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Be Generous – Lessons from my dad

June 22, 2011 / Sri Srikrishna / 10 Comments

As in my worst fears, the call came early in the morning, just before 3AM California time. When the phone rang the first time, I rejected the call, reckoning it was a colleague in India, who’d lost track of time. When the phone rang again within minutes, this time with caller ID showing another colleague’s name, I knew something was amiss.

“Sri, I am sorry to inform you your father has passed away!” At first, I was not sure I had heard right. My first thought strangely was for my colleague who had the unpleasant task of having to call me with bad news. I almost felt apologetic that I had put him in such a position. Maybe it was shock and I was not ready to hear that my father was no more.

Rushed calls to my travel agent, wondering what to tell the kids sleeping in the next room – the next thirty-six hours were a blur – neither Icelandic volcanoes spewing ash, nor delayed flights and uncooperative flight supervisors would get in the way of our making it back to India. The nearly two hour trip from the tarmac to my father’s home felt longer than the whole journey.

“Your father paid for me to go to college and then got me started on my Chartered Accountancy apprenticeship,” said the stranger, who’d come to the funeral. He looked to be about 40 years old. “Your dad was also the one who helped my brother go the United States,” he continued. There were nearly 150 people at home when I got in from the airport, most of them extended family and a good many folks that I didn’t know. Much of the afternoon, was spent recounting tales of how my father had helped someone buy a house, another furnish one and still another get a compound wall put in.

Second cousins who’d grown up in my house abounded and had their own tales of getting jobs with my dad’s help. I recall when I was a young teen, some relative admiring my father’s watch. I was aghast when my father removed it and insisted that the relative have the watch.

That evening I recall my sister and I arguing with my dad, that if he just gives away stuff, we’d probably not have anything – not that we knew what we had. My dad just laughed at first. Then when he saw how serious we were, he said “There’s great pleasure in giving – I’d say more so than even receiving.” My sister, ever the smart alec quickly retorted, “Then you’ll be happy to give and I will be happy to receive.”

It was only many years later that I learnt about my father’s journey to the city as an impoverished young man with three rupees in his pocket. While he became a successful man over the years, he never stopped giving regardless of his own financial status. His life itself was one critical lesson – “Be Generous”

My father Dr. K. Kuppuswamy passed away on the 24th of May 2011.

4 Degrees of Separation – The Indian Network

February 15, 2011 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

Photo: marfis75 via Compfight

As with many profound discoveries it began innocuously enough.

“I don’t believe that there are truly a billion Indians,” my friend Marcel has remarked more than once to me. Of course, when he first made this statement as a graduate student, maybe because it was after a late night party at Ms. Chan’s, I didn’t take him seriously. However, the events of the past few years, particularly each time I meet someone new, have convinced me that he’s probably on to something: There don’t seem to be a billion of us.

“Please meet my partner Habib, he’s coming down to the entrepreneur’s meet next week in Bangalore.”

Jaideep, a classmate who now was living in the U.S., and I had reconnected last Christmas at our 25th reunion. Despite, or more likely because of, the amount of libations consumed, he figured I must know a thing or two and asked me to share it with his Mumbai-based business partner.

Habib and I did connect over the phone soon after at a startup event and agreed to meet outside the auditorium just before lunch. When I made my way out of the hall a few minutes before midday, I found small clumps of people discussing the morning presentations and their own businesses. After several “Hail-fellow-well-met” intercepts, I heard my phone ring. It was Habib. As we exchanged “Where are you ats?” I spotted a bearded gentleman with a phone to his ear, standing next to my friend Dhruv just outside the gate.

“Habib?” I asked tentatively and the gentleman stuck out his hand

“You are Srikrishna?”

Inevitably, the discussion of “How do you know…” ensued between Dhruv (with whom Habib had worked for several years at an ad agency) and me. The longer we spoke, the more folks we found we knew in common.

Scientists in the U.S. as many as 50 years ago began exploring what they then termed “chains of acquaintances.” In fact, Stanley Milgram, then a young social psychologist (apparently you can study practically anything at Harvard) did his famous package-mailing experiment to see how short these chains of acquaintances were.

He mailed packages to 296 people asking them to post them on to a “final recipient.” None of them was told where the final recipient actually lived; just his name, occupation and some personal details (these were pre-Internet and pre-Google days, of course).

The folks who received the package were supposed get it delivered by passing it on to someone with whom they were on a first-name basis and who might have a better chance of finding the final recipient. Astonishingly, even without any Indians or Chinese being involved, the packages made it to their destinations in less than five hops.

Hollywood got in on the act with “Six Degrees of Separation,” based on the play of the same name by John Guare.

Before you know it, folks studying crickets and how diseases spread started working on this “Small World” theory. While the folks at the University of Virginia, in an urge to create something useful, released the Kevin Bacon game (look it up), Duncan Watts at Cornell published the first compendium of all key Small World theories.

What however was missing in all these studies is what my friend Dr. Sluiter, keen scientist that he is, formulated as Sluiter’s Lemma on Indian Connectedness or SLIC. I feel like Harrison Ford finding the Ark of the Covenant when I present these lemmas. If only these other folks had stumbled upon it sooner, the Small World theory would have made a whole lot more progress much earlier. But as the old saw goes: Better late than never.

Lemma 1: Any two Indians went to school with each other. Given the average Delhi Public School class has probably 300 kids in five sections, and every kid raised by a self-respecting, card-carrying Indian parent needs to become a doctor or an engineer, it’s almost inevitable that between 12 years of schooling and at least three years of college a good many of us have gone to school with one another. And this does not even count graduate school where a few more links can be forged. I can hear the mathematicians among you stating that the average IIT had only a class size of 400 to 600 and medical schools even less and that those are pretty small numbers. Fear not, Lemma 2 comes to the rescue.

Lemma 2: Or their siblings/friends went to school with each other. Regardless of what you may have read in this paper or other publications about the rise of nuclear families in urban India, we are blessed with a large number of siblings and cousins. When you now factor in all the other kids with whom we played on the street with marbles, tops, gilli-danda, cricket and numerous other sports, it quickly adds up.

Lemma 3: They are related to each other. In the unlikely event two Indians or their siblings or friends did not go to school together, they are usually related. “Oh, he’s my mother’s brother’s wife’s cousin’s son.” (In my case this person also happened to be my classmate in college.) In my brother-in-law’s case, he has found a good part of Tamil Nadu is related by blood — not that surprising when grandparents on either side have 12 siblings.

Lemma 4: If all of the above fail, they are married to each other. Drum roll on this one. Just when you felt that you’ve actually met a couple of Indians who are not connected, you’ll find, as Dr. Sluiter did, that they are married, either to each other or into each other’s families. Sometimes you can’t tell the difference in India, but that’s a story for another day.

This article first appeared in the India Real Time of the Wall Street Journal.

pile of books — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

10 books every entrepreneur should read

February 13, 2011 / Sri Srikrishna / 26 Comments

Image by Andrew B47 via Flickr

A question “What books should Indian entrepreneurs read” on Quora set me thinking. The good news is that Indian entrepreneurs should read, for most part books that entrepreneurs anywhere would do well to read. The trick is picking the 10 or fewer, that would make reading (or starting) seem not so daunting and that you’d have a snowball’s chance of completing. My own recommendations (& favorites) include the following. Much like a travel guide that tells you what to see if you have only one day in Paris, a week, a month or more, I have attempted to bin them in an attempt to bring coherence and priority.

Plan to ready only ONE book

The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker: Forty years after its first publication, this book, like good wine, has aged well. If you are going to read only one book, this should be it. Even if you are only contemplating to be an entrepreneur, you should read this. You’ll do better in any role with this one.

If you can squeeze in two more
Particularly for tech founders and any first time entrepreneurs, knowing about sales and design, particularly as it related to customers, these two books work.

Selling the Wheel by Jeff Cox and Howard Stevens: Most entrepreneurs are surprised when they build something and the world does not beat a path to their door on its own. This novel is the gentlest way to get acquainted with selling.
Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman: How many times have you had to re-print your document to get the two-sided printing working? Or needed to paste instructions on your copier or building door. Before we build it – anything – it would be nice to understand what folks are trying to get done.

Now you are on a roll, here are three more
Now its time to hear others’ stories and to see what part of it is relevant to you.

Growing a Business by Paul Hawken: The first person conversational tone of the book speaks from the heart and is as applicable today as when it was written more than a decade ago.

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston: this is probably the newest book in this list – and one that I am still working my way through. The breadth of entrepreneurs covered alone would make it worthwhile.
Made in Japan – Sony’s story by Akio Morita, Edwin M. Reingold and Mitsuko Shimomura is a timeless story of innovation, perseverance – that’s particularly relevant from Indian entrepreneurs trying to enter global markets

If you are still with the program, these can help you round it off

What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan: The author’s Indian origins and his experiences with the family shoe store make this book easy to relate to and important for business acumen
Marketing Myopia by Theodore Levitt – if you were going to read only one book about marketing this should be it. Insights that seem self evident in hindsight will bite all of us in the rear. This tells you how to avoid some of it.
Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy – being an entrepreneur is all about getting things done – and nothing stops you as procrastination can. A simple, yet hard hitting book on getting things done.

Bonus number ten
If you got this far, you need to read a darn good yarn of how a set of engineers got a new machine built.

Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder – this book helped the author land a Pulitzer prize – a non-technical journalist covering the story of how Data General went about trying to beat Digital at the microcomputer game. Human drama and much that goes on in the name of startup success.

It is hard to pick a finite list and any such list if likely to be highly subjective. You will notice I have not picked any Indian entrepreneurial stories – its just that they don’t figure in the top 10 – in which itself only one book younger than 5 year old figures. This is in a sense a foundational reading course rather than here’s how some specific company has done it, in India or overseas. It is important in the first instance to read – which I am still surprised how many tech folks in India don’t seem to read and freely admit to not doing so :).

Happy reading!

11 Recommendations for the Entrepreneur’s Bookshelf (mashable.com)
What books should young entrepreneurs read? (compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com)

Who’s pain are you trying to address?

January 30, 2011 / Sri Srikrishna / 11 Comments

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Over the last two months, I participated in a number of meetings with founders of startups – as an adviser, reviewer or investor. Interestingly in nearly every one of these meetings the same questions kept coming up.

In particular four different companies – two nascent startups and a couple in their early tweens – were facing eerily similar issues. Despite the startups being in very different spaces, the varying ages of their endeavors and having smart and motivated founders – they were all trying to come to grips with the lack of market traction. This despite a great deal of time spent talking to prospective customers, partners, building and launching working prototypes.

I must admit after the first couple of meetings it appeared they were having different problems. In one, a marketplace that was not getting suppliers nor buyers off the starting block, in another focusing on the technology to the exclusion of all else, and yet another having a solution looking for a problem. However, by the time the fourth meeting rolled around it was plenty clear, that all of them required a sharp focus on answering the question

“Who is your target customer?”

and more importantly,

“What pain are you trying to solve for them?”

Two years into our own start-up, we find ourselves returning to this question with reasonable – some would say troubling – frequency. When we got started on dog-earz, the newsletter tool for the rest of us, we defined our target customers as “marketing & sales folks in SMBs” and the pain we were trying to solve for them was How to keep in meaningful touch with everyone in your Rolodex, even if there wasn’t a deal on the horizon.

Of course, it helps, if your target customers actually exist (ours did) and are accessible (a little more difficult) and truly felt this as a problem (not clear). Our solution seemed more a nice-to-have vitamin rather than make-my-pain-go-away Aspirin. We hung in there, as we felt we were target users ourselves. With time it was clear that we’d better solve their pain rather than imagine that they will behave the way we’d. Seems obvious in hindsight, doesn’t it?

Things are not always as evident as we’d like them. I once had an opportunity to talk to Phanindra Sama, founder of redBus.in about his understanding of what pain they are solving for their customers. Phanindra shared his view that the pain his customers felt was not in purchasing bus tickets – as I’d have thought. In fact it might still be more convenient for a traveler to call someone to hold a ticket and pay for it at time of boarding – only one phone call needed, but it is the absence of reliable information – as in how many buses, when and at what price or location will leave from Bangalore to Chennai (or better yet from Jalandhar to New Delhi?) that was the customers’ pain point.

Ask yourself these two questions, repeatedly and validate them by getting out of the office and asking your target customers about their pain points. Once you nail this down it makes, at the very least, decision-making a whole lot easier. Knowing this is of course only a good start, but not knowing can kill your business.

Giving this Diwali

November 4, 2010 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

Admiration, respect, possibly adulation or envy are the emotions that pop to mind when people talk of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, who are not just among the world’s richest men but among the most philanthropic.

Yet fear or trepidation seems to have been the emotion stirred, if we are to believe the media, by these two men when they took their message of giving to China and are rumored to be bringing it to India.

Even before the Joy of Giving week rolled out at the end of September, newspapers in India and elsewhere were talking about “…concern among some of China’s wealthy that they would be pressured into contributions” and of Gates and Buffett’s dinner plans in India.

Other Op-ed pieces discussed everything from the high-rise “apartment” that Reliance’s Mukesh Ambani is building to what philanthropy India’s wealthiest are doing, if at all, and how much.

It is nice that, despite the never-ending stream of scams (Mumbai high-rise, Commonwealth Games, iron-ore mining) the mainstream media is also discussing philanthropy, particularly in the private sector. However, their starry-eyed view of it as something solely the domain of uber-rich would be depressing but for the fact that a million “little men and women” are toiling away in India each day, giving well beyond their means.

As anyone who’s tried to support a charity knows, it is easy to give a little money of your own, harder to give your time and hardest to get others to give their money or time — and it is this giving that I’d like to celebrate this Diwali.

Certainly, the wealthy in India have contributed enormously to philanthropy, be it the Tatas with their charities and institution building or Azim Premji’s eponymous foundation. Their giving, even when they’ve sought to keep it quiet, has gotten the rightful recognition and coverage.

However, most Indians who are giving each day — disproportionate amounts of their time and money — rarely have their story told. Their story needs to be told, if only to inspire others to celebrate them by following in their footsteps. I share the story of two such unheralded givers, so that giving becomes as much a second nature to all of us, as taking seems to be to a large swath of our politicians and bureaucrats.

“Why me?” is a question I hear often as the father of two teens. It is hard to explain even seemingly simple life lessons to kids. So when the “Why me?” question is posed by a teen, both orphaned and HIV positive, it is particularly hard.

Krishnagiri is a town on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border just an hour outside Bangalore. Its location on the cross roads of four national highways and as a main trucking route connecting Chennai, Hosur and Bangalore make it a hotspot for HIV/AIDS infections.

This has led to a number of children within the Krishnagiri district being orphaned and many are HIV-infected at birth. Many children were taken in by grandparents, relatives and in some cases by neighbors. Most of these foster parents are themselves poor and face economic challenges even before having to care for these orphaned or infected children.

The Association for Rural Community Development is an NGO that has taken up the cause of these children. Founded in 1998, ARCOD is focused on the empowerment of rural poor, particularly women and children. From the initial days of helping rural poor women form self-help groups in one district, they have grown to four districts of Tamil Nadu and their initiatives span micro-finance, rural housing, and health with emphasis on sexual and reproductive health rights.

Their most recent initiative has been to ensure that these orphaned or HIV-infected children get the nutrition that can ensure them a reasonable quality of life — and so, too, the foster families.

As in any human situation, the numbers rarely paint as clear a picture as individual stories. One 13-year-old girl’s father died of AIDS and even while her mother tries to earn a living as a day laborer, the teenager has to take care of her three younger siblings. Another girl is 11 and HIV positive; she has lost both her parents and is being raised by her grandmother who works as a coolie.

A contribution of 500 rupees a month per child enables the provision of such nutrition. With their volunteer teams on the ground, their counseling and training services for families, ARCOD is directly impacting the lives of hundreds of children. All this with little or no fanfare and even lower overhead.

Pasha is a gifted painter and, like many kids his age, likes playing computer games. However, growing up with muscular dystrophy in a family that lived in the slums of South Bangalore, he’d have never been able to pursue his dreams but for the Foundation for Action, Motivation and Empowerment India.

Founded in 2001, FAME is a Bangalore-based NGO that supports rehabilitation and empowerment of children and young adults with neuro-muscular and intellectual development disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, mental retardation and muscular dystrophy.

“Most poor parents who work had to leave their mentally or physically challenged children locked at home,” says Janaki Vishwanath, managing trustee of FAME India. “They could not put their kids in regular schools nor necessarily afford the special education or schooling.”

It is this gap that FAME India has stepped in to bridge. While admitting students of every economic group, the fees it charges for the school is based solely on parents’ ability to pay. The school bus service at FAME is as important as the special education teachers, the dedicated volunteers, the wheelchair friendly building and in-school lunches as it allows both the children and their parents to pursue an empowering course.

Now, as some of their students approach or cross into adulthood, FAME has stepped up to face the challenge of helping them seek gainful employment that offers a modicum of income and immeasurable confidence to face the world. Opportunities they have created include those in their in-house production facility for cloth and paper gift bags, paper cups, painted clay lamps or diyas for festivals or through mail room or copying and courier jobs with local companies.

Although in a relatively nascent stage from a job creation standpoint and constantly challenged by the financial needs of a growing student body, FAME India is yet another instance of unsung heroes who are changing lives each day one child at a time.

There are yet more organizations such as Gift-a-Future, who are attempting to remove economic impediments that come in the way of education, particularly for high school students. Even if we featured one a week, or better yet one a day, our lives would be that much the richer. Join me in getting their stories told.

This story first appeared online at the Wall Street Journal’s India Journal.

Are you a pushy Asian parent?

October 11, 2010 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

“How can I help you?”

The principal was polite, but somewhat reserved. This was our first meeting with her. Contrary to what my wife and I had heard from other parents, she was neither fire-breathing nor scary. Sure, with her hair in a tight bun, a somewhat conservative raised-collar white shirt and severely cut skirt, she looked more like an up-and-coming corporate marketing executive than the principal of an elementary school. Her reputation was as a no-nonsense disciplinarian.

Photo Credit: pjern via Compfight cc

Sometime early in our meeting, the atmosphere turned from the formal and somewhat frigid start to a whole lot warmer and practically collegial. We realized this had happened once the principal knew we were not there to discuss our older daughter who was already in the school but that we’d had asked for the meeting as a prelude to admitting our younger one. In fact things got comfortable enough that somewhere in there she alluded to the fact that she always gets tremendous pressure from “Asian” parents.

Of course, in California and much of the U.S., the word Asian, particularly in an educational context, is used to refer to the arc of peoples from Japan through Indo-China to China itself. Rarely are South Asians, including Indians or West Asians, referred to as Asians.

In this instance, the principal referred to the preponderance of Indian and Chinese parents who wanted their kids to start earlier at school, get more homework, have even more activities for their kids — in other words these parents were COMPETITIVE. Her relief was palpable that we’d merely come to discuss our child’s admission.

I could certainly empathize with her and did not want to be in her shoes at a parent teacher meeting. Hah, but little did I know that I’d soon be stepping into the proverbial fire from the frying pan when my family and I relocated to Bangalore.

“Excuse me, excuse me!” the lady was persistent. About 40 of us, all parents of tenth-graders were in a meeting with the principal, this time at a school in Bangalore. The family and I have been back in India for nearly five years and our older child is in the 10th grade. The principal, this time in a starched saree but just as businesslike and no-nonsense as her Californian counterpart, was trying to address all the questions the parents had — and they had a few!

The Central Board of Secondary Education earlier this year announced its most significant reforms since the current “10 plus 2″ system of secondary education was rolled out in 1977. They were doing away with the “Board Exams.”

Across 11,500-plus schools in India each year, nearly 1.5 millions students appear for these examinations. For three decades, this single exam, taken at the end of the 10th grade, has determined what educational streams Indian kids can pursue in grades 10 and 11. Science, Commerce or the Arts are the most common choices. This choice, in turn, determines what college majors they can apply for.

No prizes for guessing the two popular choices — medicine or engineering, both of which require science and math in 10th and 11th grades.

Our children’s school was one of the few CBSE “senior secondary” schools in our city, meaning they offered 11th and 12th grades while most others only went to tenth. So if you wanted your kid to stay in high school for 11th and 12^th grades, they had to compete with not just their classmates, but kids graduating from tenth grade in other schools.

“What if my child does not get admission in the science stream in 11th class at your school?” said the persistent parent. I could feel the collective nods of nearly every other parent in the room as they strained to hear the principal’s answer.

“Shouldn’t you give preference for your own students first?” pressed another parent before the principal could respond.

Like an angry town hall or shareholder meeting, the mood in the room was tense as parents tried to determine if their kid would get into the Science section.

“As long as your kids score A grade or better (80% or more) in science and math, they will be given admission in our own school,” the principal tried to assure the gathering.

“And if we are transferred or have to move, would other schools accept the grades the school gives out?” a couple from the front row asked in tandem.

“Let me speak plainly,” piped in a dad. “Your school exams have been a lot tougher than the Board exams in the past. Wouldn’t it be better if our children took the Boards? Wouldn’t that allow them to compete on a level playing field with kids from other schools?”

To her credit, the principal kept her cool as the parents continued to pepper her with questions.

While my wife, and at times one of my children, had regaled me with tales of moms who showed up at school wanting to know why a teacher had knocked off a mark or two from their child’s class test, I had not encountered this face of the anxious — at times angry — Indian school parent.

Even as the buzz of parents talking to one another grew, I put my hand up. Once I caught the principal’s eye, I asked: “Is the discussion so far pertaining only to admission for Science majors? What about Arts major?”

You could have cut the shocked silence with a knife.

“If 25 parents are prepared to commit in writing that they will send their child to an Arts major, I am prepared to offer one,” the principal said. “Otherwise anything other than Science doesn’t have enough takers.”

That evening, I took a poll of about 20 people — colleagues at work, neighbors and college mates — nearly all of whom had trained formally as engineers. Most hadn’t practiced engineering in two decades. One had become a restaurateur, several were real estate developers, others run businesses ranging from an adventure outfit to advertising agencies. Several were in teaching, general management and consulting. Many were still considering career changes. And these were the successful ones.

So why do we as parents expect our children to make up their minds at 15 or 16 and, worse yet, determine that they should all be mindlessly studying for professional courses? At the end of the eighth grade, many kids take a test to be admitted to a coaching class for taking engineering or medical entrance exams four years later!

From the ninth through 12th grades, their evenings and Saturdays are spent boning up for entrance exams. Each year, we read of ever more kids killing themselves after their 10th or 12th grade exams unable to take the pressure.

Only when we win an elusive gold at the Olympics (can we name two Indians in the last four years) or an even rarer Nobel Prize, as happened with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan in 2009, do we as Indians seem to think that there are worthwhile pursuits outside of being a doctor or an engineer.

But I am rambling. I had better stop here and rush to get into the queue for admitting my child in the special prep class for her tenth grade exam!

This article first appeared online in the Wall Street Journal in October 2010.

Be Grateful – Lessons from my dad

August 25, 2010 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

“I was in 9th grade – nearly 15 years old, when my father passed away.” I could see that my father was already in the past living through those first few traumatic months after his father’s death. “We continued in the same village where my father hand been the karnam – the village accountant.” My older brother was still in high school, two younger brothers and a sister in middle and primary schools. My mother did not know how she was going to put us through school – which she was clear we should complete at all costs.”

“At one end of our village lived the Mirasdar – there were two brothers, the peria (elder) and chinna (younger) mirasdar. I remember their house being a big pukka house. A family friend approached the younger mirasdar for help, when he learned that my mother could pay for only my elder brother to go to school. The mirasdar offered to pay my school fees. The amount of money involved, though small by today’s standards, was a huge boon and put me through high school. I don’t think I thought about it much at that time, besides being grateful for their support. After all in our eyes the mirasdars were the richest family in our village.”

My father after graduating from high school left his village for the “city” – Chennai and then onwards to Delhi seeking his fortune. After three years of being away, my father returned to his village for a visit. He was now employed as an accounting apprentice in Delhi earning a princely 300 rupees. In the meantime he had his share of adventures with his uncle declining to support his college education, running away to Delhi and landing a job, travelling to Shimla and other towns on his job. Wanting to share his good fortune and to thank his first benefactors he visited the mirasdar family.

“I was shocked to discover that the mirasdar family was not at all well-to-do. They lived in a dilapidated house and in talking to others in the village I realized that they had probably been living in genteel poverty for the last decade or more. My youth and naivete, when I still lived in the village, was probably what lead me to believe that they were wealthy. I was all the more grateful and overwhelmed by their act of kindness and charity in paying for my education, when they could probably ill afford it themselves.” My father’s eyes were no longer dry as he recounted this tale of magnanimity.

His story did have a good ending, in that the children of the mirasdar family themselves went out to seek their fortunes and did well – which my father attributes, at least in part, to the good deeds of their parents.

“Things are not always what they seem,” was my father’s advice to me. “Keep an open mind and recognize that we often see what we want – which may be far from reality.”

“Be grateful for what you have and strive to help other people whenever you can.”

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Do you know more about your TV than about your doctor?”

July 9, 2010 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

“Are you a doctor?”

I am never sure how best to answer this question. My first, unvoiced response is a curt “no.” But I then settle for a more ambiguous, “No, I am not a medical doctor.”

In India, where politicians insist on being addressed as Dr. A or B, usually having been bestowed an honorary degree — deserved or not — by admiring vice-chancellors, it was not uncommon a generation ago to see folks append a BE or MA (English) as my grandfather did, after their name.

I have always assumed that this is a left-over from when the Brits ruled us — of having to wear one’s qualification on one’s name, if not on one’s sleeve exactly. Guess saying you are a summa cum laude from Harvard in your bio is not that different.

While a PhD does stand for Doctor of Philosophy (in my case, in materials science and engineering), I have always been uncomfortable being addressed as Dr. Srikrishna — somewhat misleading and a bit pompous, I felt. If I had any momentary doubts it was quickly cured after my travel agent booked me on a couple of flights as Dr. Srikrishna and I had to explain to the crew that I was not a medical doctor when they called upon me to attend to a unwell fellow flyer. Talk about truth in advertising!

Yet, I am asked this question each time I take someone to the hospital. For the record, I must admit that on more than one occasion, the word “assertive” has been used in conjunction with my public behavior.

For those of you who have not been in the emergency room of a major hospital in India, assertive is not necessarily bad, in fact it may be a necessary condition to get proper and timely care. Sure, emergency rooms (or as we insist on calling them in India, “casualty wards”) are filled with emergencies, small and large, but even when they are having the occasional slow night, doctors appear to work on a need-to-know basis.

More importantly, your need to know seems to be directly related to your social standing in the doctor’s eyes. Granted, the internet and Google have made every patient “an expert,” complicating an overworked doctor’s job.

For those of us who’d like to believe that class and other atavistic divisions are a thing of the past, experiencing an information triage in a seemingly uncaring doctor’s hands is the clearest indication of how class as a social arbiter not merely lives but thrives.

“You did what?” was the first reaction of my wife’s best friend when I recounted the story of the birth of my second child. The scene was the birthing room in a small nursing home that my wife’s obstetrician ran in South Bangalore.

The room had unfortunately been painted all too recently and the fumes were not helping matters, as the midwife encouraged my wife to push. The good wife was gritting her teeth and the doctor waltzed in to declare that she might give my wife a shot to move labor along.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

The question popped out of my mouth even as I gritted my teeth wondering where my wife got the power to squeeze my hand so. The doctor, to her credit, didn’t freeze in shock – nor did she ask me “And in which college did you get your medical degree?”

Instead she briefly tried to explain to my wife and me why she thought it was a good idea. The mid-wife and orderly were as bug-eyed as my wife’s best friend was upon hearing about my “questioning the doctor” and at that in the middle of child birth. Luckily our second child had other ideas and chose that very moment to put in her appearance without waiting for further inducement, chemical or otherwise.

I’ve found that this doctor, like many others, was prepared to listen and willing to explain her thought process, and therefore treatment options, patiently to me. But the very same doctors make snap judgments, often unfavorable in nature, about their patients’ educational and financial status — based on whether they spoke English, how they were attired (in western or traditional garb), how old they were. And they routinely choose to play God with little or no explanation.

As a scientist and engineer, I set out to test this hypothesis by appearing only in traditional white dhoti, speaking only in Tamil or Hindi, and my relatives and friends cooperated by having a variety of medical challenges with great regularity. Concussion from a fall for a 12-year old; appendicitis for a nine-year-old; dengue-like viral fever; clavicle fracture in an 80-year old; uterine fibroids for middle-aged cousin; possible tail bone compression soccer injury; all topped off with prostrate surgery and a urinary tract infection. The local nursing home, regular hospital and super-specialty hospitals – government- and private-owned — all figured in this multi-year experiment.

Repeatedly, whether it was an in-law having hip replacement done (“old”), a parent having a parathyroid surgery(“traditional”) or a chauffeur’s child being treated for inhaling toxic fumes (“blue-collar, uneducated”), the doctors’ explanation of the problem, prognosis and its treatment was governed by their perceptions of the patient.

So these folks and I as their “traditional” attendant got, at best, a sketchy overview. When my wife or I, dressed in our best, demanded in English that we be educated about the issues and choices, we were given the low down, usually starting with the “Are you a doctor?” question.

A close friend was a cardiac care nurse in California and I have heard my share of horror stories of how doctors talked down at and treated nurses shabbily. It almost seems an occupational hazard. So this doesn’t seem to be a problem uniquely confined to Indian doctors.

However patients, who are the paying customers, and especially those who require a detailed explanation of their situation and choices, seem to get the short end of the stick if they don’t speak the right language, wear the right clothes or otherwise belong to the “right” group even as doctors are making life-or-limb decisions on their behalf.

It’s disheartening when we are able to get more information and options about a 30,000-rupee flat screen LCD television from a high school-educated salesman than from a physician about to perform a procedure that not only costs more but needs to last a life time.

This article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal online on Jul 9, 2010

Be Self-aware – Lessons from my dad

July 8, 2010 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

: Image by sowri via Flickr

“Just tell me what I should do!” My 15-year old was filling out an application for an international student exchange program. One of the questions was “What are your goals in life?” She’d of course asked this same question a week before, when she felt all her friends already knew what they wanted to do in life. As I couldn’t think of any excuse, I had to embark on a discussion with her.

“Think about what you like doing. What you truly enjoy. And what you think you are good at.” In her case, we figured she enjoyed drawing & painting, playing sports and working with young kids – and she was really good at all three. Ah yes, she enjoyed traveling too.”

The discussion set me thinking about a conversation my dad and I had many years ago. I can’t recall what triggered the conversation, but distinctly recall my father telling me “You are a Hanuman!”

For those not up on Hindu mythology, Hanuman is the monkey demi-god who is cited as the ideal devotee for his major-domo role to the eponymous hero of the Hindu epic, Ramayana.

I didn’t reckon that my dad was alluding to my physical appearance when he said I was like the monkey [even if a] God. Nothing I had done thus far, could allow me to be termed a devotee of anything other than good food. My perplexed expression must have given me away, when he continued “Like Hanuman, you don’t know your own strength!”

While knowing one’s strengths is good in general – it is a particularly critical skill for entrepreneurs. Most successful entrepreneurs, when observed from arms length, may come across as manic- depressive. Maniacal in pursuing what they believe is the right path and optimistic to a fault and then when that critical deal doesn’t happen or funding falls through or a key employee leaves, lost in the dumps – even if only for a short time.

Knowing your strengths may not do away with the ups and downs but certainly will help dampen the amplitude and help you make decisions with greater confidence. Knowing your strengths is just as much about recognizing stuff that you are not good at and surrounding yourself with folks who’s strengths complement your own.

Unlike my daughter who’s just fifteen as of this writing, I was on the wrong side of thirty when my father made his comparison to Hanuman. So don’t wait – get to know your strengths today. Ask your colleagues, your ex-boss, your staff and if your bold enough, your spouse or significant other. And once a year take stock to understand what new strengths you have acquired and what has atropied and been lost.

Be a self-aware Hanuman!

Don’t cheat yourself, by aiming too low!

June 30, 2010 / Sri Srikrishna / 0 Comments

“You want us to pay you $120,000 and I have a quote here from your [much larger] competitor for $30,000!”

Photo Credit: djfunny via Compfight

In our first startup, just as we had built up our reputation in a niche, we encountered competition from a larger Indian firm at one of our major customers.

The purchasing manager had become a good friend and didn’t mince any words. We did bag the deal, still at over three times what the competition had quoted but not without with some fancy footwork.

I am sure our competitor would have broken even, at their quoted price, but they could have both bagged the deal and made a very nice profit at half our bid. By bidding so low, they queered the pitch not just for us but intrinsically undermined the value of what they were delivering.

Their eagerness to win this account, while understandable, needlessly drove down the profitability of future deals for all of us. And this was with a technology firm! This was the first time that I realized how short-sighted it can be to lower value by charging far too little.

This experience brought to mind, how other visionary entrepreneurs – often self-made men brought a different perspective to building businesses.

“I had three rupees in my pocket when I first landed in Madras.”

It was hard for me to visualize my father arriving in the city as a penniless high school graduate and reconcile it with the globe-trotting CEO that I had grown up with. At least two other folks of his generation that I know well personally came to Madras with less than 10 rupees in their pockets — from Gujarat in one case and Kerala in another — and went on to build multi-million dollar business empires, in plastics and publishing.

I am certain that there are thousands of such unacclaimed, self-made men who started with little more than a dream and a great deal of determination, who through their hard work spanning decades, unwavering vision and a few lucky breaks have built successful businesses. A thousand mini-Reliances and Future Groups, as it were. This is the part of India and Indian businesses that makes my chest swell and gives rise to my unending optimism about India.

Yet our everyday experiences seem to bring us in contact not with these modern day Dick Whittingtons but with seemingly short-sighted tradesmen who are interested in making a quick buck, even it means burning bridges.

“The samples he sent were exquisite. My clients loved the color and quality of the granite — so distinct from the Italian stone they were used to.”

My friend, a mining engineer and consultant spoke of his experience helping buyers in Taiwan source stone from India.

“So you can imagine their shock when they received the first container load and most of it was second-grade and a good deal of it damaged. Having paid for the shipment with a letter of credit they had little recourse.”

My friend shook his head; the very recounting of the story was painful for him.

“And these were clients who were capable of moving hundreds of containers a month. The short-sightedness on the part of the seller to make a quick buck on the first container hurt not only his ability to sell again but set back the reputation of all Indian stone exporters.”

I wish I could claim this was one rogue trader. Alas, I have heard the story repeated – for leather goods, for handicrafts and pottery, bedsheets and linen, food grains. We seem to have honed the bait and switch to a fine art. Delivering good quality samples or first shipments and, once the buyer places a large order, shipping a lesser grade or worse to make a quick killing.

Of course this kills any chance of further business from that client or long term growth. And all too often damages the reputation of an entire segment or even the country as a whole. Why do we do this?

Lest we conclude that it’s just businesses that buy from Indian firms that face these challenges, consumers don’t have it a whole lot easier. Sure we’ve all read about how the Indian consumer is price conscious and finicky — businesses that don’t give them what they want are unlikely to survive, let alone thrive.

However, the demand-supply mismatch is so pronounced in favor of suppliers that most Indian businesses are able to get away with poor quality and all too often poor service.

As a reader of the Wall Street Journal recently put it “[their] focus [seems to be] on getting as many bucks as they can out of customers the first time they deal with them as opposed to cultivating repeat business. At least that is how I felt after paying 455 rupees for a beer at a pub in Khan market last week…”

The sort of behavior we are prepared to condone in our politicians — who after all may not be in power after the next elections — of making hay (or moola as may be the case) while they are in power, seems to infect many of our business folks, especially small businesses. This is particularly galling given our avowed belief in the concept of karma and a spiritual span of more than one life time.

This is why I have taken to hanging out at the railway station trying to spot the next Dhirubhai Ambani or someone like my dad so that my faith and belief in the visionary, long-term oriented Indian entrepreneur is restored.

A variant of this article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal online.

K Srikrishna