Pushing Thoughts into Actions

good morning coep

so let me begin why am i here

the story is simple i would like to

try and inspire all of you

to create thoughts into actions

i have been an entrepreneur for the last

19 years

created four businesses traveled the

world

and met some amazing people and mentors

along this journey why is it

that i like to give so much time to

mentor companies

to fund companies to meet mentees

it’s simple there have been people in my

life

who have been amazing mentors and given

me great advice

during my journey as a way of giving

back

i propose to do the same

so i have a unique approach when i

try and mentor some company

i do not give gyan because i believe

there are a lot more better people out

there in the world

who can really preach better what i do

is simple

i tell you my life story and i leave it

up to you

as to how to interpret this story

let me take you back to june 2001

i had just finished my engineering from

puna university

and i came home excitedly showing off my

degree

to my parents as all parents do

my father asked me so niraj wonderful

congratulations

you’re finished your engineering now

what

so told my father you know dad i had

this idea last year

and i would like to give it a shot

he said fine what is the idea so i told

him

i said it was around third year of

engineering

i was sitting at my barber shop waiting

in line

and earlier those days a barber shop

would keep

imported business magazines to read

which they would get from a second

reseller

so i was flipping through this american

business magazine

an article caught my attention in 1999

u.s clothing retailers had started

selling

clothes online to their surprise

they were doing very very well but

there was one problem their rejection

rates were very high

so customers would order clothes online

and they would be delivered once tried

on

most of times the customer wouldn’t like

how the certain outfit fit on him or her

and they would send it back to the

company

this replacement cost was born

by the clothing company which ran into

millions of dollars

there was a problem and it needed a

solution

so coming back to 2001

um this was the problem i thought i

could provide a solution to

being an engineer and having a lot of

common sense

i realized it can be definitely solved

so i sat at home meanwhile

with a pen and paper trying to write a

business plan

of course in those days we had no

incubation centers

neither did we have any actual mentors

to mentor you

so in around three months time i

finished a 180 page document

explaining exactly what i wanted to do

and then as a natural step i reached out

to friends and family

telling them and showcasing this idea to

them

i waited for a month and guess what no

one replied

so i asked one of these people i said

you know why aren’t you replying to me

back with

what you think of my idea so they said

neither is too

long to read you know who’s going to

read 180 pages

so again sat back it took me on a month

and i compress this idea into eight page

document

and i started to show people around and

started to get some great feedback

along the way someone told me that why

don’t you look at us and uk

to raise money for this idea because

india did not

have the ecosystem for the kind of

funding which i needed

hence with this eight page document

i started to reach out and

um long story short i could raise

around two million dollars at the end of

6 months

this was the start of my journey

we grew the company we had a

headquarters in the u.s

we had a development center right here

and i started to work with the fashion

industry

and the photography industry it was

truly truly a great journey

and a lot of learning by 2005

say on three years later i decided to

step out of the company

due to some differences between me and

the investor

so i sold my stake and decided

to take a small break and to now kind of

sit back

and decide what to do next

you know how parents are they see you

and they realize that

okay now they see someone who was

terribly busy for three years

and all of a sudden they see a lot more

of me at home

so they approach me saying that you know

what needles why don’t you do one thing

instead of trying to just sit and think

as to what to do next why don’t you

travel

and i thought that’s a great idea so

i backed my i just packed my bag and i

went across europe

just you know traveling alone at this

point

um i had no clue what to do but

this journey turned out to be very very

special for me

i have this you know extremely peculiar

habit

where i love talking to strangers of

course

i do tell my son not to talk to

strangers but i do have this habit

so during my trip i was sitting at a

coffee shop in london

and i saw this birdly german fellow you

know sitting

right beside me and i started talking to

him

it turned out to be he was a french

filmmaker

now that was very very interesting to me

you know a german guy making french

movies

and he too was traveling alone so i got

talking to him

and we really struck it off we decided

to meet the next day

again for a coffee while talking to him

the next day he kind of confessed he

said you know niraj i have this idea and

i would like to share it with you i said

sure why not tell me

he said you know i have a hollywood

script with me and i want to make this

movie

and he handed me a spiral bound book

which had the script

so you know how we indians are like we

love to poke our nose and stuff right

so i started to flip through uh you know

the script

and i found some grammatical mistakes

you know which he had made so i started

to just make some small corrections with

the pen

he was amazed to see that he said wow

this is lovely

you know i know that you don’t have

anything to do right now

so can i give you a small task take the

script back

to india and rewrite it and give it back

to me

i thought yes why not you know as it is

i didn’t have any work

so i came back and i started to rewrite

the script with some help

uh around two months later i got the

script ready and i sent it back to him

i got a call from him around a week

later and he was extremely excited

he said niraj thank you so much you know

i can’t believe you actually rewrote the

script and gave it back to me

you know could i propose something to

you i said yeah why not go ahead

he said could you be a part of my

filmmaking team

let’s make it together i said yeah of

course that sounds amazing i would love

to work with you

so that’s when the second journey

started um

we had a small swot analysis done and we

decided that

i take care of the entire media and

promotion of this hollywood movie

sitting in india we shot the movie in

las vegas it was about a real life story

about a las vegas singer

and yes it was amazing that one and a

half year journey was truly truly

amazing

in the meantime some of the local press

also picked up the story

and supposedly i was one of the first

indians to outsource movie pr

i had no clue and honestly when i

started out

this journey lasted for a nice one and a

half year

and was really really enjoyable once the

movie was made

i again decided to take some time off

and sat at home i was 28 at the time

again my parents approached me and they

said niraj

it’s time to get you married now here

was a battle

i couldn’t win so i said fine i agree

give me six months let me try and

look for a business which is scalable

let me try and truly see at something

which is

uh which i love to do he said fine take

six months

as a child i loved automobiles

even now i really do love automobiles

and pune being the hub

of the automotive industry i decided

that let me do something in this so how

did i go about it

simple i started to attend every event

there is

in india regarding automobiles from

delhi to pune

south everything and i just went and

heard these people speak that’s it

what they had to say about the

automotive industry so 2008 2009 was a

very

interesting era for the automated

industry

fuel was getting expensive and customers

wanted better fuel efficiency from their

cars

they also wanted safer cars

this resulted in a technology called as

light weighting

where you simply try and reduce the

weight of an automotive component

so in short i was going to help

automobiles

lose weight fun isn’t it

so you started the journey

i started to meet a lot of engineering

experts

and i decided that steel is the way to

go

so in engineering terms i would be

replacing a solid steel bar

with a hollow steel tube period

this journey was very difficult it took

me around three years to establish

the factory along the way uh one of the

first successes was for a very big

automotive manufacturer

one day i was going home really trying

to find a breakthrough

and driving back home i was getting a

little frustrated you know with

where i could really create a

breakthrough

and i was as i was hitting my hand on

the steering wheel

i realized that perhaps the steering

wheel is a great place to start at

because if you see the earlier steering

wheels of cars

had a solid bar which were coated with

foam

this was a idea perhaps i thought could

work so i took one of my hollow steel

tubes

and coated it with similar foam and i

got that safety test done

and to my surprise it passed all the

safety tests

so here for example where i could save

700 grams of steel

behind every steering wheel of every

automotive in india

that was a breakthrough i got for my

company

so here has been my journey

as an entrepreneur in the last 19 years

normally i would end my talk here

but i too have changed and believe

that there are there are a few takeaways

from my life journey which i would like

to share with you

so my first takeaway is to all of you

over here is to fit in

and then later stand out i see a lot of

startups today

you know they want to create the right

product the right app the right software

and they keep working on their idea

day in day out for years together

waiting for the perfect product

there is no perfect product let me tell

you

what should be done is simple they

should try and reach out to a customer

or try and see where the problem lies

come out with a solution

try and fit in to what the customer

needs are

and then try and stand out later

my second takeaway is to live a life of

friction

to live a life of friction why do i say

this

simple what do you hear today in the

media

it’s all about stress you know and

people getting affected by it

but tell me one thing isn’t it true

that the reason our automobile travels

on the road is because of the friction

between the tire and the road

the reason we can write on a piece of

paper

is because there is friction between the

pen and the paper

so friction is very important for every

one of us

we need to really put ourselves outside

our comfort zone

in in order to achieve something so

i do believe that all of us should have

a lot of friction in our lives so that

it can also get

a lot of good out of us

my third takeaway is to simply

cut the noise so what do i mean

noise what’s the noise around us

it’s our cell phones it’s our tvs

it’s the radios is the constant news

it’s people who keep giving advice even

though not asked for

if all of us can try to reduce this

noise

perhaps we’ll get some real time

for ourselves let me ask you a question

how many of you have in the recent past

really spent one hour only with

yourselves

with no device around you

really suggest we all should really try

and cut the noise around us

and let me give you my last and fourth

piece of advice

my last takeaway is stop acting

like you live toys why do i say this

it’s very simple i observe a lot of

people out there

who truly believe that they are going to

live seven lives

sorry to cut the chase you aren’t

we live one life we have one

chance there is no rehearsal

every day it’s show time

so let me end my conversation with this

one question to you

why not live this present life to not

want

to live the next one thank you

you