The question is, what are we busy about?”
-Henry Thoreau-Entrepreneurs never sit in their fully furnished AC cabins and predict the future or manage their present and or create the future. Entrepreneurs are the people who expose themselves in the field and learn things by applying their knowledge and executing their ideas. On a fine Saturday all of us left Lemon campus for a field visit to “Spacewood”. As many of us are aware about but still let me give a brief about it. Spacewood is a 20 year old company started by Krit Joshi and his college mate
Mr Deshpande. It is India’s 3 leading furniture manufacturing company,It deals in manufacturing, retailing and supplying of home, office and kitchen furniture to some of the most known brands in India such as Godrej, Qosmo and also Hettich. Recently 26% of its stakes were purchased by a Japanese company (of course in Japan), the evaluation of the company is more than 300 Cr.
For us entrepreneurs its a big achievement. We were taken around the manufacturing unit which was spread over 10 acres of land. We were told about all the processes one by one as both of us (lemon and the spacewood crew) considered attention to detail, a very important feature. After the tour, all of us gathered for a discussion about their entrepreneurial journey and achievements. Sometimes knowing hat you have achieved in life, makes you proud of yourselves and sometimes you feel prouder than the others. But Mr Krit Joshi and his friend and Co-founder Mr Deshpande were so down to Earth and polite yet straightforward, at first you won’t be able to make out that they both are the Country’s one of the most leading Entrepreneurs. While on our way back to Lemon, we sat to assimilate the our lessons from the sessions. Some of them that I remember are:-
1. One’s got to have perseverance and consistency to reach his or her goals and to further pave the way for others and themselves.
2.Acceptance of failure is very important for a person to recover from his fall, get up and run once again. Failures are inevitable and they are important too. The help in identifying your abilities and will power.
3. One of the things that I significantly remember Mr Deshpande saying that “The scaling of your business will be inversely proportional to the number of challenges you encounter.
4. You will gradually scale up, but so will your challenges. If you have seen the old Spider-man 1, you surely remember Uncle Ben saying that “with great power, comes great responsibilities. Why? this is why!! Its like the more people you know, the more you have to be accountable.
5. If you run away from them, today’s challenges will become tomorrow’s issues. Really!! If you do not take away the fork from the fat lady, she is going to burst some day , or something like that. (no offence).
Its almost everyday that these Entrepreneurs manage to leave a mark on us. And not 1 or 2 but all the people we have met, teach us the same thing. And that means whatever we have learnt so far is as it should be. Its our dream or the Entrepreneurs call it the ‘fire in the belly” that has kept us together and in touch with our mission and vision.
Persis Ratanparj…
Lemon Blogger
