A talk through time

once upon a time

somewhere in the early 70s i was born to

a lower middle class

long family target now lower military

families in canada didn’t have money at

that time

but they had a hidden agenda they wanted

to make their kids successful

kids at that time had amazing

opportunity according to the lower

community

families they would either become

doctors

engineers or lawyers or they could

become engineers

doctors or lawyers or they could become

lawyers

doctors and engineers so that was the

situation at that point of time and i

didn’t want to be either of them all i

wanted to do

was play cricket for my country don’t

look at me

now look at me there i didn’t realize

what i was saying

so there i was i was miserable in school

didn’t know what was going on and my

parents were muslim without perfect

i remember when i was in uh sometime in

class

six i’d once come back from a cricket

match

and uh i was walking in and i

realized that my parents my father’s

friends had come so

the moment i was walking in one of my

uncles one of my father’s friend called

me and said hey

come here tonight and memory asked

what do i give what will you go become

when you grow up

before i could say anything my father

said i am saying i think

your son is going to be a doctor pradeep

son is going to be an engineer

uh rajasthan will become a lawyer and if

everybody becomes doctor engineers and

lawyers

who will send potatoes my son will send

potatoes

so how did this young cricket loving kid

who

never understood what was going on in

classroom land up handling

one of the most successful corporates of

our country

incidentally vip industries happens to

be the largest

money manufacturing company of india and

second largest in the world

is a story that i’d like to tell you

actually

i’m going to tell you a lot about my

whole life i’m going to tell you about

five days

in my life which shaped my my whole

career now these five days

are normal finance there’s nothing

extremely ordinary about them

but what was externally ordinary was the

lessons that they

taught me these lessons have stayed with

me

and i still today use as much as i can

from the lessons that i learned

and i hope you guys will also take back

something from there

the first one involves my favorite game

today

i remember it was sometime in

1986 we had reached the semi-finals of

the cav which is calculated uh

trigger resolution of bengals

tournament which was in the school

tournament and we reached

the semi-finals i think and uh

we were to play sincerely in school

and uh there was this huge talk about

this young kid called sarah brownlee

who was doing very well at that point of

time we have been hearing about him

and we didn’t know so somebody said that

we need to get this guy out

uh as soon as we can otherwise there’s

no chance that we have

now we also had a very uh

very important weapon in in our

organization

there was one kid who had got

transferred from bombay

at that time was bombay uh to calculate

that and we were he was

the coach said let’s time out and i was

asking back

and that day i complained

he was fast he was lying length was

perfectly well

and

[Music]

i asked him who is this guy because

somebody told me

that this guy had represented mumbai in

the underlying tournament

and that moment i realized

that i was not good enough to be a

professional creator

all my life i wanted to make it with her

but at that moment i realized i was not

good enough to be professional together

i was sad but one thing was sure that i

cannot ever be a question because

is critical over the years i have seen

many people

strong on things that they know that

they’re not do that

but they simply would if you are doing

something like that ask yourself

drop it because it will not make you

much fun even today i practice that

okay so i was in school and i was 14

years old at that time

and i realized that i was not good

enough to play together

i still hated school i didn’t want to go

now at that time

our school had this weird coaching where

students were trying to be teachers used

to come to teach us

so one fine day there was a lady who

walked in

and at 14 years of age i’d never seen

something more beautiful than that

she came into the room and she

introduced herself as

pretty chummy shaker he said that she

wanted to be an

english teacher for the next one

suddenly

the whole school was wonderful

i wanted to go to school english became

my favorite teacher

and always but there was one problem

i was just another kid in the class and

that is something

that was not acceptable to me but what

would i do

i was afraid then please with

and as a part of this whole thing she

said

uh so this this was happening anyways in

the month of september

and her course was supposed to be in the

end of september

and she said she has to conduct a debate

as a part of her career

and the topic of the debate was is

education remotely parameter to be

successful

i said yes this is it i love the topic

it was really close to my heart and

and this was the only way to recognize

it

so without thinking i put on my hand the

debate was supposed to be on 28th of

september i still remember the day

because remember

these are the days that have taught me

so many things

again and before that i practiced at

home and i did all the tools

and then i went from this debate

say impressed so many people especially

one particular lady in the room

and of course

i couldn’t say it i was scared

people were looking at me

[Music]

[Laughter]

and the lesson is fear is inevitable

face it i have seen when you do anything

new

ninety percent of the chances are that

you think and when you think

fear will come in i’ve seen people who

give up driving because they have met

with an accident

they have fear and they never can drive

again actually

people who are into one job doesn’t

change the job because they’re scared

of changing the job forget about the job

i’ve seen people who don’t even change

divisions

that doesn’t want to go to sales a sales

guy doesn’t want to come to marketing

because they’re scared of them don’t be

because it will tell you

few years went and i was working i was

going to jump in

it was my second job and i was not doing

well with with my manager

so i called up one of my old bosses his

name was somebody who had

really worked very closely in the first

club

[Music]

letter with a good salary and with a

new job in hand i went back to work boom

and i said here is your job i don’t want

it i resign

i like all good organizations when

employee designs

organizations feel the importance of

work and i was flown to

community and i was told how good i was

and the fact that you know they would

give me a different role

and they gave me so i was and i flew

back

and i

boss who came to me at the time of me

and gave me a job in a startup which was

to me a little risky

proposition while the other i had

a great organization given me a job with

somebody that i didn’t even know

i chose to go with whirlpool i’m a

little

dated guy so it shows the world working

but that’s not the lesson that i learned

for the next two days i was trying to

understand how do i say no to that

because i didn’t know about the

relationship

with a lot of parents a lot of planning

i picked up the phone and called him

and i told him boss i don’t think i’d be

able to join

so there was a friend of silence for

some time and then

he said why i told him that you know

there will be a different role in one

moon and i think i should stay there

and i thought he was going to bang the

phone but as typical of today he

smiled and actually tell me don’t worry

you know i understand

uh we’ll talk later we are still very

very good friends

who they went on to be one of the most

respected uh professional

in the digital field of india and uh

i went down to a good one that day i

learned

the third lesson which i still follow

which is

which is it’s easier to say yes

but it’s important to say no when you

want in life there are times when we

have to say no

please say no because it’s important for

you

i’m not going to be married nothing will

matter everything will be please

so try this by the segment

okay so i’ve only worked in whirlpool

for about

four and a half years i was in the

category management

and to shift from land management so in

marketing there’s static

management and brand management and um

and brand animation rules were difficult

to get

uh people who got into brand management

standing into brand management because

it’s very

reported kind of a kind of a position

i got a couple of interview calls i went

there and most of them asked me

questions about my management

which i didn’t answer because i didn’t

know about it so i was not getting

through

and somewhere in the month of october

i got a call from the company called mob

electronics

and the owners of only the brand and

they said i could meet one mr gender

morning reincarnation in the morning

uh on 31st of october 2012

i remember the date because it’s my

boy’s birthday

and i went to meet uh molly um

at grand hyatt in london and we spoke

about he took my interview for about 45

minutes

he didn’t even ask me one single

question on brand management it was all

on

category management um and i said

uh i asked him why i’m asking questions

on on brand analytics and i saw you see

you don’t know anything about it so why

should i ask you questions about brand

management

i want to understand how much you know

about category management because

i would gauge by that how deeper you

have gone

in your work so that if i give you a job

i would expect you to go that deep

you know you can go a little bit

professional

and i like that i said wow this is the

kind of guy that i’d like to work with

remember 2002 the color tv market was

dominated by

the koreans and and the japanese and

i was a faded company and i joined

omnida

i didn’t join only that i joined

childhood and that day

it’s a very important lesson in life

you’ll meet many people

one or two qualified group if you meet a

group

lose your ego and let them you know

guide you

morning even today i get great advice

from molly we went on to be the managing

director of mondelez

and we are still great and unique i have

a great relationship going

and remember you know this is something

that i think we should understand we

should understand to sports people

even the best of the people have a group

do you think roger federer needs a coach

do you know do you think we’re not

totally needs

coach but they still have it because at

this talk you need to keep on improving

and improving a lot so that’s my

fourth lesson that i learned and i still

follow this

the fifth was amazing day

this was ready march 2008 the day i was

elevated as a ceo of vip industries uh

it was on the cards

and um we were having this serious

conference in jaipur

my she flew in in the boss

and she spoke to me saying she’s going

to give me she’s given me a surprise and

she said i’m going to

announce and

i was happy with this former office that

i was getting

an announcement happened and there was a

of organization we came back from the

conference

and i remember that very clearly

presented anna

and a header are taking letter that says

the box stops here

at that moment i didn’t understand what

she was trying to say

um you mean i i