Power Talk │ February 2021│Ready to Startup

The Driving Factor
25 years ago I met an American diplomatic
wife who was living in Chennai. At the time Chennai
called Madras. I realised that they were going to be
lot of foreign direct investment coming into our
country and they would have to go to various
different places to get answers to living and working
in India. It was then that the idea of providing an
umbrella of services under one roof came to my
mind. This is what drove me and gave birth to my
company Global Adjustments. So really, the one
thought of not looking back and not giving up, even
when entrepreneurship was difficult was the idea
that what I was doing and what my old team was
doing along with me was actually building the
nation. We were helping attract foreign direct
investments to stay, to enjoy and to love our country
while making a lot of money for themselves. For this
idea, and the bigger picture that we helped our
nation to grow was a never looking back kind of
concept that really worked for me
Entrepreneurship Then & NOW
Entrepreneurship itself I don't think has changed in
the texture of what it stands for. In some ways,
between two decades ago it has become easier now.
For instance, finance is much more easily available. If
you have a good idea. then institution come forward
and are in fact queuing up to fund that Idea, which
has become the big impetus for the startups. So
that’s a plus but with every plus there is also a
challenge. Negative being the over leveraging and
funding through EMI. Learn from entrepreneurs who
were aggressive in growth but cautiously aggressive.
When there is a good idea, there is always money to
back it up but when there is good money we can't
throw good money over bad money. If the idea is not
working for the territory or geography, the
entrepreneur needs to think .I would like to give an
example from my own life. I started an academy of
learning called Global Academy under the Global
Adjustments services after we started relocating
foreigners to come to India. This was for Indians to
understand the world and for the world to
understand doing business with Indians. That was a
very successful tenure .We would work with people
Like Jeff Bezos himself. Before he invested his first
billion dollars into Amazon India, we would work
with his middle level managers in India .We would
work with Indian managers going to work for
Hyundai, Ford and Facebook. The entire concept
seemed quite scalable to us . With that in mind, we
started a digital platform called GLOBAL INDIAN.in A
portal where people could learn online and advance
their careers. The concept behind that portal was
create a platform that would help people
strengthen their Indian roots but fly on global
wings. So, the idea was to educate people how the
style of doing business changes with people coming
from different nationalists. The approach of doing
business with Korean may differ from that with a
German. Adapting to their way of thinking was
crucial for doing good business. Now, when the
same sessions were taken in the real time class
,things were different.
All ideas don’t work
We would have real life examples. we would have
people from those nationalities even coming in
and presenting and co-presenting along with me
and my trainers. We would talk about the actual
problems they were facing in business .May be in
mergers and acquisitions. Discussions would lead
to answers alongside. The solution would come
from themselves, when they heard about the
different values and forces that drive different
cultures.
Now, when we translated this to an online
platform everything changed. Although we had
made a very interactive portal. Had that been the
time of pandemic with no other choice, I think
people would have enjoyed that interface, just as
they do now with Zoom and all other platforms.
But because we were ahead of time that
particular project didn’t do well.
I had already invested a very big amount of
money in digitizing the portal and money spent
ion marketing this venture was huge .I quickly
realized that the concept wasn’t going to fly. So,
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