In a new book, an entrepreneur presents a blueprint for building sustainable, profitable start-ups

Leaving India for greener pastures abroad was considered the best outcome in the late ’90s for those of us who were not afforded great wealth but graduated from elite educational institutions in India. The low growth opportunities of the pre-liberalisation era were the impetus for our careers. The American dream provided the perfect getaway to our prosperity.

As an individual who excelled in exam-taking, learning was never the real objective in my earlier years. Through rote learning and exam-cracking regimes, many of us had perfected the art of repeatedly making it through progressive academic rungs. Learning by regurgitating past test papers, studying with a friend’s class notes on the day before the exam and prioritising exam-oriented problems were all part of the study system that many of us had mastered. No wonder Narayana Murthy of Infosys, in 2018, posited that “engineering colleges in India are churning out only 25% quality engineers and nearly 80–85% of youngsters are not suitably trained for any job.”

Deep learning and mastery require a disciplined, systematic approach, not shortcuts. During my graduate study in America, I observed that many of my international student peers had made a conscious choice to specialise in their chosen fields and understood what the graduate education system entailed. Even when some of the students were not inherently brilliant, they built mastery of their subjects through consistent planning, organisation and rigour.

The American learning system, especially at top universities, was focused on providing the student an elemental understanding of basic concepts followed by mastery of advanced concepts. This was possible, as the students consistently followed a set of steps that were prescribed by the educational system. In addition to periodic exams, weekly graded homework and pre-class assignments ensured that the student kept pace with topics taught in class. When a student did not understand a topic or needed help, the professor or the teaching assistant would help clear conceptual doubts during prescribed office hours. Combined with practical internships, the comprehensive educational programme produced highly qualified, work-ready graduates.

Many Indian universities have adopted similar systems, but the results fall short as the stakeholders involved do not genuinely internalise the goals. By and large, Indian students attend university programmes for the economic outcomes and not for the associated learning. At Purdue University and at UC Berkeley, many of my peers had made a conscious choice to specialise in their chosen fields and build proficiency. To build mastery in my subjects, I finally made a conscious choice to build expertise in my study discipline and committed to the prescribed systems of learning.

As an entrepreneur in the later years, I realised the importance of this exercise. To run a successful company, mastery of the craft is a prerequisite. In just a few decades, Tanishq, a Tata jewellery company, has achieved national success by mastering jewellery manufacturing, contemporary design and retail, surpassing traditional jewellers who have honed their craft over generations. To start a company that builds cutting-edge products in science and engineering, mastery is essential. It is impossible to build a spacecraft or an electric car unless the people involved have developed mastery by perfecting their craft over many years. ISRO has emerged as a global leader by developing exceptional expertise and mastery in every aspect of rocket technology. Fundamental innovation is not possible without building proficiency and expertise.

My learning during this academic experience to develop expertise by internalising goals and adopting a disciplined and systematic approach proved fundamental to our organisational success when it really mattered.

Living in an advanced economy gave me a first-person understanding of the importance of systems to achieve excellence, even beyond academia. Adhering to the systems and the prescribed processes at an individual, corporate and country level was the primary recipe for success for these developed economies. Most developed countries create excellence because of a workforce that rigorously follows processes laid out by the top echelons of society. Not everyone needs to be very talented to obtain the best outcome in the system. They just need to do their jobs right, consistently. The traffic in developed countries runs smoothly because people follow road rules. McDonald’s and Starbucks scale because of process adherence combined with automation.

Scaling an enterprise through systems and process adherence was the underlying principle I used later to build my company in India. I fathomed that if I built a company based on efficient systems and ensured that this was replicated over and over, I could build a large, successful enterprise. This understanding of systems and scale was a big ‘aha’ moment for me. I borrowed these lessons from America – of setting up systems and replicating processes to build sustainable scale in India. Developing unique points of view from one’s life experience often provides an original idea that can underpin the basis of an enterprise. Being curious, observing things around him and developing points of view is an integral part of being a creative founder.

The habit of short-circuiting a well-laid-out system was one I would struggle with many a time as a business owner in India, preventing our ability to scale, especially as a service company. When faced with a problem, result- oriented colleagues in my company would resort to short-circuits and jump to instant solutions that were not well thought out. Their instantly conceived solution was the right thing to do in their minds. In our warehousing business, a part of the logistics company I founded, an operator would place a particular item in the first available spot because the designated space for the item was full. With no documentation of its whereabouts, we would be hard-pressed to retrieve this item when needed. Therefore, we devised a system to ensure documentation of location, irrespective of where an item was stored, ensuring easy future retrieval.

Excerpted with permission from Building India’s Upstarts: A Bootstrapped Entrepreneur’s Playbook for Success, R Narasimhan, Penguin India.