When serendipity helps build a strong career

Serendipity played a major role in Vishal Mehta's life. In 1999, after having worked for four years in the telecom sector in India, he decided to do an MBA from Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in the United States. When he began studying for his degree, he had a clear vision: to either make a professional shift into the consultancy space or continue in the telecom sector. This was the time that India's privatization story had just about started, and many new private ventures were being set up across sectors including financial services, telecom, education and healthcare. Up until that time, most of these services and their delivery was dominated by government run and controlled institutions. Vishal's job in the telecom space in India was a direct result of this privatization story where he also very quickly realized that most of these new ventures were being set up for the higher income segment in India and for the masses the life wasn't really changing much. This realization of non-inclusive growth that he was witnessing was buried somewhere down in his priorities and did not get exposed until he got to University of Michigan.
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But when he began his studies at the University of Michigan, he took a course that would, quite literally, change his life. The course was taught by C.K. Prahalad, then one of the world's most visionary management thinkers. Prahalad had been teaching at Michigan Ross since 1981, but his influence grew in 2004 when he co-authored a book, titled The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. The book galvanized how multinational corporations (MNCs) across the world looked at dealing with the poorest consumers. In itself, 'bottom of the pyramid' was not a new concept. It had first been used by the US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1932, when he talked about poor people who were often forgotten, because they lived at the bottom of the economic pyramid. This demographic segment, argued Prahalad, was actually a profitable consumer base. As he explained, ' . . . typical pictures of poverty mask the fact that the very poor represent resilient entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers.' In his opinion, what was needed was a better, more empathetic approach to help the very poor—one that involved partnering with them to drive innovation and to create sustainable scenarios where they remained actively engaged while companies profitably provided products and services.
Prahalad wrote: 'Such an approach exists and has, in several instances, gone well past the idea stage as private enterprises, both large and small, have begun to successfully build markets at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) as a way of eradicating poverty.' This would mean that a formula would have to be created to achieve optimum results. Prahalad devised a 'low price, low margin, high volume' model; products could be offered at very low prices and margins, to generate profits simply by selling in enormous quantities. This model changed management strategies almost permanently. In India, the greatest example was Hindustan Unilever's success in selling the Wheel brand of detergent to low-income consumers in India.
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Prahalad wasn't a very flamboyant speaker. There were no antics on stage, and he spoke with almost no expressiveness or voice modulation. But when he did speak, it always left a profound impact on those who were listening to him. This was exactly the effect on Vishal.
This resonated with the lack of inclusive growth he had witnessed in his stint at private sector in India. It was perhaps serendipitous that at this same moment, he met Dr Aravind, then his senior at Michigan Ross. Aravind is the grandson of Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy, founder and former chairman of Aravind Eye Care chain of hospitals, and was involved with the hospital chain, focused on addressing the needs of low and middle-income people in India. As Vishal spent time with Aravind, he began to think along the lines of what he had heard Prahalad discuss in class. One of the first opportunities to test these ideas was the possibility of replicating Aravind Eye Care's model in Africa as part of one of his elective courses during his MBA. It was the first time that Vishal was thinking actively of a business model where profit maximization was not the objective, and where shareholder value was seen in a very different way.
His experiences convinced Vishal that his interests lay not in the telecom sector as he had once thought, but in the social sector. But practicality intervened. He had to still pay off his student loans, so for the next couple of years, Vishal worked at Capital One, a consulting firm in Washington DC. Then, he began to actively scout for new opportunities in the social space. Almost a year passed. Unfortunately, the traditional non-profit sector was looking for vintage and sector expertise—the one thing that Vishal lacked, since he was from a fairly commercial mainstream business background. As nearly every opportunity hit a dead end, once again, serendipity took the wheel.
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It was around this time that Rajiv Lall moved to New York. Lall was then a managing partner at Warburg Pincus, one of the world's largest private equity firms. Lall wanted to use the same principle of venture capital for socially relevant businesses. He wanted to put his significant experience in investment to use in India.
Naturally, then, he was looking for someone who would be able to drive this cause forward and be based out of India. Rajiv heard about Vishal from a common acquaintance. He liked what he heard and gave Vishal a cold call, which reached his voice mail. As he listened to Lall's voice message, Vishal quickly did some preliminary research on Warburg Pincus, as he was totally unaware of the private equity industry. Soon, the two set up a meeting over coffee.
It was serendipity once more. After a three-hour long meeting, Vishal was ready to move back to India and get to work (on almost a quarter of the salary he was earning) to build Lall's vision. The two men had even come up with a name: Lok Capital. Delighted, Lall asked him to discuss matters with his wife before making any kind of firm commitment. Vishal laughed and said, 'I will discuss it with her, but I'm making this commitment to you: I will move to India!'
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Random House India. The book will be published later this month.
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