In 1992, a young lad of 17 leaves Chennai and comes to Mumbai with an acquaintance to explore opportunities. He gets abandoned at the Bandra station and, with no money in his pocket, takes shelter in a nearby temple, and then gets a string of small jobs in the kitchens of various eateries.
Being a Tamilian, he faces discrimination. However, he is enterprising and when he finally gets a customer-facing job — that of serving tea — he quickly begins to generate three times the business of the other tea boys because he is so good in handling customers.
He enters into a partnership to start a tea stall only to get duped by his partner after the business is successful. He is intelligent and learns from the experience. He then breaks out on his own and ends up running a successful South Indian food stall and learns the trade as he goes along.
This food stall grows into a chain of 25 Dosa Plaza outlets with a franchise in New Zealand and enquiries from other countries.
Or take the story of Kunwer Sachdev of Su-kam. Born into the family of an Indian Railways clerk who ran a string of small unsuccessful businesses on the side, Kunwer went to a Hindi-medium government school.
From there, he pulled himself up by his bootstraps and went to college, and after some years of stopping and starting created Su-kam — India’s largest inverter company. Who says India cannot do well in manufacturing? That India has to be a services-led economy? That Indian companies cannot do R&D?
Samar Gupta’s Trikaya Agriculture tells us that there is still hope for Page Three people. Born into a privileged family, educated at Mayo College in Ajmer and living on Napean Sea Road, Gupta tried to do several things unsuccessfully. Much of his time, however, was spent partying hard. When his father died and he inherited the family farm, he got serious about growing exotic vegetables and creating a market for them in Mumbai. Trikaya Agriculture today is a success story.
Or, take the case of R Sriram of Crossword. An introvert, a college dropout, who does not believe in the institution of marriage. He tried his hand at advertising, market research and then journalism. Finally, he converted his passion for reading into a business — he started India’s largest book store chain Crossword.
And there are many such inspirational stories in this book. Each one is different and engaging.
Connect the Dots (CTD) tells the stories of 20 regular people who became entrepreneurs and made a go of it.
CTD is a must read for all entrepreneurs, managers, students, and anyone interested in the new India.
I would definitely want my children to read it. It is inspirational stuff.
From Sanjeev Bikhchandani's review of the book Connect the Dots (CTD) written by Rashmi Bansal in Business Standard
To read the full review click here
Rashmi Bansal is a writer, entrepreneur and youth expert. Rashmi is co-founder and editor of JAM (Just Another Magazine), India’s leading youth magazine in print and online. She writes extensively on youth, careers and entrepreneurship and hosts the popular blog: Youth Curry.
Rashmi is Consulting Editor for ‘Cracking Careers’, the careers show on business news channel UTVi. She mentors students and young entrepreneurs in colleges across India. An economics graduate from Sophia College, Mumbai and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, she lives in Mumbai and can be reached at “rashmi at jammag dot com”
1 comment:
The success story of Raja Gopal who has established a chain of high class vegetarian restaurants (Saravana bhavan) worldwide is worth mentioning here. Similar is the case of VGP VG Pannerdas, VG Santosham (of VGP Golden Beach) and brothers. They started their life as newspaper delivery boys. So is the case of another unsung hero who has made it big. He is Ameerjan from Krishnagiri. He has carved out a name for himself in Mango business and has established largest cold storage facility (ASA Cold storage) for mangoes in the state. He had started as a petty trader.
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