About Viiveck Verma
From being in the corporate world for many years to be a startup ecosystem enabler, Viiveck Verma has donned many caps. The ex-CEO of Karvy Data Management Services who is now a Board Member of investing community Hyderabad Angels (the third largest startup investment ecosystem enabler in India), curator TEDx Hyderabad and the chief strategy officer & head retail at Srinivasa Farms. He is also the co-founder of IIIT Seed Fund and has investments in more than 15 companies ranging across domains.
Transcript
Good evening! So as you can see on the slide here, that’s the way I’ve lived my life. That the future is still loading, and that’s how it’s been for a very long time in my life, and I will talk about a few incidents here specifically, focusing on failure and why I say that. And this song some of you may have heard it’s a song from our time or maybe a little before our time, Que sera sera whatever will be will be the future’s not our’s to see. And that’s what I say that the future is still loading. And I’ve used this mantra at many times, three of which I will talk about in this presentation in the next 10 or 15 minutes. But the future is always loading. And that’s the way I’ve lived through those three failures that I’m going to talk about and many many many more that I have had in my life. As I stand here today I think I’m more proud of the failures I have had, than the successes I’ve had. Because I think the learnings that I have had from the failures are significantly more. I’ve picked three out of my life to talk about specifically today. And for me, like I said failure is not the opposite of success I think failure is as much a part of success as anything else is, because if we don’t fail, I don’t think we are moving. If we don’t fail it just to me means you’re not trying, you’re not doing anything. To me failure is a part of the success and I think, also now given the fact that I spend a fair bit of my time in the startup space, I think it’s an extremely important phenomena that we should learn to fail, we should learn to celebrate our failure and I’m very very happy at what’s happening here today, because this is, in a certain sense, a dream that we should start celebrating success. So to me failure is not the opposite of success, it’s very much a part of success.
So let’s talk about my first failure. That’s me, roughly around the 9th grade, when I was in school, and like some of you in the room, I won’t say most of you because you are all sitting in the IIIT campus so a lot of you are the studious types, be like what I was then, that I had no interest in studies. Okay I was just trying to while away my time, finish and think as if the education will end one day and the life and the miseries attached to education will end. But as you all know it doesn’t happen that way. And I was faced with my first kind of failure in 9th grade when my report card came, and I had failed in four subjects. And I was studying in a Kendriya Vidyalaya, typically if you failed in three subjects you got a supplementary exam, which means you had to study through your summer break and you could go back and give an exam. And if you pass then you would move to the next grade. But I had failed in 4 which means I had to basically repeat my class. And that’s when the first time it kind of hit me that you know if I don’t do something, this is what the future is going to be. I then went obviously got a huge you know round of screaming, beating, all of that that is associated with, you know, producing a report card with four red marks below the line, and then pleaded with them. Fortunately my parents also felt, you know, I am the eldest in the family from my mother’s side, father’s side, my father’s a doctor. So from an educated family, here’s the first one, the black sheep of the family. So they also felt that let’s go and give it an attempt. We went to the school, spoke to the principal, spoke to the teachers. They made an exception, and said despite failing in four subjects we’ll allow him to give the supplementary exams. And that’s when for me the first failure happened. And like I said, for me failures always been a part of success.
And that’s where I decided to kind of take things in my hand and say let’s understand what is it that one is looking at in the form of Education. What is it that I need to do so that I don’t get these red lines below the marks in my report card the next time around. And from then in the 9th grade when I almost failed, moved to the tenth grade, I moved on to do my BSc. Geology, where I topped the University. And this is from Pune University, and for those of you who know who know Pune is ranked as one of the best, or one of the better universities in the country. And I was doing subject called geology, which I topped in the University and if all subjects put together I was the number 50th rank in the university. And the only reason I was able to do that is because that failure taught me that I have got to understand the subject I’ve got to understand what is it that the system is looking at. Probably somewhere I was thinking about the system to learn and I was going through what the education system was not doing, which is around application and here after I started looking at finding methods to beat the system, in terms of understanding the subject. And I was very famously in my college and school days, known as “Tedu”. Which in Marathi for those of you who understand means, “someone who’ll never do the things straight”. He’ll always find a crooked method to do things. So I would create acronyms for an answer, the most difficult answer I would have that absolutely easily ready, because I would have formed an acronym for the answer. The most famous then in the college that I was known for was “UPC mofta aloo ka kofta”. UPC mofta essentially meant all the eight points of the answer and I would rhyme it like that and I will have answer. So I went on to beat. So that was my first failure, that how do you kind of move away from failure. Almost failed to a university topper, all in a matter of about five years.
So that was my first failure that I went on topped the university, got some scholarships, you know went on to do various other things in education. Did an MBA, did a law, did something in computers and started my corporate life. And you know corporate life went on well. Did work with some very good Marquee clients or marquee brands, like DHL, you know, like BPL mobile. Some very very fantastic companies, associated with startups, launched the first call center in India, first conveyor belts in India, multiple activities like that. The first use of digital maps was done might be way back in ’94 ’95, when application of things like that was not there. And then at the age of about 36 is when I got to work for a UK company, a UK BPO called Liberata, which was UK’s second-largest BPO company. I was their Vice President for India, responsible for setting up the Indian operations. So I used to you know live the the high life. Travel once a month to London business class, Vice-President of a global company, you know, all of it that you can tick in the tick box is all the ticks that I had. And then, the company decided that they didn’t want to continue with the India operations. So they asked me if I’m willing to move to UK, because we are not looking at India anymore. And here I was in sitting in London in the month of June, 30th June happens to be my birthday. On the 30th of June my boss calls me and tells me that these are the two possibilities for you now, either you move to UK, or we’ll have to let you go because we have nothing to do back in India. And that was the time when in my life I was in the middle of making a purchase of a house of about 1.4 crores. I had made the down payment and I was sitting there you know, because like I said, I had all the ticks in the boxes and I said now is the time. This was in Bombay, in Malad two and a half thousand square feet apartment, so way beyond my means. But I said it’s okay I’ve got all the ticks let me do that. And then I come back and I was going through a personal challenge at home so I wasn’t able to share, with anybody else in the family that I don’t have a job. For six months I was busy trying to find the next job, with an EMI that I’m paying on that fancy house that I’ve bought, and I went through that patch kind of thinking telling myself what did I do wrong? What went wrong? From a situation of all ticks to a situation where I don’t know whether I’ll have the two square meals, because I have an EMI to pay, I have a family to run, and I don’t have a job. And I am also having a personal challenge as a family that I have to overcome. And from there I kind of fortunately like I said, I must have done something right, or God was kind in about six months time I found a job with another multinational company and then kind of life moved on. But that period again, as a failure, taught me that you know I think we just have to remain calm look at things and I’ll talk about some of the learnings that I had from that. But to me this was also an important failure, which taught me that I have to have preparations. I have to have a plan B. I should have something else in place before you take the plunge. And that to me was my second failure.
And then I went on to come back to the professional life, you know, went on to be successful a lot of companies again like some marquee brands, you know, like Galileo, Abacus, you know, Daksh, various companies where I did did some work and kind of won some accolades. Anyway, so I mean the other slide that we are missing here was in a slide where I won a lot of accolades including one from the Civil Aviation Minister. I spent eight years in the travel trade, and one of my most valuable possessions is that award that I got for best ethics in business, and for for all of you who are going to start your careers, travel trade is essentially a trade where a lot of underhand dealings used to happen then. Because travel agents would deal with tickets, visas, and a lot of that was cash handling a lot of that was things that there was a lot of money change that could happen. And in that trade to get in a world about the best ethics in business, was something which was kind of a great achievement for for me. And then I’ll come to the third failure, where.. Okay, so my third failure was in 2014. I used to be the CEO of a Karvy company, like Ramesh mentioned earlier, again you know doing quite well, starting a new concept, I’ve done about 10-12 startup concepts and I participated in a cooking contest. And and you know this is for you, the chef friend I was telling you about when we were sitting in the other room. And I can’t cook to save my life. A friend just enrolled my name because he said CEO Cook Off contest, and I have to find 10 CEOs. I couldn’t find 10 you are a CEO, you work for Karvy so you kind of meet the criteria, I have registered you you come have fun. My wife then felt that if I go and make a fool of myself, that won’t work. So she said at least once in your life try to be in the kitchen, do something. I did that went to the contest and you know, did what I could do. After that I went to the contest basically to say I’ll get some good food and some good quality daaru. So that’s all that matters. Let’s go to the Hyatt. This was a contest done by Hyatt. I’ve finished my cooking, hit the bar, was enjoying my drink, they started making the announcements and they are now saying the winning dish today is the Mediterranean chicken stew. And I call the GM of Hyatt and I said, look you’ve got to give it to me. I chose the same dish as the winner chose, so at least I got the dish right because what I cooked is also the same dish that they made. We did cheers to each other, continued our drinking. Two three minutes later they announced it two three times, and then the organising team came saying you can’t hear is it? I said what is there to hear you also come have a drink. You know, let’s get on with life and he said no sir, you have won the contest. That’s what we’ve been announcing your dish was the winning dish.
And that’s when my life changed. Because I went back, participated in the next round with them in Delhi, was almost like the second person in the second round and I created a dish in the second round using seafood and I don’t eat seafood. And I was almost the winner there and I said if I can do this, you know in terms of converting my learnings in the corporate world into cooking, then why don’t I do something on my own? And I then quit, started a coaching company I’m an executive coach. I ran a company called “Disrupt Thinking” for a few years. So that in that sense was my failure I moved out of the corporate world, ran a coaching company for three three and a half years and that’s what Ramesh was referring that we coined the world of corporate dropouts or corporate jump outs, because we didn’t like the sound of dropouts. And just about a year ago I moved back into the corporate world. And in that three years these are some of the things that I did, in terms of mentoring, in terms of running the TEDx platform, in terms of a society that I created called “SAHI”, which is doing a lot of work along with people like Ramesh, and a few others in terms of Lake restoration and things like that. So with that I just had a few lessons that I’ve learned through these failures that I’ve had.
I think one of the greatest lesson that I have at least taken is that, whatever happens in your life, you know, and I have been through many things in my life, I think the most important thing I’ve learned is take responsibility for what’s going on. And I keep using the cliche that, whatever happens to you is a choice you make. You know a lot of times we have a method of saying that this is happening to us because circumstances are making this happen to us. And I say circumstances don’t make anything to happen. Circumstances at best will make a situation happen how you deal with it is all in your mind and it’s a choice you make. So take responsibility and not excuses. I have lived my life saying take each day as it comes. I’ve been through the most difficult times in my life and I think the only lesson it’s taught me, is that tomorrow morning is a new morning. You know so whatever happens today let’s just wake up tomorrow morning because it’s a new day. And I must look at it with the hopes of being a new day, and then kind of live the life from there and like I said no excuses. Take responsibility. There’s always another side. I’ve learned this again through my failures, that a lot of times we live in our own minds, with our own thought processes, sometimes not realizing that there is an another side. And when we sit back and kind o, for a minute, from our mind, erase ourselves. And I say this, it’s not an easy thing to do. But sometimes it’s important to get out of our mind and have a conversation with ourselves. And I do this sometimes when you step out and say okay as a neutral person let me talk to myself. And that’s when we realize that there’s another side which I hadn’t realized. I was still thinking and living in my own thought, with my own filter and hence the world was looking in green. Because it’s not that the world is. It’s just that my filters were green and if I change the filters the world will suddenly change to look at it.
Life is not linear, you know, and I’ve learned that. I’m 51 years of age this year. Life is not linear. We will all have ups and downs, whether it’s in the startup world the, corporate world or in our life, or in our relationships. Life is not linear. That’s what you plan. But that’s how the life is. And we’ve got to learn to live with that. And the last, which is my philosophy in life is that, there is no regret. A lot of times people ask me that you know what’s been your biggest regret and I’ve said it hasn’t happened to me as yet. Because I haven’t regretted anything that’s happened to me. Because it’s just a lesson. As long as I can learn something out of that there is no regret. Because regret or sadness or some of these to me, are wasted emotions. Because if I can find a method to channelize that energy into doing something, so that regret if I can use that regret energy, channelize that to do something that that’s what life is all about. There’s no point in regretting, there’s no point in feeling sad and there’s no point in kind of sitting gloomy because that’s not going to help. As long as you can do something about it that’s what’s going to make the difference. So I have lived my life with no regrets, and whatever is happening is happening for a reason and I’m sure I learn something out of out of that. That’s what my life has been and that’s what been my kind of failures. I’ve only picked three of them here. But believe me, there are many many many more that I have lived through and I’m sure a lot of us have lived through. So thank you, thank you very much.
Original link: https://fail-sharing.org/podcast/viiveck-verma/