Unraveling the Professional

If you were to walk around the CL offices and ask people to define Satya, some of the answers you might get are – a visionary beyond the current reality, seer of the unseen, yet completely rooted in spotting ground opportunities, one with extraordinary personal maturity of putting goal above self, highly ethical and above all, someone who believes in people, and builds confidence in them. These are some of his key strengths. He has built a culture of approachability and an organization rooted in its core values.

His Endeavors – Past and Present

On the very first day of business, as a one-man start up, he readied his office, and bought the first chair (before the first prospect walked in). From there on, Satya has donned various roles at various points of time; in the initial years – teaching, selling, managing the brand, marketing, a lot of organization building, people building and so on. In the middle years, he became the force for new markets, new products, new diversifications into different education segments, and several inorganic opportunities. In the later years and now, he is focusing on organization building, setting vision, and mentoring various businesses.

He’s a sought-after speaker at various events, and an active TiE member. He has won many entrepreneurship recognition awards.

He began his career in Ranbaxy as a management trainee and then as a brand manager.

The Person

Some of the activities he engages in every week are playing competitive tennis, learning the Urdu language, teaching his daughter (who attends home school) and following sports. A budding poet, he loves traveling and interviewing people from varied walks of life.

Satya dropped out of his XII grade board exams one year to give a shot to his cricketing career. He played cricket for his State and was very close to making it to the big league. A quick self-assessment in Class XII made him shift gears.

Satya is an alumnus of St. Stephens College Delhi and IIM Bangalore.

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At culture level education is deeply ingrained. When we can do it for a country of a billion. When we were young were told about Indian as a cab driver in New York or the mopper in Heathrow airport. Today they talk about knowledge driver, tech-preneurs etc. The world has started seeing India in a different light all together. What has changed, the entrepreneurial orientation of Indians have come to fore in many a sector.

Entrepreneurship is the only way we can deploy productivity. We need a million entrepreneurs to employ 500 million. Where and how will we make them employable?

I am going to pick up seven exciting entrepreneurs, rather edupreneurs who have impacted our nation in the last decade. I have taken CK Prahalad’s framework – Not an entrepreneur but guru of entrepreneurs. His thought leadership contributed – Core competency, bottom of the pyramid – BOP – people at the bottom of the economic ladders not as burden on the society. In fact people at the bottom of the pyramid are not just seen as the market but also creators.

“Anything that does not touch million, is not an exciting” – CKP shared when we were talking to him about education and schools.

CKP’s four principles of entrepreneurship –

1. One of the diseases that entrepreneur suffers – when resources are low, the excitement is high.

• A – Resources are low, and aspirations high
  B – Resources are high, aspirations are high

 

• Entrepreneur is one who is always at Situation A. You need imagination and not resources to change the world. Changing the game and the field….When we are a world-class economy – guilly danda, marbles (kanche), kabaddi will be in Olympics, since the world will naturally see us through a completely different prism. So our chances in Olympics will become very bright!!

    Madhav Chavan – Pratham – amazing movement in education addressing children from marginal sections of the society (www.pratham.org)
    Kiran Bir Sethi – Design for change – No school education puts a statement in child “I Can’- movement, now spread to 33 countries, 2 million children (www.dfcworld.com)

2. Fold the future IN

• If in 2015 I want to be there, then fold the future in … set your schedules and targets and work backwards.

    Parth J shah –Centre for civil society – Access to education: Please do not subsidize the school expense. Take the same expense, not just access but also give choice to child. (www.ccs.in)

    Can RTE (right to education), good intent can be translated into society changing mechanism

3. FOCUS on NEXT Practices

• Be not happy with the good practices of today. Entrepreneurs are always a little ahead. Design for the next generation. Amplify weak signals. When these six ‘India Future of Change ‘- entrepreneurial designers are going to go on CNBC, they are going to find a great many takers..

    Ashish Rajpal – IDI XSEED : over a decade of work in curriculum design and mentor training that powers hundreds of schools in the country today. (www.idiscoveri.com)

    Sridhar Rajagopalan – Education Initiatives – 15 years. How education should be lead by understanding the concepts. Enable a school by being on the assessment part. Give feedback to the system for course correction. (www.ei-india.com)

4. Focused on constrained Innovation

• For a country of our size, rather do solution that has potential to reach million people. Prototyping, sand box, can it reach a billion?While technology innovations happen in institutions, the gurus take it too late to adapt..

    Gopi C P, 361 DM – A five-member team is brain behind 87 year old Annamalai university. Want to reach a million university goers in the next couple of years. (www.361dm.com)

   Nishant Saxena; Founder: Elements Akademia – EMO : Education Management organization – Helping institutions to excel with “Elements Inside” concept. (www.elementsakademia.com)

Entrepreneurial Transformation requires – Intellect, humility, humaneness, Courage, passion, imagination and of course Luck (being at right place at right time)