Did you read my last blog post about the need for an app or website to keep travelers updated about delays in flights and my thought that Makemytrip.com or any other company should offer this service?
How coincidental is it that I ended up interviewing Deep Kalra (Founder & Group CEO, Makemytrip.com) for the Emerging India series 10 days after posting that thought? In its 10th year the Emerging India Awards (presented by ICICI Bank and CNBCTV18) continue to honour the best SMEs in the country and as a build up to the awards, I met 7 industry stalwarts and got them to mentor some promising SMEs.
Today, I met Deep Kalra as he played mentor to Pushpinder Singh (Co-Founder & CEO of Travelkhana.com). Using Travelkhana.com a train traveler can book a meal online and have it delivered to his seat in the train, at a station of his choice.
While talking about business sustainability (the theme of this episode), Deep spoke about the 4 P's of business sustainability - People, Profit, Planet & Processes, each being important in its own space.
He shared his experiences with regards to CSR - Makemytrip.com has being doing extensive CSR before the govt mandated it, but even during their initial years, when Makemytrip.com didn't have the money to do CSR, they donated their time.
He spoke about the need for SMEs and start ups to be tenacious - don't give up, keep striving. Picking up on Pushpinder's achievement of having run his 1st full marathon yesterday at the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon, Deep said that running a business is also like running a marathon, you have got to keep running -divide it into short sprints of 5km/ 1 year if you want, but never stop.
It's survival of the 'stubbornest', not the fittest, believes Deep.
He said that many people shut their businesses only to see the sector boom within a year or two. If only they had pushed on, the result would have been markedly different.
When I questioned him about valuations and unicorns, he said he also is quite amazed by the valuation game. But he shared an intriguing insight - Whenever he chose to focus on valuations, the company performed poorly and when he and his team decided to buckle down and concentrate on making things work, the company performed well. Don't start a company with an aim to exit - that's a non starter for sure, and don't ask for business ideas - if it's not your idea, if you aren't passionate about the business from day 1, it's not going to work out, said Deep.
Pushpinder asked an interesting question on how to manage people when scaling up to which Deep replied that there are people who are great to have in a start up (he applied the cricketing analogy, of them being "all rounders") and there are others who are essential to have when scaling up. You need to look for the right kind of person for what stage your business is in. It's a tough call when some people want to leave or when you have to let them go, but it's essential for growth.
Deep chose to add 1 more 'P' to the existing 4 under the business sustainability umbrella -Prioritise. SMEs need to prioritise at every stage. At this point Travelkhana.com needs to focus on revenue and not profit.
Words of wisdom from the founder of the 15 1/2 year old Makemytrip.com - a company that has seen many ups and downs, a company that has weathered many a turbulent season and a company that might be considered a senior in the start up space but still has many more trips around the Sun to go.
This interview totally did Make-My-Trip worthwhile.
Oh and by the way, I did tell Deep about my idea of a flight/weather update giving feature that should be added to Makemytrip.com, but he informed me that it's already being done by someone else (Flight Stats is one of the apps).
It clearly works, I thought to myself, as I twiddled my thumbs while waiting for boarding to begin for my delayed flight back to Mumbai tonight (Flight Stats showed the delay, but the flight status screen at the airport didn't.)
Catch more of the interview on CNBCTV18 on 23rd & 24th Jan at 4.30 pm.
Youtube link coming shortly.
