Stay Hungry Stay Foolish_9 docx

263 THE ART OF GIVING Had Venkat Krishnan got admission in a convent school in class 5, he may have been your regular investment banker type today. But six years spent at ‘Airport High School’, where a large number of students came from slums and chawls, changed Venkat's life. It made him who he is. “From class six or seven, I started feeling extremely strongly about inequity in society. I could see that there was a guy in my class whose father works in Dubai. So the family is well off, they have a two bedroom house. They would eat biscuits for breakfast which is a luxury.” “And there is another guy in the same class who lives in a slum in Kajuwadi and his father is a garage mechanic. And they would always buy dus paise ka shakkar aur pacchis paise ka tel , that too when a guest comes to their house. ” And to Venkat that seemed fundamentally wrong. In a country where most of us are conditioned to simply ‘look the other way’ that makes Venkat a seriously different kind of guy. And that difference reflects in every choice in life he's made. We are meeting in the lobby of a suburban hotel. Venkat lives somewhere close by but hesitates to call me home. “The house is too small,” he mumbles. Not that he really cares what I, or anyone else, think of his life, or lifestyle. Venkat's nickname on campus was ‘Fraud’ which is ironic because both in the honesty with which he speaks to me, and the actual work he does, Venkat is one of the most genuine people I have ever met. And genuine people are always an inspiration. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 263 264 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH Venkat Krishnan grew up in what you would call an ‘ordinary middle class home’, the youngest of three children. “My dad used to work in Godrej, and I have had one of the best childhoods one could possibly have. Very caring mother, always making sure you ate all the vegetables and all that.” And yet, it was extraordinary in some ways. “Dad is an engineer and he is one of those gizmo type guys meaning our house is a garage at all points in time. Even now, we will have a black and white 1971 television lying somewhere in the attic because he will always aspire to repair everything.” From the time Venkat was five, he was part of these projects. Late in the evenings after coming home from work, dad would be busy tinkering with a Bush radio. Venkat would hold the soldering wire or the pliers - involved in some way. “I think one of the best things that happened in childhood and particularly with me (I think the youngest kid in the house always gets the best treatment) was lots of exposure and learning right from early in life.” When Venkat was about 10 years old, his dad worked with a company which manufactured speakers for export to Denmark. When they had to get a die or a mould made, he would take Venkat along. Few kids get exposed to what is grinding, what is turning in a lathe, what is oil hardened natural steel and what is mild. Later, as a teen, Venkat recalls hanging out at Sakinaka, where there are many small scale industries. Accompanying his dad Venkat would watch, figure out things, and give ideas on how those people could improve productivity. “Another interesting thing - we used to play a lot of ‘games’ as a THE ART OF Venkat Krishnan (PGP '93), GiveIndia GIVING 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 264 265 THE ART OF GIVING family when I was young. Late nights, over the weekends, all five of us used to do four digits by four digits multiplication sums and see who finished first!” When in class four, Venkat discovered the system for multiplying end digit by end digit numbers in one line without having to write down steps. Much later he found it was called the ‘Trachtenberg System’. The bottomline is a spirit of curiosity and of ‘learning to think independently’ was aroused. And that's a critical characteristic you will find in most people who are entrepreneurial in nature - they will tend to not accept what is told to them at face value but take the available information and process it on their own. And then there was the impact of schooling. Up to class five Venkat studied in what we call ‘good schools’. But when his dad switched jobs and shifted to Andheri, he ended up joining ‘Airport High School’ which is, by all standards, a very average kind of school. “I think that was the most life transforming experience for me. When you go to convent school, you actually don't see the whole spectrum of people. It will be middle class dominated.” At Airport High, much of the school was from the ‘lower middle class’, Venkat was regarded as relatively ‘well off’. One day he would be playing at the house of a friend who lived in a two bedroom house. The next day, it would be a friend who lived in a slum. “It hits you very, very strongly when you see this first hand. Nothing shapes your future as much as the house in which you are born. That's the most significant predictor of your likelihood of success.” “There will be exceptions. There will be the odd Dhirubhai Ambani who was born poor and went on to become a star. But those are extreme examples.” No doubt something we all know, but don't feel for, because we have not personally experienced it. In fact, the trend is to protect your kids from this knowledge by sending them to an elite international school full of elite international kids like your own. Far, far away from the ‘real India’. By class seven, Venkat was clear there was something wrong with the way things were and wanted to do something about it. At this stage Venkat studied the ‘Communist Manifesto’ (he knew it by heart, word by word!). George Orwell's ‘Animal Farm’ was another book which had a huge impact. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 265 266 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH Engineering would have been a logical career choice but by class 10 Venkat was clear this wasn't the thing for him. “I was quite fascinated by engineering, but felt very clearly that I didn't want to become an engineer. I wanted to do something that could make a difference.” So Venkat decided to take up commerce. He believed that it would help in his ultimate goal - of making a difference. Unfortunately, even though he hardly studied, Venkat managed to secure a state merit rank in the SSC board exam. “My father is a very pushy character. He dragged me to Parle College and got me admitted to science. So le liya admission. I passionately hated biology so I took electronics as the option. And somehow I decided not to do commerce at that stage. In hindsight, I think that was a very wise decision.You learn far more in science.” Venkat refused to sit for engineering entrance exams and opted for a BSc in mathematics instead. Ironically, he coached several others and seven of his friends actually got through to engineering colleges. Meanwhile he essentially ‘freaked out’. “I used to play 6-7 hours of cricket everyday. And I had also started smoking. So a typical day would be sitting on a katta , outside the college, looking at girls, eve teasing them, smoking, and lots of cricket and whiling away one’s time.” An admission which will shock and awe most kids today, who dream of someday making it to an IIM! However despite failing in all subjects in the prelims and studying for about a week, Venkat managed a 92% in the HSC. Once again, dad tried to interest him in joining a local engineering college but by this time he had grown in conviction and learnt to say ‘No’. “I was passionate about mathematics as a subject, still am. You can get me excited about maths like this in thirty seconds.” Venkat secured a merit scholarship for studying maths. Of course, he hardly ever went to college; instead excelled in extra-currics. We also set up a Rotaract club in the college, which was very very exciting. I would say my first entrepreneurial experience in a sense. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 266 267 THE ART OF GIVING “At the the end of every term, I would go with a long sheet with day by day details of where I had represented the college - in chess, debating, dramatics, JAM and so on. We also set up a Rotaract club in the college, which was very very exciting. I would say my first entrepreneurial experience in a sense.” Parle College was a fairly traditional, Marathi kind of a place where there was no culture of participating in intercollegiate competitions apart from classical music. The Rotaract club made a huge impact in terms of transforming the environment in the college, making it more cosmopolitan and encouraging young talent. “I was the founder and president. It took a lot of effort to convince our college authorities to allow something like this. According to them, it was very western. They believed that girls wearing skirts is not a good idea and with Rotaract all these skirt-wearing girls would come to the college.” In hindsight, Venkat realises he was good at understanding people from opposite ends of the spectrum - the ‘pseud’ category and the ‘ dehaati ’ category. He had the knack of seeing the perspective of others, and somehow balancing it all. The activities of the Rotaract Club included going to TOMCO (Tata Oil Company), meeting the GM and convincing him to come and give a talk on marketing as a career to students. “We actually used to meet people, get them excited, get them to college and organise a career guidance fair entirely on our own. Coming from the classic middle class upbringing, it was a liberating experience, being able to do my own thing, meet new people, take risks, buy things, succeed, fail, whatever.” The result was that Parle college blossomed. In fact, they won the ‘Best College’ trophy at Mood Indigo in a particular year. Which again goes to show that it's not important to merely get into the ‘Best College’. But to make the best of your college life, wherever you experience it. So after all this, how did IIM happen? We actually used to go and meet people, get them excited, get them to college and organise a career guidance fair entirely on our own. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 267 268 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH “That's an interesting story. Three weeks before my second year finals exams in college, our head of department in statistics called me and another guy said ‘I don't care what you have done in intercollegiate bullshit. You have not attended any statistics classes, I am going to fail you’.’” Finally he relented and gave them a separate test as a ‘pre-qualifier’ to even attempt the exam.Venkat got 20 out of 20 on that test and the crisis was averted. But as a consequence, he got deeply interested in statistics. “Firstly because it is so much about numbers and I am passionate about maths. And secondly, you realise how much impact it has on peoples’ lives. Look at the green revolution that has happened, or the top scientific discoveries ” “What does a scientist do? He designs the experiment. But that is actually only 25% of the job. 75% is analysing the data you got from the experiment, creating hypotheses and testing them out. Which is all statistics actually.” Venkat gave up his maths scholarship and decided to major in statistics. Side by side he studied French and Cost Accounting. “People say balance sheet is difficult but I have never been able to create a balance sheet that doesn't tally,” he says matter of factly. “So basically things came quite easily to you,” I observe. “Yes, things came quite easily to me.” “Then that becomes difficult because you can do anything,” I add. “To say that it's difficult is not fair. I would say it makes life easy.You can pick and choose what you want to do.” And at some point Venkat chose to take up management, although not for the usual reasons. “One of the fears I started having while doing BSc is, am I being extravagant? Because I am not from a rich family, right. I had to build my life.” The idea of becoming a sales rep running around selling  somehow the idea that the MBA degree gives you much more access to more opportunities, financially you will be much more well off, that in turn is empowering. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 268 269 THE ART OF GIVING pharmaceuticals did not appeal. So more as a ‘de-risking’ thing, Venkat took the CAT exam. “I managed to get section A of IMS coaching material from one of my seniors, free of cost. I studied from that. My CAT entrance was terrible. At IES school in Dadar, I was put in a KG class where the benches were so small that I had to sit with my legs outside for the whole two hours.” “Calls came from all four IIMs. At the IIM Ahmedabad interview, Prof GS Gupta was on my interview panel. In those days, on Doordarshan, in weather forecasts, they used to give decimal temperatures of all cities. Gupta asked, “You are a stats grad.Tell me, what is the probability that all eight decimals will be different. A guesstimate.” I said, ‘“Less than five per cent.” He said, “I am delighted. You are through because this is the first time anybody has given the correct answer to this question.” Venkat had also taken the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) entrance test. On 3rd July, 1991, when he was on the IIM campus, the MStats admission letter came. “I think that was the toughest decision I went through in my life. From six in the evening till three in the morning I was agonising over what to do. My passion was to do statistics, I wanted to go to Calcutta. But somehow the idea that the MBA degree gives you much more access to more opportunities, financially you will be much more well off, that in turn is empowering.” Finally, he opted to stay at IIMA. “First 1.5 months, I was very scared because everybody is a Stephen’s topper and IIT this and IIT that. I did extremely well. My first mid terms GPA was 3.7 or something like that. Then I stopped studying.” Why? “I am not interested in doing well academically.” So what was he doing? “I was sleeping.You can ask anybody in my dorm.” And thus, Venkat was nicknamed ‘Fraud’. People used to believe that after everyone slept, he must have been switching on his table lamp and studying. Because he did so well, getting As in tough quant courses without ‘any apparent effort’. As usual, Venkat did find ways to use his time constructively. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 269 270 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH Learning to play the keyboard; reading in the library, whenever he had free time. Much of it on the subject of higher education. The system of memorising dates and formulas, he strongly believed, was killing human potential. If you let young people fall in love with a subject, imagine what they can do to a build a better world! Clearly, Venkat was not headed for a mainstream corporate career. The idea was how to leverage this degree to make a difference. IAS was one possibility. A summer job with Khadi Village Industries followed. The project was to develop a model to market khadi without rebate. Soon enough he realised a similar project had been done by IIMA's Prof Vora and it was gathering dust in their library. What's more, working with the CEO of KVIC, an IAS officer, made Venkat realise how weak the bureaucracy was in terms of decision making. He realised that IAS was not his cup of tea. Then, LEM happened. Venkat had opted for the entrepreneurship package - courses like New Venture Management, PPID (Project Planning Implementation and Development) and LEM (Laboratory in Entrepreneurial Motivation). Plus, he did two IPs (Independent Projects) on entrepreneurship. The first IP was on the feasibility of private enterprise in education, especially vocational education. The second was on the feasibility of the private sector in rural finance (the term microfinance was then unheard of). By this time he was quite confident about wanting to become an entrepreneur, at some stage in life. But it was also clear that even if he became an entrepreneur, it would not be something like IT, but about ‘making a difference’. “I remember my first reflective note for the LEM class - I see myself as an instrument or tool that is available to society. And my choices should be guided by maximising the returns that I will give to the society. So I will not do something just because I like it, but because that is the best use of my time for the society's benefit.” “If I think that I will serve society best by becoming a teacher, then I will teach. If I think I will help society best by becoming a businessman, then I will become a businessman. I will do whatever it takes.” The guiding principle was, and remains, to restore the maximum amount of fairness to society. Come placement and you know Venkat is not going to go for the usual companies. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 270 Actually, he almost joined an aatawallah near Vapi who had participated in placement that year. He was offering a fancy salary, but the chap said the job is to help run the aata chakki and help him to save income tax. That put Venkat off completely. “I would have joined him, if he had been an honest guy. Because he was asking you to run the business as a CEO,” says Venkat wistfully. And that's something which makes a lot of sense for any MBA with ambitions of becoming an entrepreneur. Joining a company which may not be the biggest or most glamorous name in the business, but a place where you get to be hands-on and get a 360 degree experience of actually running a business. Eventually he settled for TOI - a day six company - as media too is an opportunity to ‘make a difference’. And like every experience, he sought out and savoured for its duration, this stint too was about learning, about growth, about invention. Being EA to Mr Arun Arora, a director on the board, Venkat interacted closely with Sameer Jain, Vineet Jain and Ashok Jain. He worked on IR problems faced by the company, drafting the letters sent to the Union during a strike. Then there was a salary restructuring project where Venkat argued that journalists should be paid better. He also helped write a far reaching document called ‘Looking Beyond the Horizon’ which envisioned the technology strategy for the company. Much of which actually got implemented. Then Venkat's boss joined Sony Entertainment Television (SET) as CEO.The condition set by the Jains was that Mr Arora could not take away more than one employee. The person he chose was Venkat. “I was not keen to leave but he had already asked for me. Plus SET paid me 40k a month which was big money in 1995. My brother and I had both taken student loans, plus dad had quit his job, tried a business and failed at it.” The SET job held the opportunity to clear off the family debts, allowing Venkat the freedom to then do whatever he wished. Four 271 THE ART OF GIVING I remember my first reflective note for the LEM class - I see myself as an instrument or tool that is available to society. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 271 272 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH months salary was all it took to pay off everything. And as always, Venkat is grateful for the exposure he got at SET. “Even though it was a very short six month stint, I got to work with the promoters and build the business plan of the company. I made the most critical sales pitch to Fulcrum, and to M Venkataraman, the head for media at HLL.” But it was time to move on to something else. In a field much dearer to him. The field of education. In 1995, Sunil Handa sent out a note to a number of IIMA alumni and former LEM students about a proposed school project. However, the idea was a residential school for the middle class and that did not excite Venkat. Until close friend and batchmate Sridhar (DD) stepped in. DD was working with IBM at that time and he was excited. He said, “Let's go and meet Sunil Handa. Let's offer to volunteer the weekends.” Venkat was very passionate about teaching and said, “ Chalo, jaate hai .” But once they got there, something happened. “I told Sunilbhai that residential schools are cut off from real life. Even IIT and such places, you are so cut off from reality that you tend to live in islands. You don't know what it means to be a poor guy in India. You don't know what it means to live in slums. You don't know what it means to struggle to exist.” Why not instead set up a day school? What's more, there would be a certain quota of students from the poorest of poor families. Sunil agreed and by the end of the meeting both Venkat and DD decided to quit their jobs. This was in August 1995. “Both of us were in the middle of product launches, so when they said please stay back till the launch, it seemed like a fair kind of thing to do. I finished work at SET on 14th January, 1996 at 7.30 pm. At 9 o’clock I took the flight to Ahmedabad.” And thus started the Eklavya chapter.  whenever you look into the things that make a difference to the quality of our lives, we somehow think there's no need to apply scientific thought. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 272 [...]... once, but he stays with you for a lifetime Once he has signed in, by default he is on the program So the only thing left is the cost of servicing the donor You have straight away In 2007-08, GiveIndia expects to channel roughly Rs 18.5 crores from 50,000 individual donors Of these, 25,000 are ‘payroll giving’ donors 281 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 282 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH... the road, when he “I think if there is passion in the environment, people pick it up I have seen it in every place I have worked in.” 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 276 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH “In America, every school that I went to there was this sense of civic responsibility, that as a citizen it is our duty to help.” buys his two bit of a matchbox and pays sales tax The... Sunil Handa for that, is whenever you have a good idea, write a note, circulate it, show it to people, get their thoughts and reactions So 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 278 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH “Diarrhoea is a much bigger disaster than earthquake, tsunami, cyclone, the Orissa cyclone, all of them put together.” he wrote a two page concept note, mailed it to some people and... every year to NGOs alone.” So it's more about instituting a culture of giving “Yes, but more important than that is the idea of building 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 280 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH ownership Why is that the tax rupee does not get used effectively? Because most of us look at taxes as a license to exist We are paying taxes and telling the government, ‘I don't care... afternoon madam, we are here to talk to you about a new school that we are setting up in your city Would you like to know about it’?” 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 274 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH “The good thing is, more than 70% of the people let us into their homes They would sit, they would hear us, give us chai and biscuits The fact that we were from IIM made a big difference... 2020 annual report It's a letter which read as follows: Dear Stakeholders, We are delighted to inform you GiveIndia has closed down 283 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 284 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH Donors are now active, they are finding NGOs, they are engaging with them, they are giving money directly and they don't need GIVE INDIA “We love what we do, but ideally we are an undesirable... skills to people who need it, and help improve their lives, and trust me, you will get far more joy out of it than anything else 285 23_Smalls is Beautifuleditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 4:27 PM Page 286 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL Anand Halve (PGP '77), chlorophyll After two decades in advertising Anand set up a brand consultancy called chlorophyll He believes ‘small is beautiful’ because in... equity, outside capital and attendant pressures, so be it But there is another way which you could explore The small and beautiful 287 23_Smalls is Beautifuleditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 4:27 PM Page 288 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL Anand Halve (PGP '77), chlorophyll Know thyself and the rest follows, they say As a first year student in medical college Anand Halve knew he could not spend every... customer and I would have the last call on that decision Whether we should take a more serious approach, or emotional approach - that was 23_Smalls is Beautifuleditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 4:27 PM Page 290 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH “The buffer that we talk about is having enough money in the bank to pay fixed expenses for two months You need to have it at any given point.” Mohammed's decision Because that is a... idea was to build a second network in Pune, in Nagpur, in Jaipur, in Kanpur, which is essentially staffed by regional language creative 23_Smalls is Beautifuleditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 4:27 PM Page 292 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH directors Not the smooth-talking South Bombay culture represented by Lintas.” The idea was shot down “That's when I said, ‘ The time has come to get out of this circuit Somebody else . ways to use his time constructively. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/ 19/ 08 3:32 PM Page 2 69 270 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH Learning to play the keyboard; reading in the library, whenever he had. important than that is the idea of building 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/ 19/ 08 3:32 PM Page 2 79 280 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH ownership.Why is that the tax rupee does not get used effectively? Because. guidance fair entirely on our own. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/ 19/ 08 3:32 PM Page 267 268 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH “That's an interesting story. Three weeks before my second year finals