Convocation Address of Padmashree Lila Poonawalla; Chief Guest for the 8^th Convocation of EDI's Post Graduate Programmes held on 29^th September 2006.

I also would like to add my own message here rather than keep it for the end. Lila Poonawalla – Think big. Challenge conventional wisdom. Work towards long term objectives and aim for the best. Demand excellence. Do not fear change or the unknown. Work hard and never accept defeat. Never compromise on fundamental values. Look ahead, be self confident and have the best around you. Be committed to quality and play to win. Have a Vision and ebullience, perseverance, tenacity and a bias for action. You also need attitude and above all, passion. Speed and imagination.

Let me take a detour from entrepreneurship to education and the importance of education in our life. In his Presidential speech, on the Eve of our Independence Day, two years back, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam emphasized on education. The important role education plays in changing the Indian Mind. How education brings confidence and the will to win. Here is an extract from his speech “Yesterday we celebrated our independence day. 57th birthday as a free nation. What is this freedom – what have our young men and women to say? To them freedom means the liberty of making choices, of realizing their dreams, and belonging to a democratic, progressive and egalitarian society. India today is a country where every boy and girl can dream of playing with only a bat in their hands, equipped with determination and a will to succeed. Education gives you this.”

From my personal experience of assisting young Indian minds, minds from Pune I come across new surprises every day. By the way I have a Foundation of my own, called the Lila Poonawalla Foundation. Which I started 11 years ago and so far we have supported 362 young girls. The main objective of this Foundation is to support academically excellent girls (yes it is only for girls) but economically needy for their Post Graduation studies. We have found that these young minds are totally unprecedented. They are confident, have poise and education seems to bring to these young girls magnified knowledge.

“Entrepreneurship is behaviour rather than personality trait. It sees change as normal and healthy. It strives for doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. A strong sense of innovation is a critical tool for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is not only about creating a new venture, but also a new satisfaction and new consumer demand.” So said one of the most admired management guru Peter Drucker. I will attempt to illustrate what he meant by an example. Until 1860 only a few men shaved – those who could afford a barber. Suddenly the trend changed, a clean shave was the look of the day. Visit to the barber was expensive and time consuming. This resulted in many entrepreneurs designing and manufacturing a multitude of do it yourself razors. The average price of the razor was $5. Now mind you the wages in those days was $1 a day. Thus very few men could afford this luxury. They continued to go to the barber whenever they could save some cash. Many manufacturers had to shut shop within a very short period. Than came on Horizon razors manufactured by Gillette. They priced the razors at retail price of 55c and gave it at 20c to the wholesaler. This was lower than 1/10 of the production. Now everyone could afford to buy the razor. This price was much below the cost of manufacture of the razor. But Gillette ensured that no other manufacturers blades could be used with their razors. The blades were priced @ 5c against production cost of only 1c. The rest is history – selling a shave was never so successful.

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