He is all SET for success
|
A daring entrepreneur urges you to develop risk appetite and planning skills
|
Many people venture out on high-risk plans and start their own companies, primarily because they are fed up of being bossed around in an environment set up by others. In corporate giants, a majority of the employees suffer a complex of not being important enough to the company. Some people just get tired of doing mundane work and turn to new, thrilling ventures of their own.
Infosys and Wipro were founded by entrepreneurs who simply wanted to prove to the world that they can do something on their own. Some companies do very well and grow on to reach the acme of success, while some, many rather, start-up companies flounder and are compelled to even shut down eventually, if they are not acquired by bigger companies in their realm.
So what does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?
Ask Naveen Lakkur, CEO of Compassites Software Solutions, Bangalore, and he says `SET' which stands for:
Speaking: Ability to articulate ideas and deliver motivational public speeches.
Entrepreneurship: IT start-ups.
Teaching: Mentoring employees and fellow beings.
Naveen is SET with passion and he believes that building and maintaining professional and personal relationships with people is very important in order to become a successful entrepreneur.
Goal setting
A good entrepreneur knows how to set a feasible goal and plan to achieve it. A goal without a time line is a dream. It is important to form a consensus with the key employees of the company in establishing the motto and goals of a company. If you have frozen on a goal, your work is half done. After goal-setting, comes goal-planning, i.e, how to go about achieving that goal.
Naveen believes that an entrepreneur must have enormous risk appetite and astute planning skills. His blog `Start2Lead.com' liberally spews thoughts, experiences and ambitions of a young and dynamic entrepreneur. Naveen, whose roots are in Bangalore, has so far founded five start-up companies in different countries and successfully led them all on the path of success. He was riding a wave of success at an enviably young age of 27, when fate played a cruel game on him.
In 1997, Naveen, along with his family, was enjoying time out in an amusement park. He was swimming and somehow landed in the midst of a gang of unruly guys who were splashing water over one another. They splashed water on his eyes with such force that the cornea got ruptured. Many people around him thought that his career and life would never be the same again. But he proved them all wrong. Naveen never pitied himself and went on to work as VP in a company named Karna, which did very well and was acquired by a bigger company.
Entrepreneurship requires a do-or-die spirit. It is analogous to a trapeze artist's performance. The artist leaves one swing for a brief while before clinging on to another. In the transition, he is left hanging in the air with nothing to hold. But the trapeze artist's confidence in obtaining return on his risk and the fact that he takes a calculated risk by spreading a safety net below, inspires the true sense of entrepreneurship.
Mentorship
It is important for a young, inexperienced entrepreneur to have a good mentor. And Naveen has been fortunate to have mentors like Rajesh Setty (of `Beyond Code' book fame), Jnan Dash (CTO of Oracle and IBM at different points of time and co-founder of RDBMS database management system) and a whole lot of awe-inspiring personalities, in the proximity of whom, one cannot but get charged with enthusiasm and ambition.
Naveen is now playing mentor to about 45 young software pros at Compassites. His life is a message for entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs.
VINAYA KURPAD
Vinaya_Kurpad@rediffmail.com
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Education Plus
Karnataka
Chennai
Coimbatore
Hyderabad
Madurai
Tiruchirapalli
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
