Situation:
2001 dot com bust. At contests2win.com, we had 2 months of cash left to survive. I was desperate. I knew I had a great idea and had to ride out this storm. So I assembled my core team and requested a meeting with Renuka Ramnath – then CEO of ICICI Venture – our principal VC for financial help. I was going to beg her for money.
We met in the lobby of the Oberoi (now the Trident) in Mumbai – the sofa was small and so I was sitting facing Renuka, with my team members standing.
I started mumbling about more money and rambled on for a few minutes. Renuka looked at me, smiled and said ‘Alok, when we have children, they need to fall to grow up. As parents we can easily hold them but don’t. Allowing them to fall is what is good for them’
That’s all she said. The message was clear. Fall. Stumble. Get hurt but get strong.
My team and I were shattered as we walked out. Yet something had been triggered inside.
We struggled, beat ourselves to death and survived. Almost 10 years later, we are miles ahead of those horrid times, and that advice remains unbelievably hard to beat.
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Interesting & inspiring Alok!…would be nice if you could share sometime how C2W managed to raise the required funding and managed to tide out the storm?
Alok you share many a learning through this.
inspiring…
Alok, consider podcasting too; you’ve got quite a story to tell and most of your listeners would be on broadband.
itz a beautiful and insightful line, it gives lot of us hope to rise after a fall
thanks alok for a gr8 post
Though i have spent a lot of time with you right after this incident…i was never aware of this…Now i know the source of inspiration
Amazing !