Igniting passion for the country
[Music]
a happy
republic day to all of you
so i’m often asked how did i get into
the business of design
well i didn’t the business got into me
my story my entrepreneurial journey
began
when i was in school i used to modify
cycles
so i would pick up a magazine look at a
catalogue and try and take an ordinary
cycle and convert it into something that
was aspirational
i did that moved to college unlike you
guys i was not fortunate enough to come
to bits
but i moved to a diploma and mechanical
engineering college in nagpur
i started doing motocross racing i would
do the same thing that i did then with
the cycle
i did with my bike i would go to
sponsors collect money
modify the motorcycle bring it into an
aspirational racing machine
and race motocross that was when i was
when i was 17 that was my first business
card out there
it was a homegrown small catering shop
meant for small parties and corporates i
did it with my neighbor
by 18 i was frustrated i wanted to
become an entrepreneur
i dropped out of my college i didn’t
finish my diploma
and i moved to bombay my real
entrepreneurial journey began when i was
i moved to bombay being from a middle
class parsi family didn’t have the
resources to invest into any business
but i decided i’m never going to work
for anybody else
i sold off my motorcycle got about 20
thousand rupees those days
bought a pest control pump or a drilling
machine and got going with my business
printed my cards went to the nearby
jaguar party
and hired literally a japanese
and converted that into the pest control
license operation
started approaching corporate clients
and got an exposure what it takes to go
and sell yourself
i was very fortunate enough to land at
the right corporates at the right time
and i got some great companies like bank
of baroda and tatas
that changed my whole perspective i
would go into bombay house every now and
then to do pest control
and very close quarters i would look at
the top executives which otherwise i
would have never had a chance to see
got me thinking in a direction that i
needed to do something bigger so even
though pest control was doing good
i wanted to move to contracting and the
very same clients that gave me pest
control jobs
started giving me small contracting jobs
building repairs plumbing wall repairs
cleaning of water tanks it moved beyond
and i moved my place from the jewelry to
a small electrical meter room at nepean
zero 200 square feet
and made it into a contracting office
the staff grew
the business grew and it was 95 by the
time again i was frustrated because i
didn’t see the contracting business
growing i always wanted to be on the
creative side
that got me to the next level that got
me
to my actual entrepreneurial career
one day passing from churchgate i used
to go and look at these books and
catalogs sitting there you know these
these guys have stalled on the roads
i picked up a book feature that really
changed my life
it was a catalogue of italian office
furniture suppliers
and from that catalog i could quickly
sense that as a contractor i’d never
seen that kind of furniture in any
office
including bombay house where i thought
that was the epitome of design those
days
i got a couple of fax numbers those days
emails were not there mind you
you guys must have been just born that
was that was 95
i sent faxes to about 25 26 companies or
more
one company responded back and i said
i’m interested in representing you in
india i didn’t know what i was talking
but one company responded back and like
my earlier speaker said
you need to create opportunities
that company that responded back turned
out to be the world’s second largest
office furniture manufacturer of those
days
in europe number one in europe number
two in the world
olivier synthesis so this guy responds
to me and i go
i pick my bags go to italy meet with
this guy
he was a he’s a genuinely nice person
who turned around things for me
he not only gave me a dealership in
india because oliver he was doing zero
business with india
he also introduced me to other italian
furniture suppliers
and very soon before i could actually
think i was
representing company after company
picking up catalogs after catalogs and
suitcases getting them back to india
going to architects and trying to sell
because i’d identified a business that
didn’t exist
supplying italian furniture and having a
showroom of italian furniture in india
that was the first one more than 20
years back
this continued as soon became very
popular with the leading fancy
architects in the country not only in
bombay
across delhi chennai calcutta bangalore
and i would frequent italy at least
twice a month
i hired a showroom and set up india’s
first italian furniture showroom and
represented about 27 brands
did an exhibition of italian furniture
way back in 96.
soon enough as soon as the exhibition
got over and order booking was done
yet another blow to me the government of
india decided to
remove furniture imports from the
spatial import license
and it became a negative list of import
means i could no longer import for those
months
and i didn’t know when that policy would
change this compelled me
to get into manufacturing it was a
blessing in disguise
so i went to nagpur where i was doing my
engineering once upon a time
and hired a friend’s workshop which was
about 2000 square feet his father had
expired
took it on rent and set up a carpentry
shop
soon enough i got the biggest break of
my life of star tv to supply their
entire furniture
and i went off to daman and hired an
entire factory
and started manufacturing furniture
there
this was 97 things turned around became
popular
started working with so many architects
and designers
to me design came naturally because
that’s what i had learned doing
improvising things and bettering things
aesthetically and functionally
to me design was never taught i’ve never
learned to be an architect or designer
day in my life i’d never gone through
formal education and design
but that particular thing kept me going
design thinking happened to me way later
in life
but whatever i was doing there was a
method to the madness there was a
process
it was chaos but it was organized chaos
and at any point in time our lives were
chaotic it was never
never a simple dull moment till date in
our lives
well 97 98 99 supplied furniture
and again i get disheartened when i
don’t see the businesses growing at the
speed i want them to grow
i thought the most of the architects
whom i’m supplying the furniture
i could design better than them and we
could have an organization where we
would
kind of democratize design
so we realized clients wanted the
international design
they wanted the stuff at a fixed price
and if we worked out a turnkey design
formula we would be successful
that was a niche i identified 99 we did
the first turnkey interiors for hdfc
followed by i don’t know hundreds of
offices and
across india we were literally doing any
brand so 90
of television channels you would change
were designed by me one once upon a time
uh finance shipping we went across
industries
and this formula of turnkey design was
one of the reasons why we became so
successful
a factory would supply a contracting
company would do the contracting
we would design and we would democratize
design
we replicated the same and realized that
even though i was not a qualified
architect
client started approaching us for design
and we started designing architecture
we hired hoods of designers we had about
at the peak we had about 1700 employees
architects designers engineers
mep consultants furniture manufacturing
specialists all within the same
organization
but this one thing separated us from the
crowd trying and identifying a gap
in what is available wizard is what we
can deliver what the finest architects
would deliver
versus what value would we bring across
on the table if clients
appointed us so we did we did a couple
of very interesting projects across the
length and breadth of the country
again architectural design fees interior
fees the turnovers were not really
really
happening when i would compare myself
and our organization to the leading
developers in bombay and bangalore
with whom i used to work very closely
their balance sheets would be at least
three zeros ahead of mine
and i decided that we should get into
development but development
again we use design thinking and try to
do
something when we are to compete with
established players in the industry
tomorrow when you guys start your
careers and want to compete with the
established players in the industry
you need to identify a niche and then
you need to give it to 100
so we developed only one building in
bombay that was the first redevelopment
job that we did
but aesthetically we give it 100
it was so strong in design that today it
has got
onto the landmark of bombay it has gone
to become a landmark in bombay
on the skyline of bombay every developer
with this one project
and every architect and designer with
this one project began to realize
and acknowledge the building so we gave
it a personal architectural theme
and we recreated art with with with more
than 250 artists sitting for
two and a half years working on this
particular project
we moved across and got into something
in the year 2008 which was second home
development
again we wanted the company to grow
identified a niche
developers were there doing commercial
development developers so they’re doing
residential development there was not a
single developer focusing
on specialization in second homes
throughout when i was traveling on and
off to italy and the rest of europe
i realized in india we lacked the
quality of life and enjoyment
the italians were designed with passion
and with the same passion they would
live their lives
so on weekends we would see entire
families of husband and wife children
dawning their cycling attire and cycling
together
we would see them biking together in
dirt bike tracks with small miniature
bikes for the kids
and the fathers and kids enjoying
together and the mothers riding as well
zip lines flying foxes i i could ever i
would go
weekends i would see recreation that we
were devoid of
and that got me thinking in 2008 nine we
had the first recession
and and it was a strong recession as far
as we were concerned
2009 was really bad out of our 1700
employees we had to let go of 600
employees because most projects are
shutting down
with this idea in my mind brewing why
can’t we get recreation
for the mind body and soul for the
entire family to india we set up
an adventure park every single activity
that we had seen there
we converted it and put it across an
application being into the world of
design
being into the world of manufacturing
being in the world of contracting
for us it came naturally setting up
these things but we wanted to not set up
a theme park we didn’t want to go to
china and pick up some equipment of junk
and put it across over here and call it
a theme park
we wanted to develop something for the
mind body and soul something for every
family member
so we designed about 70 activities and
again
design thinking really really helped me
none of this would have been possible
hadn’t i gone through a course of three
days with ideo design
how many of you know ideo surprising i
would i would strongly suggest all of
you
to visit ido idea is one of the foremost
design institutions in the world they
are the ones who designed the apple
mouse
so ideo taught me in three days
with their seminar what design thinking
meant
and why should you go through a process
of design
to reach achieve the desired result the
same desired result
each time if you go through the entire
process of design
that really changed my life and
everything i started doing how do you
create something unique
it’s not because it’s your gut feeling
it’s because you put it through a design
process
we set up the adventure park and we
moved ahead and we said
next to the adventure why don’t we have
accommodation and again in the
accommodation we did design thinking
what is that is not available people
were fed up of five stars
people wanted experiences so we started
focusing on experiential hospitality
level on a hotel we had not even run a
restaurant in our lives
so we set up a 30 room tented resort
on the edge of the mountain adjoining
the property none of this was inherited
this was all being acquired as the
business was running every rupee went
back in the business
with this resort people loved the
experience they loved
the contemporary tents in india usually
in rajasthan tensar
the raja maharaja luxury tents when you
put in a very philipstack contemporary
tent
it excited the corporate world it
excited the people who traveled
globally so this was the first resort we
set up with 30 rooms
we learned our ropes we kept our ears
very close to the ground
and we kept listening to our customers
and how could we
improvise their experience of
hospitality
well one thing led to the other and
three years down the line we set up the
next resort
and again two years down the line we set
up the adventure resort and each time we
were looking at a theme
what to set up that would turn on people
across and soon we had a fan following
of the top 500 corporates in the country
as our clients so we have everybody from
a google tour microsoft who comes from
across india
and goes there for the experiences that
we offer
it moved to the next it moved to
creating innovating new things in
hospitality which didn’t exist 24 hours
apart and exist in the country
24-hour fine dining is a is a word we
find out didn’t exist in the country
so we kept on innovating new things
across we soon became a case study for
new york stone university
the final year mba students came and
spent a day with me and
and we were a case study for what we had
created in terms of experiential
hospitality
well again
three years down the line three years
back
i used to always always be looking for
an aspirational figure to mentor
i never had a mentor in my life and
bombay house days
got me connected to jrd tata and i’d
read this writing over there when i was
in my pest control days
no success or achievement in material
terms is worthwhile unless it serves the
needs
of the city country and its people and
is achieved by fair and honest means
this stuck to me that we were successful
in design we were successful in
hospitality
but what the gratification was not
really coming
and something else happened in the same
time
26 11 i was there in taj on the same day
i was in chambers on the same day and i
left chambers at about 5 30 for a
meeting
hadn’t i left chambers perhaps today i
won’t be standing here
these two things what to do so that
business becomes meaningful
and to seek revenge for what had
happened because i didn’t think enough
was
done to seek revenge those days
well the eureka moment happened
and wanted to merge
experiential hospitality design thinking
and get it across to igniting passion
for the country
so that was the turning point where
business became secondary
and the primary motto was to take this
message of igniting passion for the
country
we identified a piece of land being into
hospitality for so many years of course
things were more easier at this point
but this was by far the most difficult
project of my life in the middle of the
forest
identifying a piece of forest land
looking for a farming land
and converting it across into india’s
first counterterrorism training academy
for civilians
this is this is what we started off we
got into the military mindset
the sarvadaram stall respecting the
national flag
igniting passion for the country begins
from there
the minute you don a military uniform
every every civilian coming there has to
down a military uniform
you sit in military vehicles in the
military trucks so people get off from
their fancy cars and get rid of these
trucks to come to this place
it creates imbibes a different sense of
discipline in them
this is this is what we’ve created
across we wanted to mix
[Music]
experiential hospitality in a military
theme and then get the finest in
training together
so the of course design is is in every
every inch of what we’ve created to
create that experience across
india’s veteran military war hero
without this man we wouldn’t have won
the 1971 war that we keep talking about
even till date against pakistan
we’ve dedicated entire restaurant to his
life and his story
dedicate to maratha regiment because we
are in maharashtra in bombay
in lonavala we are in the land of the
marathas we dedicated maratha regiment
a banquet the idea was to really live
the theme and let people
soak it in of what the experiences are
pictures and patronism cannot be done
and displayed you know
all of you will agree with me that we in
india
are all by and large patriotic but the
only time we get to see patriotism in
our bloods boil is during
india-pakistan cricket match that’s the
only day we give a few abuses and then
we are quiet
we do nothing about this bitorism so
this place was finally something that
was my chance
to do and demonstrate patriotism so we
were lucky enough to get left in general
of indian army to lead our team raymond
narona
we got captains zubaidahs marcos
commandos nsg commandos
black cats we even have two of the first
commandos were there eight respondents
in taj
as trainers at our academy so employing
the army veterans
and that too from special forces was an
act of patriotism
and this is something that should be
done and practiced by all the corporates
across in the country
we’ve got multiple things so how do we
seek revenge we seek revenge by
training people in counter-terrorism
training people in survival techniques
training people in jungle survival
reason for training people
this is our way of seeking revenge in
case of a natural calamity
floods landslides the citizen becomes
an asset and not a liability to the
country in case of a terrorist attack
not only does the person train how to
survive
how to get into the mindset of the
terrorists how to survive what are the
techniques that special forces use
to survive and these are lessons that
need to be learned mentally
not physically by training people on
counterterrorism
this is our revenge we have about 3000
people being trained at the academy
civilians on a monthly basis that comes
to 36 000 people a year
36 000 trained indians is
a way of seeking revenge by making them
as an asset
in case of a adverse situation
well that’s the training that’s the
training modules
clearing general local employment so in
a place where we are creating local
employment
like jrd has said no success or
achievement is worthwhile unless it
serves the communities and the city
and the country so creating local
employments wherever we go
we do not employ contract labor we make
sure everybody is on the payroll
we make sure we generate employment
where we go
well this is what we’ve done to ignite
passion for the country
what is it that you’re going to do to
ignite passion for the country
quite a few of you are going to turn
into entrepreneurs when you leave the
university
quite a few of you are going to be
successful what is that measure that’s
going to measure the success
is it going to be your balance sheet is
it going to be the amount of money
you make or is it going to be your
contribution
to your city community country
your contribution to igniting passion
for the country
your contribution of saluting and
acknowledging the armed forces
i’ll leave you with this thought jain