Report on India First Leadership Talk by Shri Anand Mahindra

In preparation for the Smart India Hackathon 2019, All India Council for Technical Education with support from Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) launched the “India First Leadership Talk” on January 8, 2019, from 2:00pm to 3:00pm. It was coordinated by Institution Innovation Council of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeethan in a Facebook/Youtube live session with Guest Speaker, Shri Anand Mahindra.

Shri Anand Mahindra is the Chairman of the Mahindra Group and the Executive Chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. He has served on several influential bodies, national and international. These include the UN Global Compact Board, Global Board of Advisors of the Council on Foreign Relations, World Bank Group’s Advisory Board fur Doing Business and the International Advisory Council of Singapore’s Economic Development Board. He has been the President of the Confederation of Indian Industry and served on the boards of the National Stock Exchange of India and the National Council of Applied Economic Research. He is currently on the board of Invest India, the National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency. Mr. Mahindra has been named in Barron’s List of Top 30 CEOs worldwide (2016) and Fortune Magazine’s list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders (2014). He was appointed ‘Knight in the National Order of the Legion of Honour’ by the President of the French Republic (2016) and conferred the ‘Grand Officer of the Order of the Star of Italy’, by the President of Italy (2013). Among his many social change initiatives is the “Nanhi Kali” programme.

Mr Anand Mahindra was asked various leadership and entrepreneurship related questions which were submitted in an online forum before January 5, 2019. He defines a leader as “one who has ideas, who can envision the future and makes you believe it is your own idea” and he believes Innovation in critical to a sustainable future. Mr. Anand rebelled in his family, which had a business background, by deciding to attend the Harvard Business School (HBS) and majored in film and Cinema. He learned that a leader must have three fundamental qualities “HBS”

H – Humility. A leader must be humble whether if he/she is successful or otherwise.

B – Brevity. A leader must be able to breakdown a complicated problem and be biased to simplicity.

S – Self-awareness.  A leader must be self-aware in what his choice of path may be.

A leader may be either a ‘Transformer’, one who can envision, or an ‘Executer’, one who can implement the change; both of which are highly important as one cannot succeed without the success of the other. When asked about Failure, he said “Allow yourself to feel the pain”. Without failure there may be no success and hence you must be able to feel the pain, accept the failure. Taking time off is also permitted as long as you set a point to come back and focus on the task at hand.

Coming to the work life balance, he said that if you enjoy your work, your work will be your life and you will not feel the burden on the 9 to 5 clock. He agrees that he has adopted Google’s work environment into his company. “A person when s/he gets up must not be burdened by work but be enthusiastic about it”. One must find pleasure in their work and be self-aware whether they wish to become a teacher or an entrepreneur.

Coming to the current markets, he believes that competition is the only way for best outcome for a business model and that collaborations to some extent whether its outsourcing or sharing work, it is necessary. Mr Anand Mahindra ends on a note inviting aspiring entrepreneurs to appeal to his company which supports and recognizes innovation in their “cooperate garage”. In which he has set up on the morals of autonomy, empowerment and sharing of wealth.