Your legacy lies in what you do to serve others.

good evening my name is palaksha and i’m

the founder

the topic of my talk today is the legacy

of us all

incredible legacies that we all leave

behind incredible legacies that we all

strive to create through our lives

the legacies that make us etched in

people’s heart forever and make us

immortal

i’ll start my talk today by sharing a

small story a small story of a man

called tashrat manji

i’m sure you’ve all watched this movie

manji if not please allow me to run you

through it again

in the 1960s lived in the small town

near gaia

was really small and the in the closest

medical facilities

were available in this town called

vizirkaj and in order to get to azeer

khan

had to cross a mountain in a very rocky

one

now dasha’s wife was pregnant and now

she was trying to cross the mountain

to get medical help but unfortunately

she ended up dying

on the way after this incident manche

took it upon himself to carve

a road through the mountain so he took a

hammer and he began hammering

for 22 years he hammered and he hammered

any hammered

now a lot of people around him called

him united called him mad and called him

all sorts of names but that only made

his resolute stronger

dasha became stronger in what he was

really trying to do

now after 22 years should successfully

created a 360

feet long road 25 deep feet

deep road now the point that i’m really

trying to make

is what was dasha trying to do was he

trying to create a legacy

was he trying to get his name out there

was he trying to create a name for

himself

no he was not trying to do any of those

things he was simply seeking to serve

was dasha trying to create a glory for

himself

no yet when he went to meet the

ministers

they all stood up in his honor and

offered him a chair

he was simply trying to serve he was

simply seeking to serve and he was

simply trying to solve a need and to

really help everyone around him

the point that i’m really trying to make

here is folks you cannot create a legacy

all you can do is live consciously and

really help

and do good for the society and hence

for

most of my talk today i’m going to

counter this whole argument that you can

create a legacy or that you must create

a legacy

now let’s go back and like really try

and remember what a legacy is

a legacy is something that is passed on

to us from one generation to the other

it’s something that your grandparents

parents family members

friends etc pass it on to you now

do you get to decide what you get no you

don’t a legacy is defined by

the way our parents have lived by the

actions that they’ve taken by the

responsibilities that they took on by

the decisions that they took

by their achievements by their failures

so really is it up to us to create the

legacy

no one simply has to live consciously

and do what is best and do what is

necessary

i’ll share another story with you of two

men who were cutting a stone

and being asked upon what they were

doing one of them said that

he was cutting a song the second one

said he was building a temple

now 120 years ago my great-grandfather

moved from patan gujarat to banalis in

search of some work

now banashi textiles were really hot

then you know everyone wanted to get a

piece of it

and as did he he started the bananas

textile business

ran it very successfully for x amount of

years then passed on to my grandfather

who then passed into my dad who then

passed on to me

now what did i get did i get the

business of textiles no

i got the business of taking care of 8

000 lives

of taking care of the less fortunate who

in my case were the weavers and were

skilled viewers

i also got in legacy for a fair trade

practices

transparency the way we the way we work

family-like relations with generations

of viewers know-how

skills and most importantly i got the

promise of taking care

of all these lives and to not let this

tree die

i got the promise and the responsibility

of passing the street onto my next

generation

and in generations of feathers now what

did i do this legacy

i took this legacy and shaped it for the

current times

now not many of you know about me being

an accidental entrepreneur

i will have to share some light in that

as well

so i it was never a part of my plan to

join the family business

i was studying business management in

london and i wanted to join when the big

falls joined the corporate

other corporates and if lucky you know

start a life there

but as luck would have it i had returned

back to india in search of a job and i

was spending time with my family

now the of a guy had already been sown

because my family wanted to anyway

expand their business into rating

so just thought they always wanted to

anyway do it but

what they needed who they needed rather

was a person to run it they needed a

pilot

and who better than a family member now

i got this legacy of this family

business i got 120 year old very

successful

wholesale manufacturing business

i got all the beavers who came along

with it i got all the responsibly the

morals

achievement the feel is everything i got

with it now

one thing is to get it all the other

thing is to manage it

and the other thing is when you don’t

want at all what do you do

now of course i took on the challenge i

took on the challenge of working with my

family business because i really wanted

to

120 years ago my great grandfather moved

from patan gujarat to banaras

in search of some work now bernarci

textiles were really famous then and he

took advantage of it and started a

business

he ran the business through the course

of his life then passed it on to my

great grandfather to my grandfather

who then passed it on to my father who

then passed on to me

and after four generations what did i

get did i get the business of textiles

no i got the business of taking care of

8 000 lives

i got the business of taking care of the

less fortunate who in my case are very

skilled and other weavers

i got as a legacy family-like relations

with generations of weavers

i got as a legacy fair trade practices

i got as a legacy transparency the way

we work and most importantly i got as a

legacy the promise to

never let this business die and to

always promote the weaves of india

now what did i do with this legacy i

took it forward and i shaped it for the

current times

now not many of you know by the way that

my plan was to never join the family

business

i was studying business management in

kings college london

and i wanted to be a financial analyst

and in if i got lucky perhaps joined the

big farm

but as luck would have it i’d come back

to india in search of a job

and that’s when the opportunity came up

for ekaya

now the seat of the kaya had already

been sown because my family anyway

wanted to migrate

from wholesale to retail so the idea was

already there and they really wanted to

sort of create a retail business

which was anywhere the pipeline anyway

now when i came back

they needed someone to run this business

and who better than a family member

so i ran so i told my dad offered me and

i was like sure why not i’ll give it a

try now this business student

who was good at maths and accounts but

did not know anything about textiles was

asked to run a textile business

and that 220 year old textile business

with all the reputation that preceded it

fine i joined the family business now

you know when you’re working with

someone who’s really really strong

someone like my father and someone who’s

achieved it all someone who already

knows the formulas to success someone

who already

has seen success and someone knows that

x plus y leads

to this result now comes as young girl

who wants to challenge everything who

wants to change the way textiles are

sold

in india they want to change the way

they are communicated wants to change

everything about it now it’s a shocker

for them

now you might get a legacy but to

maintain their legacy and to

run it and to grow it is a whole

different task altogether

now i started working with my father i

started working with his brothers and my

grandfather

now while they were being very

supportive because i was the daughter

after all

i faced a huge number of challenge

because now i was trying to shake up

how things were done for 120 years i was

really trying to shake

how this whole textile industry ran

right so now starting from small

challenges like

i mean being this 21 year old trying to

sell indian textiles in an international

market

i wanted to do a show in singapore but

everyone around my family

said no for it because again banarsi

textiles were never sold in singapore

no wholesaler ever dared to take any

textiles outside because they thought

they would never sell

but i wanted to do so it was my dream

it’s still my dream to put indian

textiles on the international map

i remember going there with a suitcase

of 70 sarees

and everyone in my family was like no

you shouldn’t do it it’s a wrong

decision

i came back with one but my point that

i’m really trying to make

is that being handed over a legacy is

not the end of the game

it might sound all rosy and it might

sound also fantastic that you’re behind

it over a legacy

but the real challenge comes when you’re

in their shoes

because right now i was not the boss’s

daughter was handed everything on a

platter

i was the boss’s daughter the boss’s

daughter who had to prove to be as smart

as

agile as sharp as hard-working as a boss

which made things a lot a lot harder

i had to work 10 times extra especially

because i didn’t know anything about

this business

i had to work a lot more harder i had to

pull all-nighters i had to know

everything about it before i even

recommended it to anyone else

i was also working with a team who was

eight years older than me who was eight

years

of more experience but yes i might have

a vision

but they had that experience and now how

did that go about

i was also one of the first women in the

women in this industry to be working

now with so many challenges

i stuck to my residue because i wanted

to take

indian textiles to a whole different

place

i wanted to showcase indian texas in a

whole different light

i wanted to create indian textiles as

the new

luxury of the country i wanted to change

the way that we perceived

i wanted to make indian textiles the

louis vuitton of the country because

now let’s face it louis vuitton mess

chanel

they’re all banking on the artisans of

their country

why can’t we as india bank on art and

our artisans of our country but anyway

we’ll go back to legacy

the point i’m really trying to make is

that legacy yes

as beautiful as it sounds and as

fantastic as it is

it needs to be maintained it needs to

sort of be taken care of and there’s a

lot of hard work around it

but my goal was that i am i was not

trying to create a legacy i’m still not

trying to create a legacy

i’m simply sticking to my vision i’m

sticking to what is necessary and what

is the greater good of what i’m really

trying to create

now the legacy that i will leave behind

whenever i move on

will be of a person who tried to

challenge the texan industry

will be of someone who was trying to

save lives who was trying to save the

weaves of india

who was trying to change the

relationships of the weavers with

themselves who was trying to give them

back dignity he was trying to move

weavers from being

simply viewers to being engineers

because let’s face it they are engineers

of our textiles

i was trying i am going to leave behind

a legacy hopefully

of someone who never shied away from

taking challenges and who never shied

away from putting indian texas on the

global luxury man

because why not the goal that i’m trying

to make is that you should not work on

creating a legacy you should work on

doing what is right

and that will truly put your mark on

people’s heart and not on buildings

which will eventually become tombstones

today we’re at the crossroads of climate

change

global warming and income inequality

and all of this can be solved by living

consciously and one of the choices that

you can make is the choice

what you wear you can either choose to

wear

fast fashion you can choose to wear

environmentally unfriendly products like

polyester

rheon etc or you can choose

environmentally friendly products

products that not only not only support

the environment but also empower the

people making it

millions of years ago india was a mecca

of textiles

to the extent we had a huge legacy of

textiles to the extent that

rome had banned the import of indian

textiles because rome was using up

all their gold to bind in textiles that

was the glory that we lived in

fast forward to british empire where all

a legacy vanished because our indian

textile industry started giving

competition to the manchester texas

industry

because of which they started cutting

the thumbs of all the beavers

we are now back again but the demand is

increasing

where now we’re getting back to the same

glory that we

that we had during that time and we have

the power in our hand to really recreate

that legacy

so my question is what choices are you

making

i what legacy are you building i’m

building the legacy of bringing our

textile legacy

back back to its glory that it was

millions of years ago

thousands of years ago and that’s the

legacy that i’m building what legacy are

you building

remember the secret is to not create

but just simply seek to serve thank you