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