Game Changers , livre ebook

THE
GAME
CHANGERS
20 extraordinary success stories of entrepreneurs from IIT Kharagpur
THE
GAME
CHANGERS
20 extraordinary success stories of entrepreneurs from IIT Kharagpur
YUVNESH MODI RAHUL KUMAR ALOK KOTHARI
Published by Random House India in 2012
Copyright Yuvnesh Modi, Rahul Kumar, Alok Kothari 2012
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B, A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, UP
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA, UK
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EPUB ISBN 9788184002843
To our parents who have always supported us in our endeavours
CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
The Idea
1. An Indian Revolutionary in Silicon Valley
Dr Suhas Patil
2. Sailing against the Tide
Vijay Kumar
3. Tryst with Destiny
Vinod Gupta
4. The Illusionist
Sam Dalal
5. The Guru of Indian IT
Sridhar Mitta
6. Tech Visionary
Arjun Malhotra
7. Striking a Chord
Kiran Seth
8. The Think Tank
Prabhakant Sinha
9. Mission Critical Designer
Ranbir Singh Gupta
10. The Journeyman
Bikram Dasgupta
11. The Master Builder
Praful M. Kulkarni
12. The March of the Geek
Sunil Gaitonde
13. Persistence Pays
Anand Deshpande
14. Agent of Change
Arvind Kejriwal
15. Let there be Light
H. Harish Hande
16. The Lady Means Business
Anuradha Acharya
17. The Subziwallah
Venkata Subramanian
18. The Cyber Guardian
Bikash Barai
19. A Resolve to Succeed
Vikram Kumar
20. Riding on Cloud Nine
Krishna Mehra
Acknowledgements
A note on the authors
FOREWORD
The authors of this wonderful book had invited me to write the foreword for this book, and as a proud alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, I was delighted by the idea. This book is a tribute to the achievements of twenty distinguished alumni. Each of these stories is a remarkable tale of success, entrepreneurship, courage of conviction, and leadership. The sum total of the twenty stories tells an even more remarkable tale of a great institution-IIT Kharagpur-which is celebrating its diamond jubilee this year.
Over the last sixty years, IIT Kharagpur has distinguished itself not only among institutions of excellence in the country but also among the very select peer group of other IITs. What sets IIT Kharagpur apart is that even as it excels in academics, it also emphasizes personality development and leadership qualities. At IIT Kharagpur, learning is a 24 7 process-in the classroom and outside. It produces outstanding engineers, but it also produces mature, socially conscious individuals, entrepreneurs, and potential leaders. The twenty stories in this book are just a sample of thousands of others who owe their success and achievement in life to education at this great institution.
It has been forty years since I graduated from IIT Kharagpur. What I learnt there in my formative years has had a very positive influence on my personality and my outlook on life. I owe a great deal to IIT Kharagpur.
My congratulations to Yuvnesh Modi, Rahul Kumar, and Alok Kothari for the commendable effort and enthusiasm they put into writing this book. They have done a very impressive job, in the best traditions of IIT Kharagpur. I wish them all the best.
Dr Duvvuri Subbarao Governor Reserve Bank of India
INTRODUCTION
The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, the torch bearer of the IITs, has just completed six decades of glorious service to the nation. Befitting the milestone, two of its students, Rahul Kumar and Yuvnesh Modi, and an alumnus, Alok Kothari, have written a beautiful book The Game Changers : 20 extraordinary success stories of entrepreneurs from IIT Kharagpur .
Environment is crucial to a student and IIT Kharagpur provides the ideal ecosystem to explore and excel in areas other than academics. Its rich environment builds leadership, encourages students to question received knowledge and traditions. IIT Kharagpur is well known for producing leaders in science and engineering worldwide. Its graduates have made an undeniable impact in the professions of their choice. However, little is known about KGPians who have excelled in other areas to become game changers and have left their mark by making breakthroughs in conventional and social entrepreneurship, literature, culture, and public life.
The twenty alumni discussed in this book are some such sung and unsung heroes who have made a difference to themselves and to society. The book gives a glimpse into their lives and achievements. The attempt is to uniformly represent both seniors and juniors, and throw new light on their lives and their journey to success.
I am sure this path-breaking accomplishment of Yuvnesh Modi, Rahul Kumar, and Alok Kothari will be widely appreciated. This book will be of value to those who wish to traverse untrodden ways and create a niche for themselves.
Dr Damodar Acharya Director IIT Kharagpur
THE IDEA
Here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands the fine monument of India, representing India s urges, India s future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolical of the changes that are coming to India.
These were the words of India s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, on the very first convocation of IIT Kharagpur in 1956. Fifty-five years later, IIT has emerged as one of the elite temples of education in the country. Today, after sixty years since its inception, IIT Kharagpur is globally renowned for being the proverbial birthplace of innumerable legends. As three curious students of IIT Kharagpur, we began to question, who are these people who have helped IIT become the brand it is today?
We had a brainstorming session and did a quick search on the famous people to have graduated out of this hallowed institution. We observed something peculiar about the sample set we had come across-apart from being IITians, they didn t have much in common. They all had made a name for themselves in completely different walks of life, sometimes quite different from what they had pursued during their undergraduate years. However, there was another thing which connected them all, the word entrepreneur .
We further attempted to explore the idea of what or who is an entrepreneur and what impact they create on their surroundings. It emerged that at the cusp of the rise of a successful nation or a community there was an entrepreneur or a group of them.
So, how does one define an entrepreneur?
The generic definition which Wikipedia provides is: An entrepreneur is a person who shifts economic resources out of lower and into higher productivity and greater yield . This definition is simplistic and means an entrepreneur is an efficient businessman, who is able to make monetary profits. However, when one looks at some of the entrepreneurs, the likes of Dr Harish Hande, monetary profits was not their ultimate aim of doing the things they did. So we asked ourselves, what exactly makes a person an entrepreneur. Is it being a businessman, or an inventor, or a social activist?
None of the definitions we came across could successfully be applied to all the entrepreneurs we learnt about. All the people we shortlisted were described by the same umbrella word, yet they were so different from each other in what they did.
There was only one solution to our dilemma-to meet them and learn about their journey to success. We desired to learn what made them do the things they did. Moreover, what were the challenges or impediments they faced when they chose to walk on the path of entrepreneurship and how did they overcome them. We didn t want to limit these experiences to ourselves but share it with a multitude of people. Hence, we hit upon the idea of writing a book about these individual experiences.
Our aim was to interview a set of entrepreneurs who were as diverse as possible. The motive was to get a perspective of the extent to which the spectrum of entrepreneurship can be stretched. We interviewed entrepreneurs like Arjun Malhotra, who was at the forefront of the IT revolution in India, to social activists like Arvind Kejriwal. Entrepreneurs like Dr Suhas Patil and Vinod Gupta, who successfully started up their ventures abroad and explored opportunities in the US, provided us with a more global outlook. Whereas stories of entrepreneurs like Vijay Kumar, who breathed life into an ailing industry, were fascinating to hear about. Lastly, there were those like Sam Dalal, who had the guts to follow their childhood passion and turn it into something larger than life.
It was also important to encompass entrepreneurs from different eras, as the eras presented their own unique problems and constraints. For example, one cannot talk about starting a company in the 1970s and 1980s in India without mentioning how the individuals had to overcome the limitations caused by the draconian Licence Raj. It was also imperative to cover entrepreneurs who have launched their enterprises in the recent past, as their experiences through the initial struggle would be more relevant to people who want to start up now.
We got more than we bargained for. These people were not only successful but were also awe-inspiring personalities. For them it was not about earning a million bucks but about changing a million lives. Often they had to take hard decisions, with a lot at stake. However, they had the vision to look past those difficult times and do what needed to be done. Each entrepreneur was different from the other, yet they