Prof. Handa - The Alchemist

What would you think if about 100 IIT Kharagpur students on a Saturday afternoon file in an auditorium to attend a lecture, you would think that the person delivering the lecture is seriously something! Yes Prof. Sunil Handa, visiting faculty at IIM Ahmedabad and Founder of Eklavya Education Foundation, is indeed that kind of person. He taught people like Sanjeev Bhikchandani, Narendra Murkumbi and several other leading entrepreneurs in India, entrepreneurship. He took a class in IIT Kharagpur on Entrepreneurial motivation on Saturday, 8th August from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and on Sunday from 8:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. He also had half an hour one on one session with 8 people who have started a venture of their own in the IIT Kharagpur campus. He started the class by giving a brief description of his career, which started in BITS Pilani, then he went on to join IIM Ahmedabad. After graduating he joined a company, where he felt he could realize, “only 2% of his potential”. Feeling frustrated he left his job and started a consultancy company with his brother with a loan from their father. They experimented with various ideas with varied success and failure. Finally, after experimenting with about 8 ideas they finally “struck oil” with their 9th idea. His Core Emballage, a pharmaceutical manufacturing company became the largest manufacturer of IV fluids in the second year of its operation and went on to become third largest in the world later. The net worth of the company was over $240 million by 1998. Hence, through his own example, he was able to show that an entrepreneur may not gain success with the very first venture he starts off with. What is necessary is persistence, not giving up if an idea isn’t working, there are always opportunities lying around somewhere, one has to keep one’s eyes open.

He elucidated his point by giving example of one of his student’s Narendra Murkumbi, who started a factory which made neem insecticide, a thing which was unheard of. He was relatively successful with the venture, but he wanted to be more successful. So he bought sugar mills which was a sick unit and started a sugar making company named Shree Renuka Sugars. Today, he is a man worth 1600 crores rupees.

Prof. Handa kept on stressing on the fact that doing a job is limiting one’s ability. He described people from IIT, who take up jobs, as “Glorified Technical Clerks”. He, through examples from his own life and life of his students, was able to show the ability of the human mind and its infiniteness, and how entrepreneurship is able to draw it out. He exhorted people “not to prostitute yourself for a petty amount which service pays”, he told people to expand their horizon and startup to earn big. According to him, an entrepreneur doesn’t have to be a good orator or a very outgoing person, even a shy and reserved can be successful, the most important entity is passion to reach the top. Prof. Handa spoke about his batch mate at IIM, Raghavendra Rao, he was an average student with a vernacular education background and a very reserved person. Now he owns a big pharma company, Orchid Chemicals.

Next topic he spoke upon was the importance of a mentor in an entrepreneur’s journey to success. The mentor should be someone who is old and experienced, the person should know you very well and should be an emotional support, with whom you can share everything without any reservation. The person should also be very honest with you and should not give you false assurances. Mentors are really important in the early rigors of an entrepreneur’s career.

On being asked, which thing to chose “Value Creation or money”, he replied that both entities went hand and glove. If one is creating something which will add value to the society then the idea is bound to create wealth. He also discussed about the fact that choosing partner(s) is a very crucial decision. While starting up its really difficult to manage things all by oneself, so its always better to have a partner or two so that the storm can be weathered much easily, but not more than that. However, the problem is when the partnership breaks, it’s normally very depressing and it takes the individual a lot of time to recover from it. He also took swipe at people selling their successful ventures for instant money. He compared selling one’s company to selling one’s soul.

He also took up the topic of what to do just after completing college so that one is better equipped to start-up in 2-3 years time. He advocated for an M.B.A degree from a reputed institute like the IIMs. According to him, an M.B.A degree does a world of good to an individual’s development and outlook. As for jobs, he said there are primarily 3 kinds of job people interested in starting up at some point of time, should do. First, being a part of a new project, one can understand the dynamics involved in putting up a new project in motion and it would be really beneficial when he starts up. Second, a small company which is in its growing phase, it would provide the individual with a great insight. Thirdly, one can become an executive assistant to the CEO/MD in a mid-sized company, one can learn all the nuisances of running the company being an executive assistant to a top brass of the company. Prof. Handa also said that opening up a consultancy is also a great option just after graduating, through which one can have a great insight of the market and industry as a whole.

His life-story, right from a tough childhood to a belligerent entrepreneur with an appealing personality, has inspired over 250 people to become entrepreneurs. If people listening to him ever had a doubt about what they wanted to do in their life, I guess all their doubts must have vapourized into thin air, as for me I never had a doubt!!

Who’s the best?

People have aimlessly debated over which rock band is the best ever. People from old school say it’s the Beatles, some old rock heads vouch for Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. People from a relatively younger background would say it’s the Pioneers of Heavy Metal Iron Maiden, or people having softer taste would say U2. In my opinion best bands of all times have done rounds, it ranged from Eagles to Dream Theater to Iron Maiden. However, off late I sat down and heard most of the famous bands or so called critically acclaimed bands to come to a final conclusion. It was an extremely thought out process and I judged the bands on various parameters. It was based on their musical abilities, their live performances, their fan following, impact they had on world of music and their whole musical career. So, here is the list of top 10 rock bands of all times, which I came up with.

10. Eagles

The group made their debut in 1972 when they released their 1^st album Eagles. Their genre can be loosely defined as country rock, with signature guitar solos. They are most famous for their evergreen track Hotel California, everyone whether it’s a 60 year old or 12 year old kid, they know this song. They had a very successful musical career, with a huge fan base and a string of successful live performances. However, they lost points in my evaluation due to their latest album Long Road Out of Eden which was a disaster to say the least. However other tracks like Take it Easy, Love Will Keep Us Alive and New kid in Town are still a delight to listen to.

9. The Doors

Let me tell u this band was not only about Jim Morrison, they also had really talented musicians, especially their keyboardist Ray Manzarek. Doors thrilled their fans with their smash mouth music from 1965 to 1971. Jim Morrison was a household name, a demigod of those times, as he told his fans to Break on Through. However, down the line they lost track of their music and Morrison converted them into a propaganda house. Their live performances turned into Police beatings and Morrison, due to his obsession with Women, drugs and alcohol, lost his voice. Still they had produced enough of great songs to go down as one of the greatest bands ever. Roadhouse Blues, Riders of the Storm and The End to name a few.

8. Megadeth

Pioneers of Thrash Metal, one of the greatest metal bands ever with a fiery frontman, Metallica reject Dave Mustaine and an awesome guitarist in Marty Friedman. They are not a growling bunch of kids playing loud music, what makes them special is their ear-ripping guitar solos and aggressive vocals. Their gigs are one to be watched, it always has something special. Some of their best songs are A Tout Le Monde, Tornado of Souls, Trust and Crush ’em.

7. Metallica

They started off as a band having a Heavy Garage Metal kind of monotonous sound. They had some initial success with hits like Master of Puppets, Fade to Black and Battery. However, they became a legendary band with the Black album. Famous music producer Bob Rock came into the setup and made them change their style of music, which the band took with a pinch of salt, especially drummer Lars Ulrich. It turned out to be a masterstroke, songs like Enter Sandman, Unforgiven and Nothing Else Matters became chartbusters and the album was one of the best selling of all times. Another highlight of their career was Symphony and Metallica concert, it added another dimension to this great band.

6. Led Zeppelin

One can call it the mother of all post 70s band. Their name was inspired by an American journalist comments that “The band is a Zeppelin, which is going down”, so to take a dig at the Americans they kept the name led (lead the metal) Zeppelin. They went on to become the biggest band in the world with sell out gigs and millions of fans around the Globe. Stairway to Heaven was like a national anthem which unified the whole world. However, as time went by their gigs and music turned into musical exaggeration, with Jimmy Page playing not so captivating long guitar solos and Bonham banging his heads into the drum. Zeppelin magic started to wear off and was brought to an abrupt end by John Bonham’s sudden death. However, people will always remember Stairway to Heaven, A Whole Lotta Love and Kashmir.

5. U2

The Irish rock band formed in 1978 has won it all and to highlight it, they have won 22 Grammy’s in total. Be it Bono’s vocals or The Edge’s unique guitaring, it’s just flawless.

They have won fans all over the globe with their soft rock. Their hits include With or Without You, Where the Streets have No Name and Kite. They also influenced the current breed of Alternative music. They have done a large amount of humanitarian work with the help of their music, such as raising funds for Africa and spreading awareness about AIDS. They can be called a role model band.

4. Dream Theater

What happens when you put together an insane drummer like Mike Portnoy, a technically gifted guitarist like John Petrucci, a tremendously talented bassist like John Myung and an exceptional skillful keyboardist like Jordan Rudess. You get a super band; Dream Theater was able to do what Cream couldn’t. One of the most underrated band of our times, may be because laymen couldn’t understand the depth of their music, even the cover bands are scared to play their songs because of the complexity. However, if one understands it they just can’t stop listening to them. Maybe only James Labrie‘s vocals are the only chink in their armour, but its not bad either. Beauty of their music is that they continually evolve, they had started as a Progressive Rock band and now they are pioneers of Progressive Metal, along their way they touched Heavy Metal, Classical Rock and even Psychedelic. They also brought a new concept of Concept album in the shape of Scenes from a Memory, which was critically acclaimed. Live at Budokan is one of their most famous Gigs, by which they caught attention of the music world. Their famous singles are Pull Me Under, A Change of Season, Hollow Years and As I Am.

3. Iron Maiden

Gods of Heavy Metal, that’s what describes them the best. The British band took the world by storm with The Number of the Beast and Hallowed be thy name in 1981. Ear piercing guitar solos by Dave Murray and Adrian Smith, bassline by Steve Harris, shrill voice of multi-talented singer Bruce Dickinson shook the world of music. Great albums like Powerslave, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and Fear of the Dark dominated the music charts all over the world. However, it wasn’t smoothing sailing all along, in 1992 band broke up with Dickinson and Smith leaving. It was a dark period for the band as the new look of the band wasn’t appreciated by their fans, however the estranged members came back in 2000 in the album Brave New World and they were back to their best. They are also known for their kick ass live shows in which they seem to perform with boundless energy even now as they approach their mid 50s. Some of their legendary Gigs are Rock in Rio, Live after death and Raising Hell. They even filmed a documentary of their tour named Flight 666.

2. The Beatles

Not much needs to be said about these guys from Liverpool. One the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed music groups of all times. They took the world by storm back in the 60s, even now u can hear their songs wherever u go. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Ringo still rule over people’s heart. These guys must have influenced thousands of musicians all over the world. Also the generation’s lifestyle was influenced by them, the Hippie Culture. They were perhaps the first proper band of the world.

1. Pink Floyd

Psychedelic music at its best. The band debuted with Piper At the Gates of Dawn in 1967 they came across a young group of guys playing some phony music and singing some frivolous songs. However, the turning point of the band was when Syd Barrett left the band and David Gilmour took charge of it. People started calling their music Space Rock. People found it soothing and uplifting, the album Wall was a smash hit, but nothing could compare to the success of The Dark Side of the Moon. It was a ground breaking album containing singles like Brain Damage and Us and Them. They continued there success with Wish You Were Here. Band was weakened when Roger Waters left, but still it continued to be successful. The biggest contribution of Floyd to the world of music and not only rock was the extensive use of electronics in their music, which changed the whole landscape of the music world. The exclamation point of their career came on the evening of 20^th October 1994, when they performed to a sell-out crowd at Earls-Court in London, the concert came to be known as Pulse. It was a magical evening, where they belted out the famous numbers such as Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Another Brick in the Wall pt2, Coming Back to life and Comfortably Numb. If there was an impersonation of Poetry in Motion then it had to be them.

Some bands who missed out are Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Who, Queen and Creed.

Confessions of a Single mind

It’s amazing how fast things change nowadays, it’s not even been 1 year since I left Kolkata and gosh things have change. Nowadays, when people ask you about yourself, you can’t escape this question, “Are you going around with someone?”. And if the answer is NO!, they look at you and think, “Is he some kind of an alien?”. They cross question you, “You broke-up with someone?”, and if your answer is still NO, they conclude there is something wrong with you and you need some mental help. Being single, these days can be a really troublesome. This holiday I began to observe the habits of both single and “committed” people and tried to come to a conclusion whether being single is bliss or a curse. I am going to talk about various observations or rather experiences which I had during this summer.

1) Cell-Phone: It’s like bare minimum necessity for the committed people. It’s funny to see that just 5 mins after they have met they start talking on their cells again. They call up their partner about five times a day and talk for at least 15 mins each time. I don’t know what they discuss, but its certainly not Indian politics. They fight over the phone and go on telling people how they fought and made up with each other. Wow! and people say world is undergoing an economic recession. For single people it’s nothing more than an information box, because the only people who call them are their parents, to know what time they are coming home.

Inference: If you are in cell-phone industry you worship Cupid.

2) Friends: It’s like an extra for committed people, when their partner is not around they call up these people named “friends”, and tell them about their love life. If the friend is committed he or she will compare their love life with them. If the friend is single, then well all the friend says in the conversation is hello and bye. Single people are well single, because most of their childhood friends are committed now, and if any friend is single then they talk about the friends who are committed. If you are single (lets consider you are a guy) and you are going out with a childhood friend who is committed now, and his girlfriend is also coming along. Then you have to be at your best Sunday morning behaviour. You can use no slang, no PJ’s, or you put your friend in bad light, and that friend might never ever talk to you again.

Inference: Friends are randomly happening phenomena for couples, but if you are single, you really are single.

3) Park: Few weeks back I met a friend of mine, and he came up with the idea of going to a park, where we used to jog in our younger days. It used to be a really good joggers park with a lake in between and atmosphere used to be really good. When we reached there we were literally scandalized to see what had happened to the environment of the place. It was littered with couples making out, and as me and my friend were taking a lap of the park, ironically people gave us a scandalizing look. They were thinking that we were you know what!

Inference: If you are single make sure you go to a park with more than one person.

4) Opinions: Well when you are committed your taste starts to change, and mostly for the worst. When I had a crush on someone I used to listen to “Hey there Delilah”, while I had grown up listening to Pink Floyd and Eagles (Man I still can’t believe that happened). People who are committed would rather be rich than famous. To the couples the whole world revolves around them. Well for singles, their friends were the world to them but what they got was a reality check, and they finally end up doing something constructive and more fun.

Inference: Being committed can be beneficial, as they say “Ignorance is bliss”.

Taking all this into account I can now safely say, Single is Sexy! Look at Richard Branson, he’s rich, he’s single and he is a rockstar. Even though I miss my friends a lot but nothing in this world can replace them. I rather cherish the memories of the past than metamorphosize into someone I don’t like.

P.S.: No offence intended to anyone in particular.

To my friends: If your partner finds this offensive and breaks up with you, I will treat you to a drink at Someplace Else ;-).

Black Clouds & Silver Linings

Dream Theater are releasing their 10^th studio album titled Black Clouds & Silver Linings on the 23^rd of June. However, thanks to some seeders, it was leaked on the net, I couldn’t hold back myself and downloaded it. Thankfully my excitement wasn’t betrayed, DT have produced by far their best album after Scenes from a memory. Every time I switch on the PC I can’t help but listen to it.

The album consists of 6 mind-blowing and multi-genre tracks. The album opens up with track A Nightmare To Remember. It’s a 16:10 min track, which has an almost death metal kind of feel to it, with a really heavy opening riff and Mike Portnoy growling in the middle. Prior to the making of the album, Mike Portnoy and Jordan Rudess announced that they are going to inculcate some of the gothic elements into their music. This track is perfect example of that. John Petrucci wrote the lyrics, it’s about a car accident he was involved in as a child. Lyrics like the music is on the darker side and presents a very raw and gory experience of a person who has gone through a tragedy.

The 2^nd track is A Rite of Passage it’s an 8:35 min track. It’s a more of typical DT progressive metal kind of song and it sounds very similar to In the Name of God, from the album Train of Thought, though it doesn’t have any crazy solos by Petrucci and Rudess. Though it’s a very apt name for the theme of the album, as the band itself has undergone another rite of passage. Lyrics involves concepts of involves Freemasonry and secret societies.

The 3^rd track is Wither it’s a 5:25 min track. This song could be compared to Vacant from the album Train of Thought, though it has more colour to it. Petrucci wrote Wither about writer's block.

The 4^th track The Shattered Fortress is last song of Portnoy's Twelve-step Suite, which began in the album Awake with the song The Mirror. The series was started as a result of Mike Portnoy’s various experiences with alcoholism. The song has lines from The Root of All Evil, The Glass Prison, and This Dying Soul .

The 5^th track is The Best of Times which is perhaps the most emotional song ever written by DT. The Best of Times is about Mike Portnoy's father, who died due to cancer. It captures the emotions of two of the greatest songs of DT, A Change of Seasons and Hollow Years. In this song Portnoy talks about the great years he had with his father and also about the regret of the time they weren’t together. He played the song for his father prior to his death.

The last track is perhaps the best of the album, titled The Count of Tuscany, it’s an epic song which talks about the writer’s fated meeting with an eccentric man who proclaimed himself as Count of Tuscany. Listening to this song is like journeying into a path unknown. One can’t guess what’s coming next, whether it will be a beefy solo by Petrucci or an elegant piece of work by Rudess. If you think Octavarium was the best piece ever by Rudess, its time that opinion changed. Rudess is absolutely marvelous in this track. The song has shades of Metropolis Part I, may be it’s a foundation of another concept album like Metropolis Part II- Scenes from a Memory. My, my I am already getting excited about it.

Well I can’t wait to get hold of a copy of this grand masterpiece!!!! Hopefully they come to India as a part of the albums live tour.

Ref:

Every man has a price!

It’s a famous quote by a British politician of the 18^th century, Sir Robert Walpole, and till today he hasn’t been proved wrong. In the recent week newly elected Real Madrid President Florentino Perez has been making a mockery of the ongoing Global economic recession by making the two of the highest transfer deals in the History of Club football. He shook the entire football world by spending around 140 million pounds to bring in Kaka from AC Milan and Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United. An amount of money which can easily buy all the 8 teams in the IPL(Indian Premier league).

Has professionalism reached this far? Has winning become that important? The first encounter I had with the so called “The beautiful Game” was 9 years ago when Real Madrid beat Valencia 3-0 in the European Cup final. It was a magnificent display of football artistry by the Los Merengues which cast a spell upon me that night and this game became my favourite sport. At that point of time Real didn’t have any really big names in their ranks, and star players were mostly home-grown talents. There wasn’t any team in Europe who could match their brand of exhilarating football.

However a certain man named Florentino Perez became the President of the club, He was a very successful Madrid businessman and wanted to make Real Madrid a club which could win championships and also make money. To ventilate his interests he adopted the policy of ”Los Galacticos” by which he went to any extent to bring the big names of football to the club. The policy initially was a big hit as they entertained and won trophies after trophies. However, it backfired when they bought a certain man called David Beckham, Real name started to disappear from the sports page and appeared on page 3 more often than not. Despite lacking success on the pitch, Perez said,” I will never let go of Beckham, he sells T-shirts for me”. But was Perez really the root of the problem?

English premier league in the 90s was a sub standard league dominated by one team Manchester United, it was light years behind Spanish and Italian leagues. So it was not a very popular high earning league. In order to pep up the revenue it started to target Asian market to gain popularity and get revenues out of it. So the league with the help of the ever exaggerating English media gained control of the Asian market and started earning massive revenues compared to other rival leagues, hence English clubs were able to price away big names of the game from other leagues of Europe. Not so great players of English league were converted into Demigods. People in Asia knew David Beckham and didn’t know Zinedine Zidane. So in order to counter this, people like Perez broke their bank accounts to remain at par with English clubs. However, English clubs went a step further and started selling the clubs to foreign investors who would pump in millions of pounds get the best players in the club.

However in the whole process only one thing suffered: “The beautiful game”. The game has been slaughtered by these people, who in the name of professionalism have taken away the very essence of the sport- “Amateurism”, the raw love for the game. Even players are to be blamed, they are nothing more than mercenaries, who kiss the crest of the t-shirt after scoring a goal and the very next day would pounce on a lucrative offer which would pay them more. Some of them even go as far as saying that they love the club and would retire there and then behind the scene threaten to leave it if they are not paid as per their demands. Ronaldo as far as one month back said that he won’t ever leave Manchester United, but as soon as he got an offer of 12 millions pounds per year he readily packed his bags and set off for Madrid.

The game is really dying, every year we see the same teams reaching the top. Where have the Steaua Bucharests and Red Star Belgrades gone? Where are players out of Ajax youth academy who blew away each every team in their wake and won 4 European cups?

The thing is that, when it’s a battle between money and love 99 out 100 times, it is the money which wins. Love it or hate it , Robert Walpole’s words will always be right.