Business Icon
In endless pursuit of knowledge and perfection;
Mission bound to make this world a happier place for animals
An engineer and an MBA with four international certifications, Vikrant always had a very strong academic bend and a deep, intense, and studious approach to everything that he undertook. He talks about two yardsticks of success for an entrepreneur; commercial success and intellectual success, and it is not necessary for both to go hand-in-hand. While commercial success is a relative and subjective aspect, Vikrant always aimed high on intellectual success; and so he achieved.
Post his MBA from the prestigious Symbiosis Institute of Business Management-Pune, Vikrant embarked on an ERP career in Oracle Applications as a functional consultant with the well-known IT services firm Satyam Computer Services. After having worked for 11 years in ERP in marquee organizations like Satyam, Oracle Corporation, and Patni Computers, Vikrant called it quits in late 2008 to pursue his entrepreneurial dream. His last stint was again with Satyam Computer Services as General Manager with the responsibility for presales and delivery for North America for several verticals. He had a 130-strong team reporting into him.
While Vikrant forayed into entrepreneurship with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm, his passion soon snowballed into a larger role. He started evangelising entrepreneurship. His initial baby steps led him to conceive the idea of a CEO Peer Group called Mavens.
Vikrant had been actively associated with various organizations which foster entrepreneurship like BNI (world’s largest business referral organization) and TiE. He noticed that in addition to BNI, there were umpteen ‘affordable versions’ of BNI which copy the BNI model with (or without) minor terminology variations. Unfortunately the focus of these organizations was primarily on sales. Then there were organizations like TiE, though much fewer, which regularly hosted seminars, conferences, knowledge sessions, and various other nurturing activities, which certainly added value by enriching the audience and/or members. However he noticed a major gap. He realised that these inputs, most of the times ad-hoc, are like cooking khichdi with fire kept a few meters away as in Akbar-Birbal’s famous story. This led to the conception of Mavens, a ‘think tank’ of trusted peer CEOs founded to serve a two-fold purpose; (1) as an advisory board, (2) as a learning platform.
Vikrant’s casual conversation with the founder CEO of a very large Pune (Hinjewadi) headquartered IT organization, who was also one of the prior The Senate Talk Show guests, captures the crux behind the idea of Mavens. He was curious to know as to why Vikrant preferred to start Mavens when he could have more actively contributed to the TiE initiatives. Vikrant explained that Mavens has a very different objective. Mavens aims to create a large impact for a small number of entrepreneurs, while TiE, in most cases, brings about a small impact for a large number of entrepreneurs.
Two of Mavens’ star initiatives are Mavens School of Organization Development (MSOD) and The Senate Talk Show. As part of MSOD, Vikrant conducts full-day workshops on business topics like strategy, innovation, growth, risk, culture, governance & control, branding, marketing, sales, organization development, money, and so on. These are followed by full-day advisory sessions on the same topics.
Likewise Mavens has been arranging Talk Shows, conducted in an interview format, with successful entrepreneurs who lead large and successful organizations. First ten Talk Shows were held with first-generation, Pune-based entrepreneurs who built successful organizations from scratch. 11th Talk Show onwards, they started their PRIDE OF PUNE series with those iconic brands from Pune who have not only managed to hit the sweet spot with Puneites, but are also highly regarded across the country & beyond. Their first eleven (11th to 21st) Talk Shows under this series have already been conducted with Dr. S.B. Mujumdar, Ms. Meher Pudumjee, Mr. Prataprao Pawar, Mr. Kishor Patil, Mr. Atul Chordia, Mr. Satish Magar, Mr. Sanjay & Girish Chitale, Late Jagannath Shetty, and so on. Vikrant had the privilege to interview many of these guests. He aspires to see The Senate Talk Show as Pune’s signature event for entrepreneurs.
Vikrant also gets invited by other forums to moderate panel discussions and talk shows. He was recently invited by YPO-Kolkata to Kolkata to moderate a panel discussion titled ‘Lives Shaped by Challenges and the Courage to Move On, to Grow and to Give’ with Ms. Anu Aga and Ms. Meher Pudumjee. Prior to that, he was invited by Finnovators to moderate a panel discussion on ‘Women in Business’ with Ms. Anu Aga and Ms. Radhika Gupta of Edelweiss.
A wonderful culmination of these Talk Shows is a book called Guideposts authored by Vikrant. Guideposts uses the 21 The Senate Talk Shows as the foundation. The book (around 385 pages) is meant to serve as an essential management handbook for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. It is written with an objective to expose readers to a wide array of thoughts and ideas derived from these 21 Talk Shows. The book is a commentary on the experiential insights, wisdom, and knowledge of Talk Show guests which the readers can ruminate on.
Unlike many other books on entrepreneurial success and failure stories, Guideposts follows a multi-dimensional approach. The book presents the content in a three-dimensional (3D) form. Part 1 of the book doesn’t merely narrate stories, but extracts fantastic usable management learning in the form of rich and informative essays. This makes it 2D. However what makes the book highly value-adding is its Part 2, which adds yet another dimension, thus making it 3D.
Just as writing is therapeutic, it is addictive too. Having tasted the joy and challenge, and reward too, of writing a book, Vikrant completed his second book called 50 Dilemmas. The book discusses fifty dilemmas that plague an entrepreneur’s mind. Across these fifty dilemmas, an attempt has been made to cover as many functional areas as possible to make the book a holistic read. The focus of the book is to discuss each of these dilemmas as exhaustively as possible. Wherever possible, an attempt has been made to provide a ‘rule of thumb’ to resolve the dilemma. However, there are many dilemmas where a concrete rule of thumb cannot be provided. The author leaves such dilemmas with various possibilities and pointers.
Vikrant’s mainstay is a coworking/business center chain called The Senate Business Center, which he drives with as much passion as all his other initiatives. Founded in April 2013 and spread over 21,000 sft through its two centers in Erandwane and Wakad, The Senate is one of the prominent workplace solution providers in Pune.
Most conventional workplace solution providers limit themselves to providing serviced offices (physical infrastructure plus services). Some of them would arrange a few entrepreneurial events in a piecemeal manner too. However there is no workplace solution provider in Pune which does such ‘intensive’ & ‘extensive’ work in entrepreneurship the way The Senate does.
The unique value proposition of The Senate is their promise to provide ‘a complete ecosystem for growth’ through many initiatives which roll-up into their two themes: ‘Entrepreneurship’ and ‘Fun & Fitness’. Under Entrepreneurship theme, The Senate runs unique initiatives like Center for Entrepreneurship Development, Mavens, Talk Shows, Knowledge Sessions, Mixer Events, Library, and Club Senate. Under Fun & Fitness theme, The Senate provides exclusive areas for a Recreation Centre, a Reading Lounge (Crossword’s style of seating area), an Open Air Cafe (called Chimes) etc. It also consistently arranges sporting & recreation activities like The Senate Sports Week (a six-monthly activity) and ongoing yoga and zumba sessions. A combination of these two themes makes their value proposition unique and hard to match.
The Senate offers an innovative service called Club Senate. It is a unique solution consisting of a compelling combination of conferencing, lounge access, virtual office, access to events, and other benefits. Club Senate provides an opportunity to those entrepreneurs to get associated with The Senate who otherwise do not see the need to hire a serviced office with them.
With four conference rooms of varying capacity and a large banquet hall called Conferia, The Senate offers a comprehensive conferencing solution. Conferia banquet hall is a suave-looking, well-equipped, air conditioned hall with good acoustics which can accommodate an audience of 150 guests in theatre format or a get-together of up to 200 guests. It was setup with a view to provide an elegant and superior banquet facility to cater to varied requirements of clients. Conferia banquet hall is strongly supported by Chimes, an outdoor 1600 sft venue for cocktail, lunch & dinner, and hi-tea.
Interestingly Vikrant’s model mandates that they own the real estate rather than run their centers on a rental space. Thanks to his early realization that richness and wealth are two different aspects and what lasts and provides financial freedom is your wealth. While many challenged his philosophy, it later got vindicated when people understood the business models of giant corporations like McDonald’s and Walmart.
A completely lesser known dimension of Vikrant’s life and work is his love for animals and passion for animal care. He is strongly supported in this endeavour by his teenage daughters Tanisha and Siya. Vikrant believes in adopting needy (indie or injured) dogs as pets and gives them all the love and care.
He is a proud and loving ‘dad’ to seven dogs and five cats. Additionally there are several street dogs which he has been feeding and providing medical care for many years. His latest addition is a pup called Toffy, a street child who was under Vikrant’s care. Unfortunately Toffy suffered from a gastro stroke. After umpteen visits to his veterinary and long medication, Toffy recovered, only to be hit by a speeding two-wheeler. One of Toffy’s front limbs was paralyzed, and after the substantial effort to cure her failed, the limb had to be amputed. Toffy was adopted by Vikrant since she was hit by gastro. He has made similar rescue attempts with pigeons and squirrels too.
Several pups adopted by Vikrant have been successfully rehabilitated with other caring parents post their vaccination and initial care. His car is loaded with a box full of goodies (dog food and dog treats) which he generously keeps distributing to his furry friends all around the city streets. He has also been donating to organizations like RESQ and others. Vikrant wants his work in this area to snowball into something large and impactful in the years to come. He has already named this initiative as Be PAWsitive, and he positively feels upbeat about this.
Website : www.thesenate.in; www.mavensindia.com
Email : contact@thesenate.in
Add comment