Funny story. So I start off and my first job
was in Citibank Bombay in what used to be called
global finance, which is the corporate banking
side of the bank. On my second day at work, they
made me sort of get my signature authorized to
be an authorized signatory. I had to register
my signature with all of the requisite authorities.
And day three, I'm signing a check for, I nearly
fell off my chair, 500 crores. It wasn't seeming.
It was. I had never seen so many zeros on a checkbook.
Welcome. We are here for another session of My
First Job, the podcast, where each week we speak
to people who go through their own individual
career journeys. They have their successes and
their moments of reflection. None of it. I think
is a setback. Today, we have Divya Sampath. She's
sponsor and partner of AWE Funds. Divya has had
a long and successful career in IT. At times,
you have to be lucky. You're born at a time when
the world is changing and the world itself is
transitioning to a completely new paradigm, as
they say. This is one place where that word actually
fits. Divya's been in IT. When search engines
were still known by names such as Infoseek and
Lycos and AltaVista, social media didn't exist.
To come through a stage from there to where she
is today is definitely going to be an interesting
journey to hear about. Let's welcome Divya to
the show. Hi, Venu. Thank you so much for the
warm welcome. I appreciate the kind words. Great
to have you on the show. One of the things that
you said is that you divide your time equally
between venture capital and social causes, which
is a great balance because I think work -life
balance, while people look for, you seem to have
found that golden mark between handing out funds
to people and ensuring that there's a certain
set of people who are uplifted as well. So what's
it like? That's a very interesting way to put
it. First of all, I think I learned from... Way
back in my career, I've been fortunate throughout
my career to have great mentors and role models
to look up to. And one of the things I learned
from watching them is that when it comes to work
-life balance, of course, it's important. You
know, one should never overwork and burn oneself
out and all of that. But it's far more important
to find purpose in what you're doing. That is
the source of enduring happiness and joy, finding
balance, as it were. That's really the secret.
So whether it's working as a venture capitalist
or supporting the various causes that are dear
to my heart, as you said, the key to finding
true balance is to always try to stay connected
to your personal purpose, your personal values.
You know, the old -fashioned virtues of working
hard and trying to do good work, right? That
does give a lot of satisfaction. At the end of
the day, most of us spend, you know, 8 to 16
hours, hopefully not 16 hours, but 8 to 16 hours
at work during a day. So it's very tied up in
our personal identities, our self -esteem, the
way we perceive ourselves. So the way we show
up for work, what value we find in the work that
we do is very critical, I think, to maintain
some sort of mental balance or happiness. Finding
that elusive work -life balance as the saying
goes. I'm sure we'll get into the venture capital
part a little later. People often say, and I
think it said on the LinkedIn post about this
podcast, that I've had a zigzag career. I also
had a zigzag education. So one way of looking
at it is that I was open to all kinds of different
experiences, which is a very positive spin to
put on it. The other way to look at it is that
like most people in their late teens, you're
not quite sure what you want to do with life.
One may have multiple talents or multiple interests.
As the saying goes, my official college graduation,
I graduated, I did a BCom. But at the same time,
being surrounded by, you know, friends and family
who are all extremely type A personalities and
very achievement oriented. It wasn't sufficient
to just go to college and get a degree. I, at
the same time, pursued what used to be in those
days called a GNIIT program, which was a graduate
diploma program in programming, as well as I
pursued the equivalent of a BA in French at the
Allianz Transits. Because I was genuinely at
one point in time toying with, should I become,
you know, should I take up arts or should I become
some sort of a diplomat and use my linguistic
abilities? So, or, but my true love was always,
I was always very attracted to technology. So
that remained, has continued to be a constant
threat to my career. So having started that way,
my first job actually pre -MBA, I worked for
a year with Air Ferguson, which is at the time
it was, hadn't been taken over by the larger
consulting firm. It is known as a consulting
and an audit firm. And I worked with the consulting
side to, as a programmer analyst. to digitize
their management library. So that was a very
interesting experience. I was surrounded by management
consultants from the top deep business schools,
as you can imagine. So that had something of
an influence in terms of what to do next. So
that was how I ended up. It certainly had a significant
influence on why I wrote the MBA entrances and
how I ended up doing business. And post my business
degree, the start of my zigzag career was again,
I had a dual major because as one did in those
days. in finance and marketing. And I picked
finance and went into banking for about a year.
I figured out that while I loved the people I
worked with, certainly I joined Citibank, which
is as good an employer as you would get in those
days. And we had a phenomenal management associate
training program. Funny story. So I start off
and my first job was in Citibank Bombay in what
used to be called global finance, which is the
corporate banking side of the bank. On my second
day at work, they made me sort of get my signature
authorized to be an authorized signatory. I had
to register my signature with all of the requisite
authorities. And day three, I'm signing a check
for, I nearly fell off my chair, 500 crores.
I had never seen so many zeros on a check before.
What was the context there? So again, I was managing
cash management. So corporate cash management
means that fundamentally you move large sums
of money around. And this is very much in the
mid -1990s. Indian banking was also not as automated
as it is today. So money didn't move instantly.
There was no NEFT, no RTGS, etc. If you had to
move money from, let's say, from Kolkata or Jamshedpur
to Pune, which is what the Tata Group used to
do. They would have to work with their bankers
to work with a correspondent banking network.
So you would transfer money to, let's say, your
correspondent bank's account in Jamshedpur. And
those folks would then transfer the money to
their branch in Pune, which would arrive four
days later. And then that branch would, through
the local clearing system, transfer the money
to Telco's account with Citibank. There was a
cash management system. So Citibank had leveraged
this opportunity because money did move very
slowly. Either that or you had to move money
through much slower methods. It would take two
weeks for the money to get transferred. So Citibank
had created this cash management offering, leveraging
the weaknesses in the banking system to say,
we'll move your money. Otherwise, it'll take
you two weeks. With us, it'll take four days
by leveraging this network of correspondent banks.
And they were making money off the float because
while the money is moving through the system,
you're sitting on two days of float. So that
money is basically free money that you can then
put into the money market and so on and so forth.
You need to boost up your statutory liquidity
ratio, your SLR and so on and so forth. So I'm
getting too deep into that, but this is the context.
I think very clearly what you found out is early
on you said a check for 500 crores and that kind
of set the stage. What brought me very quickly
down to earth was actually seeing the credit
in my own bank account, which is barely touching
five figures at the time. So on the one hand,
my salary was like barely, had barely crossed
five figures. And on the other hand, it was very
schizophrenic in a way. But you know, beyond,
you very quickly stop thinking of it when it
has so many zeros and you're talking about such
vast sums of money. The thing that inures you
is you stop thinking of it as real money, which
is dangerous. It is dangerous. Yes. So how would
you ensure that all of this was, you know, it's
a huge responsibility. So one zero from 500 crores
will depreciate the value by, you know, straight
away. So how do you ensure that all of this takes
in value? Very true. And fortunately, you know,
Citibank was not stupid enough to trust a fresh
MBA graduate with the sole responsibility of
managing all this. They had a very competent
staff of five people whom I was managing. And
those are frankly the people who did all the
hard work. They were the ones who actually prepared
the checks, did the transaction entries. All
I had to do was sit there and approve things
on three different computer systems because that's
how things were and sign a few checks. I had
to sign about between 20 to 60 checks in a day
because some things actually physically had to
be signed and go through a physical clearing
system. Everything else used to be approved on
various systems and flow through. Staff members
had been there. And all one did was, you know,
supervise them, quote unquote. Yeah, but it's
amazing how there were so many, like you said,
there were so many gaps in the banking system
that could have been, that were actually models
of making money at that point in time. It may
have been a small window, but like you said,
are you finding those kind of things still happening?
That no matter how much technology catches up,
you still have gaps? That's a really good point,
Venu. And actually, we are making a fundamentally
very good point. I would actually say that there's
a reason. And cash management operations this
way was a product offering that pretty much was
invented in India and then was transferred to
other sort of South Asian and a few other developing
economies because, of course, the developed world
didn't need it. There wasn't money moved much
faster. They had other automatic systems of moving
money. Citibank saw this opportunity and, frankly,
was quick to exploit it and make money out of
this in India. There's a reason also that so
many Indian talents went on to bleed Citibank.
And there have been multiple CEOs and leaders
of Citibank of Indian origin, starting with Victor
Meneses back in the 1990s. And he was, I think
he passed out of IIT Bombay sometime in the late
1960s. So we've been exporting talent since way
back when. But that sort of management talent
and that entrepreneurial spirit of seeing a gap
in the market, seeing an opportunity that nobody
else is seeing an inefficiency and saying, I
can develop a product or a service that can solve
this problem for customers and they'll be willing
to pay me for it. That actually is at the nucleus
of most of the really successful startups that
I look at investing in as a venture capitalist,
right? On the other hand, I'd say it's also a
common thing that you see in the social sector
world. There is a service need or a gap that
needs to be addressed. And someone stands up
and says, why can't I be the one to fix this
problem? Or at least let me take a stab at fixing
this problem. And there's value being delivered.
Someone is going to benefit from it. That common
principle of finding that exploitable market
opportunity, limited though it might be in terms
of time, now it doesn't exist, obviously, because
you have instantaneous transfers. But for a long
time, it did. For about a period of close to
a decade, Citibank was making money off this.
And other people followed. They also made money
off this because of the banking system. And genuinely,
if you're a Tisco, you're a Telco, you're a Hindustan
Lever, you have... payrolls that run into crores,
you have, you know, payments that run into crores.
A single day's saving in terms of moving money
from one destination to another is worth a lot
of money to you, right? That was an interesting
opportunity then. And there are continued opportunities
like that today. But that is a common thread.
Maybe the technology has changed, but their ability
to spot those gaps has not. This is amazing.
So when you were doing so well in finance and
in a bank, What brought about the transition
to SIFI, right? Or was it, was there an intermediate?
Brand manager in between. And I had an adventurous
two years as a brand manager after SIFI. So as
I said, that zigzag career, then the next zag,
if you will, after the SIFI zig, was I kind of
quickly figured out that I didn't want to be
a banker. Mainly because I looked around me and
said, in 20 years, do I want to be doing any
of these people's jobs? And the answer was no.
So I was at least fortunate to have figured that
out quickly enough that after a year, I quit
Citibank and joined Sterling Holidays as a brand
manager because my other specialization was marketing.
And I had friends who went into brand management
and here was this opportunity because Sterling
Holidays had pioneered the concept of timeshares
in India at the time. And they had hired a rockstar
team of sales and marketing folks from the who's
who, from Prepton Gamble, Hindustan Leaver. Asian
Paints, all of the best known marketing brand
companies of the day had, they had hired talent.
So it was a very, very sought after place to
be working as a marketing, young marketing professional.
So I ended up joining as a brand manager. And
again, I was very fortunate to have fantastic
bosses, mentors, great learning experiences and
enjoyed it. One thing that I find myself... Conceptually,
that was completely new, right? Because the whole
concept of time sharing. Now, of course, you
have an Airbnb and so many others who have leveraged
that and taken it to a different level. But at
that point, to even say fractional owning of
holiday was something that really had to be drilled
into people. They really didn't think about it
as an option. Yeah, no, absolutely. You were
sort of creating a market because it was kind
of well -known in Europe and the US, right? They
had these club -made kind of timeshare facilities
that had been around since the 1970s, really.
But in India, this concept of, you know, I'm
going to pay a fixed fee and this entitles me
to a two week or three week vacation every year
in a network of holiday properties rather than
sort of owning a property outright was a very,
very new concept. Selling holidays actually had
to educate people and create the market. So it
was very, very interesting work. It was very
interesting being a brand manager trying to communicate
these ideas. We started off with, you know, this
classic. holiday, summer vacation locations.
Then, of course, you obviously realize that,
you know, those great hill stations are pretty
much occupied for maximum five months in a year,
even if you include the off -season fields. The
property is clear for the other seven months,
right? Sterling Holidays very smartly launched
what they call the heritage list of properties,
which were all linked to pilgrimage sites, you
know, or some of the more traditional. So they
started kind of creating destination -themed
holidays. Which might be, so for example, one
of the very first heritage properties was in
Palani in Ramanath. They tried very hard to actually
get something in Tirumala, which of course was
not allowed. So they ended up doing, I think
they dropped the Tirupati. idea after a while.
But, you know, they were genuinely trying very
hard to see it. Do you remember any particular
campaign or interaction with customers which
kind of stands out for that time? I'll tell you
one that kind of stands out. So we were trying
to launch a new sort of golfing holiday package
series. And we had tied up at the time with Greg
Norman, you know, the famous golfer of those
days, to do signature golf courses. The first
signature golf course was launched in Delhi and
that went fine. But then we needed to find other
sort of golfing properties at reasonable prices
that we could then turn into resorts and launch.
Coorg was one of the destinations that, you know,
the Sterling Holidays team ended up choosing.
So they put me in charge of actually developing
the campaign, the brochures, the leaflets. I
hadn't been to the property at the stage and
the resort hadn't come up. So essentially, we're
selling the destination as one does. So I went
to, you know, I wrote, got the creatives to write
beautiful copy about, you know, Coorg. And I
had to correct the copy because there was some.
nonsense about the sound of cheetahs in the early
morning light. And I had to point out that cheetahs
had gone extinct in India a couple of years ago.
I mean, it's a poetic license aside. You can't
sort of just make up African. You can't play
with the facts to that extent. Yeah. So there
we are. We come out and, you know, we do the
launch ad. We've got the leaflets and the brochures
and they're sort of ready to be launched to the
sales team. And the marketing manager says, OK,
when did you, the head of sales and marketing,
he says, OK. have you been to the site and have
you actually, you know, there might be some additional
things that you want to highlight. And I was
like, no, I haven't been to the site. He says,
what are you talking about? How can you market
a site you've never been to? Which was a good
point. So the corporate communications head of
Sterling Holidays and I, a lady called Meera,
a great friend of mine, we unfortunately drifted
out of touch, but we went on a trip to Coot.
And then when we land up at a resort site, we
discover that one, we've been talking about all
of these rolling hills and stuff like that. We
are actually, the resort site is in Virajpit,
which if you're familiar with Coorg, is kind
of, you know, not really much. It's barely, you
could barely call it hilly terrain. So, and which
was also understandable because remember, this
was supposed to be a golf resort. So with golf
resorts, you don't necessarily walk sloping.
You can't, yeah, you can't. The problem that
had been written and approved was all about rolling
hills and misty mornings. And the misty mornings
did exist, of course. But it was a good thing
we went and came back. And before we did the
next lot of printed collaterals, we did a few
things and included a few actual photographs
that we had gone and taken at the site. Not a
single building had come up at this point, but
we did get some actual views of the Virajpit
property included in the brochure. Okay, that's
another break of a different sort. So how did
SIFI happen? So I found myself at Starling Holidays
gravitating towards all of the projects that
included some sort of computerization or digitalization,
right? And I would always put my hand up and
volunteer to do that. And I was the, you know,
first person to say, okay, we need to create
a website. So they put me in charge of creating
the website and, you know, getting the agent,
briefing the agency and getting a website put
up and all of that. So my boss, when he was doing
my annual appraisal, and again, I was fortunate
to have two really great bosses. I moved from
one to the other, a gentleman called Ravi Warrior
and then to a gentleman called VN Bhattacharya,
who was one extremely accomplished, very smart,
fantastic mentor, fantastic boss. And I remember
after doing my annual appraisal in April of 98,
he gave me a good review and he gave me some
feedback. He said, look. And we started talking,
as one does, you know, good bosses talk to you
about your future and development and what do
you want to do next. And as I was talking, he
said, you know, everything that I hear that you're
really passionate about is really in the tech
field, not so much in the marketing field. So
my advice to you was think about what you want
to be doing five years from now. Picture what
is exciting you and is going to keep you happy.
And then, you know, figure out what you want
to do next, because that's how you're going to
find real satisfaction in a job well done. Because
you're a good brand manager, you're competent.
No doubt you can continue to succeed in this
path. But the thing that really makes you light
up is something other than pure marketing. So
that was good advice. And I started casually
looking around for, you know, at what was happening.
Quite a few of my friends are actually at this
point. This is, you know, 1998. Tech was booming.
That whole Y2K thing that you mentioned was just
sort of coming up. So lots of people were joining
the likes of Infosys and TCS and Wipro and, you
know, starting to make careers in the software
development world. They were starting to go overseas.
You know, my batchmates, my friends, even some
of my juniors were starting to go overseas and
do interesting things. The thing that I was hooked
on to was something that was barely sort of known
in India at that point in time, which is the
internet, right? I looked around and there were
really... Less than a handful, you couldn't even
count on the fingers of one hand the number of
companies that were doing internet work in India
in 1998. And one of them, the better known one
was Rediff, which was Mumbai -based and was a
website. And the less well -known one was this
Chennai -based upstart company called Satyam
Infoway, which was a subsidiary spun out of...
and they were talking about being India's first
private ISP at a point when India's ISP policy
had not been rolled out. So this was an internet
company that was not licensed to sell internet.
But I was enthusiastic about the idea. And I
was very sure that, and of course, the signs
were there. The BSNL, MTNL were the only ones
who were giving you that fantastic. Blazing speed.
I was so excited when I upgraded my home internet
from 28 .8 kbps to 56 .6 kbps, you know. And
I remember selling Dishnet DSL. We did a campaign
for them where 256 kbps broadband was sold at
30 ,000 rupees a month. So obviously there were
people who knew how quickly it's going to change
or at least they took the plunge into it early
on. That's very true. And remember that at this
point, the ISP policy hadn't been released. So
Dishnet wasn't selling internet at the time that
I'm talking about, right? Nobody was. Because
they weren't allowed to. Only three companies
in India could, which was BSNL, BSNL and MTNL.
These were the only three companies that could
actually sell internet to anyone, corporate or
not. They were, of course, we were allowed to
sell private network services, which is what
SIFI was doing at the time. They were also doing
system integration work and particularly around...
Some areas which are, you know, nobody talks
about EDI, et cetera, et cetera. But there were
services B2B, no B2C, no. So I walked into their
offices with my resume in hand and said, this
is my resume. Please consider hiring me. I think
they were a little surprised. But, you know,
the head of HR listened to me for half an hour.
She asked some questions. I was very, very enthusiastic.
She left me sitting in the room opposite the
reception. I remember this in the ground floor.
After some time, this gentleman walked in and
he sat down and we had a really great conversation.
He asked, I had a lot of ideas to share. We spoke
for, I think, close to an hour. And he finally
asked me, he says, OK, this is all very interesting
and clearly you're enthusiastic and knowledgeable
about the Internet. What kind of job would you
like to do here? And I knew that, you know, there
was no sort of B2C Internet just yet. So I said,
would you hire me for corporate sales? He said,
I thought you don't have any sales experience.
I said, that's right. But I learn on the job.
For whatever reason, I think he said, yes, okay,
fine. Come on board. You can start a corporate
sales. We had a grand total in Chennai of three
corporate sales people, one of whom was my boss.
What I did not know, which stood me in good stead
later on, I found this out much later, was that
the person I'd been speaking to, of course, as
I was walking out, I realized that was the CEO
of the company, R. Ramraj. And what I did not
know at the time was Mr. R. Ramraj was a close
friend of Mr. V. N. Bhattacharya because they'd
gone to IMK, let's say. So there was a conversation
that happened behind the scenes about, you know,
he says, you know, there's this girl who works
for you, Vian, and she's applied here. And fortunately,
of course, it was Vian who had given me this
advice about, you know, following your passion
and all of that. So I was completely open about
applying to other jobs. It's not like I was doing
secret fee. So he was also kind enough, obviously,
to give me a positive. So what was it like selling
the corporate internet at that point in time?
Yeah, it was more vision than anything else because
you had to sell the probability and the potential
of change because nobody had actually seen what
the internet could do for businesses in India
yet. So you had to really sell vision. Through
a combination of, I think, you know, sheer sort
of power and luck and whatnot, within one month
of joining SIFI, I had landed the largest internet
commerce deal in SIFI's history up to that point.
So there would be a... They're all small enough
to fit into one sort of small basement in the
Velachery Road office in Zafiq. We all crammed
in there. There was a cake -cutting ceremony.
And, you know, all of that happened. I was very
lucky to have that early success. Buoyancy generated
by that early success with that and a couple
of other deals. About a month after closing that
deal, it was a very interesting one because I
sold it and then I very confidently... So I sold
this to ColorPlus, which at that time was not
yet owned by... a larger multinational. It was
an independent Chennai -based company. So what
is Color Plus' reason? What did they see? They
said, we're going to create an online website
where you will end up doing most of your sales.
We will build you an Amazon .com in India, but
for clothes is what we told them. That's the
vision we told them. And so the CEO said, look,
I'm happy to try this out because I can see that
overseas. And, you know, the CEO was very forward
looking. He said, look, I can see that LL Bean
is doing this in the US and I can see that the
Gap is doing this. So I'd like to try it out
in India. And at this point, nobody else was
actually selling clothes online. And Color Plus
was kind of a niche brand, right? Upmarket, but
niche brand. Wasn't exactly all of it. But he
said, look, the thing is, we'll do this, but
early August, but on the condition that you can
get the site up and running by Deepavali, which
is October. So I looked at my... technical architect
who was in the meeting with me, he was like,
don't say that. And I said, sir, I think we can
do that for you. And the student was like, what
did you just say to the man? I said, no, no,
don't worry about it. We'll go. So I went back
and I actually talked to the technical team and
said, no, look, we'll have to do it in a slightly
different way. And luckily, we were using an
existing, we were using the Sterling Commerce
platform. And the product manager was very happy
that it was going to be a Sterling Commerce sale.
We said, look, we'll bend over backwards, but
we'll make it happen. Everyone finally signed
off on it. So it isn't that I ended up sort of
committing something that we didn't deliver.
Our team had to really pull very long nights
and make it happen. But we did make it happen.
It was successfully launched on the public day
in 1998. You know, so we did meet that commitment.
But the thing that happened for me after that
was, and I had a couple of other sales successes,
but that one boosted my confidence to the point
when I had another long list of ideas. And of
course, I marched into. Ram Raj at the time didn't
have a cabin to himself. He had a walled -off
cubicle. So Ram Raj and the three other sort
of department business unit heads sort of had
walled -off cubicles next to him, which were
kind of half glass and half sort of partition,
and the rest of it was just open office, right?
So I marched into his cubicle one day and sat
down and said, Chief, I have, we used to call
him Chief, I have these ideas to share with you.
And he very patiently listened to all of the
ideas. And he went through the list, actually,
he was very, very incisive thinker, right? I
still use lessons that I learned from him. He
said, okay, this idea is rubbish. It won't work
for this, this, this reason. This idea has merit,
but you need to work on it, etc, etc. At the
end of the conversation, he said, you know, these
are all good ideas. And I think at least three
of them are worth implementing. So why don't
you come on board my team directly and work on
executing these things? My initial reaction was
horror. absolute horror. My job is not to go
and execute all these ideas. My job is only to
give ideas. That's such a wonderful lesson, Divya,
because a lot of people think that giving out
the idea and their job is done. Yeah, I can learn
that lesson early. So, look, if you're going
to have the courage and the conviction to think
that this idea is going to change things for
the company and we should do it, then you should,
you know, put your time and money where your
mouth is and come and actually work on it. So
give me one of those things that you, at that
point, you know, you came up with, which today
in retrospect looks almost obvious, but at the
time was not. Yeah. So I was, as I said, a tech
enthusiast. So I said that we should actually
start an e -learning division, which took a couple
of years, but I said, and my whole model was,
you know, the company that's doing great online
tech training and programming, et cetera. It's
a company called ZDNet. At that time, ZDNet was
the US -based thing, which was actually offering
a lot of content. And I said, we should make
an Indian ZDNet. And lo and behold, actually,
I was given the opportunity to go and sign. We
ended up in 1990, 2000, early 2000. I ended up
going along with a senior colleague and signing
an agreement with ZDNet to bring that kind of
services to Siffin, India. Literally a few days
after I joined, Ram Rajasthin officially has
a... you know, as a member of his team heading
strategic initiatives, quote unquote. Ram Raj
had a town hall meeting, which we used to do
every month. And he said, so you've heard that
Infosys is planning to list on NASDAQ, right?
And we said, yeah, yeah, we were all excited
because an Indian company going and listing on
US stock exchange. He said, this time next year,
SIFI will be listed on NASDAQ. We were all, what?
You should have heard a pin drop. There was absolute
dead silence in that town hall with about 70
people. And, but we were, you know, when we recovered,
I think there was a mix of. Shock, elation, disbelief.
Everything. But the end of that story is that
almost a year after that, October 19th, 1999,
he told us this in November 1998. October 19th,
1999, we were listed on the first internet company
to list on NASDAQ. So I was very fortunate to
be a part of that journey, to be a junior cog
in that machine. But a team which... took us
to NASDAQ, launched and pioneered a whole lot
of things. In fact, a lot of people don't realize,
but SIFI and a few other players played a huge
part in influencing the privatization of the
internet in India. The privatization of the internet
in India, the ISP policy was announced in September
1998. SIFI launched its consumer internet services
on the back of that. Internet in India started
its journey there. SIFI did a lot of interesting
things because most people didn't have computers.
They didn't have internet -capable mobile phones
back in the late 1990s, early 2000s. So SIPI
pioneered cyber cafes, a chain of cyber cafes
called, you know, across the country. So people
could come and use shared computing infrastructure
to access the internet. So it was a groundbreaking
company, power -breaking company in so many ways.
I learned a lot. And again, we had a murderous
row of the top talent from everywhere. from every
top company, whether it was tech talent or marketing
talent or sales talent or operational talent
or financial talent, we just had top talent.
So everywhere I looked, there were people that
I could learn from, people who mentored me, people
who were doing amazing things and you got to
be working alongside them and just watching and
learning from them and, you know, being part
of that journey. And that was how I got started
on the internet. The rocket took off. We listed
on NASDAQ. We did the world acquisition, went
back to NASDAQ. So in February 2000, to go and
finance the India world deal, because we didn't
have enough money in the bank to do that deal.
At the time, it was, you know, $100 million.
It was 500 crores at that time, US dollar exchange
rate being what it was then. It was the largest
cash and stock merger and acquisition, acquisition
that had been done in India up to that point.
So, you know, in the US, AOL had just taken over
Time Warner. Really, the rocket was rocket ship.
People believed that the bubble was at its peak.
Let's put it that way. Yeah. But I'm also saying,
Divya, that, sorry, that your learning should
have been not just hockey stick. Is there another
way of putting it? Because you're literally doing
new things. In retrospect, it looked like committing
to deliver a website in two months was almost
like, yeah, so what? But then to say, I'll go
and list on NASDAQ, figuring out everything that
needed to be done, ensuring that it was all in
place. And how did you go about figuring out
or you said you had the talent in -house or it
was a combination of several things that worked
in your favor? So definitely both, right? Because
the one thing that I learned was Ram Raj didn't
say that lightly, right? He'd been doing, this
had been part of his vision from the day that
he agreed to come on board as a professional
CEO of SIFI. He did several things. He struck
a deal with Ramaling Raju and the Satyam family
to say, I'm going to run Safiya as a completely
independent company. We'll have a completely
independent board. We may be initially completely
owned by Satyam Computer Services, but I will
hire a separate team. We will not go to market
with any of the other Satyam divisions. We will
chart our own destiny because we're an internet
company. We are not a software services company.
So we don't run businesses. The rest of your
business looks different from ours. So we will
run this differently. And we are going to become
independently listed on the stock exchanges.
And I think very quickly after that, he told
me later that he had decided that it would be
quicker to list overseas than it would be to
list in India, which is why we... That he was
right. Yeah, absolutely. And there was a lot
of capital being made available to internet companies
at the time. So Sifu would have been foolish
to miss that opportunity, right? So we didn't
miss that opportunity. And a lot of groundwork
and thinking had gone into that point. And it
was... that vision which inspired all of us so
i think great leadership is both inspiration
and preparation and ramraj really taught me a
lot because he embodied that in so many ways
right um the you and i may know in a private
chat earlier we're talking about how one of the
key skills one needs to learn is how to read
a room and you know how to talk to people and
and and that was something that i learned from
watching Ram Raj and learning from Ram Raj because
it was something that I was not inherently good
at so I had other mentors too but of course he
stands out and he still continues to be a mentor
whose advice I rely on today so yeah because
like you were saying I would say that we be sold
up but we also came crashing down to earth a
few months later with the dot -com bust right
so And very quickly, the stock options, which
we were all very excited about in terms of as
we were watching the notional value climb, had
within a matter of months, weeks if not months,
become a penny stock. So when the fall came,
it was a very sharp fall. And we were among the
smaller fish in that large pond, right? Everybody
from the Amazons of the world, the EBAs of the
world, nine out of 10 startups that had listed
on Nasdaq. as internet companies actually failed
and shut down. Even some of the giants like AOL
today, kind of, you know, AOL kind of exists
as sort of a very tiny company somewhere. It
still exists as a corporate entity, but you know,
that AOL -Time Warner merger obviously split
up and Warner Brothers went its own way and Time
magazine shut down and all of that happened,
right? So the world changed a lot after that
dot -com bust. I know a lot of people were very
wealthy. depressed. But fortunately for SIFI,
most of the revenue was still coming from the
B2B business and was on a much more stable footing.
So while our stock value had perhaps crashed,
our business was robust and was continuing to
grow at a steady pace. So SIFI was not, you know,
of course we were, everyone was badly impacted.
I wouldn't say not, but our business was not
impacted. What went away was all of these things
of, you know, people coming to us and say, you
should, SIFI should acquire us. I won't name
names, but there were several sort of archmages
which approached SIFI and said, you should buy
us out. Like AOL bought over and took over Time
Warner. You know, that sort of thing. Right?
But... No, it was, like you said, it was one
of those times which today, in retrospect, two
decades ago, people don't remember. They remember
the crash of 2008 because it's more current.
But what happened is that it literally wiped
out a whole lot of companies in India and people
began. I remember articles saying that the Internet
is just another fad. Nothing is really going
to happen. This is not going to, you know, take
off or it's going to be one of those things that
happen. And it was literally, you know, step
by step, which is why I'm saying the people who
stuck around, which you did, you figured out,
you believed in it. deeply enough to say that,
you know, that this is where I think the future
and that is hardest to do when things are down.
It's very easy to do when, you know, markets
are growing at X multiples every year. But it's
very different when you have to try and figure
out, okay, where do I stand? And then trying
to figure out where do you go? So how did you
make that decision? on the next thing because
you you took over you you grew businesses of
cognizant in north america and europe so i mean
i'm saying we've just touched upon the early
part of your career and we're already 45 minutes
into this yeah maybe maybe i should shorthand
things a little bit more um but so but i want
to address two things which you said which i
think are relevant uh lessons which i learned
which was again i said as i was fortunate to
have uh smart people around me who advised me
and guided me. And I was able to learn from them.
One of the things that I had formed a deep conviction
about was that, you know, you can't put the genie
back in the bottle about the internet and the
potential of the internet. We did believe that
there were some other sort of other factors which
needed to fall in place for the internet to truly
become transformational in India. And that was
an early other early trend that we had a lot
of conviction about, which is when mobile internet
really proliferates. that's when it's going to
be transformational for the vast majority of
India because most people will never access the
internet through computers. It will end up being,
though, you know, even we didn't at that time
anticipate just how large it would be and how
transformational it would be. I remember helping
Ram Raj write speeches about how, you know, feature
phone, Kerala fishermen with feature phone access
were able to SMS and find out which port was
getting the better prices for fish that day.
And therefore, how mobile technology combined
with Internet technology was going to completely
transform the lives of every person in India
over the next two decades. I was helping him
write those. And we had that deep conviction,
which never changed. So that kind of helped me
to keep up. I mean, obviously, it is the first
major sort of economic crisis I had seen in my
career, but certainly not the first seen by my
parents or, you know, my. seniors at my employers.
So people, you know, talked about what they had
gone through and the kind of turbulent times
that they had confronted and to just try and
find a firm place to sit and to keep your feet
on the ground and continue to work hard and,
you know, find opportunities in the day -to -day
as well. So I ended up moving to Cognizant at
also at a time when Cognizant was a relatively
young company. And again, this was, it had not
hit a billion dollars in revenue. when I joined,
which was 2005, May. But the other thing that
I did join was also a practice which in an area
where Cognizant was less well -known for, which
was infrastructure services, because that was
my background. I'd come from SIFI where I'd helped
to set up a remote infrastructure management
business and I understood the networking space
quite well. So I joined that practice in Bangalore
and I initially helped to set up the consulting
capability. business development capability with
a group of you know i was relatively still quite
you know barely 10 years out of business school
and even younger group of smart mbas and engineers
from top schools that's the team that we have
and again we we had a lot of passion and conviction
and ended up winning some lighthouse deals stealing
stealing the business from the more established
competition like TCS and Wipro and HCL and even
IBM and Accenture in a couple of cases. And that
gave us a lot of confidence and momentum. And
I ended up moving to London to help set up the
infrastructure services business in Europe for
Corbin's at the time. And I lived in London for
five years doing this. When I went, I was the
first person on the ground. We had no customers
in the UK or Europe. So, but we ended up doing
a couple of deals and we ended up at close to
a million dollars in my first year of operation.
The second year of operation. How did you land
your, so how did you land your first deal? How
did you go about meeting customers? What was
it that you did? You leverage your friends and
colleagues, right? I went around and made friends
with every client partner in the London office
who was selling app services. And I said, can
I come and sit with you in a customer meeting?
I won't sell anything. I'm just there to listen.
So please take me with you. And I did that for
a month. And out of that came some of our early
sort of customer opportunities, including at
customers like Lloyds, TSB Bank and AstraZeneca.
And, you know, like I said, when you listen to
what customers need and you find an opportunity,
the problem that nobody else is solving, none
of the other vendors is even looking at. And
you say, look, I'll solve this problem for you.
I'll save this money for you. I'll remove this
sort of quality issue for you. People are willing
to try you out. And that's what we did. We kind
of sneaked in almost. And then after that, once
we established enough of footing, we also won
RFPs in competitive situations against the competition.
So as I said, again, the team grew very rapidly.
We did $7 .5 million in the second year of operations,
$25 million in third year of operations. By the
time I moved back to India to a different division
of Cognizant, and this was at the beginning of
2013, we were doing $110 million a year. So zero
to $110 million a year in five years. Yeah. So
it looks like the check you signed for 500 crores
earlier on was just a portent of things. My money,
by the way, but yeah. That continued to be a
trend. I mean, I will say all of my employers
have treated me very fairly and compensated me
and all of that. So no complaints. But certainly
the disparity that continues is the size of the...
the money that other people's money that you
manage and deploy and your own money that you
manage and deploy. That remains quite considerable.
That will always be a kind of the thing. So I'm
saying now, I wish we had more time to spend
on this, but your venture capital, how did you
decide that you then wanted to get into, you
know, was it one thing that you felt that I have
done enough, but I think if I get, what were
your motivations? Yeah. So I'd been, you know,
after Cognizant, I was with Microsoft for five
years, during which I moved to Singapore and
I moved to another very fine company called ServiceNow.
All of these are great IT companies. But at this
point, I started wondering, I was questioning
myself. I have, you know, I was looking at other
people. Some of my mentors were retiring from
Microsoft after 30 -year careers, etc. So I remember
having a very memorable conversation saying,
you know, this is great. I'm really enjoying
what I'm doing. And I love Microsoft. I love
my colleagues. But I find myself wondering, what
am I actually... you know, doing for the world.
It's my personal purpose, this, that, and the
other. She was very patient and listening to
me. And she said, you know what, when I was kind
of questioning myself about 20 years ago in a
similar point of my career, what worked for me
was I took a sabbatical. I took a year off. And
I was completely horrified at the very idea of
taking time off. The longest gaps between jobs
I'd had was one week to this point. But the motels
certainly are completely, you know, I mean, it's
wonderful that you found both purpose and you
enjoyed what you were doing. Otherwise, you wouldn't
have, you know, it's such a high pressure environment,
which people on the outside don't realize. Because
while you talked of growing the business from,
you know, 7 million to 100 million in three years,
I'm sure you understood what was involved at
every stage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly, I think,
look, one of the things that you learn in which
is a truism in life that I find, at least it
works for me, is teamwork makes the dream work.
Right. Don't try to do everything yourself. When
I first started off being a people manager, I
was terrible at it because like many other bright
young people of my age, you start off as a really
outstanding individual contributor, even as a
salesperson. The early success that I saw was,
you know, me as a sort of going and taking chances
and, you know, relying on my. ability to speak
and persuade people etc but that doesn't sustain
right if you want to really grow and succeed
and the job of a leader is to create an environment
where your entire team is able to do their best
work that's what i learned from my mentors and
that's what i've continued to believe so if you
do that then you find success at that scale um
if you if you're not able to inspire people and
take them along with you and work together towards
those common goals none of these big goals are
achievable right um so so that is something that
I truly, truly believe and continue to believe.
And the other thing is, I think somebody had
made the comment, I think in your LinkedIn post,
when you folks had talked about this session,
somebody had said, I'm something about change
and how to handle change. And another thing that
I deeply believe that I've learned over the years
is the best way to handle change is to create
it yourself. There's no avoiding it. There's
no running away from it. If you try and stab...
You know, it'll be like that too. It's like standing
in the way of one of an avalanche coming at you.
It's going to bury you and move on, you know.
So it's best that you try to be part of that
change and adapt to it in that way. So change
is the only constant. So then you were talking
of, yeah. No, so you were talking of the mentor
telling you or the person who's been at Microsoft
telling you that at some point take a sabbatical,
which you didn't want to do. Which I did not
want. And that idea kind of cooked in my head
for a while. But then I realized that, look,
the more I did, I did actually think through
some meaningful things. And I realized that there
has been causes that I've consistently been interested
in, have, you know, for example, donated charitably
to or also volunteered time to consistently over
the years. Right. And again, my family is very,
very has always been very committed to charitable
giving and making sure that we give away money
to good causes and so on. So there were three
causes which have consistently been at the top
of my list. One is climate and the environment.
I do strongly believe we need to do something
so that our planet is habitable for ourselves
and for the generations to come. Women's development
issues are also very close to my heart. And bridging
the digital skills divide. As I said, I have
a very strong conviction that this technology
genie can't be put back in the bottle. And it's
going to continue to transform the world. And
it's a huge predictor of... success or failure,
your ability to have access to digital skills
or not have access to digital skills. And that
I think bridging that divide is the key to bridging
other kinds of divides, the social divide, the
wealth divide, and all the other sort of divides
that we have. So the more I thought about it,
the more I realized that if I'm sitting in the
corporate world, I'll continue to succeed, but
there's not going to be enough mental space for
me to really explore what to do in these other
areas. And I was very, you know, again, most
of my employers have treated me well enough that
I'm in a situation where I could take financial
risks, right? To say, okay, I can step away from
the security of a monthly salary and explore
some of these things. Of course, the timing of
when I did this was not conscious. So Jan 2020
was when I put in my papers at ServiceNow. And
I realized two months from then, the world would
be completely different from anything any of
us had imagined. But it turned out to be, you
know, a blessing in disguise because we got our
venture fund or funds off the ground during the
pandemic. Our fund is a pandemic baby. Some of
the other organizations that I spent time with,
including Aspire for Her, which was started by
my junior Madhura from Madhura Dasgupta Sinha
from XLRI. That's an organization that focuses
on getting women to enter and stay in the workforce
because India has this problem of women's labor
force participation being quite low. The other
causes that I volunteer with. Most of these things
I got involved with during the pandemic lockdown
period. I was still living in Singapore at the
time. So thank heavens for technology. Most of
this happened over Zoom and Teams calls and web
conferences and video conferences. But we did
get past that particular situation. And three
years from then, I'm excited to see what will
happen next. Very much learn to live in the moment.
So you must be getting a lot of pitches from
young entrepreneurs, startups, and that's your
daily, it's almost like a daily routine. So it
is very much my daily routine and it's my conscious
daily routine. I love that. So it's not just,
you know, the startup pitches, which are interesting.
And I'll tell you a couple of examples of, you
know, striking conversations that happen. One
is I do mentor some startup founders as well
as, you know. others people young professionals
and people at various stages of their career
as well because I as I said I've been very lucky
to have great mentoring throughout my career
and I think it's important to try and give back
the other thing I've learned is mentoring actually
you get quite a lot of stuff back because the
more you work with people the better it broadens
your perspective you learn a lot in the process
of mentoring others as well so two stories I
wanted one is you know of a A young person that
I met, I had been a panelist at a sort of a small
event in Bangalore about three, four weeks ago,
where I'd been speaking with, you know, we were
a panel of folks from the venture capital world
and we were talking about startups. And one of
the conversations we went through was, you know,
how this whole funding winter is happening right
now for, you know, startups and what's going
to happen. And I sort of shared my perspective
saying, you know, I thought the sky had fallen
when the dotcom bust happened in the early 2000s.
And then, you know, I thought the sky had fallen
again when 2008, this recession happened. And
yet somehow, you know, we survived and got through,
we adapted. So like Charles Darwin said, you
know, survival is not the strongest or the most
intelligent. It's the ones who are most able
to adapt to change, right? So that is the thing
that applies to these situations as well. This
too shall pass. We need to adapt to this new
set of circumstances. And maybe some of the unnecessary
hype has... it might be a blessing in disguise
in some ways because it will separate the wheat
from the chaff. I'm not saying it's not traumatic.
Some, unfortunately, some companies and even
some funders will not be able to weather this.
It's challenging times. But this is, again, it's
an opportunity as well. Right? So, like the old
proverb goes, tough times never last, but tough
people do and tough companies do as well. Tough
companies are nothing but the people. Right?
So, So the story that I wanted to tell is this
young engineer walked up to me and he's been
working in the software field for about seven
years. And he's just come back to the US. Unfortunately,
he lost his job. So he lost his H1B business.
So he's come back to India. But he's found another
job. But he's a techie with good skills. He's
found another job. He said, look. The job that
I really want to ask you about, and I want to
ask you how I get into it, is this thing that
I saw online and that one of the people that
I know through an acquaintance has become. And
I said, okay, what is that role? He said, it's
entrepreneur in residence at the Sweezy. I said,
entrepreneur in residence? Okay, tell me more
about what you mean by that. And he said, no,
this person that I know is working at this US
VC firm and he's the entrepreneur in residence
and he gets a 200 ,000 salary. Plus he gets stock
in the companies that he brings to the table
and mentors, et cetera, et cetera. And that's
the job. That's my dream job. And that's what
I want to become. So I was a little challenged
not to sort of giggle a little bit at that, but
I thought it would be a rule. So I decided to
step back and answer that question a little bit
seriously. I said, okay, first of all. what is
the background of that person who became entrepreneur
in residence? He said, yeah, he's my friend's
older cousin. And he had started two businesses
in Silicon Valley, sold them off. And then he
became this entrepreneur in residence. That is
the key. The entrepreneur in residence means
that the starting point is you have to be an
entrepreneur who's had a reasonable amount of
success. And then they'll hire you to share your
expertise with others. So the long way, the long
way around to that job is. Over the years, you
would start your own business. You would sell
it off. And then people will come to you saying,
how did you build your business and how did you
successfully sell it off? And then you can become
an entrepreneur in residence. I think he was
a little disappointed that I didn't have a magical
shortcut to give him. But that is so true that,
you know, this and the Internet is full of stories
where. In three weeks, I made $400 ,000 doing
this and something else, which is like, I mean,
I'm saying, why do you, there is a formula. It's
hard work consistently over decades. Unfortunately,
nobody thinks that is the formula. They think
that there is a shortcut. Yeah, no, there was
a, so there's another, anyway, there's lots of
stories like this. You're exactly right, Venu.
But I also, I think. I was very impressed by
this startup founder who was pretty young, was
only 29 years old. And had actually, this was
the third startup that they were bringing to
the table and were telling me about. And it's,
you know, the startup is still quite young. They've
not yet got a prototype ready. It's a very interesting
idea. And I offered to connect them to some people.
What I was impressed by was this, right? They
started a business while they were still in college
with some of their college mates. It failed and
they had to shut it down. And they went their
separate ways. Then this guy started a second
startup with some work colleagues because he
joined again an IT company as one does. And,
you know, I was doing work there. And while moonlighting,
he started another business with some office
colleagues. And that actually ended up finding
some traction. But he said he had a bad experience
and had to part ways with his partners. So he
had left that startup on somewhat sort of bad
terms. But look at the passion of this guy. He's
now started his third startup, right? I truly,
I said, look, I really admire your perseverance
and your commitment to being an entrepreneur.
He said, yeah, because, you know, I know that
one day my dream is to be a really successful
entrepreneur and make a difference. I said, that's
it. That, you know, there is no way that someone
like you is not going to succeed with your commitment,
with your passion and everything that you've
learned from what you've done before. I'm sure
you will continue to do well. And that I thought
was very admirable. That's the attitude all of
us have to have. And that's a wonderful note
to end it on because I think, Divya, you've really
touched upon that we spent a lot of time on the
early part of your career. I think that's the
fundamental building block. And now you're in
a stage where you're giving back, you're helping
a whole lot of people succeed as well, as well
as ensuring that women enter and stay in the
workforce for much longer. Thank you for spending
this time with us. Is there anything that you'd
like to close with? Well, I'd just like to say
something. I'll share something that was shared
with me when I was starting out my career. There
is no single path to success, right? You as an
individual will not have the same path to success
as your sibling or your best friend or your neighbor.
You as an individual have your own strengths,
your own weaknesses, your own interests, your
own enthusiasm, your own opportunities. The key
thing is when you find an opportunity and you
find a new opportunity to do something, I would
say if you are 100 % confident that you can do
it, there's something wrong with that opportunity.
You should always jump into opportunities where
you are, you say maybe 30 % of this I can do,
70 % of this I'll have to go and discover. I'll
learn on the job. That's the opportunity you
should go for. Because if you're just going to
do the thing that you're 100 % sure you've done
before and you're doing again, you're not learning,
you're not growing, you're not doing anything
new. That's not opportunity. So go after the
opportunity that scares you a little bit. That's
my, that's the advice I'd like. Yeah. No, it's
wonderful words and they ring so true because
they come from a lived experience, which I think
is one of the things that, you know, people,
there's no other way. You simply have to go through
the... University of experiences, I call it because...
Or you can learn from the university of other
people's experiences, which is also good. Yeah.
Yeah, so that's it. So thank you, Divya, for
taking out the time and sharing so much of your
learnings, the setbacks, the phases that you
passed through and how you worked on them. Because
I'm sure that anyone who listens to this... We'll
see exactly. Like you said, they won't take the
same lessons. They won't follow the same paths.
But they'll at least have the material to say,
this is how I built my own. Thank you for being
on the... My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Bye, everyone. Have a great week. Thank you.
That was Divya Sampath. And as you listened,
it's been a life lived with several... Twists
and turns, zigzags as she calls it. So next time,
come back for another session of My First Job,
the podcast.