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