Loading ...Probably the most read blog of mine was on mentorship. I got lot of replies and comments direct to my inbox (in total 40) – thank you all so much for the feedback. One thing stood out in all the comments was for me to name the mentor and in fact I did not name him for two reasons, first the objective of the blog was to create awareness on the mentorship and their advantages rather than the “mentor’ itself and again I hadn’t taken permission per say from my mentors (Why I am using the plural word here, I will come back to it soon ) to name them but now that almost everyone asked me to reveal their names and I did go back to my mentors for their approval and have got it, let me introduce them here.
The person who I referred in my other Blog is Anal Jain. Mr Jain has more than 30 years of experience in top management positions in major international IT firms’ right from leading WIPRO’s InfoTech’s marketing to building and leading IBM’s business in India after their re-entry into the country. Starting his career in early 1970s with IBM India, Anal has been a part of the India IT success story, steering companies through unchartered waters and with fabulous success. Anal was a topper throughout in his B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur and holds Master degree from Brooklyn Poly, New York, USA. Today he is very actively involved with the mentorship via NASSCOM and TiE.
We spend together almost a complete day once every month in the office reviewing the past progress, analyzing the current market and strategizing based on any changed conditions in the market. When we do this micro level analysis his feedback and his ideas are amazing and helps us thoroughly – basically they have been there, done that and achieved success and their guidance, planning and help in the crucial junctures are compared to none. Let me take this opportunity to thank anal for agreeing to me our mentor and spending lot of hours with us inspite of his busy schedule, - Thanks Anal for all your help, we all appreciate it.
Let me step back, digress a bit and go back to the questions and feedback I got, and there were lot of questions on how to select a mentor to can anyone be a good mentor and should the mentor be local. To answer the first one, like how all project managers are not the best so as in mentorship too – you need to be careful on who works the best for you and with whom the chemistry is right (of the mentor and the management). A lot of home work has to be done to find out which spot is your Achilles heel and then find a mentor who is strong in that area. At S7 Software when we started we knew that our sweet spot is technology and when have great engineers but our weak spot was Sales and Marketing and in general the whole experience of Entrepreneurship as such. So those are the areas which we concentrated on to find mentors.
The other question was whether the mentor has to be local or we can still derive a lot of advantages even if the mentor is not local. To answer that question let me talk about a bit about our experience. When we started I went to another successful entrepreneur (and a serial entrepreneur) called Aki (I haven’t taken his permission yet and hence won’t reveal everything of him yet 
) who was responsible for setting up many firms in the US (in Bay Area) and all of them were sold successfully to bigger firms and then now he is back again to what he knows best – starting a new venture. He is a very busy man but encouraged and gave me lot of tips on how to start and how to tackle initial issues as they crop up while we grow. Today we are mentored by another great strategist who resides in the Bay Area (California), United States. His name is Dr. Shyam Johari, worked as Vice President for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – America, worked for Compaq (Tandem) as Director of Product Performance, System Integration, and India Software Development for NonStop Division and with Burroughs (Unisys) in various management roles. Dr. Johari holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from University of Illinois at Chicago.
We call him once every month and spend atleast couple of hours going over the metrics, results achieved and what needs to be done for the next quarter, next half year and next year so that we are on track. He is very good in analyzing the US market and he pretty much our eyes and ears in the US and gives us lot of feedback and ideas and of course brings in lot of contacts too. We also get to meet him every time one of the top management goes to US (which is almost 6 times a year). We report our earnings every Quarter to Shyam like say Infosys or Wipro does for the stock market. Because we do this we are very disciplined in this and we know even though we are a privately held firm we cannot behave like that and we use Shyam as the per say “Stock market” and every quarter we have to be prepared with answers for the tough question he (substitute with Market) asks us after we announce the results. We have been practising this of announcing our quarterly results to Shyam (and to all our employees) and sort of getting prepared to announce to the market one day when we go IPO – too big a dream right? Why not? Just because we are a small firm let’s not act like one is our mantra and only time will tell us how we succeed. I hope with Shyam’s example I have given how actually having a non-local mentor you can actually convert the fact to your advantage. Again let me take this opportunity to thank Shyam too – Shyam, thank you so much and your help (as you are aware of it) has been exemplary.
To end the note, I don’t think I have done a complete justice in mentioning all the help and advice our mentors have provided with especially in critical junctures. I have recorded as much as I could recollect but if I have to mention all another five sheets won’t be enough to be frank. My main intention behind this blog was not to either glorify my mentors or my company but to throw light on the “Mentorship” as such which is very common in the western world and in India still is in its infancy I feel and from my experience (whatever small it is) lot of entrepreneurs feel that somehow they know all and are hesitant to involve mentors and also they have lot of apprehension in a way that how can someone from outside can come and help. This is a myth and in reality everyone should try mentorship and at any stage every company is always looking to get that quantum jump to the next stage and a mentorship at that level will be very helpful and handy (irrespective of what level your firm is). Hope this blog has been educative as well as eye opener. As again please send me your feedback irrespective of whether you agree with me or not – it is always great to see another perspective.
Manjunath M Gowda, CEO, S7 Software
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Nice post! I agree too. Having a good mentor is vital for you to keep learning and expanding your knowledge from someone who has already been experienced and can pass on his/her knowledge. Thanks for the great post again.