteer for open-ended assignments organize different events organize field trips organize competitions you know so volunteer for open-ended assignments things that will where the budget is not set the team size is not set the opportunity is not defined but open-ended so that you because that is how the real world is it's an open-ended world it's not a closed-end world where somebody says okay solve this problem and boom you are going to build a successful company no the world is entrepreneurs world is open-ended and they'd how they attack the problem how the solution comes comes together is basically what will define the parameters of your company so basically pick up open-ended assignments because you will decide and you will come up with oh this should be the framework of the of the of that particular challenge that you took up the next thing is that you an in vitric problem solver does is that they learn that resources can come from everywhere and anywhere and you know if they need money to get something done they can get it through the institute they can get it from the department they can get from their parents they can get from their friends they can get it from different institutions and number of places to essentially get resources whether it's money resources i told you about all these different ways people resources equipment resources promotional resources all kinds of resources are available from so many sources and the question is you have to figure out what is the right combination of resources to put together to solve your open-ended assignment by thinking out of the box and doing the right kind of engineering right so you and finally remember you have to enjoy this because tomorrow there's going to be another problem later on there's going to be another problem i mean the problems never stop and if you don't become a in vitric problem solver while you're a student at your institute it's going to be hard for you to go ahead and and become an entrepreneur and you're going to be exhausted instead of getting energy from solving the problems and looking forward to the next problem to solve and having this continuous feeding of energy from solving problems it'll start draining you out and entrepreneurs that are drained out don't last too long as an entrepreneur so first thing in my opinion is develop the hard skills to make your in vitric problem solver then you find out that you know those hard skills don't really make you successful by themselves they're just a foundation ultimately in order to build a company in order to get a purchase order in order to raise money in order to do that you have to do something called close the deal and you've got to learn the art of the deal what does it take to get a deal closed right so clearly things to be learnt what are the key tools there are sales skills have to be developed sales techniques have to be learned marketing skills have to be developed marketing technology and nomenclature and all of these things are to be learned negotiations you know soon you'll realize that every transaction is actually negotiable what you get depends on how good a negotiator you are and then you got to learn money money is what makes the world go around sad to say that as you know you thought money came from your parents and they will and obviously they took really good care of you so that you got admission to all these schools and you don't have to worry about who pays for your tuition or who pays for your lord lodging or boarding etc but in the real world you are responsible to raise money from strangers now you need to know everything about money so learning everything about money becomes very very important so lots of soft skills have to be developed soft skills in the area of sales marketing negotiations finance on and on and all all the MBA courses that you see online as well as as well as through an MBA program all of these skills have to be soft skills have to be learned and then you find that you know if you are just quiet about how good you are you are going to be ignored you only get you you're just going to be left behind in the dust you realize that if you are going to go ahead and be successful in life you better communicate to everybody as to how good you are how good your idea is how successful you're going to be and deliver and of course the communication skills the effective presentation the debating you'll find that everything requires a back and forth and then you come up with the right answer and convince the other person so debating skills presentation skills convincing skills all these communication skills start becoming very important in order to get your deal to become something that is interesting to to to whoever you want to do transaction with whether it is customers whether it is investors bankers whether it is lawyers whether it is investment bankers whether it is you know all of them you have to do presentation and then you find that you know some of the other everybody likes the way I sell it promote it to present it etc but nobody signs on the deal nobody hands over the money and the reason is there is something missing and that's something missing is called emotional quotient of eq you are not credible you are not trustworthy oh my god how do I get other people to trust me with their million dollars how do I get I had to when we raised our selective data selective IPO I had to convince investors that my company was worth five billion dollars how do I get them to trust me with their money and their future and you know their personal savings and to get them to buy my stock so eq is something that you have to learn to develop and then finally realize that the king is not your great company the king is the customer for your products and services right so you have to have the humility to realize no matter how great a mousetrap you design how great a product you design unless the customer you treat the customer like a king you know with humility with care with the you know not going to succeed so out of the deal is very important and finally suddenly realize that boy you know you've developed the hard skills you've got the soft skills now what you have to become like a craftsman and generate focus be focused on one small niche where you are going to be the best the important thing in life is to be the best it's up to you to decide whether you're going to be best on a big market or small market or whatever market you want but you have to be the best at what you do and you know the world of business is you know is always in a state of change and flux technology can be disruptive it can be a friend or your enemy competition if you're making a lot of money competition wants to come and is sniffing at you sniffing in your tail down your back the competition is always learning then you realize that the people working for you people who are your partners people who are your customers they're not robots they're continuously changing they're continuously learning and then you realize that you know the customer was happy last year with this performance but today you want something 30 faster their needs are continuously evolving they were one more features soon you realize that you cannot rest on your laurels you cannot rest on your success change is the only constant in business and you have to be comfortable with a world that continuously changes under you and an entrepreneur by focusing on a niche market where he is the best in terms of all the functionality all the capability he becomes the master craftsman for his market segment that he defines right so you have to develop the craftsman's focus on a niche market and once you've got the market in your pocket once you've got the soft skills in your pocket once you've got the hard skills under your belt now is the hard thing you have to make the jump or you're going to take the plunge and it is an irreversible change like you know so once you go ahead it can't go back and so there is no looking back for an entrepreneur and you want to be an employee dogs wonderful lives but they eat the same food every day it's always there at the same time and so on but somebody else is the boss or do you want the freedom of a wolf you know one day you'll eat like a king next three days you're going to starve but you know you are it's up to you to decide that you want to hunt or you relax or you want to enjoy the the moon and so you have to decide you know whether you're going to be living a dog's life or the freedom of a wolf and you have to get out of your comfort zone some of us got kicked out of a comfort zone you find that your company led you off or you find that your wife says okay i want you to start a company or your boss says that but you get kicked out of the comfort zone for me it's happened in many many different ways there were times when for some companies i was kicked out of the comfort zone other companies i was tired of the comfortable job comfortable seat situation that i wasn't but either way you've got to be out of your comfort zone where there is risk at every turn and you'll say that you know i'll start a company tomorrow or next year or 10 years from now the time is never right as soon as you become passionate about something that you're willing to give your everything to it that's when the time is right you know don't start a company because if you're not passionate so passion is really what is going to be most important for you and the reason is that as i said entrepreneurs face problems all the time and passion is what enables the entrepreneur to struggle on and persevere on in spite of all the odds because failure is not an option for an entrepreneur they have to succeed you know who nobody else is going to you know save you or pay your salary or or pay your employees their salary if you don't succeed right and ultimately entrepreneurs do it because they enjoy the journey it's entrepreneurs don't work for the ipo they don't work for the mna they don't work for you know basically stock options they work hard because they enjoy the journey you have to enjoy the journey if you're going to be an entrepreneur who's going to enjoy the freedom of wolf and the success that comes from and the happiness that comes from having your ideas take life and creating the company that has a life of its own so wishing all of you the ability to enjoy the journey of an entrepreneur thank you