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How India’s First Unicorn Solves Problems Differently | Dhiraj Rajaram (Mu Sigma)
227 Plays4 years ago
"The Big D is not Data.. it's Decision."
This core insight from Dhiraj Rajaram encapsulates the philosophy behind Mu Sigma. It highlights that the true value lies not just in accumulating data, but in using it effectively to make better decisions, a principle that guided him in building India's first unicorn.
Dhiraj Rajaram is the Founder of Mu Sigma, the pioneering decision sciences company recognized as India's first unicorn. Starting the venture by investing $275,000 of his own money, partly by selling his home, he scaled Mu Sigma to over $160 million in revenue. Dhiraj holds an MBA from Chicago Booth, previously worked at Booz Allen Hamilton and PwC, and has been honored as an E&Y and ET Entrepreneur of the Year and featured in Forbes 40 under 40.
Key Insights from the Conversation:
- Learning Over Knowing: Prioritize continuous learning and discovery over static knowledge.
- Experimentation Over Experts: Value trying new things and learning from results rather than relying solely on established expertise.
- Interaction Property: The real value (the 'New IP') is created in the interaction between different elements (people, disciplines, data).
- Problem Solving in Uncertainty: Companies need new ways to solve problems in a world of increasing entropy and uncertainty.
- Abundance Mindset: Approaching challenges and opportunities with a belief in abundance (of talent, learning, etc.) is crucial.
- Being vs. Becoming Entrepreneurial: Focus on the act of being enterprising; becoming a founder is a potential outcome, not the primary goal.
- Authenticity Matters: Genuine interaction and self-awareness are more valuable than superficial networking or posturing.
Chapters:
- 0:00:58 - Introduction: Dhiraj Rajaram & India's First Unicorn
- 0:01:39 - Early Life, Grandparents & Dealing with Pain
- 0:11:02 - From Cricket Dreams to Engineering Reality
- 0:14:19 - College, Meeting Ambiga & Early Career (PwC)
- 0:18:28 - Why Consulting Wasn't Enough: Seeking Freedom
- 0:21:04 - The Leap: Selling His Home to Fund Mu Sigma
- 0:24:28 - The Mu Sigma Idea: Solving Problems in a New Way
- 0:37:46 - The Art of High-Value B2B Sales & Client Relationships
- 0:49:41 - Scaling to $100M+: Revenue Growth & Team Building Philosophy
- 0:58:30 - Authenticity, Philosophy & Why Networking Fails
- 1:07:06 - Personal Toll: Separation, $250M Payout & Rebuilding Mu Sigma
- 1:15:04 - Advice to Founders: Be Entrepreneurial, Let the Idea Lead
Hashtags:
#FounderThesis #DhirajRajaram #MuSigma #UnicornIndia #StartupIndia #DecisionScience #BigData #Analytics #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #B2BSales #ScalingBusiness #StartupAdvice #IndianStartups #Podcast #Innovation #ProblemSolving #FounderJourney #ChicagoBooth #BoozAllen #PwC #TechIndia
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
H.T. Smartcast You are listening to an H.T. Smartcast original
00:00:24
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Aurob. And you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn.
00:00:40
Speaker
The struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred. The struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can't hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is the struggle. The struggle is unhappiness. The struggle is not failure, but it causes failure, especially if you are weak.
00:01:02
Speaker
For any science student, Nu and Sigma are just Greek letters, but Dheeraj can sum up the entire world between these two. Dheeraj Rajaram is the founder and CEO of Nu Sigma, the very first unicorn to come out of India.
00:01:20
Speaker
It is a company of exceptional problem solvers that is the culmination of a deeply thought conviction based on both physics and philosophy about what the world needs. In this fascinating conversation, we get a peek into the mind of one of the most enigmatic and original thinkers of India's startup ecosystem to decode how to build a unicorn without really trying to build one.
Dheeraj's Upbringing and Family Challenges
00:01:52
Speaker
Just give me a bit about your childhood. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? Like your schooling, bulk of your schooling? I grew up between Mumbai, Chambur and Chennai. I actually grew up with my grandparents for the initial years. And then later my father was with the Reserve Bank of India. He was working there. So it was a transferable job. And then my later years I spent with my parents at high school in Chennai. And then did my college in Chennai too.
00:02:20
Speaker
How old were you by the time you left your grandparents and joined your father? First 11 or 12 years, I was brought up by my grandfather and my grandmother. Where? They were in Chambur. Yeah, in Chambur, Mumbai. So by the way, my grandfather is 98 years old now. He lives with me. Life coming full circle. He wants to go for another 5-10 years more.
00:02:46
Speaker
So when you moved with your father by the age of 13 or so, so at that stage, what were you like? Like, what do you remember about those years, you know, as a teenager?
00:02:57
Speaker
I would say I was very precocious. I used to struggle at school. Good at sports. I played cricket for my school team and went on to play cricket under 16 at multiple levels. I had difficulty following a system from the beginning. I struggled quite a bit with attention. I had what you would call a wandering mind.
00:03:19
Speaker
That was how it was. My grandmother was pretty amazing. She basically realized very early on and she was one of my relatives told her that this kid has too much energy in him.
00:03:35
Speaker
So she had put me on lots and lots of extracurricular activities in the beginning. So I used to play better than dumb. I still, you know, I did a little bit of singing. I did a lot of things that typical, you know, you know, tamrams actually would engage in a little bit.
00:04:00
Speaker
And you know, when you are brought up by your grandparents, you are spoiled also. So, I was one of those kids.
00:04:11
Speaker
Okay. Could it be that you had what is now called ADHD? I think all of these things are like over. Look, I didn't have an easy childhood. I can tell you that. My father struggled with alcoholism. And later we realized that
00:04:38
Speaker
He also had this thing called bipolar disorder. It was not an easy one, but he loved us quite a bit. He had his issues, but that doesn't mean that he didn't love me and didn't love my sister. That's one of the reasons why I was brought up by my grandfather and my mom had me when she was 18 years old.
00:05:01
Speaker
So she was a very, very young mother and father was 23 or something like that. So they were very young parents. And because of this issue, it made sense for my grandfather and my grandmother to
00:05:16
Speaker
to take care of me in the beginning. Fun childhood in Mumbai, the typical Mumbai building society kid, playing cricket in the galleys, dancing in Ganesh Chaturthi, watching every Hindi movie I could watch.
00:05:34
Speaker
I'm a big movie buff so I like storytelling and visual storytelling quite a bit. And then later my mom obviously was missing the fact that she could not be with me, it was very difficult for her. So eventually she and my father took me to Chennai.
00:05:53
Speaker
And Chennai was like a tough time for you, like growing up in Chennai once. No, it was fun. It was fun. My father wanted to be in Chennai because initially the reason was that Chennai had prohibition. And so we thought it could be better for him because he was there. I
Impact of Alcoholism and Early Life Lessons
00:06:13
Speaker
studied in a nice, cute school called Bharati Vidyapavan's Rajaji Vidyashram.
00:06:18
Speaker
That's why it was a great school and in fact, it encouraged quite a bit of lateral thinking. You know, I used to, I loved writing, played cricket quite seriously. So it was a, it was fun times. I mean, there were issues at home, but that's not what I remember about my childhood the most. Your father was pretty open about the fact that he was struggling with alcoholism. Like it was not something which he was hiding.
00:06:44
Speaker
We all knew that at home. Alcoholism is a family problem. It is not an individual problem. It affects the whole family. It affects the person for sure, but it does affect the children. It affects the wife. In fact, when you get to study it, you will know that there's something called Alcoholics Anonymous, which kind of talks about the person to be a solution for that person. But then there's something called ILTEAM for the kids and ALANON for the spouse.
00:07:12
Speaker
The problem in India is we don't talk about issues like this and mental health quite openly. And it's a big issue. I also believe that these are all gifts. Pain is always a gift eventually. It does sculpt you. Actually, when I look back, I don't think I would be who I am without the challenges at all points of time in my life. So, you know, I am trying to understand what was the pain that you were personally feeling. How did it impact your life?
00:07:41
Speaker
When I was in Chennai, 6th standard and 12th standard, if I told you that we shifted our house at least 8 times, because something would happen, something would go wrong, we would have financial, some financial distress, we would have to sell a home or rent a home or move from one place, something would always, there was always a change.
00:08:01
Speaker
Change was a constant. I guess it was setting me up for a life of entrepreneurship in a nice way. So moving from one place to another. Also there was a little bit of power. Sometimes he would have trouble folding the drink and therefore it was not in good state. So that was not easy to watch him go through that. There was a little bit of shame around societal shame.
00:08:26
Speaker
and me and my sister were coping with it in different ways. She was a little younger than me. I can say that I grew up angry I can tell you that.
00:08:43
Speaker
I know. Angry Tha was Tula. I mean, now he's no more. I kind of, maybe initially angry at my father, but now when I look at it, I was angry with the whole world and myself also equally. You know, I get very emotional when I think about my father.
00:08:59
Speaker
I didn't have an understanding at that time that he was struggling and he had mental health issues, which I now know. And in fact, Mu Sigma supports a lot of, from a corporate social responsibility, we support mental health in a big way. And in fact, this Deepika Padukone thing, we support her. I think she's doing an amazing job talking about, you know, these kinds of issues. This was always there was in our society. And we just need to accept it now.
00:09:29
Speaker
Did it lead you to resolve something? You know, like typically, you know, strong experiences lead you to make some resolution that I will not let such and such thing happen to me or I will not become like so and so. Did it lead to any such resolutions? I don't smoke. I don't drink.
00:09:46
Speaker
At Mu Sigma, it's a policy that no alcohol is allowed in any company event. So I do think subconsciously it might have led to all of this. But Mirko, I didn't want to be normal. I was comfortable not being normal. In fact, at some point, Mirko, I didn't mind having a point of view and being okay about not fitting in. Oh, I think at an early age that had got imprinted into my psyche.
Educational Journey and Career Beginnings
00:10:15
Speaker
How did that get imprinted? Like how did having a father struggling with health issues lead you to feel that normal is not for me and I'm okay being a rebel.
00:10:26
Speaker
He was one of the most creative people I know. In Amma, he brought tremendous amount of love to our home. So there was a lot of time of love inside the house, but there were also times of pain. Neighbors always knew that something was wrong, that obviously that did have some impact. So I think this must have happened more at a subconscious level more than anything else.
00:10:52
Speaker
So then by the time you were wrapping up your schooling and hitting your late teens, what had you thought that what would you go on to do? What would you go on to become? Did you have ambitions in terms of maybe you wanted to become a movie star considering how much you love movies?
00:11:16
Speaker
I did play cricket seriously. Loved the game. When I was about 16 years old, I realized that I was not good enough for reaching the highest levels of the game. I could have probably played for Ranji, maybe, or maybe tape team, but not good enough.
00:11:33
Speaker
I mean, now I'm even more sure about that because I know all the guys at that time who were better than me and they didn't make it. My father just wanted me to settle down. He was a bank clerk. In fact, when I was after 10th standard, my father actually, unlike other fathers, my father came to me and said, don't aim big and all in life.
00:11:54
Speaker
why don't you just take up this small job at LIC, which will give you like a, they will take care of you from day one, clerical job in the beginning, and then you will eventually make you an officer and you can do your PA or something big or something like that on the side. It's a safe job, it's safe. I was kind of pissed at him saying that, look, everybody else is like, go conquer the world and you want me to be like, do anything. I mean like, but it's out of love. I mean, keep in mind it was not,
00:12:23
Speaker
He just wanted safety for me and he just wanted me to have a safe life. And I was like, you know, saying, no boss. So I said, look boss, though I struggled between 10th standard and 12th standard quite a bit, I just gritted my teeth and studied really, really hard. And it was not easy paying attention, sitting and doing one thing, writing questions and answers, all of those kinds of things, following the rules. All of this is very difficult.
00:12:52
Speaker
So, I think it required me to maybe have five times the effort of other people. It might have come more naturally. And being a Tambram in South India, it meant that the reservation policy against education meant that it's next to impossible to get into engineering on merit. I realized that IIT was not the case.
00:13:12
Speaker
so hard. My favorite college was Bidspilani. I really wanted to go to Bidspilani. And then there was College of Engineering, Gindi, REC, all of these kind of things. I eventually got into College of Engineering, Gindi and REC. I took College of Engineering, Gindi in Chennai, which is actually not easy to get in, frankly. It's a great school. That was, I surprised my parents quite a bit. You know, okay, I could do that. You think I got lucky also a little bit.
00:13:37
Speaker
A lot of things that really went my way. I actually now, when I look at this, I look at my life, I say, there are so many times that luck has helped me. A lot of gratitude also. What did I was? There are a lot of, I feel there are a lot of people who are much better than me, who might have not been successful. A similar kind of success. Because I recognize that actually, because I think luck has a lot of things to do in life here. Really authentic and honest, you have to recognize that.
00:14:04
Speaker
like great luck for you that you got into College of Engineering, Gundi. Okay. And so during these four years of engineering, were you still staying at home or was it now like a hostile life? I was a hostile life. I was like free bird, first time in life. I had a lot of fun. After that, I decided I could not study the way I was studying between 10th standard and 12th standard, you know.
00:14:33
Speaker
that happened to me in college was met ex-wife Ambigar. Me and I keep saying this joke. We shared the same rank in our class. She from the top and me from the bottom. It's a single digit rank. It's fun. I mean, like, you know, I wasn't like a love at first sight with Ambigar.
00:14:55
Speaker
For me, it was love at first sight. For her, she needed a little bit. She was more like a venture capitalist. You know, she needed to check me out like really hard. You were pretty bold as a young man. Like, I mean, I probably would have been among those kids who could never have gone up to a girl to express my feelings.
00:15:23
Speaker
No, I had no problem here. I had only proposed to my French teacher when I was in ninth standard. Oh, wow. Yeah, I was like very normal to make higher, man. So, I had no problem punching above it. Did you get into trouble for proposing to your French teacher? No, I think my grades actually went up after that.
00:15:53
Speaker
But yeah, I did. Yeah, I mean like, look, Ambi was a very conservative girl and like, he's a conservative girl. Was that a Tamram? Yeah, she's a Tamram too. She basically would not agree to date me till the end of the fourth year. But you were pretty first sentence single-minded in your pursuit and... Look, someone else might have said, you take a coyote or a triker though, but you didn't.
00:16:17
Speaker
That's been a constant theme with me to have some of those traits. You know, I also felt that she liked me, but she would not, she could not say yes, even though she liked me because of various reason, instinct, whatever I felt that she liked. And eventually she did say that, you know, because why don't you talk to my parents and if they agree. So she had like written a complete algorithm. It was if then else, if then else.
00:16:40
Speaker
First you have to get a job, then you have to make sure that you have to talk to my father, then he has to agree. And then if you go to, if we both write a GRE and we go to school, go to US, then both of us should go to US. Only one of us cannot go to US. And that was like a complete algorithm. Now thinking back, it looks interesting, but puts a smile on your face. So you were doing computer science in Gundi.
00:17:04
Speaker
It's Gindi actually. College of Engineering, Gindi, I was doing electrical engineering. Both of us were doing electrical engineering. At the end of that, the best thing that happened to, I was one of the first people to be placed for campus. TCS had offered a job. Thing about that was then I could go and speak to Ambedkar's mother. I didn't take up that job because both of us went to the United States to get our masters in electrical engineering. Okay. So you both went to the same university only.
00:17:32
Speaker
Initially she went to a different university. It's called University of Maine and I went to Wayne State University. But then where she went was extremely cold. So she decided to switch and she was feeling very lonely. I don't know if you know United States, but Maine is like next to the river. It's in one corner.
00:17:49
Speaker
And it's very, very sparsely populated, very beautiful. But then she basically felt that she was not able to take it there. And then she she decided to move to Wayne State University. And I was a research assistant. So we had realized that if we got married, she would also get a fusion waiver. So we got married really, really early. So I got married when I was 22.
00:18:14
Speaker
I did my masters in computer engineering. I quickly started working for PricewaterhouseCoopers. I worked initially as a systems programmer, then worked as a systems and business analyst.
00:18:28
Speaker
I did quite well there, became a principal very quickly, got promoted pretty much every year. And then I decided to get my MBA from University of Chicago, which is now called the Booth School of Business. Post-University of Chicago, this is one of the worst times to graduate. The internet recession had just kicked in and we were coming out of that and so getting it out.
00:18:51
Speaker
This was after 9-11. Yeah, after 9-11, everything was like, it was not an easy time. At least two thirds of my class didn't have a job. So, this is from University of Chicago. Like, typically every year, every person has two jobs. Yeah, it's an Ivy League school, basically. Ivy League school, whatever, you know. So, I decided, I had got a job with Booz Allen Hamilton as a management consultant. So, I worked there for a
00:19:15
Speaker
for nearly two years. And meanwhile, what was Ambigar doing? Ambigar was always working at Motorola. She was a research engineer. She was a very talented programmer, working on, at that time, the basic infrastructure behind Bluetooth, in the cell phones, all of those kinds of things. That's what she was working on. Systems programming. Just when I was graduating from business school is when we had our child, Akash. You were both in the same city only. Her job was in Chicago.
00:19:44
Speaker
Management consulting does not have a city, right? So, you are always flying out. We could live wherever her job was. So, how was the experience at Booz Allen as a management consultant? It was a high-profile job. I liked it. But very quickly, I realized that the system is a system banana.
00:20:05
Speaker
I understood that I am not a consumer of a carrier. I'd rather be a producer of carriers. He made a thought process here. I felt it needed freedom. That freedom of expression.
00:20:19
Speaker
It became very very important for me.
00:20:35
Speaker
Yeah, there were many examples where I would feel like you could ask a question why not and do things very boldly. The system was willing to not take risks and I was a younger guy. It meant that I had to get promoted over at least three levels before I could have a say in those kinds of things. I just felt that I was not willing to wait. You know, I think that freedom of expression became the motivating point.
00:21:03
Speaker
When you decided that you want to do your own stuff, what was your situation?
Founding Mu Sigma and Philosophies
00:21:08
Speaker
Did you have money in the bank to fund it? Did you start it in the US? Describe to me that transition from Booz Allen into becoming an entrepreneur. So first thing is naturally, I don't like to spend money. My needs are quite minimal.
00:21:27
Speaker
I think I grew up in a, you know, one bedroom house in Mumbai with my grandparents. Initial parts of our childhood was also difficult lower middle class. I would save a lot of money. I would have saved easily, easily 400 to 500 thousand dollars in the first seven, eight years. And did you get a scholarship at Booth?
00:21:48
Speaker
No, I didn't get a scholarship at Booth, but I got a scholarship at Wayne State. I was making a very good salary at Price for a Husker Bush, and Booz Island is obviously a high profile job. All of those times...
00:22:00
Speaker
No vacations. The only luxury, the only thing we would do is come back home and visit parents in India. And we had invested into a home and stuff like that. You know, at some point of time when I really had that epiphany that I could strike out on my own. Basically, I decided to put my own money actually. The initial funding for New Sigma was about $350,000 roughly.
00:22:24
Speaker
out of which I put about 275,000 of our own money and basically, we mortgage the home and eventually sold it. I still have a picture of that home because that's the home that was sold to start New Sigma. We got started and I'm really glad that I did that. I think it got started. To some extent, I would say I was okay not having money eventually.
00:22:48
Speaker
But you were, I mean, you were a father at this stage. And, you know, so what did Ambika feel about you putting all your collective life savings into starting off an entrepreneurial venture?
00:23:04
Speaker
See, first of all, I think you have to understand, Nambika is quite an independent person. She had a job at Modrola, so she suffered that, worst come, worst case, what is the thing? I mean, Dheeraj will not make money. That's okay. We really don't need so much. So that was one perspective. And second perspective is that, I think she also knows and I also noticed that I am not going to listen to anybody else.
00:23:24
Speaker
freedom of expression. I was not going to listen to any boss. She knew that about me and I knew that eventually about myself. There was no other way. There was actually no other way but for me to go and do this.
00:23:40
Speaker
I feel like we think that we do things. I don't feel that's true. When people ask me, did you come up with the idea of Mu Sigma? I always say, I think the idea of Mu Sigma came to me. I think we are all just channels. If I am speaking to you right now and you're coming to me right now, I do think it is
00:24:00
Speaker
it just channels for information you know information has its own mind and it wants to do its own thing and i think if you you study integrated information theory you will realize that
00:24:11
Speaker
Even you as a human being, as life, are nothing but information. You're carrying information, carrying your great grandfather's nose, Genghis Khan's eyes. Basically, you are just a DNA propagating machine. Basically, DNA is nothing but encoded ontology of biological information. So let me put it that way, that you are just an information carrying, a temporary information carrying machine that has a purpose between 60 to 100 years or whatever, 50 to 100 years.
00:24:39
Speaker
who will eventually carry that information to the next level. How did the Mu Sigma idea reach you? When you were quitting, did you already have clarity on what you want to do? Or you just knew I want to start something and I'm going to quit? No, that was not the case. I think it was the idea of Mu Sigma that made me quit. I had no intention to quit Moozallang. I was doing well, but the idea was so seductive. And the thought process of the idea
00:25:08
Speaker
In the beginning, it talked to me through different dimensions. The first dimension was that, there is a different way to think about problem solving than how things are happening right now. The second theme, global delivery and globalization is not just for cost arbitrage, it could be for innovation arbitrage also. That was the second theme.
00:25:34
Speaker
Third theme, people just don't take enough chances. Innovation requires a certain kind of ecosystem. And building that ecosystem means you have to do a few things for organizations. For example, you want to make those organizations learning organizations. You want to make those organizations enjoy experiments and not be dependent on experts.
00:26:03
Speaker
You want those organizations to not keep secrets, but share secrets.
00:26:09
Speaker
You want those organizations to understand that the new IP is interaction property. Basic, some of these themes, what does it mean to get people to create the next generation way of thinking about problem solving, a new kitchen that can make you better. Those are all coming to me. Look, I have the advantage of time and words that will express myself better right now, but at that point of time,
00:26:34
Speaker
They were all coming in different ways to me. That's how it got started. Could you like give me examples of how these realizations came to you?
Mu Sigma's Innovative Approach
00:26:43
Speaker
So for example, you said you want organizations that don't depend on experts. Was it because Booz Allen Hamilton typically comes in as an external expert and you felt that approach was wrong? Hamilton is an amazing company, but it's a typical management consulting firm. And what I realized was all of these people in large Fortune 500 companies
00:27:03
Speaker
would ask us stuff that we didn't know anything about, just because we would say they would feel good about it. And that's when I realized that good first principles thinking is so much valuable, but does not have an institutionalized way of making first principles thinking happen. So that was the, that was how
00:27:21
Speaker
So you were clear that profit is important and you want to make money. But what exactly was the business plan or the business idea that came to you, that this is what I will offer as a service?
00:27:34
Speaker
thought process was that the new kind of way of thinking about problem-solving is important. It was there in the world. One way of thinking about problem-solving was management consulting. I was there, so I had understood it. It's about taking what works in one place, having best practices and processes around that and applying it in other places.
00:27:53
Speaker
So that's management consulting at a high level. The second one was information technology, IT, was about using technology computers applied on business to automate things and make things efficient. So that was the second way of thinking about problem solving. A variant of that was products, which was taking a specific problem, putting very specific technology for that problem,
00:28:19
Speaker
with very minimal intervention of human beings and then solving for that. But each of these when you look at it, right, have their issues. Management consulting does not have science, technology, engineering and math and therefore is not very scalable. IT wants very clear requirements. The requirements keep changing and the complexity of the organization is quite huge.
00:28:43
Speaker
then it slows things down. Product, on the other hand, is meant for a specific purpose. If the purpose keeps changing in a world of higher uncertainty, you know, products cannot be as flexible, right? So, the third process was, look, what is the one thing that continuously is increasing? And that's the second law of thermodynamics, it's entropy and uncertainty. So, in a world which is going to have increasing uncertainty, you needed
00:29:11
Speaker
A more scalable way of thinking about problem solving, you needed a more agile way of thinking about problem solving, you needed a more flexible way of thinking about problem solving, which was something that needed aspects of all of these ways of thinking, but still was new. So in Mathna, if you have a point and then you unroll that point,
00:29:33
Speaker
it becomes a line and the first dimension gets created. That line unrolls itself, it becomes like a square and the second dimension gets created. The square unrolls itself, it becomes a cube. Every time this unrolling happens, a new dimension gets created.
00:29:49
Speaker
My perspective is that, look, I think that meant that there was something which had aspects of all of this but was not any of this. There was a need for a new category that would solve for the increased entropy that we were all going to experience sooner, if not later. And that thought was so endearing for me. I could just think about that for a lot of time.
00:30:17
Speaker
So what was that new way of solving problems? I mean, you know, I'm trying to pin you down on specifically what was the business idea. The business idea was that, you know, a new way of thinking about problem solving
00:30:32
Speaker
included a future of interactions. And even now we feel our time has not yet come, we are ahead of our time. So if you notice, first thing first is it's an original idea. It's not like a, if you are very simplistic about view sigma, you will think that it is an analytics group, but it's not actually. The way I see it is that the future of problem solving is interaction based and not entity based. Again, I'll give you an example. Okay. So you have to bear with me a little bit, you know,
00:31:00
Speaker
I also want you to explain interaction property. So right now you and I are talking. Okay. I am saying something. You're saying something. Both of us are entities. But there is something between us which is our interaction. That's where magic is.
00:31:17
Speaker
It is in the hump. It sits above you and me. So if you were to look at it, you have two dimensions x and y. The interaction of both of these dimensions is not felt in either of those dimensions. It's actually felt in the dimension z, where it can see x and y equally. There is no point in x and no point in y, which can see as much as a point in z, which can see x and y. You see my point? So now you take that thought process.
00:31:44
Speaker
And you say that, okay, here is a world which is having more and more entropy, which is having higher volatility and ambiguity and complexity. And it is constantly becoming more and more afraid of risk-taking or more and more afraid of uncertainty. Innovation is nothing but accepted uncertainty. When you have uncertainty and you don't accept it, you go back to the status quo.
00:32:10
Speaker
And when you accept it, you go back to a new way of thinking. That is, don't accept it. Decide what you want to accept and what you want to change. And by the way, you know, this thought process actually is a very nice thing which happens as part of Alcoholics Anonymous. Which actually they say, the prayer goes something like this. God granted the serenity.
00:32:40
Speaker
to accept the things that I cannot change, courage to change the things that I can and wisdom to know that it is. So, this perspective of courage to change the things that you can, you know, comes from accepted uncertainty and this new world of accepting uncertainty, being more friendly towards your sigma to prepare yourself for and it can't happen by itself.
00:33:02
Speaker
What do you mean by sigma here? Being friendly? Sigma is uncertainty. Basic things are mathematics. Everything about the world can be described between mu and sigma. It's about what your expectations are and how you are going to be surprised or disappointed by that.
00:33:17
Speaker
mu is expectations. So let's say you want to make a decision in the world to make a decision, you need to know you need to have an expectation or an answer. And you need to know that what confidence you can believe in that answer that comes from mu and sigma. You statistically means average, right? Statistically mean the average expectation, you know, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. And average sets your expectation, right? So so the thinking here is like, look, this future means that you need a combination of interaction property is going to become more important. For example,
00:33:47
Speaker
The future of problem solving is not that you have a marketing problem or a product problem or a sales problem or a supply chain problem. You have a problem that's an interaction of all of those things. The future of problem solvers is not that you have a business analyst, you have an applied mathematician, you have a programmer, you have a design thinker, you have an interaction of all of those kind of things. I'll give you an example, right? If you were to look at cricket, I'm a, you know, I love cricket, so I'll give you a cricket analogy.
00:34:12
Speaker
And first I'll start with the business perspective, where the world is going from bigger is better to faster is better. So it's going from this perspective of economies of scale, economies of speed. Organizations are being tested on how responsive they are going to be towards various things that's happening around them.
00:34:31
Speaker
Now, you look at it from a cricket analogy. Cricket is a test cricket. It was a two innings game. It was really a test of making things happen over a long period of time. You had very specialists. You had a cricket keeper who was a specialist. You had batsmen who were specialists. You had a few all rounders and you had like specialist bowlers. And then it became one day cricket.
00:34:55
Speaker
And in one day cricket, the advent of the all-rounder became very important. The wicket-keeper became wicket-keeper batsmen. You had Gilchrist coming in and the test cricket was like people like Marsh and Girmani. And you had in one day cricket, you had Gilchrist and Dhoni.
00:35:10
Speaker
And then you had 2020, which compressed the game to a few hours. And in that, you pretty much every person had to do many things. We could keep our obviously was a, we could keep our batsman and you had to take chances very differently than how you would date in even in one day.
00:35:28
Speaker
The game shifted quite a bit towards taking chances, towards trying new ways of hitting the ball that would consider blasphemy in one-day cricket or in desktop.
00:35:41
Speaker
And it eventually changed one day cricket and test cricket too, because having 2020 meant that the scoring was going to follow a different rhythm in one day cricket and was going to follow a different rhythm in test cricket. So this perspective of that, this game became a game of producers of optionality and all around them is nothing but a producer of optionality. Yeah, you have multiple options with them.
00:36:08
Speaker
But even options you can do with him. What does the world of uncertainty need? It needs optionality.
00:36:14
Speaker
So the world of higher uncertainty meant that you needed organizations themselves to be producers of optionality and you need organizations to have a problem solving kitchen that was going to be producers of optionality. So that became actually a business perspective. It was not mu shunning sigma. It was mu seeking sigma. Why?
00:36:42
Speaker
because in the past you were in the business of predictability, you had a factory, you wanted the same product, you had Six Sigma which was all about reducing sick, you had methods that you would put in place which was about reducing uncertainty. In the future, in a world of higher entropy, it was a world of embracing uncertainty to optionality and this meant that this new kind of kitchen
00:37:06
Speaker
Was a combination of people processes and platform that was an interaction property it was not going to be the superman which is going to be a normal encompassing person it was not going to be the robot which is a machine it was an iron man. Man interacting with machine and it was going to be a place where math business technology was going to interact with each other.
00:37:25
Speaker
And it meant that you needed to see problem solving, not just from a perspective of analysis, but also from a perspective of synthesis, which is bringing things together. And it was so much different to Jayeda. That's what I would say was the core concept of the idea of music.
00:37:43
Speaker
Okay. So how was Mu Sigma creating options? You essentially explained to me that Mu Sigma's offering to a client was that you would create options to help them deal with uncertainty. So how exactly did that happen? It came down to just one word was. Okay. And that one word is abundance. Abundance mindset is required. Is there abundance in knowledge?
00:38:14
Speaker
or is there abundance in learning? Then when you see that now, really quickly you realize that the abundance exists in learning. So is there, I'll reframe this to you with a little bit negativity, negative perspective. Is that abundance in knowledge or is there abundance in ignorance? There is actually abundance in discovery of ignorance, which is nothing but learning. Right. Okay.
00:38:43
Speaker
So, unless you are friendly with your ignorance and smiling at that ignorance beautifully and seeking to convert, discover it more or know what you don't know.
00:38:54
Speaker
and then figure out how you can know more about it. That perspective becomes learning. It meant that first principles thinking and understanding learning by looking inward and looking outward is going to become important. Learning by looking inward is meant that you have to look at your data, you have to look at what is happening, you look at your transactional data, you are looking at this thing. Even in spirituality, when you look inward, you are watching your breath. So, all of that is just having an appreciation for Kia ora.
00:39:25
Speaker
What's happening with customers, what's happening with markets, what's happening again, looking at data, all of these kind of things. And it's not just looking at data, looking at data interacting with technology and building data lakes, building databases, databases and data lakes and data engineering interacting with applied mathematics, building data science.
00:39:45
Speaker
What do you mean by data leak? Sorry, I'm not from a data science. When you collect a lot of these data and you put it in one place, think of it in a simple manner like that. So it's a database. Think of it like that. So the first part is just making the data sit in one place.
00:40:03
Speaker
about collecting new kinds of data. All of that forms or creating data when data does not exist. All of that comes in this perspective of data engineer. Data engineering, when it interacts with applied mathematics, that becomes data science.
00:40:17
Speaker
And data science, when it interacts with business thinking, problem space, all of those things, it becomes decision science. So again, as the level of interactions increase, it becomes more and more useful. Just like the coffee seeds, when it interacts with water, it becomes the coffee decursion. The coffee decursion, when it interacts with milk, it becomes a coffee. When you put a little bit of essence, vanilla, sugar, everything in it, it becomes a very different product. So you see this?
00:40:46
Speaker
transformation occurs as more and more interaction takes place. You and me are just higher interaction of the algae that we originally were. It's not a new concept. It was there in nature all the time. So this perspective of seeing things as interactions become very, very important.
00:41:02
Speaker
And it meant that for these organizations, you needed them to have a perspective of this new kind of problem solvers who are a combination of business analyst and applied mathematician and a programmer, which means a new kind of talent had to be created. You needed new kinds of technology who would work with that new kind of talent.
00:41:21
Speaker
which meant that prefabricated algorithms needed to be created, prefabricated machines needed to be created. You needed an entire Iron Man suit for this new Tony Star that was getting created. And you kind of need a new training, new processes, all of these kind of things. New processes, new people and new platforms, building a new way of thinking about problems. I think it's quite audacious. There is an audaciousness around that. It was not like I'll build an Uber for India or I'll build an Amazon for India. There's something about originality that has
00:41:51
Speaker
Hopefully, more and more teams in India will be more original. So if I was to put in a little bit of layman language on what you wanted to create, it was like a management consulting 2.0, which was more driven by data.
00:42:08
Speaker
It's not a problem. We don't want to really understand things. We want to represent the future as some version of our past. That's kind of like saying Rajnikanth is the Abhata Pachan of South India. Madras says to look at you and says that, we have a problem with them. So, you know,
00:42:37
Speaker
See, we live in a world where labels work and how would you have sold this to a client? You could not have. I actually think that, you know, human beings, clients are first human beings, right? And then they are clients and they appreciate originality.
00:42:56
Speaker
I thought that it was going to be a good time to go to India or to end my life. But I just thought it was going to be a good time.
00:43:10
Speaker
If he thought of lagana as the Ammar Akbar Anthony of rural Gujarat. So how would you feel about that? I think he trusted the world. He trusted his audience and he said, look, I'm not going to underestimate them. I think we underestimate people. People are capable of so much abundance. The abundant mindset is that you don't give up on your people. You don't give up on your customer base. They will rise up to the level that you can allow them to rise up.
00:43:37
Speaker
Akshay there is a difference between being simple and being simplistic and that's a very very careful thing that you want to not fall into the trap of most.
00:43:45
Speaker
Yeah, Gandhi would have strived for being simple. Yeah, but he was a very, very complex human being. For him, understood that non-violence as a theme was simple, but it had put a lot of thoughts in it. It became a way of life for him. Concentrated a lot of things into it. That was his, it was an essence.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yeah, being simple is tough. Being simplistic is actually simple. That's what I'm saying.
First Client and B2B Sales Strategy
00:44:15
Speaker
Whenever mind doesn't want to engage, we become simplistic. So this is a management consulting of 2.0. When I kind of made you exercise your brain, becoming hard, that's when you succumb to that. You know what I'm saying?
00:44:32
Speaker
I was also thinking of my listeners who may not be so willing to exercise the brain so much. Look, I think I might give up on them so fast.
00:44:50
Speaker
Okay. So tell me about your pitch to the first few clients. Like what did you pitch to them? You know, I mean, at the end of the day, you needed to make money for which you needed to pitch something specific to a client for which he would pay you money. So what was that like? How did you like get the first deal?
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah, actually the idea was also evolving with me. And I'm still evolving and therefore the idea is still evolving. It understood that a new dimension was needed and the dimension of math was needed on business and technology. And we would bring more math to the table. And Microsoft was our first customer. My first customer was the 14th employee of Microsoft, Jim Minavino. Jim saw me as this 28 year old kid who was jumping up and down.
00:45:33
Speaker
I guess he felt sorry for me more than anything else and he was kind I think to me. I would say more than anything else. He gave us an opportunity. How did you reach him? How did you get a chance to present in front of him? I called him. As in you got his number from somebody and just called him or you called the board line and he agreed to speak to you?
00:45:56
Speaker
He was leading a group called consumer market research and insights. And that, that was kind of Microsoft's learning ecosystem, learning organization and what was happening in the world. And I reached out to him and he was, he was kind enough to, I had a friend who was a professor at University of, University of Georgia. And he, the marketing professor, he basically connected us. And then we just talked about this new way of thinking and he liked it. So, first of all,
00:46:27
Speaker
What was the pilot? I think it was something to do with segmenting, you know, Microsoft customers for a certain set of their products and seeing what was happening, you know, their net promote the score and stuff like that. There's something very simple, not a very complex one.
00:46:48
Speaker
Okay. And then how did that eventually scale up? Like how did you get to the second client, the third client? Tell me about... There's no secret sauce here. There's no secret sauce. But Satch Bolo, tell the customers exactly what you want to do, what your dreams are, what you can do. Don't sell them what your past is. Sell them your future. Because they are interested in their future and your future. And talk about what the future could be.
00:47:16
Speaker
With the perspective of why not and that's what we did the place that we thought we went and spoke interacted engaged with them.
00:47:24
Speaker
I want to know more details. For the Microsoft project, was it a one-man show that was there at that time? Were you alone executing it? Did you build up a team? When did you start to build up a team? When did you decide that you want to build the team in India? Because you were in the US at that time, so tell me about that. For the first nine months of New Sigma was a one-man show. We didn't have anybody.
00:47:46
Speaker
in the company. So I quit Booz Allen in 2004, September, incorporated Mu Sigma in December 2004. And when did Microsoft deal happen? I think it happened. The start of the interaction started around March, April, and we started working on it sometime in June. June 2005. Yeah, June 2005. And we built our team sometime in August 2005.
00:48:15
Speaker
in India. It was like a little bit of me doing a little bit. I call myself the zeroth employee. Okay. Okay. So those six months, like you incorporated in December and you got the deal somewhere in May, June. What were you doing in that period? Like before the deal happened? I was talking to a lot of people. I was talking to everybody and anybody about the thought process, the idea.
00:48:41
Speaker
I always whether you, you could be a customer of New Sigma or you could be an employee of New Sigma or you could be an investor of New Sigma. So I never, I never let a chance to talk about New Sigma go away. It's just, I was hungry to talk about the idea. And I'm still, you know, what I find fascinating is that I'm still quite hungry to talk about. It was easy for me to talk about the idea of company was just a put of the idea. So the idea is more important than the company.
00:49:07
Speaker
Okay. And why did you decide to build a team? First, I think I'm from India. That was important. Second thing was I didn't realize that India has an abundance of raw material and therefore in people and therefore you could mold them and build new kinds of talent quite, quite well out here.
00:49:26
Speaker
The Iron Man that you wanted to build. Exactly. The Iron Man that I wanted to build a new kind of Tony Stark with policies and with talent. India was already proven itself to the world that it was good with technology. We have a good history of math, not like maybe not as high as the Russians and the French, but still we're good. So I felt that this could be interesting place to start this from. Okay.
00:49:53
Speaker
And by the end of first year, like, you know, 31st March 2006, how much revenue did you make or after Microsoft, when did the next deal come about? I think if I remember, I might get this wrong, but I think it was like my first year's revenue.
00:50:11
Speaker
I think if I remember, I had $300 to $400,000. Next year was about $1.3 million. The year after that was $4.5 million. The year after that was about $13 million. The year after that was $26, $42, $66, $93, $126, $166, you know, that's the way it went.
00:50:38
Speaker
Okay, and what was this year which just ended, 31st March, 2015? So, we probably do about 160-170 million. This is COVID year, so it's a very difficult year. I think we are looking to shoot for, I mean, I'm talking about 2021 right now. Next year, you should expect us to be in the 150-160 million dollar range.
00:50:59
Speaker
I'm not so sure because this given the current scenario, I think it would be very hard to talk about revenues today. These are difficult, really, really difficult times. The nature of our business from a long-term perspective is that the more the uncertainty, more the people have questions, more the people have questions.
00:51:20
Speaker
Essentially, this is your core offering. Like you are, like you built Mu Sigma to help companies deal with uncertainty. I mean, this is what you built. So I also had a setback in Mu Sigma. Me and Ambika got separated.
00:51:34
Speaker
So before we come to that, first, let's go back to those early years. So you were like, you know, doing Forex of your previous year's revenue for the first couple of years. How did that happen? Like, was it very high referrals and therefore customers chasing you and getting signed up? Or was it like you were extremely evangelical and going out and getting customers? I was like traveling like crazy. I was traveling about 200 days a
00:52:04
Speaker
A year, I used to live between two continents. I had also abused my own health quite a bit. I was like 220, 230 pounds. I'm not a very tall guy. I'm like five feet, eight inches. So I was very unhealthy at one point. But I think company was doing so well. We got recognized hopes 40 under 40 economic times entrepreneur of the year. We built kind of by some would say India's first unicorn. We got recognition from all the venture capital firms.
00:52:34
Speaker
It was a great first many years. How were the clients coming in? Was it reference or was it you going out? Combination. Subtab was always a combination. There's never one thing was.
00:52:45
Speaker
When did Ambiga join the business? She joined after about five, six, four, five years. I think around 2005, maybe 2009, sometime around that time, she would join. I think five years. Five years after we got started, we were just sitting and we won a new client and he was looking around and saying, he said, well, you join. That's how it got started. And I think the company was doing well that it's not so bad to do that.
00:53:17
Speaker
Okay. You were still in the U.S. when I'm... Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we lived in the U.S. till 2010. I mean, it was always a multi-continent life for me, me personally. So either I was living in the U.S. and traveling to India half the time, or I was living in India and traveling to U.S. all the time.
00:53:35
Speaker
All your customers were in the US and the delivery center was there. All the customers were initially in the US, then later Europe got started and now Australia, China, everything, the Middle East.
00:53:48
Speaker
I'd like to learn from you and you know what would help our listeners also is in terms of how high value B2B sales happens because I mean you are essentially in a B2B business which you scaled up extremely fast at like 4x revenues each year. So how does high value B2B sales happen?
00:54:11
Speaker
And you know, what did you learn about making that happen? Well, the first thing first is there's no one way to do this. Okay. So don't whatever I say, take it with a pinch of salt. I can tell you what, how we did it. I think the first thing is these large B2B businesses are as much as you think about them as organizations. You got to think about them as organisms. They have their own life.
00:54:39
Speaker
While they are trying to solve complex problems, they have complexity as a problem. What I mean by that is that they are not trying to, the problem that they say that they have may not be the problem that they actually have. It may have started somewhere else. So, think of it like a child who comes to home and says I am hungry.
00:55:04
Speaker
He says I am hungry. He doesn't say I want Maestro Masala Dosa.
00:55:09
Speaker
Right. So you, you have to say, Okay, do you want Italy? And you say, No, do you want dosa? Maybe you want pancake? No, then you want the salty stuff or sweet stuff, salty stuff. And you want, okay, can I make masala dosa for you? Yeah, what kind of masala dosa? I don't know. You know, so that's how the interaction is. Right. So that perspective of engaging becomes really, really important.
00:55:36
Speaker
Knowing very well that the customer can never tell you what he actually wants. So, you have to give him what he needs, not what he wants. So, that becomes a very important perspective of listening and engaging with the customer with a combination of humility and irreverence. Humility about the fact that, yeah, you don't know a lot of things.
00:56:00
Speaker
But irreverence about the fact that you can solve many things. So, that duality has to be there in people who are shaping these kind of relationships. Do not engage with them with the perspective of selling. Engage with the perspective of shaping. There is a difference between shaping and selling. Be generous. Exchange information. You have to want to exchange learnings and information. Things may come, things may not come.
00:56:31
Speaker
But long term, it will be good. So, do not be transaction oriented, be relationship oriented. So, and that perspective meant that we were engaging in the art of problem solving rather than solving specific problems alone. So, this was the way we would engage in the initial years of mu sigma.
00:56:53
Speaker
Like every interaction with a client, you would try your best to add some value to them by giving information or sharing insights. Yeah, sharing what's happening in the world, what they could be doing, what we can learn from them. If you learn something, then give them credit for that. I'd be willing to say these three beautiful words, which people don't say enough, which is, I don't know, right?
00:57:20
Speaker
I agree. What does that mean, lookalike model? Basically, you know, if you say, Hey, see something new, like a dim sum, and you've never seen a dim sum. So you call it like, this is Samosa.
00:57:45
Speaker
No, this is not a management consulting though, it's a new thing. Anyway, sorry, I asked for it. Hey, you know, if you can't laugh at ourselves, then what else? Well, it's boring. That becomes very, very important.
00:58:10
Speaker
So that is one part of creating memorable interactions. But also then the other part is the tactical part. How do you open doors? How do you get to meet decision makers and stuff like that? Is there any insight that you want to share? I think the idea will carry itself here. I am not a believer. If you have a good idea and you engage with it with honesty and you're sincere about things, the idea will carry itself.
00:58:41
Speaker
Okay. Were you good at networking or rather are you good at networking? No, I actually am not frankly. I'm quite an introvert. I like spending time by myself quite a bit. There are people and ideas on which I can engage quite passionately. But that doesn't mean that I'm like a people. If I don't like something like this is not me, I'm not that. So I don't think that and I didn't believe in networking boss. I think it's, I think it's my Satchai name boss.
00:59:06
Speaker
That's true. I think our ancient philosophy had this perspective of Sathyam Shivam Sundaram. At the most simple level, I could think of it as the truth is God and God is beautiful. That's one way of thinking about it. But then when you truly understand ancient Hinduism, not as a religion, but as an old science,
00:59:33
Speaker
You will get to appreciate the fact that Shiva
00:59:37
Speaker
is also a representation of entropy. He is the god of transformation. He is misunderstood as a god of destruction. So, if you look at the perspective of Shiva and Shakti, it is basically constantly interacts with energy, entropy and energy. The first law of thermodynamics is that energy is conserved. The second law of thermodynamics is that entropy will always increase. The interaction of entropy and energy, Shiva and Shakti is a very important perspective. So, when you look at it from that perspective,
01:00:06
Speaker
what you are basically saying the truth is in transformation and it is constantly seeking newer and newer things. What am I trying to say here? I think this perspective of seeking the truth and when you look at the truth, it has all the things that you know and all the things that you don't know.
01:00:29
Speaker
between all the things that you know and all the things that you don't know lies the truth. If the union of that is the truth, then comes the point, what is the intersection of that? What is the intersection of all the things that you don't know and all the things that you know? Well, it cannot have an intersection, it's kind of like saying that, I know this and I don't, you can't have anything. So, it's basically the intersection of that is a point, right? It's a point which touches each other.
01:00:56
Speaker
What you know and what you don't know, the point that touches each other is that point of learning. Show the point where everything happens that differentiates the past and the future. And that point is the present. If it is lived authentically, it becomes a point of learning. And when it is not lived authentically, it can never be a point of learning. And by the way, all of us
01:01:21
Speaker
get into these traps of inauthenticity. I mean I also get into these traps. Our ego kind of fuddles our mind up. What's an example of this, like a trap of inauthenticity?
01:01:34
Speaker
Simple things like this networking. You have no freaking, you care about your family, but you ask, how's your father? How's your mother? And the other thing in meetings have you noticed? They will always start with how's the weather. What a stupid way to start a conversation. It's a very, because world is filled with these perspectives of inauthenticity. Being real.
01:02:03
Speaker
is hard for everybody. We fill it up with these things which actually have no meaning frankly. They create noise. They are not signal. And what you see in today's world is that the rate of increase of data is very high.
01:02:18
Speaker
But the rate of increase of noise is much, much higher than the rate of increase of signal. And therefore, the rate of increase of confusion is quite high because that is noise minus signal. So coming back to those early days, so when did you build up like a sales organization and people who were going out and doing those sales?
Leadership and Personal Struggles
01:02:37
Speaker
I assume first two, three years, you must have been the primary salesperson for the company.
01:02:43
Speaker
I still think that analyst, I am a salesperson. I am the designer for the office. I am the janitor in the toilet. I think founders who should ever give themselves a role. I am the CEO, the chief entertainment officer in the company. So I don't think of myself as the chief executive officer. But I think that's how I see the world. Perspective of roles and responsibilities are like clothes, you know, you've got to wear it very lightly.
01:03:13
Speaker
It's not your skin. It's not your flesh. It's not your bones. So I think you've got to wear it over your skin and flesh and bones. But we had a few people who would go talk to people and I guess they were performing the function of sales in the beginning. We still don't have a really professional sales team was in New Sigma because we have problem solvers. I think that's what we have in the organization.
01:03:40
Speaker
So instead of like looking at building a sales team, you built a team of problem solvers who went out to seek problems. I think that all of our people are problem solvers. When you look at it that way, all of our people are sales people, all of our people are technology people, all of our people are delivery people. I think that's how I always viewed the world. May the world view OHA.
01:04:02
Speaker
See, if you notice, but that's also part of our philosophy. It's a no-experts philosophy. It's experimentation more than experts. Interaction property again, if you notice it.
01:04:12
Speaker
So how did, what's your learning on building a team? Like, you know, I think becoming a unicorn definitely needs a very, very good team to make that happen. So, you know, how did you build your team? I don't think I built my team. I think my team built me. That's how I would say. So the team discovered you the same way as the idea. The team discovers me. They look at it, they like the idea. They look at this crazy guy.
01:04:40
Speaker
and they hang around you and that's how things evolve actually. I think saying that you build a team is again a very bombastic perspective which I don't want to keep. So the team builds you actually, not you build a team. Actually you can only be authentic and people will come around you, some people will like you in the beginning, they may not like you later, some people will not like you initially then they'll like you later.
01:05:03
Speaker
Because life is also constantly entropy and Shiva happening, right? So, we Hothai was. People are also going through their own journeys. They may like you when you are succeeding. They may not like you as much when you are going through a tough time. So, I think all of that happens first.
01:05:20
Speaker
Okay. And as a boss, are you like the kind of boss who is instructive, like giving instructions, or are you the kind of boss who is very hands off and more of a, like a friend and a mentor rather than a boss? I think in sports terms, I'm much like a teammate. I want to be following the problem with you. I love Dhoni. So you're playing the game with them. You've got to engage with them.
01:05:44
Speaker
this perspective of like hierarchical world of like one guy, then five guys reporting to him, then five guys reporting to those each five guys. That's not the way the problem solving world actually happens. I always joke that companies think that they are raviolis, but actually they turn out to be spaghettis.
01:06:02
Speaker
What can you explain? So, it's like there's a marketing ball, there's a sales ball, there's a disc ball. That's how the world view of them is. But that's not how companies function. Companies function like spaghetti. It's all twisted.
01:06:25
Speaker
So that's the reality. I mean, the future is not a boss. The future is a teammate and it's a network world. Everything will become networks. I always say that, you know, there's a leadership team in music. That's working together. We get into a call. Many times with that call, there's not a very strict agenda. The agenda gets decided in the call and we talk about shit.
01:06:48
Speaker
But at the same time, we keep it real, right? As much as possible. That's how I would say, I think most real founders will always be like that boss. I think they are not thinking like a boss. We have a team like called the founders office. And that group is like about 10 people across all levels. And it has some rainy decision scientists in it. It has some apprentices and it has everybody. So, so we are like, we're kind of engaging and like making things happen and so on and so forth.
01:07:19
Speaker
So 2011, you did your first fundraise. What was the need for the fundraise? Was the business not B2B services companies typically generate enough cash? Honestly speaking, actually this company never needed funding was.
01:07:39
Speaker
I mean, B2B services, so I imagine it would not have. Yeah. See sometimes what happens now, entrepreneurs are also human beings and we want to seek validation. And sometimes, you know, and when you don't need money is when money will run and come to you.
01:07:57
Speaker
True. And you also want, you know, you also see all these newspapers are only looking at valuation and funding and this, that. So you get into these kinds of ego traps.
01:08:16
Speaker
I guess I was also seeking validity. That's how it happened. Multiple rounds of funding. I mean, most of the funding that New Sigma has done is secondary capital, which means that some investors sold it to some other investor who sold it to some other investor. You know, that was what was happening. Okay. Okay. Okay. And the Mastercard Fidelity Investment 2013, that was also secondary. Sub-secondary commerce. Sub-secondary. Now, Pura, for a long time,
01:08:44
Speaker
It was largely, the stake was largely with you before you did the fundraise, like you were the, I mean, between you and Ambigay, I assume it would have been. Yeah, I mean, what was mine was first in India. So when did the distance start coming in between you and Ambigay? This happened after you shifted to India, right? That's a very personal thing. You know how much I want to get into it.
01:09:13
Speaker
I am going through a time where it was just 40 and I was going through my personal demons, I would say. Some would say it was depression, whatever.
01:09:23
Speaker
But why were you depressed? I mean, you had a fast growing... Sometimes things happen with you, you cannot explain by saying that, you know, you are because of this, that you are. You cannot explain this in that manner. The mind has its own mind, if I may say.
01:09:43
Speaker
Right? So, it was simplistic, right? Because it's not so easily explainable to anybody, even to oneself. I was going through my journey and I, we just were, if I may, the distance was building up. And I mean, I first talked about with her. The first time I talked about it was December 2015. And we had got separated by March 2016.
01:10:07
Speaker
And it was not an easy one. It was difficult care deeply for her. And it didn't feel bad. That's what happened. But that put a lot of strain on the company. Why is that? Because she wants to take her money out. So I had to take about $250 million. I didn't even have a lawyer on my side. I just gave it to that meant that I had to deal with the current investors. I had to do a dividend recap, a lot of strain on the operating ecosystem.
01:10:36
Speaker
Okay, so you had to take that cash out of the business, basically. Yeah, I had to take cash out of the business. I had to take a loan. There were a lot of people who were senior management, decided that they didn't want to be part of. And so it became hard. As in people quit in the leadership. Yeah, there were a lot of people who quit. But it's okay. It's, you know, that's life.
01:10:58
Speaker
Okay. So, I think then you also raised additional funds around 2017. That was partly for this only, like the cash that you took out. Yeah, it was mostly debt. We did a round of debt. We recapitulated the company, gave some cash out to investors, so I got more control of the company.
01:11:20
Speaker
And by 2018, we started rebuilding the company. So we had like a 2015, 2016 and 17 were the hard years for the company. 2018 was when we got settled. 2018-19 was the rebuilding years. And then now it's 2020 and we are in COVID. But the good part is pretty much have a flat COVID. A flat COVID can be called a growth year any day.
01:11:43
Speaker
Yes, yes, absolutely. And what is the split of your revenue now between US and Europe and India? It's not maybe 60-70% United States and the remaining is the rest of the world.
01:11:56
Speaker
You know, Mu Sigma is a highly desirable employer. You know, like a lot of people have Mu Sigma as a dream company to work for. And, you know, what are some of the things that, I mean, people in the industry, like, you know, I spoke to some people that I'm interviewing you and they said, oh, wow.
01:12:17
Speaker
You know, I mean, so there's a lot of respect for Mu Sigma. I appreciate that. The most interesting thing I would say is opportunities to learn, boss. We understood that real learning happens when you are problem solved. The canvas of the problems and the canvas of talent, where that battlefield happens, right? That's where learning happens. Again, interaction. You see the theme is this, if the word interaction was not in my language, I would have a lot of difficulty.
01:12:47
Speaker
So, the perspective is that we have an amazing canvas of problems seen with abundance. We have amazing paint and brush, paint of talent, which is again in abundance in India, if you see them as our material. We have amazing technology and processes in the brushes and paint and all of those things that we slowly accumulated and built.
01:13:11
Speaker
And on this canvas is the painting. Sometimes it's paper, oil painting, sometimes it's watercolor, sometimes it's this, sometimes it's that, sometimes it's with pencil.
Talent Development and Influences
01:13:20
Speaker
Sometimes it's got lots of various kinds of problems, various kinds of data, various kinds of complexity, various kinds of technology. And we are producers of optionality, embracing risk.
01:13:36
Speaker
So that creates like this rich ecosystem of that actually builds more than 10 internet companies in India, which are doing very, very well. And the head of analytics for most of them is a music. There's a lot of people who are proud to say X mu Sigma, you know, they go on to interesting things, but it has its problems also because like people like Amazon and Google and all these guys, they just wait for us to build talent and poach our people. So constantly we are like building talent.
01:14:02
Speaker
Initially it was frustrating, but now I've understood that our place in the world is the place of a ladder. A ladder should not complain about all the people who are going out. That perspective, it took time for what I was. And you generally prefer to hire people fresh out of college because you can then mold them the way you want. I generally like the people who are fresh. They can be fresh out of college. They can be fresh out of a company. They can be.
01:14:32
Speaker
It's a problem. Maybe the whole company is built on first principles thinking bus. And they carry a lot of their baggage. Thinking of the world as Samosa is a dim sum of Punjab.
01:14:50
Speaker
I think for me, it's not ice cream. The perspective of fresh thinking and seeing the space open. So I would like to say that we like to hire fresh thinkers. Do they happen to be more young? Yeah, that's just where we find the most freshness. But that's what we seek.
01:15:12
Speaker
What are the levels at which you ask, who am I? Like one could be like a very superficial level of who am I? Like I'm a, let's say a founder of music, could be one. If you continue to ask the question, who am I? You will be forced to go deep. You can start, you can be the most superficial person. You can be like the most shallow person in the world, but you just continue to ask the question, who am I? And you will have to eventually
01:15:42
Speaker
realize that you are not this and then you kind of get that perspective of you are not Akshay or Dhiraj, you are not the molecules, you are not the cells, you are not the atoms, then who are you? This perspective that you know
01:15:59
Speaker
you are what you see, you are what you measure becomes the Schrodinger's cat equation. And which means that mind is such a big part and a power of the self. And it is spawning thoughts like that's what is creating this perspective around us. Sorry, I didn't mean to get philosophy to learn.
01:16:22
Speaker
No, no, no, not at all. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what you just said. I'm still trying to wrap around that also. I'm with you. There was a very nice saying Feynman used to say about quantum physics and he got the Nobel Prize for that, right? So he said, if you really understand quantum, if you really study quantum physics and know about quantum physics, you'll know that you don't know enough about quantum
01:16:52
Speaker
Yeah, right. True, true. Who are some of your heroes, like some of the people that you admire deeply? I think I like my primary hero is my grandfather. It's just an amazing, resilient human being who's very simple. He lived his entire life working as a typist in times of India. You know, saw so many problems, you know, lost his son, lost his wife, was a father figure to me when I needed him. My grandfather is a big part. Then I like scientists.
01:17:23
Speaker
huge influence on like just that thought experiment perspective. I love a huge bunch of scientists, but Einstein for me is special. Just because of how he could rethink the universe and challenge Newton, you know, said this to my friends sometime back, the best of the scientists left the world wrong. And when they left the world, they were wrong about something, but they made the world more right than when they came in. That perspective is quite beautiful.
01:17:52
Speaker
that you moved the world towards seeking the truth, more truth and that in my mind is spiritual and that journey that you allowed our species to take.
01:18:07
Speaker
What about Gandhi? Are you like a fan of Gandhi also?
Struggle, Resilience, and Entrepreneurial Advice
01:18:10
Speaker
You know, I love Gandhi from a perspective of how he abstracted his entire learnings into this one concept of non-violence and how he took pain that he felt in South Africa and came back to India.
01:18:25
Speaker
and did something about with it instead of like being a victim. So that's something I love about Gandhi. I love to see some common themes around them. I think we like to put characters around the themes. The theme is more important. These people are trying to... are just like housing those characteristics, if I may say. So if there was a Bollywood movie made on your life, what kind of movie would that be? Struggle?
01:18:55
Speaker
Would you imagine Averkan playing you? No, he's too good looking, yeah. But he's very good at changing his weight, right? I would say the team would be struggling.
01:19:17
Speaker
And I think, you know, I have this, you know, I don't know if you've ever, you've ever seen, you know, I keep this in my notes all the time. I call it this about the struggle. Have you read it? No, I haven't. Could you tell me what it is?
01:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, I can actually just quickly read it to you. I mean, I can decide whether you want to use it or not. It says about the struggle. It's written by this. It starts by saying that life is a struggle by Karl Marx. It is written by, I think, Ben Perot. The struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The struggle is when people ask you why you don't quit and you don't know the answer. The struggle is when your employees think that you are lying and you think they may be right. The struggle is when food loses its taste.
01:20:01
Speaker
The struggle is when you don't believe you should be the CEO of your company. The struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The struggle is when everybody thinks you're an idiot, but nobody will fire you.
01:20:17
Speaker
The struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred. The struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can't hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is the struggle. The struggle is when you want the pain to stop. The struggle is unhappiness. The struggle is when you go on vacation to feel better and you feel worse. The struggle is when you are surrounded by people and you are all alone. The struggle has no mercy.
01:21:05
Speaker
Amazing. I loved that.
01:21:09
Speaker
What would you call it? A poem or? It's just a small piece of writing. So I am struggling to end this. I don't want it to end, but I also know that I'm sure you have other stuff planned out. I had time till six o'clock with you. So any words of advice to people who are thinking of becoming entrepreneurs? And I'll put this as my last question to you.
01:21:38
Speaker
Becoming an entrepreneur is less important than being entrepreneurial, right? I think many people feel that, you know, I mean, I call it like, you know, I have to become an entrepreneur. You have to be an entrepreneur. You have to be entrepreneurial and you if the idea requires you to become an entrepreneur, become one.
01:22:03
Speaker
If your idea requires you to help somebody, be a better entrepreneur, do that. It's the ideas that are the heroes. Script hero boss, right? I think it was more focus only to script hero. Right? I guess subco hero banana, perspective is not the rules. An entrepreneur is like, is the perspective of building the enterprise. That is more important, the verb form of it.
01:22:32
Speaker
The enterprisiness form of it is more important than become being an entrepreneur. So that's how I would see it. And if the idea pushes you towards it, embrace it. Be open to it. Don't re-suppose that you have to be one. And I think that's why we have so much noise around this ecosystem.
01:22:52
Speaker
where there are people who wanted to become entrepreneurs rather than wanting to solve problems and come up with new ways of thinking, new ideas and so on and so forth. Let the idea guide you. And do you ever see yourself moving on from Mu Sigma? And if yes, then what would you be doing? No. Okay, so Mu Sigma for life. That's what I want to do. I don't know if the world will allow me to do that. The world has allowed me to do that.
01:23:22
Speaker
I can only do my part. But I guess someday, either I'll have a biological problem or I'll have a physical problem or a physical problem. Or I'll have, you know, some problem. But I think it's not, you know, I think it's not, I'm still, you know, they're doing well right now and I'm super excited about all the possibilities.
Future Outlook and Conclusion
01:23:53
Speaker
But at the same time, you have a feeling of insecurity that doing well will not continue forever. Absolutely, boss. I think insecurity is what keeps you awake here.
01:24:09
Speaker
So that is important. That's not a bad thing to have. You want to have that edge with you. You don't want to say that. I think there is so much. I feel there is so much more for music mind. I feel we are like Bezos would say we are still day one.
01:24:31
Speaker
So that was Dheeraj talking about his journey and the way he thinks about life, business, problem solving and building a unicorn. Dheeraj is a big movie buff and we can't wait for the day when Bollywood decides to make a movie on his life. Although, knowing Dheeraj, we'd probably struggle to give the movie a label.
01:24:57
Speaker
If you like the Foundry Thesis Smartcast then do check out our other shows on subjects like Marketing, Technology, Career Advice, Books and Drama. Visit the podium.in for a complete list of all our shows. This was an HD Smartcast Original.
01:25:24
Speaker
HDSmartCast.