At Brilliant Read Media, we always strive to bring you meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community of business leaders, investors, management students and aspiring entrepreneurs. This week we invited yet another passionate entrepreneur Sai Kumar Chandran for an exclusive interview with us. Sai is a Seasoned Entrepreneur, Business Leader, Mentor, Advisor, Strategy, Performance Consultant, Executive & Transformation Coach. He works with Corporates, SMEs/Family-Owned Businesses, Start-ups, Governments, Institutions & Individuals. He has been recognized as a Change Leader, a Problem Solver and an Evangelist with over two decades of expertise across various domains. Let’s learn more about his inspiring journey, his way forward and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Sai:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
I have had a meandering journey, learning many things on the way. The school was not just studies, but sports, some instrumental music, and loads of confusion 😊 😊 plus searching for some elusive answers… on a lighter, it’s the same today. College brought experimentation, even of starting early work life, instead of education, then coming back to education.
And then, work took me across industries and companies. My most memorable years of work were spent at the Aditya Birla Group in IDEA Cellular, in TATA Group at TATA AIG General Insurance, and Vodafone’s Global Shared Services Center. This lasted for over 20+ years before I turned an Entrepreneur.”
IDEA Cellular days taught me my biggest foundational lessons, and the Business and Entrepreneurial Spirit got seeded in me here. I joined the company a restless boy and came out a better human being. A lot of credit for this goes to my first mentor – Atul Mathur, the then Head of Management Development at IDEA Cellular.
A lot of credit also goes, to my second mentor – Pradeep Shrivastava, the then Chief Marketing Officer of IDEA Cellular. These two wonderful human beings shaped a lot of my thinking and how I worked with business teams and also how my work shaped their thinking. In a way, this is where I distilled a lot of my business management and improvement lessons. There were several other people here with whom I learnt a lot.
My days at the TATA Group, got me engaged with people many many years more inexperience, giving a certain grounding. My work with the business team also earned me some long-standing friends and valuable learning about myself and my development areas.
I also learnt about societal impact and philanthropy through my involvement with the Affirmative Action Program at the TATA Group, in which I was a trained assessor. I learnt the importance of standards, brand, loyalty, societal contributions, and above all the humility of really seasoned leaders.
My days at Vodafone Shared Services were interesting. There were tones of exposure managing multiple stakeholders, complex dynamics and several opportunities to make an impact. This is where I got my third Corporate Mentor in Bobby Abraham, the then Global Head of Finance Shared Services.
I went through several Business Roles with him. I got a chance to work on Critical International Projects, Technology Implementations and other high-end work. This was the place, where whatever I had been teaching people to do got tested. I made my share of mistakes and took my learnings on the dos and don’ts of managing an organization in various stages of work.
Finally, in 2018, my desire to build a business and organization of my own kicked in again. I say again because I had tried this once before in 2012.
As of today, I have spent the last 30 odd months, working with professionals, entrepreneurs, family-owned businesses and corporates in building better Businesses, Organizational Practices and Leaders. I have also been blessed the company of some very good partners who are themselves are entrepreneurs and we share a vision of meaningful work. I have established and run Transformation Programs like: Responsibility Leadership, HELPFUL Leadership for Situational Management and a series of long-term Strategy Consulting Frameworks and Programs.
This leg of the journey has been even more exciting as well as humbling, especially the parts that I spend helping entrepreneurs. Most people don’t realize the pressure of a business owner and all that goes into running a business. Between the risk & rewards of running a business, there are a million things that need to be done for a business to be conceived, built, operated, sustained, grown and kept viable.
Traversing this journey with people who have a dream and need help has been remarkable for me. It takes time, effort and so much more to help businesses. I was clear when I started my work that, the easiest thing for me to do is just educate people and move on. But I was clear that OrbitShift is going to be a practice with a difference. “My consulting company is going to practice responsible and embedded consulting and ensure responsible outcomes and impact for my clients.”
My motto at OrbitShift is “Moving Lives and Journeys to The Next Level of Impact”. And in doing so, the focus of my work is to give the maximum viable guidance and facilitation for outcomes and impact to the people I work with.
I am also in the process of incubating 2 other businesses currently, one in the space of Publication and the other in the space of Art and Poetry inspired Merchandise. Both are already in operation, and testing phase and God willing will see commercial launch and viability this year.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
In my case, this was a transition from Corporates where I accidentally landed first in my career, to now transitioning to being an Entrepreneur. You can say, I turned from being a consumer, to being a producer and provider in the workspace.”
My reasons: One, a Challenge someone threw at me and two, a desire to give back to the business world.
Talking about my first reason: A challenge someone threw at me.
I started my career in the Learning and Development Space and later moving into other HR roles. At one point in time, when I was doing well and was popular for my work, a critic of mine said something that stunned me. He said to me – “Those who cannot do it, Teach”. This got me thinking and I asked myself, ‘Is it so? ‘Is it that I cannot run an organization, or do sales or manage customers etc.?’ ‘And hence was it true that I had found a cushy HR career as this person described it?’
My answer was NO. I had wandered into my career accidentally, in 1998 and then just liked working with people so, continued doing so without any regrets. Though many times I had considered a corporate career in sales, BD or Customer service/operations, I didn’t give myself enough time to break onto that side. Hence, it was clear in mind, that I would want to get around to building a business or running a business as a role holder.
Running the business in an organization happened first, when at Vodafone, by the sheer sponsorship of my to-be boss Bobby Abraham I got into a business role. Did it for about 3 years and thoroughly enjoyed it. This is where my desire to stay on the business side became even more prominent.
Now for the second reason: a desire to give back to the business world.
As I picked my learnings and developed my understanding through my career, I wanted to get into my own business. I wanted to both share what I had learnt and build a product or service that would provide employment to other people.
The logical place for me to start was Consulting – where I could combine all my strengths and start-up. The next step of this plan was to also keep looking for partners and good people with whom I could then groom and create other businesses to generate value and employment.
I have a mission of creating a 1 Million independent-minded people and 5 lakh jobs in India. That is the reason I am doing what I am doing now.
‘OrbitShift’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving with the help of your startup.
OrbitShift literally is about shifting someone’s Orbit of life to the next level.
My brand depicts the opportunity space that I create with the client I work with. I focus on ‘Moving Lives and Journeys to The Next Level of Impact’. This means, if I have partnered with a client, they should experience an expansion around through the scope of our work. This could be for their personality, purpose, influence, operations and/or impact of their work.
When I named my consulting practice OrbitShift, I was shifting my own orbit to do something much larger than what I had been doing till 2018. So, the name somehow not just made sense, but also held a personal meaning.”
I believe that there is much more potential in us and in our lives, than 99.99% of us have unlocked. If we tap into this potential our lives and our work can both become many more times fulfilling and impactful to the world around. It is this problem that I am making a modest attempt to solve with whichever life or organization my work can touch. I am in the profession of unlocking potential and bringing growth & joy to the world around.
In the spirit of OrbitShift, I am also in the process of refining several proprietary models and body of knowledge for the world out there. These will then expand to Products and Services in the Business Consulting, Leadership Development, Coaching and Personal Development space.
I will soon be making some more announcements, as there are 2 more businesses that I am building like I indicated, thanks to a few lovely partners.
During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
There were two significant actions that I took during this period. One was to adapt to the change and, do and deliver my work over the digital interface. So, video conferencing, phone calls and software tools have become the mainstay of my work.
The other major change that I made was to share knowledge with those out there in how to ‘Lead and manage in this crisis and uncertainty’. This was a more important change for me. This was my modest attempt to make some small contributions to the people affected by this crisis.
I was not a ‘speak to masses and large gathering’ person before this COVID struck. But, in this period I have been talking to large gatherings of people. Supported by one of my Partner Organization: Challenging Horizons, I have spoken to several thousand Leaders and Business owners on Leading and managing in crisis and uncertainty.
How do you manage yourself and keep on going despite the challenges? What drives you?
I have a few primary and secondary drivers. My primary drivers are my faith in God and the direction of my Guru. I am a follower of Shirdi Sai Baba and faith in him is what carries me through every single moment. I talk to him constantly. I am also blessed to be a Disciple of Sadguru Yogiraj Dr MangeshDa on the path of Kriya Yoga. My Guru has instilled the path of Kriya Yoga and the practice of Karma Yoga in us. With these two primary drivers, I am taking one day at a time, one milestone at a time.
My secondary drivers are the mission and responsibility I have. My mission is to build 1 million self-sufficient people and 5 lakh jobs in India. In getting closer to this, number by number, I gain the strength and confidence to carry on bit by bit.”
My responsibility is towards my family and my clients. Both are dependent on my work. My family needs me to provide for them, and I have to do my best as an entrepreneur to bring home the best I can. My clients have lives to live, businesses to run, organizations to lead and people to provide a livelihood too. If they are counting on me for something, that in itself is a motivator to get up and play my part. They are my extended family.
In between all this, sometimes I hold myself accountable and get around to a healthy lifestyle – food, exercise et. al. and sometimes I slip for weeks at a stretch. I have to then break that pattern and drag myself out of fatigue and get going.
What are the business mantras you have embraced as you sought to establish your success story?
There are hundreds of these business mantras available out there. Everyone must choose different lessons at different points in time depending on the utility of those ideas and mantras.
At present I’m using 3 mantras:
a) Deliver value – hence I am very careful with the work I choose to do.
b) Keep your operations agile and free of unnecessary overheads – hence I operate through a lot of partnerships
c) Be on the lookout for opportunities to scale-up or indicators for realignment. Hence I am working on not just a diversified portfolio in one space, but a variety of business areas.
In your opinion – what is more necessary: Idea or a good team for a successful startup?
This answer can be looked at in two ways.
There are those who are in business because there is an established need, and you are playing a supplier. This is true for any product or service which has an established demand in the market and is a sort of stable industry. A large number of businesses start and operate in this category.
And eventually, all businesses become a supplier, as that space gets commoditized. Eventually, it is the demand that sustains the supplier to supply. In this case, a great team is very important for an organization to stay relevant, efficient and a supplier of choice for the market they operate in. A few new ideas help once in a while.
Then there are businesses which have a novel service to provide. They are solving a problem for a population that has the problem. Sometimes this problem is a hidden problem. In these kinds of businesses, you are a demand driver, and you shape the minds of people in a very different way. In such businesses, the idea has to be great and the execution has to be done by a team which implements the solution the way it was intended to be.
Sometimes, this requires experts you can’t even afford on a payroll. For these kinds of businesses Idea, Team and External partners also become important. So, these businesses should generate great ideas, groom good team members and have great consultants partnering with them.
Given the rapid pace at which the world is changing, what are the leadership traits that are necessary for success?
The best quality in these times, and for many decades to come, is learning agility. If you have the intent and the focus to learn, sooner or later you can craft your success.
However, more than this, I would encourage leaders to do a lot more work in one specific area which is: values. The area of values, and at a deeper level, the element of ethics is something very critical for the human race, in general, to focus on.
How to encourage everyone to think very deeply? What are the values which are dear to us? What are the values we are really living-by in our life? How are the values that we are practising or are not practising, impacting people and the environment around us? I would say it is in this space, the concept of responsibility has to sink in very deeply and people have to take definitive actions in their lives.
Please share with us – what has worked well for you so far?
As a human being what has worked the most for me is definitely living in faith.
As a business, what has worked for me is making sure that whoever it is that I’m working with, a client or a partner, is really successful through our association. I firmly believe that it is by contributing to the success of other people that we can truly open up a path for sustainable success for ourselves.
I am also very thankful for some of my current partners, Virendra Rathore of Challenging Horizons, Pratik Munot of Jombay, Amrita Gvalani, Rashmi Verma and Sharan Biradar each of them who are my friends and partners and Vineet Mangal, who amongst other things is also a thinking and learning partner as we plan another new venture. I have also had much help from one of my mentors and teachers in Psychology, Sashi Chandran of Nitya Gurukula.
There is also, a long list of friends & well-wishers, consulting companies and clients who have been kind and encouraging during these formative years. Can’t mention all names, but my gratitude to each of them; they know who I am talking about.
What are the three most important lessons you have learned building your startup?
First, you will discover a lot as you start going deeper – from financing to taxes to service guarantees. There are answers you will need to go find. The sooner you do the more your probability of success.
Second, if you are making a mistake, you sometimes know and most of the times, you will prevent yourselves from knowing. Hence, it’s only you who will stand in the way of your learning the right things to do. Get feedback and help to learn and change.
Third, success has a probability. So does failure. “Do your best and accept the outcomes” as my Guru Sadguru Yogiraj Dr. MangeshDa says. Keep learning but know that you will never learn enough to know the perfect formula. If you are in a streak of success, do not think you have mastered all odds. And if you have been having a streak of failures, never stop learning and trying. Also, change your path if you must. Success will come if the time has come for success.
Additionally, my biggest learning has been that miracles do happen, and you can get an amazing business opportunity without looking for it. Just like that the biggest opportunity you have worked for, will show its face and sometimes just disappear. Take both these things, in the same spirit and keep walking.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
Like I said before what really drives me are my primary drivers. The faith that I have in Baba and my Guru is what really drives me. It’s their teachings and blessing that keep me going. Beyond this ‘yes’ the work is meaningful. When I see the benefits of this work for my clients and their consumers, I get more energy to do things.
Having said this I’m very clear in my head, there’s a certain way that I’m helping people and the world around me. I’m not stuck to this methodology. I am clear of one thing that whatever business I move into or whatever methodology of working or helping people I choose, it would definitely add some real value, growth and joy to people that particular business touches.
Step by step, I want to work in a direction that helps me fulfil the mission of creating 1,000,000 self-sufficient people and 5 lakh new jobs in our country.
We would love to know your advice for all those starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
Here are the four big learnings that I’ve been able to crystallize:
First, the life of an entrepreneur is split between 5 things:
1 – Building a Business idea/service/product,
2 – looking for the next sale,
3 – delivering and servicing of the sale,
4 – collecting money
5 – and the rest of his life.
Very often the rest of the life takes a small shape or share of time – but this sometimes is the part to be paid most attention to. I try not to lose my grip on the 5th part while playing the first 4 roles most of the time. Fortunately, my wife and my daughter have been very supportive, understanding and encouraging in this.
Second, if you want to be successful as an entrepreneur be very clear that you have to add value to a client or their customer and consumers. This can be done by the product or service that you offer or by the way you run your business. So you have to be very clear before you start off as an entrepreneur how you are going to create value for someone so that somebody is ready to pay you for that business idea.
You may think that you have a brilliant idea or you may realize that there is a brilliant opportunity in front of you for self-employment or running a business. But neither of these 2 conditions by themselves are enough for you to become a successful entrepreneur. You have to have a very clear idea of how you are going to generate value. For example, even a simple wholesaler sitting in a wholesale market is generating value using price points, single-point sourcing, relationships he has with his buyers and often by the way he runs this business.
Third learning, choose how you want to position yourself. This will build on the second lesson. This means the kind of brand you want to build for yourself, the customer segment that you want to operate in, the price points you want to work at, the kind of industries you want to service etc. Ensure you have the right kind of focus, on how you are building, growing, sustaining, and operating your business. Without this clarity, there can possibly be 100 distractions that can have you changing your mind, and interrupting how you want to operate your business.
Fourth learning has been that everything that you think, or you plan, may not eventually work out in the same way. You will discover several things on the way. You may have situations and things to do which you possibly could not have thought of when you started off. In this case, you have to have a way to assess the situation and respond to it. Your clarity with your business’s foundations will definitely help you. Flexibility and the agility to learn different ways of responding to emerging situations will be the key to your progress.
I would say, if you keep these 4 things in mind as an entrepreneur, you will have the zeal and willingness to do business. Definitely a few scoops of luck and blessings will be the real differentiators.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
