Tag: Entrepreneurship

World’s richest self-made woman shares 3 pieces of advice for success

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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With a net worth of $7.4 billion, 48-year-old Zhou Qunfei, the founder and CEO of Lens Technology, is once again the world’s richest self-made woman, according to Forbes.

Born in a village in Hunan province in East China, Zhou didn’t have an easy childhood. She lost her mother when she was five and her father went blind and lost a finger in a factory accident. She had to learn how to survive on her own, she tells CNBC Make It via email: “I had to constantly think about where my next meal is and how I am going to get it.”

To earn tuition, Zhou dropped out of high school at age 16 and went to South China’s Shenzhen city to work at a watch lens factory in 1986. She was later promoted to a managerial role. However, she had bigger dreams.

In 1993, with 20,000 HK dollars savings (or about $2,547.80 U.S. dollars), Zhou and eight of her family members set up a screen printing workshop in a three-bedroom apartment in Shenzhen, which served both as their working and living space.

In that apartment, she launched her first company. Fast forward 10 years, Zhou had built a factory making watch lenses and employed 1,000 people. But her fate changed in 2003 when she got a call from Motorola, asking if she wanted to be a supplier.

Zhou accepted the invitation which helped launch her business internationally. Now CEO of Lens Technology, Zhou has built an empire manufacturing glass for tech giants such as Tesla, Apple, Samsung and Huawei.

Zhou attributes her success to her perseverance. “My biggest challenge was when I beat other rivals and won the contract with Motorola in 2003,” Zhou says.

Zhou had just started out and had little flexibility in her company’s finances but wanted to ensure the deal went through. As a result, Zhou said she sold her house and other valuables to meet the company’s demands. However, she still lacked funding and said she became desperate.

Zhou admitted that it was the darkest moment of her entrepreneurial life. “I stood on the platform at Hung Hom Station in Hong Kong, almost jumped off, delirious,” she said, “thinking that when I am gone, all the trouble will too be gone.”

But then a phone call from her daughter pulled her back to reality. “I realized that for my family and employees, I cannot give up. I had to carry on.” With Motorola’s help, she overcame the financial issues.

In 2004, Zhou’s Lens Technology sold over 100 million units for the Motorola V3 model alone —the flat-screen mobile phone with the iconic greeting “Hello Moto.” In 2007, Zhou’s cover glass beat the other Chinese vendors to become a major supplier for Apple.

On March 18, 2015, 22 years after she started the family workshop at that three-bedroom apartment, Zhou’s Lens Technology went public. Today, the company is valued at $11.4 billion, with over 82,000 employees across China, according to Forbes.

In an interview with CNBC Make It via email, Zhou shared three pieces of advice for entrepreneurs:

1. Prepare well

Zhou said entrepreneurs always need to be prepared for what’s to come. She says there are a few aspects to master: “First, improve your overall competitiveness. Second, you must be mentally strong. Third, strengthen your understanding of the market and your competitors,” Zhou told CNBC Make It.

She said her experience while working as an assembly line worker and later as the manager for her first employer helped her gain confidence, which was crucial to Lens Technology’s early days. “You must gather the courage to face failures,” Zhou added.

She also said she would prepare several backup plans when she went to visit clients during her startup years: “I was always thinking about what I am going to say if they reject my proposals, because the rejections were constant, you need to prepare well.”

2. Keep the enthusiasm for learning

“The clients won’t give you a better price for your products simply because you have a higher degree,” Zhou said, “but your knowledge of the business will help maintain the competitiveness of your company.”

As for Zhou herself, she took part-time courses while working as a factory worker and obtained her certificates in accounting, computer operations and even a commercial truck driver’s license.

“When you have the ability to learn, you have the ability to continue to grow,” she said.

3. Never give up easily

Zhou said many people would experience a serious blow to confidence when they encountered setbacks. But the key to success is to persevere, especially during the most difficult times.

For a team-building exercise, Zhou once took 20 of her company’s executive team to climb the Dawei Mountain in Hunan Province, which is more than 5,000 feet above sea level. Some team members wanted to give up halfway up the hill. However, she insisted that they do not stop and march on.

“Because when you give up halfway, you won’t have the courage to come back and start from the bottom all over again, you will still give up,” she said. “Only when we persist, can we succeed. Don’t give up because of a little setback.”

Source: Make It, CNBC.com

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

How TCS’ Rajesh Gopinathan runs the company

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services, gives us an insight into his management mantra.

Q: What is your management mantra?

A: Change with continuity.

Q: Who is your favourite tech visionary?

A: Steve Jobs.

Q: Who is your favourite Indian corporate leader?

A: Mr. JRD Tata.

Q: Are you a coffee person or a tea person?

A: I have both.

Q: Do you like to be feared, liked or respected?

A: Liked and respected. You have to earn the respect, I would love to be liked.

Q: What is your key management advice to future leaders?

A: Stay with the team. You win together or you lose together. There are no individual winners and losers.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Legendary hotelier PRS Oberoi says no business leader can avoid these three things

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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PRS Oberoi, executive Chairman of EIH Ltd, the flagship company of The Oberoi Group, is one of the legendary hoteliers of India. Popularly known as ‘Biki’, Oberoi spent his entire childhood growing up in hotels that his father MS Oberoi acquired and managed.

Oberoi Junior has helped his father build from scratch the iconic Oberoi hotels in New Delhi and Mumbai. He also led the push to build super luxury hotels in Jaipur, Udaipur and Agra.

The Oberoi hotels are known for their striking architectural designs in luxury hospitality. Today the group also runs the five-star business hotel chain Trident and employs over 12,000 people.

PRS Oberoi has always maintained that he doesn’t want his group of hotels to be the biggest, but he certainly wants it to be the best.

In 2013, when he was 84, he demitted the CEO’s office to close aide SS Mukherjee. Now, Oberoi’s son Vikram runs the group as CEO. But at 89, Oberoi is still very hands-on with building and expanding his hotels business.

Oberoi says there are three things that entrepreneurs must do to succeed.

One, see people who work with you as the biggest assets.

“You can build the best hotel in the world, but unless you have good people working in the hotel, you will not succeed,” he told CNBC-Tv18 in an interview.

It is with this in mind that the group started the Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development.

Oberoi reiterated the importance of entrepreneurs to train their own people to succeed. Entrepreneurs must select their people carefully, train them properly and keep them motivated, according to him.

“When I am involved in planning all the new hotels that we are building and I find that the most exciting thing is sitting with the various consultants and telling them what to do if I see an error.”

Two, don’t think of cutting costs. Instead, try to cut waste, he said. He recounted an anecdote to drive home the point.

“I was in one of our hotels and I found towels were not absolutely white. So when I came back I asked the person concerned what was wrong. We use a light meter to see the whiteness of our towels and this hotel was not using the white meter. Our average wash for a towel is 125-130 washes after that we discard them.”

Oberoi found that the laundry department in that hotel was not doing what it should have done.

“The devil is in the details,” he insisted.

Third, business leaders must have a passion for what they do. “If you don’t have passion, don’t do it.”

It is these crucial pieces of advice that he has given to his family and employees.

This interview was held in May 2015 as part of the India Business Icons Campaign to mark CNBC-TV18’s 15th year of leadership in business news. The India Business Icons Campaign is an endeavour to form a distinct league of the most powerful business icons that people of the country think have had a monumental impact not only on their lives, but also on the Indian economy.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

My Management Mantra: This e-commerce company founder says 50% of the battle is won by just showing up

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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1. What time do you like to be at your desk?

I am an early bird – my day starts at 6 am – by 8 am, kids off to school and I am at my desk. My most productive stage will be the first couple of hours of the day.

2.  Where is the best place to prepare for leadership: at business school or on the job?

B-School will get you only a degree and theoretical basics – the real learning is always on the job, through exposure to real challenges. I know many leaders who never went to any business schools and are great at leading their teams.

3. Describe your management style. 

Enable, empower and lead by example.

“One person cannot always know what’s best, and it doesn’t hurt to get different views on a certain subject.”

4. Are tough decisions best taken by one person or collectively?

I always talk about the importance of my team members in decision-making, because while one might have great ideas, it’s always good to take different opinions for the best implementation of it and to get an unbiased opinion. This goes for any degree of difficulty. One person cannot always know what’s best, and it doesn’t hurt to get different views on a certain subject.

5. Do you want to be liked, feared or respected?

I want to be accepted. I definitely do not want to be feared, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to be liked or respected. However, before all of that comes acceptance, and if you are accepted, then liking and respect will come automatically.

6. What does your support team look like?

My support team consists of my co-founder, the leadership team, the women at ShopClues who empower me on a regular basis, the smiling and happy colleagues who are always nice and helpful, and it all makes me who I am at work. I can safely say that the entire organisation is my support system. Outside of work, my kids and my parents make up my support team.

7. A business outside of your business or a business leader that you draw inspiration from?

I am an accidental entrepreneur and am always inspired by entrepreneurs around me – whether it is Jeff Bezos, Sam Walton or Radhakishan Damani.

8. Which management book has influenced you the most? 

My favourite book is ‘Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance’ by Angela Duckworth.

Many among us amble through life’s journey never realising even a fraction of our immense potential. We often undermine and even sabotage ourselves by incessantly repeating to ourselves a false self-narrative that keeps telling us that we are either inadequate or unlucky or somehow held back by our circumstances etc.  The book made me realise that only by finding that never-say-die attitude, that passion to hold on to and work towards your dreams, can one break out of any self-limiting and false narrative that might be holding them back.

9. Do you socialise with your team outside of work?

I do meet my team outside of work on many occasions over food and drinks and discuss topics from around the world, share experiences and just have a good time. You can get to know your colleagues only once you’ve spent some time with them, not stressing about work, but by just sharing experiences.

10. What would your key management advice be?

Just show up! Three words that I live by and think it is the best advice one can take. If you just show up, you’ve already won 50% of the battle. And then take on the rest 50% with all you have, and you can do almost anything. If you fail, you fail – but at least you gave it a shot, and learn something new.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Billionaire Richard Branson gives five crucial pieces of advice for young entrepreneurs who are starting up

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group of companies, has often been described as a modern version of a 19th-century British adventurer. He has crossed the Atlantic and travelled the same path in a gigantic hot-air balloon.

Branson, who created his first business venture was when he was just 16, is known for a swashbuckling persona that has served well for the companies he has birthed, about 400 across diverse sectors. He has also shown an endless appetite for financial risks.

All this makes Branson a business icon that up and coming entrepreneurs look up to. In an interview to CNBC, he said he has five pieces of advice for young entrepreneurs.

One,

Find really great people to come and work with you on your business and make sure that they 100 percent believe in what you are trying to do.

Two, be somebody who is really good at motivating people.

Three, be somebody who is good at praising people.

Four, don’t jump down to throw off people — get a real family of team around.

Five, be willing to use yourself to get out there and market it.

The last bit of advice exemplifies his own penchant for PR.

“Make a fool of yourself,” he said.

The interview was conducted in May 2013.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Indra Nooyi reveals the two habits she follows as CEO to successfully run Pepsico

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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PepsiCo chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi knows a thing or two about leadership — her corporate life spans nearly four decades and she runs a billion-dollar global company. Nooyi was named CEO on October 1, 2006 and chairman on May 2, 2007 and heads a portfolio of global food and beverage brands, of which 22 generate more than $1 billion each in annual retail sales, according to the company.

There are two habits that Nooyi relentlessly follows at work.

Acquire New Skills

The first habit, she said, was that she found that she had to become a learning CEO. “I have to go to school all the time because I am learning new skills that I need to run this company and I am realising that I am not equipped to just coast. I have to constantly renew my skills,” she told CNBC-TV 18 in an interview.

“However, more importantly I have to surround myself with people who can help the company power through tough times.”

As she moved up the career ladder, Nooyi said she had to elevate herself on how she behaved, how she thought and the kind of knowledge she had to imbibe. CEOs would often find that there aren’t too many people who are giving them advice, she said.

“You almost have to observe and learn as you go along.”

Corporate leaders must also lean on people who they don’t know too well, according to her. “You almost have to go and ask them for advice.”

According to Nooyi, only a leader who is constantly learning can pull companies through difficult times. “The amplitude of change is more pronounced and the frequency of change is much more pronounced today,” she said.

That is why, she explained, Pepsico is looking for leaders who are extremely agile and who can go from geopolitical calms to geopolitical crisis. “We need leaders who can work through scarcity. Very often we are finding that we need leaders who can make something out of nothing.”

Empathise with Employees

The second habit that stands in good stead for a CEO is to become visible, she said. In the past CEOs were extremely impersonal. But in today’s world, CEOs and C-suite executives should be highly visible and have empathy with the employees.

Nooyi said this trait is important but the more a company can accommodate employee issues and concerns and somehow work with them to accommodate their issues, the more the employees want to stay in the company.

At PepsiCo, she said the company has created an environment to encourage diversity. “We have a large number of women executives … if they have to go off and take a child to the doctor or go for a parent teacher meeting, we make sure we give them the time.”

According to Nooyi, more and more women are rising to the top and what was once a male bastion is fast crumbling. “I think 10 years from now we are going to see a much different environment than we are even seeing today.”

That said, she warned that women have to make their own progress. “We have to create our own tailwinds and create our own sisterhood if you want to call it that in order to move ahead.”

This interview was conducted in November 2013.

WATCH HERE:

.@IndraNooyi to step down as @PepsiCo CEO after leading the co for 12 years. Nooyi had a unique way of building a +ve work culture – she wrote letters of appreciation to parents of outstanding employees. Excerpt of her interview with @ShereenBhan #LessonsInLeadership #Throwback pic.twitter.com/MhFJMFX60r

— CNBC-TV18 News (@CNBCTV18News) August 6, 2018

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

AI has a dirty little secret about artificial intelligence

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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There’s a dirty little secret about artificial intelligence: It’s powered by hundreds of thousands of real people.

From makeup artists in Venezuela to women in conservative parts of India, people around the world are doing the digital equivalent of needlework —drawing boxes around cars in street photos, tagging images, and transcribing snatches of speech that computers can’t quite make out.

Such data feeds directly into “machine learning” algorithms that help self-driving cars wind through traffic and let Alexa figure out that you want the lights on. Many such technologies wouldn’t work without massive quantities of this human-labeled data.

These repetitive tasks pay pennies apiece. But in bulk, this work can offer a decent wage in many parts of the world — even in the U.S. And it underpins a technology that could change humanity forever: AI that will drive us around, execute verbal commands without flaw, and — possibly — one day think on its own.

For more than a decade, Google has used people to rate the accuracy of its search results. More recently, investors have poured tens of millions of dollars into startups like Mighty AI and CrowdFlower, which are developing software that makes it easier to label photos and other data, even on smartphones.

Venture capitalist S. “Soma” Somasegar says he sees “billions of dollars of opportunity” in servicing the needs of machine learning algorithms. His firm, Madrona Venture Group, invested in Mighty AI. Humans will be in the loop “for a long, long, long time to come,” he says.

Accurate labeling could make the difference between a self-driving car distinguishing between the sky and the side of a truck — a distinction Tesla’s Model S failed in the first known fatality involving self-driving systems in 2016.

“We’re not building a system to play a game, we’re building a system to save lives,” says Mighty AI CEO Daryn Nakhuda.

___

Marjorie Aguilar, a 31-year-old freelance makeup artist in Maracaibo, Venezuela, spends four to six hours a day drawing boxes around traffic objects to help train self-driving systems for Mighty AI.

She earns about 50 cents an hour, but in a crisis-wracked country with runaway inflation, just a few hours’ work can pay a month’s rent in bolivars.

“It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but for me it’s pretty decent,” she says. “You can imagine how important it is for me getting paid in U.S. dollars.”

Aria Khrisna, a 36-year-old father of three in Tegal, Indonesia, says that adding word tags to clothing pictures on websites such as eBay and Amazon pays him about $100 a month, roughly half his income.

And for 25-year-old Shamima Khatoon, her job annotating cars, lane markers and traffic lights at an all-female outpost of data-labeling company iMerit in Metiabruz, India, represents the only chance she has to work outside the home in her conservative Muslim community.

“It’s a good platform to increase your skills and support your family,” she says.

The benefits of greater accuracy can be immediate. At InterContinental Hotels Group, every call that its digital assistant Amelia can take from a human saves $5 to $10, says information technology director Scot Whigham.

When Amelia fails, the program listens while a call is rerouted to one of about 60 service desk workers. It learns from their response and tries the technique out on the next call, freeing up human employees to do other things.

When a computer can’t make out a customer call to the Hyatt Hotels chain, an audio snippet is sent to AI-powered call center Interactions in an old brick building in Franklin, Massachusetts. There, while the customer waits on the phone, one of a roomful of headphone-wearing “intent analysts” transcribes everything from misheard numbers to profanity and quickly directs the computer how to respond.

That information feeds back into the system. “Next time through, we’ve got a better chance of being successful,” says Robert Nagle, Interactions’ chief technology officer.

___

Researchers have tried to find workarounds to human-labeled data, often without success.

In a project that used Google Street View images of parked cars to estimate the demographic makeup of neighborhoods, then-Stanford researcher Timnit Gebru tried to train her AI by scraping Craigslist photos of cars for sale that were labeled by their owners.

But the product shots didn’t look anything like the car images in Street View, and the program couldn’t recognize them. In the end, she says, she spent $35,000 to hire auto dealer experts to label her data.

Trevor Darrell, a machine learning expert at the University of California Berkeley, says he expects it will be five to 10 years before computer algorithms can learn to perform without the need for human labeling. His group alone spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year paying people to annotate images.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Fossil fuel-producing nations turning into infrastructure investors

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The “Global Energy & CO2 Status Report”, published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), states that “renewable energy saw the highest growth rate of all energy sources in 2017 and met around a quarter of global energy demand growth” — a significant statistic by any standard and one that clearly points to the fact that renewable energy is here to stay.

This has serious ramifications for fossil fuel-producing nations. While fossil fuels still contribute a large part of the global energy needs, the fact that a “structural shift” is in process is clear. It is clear that over a medium- to long-term horizon, fossil fuel-dependent nations will have to rethink their strategy to boost and manage their economies.

A quick look at the largest sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in the world tells us that approximately 50 per cent of them are fossil fuel-based economies. Significant pools of capital are available with these SWFs and it should not be a surprise to see them diversify into various asset classes.

The next few decades may see fossil fuel-dependent countries go from being providers of energy and capital to focusing significantly more on being a source of capital, i.e., an investor. This switch towards investing is a visible trend, with SWFs being a source of significant capital across asset classes such as equity, private equity and infrastructure. The key takeaway is that SWFs, especially those from fossil fuel-producing countries, can be significant financiers of infrastructure.

Infrastructure as an asset class has two elements that make it attractive for SWFs: Fixed cash-flow profile and large market. Infrastructure assets, by their very nature, are highly regulated assets with fixed income type of cash flows. Such a structure works well for SWFs that are looking to match liabilities, i.e., cash outflows, on their balance sheets. In addition, infrastructure needs that countries face are large enough markets for SWFs to invest into in meaningful size to generate returns.

The large fossil fuel-driven SWFs are of significant size. Estimates by the Sovereign Wealth Funds Institute say the top 10 SWFs globally are managing more than $200 billion each, and four of these are fossil fuel-driven. Therefore, given the long-dated investment horizon of the SWFs, the nature of liabilities on their balance sheets, and the large size of capital that needs to be deployed, infrastructure as a broad sector is attractive.

For fossil fuel-producing countries, switching from being an energy supplier to a supplier of capital lets them reduce their exposure to fossil fuel price volatility in the short term and play a larger role in boosting trade ties with other nations through infrastructure creation in the long run.

For nations that need financing for infrastructure creation, the global shift towards renewables and its consequent impact on fossil fuel-producing countries to turn investors is an opportunity not to be missed.

There are also important lessons to be learnt by both investors and infrastructure destination nations from the Norwegian government’s decision against allowing unlisted infrastructure investments by its Sovereign Wealth Fund. The reason given was that the fund wasn’t equipped to deal with the risks involved, especially from a political and regulatory perspective.

This points towards the urgent need for infrastructure destination nations to, one, improve regulations around unlisted infrastructure assets and, two, create mechanisms that allow for listed infrastructure assets to grow.

The issues faced by the Norwegian Sovereign Fund are generic issues that all SWFs face. It is important that in a highly competitive global capital market, countries expedite the creation of an enabling environment for infrastructure creation.

Clearly, the global changes in the energy markets also have significant ramifications on the financial markets.

The energy transition from a world dependent on fossil fuels to one driven by renewables does not necessarily need to have winners and losers. In a global economy besieged by the fear of “trade wars”, switching roles for fossil fuel-producing nations from major energy suppliers to large providers of capital is worth considering.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

10% Indians hopeful of tasting success within a year, shows survey

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Despite pressures of a competitive job economy, one in 10 Indians feel optimistic about achieving success within one year, which is double the global average of 5 per cent, according to a LinkedIn survey on Wednesday.

“The growing optimism in India’s macroeconomic environment shines through in the confidence Indian professionals feel towards achieving success,” said Deepa Sapatnekar, Head of Communications for India, LinkedIn.

But instead of chasing a six-figure salary, most people in India tend to measure success on the scale of happiness and health, according to the results.

“Being happy” is the ultimate definition of success for 72 per cent Indians, according to the survey commissioned by the professional social network and conducted by international research firm YouGov.

Good health (65 per cent) and a healthy work-life balance (57 per cent) also emerged as important indicators of success.

Only 22 per cent attributed success to a “rise in paycheck” and 36 per cent defined success in terms of “earning a six-figure salary”, the results showed.

“While success means many different things to different people, it is heartening to see indicators like work-life balance, family time and health taking precedence over a six-figure salary,” Sapatnekar said.

The survey involved responses from over 18,000 adults from 15 other countries, including Britain, Australia and the US, besides India.

Nearly 70 per cent Indians said they felt successful and had a positive and balanced outlook on achieving success.

Among the 16 countries, Indian professionals ranked third in feeling successful, following the UAE in the first spot and Brazil in the second.

Nearly 80 per cent respondents from India said that education plays a positive role in their ability to achieve success, along with other factors such as one’s age (61 per cent), gender (56 gender) and the career they have chosen (68 per cent), which also have a positive impact on future success.

Around 30 per cent Indians think achieving social success is more important than achieving professional success, higher than the global average of 22 per cent, the survey showed.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

My Management Mantra: This boss says the best place to prepare for leadership is on the job

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Aditya Ghosh, CEO, Oyo Hotels & Homes – South Asia gives us an insight into his management mantra.

How do corporate leaders manage? Where do they draw inspiration from? ‘My Management Mantra’ is CNBCTV18.com‘s series of interviews with experienced leaders who run large companies and oversee a large workforce. This one features Aditya Ghosh, CEO, Oyo Hotels & Homes – South Asia.

1. What time do you like to be at your desk?

If desk means emails and work messages and starting to work … then around 5.30 am … in an increasingly virtual world, a hard wood desk is becoming an ornament.

2. Where is the best place to prepare for leadership: at business school or on the job?

On the job. I never went to business school.

3. Describe your management style.

Hopefully to always lead by example.

4. Are tough decisions best taken by one person or collectively?

One person with various inputs from others.

Inspiration is all around us. We just have to have the eyes to observe and not just see, and ears to listen and not just hear.

5. Do you want to be liked, feared or respected?

Both to be respected and liked.

6. What does your support team look like?

An incredible team that makes me look very good.

7. A business outside of aviation or a business leader that you draw inspiration from?

Inspiration is all around us. We just have to have the eyes to observe and not just see, and ears to listen and not just hear.

8. Which management book has influenced you the most?

I like reading but am not a regular reader of management books.

9. Do you socialise with your team outside of work?

Yes.

10. What would your key management advice be?

To have a healthy dose of fear, take pride in creating something new and the deep realisation of how many people you impact.

This piece was first published when Ghosh was president and whole-time director, Indigo Airlines.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow