Ebook: Stay Hungry Stay Foolish_9

22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 263 THE ART OF GIVING 263 Had Venkat Krishnan got admission in a convent school in class 5, he may have been your regular investment banker type today. But six years spent at ‘Airport High School’, where a large number of students came from slums and chawls, changed Venkat`s life.It made him who he is. “From class six or seven, I started feeling extremely strongly about inequity in society. I could see that there was a guy in my class whose father works in Dubai. So the family is well off, they have a two bedroom house. They would eat biscuits for breakfast which is a luxury.” “And there is another guy in the same class who lives in a slum in Kajuwadi and his father is a garage mechanic. And they would always buy dus paise ka shakkar aur pacchis paise ka tel, that too when a guest comes to their house.” And to Venkat that seemed fundamentally wrong. In a country where most of us are conditioned to simply ‘look the other way’ that makes Venkat a seriously different kind of guy. And that difference reflects in every choice in life he`s made. We are meeting in the lobby of a suburban hotel.Venkat lives somewhere close by but hesitates to call me home. “The house is too small,” he mumbles. Not that he really cares what I, or anyone else, think of his life, or lifestyle. Venkat`s nickname on campus was ‘Fraud’which is ironic because both in the honesty with which he speaks to me, and the actual work he does, Venkat is one of the most genuine people I have ever met. And genuine people are always an inspiration. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 264 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH 264 THE ART OF GIVING Venkat Krishnan (PGP `93), GiveIndia Venkat Krishnan grew up in what you would call an ‘ordinary middle class home’, the youngest of three children. “My dad used to work in Godrej, and I have had one of the best childhoods one could possibly have. Very caring mother, always making sure you ate all the vegetables and all that.” And yet, it was extraordinary in some ways. “Dad is an engineer and he is one of those gizmo type guys meaning our house is a garage at all points in time. Even now, we will have a black and white 1971 television lying somewhere in the attic because he will always aspire to repair everything.” From the time Venkat was five, he was part of these projects. Late in the evenings after coming home from work, dad would be busy tinkering with a Bush radio. Venkat would hold the soldering wire or the pliers - involved in some way. “I think one of the best things that happened in childhood and particularly with me (I think the youngest kid in the house always gets the best treatment) was lots of exposure and learning right from early in life.” When Venkat was about 10 years old, his dad worked with a company which manufactured speakers for export to Denmark. When they had to get a die or a mould made, he would take Venkat along. Few kids get exposed to what is grinding, what is turning in a lathe, what is oil hardened natural steel and what is mild. Later, as a teen, Venkat recalls hanging out at Sakinaka, where there are many small scale industries. Accompanying his dad Venkat would watch, figure out things, and give ideas on how those people could improve productivity. “Another interesting thing - we used to play a lot of ‘games’ as a 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 265 THE ART OF GIVING 265 family when I was young. Late nights, over the weekends, all five of us used to do four digits by four digits multiplication sums and see who finished first!” When in class four, Venkat discovered the system for multiplying end digit by end digit numbers in one line without having to write down steps. Much later he found it was called the ‘Trachtenberg System’. The bottomline is a spirit of curiosity and of ‘learning to think independently’was aroused.And that`s a critical characteristic you will find in most people who are entrepreneurial in nature - they will tend to not accept what is told to them at face value but take the available information and process it on their own. And then there was the impact of schooling. Up to class five Venkat studied in what we call ‘good schools’. But when his dad switched jobs and shifted to Andheri, he ended up joining ‘Airport High School’ which is, by all standards, a very average kind of school. “I think that was the most life transforming experience for me. When you go to convent school, you actually don`t see the whole spectrum of people. It will be middle class dominated.” At Airport High, much of the school was from the ‘lower middle class’, Venkat was regarded as relatively ‘well off’. One day he would be playing at the house of a friend who lived in a two bedroom house. The next day, it would be a friend who lived in a slum. “It hits you very, very strongly when you see this first hand.Nothing shapes your future as much as the house in which you are born. That`s the most significant predictor of your likelihood of success.” “There will be exceptions.There will be the odd Dhirubhai Ambani who was born poor and went on to become a star. But those are extreme examples.” No doubt something we all know, but don`t feel for, because we have not personally experienced it. In fact, the trend is to protect your kids from this knowledge by sending them to an elite international school full of elite international kids like your own. Far, far away from the ‘real India’. By class seven, Venkat was clear there was something wrong with the way things were and wanted to do something about it. At this stage Venkat studied the ‘Communist Manifesto’ (he knew it by heart, word by word!). George Orwell`s ‘Animal Farm’ was another book which had a huge impact. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 266 STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH 266 “We also set up a Rotaract club in the college, which was very very exciting. I would say my first entrepreneurial experience in a sense.” Engineering would have been a logical career choice but by class 10 Venkat was clear this wasn`t the thing for him. “I was quite fascinated by engineering, but felt very clearly that I didn`t want to become an engineer. I wanted to do something that could make a difference.” So Venkat decided to take up commerce.He believed that it would help in his ultimate goal - of making a difference. Unfortunately, even though he hardly studied, Venkat managed to secure a state merit rank in the SSC board exam. “My father is a very pushy character. He dragged me to Parle College and got me admitted to science. So le liya admission. I passionately hated biology so I took electronics as the option. And somehow I decided not to do commerce at that stage. In hindsight, I think that was a very wise decision.You learn far more in science.” Venkat refused to sit for engineering entrance exams and opted for a BSc in mathematics instead. Ironically, he coached several others and seven of his friends actually got through to engineering colleges. Meanwhile he essentially ‘freaked out’. “I used to play 6-7 hours of cricket everyday.And I had also started smoking. So a typical day would be sitting on a katta, outside the college, looking at girls, eve teasing them, smoking, and lots of cricket and whiling away one’s time.” An admission which will shock and awe most kids today, who dream of someday making it to an IIM! However despite failing in all subjects in the prelims and studying for about a week, Venkat managed a 92% in the HSC.Once again, dad tried to interest him in joining a local engineering college but by this time he had grown in conviction and learnt to say ‘No’. “I was passionate about mathematics as a subject, still am. You can get me excited about maths like this in thirty seconds.” Venkat secured a merit scholarship for studying maths. Of course, he hardly ever went to college; instead excelled in extra-currics. 22_The Art of Givingeditjuly10.qxd 7/19/08 3:32 PM Page 267 THE ART OF GIVING 267 “At the the end of every term, I would go with a long sheet with day by day details of where I had represented the college - in chess, debating, dramatics, JAM and so on. We also set up a Rotaract club in the college, which was very very exciting. I would say my first entrepreneurial experience in a sense.” Parle College was a fairly traditional, Marathi kind of a place where there was no culture of participating in intercollegiate competitions apart from classical music.The Rotaract club made a huge impact in terms of transforming the environment in the college, making it more cosmopolitan and encouraging young talent. “I was the founder and president. It took a lot of effort to convince our college authorities to allow something like this. According to them, it was very western. They believed that girls wearing skirts is not a good idea and with Rotaract all these skirt-wearing girls would come to the college.” In hindsight, Venkat realises he was good at understanding people from opposite ends of the spectrum - the ‘pseud’category and the ‘dehaati’ category. He had the knack of seeing the perspective of others, and somehow balancing it all. The activities of the Rotaract Club included going to TOMCO (Tata Oil Company), meeting the GM and convincing him to come and give a talk on marketing as a career to students. “We actually used to meet people, get them excited, get them to college and organise a career guidance fair entirely on our own. Coming from the classic middle class upbringing, it was a liberating experience, being able to do my own thing, meet new people, take risks, buy things, succeed, fail, whatever.” The result was that Parle college blossomed. In fact, they won the ‘Best College’ trophy at Mood Indigo in a particular year. Which again goes to show that it`s not important to merely get into the ‘Best College’. But to make the best of your college life, wherever you experience it. So after all this, how did IIM happen? “We actually used to go and meet people, get them excited, get them to college and organise a career guidance fair entirely on our own.” ... - tailieumienphi.vn