This Bangalorean’s name now features in the team that developed the Human Protein Reference Database by John Hopkins University. The database contains entries on the 3,000 most-studied human proteins and their roles in diseases and is supposed to be the standard of developing a database internationally. Kiran has come a long way from an unsuccessful PU candidate to a successful entrepreneur.

Like many who failed many times before tasting success, Kiran says it’s OK to fail. Stories of suicides by anxious students shock them. Exams are not the end of the world, they insist. “As Einstein said: ‘Just because a fish cannot climb a tree doesn’t mean it’s not smart.’ I was never good at Maths and Chemistry but I loved computers,” Kiran says.

What kept him going through the five years in PU: “Fear. It was through an act of rebellion that I started working. I gained confidence and I wanted to get into a college. But I felt insulted when some people said I was too old for it. That was last straw,” he said. Kiran has worked with Chip magazine, the e-governance wing of the Karnataka government and then with the John Hopkins University.

Another interesting example is renowned theatre artist Vivek Madan. He dropped out of college when he was doing his first year BSc in Environment Science at St Joseph’s College. >”Some days, I’d revise a subject for days before the exam, but remember nothing during the exam. I’d think ‘What’s the purpose of studying?’ I realized I wasn’t stupid – it was either the subject or the way it was dealt with,” said Vivek.

He added, “It wasn’t an easy decision to quit. My family did well in academics. My two grandpas are PhDs. Scoring 52% in PCMB was a horrifying experience,” he said.

Yet that didn’t stop him from quitting college at 19 and plunging whole-heartedly into theatre, despite of his parents’ disapproval — “I had a big fight at home when I did that,” he says. “It was supposed to have been a year-long sabbatical but I never went back to college.”

He began with a series of musicals adaptations. He went on to direct his first play at the tender age of 20 and even won an award for it. “You know, I got kicked out of the dramatics team at school and college. I always wanted to go back and show the cultural secretary that award,” he grins.

He then decided to tread a more conventional path and took up a job at Trump It – an events and marketing company. It was a short stint however that lasted all of ten months.So he went ahead and started his own entertainment company, Harlequin entertainment along with a partner.

Karthik Naralasetty, 25, with an established business in the US, feels success in studies does not guarantee success in life. Karthik dropped out of Rutgers University, US, after a year. “I realized I had to spend a lot of my father’s hard-earned money to get a degree. I asked myself, ‘What do I want to do after getting a degree?’ I knew the answer – start a large business and manage it,” said Karthik, currently running a company called Socialblood Inc based in New York. “Funnily, though I don’t have a degree, I’ve got investors who’ve been to Harvard, Stanford, MIT and IIM,” says Karthik.

He was labelled a poor student in school. Karthik said he couldn’t do much about his dislike for Mathematics. “Through school, I was bullied by teachers because of this. In Class X, my school officials openly declared that I and a few students would surely fail the examinations and be a disgrace to the school,” recalled Karthik. He said the mantra to be successful in life doesn’t lie in Class X or Class XII grades.

Now much more successful than he may have ever been, Naralasetty is an Internet entrepreneur and the founder of the first of its kind site Socialblood.org. “In June 2011, I heard of a rare case in a four year-old girl who had thalassemia. She needed 30 units of blood a day every day. Not knowing anything about blood banks I realised how hard it was to find blood. My obvious response in the age of Facebook, was why can’t Facebook tell me when someone needs blood,” he says animatedly over the phone.

Having started eight groups for different blood types on Facebook, his idea led to people posting requests for blood on the site. “Eventually, I formed the website that can connect you to people in your locality or the city to donate and receive blood. Within six months, 20 countries approached us to create a similar model for them,” adds this winner of the Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur Award, 2011.

At least Akshar Peerbhoy, a successful businessman, followed that mantra since the day he was enrolled in the school. I’m probably one of the only few students to fail in Class 1. Even during exams, I’d prefer playing some games” or later on, hanging out with my friends. Most teachers gave up on me. My parents were incredibly worried, as both of them are leaders in their field,” said Akshar, who had a brief stint at Deakin University, Australia but dropped out in the second year and returned to India.

It’s been a rollercoaster journey so far for Akshar, who says that focus and power of mind are keys to real success. “Today, I’m respected among colleagues and clients. Today, when I meet school friends, they’re amazed at the change in me. At the beginning of my career, I started every morning with only one goal — be better than I was the day before,” said Akshar, a successful businessman.

Reid Hoffman started his professional life with the intention of becoming an academic. But then he realized: “in order to be a professional scholar, you have to dedicate a vast majority of your career to writing esoteric books that only 50 people will understand.”

So instead, he got into the technology industry with a job at Apple, where he helped build eWorld, Apple’s version of America Online. Next, he started a company called SocialNet. It failed.

A friend of Hoffman’s, Peter Thiel, recruited him to join a startup, PayPal. It sold to eBay in 2002. Then Hoffman went on a long trip to Australia. There, he decided to create an Internet company. It’s LinkedIn. Today, it’s worth $19 billion – and Hoffman is its biggest shareholder.

Mantras for success

* I don’t believe the school system is the only route to success. It gives you an automated path to a career. Otherwise, you can make your own path.

– Kiran Jonnalagadda

* I was lucky it worked out for me. It could have gone awry. You have to play your cards right.

– Vivek Madan

* Life is what you make of it. If you fail, laugh at it and move on. Never lose hope.

– Karthik Naralasetty

* Studying is not the end of life. Today, I am who I wanted to be all along and it has nothing to do with a formal education.

– Akshar Peerbhoy

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/Failed-That-doesnt-mean-you-are-not-smart/articleshow/19268060.cms

Its chairman, 50-year-old Vijaysingh Rathore may well be another retail czar in the making to take on the likes of Future group chairman Kishore Biyani. That’s largely because, like Biyani, Rathore is a man who has unerringly got his finger on the pulse of the consumer.

Recounting his days as a struggling entrepreneur, Rathore recounts how the idea of launching affordable but value-for-money readymade garment stores for the fashion-conscious aam aadmi came to him while visiting a sale in a small town. “I saw how poor quality garments were selling like hot cakes largely because they were at discounted prices. For the rate-conscious lower and lower middle-class consumer, price is a major factor while buying a product. That’s what gave me the idea of trying my hand at selling good quality, readymade garments which would offer value for money at really affordable prices,” he confesses.

What he has also factored in while giving a final shape to his retail dream is the fact that the Indian consumer, apart from being extremely price-conscious, is also a sucker for discounts. “That’s the reason that ours are essentially discount stores which offer hefty discounts for eight to nine months in a year,” reveals Rathore.

An unassuming man from a humble background, Rathore did not learn the fundamentals of launching a business from any fancy B-school. A Masters in Economics from Agra College, Agra, his first job was that of a lowly-paid milk supervisor for Hindustan Lever Ltd in the moffusil town of Etah in Uttar Pradesh way back in 1988. “Even then though I dreamt big. I always wanted to make a name for myself,” reminisces Rathore.

And since Etah was too small and insignificant to accommodate his burgeoning ambitions, Rathore soon left for the country’s entrepreneurial paradise, Ahmedabad, in search of his dreams. But it is not as if he struck gold the minute he landed. The first decade in Ahmedabad too saw him flitting from one insignificant venture to another. “In Ahmedabad,” recalls Rathore, “My first job was again that of a salesman for a stationery marketing company following which I switched over to a small-yarn trading company where I had my first exposure at handling finances as well.”

The job did not last long but what Rathore took with him when he left the company was a friend and partner, Kailash Gupta, who shared his dreams of making it big and with whom he finally created LRIL.

However, Rathore’s first few faltering steps towards carving his own business were doomed for disaster. “Initially, Gupta and I did consultancy work advising small companies on financial activities. Then, in 1995 we started trading and export of medical products and opened offices in Russia and Nigeria.”

The venture folded up shortly leaving Rathore saddled with huge losses. “I learnt a lot from my failure. First, never to get into a business without sufficient knowledge and second, never to base a business model on hearsay, by supposed experts. My venture failed because I had no knowledge of the medical business and the products with which I was dealing—which is why I was misguided,” he confesses candidly.

In 2001, LRIL was incorporated and initially Rathore and Gupta started the garment business by supplying fabric and garments to multi-level marketing companies. Thereafter in 2004, they started working for other branded companies in the areas of networking, location identification and arranging franchises.

The exposure proved invaluable when in 2006, LRIL winged out as an independent retail venture. “By then we had figured out that there was a huge potential in the unorganised garment retail sector. In the country’s Rs 40,000 crore-apparel market, the organised market is just Rs 18,000 crore. Our aim was to tap the remaining Rs 22,000 crore in the unorganised sector,” reveals the LRIL chairman..

The LRIL model is so staggeringly simple that it’s a win-win formula for all concerned. “We saw that the small mom-and- pop apparel shops have limited stocks and a small range of products. That’s largely because they function on small margins and are dependent for supplies on wholesalers and mediators.” LRIL targeted these retailers making them an integral part of its franchise-business model. “We decided to rope in these small retailers as our franchises, outsourced our manufacturing to various locations across the country and evolved the Liverpool brand for the fashion and price conscious customers,” Rathore elaborates.

The franchise model also ensured that overheads required for setting up these outlets were kept down to bare a bare minimum as it did not involve space acquisition by the company itself. But how does he keep a check on the hrs quality of his products with manufacturing being outsourced. “Firstly, we provide the materials used ourselves. Second, we have a central warehouse where everything is scrupulously checked for quality,” Rathore discloses.

In just two years of its existence, LRIL today has a staff strength of 60 employees, 150 labour staff at its godowns and provides indirect employment to about 1,200 people across the country. The company, so far, has 142 Liverpool outlets in many cities and has just launched another 151 outlets under the Barcelona brand catering to the middle and lower-middle segment and also covering the semi-urban population. “That’s because the craze for branded products among the rural population is also huge and this brand will provide them with an easily available and affordable brand.”

On the drawing board are plans for boutique stores for the high-end market of discerning high net-worth customers as are plans of setting up an ultra modern manufacturing unit with a built up area of one lakh square feet at Ahmedabad and also taking the Liverpool brand abroad, all at an estimated cost of over Rs 500 crore. He also plans to foray into other segments of the fashion industry equipping his shops with googles, belts and other fashion accessories. Plans have also been drawn up to to enter the lingerie business. Like the man, his office in a bylane of Ahmedabad is remarkably Spartan. His mantra for success? “Meticulous future planning and anticipating public demand carefully as also studying the market closely,” he says. The company’s turnover has jumped from Rs 35 crore in 2006-07 to Rs 60 crore in 2007-08.

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Dreaming-big-is-the-key-to-success/327895/0

Talking about his days of abject penury when he supplemented his mother’s income by selling idlis door-to-door and binding books, Sarathbabu says: “Poverty can never play spoilsport if an individual is determined to win.”

It pays to focus

With two sisters and two younger brothers around, not only food was less, there was no electricity either. “But, I never felt sad as there were no distractions while studying. You cannot achieve anything if you brood over what does not exist. Even when I was asked to stand outside the classroom for not paying the fees, I used to listen to the lessons being taught inside because I understood that nobody — my mother, me or my teacher — was at fault for the situation I was in,” he philosophises.

Sarathbabu’s willpower coupled with his mother’s desire to see her son speak English like the “upper-class” people do, took him to Kings Matriculation Higher Secondary School. While his classmates discussed the good food they ate and the new dresses they bought, Sarathbabu was driven by the desire to top the class. And, first he came, always, even scoring the highest marks in school in the Matriculation Board examination.

His score of over 1,100 in the Class XII examination made him dream big. He found himself in BITS, Pilani, and then at the country’s best B-school, the IIM-Ahmedabad.

“At Pilani, I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew. My poor spoken English aggravated that feeling. But, I did not give up; I started reading books and practising spoken English in front of the mirror. Today, I think I have made it,” he smiles.

“Whenever I feel dejected, I think of my mother. I always remember her drinking only water to make sure that her children ate whatever was available. As a child, I used to think she liked water a lot but only later did I realise that it was acute poverty that forced her to fill her stomach with water,” he says.

Turning entrepreneur

Sarathbabu worked for two years with Polaris and repaid the loans taken for higher education. When good jobs came knocking, he shocked all by rejecting them. For, he nurtured a different dream: “I know the pangs of hunger and always wanted to provide employment opportunities.” Today, he employs 250 people.

Sarathbabu launched Foodking in Ahmedabad with a paltry sum of Rs. 2,000. “It was a dream come true, when Infosys’ N.R. Narayanamurthy inaugurated my venture in 2006. I introduced my mother to the chief guest and her eyes filled with tears of happiness. It is one of the most memorable moments of my life,” he recalls.

His dream is a hunger-free world by creating more job opportunities. How does it feel to be a youth icon? “Positively happy.I believe God is giving me this fantastic opportunity to inspire youth so that they too can create more jobs, bridge the rural-urban divide and address social issues and make India shine globally.”

“I have risen from the bottom. If I can, why can’t you?” says Sarathbabu, who also plans to start a school for the downtrodden.

Having come this far, this unassuming ‘crorepati’ continues to live in the Madipakkam slum with his wife Priya, mother Deeparamani and his younger brothers. But, he does plan to construct a house for his mother and also convert the ‘hut’ — from where he began his journey — into a memorial.

http://www.hindu.com/mp/2009/03/16/stories/2009031650670100.htm