Midlife Madness (ii) - Masters of their own destiny? VIEWS AND COMMENTS INVITED

Masters of their own destiny?

Anjuli Bhargava / New Delhi January 19, 2008

Running your own business is a constant learning process, a few corporate honchos-turned-entrepreneurs.

Rakesh Seth, 49, quit the corporate world after 16 years with Nestle and three years with Pepsi, when he was 40. In November 1998, the government started the Freephone service (instead of the caller paying, payment was made by the called). That gave him the idea of setting up Finedge India, a call centre and brand activation company, in February 1999. Seth says the move from the corporate world to the world of business allowed him to strike a better work-life balance. �You can do things on your own terms. I follow a system but I follow a system on my own terms.�

In contrast, in the company, you do many things because �it doesn�t look nice�. For instance, executives often stay till their boss leaves � even if they have no work � because it doesn�t look nice. �In a large MNC, it�s all about impressions and how you manage your bosses. In business, it�s all about reality. And success depends on how you manage your clients and employees,� he adds.

�If one needs to be at work at 7 am, one will � no matter what anyone thinks. And if you feel like an occasional round of golf before office, well you can.�

Rahul Chadha, who quit the corporate sector five years ago after putting in 11 years � his last job was with consulting firm A T Kearney � to start CRS Health, a chain of drugstores, says that �being your own boss� was a primary driver but not as important as the opportunity to �take a concept to the market quickly�. The going, however, hasn�t been a bed of roses. �People can be a challenge. People, as in the powers that be; people, as in the demanding Indian consumer; people like those one interacts with in civil dealings�even attracting the right people is a challenge,� he explains.

But, unlike what many believe � according to Chadha, there is no going back. �Once bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, it�s difficult to imagine getting back to a job,� he adds.

That�s a lesson that needs to be kept in mind � while it may appear easy to return to the corporate sector in the unlikely event that your business fails, especially in today�s high-growth scenario, it is easier said than done. Once you�ve tasted blood, few can deal with the placid environment the corporate sector offers.

In this transition from having a boss to being your own, the biggest pitfall, many feel, is the quality of your peers and colleagues.

As an entrepreneur, you are mostly giving �learning� and shape to the organisation whereas as a salaried manager you are moulded by the organisation and colleagues.

�Getting good people to join you is a challenge; unless you go the VC way and start big, you will not work with the kind of minds you were used to,� feels Seth.

He chose to bootstrap his operations with his own funds (his company did a turnover of Rs 28 crore last year) and not to go the VC way because then the �VC drives you like he owns you� and also because he feels that �tension and risk� depend on the pace at which you want to grow. (It�s interesting that all the three examples in our cover story on page 1 have no VC funding as yet � though 9.9 Mediaworx could be the first to go that way.)

Seth points out that in the initial stages, small things like the type of office, managing your own travel bookings and so on � stuff handled by big administration departments typically � can get to you, but one gets used to it.

For instance, Seth has an administration department of four, but the quality of people he has is not what he was accustomed to. The other issue is that the buck stops with you. �I was running a 1,700-agents call centre for Hutch. In spite of all the administrative staff, if the toilets were dirty there, I could get a call. In Nestle, I�d be doing the shouting,� he explains.

Forget the shouting, you may even find yourself eating humble pie. According to Rajat Goel, CEO and managing director of Eye-Q, which was set up last year, �You have to be prepared to swallow your pride and stand outside your erstwhile subordinates� room for two hours to get business.� And mind you, you may not even like the guy.

Running a business requires you to be a bit of a �reasonable master-of-all-trades�. �You need some skills in every area � legal, marketing, finance, administration...� says Seth, so it helps to have worked in the corporate sector for a while before taking the plunge. It also helps you empathise better with your client, and he with you.

�I found clients want to help you out because they can understand your language. They prefer dealing with you rather than a hard-core businessman,� he says. Since Seth also knows the inner workings of a large company, it helps him frame his proposals in a way that the boss and the boss�s boss will approve it.

One of the major benefits of being an entrepreneur is that while as a salaried manager you are �selling your skills and time� and the organisation is benefitting from your value addition, as an entrepreneur you pay the salaries but keep the value addition each employee creates.

In the process, you create an organisation which will work for you when you are unable to, or choose not to work! Call it the benefits of a calculated risk...