Monday, August 18, 2008

A "Must Read" for Future Entrepreneurs!


This is really a masterpiece from Sanjeev Bikhchandani - Founder, Naukri.com! In this article, I feel, he has portrayed the practical aspects of Entrepreneurship, pretty effectively.

http://www.livemint.com/2008/08/14022048/Entrepreneurship-it8217s-a.html?h=B

- Sharma

Monday, August 11, 2008

Words of Wisdom

Just now, got a meaningful (rarely so) forward (e-mail). These are the words of wisdom by Swami Vivekananda! I really find this interesting!


"

When I asked God for strength
He gave me difficult situation to face.

When I asked God for Brain & Brawn
He gave me puzzle in life to solve.

When I asked God for Happiness
He showed me some unhappy people.

When I asked God for Wealth
He showed me how to work hard.

When I asked God for Favors
He showed me opportunities to work hard.

When I asked God for Peace
He showed me how to help others.

God gave me nothing I wanted
He gave me everything I needed.

"

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Words from the "Baazee"gar!!

I went to listen to the guy who has quite a lot of brands: IIT > Wisconsin > Harvard > Apple > McKinsey > Goldman Sachs > Ebay > Baazee, associated to his fame. YES, I am talking about Avnish Bajaj who came into the limelight in 2004 when he sold Baazee to Ebay.
I must have attended atleast over 100 such talks in last 4 years, but this one was one of the special ones!

Here are some useful excerpts from his Talk:

1) Do take your studies seriously! This doesn't mean, just scoring good grades. Even if your grades are pathetic, but you focus really hard on ensuring a good learning - you may still be better off than most of your studious peers. So what matters more in the long run, is the learning and not just a number.

2) It's a fashion statement: "You don't need to be educated to be a successful Entrepreneur". And, we jump on to the examples of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page, for a quick defence. At the same time, we ignore so many thousands (a huge majority) of such drop-outs who fail to make it big in life, in short "unsuccessful"!

3) He also pointed out that "you all" (audience mostly comprising of IIT students) have a platform set in life and each of you are going to be successful in life. It's just that you need to keep faith in yourself and keep working hard.

4) He believes that it's mainly the team which decides the success of any business, ofcourse, with the leader/CEO keeping the vision and showing the path.

Q&A Session

One gentleman in the audience asks: "It is often said that the great people are the ones who create something original and not just copying! In a sense, Baazee was started inspired by e-bay because at that point of time, there was opportunity in India. Do you regret, when you look back, that you should not have copied it?" In the meantime, Avnish listens to the question quite patiently and gives an answer, with a big smile on his face: "I look at it as an arbitrage and not copying" he continues,"I think that 95% of the entrepreneurs fall in this category where they observe the results of other existing businesses and then finetune their models, as the risk is lower in this case, while, there are only a few great people in minority like Steve Jobs who push their agenda and dream singlehandedly. (example: before the launch of i-Pod, many players also tried to come up with a similar product in the market, Sony being one of them, but they all failed badly. Inspite of that, Steve Jobs stuck to his dream of coming up with a portable music player and ensured that the product reaches all parts of the world and sells). And, I am not that great!"

- Sharma

Monday, August 04, 2008

3 Js, 3 Cheers!!!

I had never thought, I would discuss movies someday on this blog! But, here it's a temptation too hard to resist. :)

John Nash, James J Braddock, Jeffrey Wigand! You must be wondering what is common between these three names except that they all start from letter 'J'. Well, two attributes: One, they all are special heroes, one can look up to, whenever one wants a candy full of inspirational and motivational flavors. Two, also the primary reason why a ranked lazy creature like me is making this post, all the 3 characters have been played superbly by one genius called RUSSELL CROWE (in the movies A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, The Insider).

All the movies are utterly inspiring and you would always want to watch them again and again! In all these movies, Russell has portrayed the characters so well and so real that after watching each of them, it forced me to doubt if the real heroes had themselves acted in the movies. Everytime, I was so excited that I couldn't resist myself from thoroughly going through the personal websites of these J-heroes, immediately after the movies finished!

Isn't it also amazing that the same actor, a Kiwi native, was chosen to depict the greatness of these legends in movies, all, churned out of Hollywood? By no means, it was easy to play any of these characters. Those of you, who haven't watched these movies yet, please do so asap. I bet, you would be extremely charged up by these fantastic pieces of genius. Afterall, atleast in Bollywood - you don't get to see such performances too often, in your lifetime! Do you?

- Sharma