Forty years, one city

My working life began at the end of the seventies. Trade in Indore then turned around the mandi and the textile mills. Pithampur did not exist yet, soya was not what it has since become, and the accounts of a business lived in a ledger book.

The first few years I did what everyone does at that age — understood less, ran more. What those years taught me is that cash and profit are not the same thing. It is an easy sentence to read in a book and an expensive one to learn with your own money.

The years after that were spent at Prestige — an international agribusiness headquartered in Indore. I held several responsibilities there and eventually served as its Chief Executive.

In those years I saw something most MSME owners never get to see: one business along its full length, from the field to a buyer overseas. Why the farmer sows, why the trader holds stock, why the bank hesitates, why the buyer breaks the price. It all sits on one line, and an owner usually only ever sees his own piece of it.

That is the part that is useful now. When an owner tells me sales are rising but nothing is left at the end, I have a fair idea which piece of the line has gone wrong.

After Prestige I ran my own ventures — real estate, hospitality and agriculture. Some of it went well. Some of it did not go at all.

What did not go taught me more. One thing I now say to every owner: before you put money into work you do not understand, spend a year inside that work. And a second: cheap credit does not make a bad decision a good one.

Most of my days now go in sitting with owners. Sometimes at a unit in Pithampur, sometimes in the back room of a shop, sometimes on the phone.

I have not built a course and I do not want a large audience. As many owners as I can properly sit with is enough.