"Creative Thinking is an Important Aspect for an Entrepreneur" | Interview with Prof Parag Shah

So I would recommend that don't get into it because somebody has got rich, somebody has created a unicorn that you want to create one yourself. And that money is lying there waiting to, you know, fall at your feet. It doesn't happen that, never money. If you're after money, you will never get it. If you're passionate about something, I think if you achieve something that you are passionate about, that you really love then that is success. And to me success is a journey. It's never a milestone, it's never a destination.

Hey guys, this is Avi Arya. Father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet Moguls. Welcome to my channel ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, thank you very much for joining us again. As always we have one more special guest with us today. We have Mr. Parag Shah. Mr. Shah, I always say the shortest distance between two human hearts is always a story. You tell a complete stranger a new story and you win hearts for life. And I'll ask you to tell us your story. So my name is ABHI Arya, Father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet Vogels. Mr. Parag, would love to hear your story.

So what would you like to know about my story?

Whatever your story, how do, how do you introduce yourself, your family, your life?

When I am a father of two, I have a son and a daughter. Beautiful daughter in law, wonderful grandson. My daughter is married, she has a wonderful husband and I am passionate about education and entrepreneurship.

Excellent. So tell us why, why is it today in 2021, see entrepreneurs are now treated as rock stars. What do you think about this new status that entrepreneurs have got?

You fad of fashion. Temporary entrepreneurship demands a lot of commitment. It's never a part time job, it's a full time job. You have to eat, sleep and drink. Only entrepreneurship and not many people have the commission to do that. So I would recommend that don't get into it because somebody has got rich or somebody created a unicorn that you want to create one yourself. And that money is lying there waiting to, you know, fall at your feet. It doesn't happen that way. There's a lot of hard work, there is a lot of, there's a lot of commitment and a lot of sacrifice that one has to make at the cost of one's health, family, time, friends. You lose everything. You have to commit yourself to that extent.

So Mr. Shah, what kind of people Are what are the best qualities? What are the three qualities that you've seen in a good entrepreneur?

One quality, one quality that I very strongly look at is whether they are enterprising. When I say enterprising, I look at four or five characteristics. One is how is he a good leader? Does he have empathy and is he a sociable person? And then he has to have intellectual curiosity because today knowledge is available in thin air. Kids think that I can find out any information anywhere I want by typing it into Google. But what about intellectual curiosity? Do you want to know things for the sake of knowing them, not because you have to know them, but because you want to know them? So we conduct a psychometric test at madhas. This is called a ctpr, the Complete Test for Psychological Inventory. And we look at these aspects in that course. So stress tolerance has to be high, perseverance has to be high. Ambition and risk ability has to be high. Sense for business has to be high. So these are the qualities one looks for.

But Mr. Before getting into entrepreneurship equality test.

I think definitely test. You know, the origin of the word entrepreneur is from the Sanskrit word inner calling. So unless and until you get that inner calling, don't jump into it is my advice.

Okay, excellent website. You talk about idea, idea creation. Can you talk a little bit about that?

See, idea generation is something that I always, I teach a course in creativity at madas. And in this course what we tell the kids is that, you know, two qualities are required, observation and empathy. You have to be able to observe people and you have to empathize with people. So what I do is I make them write down what I call three bugs every day. Every day they have to write three problems they face in their day to day life. Why do we solve problems? We solve problems because behind every problem there is a gift. So one day a student walked up to me and he said, sir, I got cold food last night. I said, what happened? I am staying as a pain guest in somebody's house. There was no power, there was no gas. I said, what is the solution? Said can you not eat food without gas or electricity? I don't know. Talk to our scientist, you know, on a panel. So he spoke to our scientist on our panel and the scientist said he brought some lime from the market, you know, and the scientist threw water on the, on the tuna and the water started boiling. They said, use this technology. This boy joined hand with CFTRI and he's developed a patented product which has a worldwide patent. You pour food in the inner pouch, you cream the outer pouch, the water mixes with the, with the lime based, chura based powder and it heats the packet on its own. And you can do it at CIC in BHCF and you can do it at sea level. So behind every problem there is a gift. One has to look for those gifts. So that is idea generation. So you have to, you know, enhance the creative ability of that person, the critical thinking ability of that person. Socrates, a great philosopher, believed that knowledge cannot be transferred. It's resident in a soul. It's how you ask the question. Unfortunately, the Indian education system forces you to chase one right answer. We should be focused on chasing the right question because how you frame the question will answer. So Socrates was one. Sorry. Einstein was once asked that if you had one hour to save the planet Earth, how would you go about it? And Einstein said that I'll spend 50 minutes framing the question. 10 minutes I'll find out. So how you. The question is far more important then chasing the right answers. So to prove that this Socrates got hold of a 11 year old slave boy.

Right?

Socrates picked up a stick from the sands of Vegans and he drew a square and he drew a diagonal across the square and he started asking the boy question. At end of 45 minutes, you'll be surprised. The boy could solve the Pythagoras theorem. So his hypothesis was true. And so how you ask the question will reveal the answer for itself. So traditionally our Indian education system, we are focused on convergent thinking. So we are asked five plus five is equal to question mark. If I flip the question, revising question mark plus question mark is equal to 10. The answers are infinite, that is divergent. So one has to have a divergent way of thinking. So our focus at Madaj is to give young minds ability to think creatively and think critically, to raise the right questions and to think creatively. So we have courses in creative thinking, creative writing, theatre, music, drama, design thinking. So they go through all these courses and then they are able to come up with 150 ideas at the end of three months.

With all of these things, what is the, what is the definition of success?

Never money. If you're after money, you will never get it. If you're passionate about something. I think if you achieve something that you are passionate about, that you dreamed about, then that is success. And to me success is a journey. It's never a milestone, it's never a destination.

See if I am doing something that I love. But I also want the value exchange so that I can take care of My family, I can take care of my loved ones, I can buy a house. So how do I equate the money making aspect with the value creation aspect?

See, there is this theory of effectuation which states that expert entrepreneurs, as they are called, are focused on their resources and not on their goals. So if I were to ask students, I would ask them, are entrepreneurs risk takers? 99% will say yes, they are risk takers. I say no, they are not risk takers. They are in fact risk mitigators. How? I walk into class and I tell them that supposing you had 10 lakhs in your bank account and you wanted a business that needed 8 lakhs, how would you go about it? They say that we will take out 8 lakhs from our bank account. I say no, you take out only 2 lakhs and borrow 6 lakhs from the bank. So you're hedging your risks. You're not putting away everything that you have into the enterprise.

Understood?

So one, one has to find passion. For example, if there is a lady who's very fond of cooking and she wants to set up a restaurant business, will she go about setting up a restaurant business by investing 50 lakhs, buying a place, doing up the place, hiring a chef or becoming the chef herself and becoming the restaurant manager herself. She can't do that, can she? So what she will do is she should ideally do is she should go and talk to corporates and tell people that look, I have this meal that I can deliver to you. It's nutritious, it is homemade and it's very nice. Would you be interested? So then she starts delivering to one person, that one person talks to two other people and then there is a word by mock. So one should not risk too much to start an enterprise.

I love that. This way of experience. That's very nice. Is that true? Can entrepreneurs be manufactured or they are?

Yes, he can be. See, there was a debate world over whether entrepreneurship entrepreneurs are born or they.

Life may struggle. Life major struggle. Those are good teachers for entrepreneurship.

Absolutely. In fact I always tell my students that in life you never lose. You either learn or you win.

Right? I like that Ajit. That's very nice. So what is the difference between going formal education, let's say Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, business education, doing an MBA with amazing teachers from around the world, amazing case studies and building a community aspect of entrepreneurs from different parts of the world. And do your three year MBA versus somebody works with a crazy amazing entrepreneur and learns on the job.

I don't know about Stanford and Howard and Cambridge. I've been to these universities. See, the problem with almost all universities in the world is that they are very focused on creating good managers. They're not focused on creating good entrepreneurs. I dare say Viras is perhaps the only institution in India, right, besides the Entrepreneurship Development Institution in Ahmedabad which is focused solely on creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurs. Traditional MBA teaches you how to be a manager. So you should read a book written by a guy called Shikan Dakar who is associated. Shrikan Dakar.

Dakar. Okay.

He is the associate dean at the HAR Business School and he's written a book called Read Rediscovering the mba Redefining the mba. What he says is that what an MBA program tells you is that, look, this is the height of the diving board, this is the length of the diving board, this is the length of the swimming pool, this is the depth of the swimming pool. You have to stand like this, you have to jump like this, but it doesn't actually make you jump. Whereas at madas, what we do is we make students actually begin their business within one month of their joining the course. They have to start as micro enterprise and they have to submit accounts of the micro enterprise every week to their mentors. So they learn hands on. And our courses are very, very hands on courses. So we have things like rural immersion program, we have outbound camps, we have courses that are taught very differently. The pedagogy is very different. And then we have developed a module called EICQ that is the entrepreneur Industry compatibility quotient. You see, not everyone is designed to do everything. So somebody may come up with an idea for manufacturing, but are you suited for manufacturing? Maybe you are suited better for marketing or services. So then we tell the student, we advise the student that look, you're going for this, but maybe you should consider doing this.

And how do we find that out?

So we have developed a statistical tool based on scores of that person's, the faculty's observation of that student. And then we are able to tell that student that your personality is not suited for this particular industry. Maybe, you know, you should reconsider. We don't force the student to do anything. We tell them that this is what we think you should be doing and we leave it to the student to choose. So he has generated 150 ideas at the end of three months. So after three months we put him through the EIC and we, we tell him that this is what you have to, what we think you should be doing. He makes a choice or he chooses to join his family business, then we work with the parents and we find a suitable role for him within the organization and we make the transition into the family business smooth. When he's going to do a startup, then we ask him to we use the Lean Startup method. The Lean Startup method states. I'm sure you are aware of Lean Startup, right?

Yes, yes, I am. But I would love to have the audience know from you.

So in the Lean Startup, what you have to do is you have to get in touch with. See, approximately 20% of people are your early adapters and creative people. So they want a product yesterday. When a Sanaan Khan movie gets released, people stand in a queue to see the movie, first day, first show, or when Apple is launched, people will stand in the queue to buy the phone when it's available, off the shelf, seven days later, right? True. Similarly, so those people who stand in the queue are the early adapters. They want the product yesterday. So what Eric says is that you should contact your early adapters and early adapters, you should actually build a minimum viable prototype and you should tell them, hey, this is what I'm thinking of doing. What do you think? Will this work? So you build, measure and learn. You keep taking feedback from your customer, from your early adapters, and you build and you measure the response and you learn from that response and you rebuild a product. You pivot if required. Let me give you an example. Instagram, for example, was launched as a geotagging site because the founders believed that what we need is a geotagging. And when they contacted their early adapters, they quickly realized that what people are looking for is not a geotagging site, but they're looking to quickly exchange photographs. So they pivoted. So they learned from their early adapters and they pivoted and they said, we'll create a site that will help people to share photographs quickly. The rest is history. Everybody knows what happened, right?

So Mr. Date means a lot of people are coming and saying that miracle. Help me find my niche, help me find my micro niche. Who should I, should I become a generalist or should I work for a specific industry? And if I'm getting into the market, should I get in as a generalist or as a specialist? So if I become a generalist in the beginning of my career, then I will be working for everybody. Means I'm working for nobody. But if I become a specialist in the beginning of my career, then maybe the market size is too small. This confusion industry, should I become a life Coach for everybody? Or should I do it only for senior citizens? Or should I do it a life coaching for somebody or who's getting into a job? Life coaching for somebody who's restarting his life.

What I think is you have to find out what your core strengths are. A different market altogether. As a coach, then your market is different altogether. So you have to identify your core strengths and match them with the work. What the market needs. It doesn't matter what is the size of the market. Please remember 5% of the people in any market are dissatisfied with their product or services. So that is the basis of the blue ocean strategy. So within a red ocean, you can create a blue ocean. Indigo is a classic example. At a time when the other airline was fighting with each other on prices, Indigo said, we are on time. We will not. We are no frills, no, no, no nonsense airline. You'll have to stand in the queue. You'll be quickly ordered to your aircraft. You have to get out quickly and make sure you reach in time. And people love that. So within, within a red ocean also you can create a blue ocean, provided you are. You keep your eyes and ears open and identify your core strength and match your core strength to the need of the market.

Is it only the core strength or is it also my life? Somebody went through, you know, maybe two marriages and went through divorce or, you know, and. Or somebody had a, you know, they lost a parent or some grief happened and now they want to help other people get over grief. Do you think that's a good idea?

I don't think it's a good idea because grief is never permanent.

Okay.

I don't think one should hold on to that grief and make that grief everything in life. If you survived cancer as a fighter, then yes. But I don't think negative emotions should be held on to too long right now.

If somebody got over the grief of a loss and then they can help other people get over that grief.

That of course. Of course, I would strongly suggest, yes.

Okay. So Mr. Parag Meapki website. There are so many things that you are doing. Would you like to tell us about, you know, something that you're doing right now and what is your plan for the future?

My dream is to create 10,000 entrepreneurs. See, God has been very kind to me. I have developed more than 4 crore square feet of space in Pune city. Another 6 is under development. And it's in partnership. It's not mine alone. So God has been very kind to me. I don't need the money to you Know, survive. So I want to give back to the society. How do I give back to society? I began by creating the first liberal arts university in India. It's called of Lame University. And then of course in 2011 I stepped down as chairman. And now I am the chief mentor of Midas, where my dream is to create 10,000 entrepreneurs. And these 10,000 entrepreneurs should in turn create 25 entrepreneurs under them. And these 26 people will further propagate more entrepreneurship and they will give employment to 500 people directly or indirectly each. So I want to create a chain of events before I die that, you know, people will will remember that I created these 10,000 entrepreneurs. And so I've created this institution called Vedas, which is acronym for management, innovation, design, arts and Social science. Because entrepreneurship is all about these five aspects. Management, innovation, design, arts and social sciences.

Okay.

So I've created this ecosystem where we train young people. We take a very small batch, no more than 25, 30 students. And we, we work with them very close. We are teachers who student faculty ratio is 1 is to 2 y to 3. A fully residential program. We create brilliant leaders.

How much time does that take?

11 months.

11 months. Okay, got it. So that brings us to the end of almost 30 minutes. Mr. Prag, thank you very much. We spoke about the fact that entrepreneurs can be created and in fact they are created. And you have a dream of creating 10,000 entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship. There will be job creation and lots of excitement. And you said do something that you love doing. You said work on it. It is something that can be learned. And you spoke about the difference between university entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who've learned from life experiences. You spoke about how the lean model works and everything in between. Mr. Parag, if somebody wants to get in touch with you and learn more from you, what's the best way to contact you?

Please write to me@paragsh.net awesome.

And I'm going to put the handle over there as well. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, that was one another episode of the Internet Moguls of the World, where we travel now virtually around the world and meet some amazing people who have big dreams and are using the Internet and creating value in the marketplace. Today's guest was Mr. Parag Shah. Instagram post Instagram or Hamari channel? Ask. One lucky winner will get a book on entrepreneurship Courier to their house every Sunday afternoon. Thank you very much for watching once again. My name is AB Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet Moguls signing off for now.