Deepak Narayanan on Why Failure Is No Longer a Stigma in Indian Business

Welcome everybody to another episode of Beyond the Case which is a podcast where global leaders from Howard Business School's OPM community join in a personal capacity and they share the real decisions failures and mental models that go behind building in the Oregon companies. My guest today is Deepak Narayana. He's from OPM 62 which is a few batches before the OPM program that I participated in. Deepak, it's a pleasure to have you here. It's a pleasure so in thanks for for pulling me out from from nowhere. I know you have a lot of choices because the OPM community is big but I am I'm kind of looking forward to this podcast. Thank you. Deepak, do you just want to introduce yourself what you do and help the listeners understand about your background? Yeah, absolutely. For those of you listening in India, I run a consulting firm. Consulting is not a very sexy business unlike being in tech today with all the valuations and page one being featured on newspaper frontline headlines. But look at the end of the day I feel that consulting is what tech or IT services used to be about 30, 40 years back. So with the growth in the economy and with the amount of talent that's available in India, especially in the advisory and in the consulting space, I think this is probably going to be the next big thing in terms of the industry build out. I've always been a consultant in the sense I've always worked for a consulting firm even before I started this company. So 25 years back I started with Deloitte and then I worked a bit for for Ernst and then in 2007, we started the this company that I currently run it used to be called as wealth, wealth tree. The loose translation of Kalpavruksh, we didn't find an equivalent name of Kalpavruksh and we named it as as well three and between 2010 and 2021, we ran a brand called my CFO, which was essentially working with organizations in either to help the CFO's office or in a number of family managed businesses, family owned family managed businesses to act as a CFO. In 2020, we made this transition to a full-blown management consulting firm, 2021, we rebranded as practice and here we are. And what is your business call today? It's called practice, PRACT US, which means results in Latin. So let me segue to why it's called practice and why we chose the name results. So if you look at consulting in general, people joke about the fact that a consultant tells you time on a watch that you are wearing. So basically reports are issued and it's a black box. We are kind of changing that paradigm to introduce a concept of an ROI, a return on investment, which means that if you charge a certain fee for a client for a certain type of work that we do. We also promise or commit an ROI for the client. So how do we do it? We predominantly work on four areas, which is helping companies to grow their revenues, improve profits, cash flows or their enterprise valuation. So if a client comes to me and says that I've got a growth problem, I help me refine my strategy and also help me implement the strategy. Then we put down all the layers that can help the client improve their growth trajectory. And one of these parameters that I just spoke about gets impacted because of helping them with growth and then we design our fee in a manner that allows them to see the ROI. If my fee is $250,000 and the ROI that I would be able to generate or promise, I would be in the range of three to five X as a minimum. Therefore, I think clients feel a lot more comfortable that there is skin in the game, even though we are a consulting organization, there is a there is skin in the game. Also, I think it's not just about strategy, it's about implementing those strategies on the ground, right? We could get involved in strategy implementation, it could be in operation, transformation, whether it is supply chain, manufacturing, it could be finance, finance transformation, working with the CFO's office, it could be people, it could be digital. So those are those five elements or facets that we bring together in order to successfully take a company from point X to point Y. Got it. I have quite a few questions around what you said. Firstly, I feel consulting is a very crowded space. And so 25 years ago, when you thought about starting well three, you know, practice today, which was well three back then, founding a company like this is not just a career move, which it's basically based on conviction. So you must have probably had some personal experience or frustration, which might have become this path to starting this company. Could you walk us through what you are going through then? It's not only happy to do that great question. So in so 25 years back, I was still working, I was working for Deloitte and then I and then I moved to Ernst and the company was started around 2007. So it's probably around 18 years since we started the company. But the frustration at that point in time was, as I said, consultants were great at giving out reports. No one cared as to what the companies did with the reports and there was no handholding or implementation support. That was available, right? So it was all about the big picture, thinking working with CEOs and boards and essentially telling them or talking them, talking out of path for growth or some kind of an improvement. But without felt necessarily having a skin in the game, how do you kind of go about implementing it? It's like criticizing the government and telling you should have done this, you should have done that, but are you a part of the problem? So we said we should be solution givers rather than trying to just point out the problems or tell them broadly how to go and address the problem, which was the first part around the frustration. If you look at the second part, which is when well three was founded at that point in time, India was still, I would say, relatively a snake charmer's country, while I think things are opening up. The private equity really took shape only in 2010, 2020, 2010, 2011 in India. So prior to that, it was still a place where companies kind of struggled overseas companies kind of struggle to set up operations, particularly around sectors, which were not frontline sectors. Data availability was a problem. CXO talent was not as available as much available as it is today. And then the general nuances or intricacies of doing business in this country was still fairly tough and not to mention the cultural aspects. So in the last 10 years, culturally, I think Indians are far more integrated with the rest of the world as compared to 18, 19, 20 years back that I'm talking about. So these were some of the reasons why we said, okay, let's do something in this space, which is all about implementation, which is about getting some of these overseas companies are soft landing. Now post 20 2008 when the global recession kind of hit us, we were forced to pivot and change our business model. We said, look, the number of overseas companies coming into India, the numbers are kind of winded and the quality of these companies were not great. And by 2010, we were seeing a bit of a shift in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem, where legacy businesses, for instance, a second and third generation were getting in. They were all Ivy League educated or they went to good colleges, even in India. And there was a general push or shift towards governance, better standards of governance, replacing bank, funding with private equity or even taking their companies to a listing. There was a sense that they should do joint ventures, collaborations, technical collaborations and stuff like that. So I think general level of governance kind of went up. And therefore, I think it was getting far more acceptable and easier for us to work with some of these legacy or family owned businesses. And we did that until 2015 2016, which is, which is when we took around a funding and then we decided to expand the team, we decided to get into other geographies, we decided to invest in technology for ourselves, right. And then we kind of scaled up, then it was an actual extension, scale up happened. By 2020, we felt that the type of service that we were providing for our clients was not just finance or see a for, see a for related, I think we were touching operations, we were touching strategy, we were touching the change management people's side. We were doing a lot of work around digital transformation. And therefore, that was a time we felt there was a need for us to change the brand. I mean, the brand has got to resonate what we do. And then naturally we, we, we kind of move towards practice being that brand with, with ROI being the focus, right. So that in a snapshot has been the journey so far. So right now, I think we have clients across 10 geographies, we have offices in India in Dubai and in the US clients predominantly are in, you can, you can kind of segment them into four. It is family owned family managed businesses in India. There are Indian multinationals. Right. So think of all the large Indian conglomerates. Some of them are our customers. The third category would be global global corporations. And the fourth would be private equity portfolio companies today. So we have got these four large segments where we kind of operate and pretty much it would probably be around 25, 26% in each of these segments. Like 23% here and there. How did you get a first customer once you started out? There is a co-founder in the business. So when both of us came together, some of his connects actually became our first customer. So the company that he worked for when he was a CFO was our first client. Right. So in that sense, I don't think we necessarily had to look too far to get our first set. In fact, I think the first five or 10 customers were so easy that I almost thought that if this is what entrepreneurship is all about. Then we are in for a six sitting spree over the next few years. I mean, little did we know that a lot of things also dependent dependent on what the market conditions were right and 2008 was the first jolt for us. But yeah, the first few clients were not too tough for us to get. You had the benefit of getting your executive education at Howard Business School. You've met with a lot of business owners from an international background. And you work with clients who potentially are generational business owners in the Indian ecosystem. So could you talk about some of the nuances you see about business owners from generational wealth and second author generation business owners in India and how that differs in a mindset from what you see internationally. Yeah. So again, a question, great question. See, I would say that if you look at if you had to look at all the companies in India, 99% of the companies in India are less than funded crores in revenue. So it's only one percent of the companies that are over over funded funded crores, which itself is a lot, but but just statistically there are there are not many companies were broken the funded crore barrier. I'm sure this there's a set to change given that the that with the growth in the in the GDP and the fact that we are now more and more integrated with global supply chains and and with the global world world order the size of companies will only will only keep going up. How does that compare, let's say with the US, even in the US, for 90% of the companies are what is called as SMEs, it's just that the size differs what we call as 500 crores here, there it is probably 100 million, 100 million dollars, right. So I think in terms of size and scale, it kind of differs, but the mindset remains pretty much the same if I would say so. So there are some differences, which I'll come to. But pretty much I think SMEs behave like SMEs all over the world, if you look at generational businesses in India, if you look at typical first generation entrepreneurs, I think these are guys who have built it from scratch, most of them came from nothing. Okay, if you really trace it back to 75 80 years back probably a lot of them set up their businesses at a time when there was when India was being India and Pakistan were partition. Okay, so they've seen the really difficult times what we call as difficulty levels their levels of difficulties as being three four five X more as compared to people today. That's point number one second, I think having come from nothing, the value from the value on money that they place is at a completely different level as compared to the value of money that even the next generation placed. Okay, so for example, they had to fight for every price, say not even for every rupee to survive, right. And therefore, I think when it came to spending money when it came to building out a legacy or their lifestyle, they were probably lot more conservative as compared to generations that came later on. And even if I look back at people of my father's generation, probably in their 70s, they would tell you stories on how even when they were making money, they were not sure whether this money would last, they always conserved, they were always said, let's save rather than splurge. So, thirdly, I think there was a sense that because money came so, so money was so difficult for them, they did not necessarily invest in people. Okay, what I meant mean by that is they had a lot of loyal people, but they would, they would not pay people very high, right, because there was a very clear gap between the owner and the next set of people. Malik Noker relationship was always there, so not a lot of money was spent around paying people well. Fourthly, I think they lived in a generation where in order to get ahead in life, it was not necessarily just the quality of business or meritocracy. It also meant that you had to deal with the government in India, right, because it was a license charge, everything was Russian and so people who had access connects and who could do some of these, I mean the skills that were required to survive in that era was very different from the skill that was required in this era. Now, 20 years later, say in the 90s, the entrepreneurs who are born in the 90s are probably probably came out of the whole liberalization mindset, right, starting with say the IT services companies or the technology companies. I think when they started from day one, they thought governance mechanism should be better, you should work with professionals, your systems and processes have got to have got to be better. That continued until 2010, I would say for only a select set of businesses, which were technology or service businesses. But if you look at the last 15 years, the mindset has changed not just for services or for technology, it's changed even for manufacturing a list state infrastructure. All these guys are getting better at governance because they have also figured out that there is more value to be made by by being professionally run a better government, more visibility, et cetera, et cetera. By the way, it's a private equity encouraging them or putting money in them or them getting valuations in the public markets. So, therefore, I think that's kind of changed at ramatically. So, first generation, entrepreneurs, pre 90s, operated in a certain way, post 90s, between till 2010, certain sectors operated in a certain way. Today, I think it is a lot more democratic as I see it. Now, let's fast forward and say what's the second or the third generation doing the second and the third generation today. I think knows only one way of working because the exposure, not just to good colleges from where they come from in India, but also to Ivy League colleges. Most of them are exposed to Ivy League colleges. And what they are taught in these colleges is that there is a premium for running business in a certain way. So, when they come here, even if their fathers or their uncles are still operating it in a certain manner, they are kind of pushing them to say, look, this is not the way that we should be running our business. So, I think today's second and third generation is already at probably at a certain level, which took the first generation entrepreneurs of the 70s and the 90s far more years to get there. That's a big change. What I think hasn't changed enough. So, you asked me what's the difference between the US and India is. I think we have a lot more emotional when it comes to letting go of their letting go of our businesses. Whether it is to let it go to a professional who can come and run it for us or it is about saying think of every business as a generational business. We want to give it to the next generation. The next generation wants to give it to the next generation. There have been in conversations where if sons don't want to come into the business, the fathers are telling me, why don't you sit in on this discussion and convince my guy that he has to run it because all my life, I did this only for him, I sacrificed a lot and he's not, he's not getting it. So, sometimes I only wonder who's not getting it. Is it the son or is it the father? Both are right in their own way, but the son doesn't necessarily want to run the business that the father has run. So, I think that's one thing that hasn't changed adequately, I would say. A lot of businesses have seen exits, a lot of them have monetized, but there is a lot more that can be done in that space because we tend to be clingy emotional about the companies that we run. That's incredible. I have a few questions. I'm going to try and club together in a bigger question. Could you talk about the relationship with outside capital for business owners in the Indian ecosystem? From my understanding initially, there was lack of private equity, which you previously mentioned only became more prominent in the early 2000s. So, there was more reliability on venture debt, maybe your bank debt. But secondly, should the business face a downside risk, there was no governing body to resolve it. And that led to litigation, which was not too favorable. Now India is coming up with regulations from what I understand is around NCLT and other tribunals. I'm not sure if you have any insights on that, but how does that play into the risk taking ability of a business owner who says, Hey, now I have more avenues to get access to capital to further grow the company and should things not work out the way they were before there's a professional avenue to liquidate and get to closure. Could you talk about the mindset there? Absolutely. So, if you look at my own example, so when I come from a family where I was only told study well, work hard, work for somebody. I think I'm probably the first guy in my family to come out and do something of my own. It was unthinkable. I was 25 and a half when I started this. And the only thing my mother told me when I was starting this, both of them are very supportive. She only told me you may not get a girl from the community because it's not a Gujarati or a Marwadi community where naturally everybody is an entrepreneur. The first port of call is to become an entrepreneur. If you can't become an entrepreneur, then you do something else. For us, it is a reverse. You actually study hard. So I could also get a community. Yeah, so I'm from a Tamil, Bram and a community. Right. So the largest number of CEOs and CFOs and professionals about come from this community, extremely small community. But considered as very academically oriented and always work for somebody else. And while I think I know the names of these professional CEOs globally, could you show in some names so the outside audience can also relate to who you're talking about? Absolutely. So you look at India. Right. So you look at the Tata group and Chandrashekaran, for example, it is a Tam Bram. Right. Sundar Pichai is another one. You have the Adobe guy. So a number of these people who run successful, large businesses, both in India and overseas, come from this extremely small community. And we were always told like the James, right. You will never see a Jane. You will hardly see a Jane who is told to go and work for somebody else. Okay. The first port of call, as I said, is to start your own business. So the community encourages you to do to set up a business or to join a business. And therefore coming from that background, it is extremely hard. Forget the risk taking. I think you want to go and tell your parents that I'm going to do this is a big deal for you. Okay. So that's my story. But in general, I think risk taking and more importantly, if you fail, you take the risk and you fail, it was a stigma sometime back. It still is, but we have come a long, long way today. I think kids who are, who are in the 20s, entrepreneurs who are in the 20s can, can actually start companies, get funded, they can fail and they can go and start another venture. And it is not considered to be a stigma anymore. Okay. And there are number of these cases where guys actually started their businesses. They raised huge amounts of capital. They did not succeed. They went back. I have a friend who did this when he was in his mid 30s. Four of them came together. They started a company, which was, which was funded by some of the top venture capital funds. They ran that company for five to six years. It didn't work. They went, I mean, nothing happened. He went and got a job. Now all the four, all four of them are RNC XO positions in another company. So this is, this was unimaginable, unimaginable in my view, a few years back. The second thing that's changed, maybe it's not to do with the risk a bit, but if you look at second and third generation, so they are not necessarily obliged to join their fathers or their uncles or their grandfathers. But today, maybe it's because of the security that they have. There is enough capital that these guys have accumulated the families have created wealth that the families have created over a period of time that allows these people to take unconventional bits. They don't even want to run an operating business. They just want to be an investor or they want to pursue their passion. Now, how many of us would have even imagined, let's say Mr. Birla's son is an aspiring cricketer would Mr. Birla have pursued his passion 35 years back, debatable. But today's son has the freedom to go out and pursue his passion without worrying too much about how he'll be judged. He's not the best cricketer. He's not in the top one percentile of cricketers who'd even play for India. But the fact that he's still at it and he's playing club cricket tells a lot about the fact that this guy has been given the freedom to pursue his passion. Things have changed quite a bit from that standpoint. Unfortunately, I think some things haven't changed. For example, you spoke about the IBC if it was brought about with a big bang when it was introduced. A lot of us thought that this would be a game changer because if you look at the US particularly the market for restructuring his huge companies go through downturns, they don't get it right. But there is always someone to bail you out whether these are restructuring funds or even banks who are willing to take bets on some of these entrepreneurs put in capital, even change the management team and resurrect the brand or the company. But in India, unfortunately, that's not really happened because banks still continue to be as they call it fair with their friends. They give you a chata when you don't need it. Risk taking appetite is very, very low and also I think a lot of our banks which are sitting on capital are public sector banks. We all know that public sector banks are also hot potatoes. I mean, politically, they could be very dangerous. If the government takes calls on helping company A versus helping company B all these tend to be political landmines. So therefore, I think in that space, we haven't necessarily seen too much of innovation or too much of risk taking ability. We have also haven't seen too many of these turnaround funds coming into India. I think there was a phase when they all contemplated whether they should be coming in. But what's happening now in IBC is say a larger company going out and buying some of those assets in the same space in the same industry at a price which is reasonable. You're largely seeing like in that space rather than opportunities for funds or for someone unrelated to put in money and make any business case out of it. So that is where we are. But huge shift from a risk taking ability. I think venture funds, venture capital has certainly stepped in to play that risk taking a role for a lot of entrepreneurs and want to be entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is cool. Could you quickly comment on the ease of doing business in India and how you've seen that evolve over the last couple of decades? Yeah. No, come a long way again. I remember when we were in the well three days back in 2007 and one of the asks for companies were also we're coming here was to set up a company because that was the first step to coming in and doing business in India. And it used to take it used to take weeks together in some cases even months to set up a company and the entire process was not online. It used to be there used to be a lot of paperwork you had to go to the ROC and the income tax and the the guy's all of this used to be used to be physical lot of paperwork right transparency was was not always the best. But just look at the look look at how that has changed over the last few years right the whole process of now setting up a company has become online today income tax assessments are done online without a face you don't even know who the income tax officer is. So it has cut time it has brought in transparency but more importantly it has also made the process a lot more easier and you don't have to grease anyone's palms to kind of get hold of a refund or go through an assessment. Okay it happens as a matter of course so these are some things which have which have kind of gone on gone on well is is it to say oh everything is a hunky-dory we we are the best when it comes to doing in terms of ease of business 100% no we have a long way to go especially I think on the manufacturing side companies still struggle on a day today basis right ease of doing business is just not there I mean now it is relative to not just where India was where India was 20 years back yeah clearly we have it has improved. But now we are going to compare it with some of the other economies right so take China or say the US or any of these economies for instance and you will see a stark difference in the way approvals are being given allocation for land is done. And the way like you go to go and interact with bureaucrats or with the government officials for you to for you to set up anything I think the difficulty level is still very high service business are kind of insulated okay so in that sense which is why a lot of young entrepreneurs and even venture capital funds are investing in services business you you don't see too much of capital going in manufacturing because it's a hard it's still very hard to run manufacturing businesses a business in India I think we we we need a lot more reforms to get that done starting with land acquisition land acquisition is a nightmare still yeah so given take things have improved but we still have a long way to go before we can compare ourselves with the best in the world. So what led you to Harvard business school at what point in your journey did you have to pause and reflect or were you recommended in the summer recommend the program to you and say you should consider P.M. So in 2021 we are a board run company I was appointed as the nominated as the CEO of the company and when I took over I think that the the we are fairly professional right we have a professional team running running the company and I don't do too much of the day today etc. So I was only thinking what next for me at that point in time and when I was thinking about this in 2022 I had not heard about OPM at all okay and even when I spoke on to a lot of people outside I'd not come across something like this because I never asked him the question that I want to do this or I'm contemplating this and I was searching the internet one day saying okay what should somebody at this stage of life be doing okay from an education standpoint and the OPM program kind of popped up along with a few others so I went through say like sessions with a few of these B schools where they took me through what the curriculum is about what the profile of the people are etc. and I found the OPM program to be extremely unique for a couple of reasons one I thought that it was a program for entrepreneurs because you would appreciate the so in that entrepreneurs are lonely at the top okay. So while you have a lot of professional professionals working for you there are there are stuff that you cannot share forget the professionals you can share stuff with your family okay. When you're in a jam you have to deal with it with fellow entrepreneurs so if you have a friend you're lucky enough or you're part of any of these forums then you can go and share it but you can't share it with even with a lot of your friends because the friends with whom you grew up 25 years back are no longer the friends that who can help you when your business is facing challenges right because they are in a completely different zone. So I found that to be extremely interesting and intriguing to say that this is a program for entrepreneurs and this should be useful for me one second I thought that cutting myself away from from work for three weeks in a year I found that to be very very interesting I didn't want to do a program which was which was virtual or online because we all know what we do when when we are doing this virtual or online right three or four hours your mind is kind of switching back to what's going on at work. You're thinking about what's going on at home and you're not fully in there I think a large part of the experience again you're having done one of the units would appreciate is the cohort is the time that you spend with people you may be talking crap with people but I think even in that crap when you come back you discover that there is value in what you've spoken about them you you're discovering newer personalities you're discovering possibly a sounding board in those conversations which whom you can go back to. Wow you know this is a guy I want him on my advisory board or this is a guy whom I want to talk to when I'm in when my business is in trouble right so these are things which which which kind of really caught my attention and the fact last point the fact that after three weeks I could actually come and implement it there was no pressure okay it was not that I would I had to do this program for three weeks and that's the end you go there learn come back implement you have time you have a year you have a year again go back to your unit to again learn come back and implement so it allows you that time and space to implement what you've learned over three years. There's been a little bit of gap between your opm program and mine so we may not have had the same professors but I'm wondering is there any professor or a case which I stayed with you that you find yourself going back to even today. Yeah multiple actually the first unit we had a couple of cases I don't know whether you had them one was one was the danna hair case where this company builds out a platform okay so essentially they were they were a health care platform and they go out and keep acquiring companies and keep adding it to the platform and they are the largest unlisted at that point in time they were used to be the largest unlisted company that created a platform and created value for its shareholders. So I found that to be fascinating you know that opened my mind to the possibilities that in terms of how to think about scale scale and not just incremental scale. I mean how do you think about massive scale right using the danna principles right so that is a case that kind of stuck with me I don't think it will it will go away till I go to my grave I think that's the kind of impact that case had on me the other case that had a great impact on me was the Lego case case. I don't know whether you have good Lego case right it was about how do you rationalize right how do you they they clearly one of the messages was doing less is big is more okay so the fact that you don't need so many products you don't need so many of those blocks. I don't need colors right you don't need all of that right so keep your business very simple. Stay focused on what the customer wants and you'll be able to create tremendous value for your customers that's the other case that kind of left an impression a couple of professors who the Toyota one again I don't know whether you had that the Toyota unenthram inside. So the Toyota model again great case study on operational excellence how do you do the boring things again and again right so all those guys were pulling the and on court and doing the assembly and stuff like that they're doing pretty ordinary stuff right and what does the Toyota C.O. says he says getting doing extraordinary things with ordinary people you know again something that stuck because at the end of the day all of us are ordinary people and we are trying to do extraordinary things and to do extraordinary things you don't need something very flashy very big you only need to do the 1% things right and you need to keep doing that and over and over over and again those are three cases I would say that that really stuck with me professors unenthram and surely I love them for the fact that he could remember every detail about you the fact so when I used to go every year to him to ask one question about the business right and every time he used to ask not just about me used to remember where my father worked and the name of the bank my father's bank used to remember what my wife did right and used to ask every time okay that is extraordinary for a for a man who's looking at say 180 students in in every cohort and multiply that with probably his thought opium for 10 for 10 years multiplied by two and he knows 3600 people right and 3600 people he remembers such finer details that kind of again stood out for me saying that look at the customer's intensity right if if I was to go to a customer I need to know everything about the customer not just about the business that this guy does but also about some of the stuff personal stuff because that makes a huge difference you know you already the barriers are broken the moment you ask somebody about your father or your your your your your wife or your child I think the barriers are broken so that was one second I think does and and everyone loves does not because he grills you but because I think he the kind of rigor that he brings to a case okay so you read every word you read every number in the case before you go because you don't know whether you will be the guy who will be caught right and great and that's again very humbling for an entrepreneur because we are never asked questions when even in your companies you have the right and the liberty to ask everyone questions but nobody asks you and forget about grilling nobody grills you right nobody dare grills you so here is a guy I mean you're just sitting there with 180 people knowing fully well that this guy can strip you naked and yet you are enjoying that experience right you don't want him to catch you but if you catch if he catches you you don't mind it getting stripped in front of other people right and and the attention to detail and the conceptual clarity and there is always something that he brings out right the frameworks etc so that's another guy whom I love I don't know whether you had Boris we didn't have Boris but I've heard great things and also Linda we didn't have Linda either I'm guessing you already had Linda but but Boris was unbelievable okay I think leadership is a very dry subject okay and it can be interpreted it's not like operations and they say the Toyota operating system you have to do it in a certain way right but leadership is so so yeah multi-dimensional and people have their own studies now to teach a subject like that and to make it humorous keep the class engaging throughout is no mean feet okay and Boris did that for us in unit one unfortunately I think he had some issues at home and he couldn't come and come back to the school and and teach unit two and three and since then he's not being back right but he was absolutely fantastic I mean if we had taught us for all three units I would have actually had Boris as my number one followed by say a little bit and maybe Annanth Raman being very very very close to it probably one somebody like the somebody like a refella I don't know whether she thought you but she actually made strategy very very interesting I mean she taught all the strategy lessons for us and she she was the one who wrote out the Ferrari case okay and we were the first class to after she wrote that case she came back and she thought as the Ferrari case again very good she had to take on other studies within within Harvard she now runs the business for for for the school and therefore I think she she's not no longer a part of the opium program but she taught us all three units of opium Linda obviously because ever green the joke is she'll she'll continue to teach even if when your kids kid goes to kid goes and does the opium program but but ultimate favorite right she's full of energy at 75 76 years old she shows her mom's pictures her she makes it very inclusive I mean a family her sons football and all of that so some some amazing professors to kind of deal with amazing you are also an avid reader from what I understand is there one book that is fundamentally influenced how you think about business leadership or life yeah maybe about life I think one book a couple of books that changed the way I approach life in general one was the autobiography of a yogi by Parmahamsa yoga another it's it is a slightly difficult book to to kind of read and grasp it's also a very long book I think it's it's probably 800 900 pages it took me a lot of time a multiple readings but a fascinating book if you're interested in in stuff beyond I mean you can learn leadership you can learn a lot of things but just about life about how things work internally I think it's a book to go to and he shares a lot of his personal experiences which is what makes it very very very interesting to read the other one also is is a book called living with the Malian masters by Swami Rama that's another book that I found to be to be absolutely fascinating and that is kind of shaped at least in the last few years my way of thinking and approaching situations right one of the the non spiritual books that I would recommend that people readers the atomic atomic habits by James clear it talks about how small habits make a big difference in your life right all the the one percent those are the ones which make the big difference rather than doing the big bang things and he talks about how you should train your mind and your brain and make things happen for you yeah so three books these these would be the three you also practice yoga and you are involved in the volunteer with the each of foundation could you talk about the impact of these two activities in your life yeah and you're possible absolutely no sadguru's influence on my life I don't think I can even describe it I mean it's not about the the tiny my but it is it is very difficult to describe they say that Guru arrives and the disciple is ready I think he arrived in my life when probably I was searching for a lot of answers and and and just being in his presence I think it makes a huge amount of difference to my to my mind my body and my spirit right so he's probably the biggest influence in my life in the last seven or eight years so a lot of heartfelt Vandana to to him as him being my Guru yoga again has helped me so I'll come to volunteering and then I'll go to yoga see volunteering what I've understood so it is the act of doing something by dissolving yourself so when you are a volunteer you are a nobody okay you are in fact ushering in people into a hall you are arranging footwear in a in a program or you're just serving people food okay and again these are opportunities that you don't necessarily get when you are running a business or you're leading a company not that I'm saying you can't do it but invariably I think people around you are are almost saying things that you want to hear or they are not telling you what is right for you on your face right and also maybe you're also in a zone where you are not in a position you don't want to listen to other people when even when they show you the mirror but volunteering is such a beautiful experience where you as I said you're dissolving yourself you are going there as a nobody and you're probably serving people regardless of their social economic backgrounds right and and that I think is a fulfilling and a humbling experience to me I think that's what volunteering does as far as yoga is concerned I think the the thing that the way it's helped me is to stay grounded which is I think if you do not have control over your your body then I think your mind will automatically not be in sync or in control your mind is always chattering and I wouldn't say that I have I have crossed that state my mind even today it keeps chattering but I think you if you if you do yoga and then you sit down for close your eyes and do meditation I think you're far more peaceful your mind is a lot more settled as compared to just trying to do this on your own okay I think that's that's been the influence that yoga has done to to to my life and last point around this is see people always talk to me ask me about how do I how do I control things again one thing I've learned through this experience is you I have come to the realization that you don't control anything what is bound to happen will happen the fact that I have come to a stage where I think that nothing is controllable is what is making me making my life a little bit more pleasant as compared to when I was in a stage where I used to think that I could go it is only it is up to me okay for once I decide that I want to achieve something I can go and get it so from the state of control now it's a state of surrender and the state of surrender is not to say that you cannot control it is just you have come to the realization that I don't want to control anything I just want to let life move the way the way it goes again for your look was this is not to say that you will not work hard you will not go after stuff that's not the point the point is you do your best and leave the rest question what advice would you give to the 25 year old Deepak who started his business the first time so when I started the business I thought if it this doesn't click I had the academic qualifications and I work for two good companies I will go back and and possibly get that right so there was a safety net in my head I would advise a 25 year old that if you're going to do something if you are an entrepreneur don't be don't be an entrepreneur like me when I was 25 just go out and do it 100% don't think of safety nets okay safety net is anyway there I'm assuming that people will study enough okay people will people will do their bit but don't work with a safety net in your head because I think that probably delays the journey what should take you 15 years would probably take you 25 years to get there so go all out and just enjoy the journey what is anyway distant for you will anyway happen thank you Deepak this has been a very powerful conversation I think you've given a very good layout of the landscape of doing business in India today and the mindset that exists here as well so I do appreciate that I'm pretty sure a lot of people will benefit from this conversation thank you so much so in some of it I don't know whether you found it interesting or like a like a project and especially towards the last 10 minutes but it was not scripted I think we just went with the flow and some of these stuff I just thought it might be interesting for some of your listeners to hear and take out whatever they can yeah absolutely no I don't think it was you know a project and anyway I think what makes a leader might is beyond just you know business it's a quality of decisions you take and the quality of decisions are influenced by your state of mind your health condition so yoga plays into this how are you reflecting you know sitting with the book etc what are you feeding your mind all of that plays into this morning routine is so important as well something we didn't get the chance to touch on but all of this eventually comes together and allows you to be the best version of yourself along with you know the kind of people you surround yourself with this has been a very powerful conversation and thank you again no thank you so much so in thanks for having me thanks for reaching out you always obviously had a choice right? OPM, you have many stars on OPM, but thank you. Thank you for having me.