H. Sriram is a director at IBS Gulf Design which he co-founded in 2009.
His company is involved in the design of complex, mechanical, electrical and plumbing
systems in modern buildings that people never have to think about.
Starting off as a supervisory trainee in Volta's back in Chennai in 1985, Sriram has
helmed projects in Abu Dhabi, Brunei, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia before he decided to strike
out on his own in India in 2009.
His work is highly technical and those in the building and construction industry know
what it takes to design the internal systems of a building to keep it ticking.
The company's client list includes some of the world's largest corporations.
How does one go about building a career in infrastructure development where huge sums
of money are involved?
This is episode 21 of my first job, the podcast that covers engaging career journeys and every
single one is full of twists, turns and insights.
I am Venugopal Naya, the host of the podcast and CEO of IdeaScape Communications and advertising
agency into branding, creative and design.
So settle in, sit back and enjoy the conversation or if you are a worker, hit those steps and
measure them.
Hi Sriram.
Thank you for the introduction.
Thank you so much.
Wonderful to have you on the show.
When you, let's say, have your introductory conversations, where does it start?
What are the things that come onto the table?
What is the first briefing session like?
But typically, when obviously you are working for a project and you are working for a client
and so it is important that you understand the needs of the client, the pains of the
client and what he wants to get out of this project.
Our whole conversation starts primarily trying to understand this.
So we allow the client to speak, we don't interrupt, we try to understand why at all
he's envisaging this project, what is his objective and what he wants to achieve in
this project.
And ultimately, how the whole discussion starts.
You started off as a supervisory, as a supervisory trainee for Volta.
What is it like?
Did you in college kind of have an idea of what you wanted to do?
How did life take you?
See I did my mechanical engineering and at that point in time, we had to choose two electives.
One elective by choices, automobile engineering and another elective by choices, air conditioning
and refrigeration.
During those times, air conditioning and refrigeration was not so popular.
Most of us didn't have any air con in the house and we haven't really gone to places
which are centrally air conditioned those days.
I'm talking about maybe 35, 40 years ago.
My initial interest was in automobile.
In fact, the project that I did when I finished my engineering was to run a Labrador scooter
on ethanol.
We were successful in doing certain changes to the engine and the magneto setting of the
scooter to ensure that we were able to run it on ethanol.
So that was the project that I did.
And though my initial interest was in automobile, I must say that I was really not having a
great clarity on what I should do.
We applied for whatever jobs that came by and I got into this.
Only after joining, I realized that it's such an interesting domain to be working on and
such an upcoming domain at that point in time.
Even now, I would say.
So what are the kind of projects that you initially worked with?
In Vultas, there are multiple divisions and we joined air conditioning and refrigeration
business group, central plants.
What we mean by central plants is working on projects which are bigger in size, not
the typical mini-split units or what we do in the houses.
It's more to do with bigger institutions, hospitals, hotels and then we do the entire
air conditioning distribution.
So that's where I started with.
Okay, just to understand this better, the levels of complexity are manifold versus one compressor
versus a central plant or is it essentially in how you design the flow of coal?
See, the level of complexity is in the mind actually, I would say.
Because you actually think it very simply, whatever we are doing today is nothing complex.
I mean, we are only doing what somebody has invented for us.
And that way, I would say, I don't think there is a much more evolved and complex machine
than the human body so far invented.
I would say, yes, the sizes were big and some of the principles that you had to apply when
you go for something very small to something very big is different.
And it all comes with common sense.
You have to at least keep it simple and think, okay, fine, in a normal small air conditioning
that you have studied in your engineering, how does it work?
And now how do we relate that to something big?
And what are the key aspects that come in between to ensure that whatever you do big
is also consistent?
What were some of the early lessons that you picked up?
Typically, we had to go for a training period.
Training in the company used to be very, very serious, serious in the sense that people
used to consider it very serious.
So the bosses are very, very particular, very serious about it.
They are very attentive.
As a trainee, there were certain key aspects that were imbibed into our blood.
I can just think of one incident where my boss used to say, you should always have a
diary and you should basically start your day with a diary and then plan it out.
So one day I went without a diary to the office.
So he said, where is your diary?
I said, I forgot.
He said, okay, go home.
You don't have to come to office.
You go home.
If you can bring the diary, you come to office.
Otherwise you stay at home.
Tomorrow, if you can't bring the diary, stay at home.
Don't come to office.
So, I mean, though it was so simple, it showed the kind of seriousness and what we used to
do in a diary, for example, is that every day in the morning before the world starts,
we will try to kind of note down what are the things that we're supposed to be doing
for that day.
And through the day, when more and more things that we start doing, we start writing before
we do so that we keep visiting those points and then ensuring that we are attending to
that.
So, whenever we complete something, we scratch it down.
And the next day morning, we again start our work.
We will take the previous days, whatever was left out.
That will be the first in our diary.
Okay, so those are the top list in our diary, which we have to address.
And then the other things.
So what used to happen was that if two or three things keep repeating in your diary for the
first two or three days, there are only two reasons.
One is you're not able to resolve it or you're not able to do that work.
In which case, you should clearly escalate it.
Because that means there is a problem on hand.
You are not resolving the problem.
You're just keeping the problem with you.
Second thing is, if there are two or three things that are appearing every day in the
morning, first thing, when you open the diary, then you really feel very bad about it.
You think that, why am I not doing this?
So you first complete that you are ensuring that you are not carrying things forward for
a longer time.
Because what happens is, when you carry things forward, at some point in time, you will start
losing it.
So I have a diary, even after 35 years, I still have the diary with me.
Whenever I sit in front of the client, first thing I will open is my diary, not the laptop.
That has completely ingrained.
And that helps in a lot of planning activity.
Most importantly, it also gives you a history.
If you want to know when did you meet this?
When did this happen?
All you have to do is to just, you know, go back to the pages of the diary and you will
know exactly.
It also helps in whenever you are having a conversation with a client or your colleagues
or whoever, if you are having all these data points with you clearly, it helps in conveying
your point more clearly to the client.
And the client or whoever is in a conversation with you also understands that you have all
the facts and figures.
So it's just a very simple tool that was taught to us when we were interns.
Second point that we were taught, we used to prepare reports.
Typically whenever we make a report, the report is made in a way that you have understood
the whole thing.
Right?
It is never made in a way to make somebody else understand.
And then we share that report with the client and the client doesn't understand or either
misunderstands it.
It is very important that you make a report that will convey what you actually want to
convey to the client.
And he has not seen the problem.
He has not seen what you want to convey.
He has to still understand it.
Right?
So it's very important that you think him in mind while making the report.
Similarly, when we make a report, there will be a initial start point which will basically
define what was the objective of this report, what was done, what is the conclusion.
So we were actually taught to communicate in a disciplined way and also in a way that
the other person will understand.
This I think was also very, very important at a very early stage in my career.
Though there were some punishments given to us by our bosses, today we really are grateful
to them for what we are teaching us all these things.
Some things that are very explicitly taught to you, something which are very subtly taught
to you.
The wonderful thing about this is the timelessness of it.
It's not as if you had to invent it and then you just follow a certain set of things and
in a job that requires you to be methodical.
This is what the method is.
It daily notes, finish off the jobs one by one on priority and ensure that you have told
people what has been completed and what is not completed.
In the early years, people may not understand the importance of doing it.
It's only as you progress in the job that you understand what exactly how important
this thing is.
So what is the experience when you first went abroad to Abu Dhabi and started working there?
I went abroad when I was 23 years old.
Suddenly my manager called me one day and he said that you want to go to Abu Dhabi?
I had no issues, no idea what was there, what to expect.
I know for one thing was clear that I was going to one of the sister companies.
So I had gone there and I was involved in one of the very big residential projects at
that point in time.
I was there only for 16 months.
So when I came back, I just looked back to where I was 16 months earlier and to where
I am today.
I realized that I had had a very steep climb in that time.
I attribute to the simple fact that not being in your comfort zone and willing to explore
is something that gives you a lot of experience that you can carry throughout your.
When you said it's out of the comfort zone, was the way of working different?
What were some of the aspects that you had to?
So many things were different.
One the weather was extremely hostile.
Second was the scale of the project.
Such a huge project and I had to manage it myself at that young age.
I had to manage it.
The third thing is I had a lot of other nationalities working.
The main contractor was Lebanese.
There were a lot of Arabs around and sometimes it takes time for you to work with Arabs because
culturally they could be.
You feel that they are very angry, but that's the way they are.
They express it like that.
It's not that they are angry.
So it takes time for you to understand what they want to convey and to also prove a point
that as an Indian, as a youngster, you are there and you can't deliver that.
That was the third thing.
The nature of work, there was so much of material that need to be procured from different parts
of the world.
We could get a lot of insight on what every other part of the world is making, manufacturing
and all that.
It's so far outside your comfort zone.
You still had to meet deadlines.
You had to show progress.
I suppose that there would have been a time limit by which this project had to be completed.
You would have been running against the clock most of the time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
It was a multi-storey building.
It was to be completed in 16 months.
Every day I would climb at least 70 to 80 storeys, at least twice in a day.
The project manager, very, very tough guy.
Not many people could stand against him.
Finally, when I decided to leave, the project manager, he's from the main contractor, the
project manager.
He called up my boss and he said, why are you leaving this guy?
He did a good job.
So that was the testimony.
That was something like that coming up from his mouth because he's generally not that
kind of person who made my life.
It's not one gushing appreciation.
It's that unrestrated almost as an afterthought.
But you know that that has come at a very high price in the sense that the person genuinely
felt it, which is why he said what he did.
So you went on to Brunei, was it from there?
I came back to India.
I got married and then I was also working in some very large projects for Volta itself.
At that point in time, those were the largest projects booked by the company Pan India.
At some point in time, I felt that it would probably be a good idea to explore the bodies
to see how things are.
So I got an opportunity to work in a consultancy company.
So I was basically a contracting.
I was working in the contracting line.
So I decided that I would go to a place, again, no idea where this island was.
I've never heard of this island before.
But it's such a wonderful, lovely place to be because one of the richest.
Exactly.
That is the part which is known.
Everyone says that the Sultan of Brunei is among the richest person in the world.
Nothing else I knew about that country.
People are so nice.
I recall an incident.
I parked my car.
There's a lot of beaches there.
So I went to the beach.
I parked my car.
Probably because of no parking area, I guess.
So 10 minutes later, one policeman comes to me very politely.
He says, I'm not a citizen of that place.
Very clearly I'm a foreigner and I'm with a brown skin.
But he comes so politely and says to me that I think you made a mistake.
You parked it in the wrong place.
I said, what did I do?
I said, park it in the wrong place.
Why don't you just remove your car and park it somewhere else?
That's the kind of approach that people had in the country.
They were so nice with others.
In India, somebody who had said, made them come and put a fine on you.
Said, what bloody fellow?
You don't know where to park your car.
What was the project, the consultancies that you were handling?
MEP kind of project.
So was yeah.
We were doing some very, very big project for the Sultan of Pranayat.
It was a seven-star hotel.
Extremely big hotel with very, very different facilities.
Haven't come across a similar project for that so far.
So many things we could learn.
It was a landmark project.
So you were interacting with people from several disciplines.
You had, you would be interacting with architects, with project managers, the logistics departments.
How would you keep track of the number of things that you had to do?
Your daddy, I think, would have been a base.
But then there is so much more that you actually had to keep in mind.
There is more to keep in mind.
But what happens is, again, this was again taught to us when we were young.
Don't go by the size of the problem.
Just break it down and make it simple.
That is what we have been taught.
So what we do is, still there are big projects, there are many things to do.
We will first try to split it, multiple smaller issues, and then we identify how to handle
it.
Most of the times when you actually split into smaller segments, you will realize that
50 or 60% of that is so easily solved.
So that actually makes the problem much smaller.
I mean, it comes with experience.
It makes a lot of sense, but I guess it's only when you're involved at the site and
you know what is involved with your previous experience and the experience of the people
around you that you begin to even understand how to break it down.
Or are you saying that the breaking down is not a very difficult thing to do because you
are saying, why does the problem come because of this and this reason?
I mean, this is not specific to a project.
This is specific to our daily routine life.
Something that we face in life, for example, people say that getting a daughter married
off is a big project by itself.
If you look at it, continue to look at it as a big project, that project size will never
come down.
You will still think that it's a huge thing.
But the moment you try to split it out and then see, okay, this is one aspect, this is
one aspect, this will first split the marriage into different segments.
Then split it into further different segments depending on the requirement.
Then what happens is it becomes easy for you to focus and easy for you to solve also.
It's quite evident, Shiram, that you come across as very practically unflappable.
Even if there is a certain sense of, okay, the problem is big, but we will find a way.
And to a large extent, I think the person leading the entire thing, when he displays
a sense of being on top of things, where let's say 50% of it is under your control and the
other 50% may not be within your control.
In which case you concentrate on what you can solve.
Everything else kind of falls into place because then you get the time necessary or you get
the finances necessary or you get whatever else to move it forward.
So how exactly were you planning your career?
Did it come from outside?
I would say that last time I was working in Burrain.
There were processes, there were systems, everything was working fine.
So I was getting into comfort zone.
That made me uncomfortable.
If I continue to be in a comfort zone, then probably my growth will get better.
There was no other reason for me to come to India.
India is one place where I always wanted to be back.
India is one country which needed that.
It still needs.
The country has developed a lot now.
What was the point at which you decided that let me try something?
When I came in, it was not that I had absolute clarity on my mind, what I want, basically
no plans in my mind, all that I wanted to do.
I said, let's first try to find out what the market needs.
Initially, I decided that I will start doing some freelancing work when I was working on
freelancing work on certain projects.
Somehow at that point in time, some of the people I met didn't seem to value the experience
and the knowledge that I was bringing to the table.
For people who come from abroad, for the first one or two years, there's always a lot of
temptation to go back.
I was also tempted to do that.
That's when I was meeting two of my clients for whom I was doing the project.
One was a very repeated doctor and another one was a very big project manager.
I said that things are not working for me.
Maybe I should go back and work.
This doctor, he was working in CNC.
He is one of the leading oncology specialists.
He travels all over the world and gives various lectures and he spends most of his time traveling.
He just told me that I had a very lucrative job in Australia.
Why do you think I came back to India?
I wanted to do something for the country.
He said, people like you are required for the country.
Why are you suddenly, within one year, deciding to go back?
Working with some principles, there will be people looking for people like you.
Stay on.
You will not repent.
Somebody was having a very comfortable job out there outside, has come back and he was
working.
I have seen the way he works at CMC.
Velour, his cabin doesn't even have an air conditioner and Velour is a very, very hot
place.
We are at least 200, 300 patients every time.
He used to work.
I mean, he used to work with all sincerity.
So when I said, such a big man, he can work.
Let us make an attempt.
That's how the whole journey started.
But you had to learn or you had to reinvent the skill of landing projects or understand
that whole thing.
Did that come to you because of the references that you had and the kind of contacts you
already?
By the time I came back to India, I had virtually lost all my contacts, starting to practice
as a consultant.
And what happens is, as a consultant, it's sometimes very difficult to get a breakthrough.
If the client is already working with the consultant, even if the consultant is a little
bit okay, small problem with him also, the client says, no, no, sir, I have been working
with him for the last so many years.
That's the kind of setup that we had.
Getting a breakthrough was not so easy.
What I have learned when I introspect those first two or three years, because those are
very critical years where you have to really hit a critical mass.
If you are sincere in your work, you will have people looking for somebody.
Market wants people who are sincere, who are experienced, who are knowledgeable.
Market wants them.
It takes a little time for the law of attraction to work.
And then I will just give you an example.
I once met a client, very old man, owner of a company.
I went and made a presentation of what I can do for a specific project.
I made a presentation.
He went for some 20 minutes.
I was only talking, I was only listening.
Okay, so after 20 minutes, he said, my friend, I'm a old man.
I didn't understand anything what you said.
All right.
Many things.
I didn't understand anything.
All I understood was that you seem to be very sincere in whatever you're saying.
And that I feel is probably a good aspect based on which I can trust you and give you
a job.
If you approach with sincerity, automatically you will deliver a good.
There can be no two ways about it.
Ultimately, when you break it down, these are the kinds of things which people who are
entering a profession that what does it take to learn something?
Don't try to get into a place which is easy right in the beginning.
Let me get away with doing as little as I can is a recipe for disaster in future.
Because if you don't do the maximum amount of work when you're starting off and your
learning curve should be like a straight line, you should go straight up so that and like
you said, there was a huge difference in you when you came back from Abu Dhabi after the
residential project because it was suddenly being thrown into the deep end of the pool.
What I noticed is this particular thread that they're willing to go the extra mile simply
by being told not because they looked at it and said, I must do challenging work.
No, it was just that.
Okay, are you prepared to do this?
Yes.
And then we'll figure out as we go along.
You see young engineers who are coming into the business today.
Are you able to kind of figure out which of these will finally make the cut?
It's not very difficult to do that.
It's pretty easy.
Some people have the fire in them and it's very easy to spot them.
You know that they have the fire and you can the most important thing is then you see somebody
who has a fire.
You also get excited about it.
You want to do something for that person.
You want to give him more opportunity.
You enjoy doing that.
Yes, sir.
There are some people who are very much comfortable.
So I keep telling my own staff at regular intervals.
I say that the moment you continue to be in your comfort zone, you stop growing.
That's the end of it.
After some time, I keep telling them that at least six months once, one year once, just
look back, evaluate yourself where you were one year before and to where you are now.
If you feel that you have not really progressed, then you have to introspect.
And if you feel that this organization is not giving you that opportunity, then you should
quit this organization.
Feel that this organization was willing to give you opportunity, but you did not take
it, then I think you should take it.
But I tell them that if you don't introspect or you stay where you are, then after five
years you will be worthless.
As an organization, we take up projects which are little complex engagement that also does
not excite us.
So we still continue to be out of our comfort zone.
We continue to work on those projects.
And at the end of the day, we are very happy that, you know, as every day passes, we are
also learning.
Before you go into a site, spend two or three minutes based on what is it that you want
to achieve or what is it that you're there for?
That realization came very late.
It comes with experience.
Now, not only the site, any meeting, even if you want to have a meeting with your wife,
sorry, I should not say meeting, it becomes very formal.
Even if you want to have a discussion with your family, for example, on certain specific
aspects, it's always better to just think for two minutes, what is this discussion
about?
What are the objectives of this discussion?
What do you want to convey?
What do you expect to get from this discussion?
So whether it is a small family discussion or whether it is a meeting or whether it is
a site visit, whatever, it applies to everywhere.
All you need is just those two minutes.
If you just step back and think what you want to do in that discussion or a meeting two
minutes before, you will realize that you are much better placed in that meeting and
you are able to bring a lot of value and more productivity.
You've seen people who could be very good in the early years of their life, but at some
point that same enthusiasm doesn't, is it because that is the point at which they think
that, yeah, I have acquired enough skills to sort of last me for the next 10 to 15 years?
Why do I?
That's precisely, they seem to have gone into that comfort zone.
Okay, so that's the comfort zone that you are talking about.
Yeah, so once you are in that comfort zone after 10, 15 years, like you said, he has
not grown.
They have acquired a lot of skills, but they did not grow enough because they were willing
to be in the comfort zone.
So when you're looking at a new project, when you say it should be complex, is it in terms
of you think that, okay, this is an aspect, it's not about the size of the project as
much as what is it that you will be doing on it?
We did a project for one corporate client, not a very big project though, it was a pilot
which was, it's an American client and they made this pilot in India for the globe.
Why did they choose India?
Interesting because they realized that at India, this company was delivering a lot of interesting
projects comparing to other parts of the world.
Okay.
When we were engaged with that project, the exciting thing about that project was the
kind of user experiences that we were trying to bring into the project.
Whoever is going to be the ultimate end user, what are the experiences that we are going
to bring to that particular person in the project?
Experience could be visual, experience could be sensual, experience could be in terms of
environment.
So there were various aspects of experiences that we wanted to bring in.
We had done a lot of brainstorming and we came up with a lot of brilliant ideas and
when we executed it, we were so thrilled that we could do that project.
After that project was executed and their senior management leadership came from all
around the world, had a look at it.
They then decided that this team will go to other parts of the world and impart their
knowledge.
So we went to a lot of other developed countries and said that this is how we do the project
and this is how it should be done.
Fabulous.
So this is an example of how you can take something that again you could have delivered
a level of satisfaction by saying, okay, we will stay within certain bounds.
You decided how to push it much further.
You actually believe there is a lot more risk in not taking risks at all?
Taking risk, I'm not a very risk taking person.
I come from a family.
I am probably the first generation engineer in my family and I'm probably the first,
definitely I'm the first generation author.
So my family comes from a very conservative background where my father always used to
say that you should join a government service.
That's the best for life.
And initially I got a job in Indian railways when I finished my engineering and I decided
not to take up that job.
And my father had that grievance still, you know, he passed away.
What I do is I use a lot of common sense to think, is it a risk?
Is it something that we can attend?
Risk is, I think, where you feel that your chances are fairly less and you have to depend
on a lot of external stuff and your luck to turn things for you.
We don't look at it that way.
If there are many things where we can contribute and make it work, and if there are certain
other external dependencies or certain other luck factors which are less in percentages,
then I don't think that's a great risk because I've always seen that are confident and if
you are approaching that with that sincerity, things work.
Sometimes it doesn't, but it's okay.
But still there will be lessons to learn from that.
How have you got about building a team?
It is a very big challenge.
Many, many big players in the market offer compensations which are some things that we
can't even manage or dream about.
We basically try and look for passion in people.
Many of the engineers today, they want to go into IT field and make some big money.
There are also some engineers who still want to be in their domain.
Try to find out those people and also the internal growth.
At some point in time, they leave the company for better prospects, which is fine for me.
It's good that you have to move.
Today, people who have left our company and joined other companies have really done very
well.
There is a small brand image that our company has created which some of the companies realized
that somebody who is coming from this company must be a good guy.
I was talking to one of my friends.
We were with Volta, so many people.
They still consider Volta as our kind of mother company.
But none of the people who were working together are there now.
Everybody is everywhere.
But the beauty is that all of us are able to spread that brand image of Volta throughout
the world.
That's the beauty of that company.
That's an amazing insight that the brand has spread literally by the people who have
experienced it the most.
Absolutely.
Not just as consumers but as people who are working within.
And then those are the qualities that you imbibe and you do it.
And you're doing precisely the same thing.
But any reason why you called it IBS Gulf or did you have some other?
No, no.
Actually, IBS Gulf was a company which we formed in Dubai first.
And at some point in time, we realized that we were not doing so great.
We started looking for work in India.
We had enrolled into various companies in India as IBS Gulf.
Before we decided to close the Dubai company.
Then I decided that I will keep the company's name like that.
But frankly, we got nothing to do with Gulf.
It's like the Chennai Super Kings team, which doesn't have a single player from Chennai
or South, sorry, or Tamil Nadu, but still is called as Chennai Super Kings.
It's quite a journey, Shiram, and I think the wonderful aspect is that you made a decision
early on.
It was as simple as that.
Be methodical and don't stay within your comfort zone.
Those two principles alone, I think account for a whole lot of how you have actually
grown professionally.
The world is different.
IT has taken over.
It's a far more networked society.
The basic things don't change.
But what is it that it would be advisable for young people to do?
Because there's a thing of following your passion versus understanding what is it you're
good at, which could be two different things.
So understanding at what you're good at, I think the youngsters today seem to be fairly
better informed than what you were during our years.
I mean, I was a youngster.
I had no idea what I was worth or what I could do.
Today, the youngsters are far better placed.
They're well informed also of the opportunities that are there.
Only improvement, I would think, is that they should give it a little longer time.
I have seen, at least in the engineering sector, youngsters are not very knowledgeable.
And I would not blame them because the education system has become like that.
There are no proper professors.
Those days when we were studying, there were passionate professors who were actually working
for sharing that knowledge today.
It is not there.
They should dive deeper into the things that they want to do.
Otherwise, they're very well informed.
They're fairly...
Yes.
They have better clarity.
If only they have that urge to dive deeper.
Careers take time.
You can't absorb knowledge and execute things in a hurry.
And the problem is that today's media emphasizes this whole thing of overnight success stories,
though they know fully well that there is no such thing.
So we're living in a mythical kind of world with unreal expectations.
That is one of the things that young people really have to guard against.
Swede by, oh, this company did this.
So if you actually go into it, it would have taken a couple of decades.
It would have taken all of that.
Wonderful.
Any closing remarks, Sriram?
My only thought would be like, whether it is a job or regular life or anything, just
approach it in a very simple way, don't get too complicated too much.
Okay.
Nothing is as complicated as we think it is.
Approach it with sincerity.
Then everything will fall in place.
If you want to learn something at your approach with sincerity, you will find a guru who will
come to or teach you.
Thanks a ton for being on the show.
I think it's wonderful to see how you made that the lodestar of your life, testing the
edges of your comfort zone all the time, whether it was in your first job, whether it was in
trying it out with different cultures and countries, whether it was entrepreneurship.
It was always about testing what is it that I can go beyond rather than try and stay within
what you knew well.
So the chances of success are definitely much higher.
Thank you for being on the show, Sriram.
And thank you for imparting your learning.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
It was a very nostalgic journey because very seldom you get to, you know, a chance to work
with the memory lane.
Yes.
Yeah, go down the memory lane.
Thank you for enabling that.
It was wonderful speaking to you.
Thank you so much.
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