Its been almost two years since i started my journey as an entrepreneur. So far it has been very satisfying. Recognition of work and a genuine gratitude from a happy customer brings immense joy to an entrepreneur. It keeps him or her motivated and breeds more innovation. Creating a job opportunity is another great feeling for an entrepreneur. Not that i have been doing very well and given employment for many, but in my own little way, i have given small jobs to a few people. The joy i experienced when i saw the joy on one of my contact worker's face when i paid him an additional 5000 rupees when he worked on the Ugadi day is unmatchable. An ipod or an holiday at Kabini for the same amount would not have given me the same joy and happiness. These little things have lot of value. One has to experience it to understand it.
Over the last year, my work took me to quite a few places. I traveled mostly in southern Karnataka and few places in central Karnataka (Some pictures of the travels are here. Of course i also had an opportunity to make a round-trip to delhi by road . I had an opportunity to meet variety of people in different bands of the economic spectrum. From school children with no footwear, dedicated school teachers working for meager salaries, people with no toilets, illiterate entrepreneurs, dedicated entrepreneurs in small towns to the likes of Suresh kumar (Minster in Karnataka), Sudha murthy, Rohini nilekani and Subroto Bagchi. I also had a chance to meet with the Chairman of ONGC (Sep 2010). So it was a very enriching experience having conversations with such variety of individuals.
Much is written and known about the people i just mentioned They are all very inspiring. They are all great people with exceptional achievements.
Here i am writing a bit about my contemporaries and friends who in their own way have carved out a niche for themselves. They are all innovative, dynamic and enterprising. They are all a part of starups working on certain innovative and challenging areas. Let me tell you that my poor writing cannot do justice to the individuals they are. They are far more and far better than what is written below.
I must start with Jaydeep Mandal. Probably the most dynamic, most talented and the youngest among my entrepreneur friends. My association with him started in late 2007. He was interning at IISC and had called me to attend a lecture on scouting and commercializing innovations. I was impressed with his attitude and vision. He was all but 22 and had decided to be an entrepreneur. I was then 24 and had no vision in life.
He is an engineer and a MBA in innovation and entrepreneurship. He has founded two organizations at the age of 26. He is presently the director of Aakaar ventures which works on commercializing grassroot/rural innovations. He has already set up a factory in Uttarakund under a licence model.
He has also founded Berhampore sarvodaya which also works on scouting and diffusing grassroot innovations.
His business model is unique and very innovative. Though he is not an innovator himself, his works in identifying the innovator and commercializing an innovation is commendable.
Ganesh Shankar. I have no words for him. My best efforts of writing will not do an inch of justice for the character and person he is. To start with he is just in absolute love with life. An awesome writer, a cyclist, a trekker, a traveler. I must say a life enthusiast. He just enjoys what he does to the fullest. A character i have very high admiration for.
My association with him started way back in 1999 when i was in National college Basavanagudi. We were in the same batch of PCME class. He was (and is) super intelligent. Since we were staying pretty close to each other, we use to take the same bus. I still remember some of the conversations we use to have in the bus about calculus, physics, about our lecturers, about organic chemistry etc etc. Of course i could never match him in intelligence, academics or for that matter anything may be apart from eating. His thinking was multiple folds higher than mine. He had suggested me a book on physics by name "Fundamentals of Physics" by Halliday and Resnick. I am still using that book to understand certain concepts in physics.
He holds a masters in communication from IISC. He quit a comfortable and highly rewarding career in GE avionics to pursue his passion in the renewable energy field. He has already done some amazing work in the forests of western Ghats in tracking Tigers.
Kiran rao. Another example of someone who quit a highly rewarding job to pursue something different. Kiran rao was my classmate in Engineering. Both of us never did very well in academics. I was adorned with one star while he got two (Each star = one subject fail). But we enjoyed experimenting. We were the only two to take finite element analysis as an elective for the whole university. In spite of flunking elasticity in 6th semester , kiran rao made a bold decision to take finite element in the 7th semester when all our friends chickened off after disastrous results in elasticity.
Like me, he holds an engineering degree in civil engineering. But he soon shifted to software and was well employed at infosys. Like ganesh Shankar, after a 4 year stint at Infosys, he joined me as a director of Hinren technologies to pursue some interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary (sometimes confusing) entrepreneurial venture. He joined me when i was struggling to set up a business and arrive at a business model (confused even now). He brought in lot of value particularly in technical matters and pricing. Though i am still unable to reward him enough for his efforts, he has stuck on bringing in a lot of value.
Apart from getting confused and sometimes frustrated over our business model, we enjoy traveling and we casually get into amateur discussion on literature.
Diwakar Reddy. A passionate speaker and a great clean energy campaigner. We were batch mates at BMS college of engineering. Though i have not interacted much with him, i have been following him on social networking sites and am a regular visitor to his blogs. He recently designed and commissioned a wind mill at a school in Chikballapur.
This is what he has written in one of his blogs "We cant afford to sit back and just wait and see what happens. If we want to deal with the future challenges of climate change we have to act today. Let's see climate change as an opportunity. Make everyday a Earth Day... "
I have been associated with these men and few others for a while now. I am sure that i get more to learn from them in the coming years.
For me all are of them are very enterprising. Apart from these, i have met few other entrepreneurs either in the renewable energy space or in sustainability space. One thing common about all these people is that they are all enthusiastic about life and are radiant with energy. I have hardly seen them cribbing or complaining.
Its my hope and wish that all of us end up one day as very successful entrepreneurs doing good to others and to ourselves.
[Over the last couple of years, i also had a chance to meet number of enterprising people (whom i cannot call contemporaries or peers). I have already written about most of them . Lokesh, the masala puri entrepreneur http://sonublogs.blogspot.com/2011/02/masala-puri-for-thought.html, Sandeep,the activist http://sonublogs.blogspot.com/2011/01/sandeep-real-hero.html, Inspirational bridge builder Girish Bharadwaj http://sonublogs.blogspot.com/2010/12/bridge-builder-girish-bharadwaj.html , Jyothi raj, the student of the monkey http://sonublogs.blogspot.com/2010/08/prince-of-chitradurga.html , Happy man Vijaykumar http://sonublogs.blogspot.com/2010/08/happy-man.html , Educator Kalappa http://sonublogs.blogspot.com/2009/07/bmv-education-trust-at-bhaktrahalli.html , Camel ride entrepreneur Bharat http://sonublogs.blogspot.com/2009/06/bahrath-aur-sharukh-khan.html , Nobel sister http://sonublogs.blogspot.com/2009/06/dreams-on-fire.html]
