Stay Hungry Stay Foolish

The very act of becoming an entrepreneur is contrarian to middle class values, study hard, get a good job, be happy with secure income and steady salary.

Logic and reason are the naphthalene balls we use to pack them away into a sandook called 'Someday'. But when that day comes we are too old, too poor, too tired or too lazy.

Of all the questions we leave unanswered the one that comes back to haunt us the most is: 'What if…' What if I'd married my college sweetheart What if I had the good sense not to? What if I had been born in this job market? What if... What if I'd planned a little less? What if I'd lived a little more? What if I'd chucked it all and started my own company? 'What ifs' are never idle fantasy. These are our hopes, dreams and desires. Logic and reason are the naphthalene balls we use to pack them away into a sandook called 'Someday'. But when that day comes we are too old, too poor, too tired or too lazy.

If you love your work, and it gives your life meaning, then you will have fun through the difficult times. You will find it in your heart to keep going. You will never lose hope.

Find purpose and the means will follow.

Ideas can come from anywhere. You could be sitting in a tub and have a eureka moment. Or in a bus or at your dining table.

When the thrill of every small saving equals the achievement of every big milestone, you know you have on your hands, a true-blue entrepreneur.

Many times you have grown with certain people and become very friendly with them. It is difficult to give a negative feedback or get performance out of them and this is a human problem. But you can’t get emotionally attached to people and base business decisions on that.

Luck is very important – it is 50%. But that luck will not come unless you put in the effort and in the effort, a very important element according to me is a daily review of what am I doing, where am I going and being ruthlessly honest with yourself. Most people blame the environment… My belief is I CAN CHANGE, and that we must learn to be nakedly honest with ourselves.

My God said take responsibility for your own life.” “I will not blame the situation, I will not blame the weather, I will not blame the government policy. I will not say my parents did this to me. I will say, this has happened, I have to take action, and I have to take responsibility. If something good, I must pat myself, if something bad, I must love myself. I am the reason for my success or my failure, not the environment or anything else.

There is really no ‘correct time’ to have a baby, because there is always something more to achieve as far as work goes. But work is not everything – that’s why babies come into this world. And there is no ‘correct time’ to start a company, because there is always some risk involved. But security is not everything – that’s why books like this are written. To drive that point home.

Miss a particular turning and you have to go several kilometres in the wrong direction, until you find your way back. Kind of like what happens in life. You make a plan, even a roadmap. But there could be a vehicle coming at you at full speed from right around the bend. Vinayak

When it comes to investors, and even when it comes to your own people, loyalty is important but competence matters more.

And do keep in mind that every choice you make impacts the family. If you live in a particular part of town, it will obviously impact the kind of school your kids go to. Frankly, these were the choices, the implications of which I did not consider. Thankfully, things have turned out well; the children also, the family also. ROCK WITH IT, ROLL WITH

Do not exaggerate in your business plan. Undercommit and overdeliver. Get great people – sell them the vision, the idea and share the wealth, be generous with offering stock. If you are starting a business to make money, don’t do it. Chances are that you will fail, because there WILL be hard times. And if your motivation is not something beyond money, those hard times will test you. You will quit and go back to your job. But if you are doing something other than money, you will rough it through the hard times. I spotted the opportunity but I didn’t know how big it was, how big it was going to be. I just said this is a smart idea, I love it! And it happened to be the right idea, at the right place, at the right time… If you are in enough places, enough times and long enough, you get your breaks in some form or the other. You just have to be

Be early. You can make your mistakes while it is cheap to make them, when there is no competition.

How long does one hang in there? 5 years, 8 years, 10 years… At what point would the entrepreneur throw in the towel? Decide to give up? “Never,” says Sanjeev. “I could have quit any time in the first 10 years, and I would have been a failed entrepreneur. Why did I keep going? Because I wasn’t chasing money. And if you chase something long enough, sooner or later you will get lucky. If you are really lucky then you will do it in 5 years, if you are moderately lucky then you will do it in 10 years, if you are terribly unlucky you will do it in 15 years.

the environment changes, as technology changes, you might be able to ‘join the dots’. To connect different pieces of the puzzle and bring your concept to life.

When I am talking to entrepreneurs, I always say base your business on deep customer insights, the way naukri was formed.

2002, the annual turnover was a mere T 3 crore with losses of T 1.1 crore.

by 2005 to do an IPO. In November 2006, Info Edge became the first pure Indian dotcom to conduct a successful IPO. At the time it had revenues of T 84 crore and profits of T 13 crore. A year after its IPO, Info Edge is still growing at a crazy pace. In the year 2007-08, revenues stood at T 239 crore with post-tax profits of T 55 crore. The company’s current market capitalisation is $630 million (over T 2,500 crore).*

There was already an executive search operation. The company added Jeevansathi (a matrimony site), 99acres and allcheckdeals.com (property sites), naukrigulf (on local job trends in the Middle East), Brijj.com which is a social networking site and most recently, asknaukri, and an education portal, shiksha.com.

Today, Info Edge has 1,650 people of which 1,200 are in sales.

Every branch kept breaking even in six months, and before they knew it, Info Edge was a 300-person sales organisation with 10-12 offices all over India. There

So if this salesman can recover T 25,000 a month, he is contributing. Then,

Post VC funding, of course, Info Edge was able to hire more people, as there was money in the bank. And after the dotcom meltdown, when people were leaving dotcoms, naukri was one of the few which kept its eggs in the internet basket. It kept the faith, kept recruiting.

Hitesh actually came to Sanjeev for advice. He had got an offer from another start up. Sanjeev talked to him for about 2-3 hours about life in a dotcom, what to look at, what the offer is like. At the end he said, “Yeh sab theek hai. But why don’t you join us instead? You will be happier here because we will give you less money and salary but we will give you more stock.

We also got lucky in many ways,” muses Sanjeev. “We got the money just before the market meltdown. So, we didn’t get time to spend it foolishly. We just put it in a fixed deposit. And through the meltdown, we spent the money on technology, products, people, offices, the sales team, getting new clients, trying to cut the losses.” This is when the importance of building good teams kicked in.

The company, with a T 36 lakh turnover received a T 45 crore valuation (which in those bubble days seemed modest). A month later, the market crashed.