Author and academic Dr Radhakrishnan Pillai believes the principles of Chanakya, one of India’s g eatest leaders, can help train today’s entrepreneurs to manage people and businesses better. According to Pillai, Indians are born entrepreneurs who had traditionally been engaged in trade for centuries. But, the series of invasions India witnessed have brought in both a sense of mediocrity and a job-seeking culture. Yet, he says, even today most Indians would ideally like to start their own ventures. So, what makes Indians entrepreneurial? Dr Pillai ventures a few answers.

NEETI 1 
The ability to adapt is essential for sustainability 
It is a well-known fact that the flexibility to change with the changing needs of the business and the environment is the secret to a long lasting business. And the good news is that Indians have a natural ability to do this. How else would Wipro have moved from being a dalda company to become an IT giant? Or Mahindra and Mahindra which was traditionally an automobile company diversified into fields like finance, software and tourism? If Indian companies were not adaptive to the changing times, they would have been washed away when the markets opened in 1991. 

But it’s not just important to adapt to environmental changes in business, but to people needs as well. For instance, in family-run businesses in India, if the father or mother is running the business, the son or the daugh­ter slowly changes the business to make it more professional, and adapts it to the next generation. I think the reason we are so good at this is because we have grown up with a lot of diversity in our living environment. India is a country that is hundreds of countries put together. We deal with numerous people from different states speaking different languages on a daily basis. Interacting with such diversity has taught us the power of adjustment and adaptability quite well. 

NEETI 2 
The power of goodwill 

Indian entrepreneurs believe a lot in good­will, referrals and word of mouth publicity. If you look at Indian family-run businesses, expenditure on marketing and branding is very low as compared to the west. In fact, you’ll find several thousand crore businesses that don’t even have a website in our country. They just don’t feel the need to do business that way. A lot of business transactions here are carried out over simple, verbal commitments based on trust. If an Indian entrepreneur says she’ll deliver a business worth `1crore and she doesn’t, she loses her credibility in the market forever. Having said that, if an entrepreneur wants to build a global company, word of mouth marketing will only be the first step and she will have to use other forms of market­ing to establish the business internationally.  

NEETI 3
Great leaders seek excellence 
If you look back at history, India used to be a land of prosperity and good gover­nance. However, many centuries of foreign invasions have made us content with mediocrity. Think about it. In a nation of 1.2 billion people, there are only a handful of world-class, globally competitive busi­nessmen. Moreover, most Indian compa­nies are used to copying trends from the west. Why aren’t there enough trendsetters among us? Is it because we’ve always been taught to be content with what we have? We are happy being successful. We don’t aim for excellence, or to be world leaders. Indian entrepreneurs need to emerge from this mindset. They should seek to become leaders. As the saying goes—“You never win a silver medal, you always lose a gold medal." Indians need to learn to never accept the number two position and search for only the gold. 

Dr Radhakrishnan Pillai is the founder director of the Chanakya Institute of Public Leadership, a training school that aims to create a new breed of public leaders by teaching them management principles of India’s ancient leadership guru Chanakya. He has also authored Corporate Chanakya, a bestselling book that has been translated into 10 regional languages, made into an audio book and a training film.