Serial Entrepreneur - K Ganesh

Founder & Partner, Promoter. Growthstory.In, Bigbasket, Bluestone, Portea Medical,Homelane, Freshmenu, Hungerbox

Interviewer: First things first, how are you feeling about receiving the Institute’s highest honour for the alumni?

Ganesh K: I am feeling deeply honoured, touched and moved because there is nothing more satisfying than your alma-meter conferring you an award. While I have won other awards for a lot of other things from the institute, this award is special. When I was told that I’ll have to come personally to collect this award, I felt we were going back to the old ways of mandatory attendance. Somehow, I suspected that they have pulled out my academic attendance because I was notorious with attendance, but later on I realized it’s not just for me, I have not been singled out. For everybody this is the case.

I: Welcome back on campus! So just to start this interview session on a light note, we would like you to talk through your days at Joka and your fond memories of this place.

GK: Joka holds very fond memories for me. The first time I stepped in Joka was 25 June 1983. It is memorable for two reasons. First, India won the world cup and second that was the day I met Meena, who is now my wife. It was love at first sight. So, these are two extremely fond memories. A lot of our romance was done on the lakes of Joka doing boating. It was a tough life because there were only 11 girls and 140 boys unlike nowadays when it is more balanced. I really like diversity for this reason. More fish in the pond. Some of the memories were boating in the lakes of Joka. The food was atrocious. That was the first time I was staying away from my home and mother’s food. We used to have a strong contingent from south who insisted on having Sambhar, and off-course the aggressive Delhi folks who grew up on Yamuna’s water and knew how to fight and insisted on having Daal. So, a concept of “Daal-Sambhaar” was invented here. It' was a combination of both but that satisfied neither. So, it was decided they would make both Daal & Sambhar. But the biggest challenge was that both tasted similar and both looked similar. Nobody could differentiate and there was a strong feeling that it was just cooked as one dish in one vessel & was just separated into two vessels to satisfy north and south Indians. The joke back then was that the only way to differentiate it was that we used to take a couple of spoons of it and pour it on the table. If it started naturally moving towards the south then it was sambhar it it started moving towards the north it was daal. I don't know how it is now.The other fond memory we used to have was Mihir’s Dhaba. Is Mihir’s still there?There was a caterer called Mihir who used to have a canteen which was a private canteen just inside the gate. The moment you come inside the gate that was the only place. There were no Swiggy of the world. No Cafe Coffee Day. There was no other outlet. That used to be nice. I think it was a lot of fun. When I came in, I was 21 years old. First time living in a hostel and first time living outside my home. So, I learnt a lot from my batch mates, from my friends, from the faculty - How to be independent, how develop a sense of self-esteem How to do things on your own. All in all, a great experience

I: What would be the skills that you acquired at this place that has helped you the most in your professional life?

GK: I think I would say the networking here, working with people who are smarter than you, either in terms of education the people from IITs or toppers or the people who have had great social skills and learning from them was great. The kind of projects we did, the case studies we did were very nice because I was never exposed to that.

The summer training was great. We were the first batch who had an opportunity to go abroad. In 1983-84 nobody went abroad. So, the first time I took a plane was when I was in IIM to go for a job interview. The first time I made a passport was to attend my summer training program. So, all of that was great leaning. So, all that was great learning, and also, I came in as a 21-year-old boy and went out as half a man. So, I think that was a lot of maturity.

I met Meena here, fell in love, and now married for close to 35 years so we all grew up together. So, the best thing I got from the Institute was my wife Meena, and the rest of it was just incidental. So that's what I think, I was very focused and I knew what I want to get. And even if you look at me today and look at her today, I think I got a much better deal than she said did. So, I think that shows a great thing to my ability to spot an opportunity and move in fast. She won distinguished alumnus a lot many years before me. So, I am closely following her footsteps. I'm behind but I'm almost there.

I: Your first business venture was IT&T which you founded in 1990, at a time when the concept of first-generation professionals turning into entrepreneurs was very rare. So, what exactly was your motivation behind risking a safe corporate career?

GK: 1990, you are right, was a time when there was no concept of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. It was a time that there were no first-generation entrepreneurs. There were only family businesses and business families and license raj was prevalent. Business meant you have to have a factory and you have a chimney and smoke will come out of the chimney. The service business just does not exist. So, while I was working in HCL, from campus I had got into HCL which was a highly entrepreneurial place. And when I am saying entrepreneurial, I'm not saying in a positive sense. HCL was a chaos, they didn't have any systems, that didn't have any process.

You could do anything whatever you want, you could do. So, I had an opportunity to do things on my own because of lack of systems and process and I found that those things actually worked OK. I got the confidence to become an entrepreneur. I had other two job offers: in Hindustan Unilever and in Citibank. If I had joined HUL or Citibank, I don’t think I would have ever become an entrepreneur because I would not have had the opportunities. So, a lot of this becoming an entrepreneur is really accident, opportunity, serendipity and luck. Whenever I am asked outside, most of the time I reply I had an inner urge, I had a passion, I want to be on my own, I want to be on my boss: well that is not true. Well it has just happened to happen.

I: Rapid fire round sir, your Hostel?

GK: I was in H4, Ramanujan Hostel.

I: Favourite chilling spot on campus?

GK: Well, boat on the lake. I actually want say it is Room Number 3 in L-1. It was Meena’s room in L-1.

I: Favourite food item?

GK: They used to make French toast as an extra. I don’t know if they still make it. They used to make French toast as a special dish and to pay for it extra in the mess

I: Present Bollywood crush

GK: Deepika Padukone

I: One regret from campus life?

GK: I don’t think I have any regrets.

I: Coming to the question, the entire campus wants to know, how did you know manage your love life, along with the hectic MBA schedule? We would appreciate if you could share your top three pointers for this.

GK: This is a tough googly. First learn to prioritise. In the first year I was among the toppers. I had won awards and scholarships because that was priority number 1. After that, Meena was the priority in the second year, so I did not feature on the Honour Board despite being the topper in the first year.

At any point of time, you have to be focused on one thing. The second thing, I think is that we very strongly underestimate our abilities. We often settle for far less than what we are capable of by frittering away & wasting our time. Of course, the fact that there was no Facebook, there was no Twitter, there was no snap, there was no social media and there was no WhatsApp helped. So living life to your potential will take you a long way. Third, you don't prioritize sleep at that age. Now I want to sleep. I want to sleep for 8 hours. I think I don't think time was ever a problem for me. If I would not have met Meena, perhaps I would have played more sports. So, it’s a question of what you want to give up for what you want to achieve.

I: Since you are a regular mentor/advisor to young entrepreneurs, what is the first quality you look for? What is your biggest parameter of assessing a person and the potential of his idea?

GK: Entrepreneurship or start-up, is a very unique business of today. For a start-up, the infant mortality rate of a start-up is very high. Less than 5 percent of the start-ups actually monetize big. In addition, less than 10 percent actually survive. So therefore, it's a low probability game. So, what do we see in entrepreneur are two things:

One, does the entrepreneur have it in himself to go through all the challenges, the failures, the down sides and the persistence to run a marathon and come out winning. So, persistence to be able to go through several ups and downs in marathon is one important parameter.

Second thing is, because the chances of success are very small, you should bet on a low probability of success only if the outcome can be very big. In probability is called expectation. Chances of winning multiplied by the expected value of the win. So, I look for ideas which if wins, got to win really big.

So, go for large pain points, go for big sectors rather than niche. Let me give you two examples. We have a company called Bluestone which is into online jewellery. Every contemporary woman between 20-45 needs contemporary jewellery so it’s a big market. I had seen one business plan, by somebody who was very passionate, wanted to do online jewellery for pets in India. That's a very small market. How many people have pets in India? How many of those people will want jewellery for their pets in India? How many of those people want to have pets in India and want jewellery will buy it online? How many of those people would actually reach for my company and my brand? It's a very small market. With a low priority of success trying to bet on that is very difficult. Whereas, if you take grocery and Big Basket is one of our companies. It's a large company. So those are the top two things I would say.

I: Although India has seen an enormous growth in the number of start-ups, very few Indian start-ups are able to establish themselves as global players in the market. Don’t you think that there’s a tendency among Indian entrepreneurs to get their brainchild’s acquired by global players instead of becoming global players themselves?

GK: I think that's a valid question. There's always a debate between should you build a company grow its scale and sell it to somebody else, make money and move on or can you build long lasting Global companies that are brands. TCS for example has overtaken IBM in terms of marketing capital. TCS is one example. Infosys is another example. Even though they are services companies, they are global companies.

A lot depends upon the individual as an entrepreneur. There are two kinds of entrepreneurs. There are some entrepreneurs who are like gardeners, who run a nursery. What is their job?What is that model? They will plant seeds. They'll make small saplings and they will sell the saplings. That is one kind of entrepreneur. The other kind of entrepreneurs are the guys who runs orchards. What is their model?They plant seed. It will become a plant, it will become a tree, then for next 25-30 years they will take the fruits from the orchard and make money. So, one sells the saplings and one sells the fruits for 25-30 years. There's a huge amount of difference between the two. Now the question is: some entrepreneurs would like doing this while some entrepreneurs would like doing that. Some entrepreneurs may want excitement. Some entrepreneurs can be more capable to run large conglomerates. I have started and sold 4 businesses. Most of the entrepreneurs will be selling. I personally enjoy the act of Starting-Creating-Selling. But I have full respect, regards, appreciation for people like Infosys Founder, or like Dell, or like Apple or like Bill Gates who can do all of the other stuff. I also personally feel I don’t enjoy running a large organization. A lot of it is personal.

I: You have started businesses in different sectors. How do you choose a sector? Or do you come up with an idea and just start working on it?

GK: So, I think I'm a generalist. IIM Calcutta made me a generalist. I have no specific knowledge. I'm not a doctor or lawyer are something like that. So, we have been in Education, in Grocery, in Jewellery, and Call-Center and all that stuff. So, what we look for is that is there a way I can use technology, internet or digital skills to slightly disrupt the status quo and change the game and address large pain points.

What are large pain points? Roti, Kapada, Makaan, Education, Healthcare and Entertainment. These six are top pain points. So, in this if you look at some technology interruption and disturb the status-quo, we would you like to do that. Personally, I think that domain expertise is highly over-rated. You don’t have to be domain expert. You can hire domain experts. But that's my view. But there are people who feel that in healthcare you have to be a doctor. But that’s one case. What need to be is a good generalist. I guess both would work.