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