• Insights

I owe this month’s column to two people. One is Pavan Mulpur, who wrote to me a couple of weeks ago. In his mail, Pavan said, “I would like you to cover a detailed article on the soft skills, the attitude and the gait that a prospective entrepreneur should ideally carry. I would like to know how the overall personality of a person who wants to become an entrepreneur should be? How should he talk? How should he present himself?”

The second person is Medini Mangala, our Brand Manager. When I showed her Pavan’s mail, she said I should explain it to him by highlighting traits of Indian cricketers. At that time, the relevance of this comparison did not hit me. But a few days later, when we were conducting a workshop on entrepreneurship for several hundred engineering students in Erode, Tamil Nadu, this simple truth was driven home.

Cricket is our language. It speaks to all of us in ways no words ever can. The otherwise silent group of students in Erode would erupt into conversation the minute we showed a picture of Sachin Tendulkar on the screen.

That gave me an idea for this column. Why not highlight those absolutely necessary qualities in an entrepreneur by drawing parallels between Indian test cricketers and entrepreneurs? Mind you, these 11 qualities that I am about to list are not unusual or new. I’m just speaking the language of cricket because, well, maybe it’ll help us all understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur!

Let’s start with Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag. The words that best describe these two cricketers are ‘focused’ and ‘fearless’, respectively. When an entrepreneur has defined his goal, his posture tells you whether he is pursuing it single-mindedly or is going all over the place. For example, I have a mentee who has access to capital, but he can’t seem to zero in on the one idea he wants to go after. And so, for more than six months now, we have only been trading mails on this topic without making any headway. His demeanor and his language speak volumes about his indecisiveness. He needs to be focused and fearless in order to make any progress.

Sehwag on the pitch is a delight to watch because he plays with gay abandon. Likewise, once you become an entrepreneur, it’s no holds barred—the worst is behind you! Fear held you back until  you made the choice. But now that you’re padded up for your time in the sun, what are you afraid of? Go ahead and enjoy every moment of it, like our man Sehwag does. Be fearless.

One down there’s Rahul Dravid. ‘Reliable’ is the most obvious adjective to describe him. Reliability is not only important in sports, it is extremely essential in the world of business as well. And needless to say, it’s a very important entrepreneurial trait. I have a mentee who relied on his co-founder to develop their product for nearly two years, only to realize later that there was no product in hand! Now, he has started from scratch all over again and has taken up a job in order to fund it. This could have been avoided had his co-founder demonstrated the essential entrepreneurial quality of reliability—a quality on which all stakeholder relationships are built, reputations made, brand equity created.

Next up is V.V.S. Laxman. The refrain in all our minds when we think of him is, “Do the impossible.” Which other man in his right mind could pick up a ball way outside the off-stump and flick it ever so gently on the leg-side for a boundary with such ease?! And who in his right mind would return to teaching science to school students—armed with an engineering and doctoral degree from Ivy League institutions—so that he could create the Hindi Scrabble? An entrepreneur would, apparently! Just ask the founding team of MadRat Games and they will tell you how they cracked the almost impossible.

Then walks in the man, Sachin Tendulkar. Need I even explain this? Every inch of him is pure-bred genius. Entrepreneurs need to have a degree of genius in them, too—and not all of it comes with the DNA. On the contrary, much of it comes with perspiration and doggedness. Case in point: Bhavin, a mentee of ours, took over his grandfather’s business of selling handkerchiefs when he was just 18 years old. That was the time when Calico Mills was floundering and the handkerchief market was going down. Most of its dealers had moved on to other products. Bhavin, however, was not willing to give up. He doggedly went on talking to people in the trade and to customers. And somewhere along the way, he discovered that one of the reasons why most people were switching from handkerchiefs to other options was that the material of the handkerchiefs available in the market at that time tended to be very stiff; it would soften only after several washes. In this revelation, Bhavin saw a huge opportunity. He introduced into the market pre-washed, soft handkerchiefs—and the rest, as they say, is history.

Then, of course, we have Sourav Ganguly. He and the word ‘leadership’ have become synonymous. Yes, his body language did communicate arrogance but, in all fairness, it wasn’t without reason. Ganguly had a solid team to back him up, and he was successful in getting his team to share his vision. I’m not for a minute saying that arrogance is good. However, believing strongly in your team, in your idea, in your vision, is always good and it yields results.

Five down is the scrappy guy, M.S. Dhoni. Now, the most endearing quality about Mahi is his ability to make the best of most situations. Give him a flat track and he’ll grind your bowlers into dust; give him a tough one to play and he’ll hit those ridiculous shots and dart across for a quick single even before the opposition has realized it! An entrepreneur, too, needs to be scrappy. In the entrepreneurial path, there is never an ideal situation where everything works out as per the script; an entrepreneur must have the ability to claw his way out of the debris and emerge a winner.

Irfan Pathan is an unfortunate example of a trait that entrepreneurs should steer clear of. When Pathan came into international cricket, he was touted as the next Kapil Dev. But where is he in the scheme of things today? Pathan made one fatal error—one that many entrepreneurs tend to make, too. He talked to too many people, tried to take advice from all of them, and eventually forgot what he was really best at. While it is important to take feedback from your ecosystem, it cannot be at the cost of your very identity.

Now, let’s get to the bowlers. First up, we have Anil Kumble. ‘Resilience’—that’s the word that first springs to mind when one thinks of him. We all remember that match against West Indies where Kumble came in to bowl with his jaw held together just by a couple of bandages. And what did he do first? He took out a very well-settled Brian Lara. Need I say more?

Harbhajan Singh is probably an unlikely candidate to epitomize adaptability, but hear me out. When he first came into international cricket, he couldn’t hold a bat to save his life. And look at him today! He has had a major hand in India’s last few Test wins and draws. Hell, he has even added a couple of back-to-back 50s and a century to his name!

The last man in is the one we all love to hate: Sreesanth. Hate him all you want, but you have got to love his aggression. That’s how every entrepreneur needs to be as well—aggressive. Don’t let anybody push you over. Don’t let anybody tell you that your idea will not work. Be aggressive—that’s the only way you’ll make it big.

To be an entrepreneur, you need to have a little bit of all of these cricketers in you… just like in the Lou Bega song, “Mambo No.5”!

NANDINI VAIDYANATHAN teaches entrepreneurship in biz schools around the world and has co-founded two companies, Startups (forstartups.blogspot.com) and CARMa (www.carmagroup.in), both of which mentor entrepreneurs.

©Entrepreneur February 2011

Tags:
cricket, Entrepreneurship, Nandini Vaidyanathan