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Can you actually sell something that is freely available? For instance can you go to Africa to grow food? The answer is yes, if you see how firms such as Red Hat working on Cloud Computing and Indian entrepreneurs who made Ethiopia their destination for growing oil seeds, cereals and soya are doing, according to Ms Karuna Gopal, President, Foundation for Future Cities.
Delivering the BL Club lecture on ‘Challenge your Assumptions”, sponsored by Tata Photon Plus to MBA students of Gurunanak Institutions here, she said when most dot com companies around the world went bust in 2000, five Indian companies withstood the onslaught and emerged as a Rs 750-crore Internet conglomeration.
They challenged the assumption that markets were bad. Instead they developed products that were relevant to India — job and matrimony portals. Similarly, promoters of low-cost airlines and travel portals challenged their assumptions on consumer behaviour and were riding the wave of success.
Referring to the automobile industry, Ms Gopal said it was enslaved by the belief that similar products would be failures due to cannibalisation, a phenomenon where one product eats into the sales of a similar product of the same company. However, Maruti-Suzuki challenged this assumption and rolled out Zen Estillo, the cousin of WagonR. Both variants are selling very well contrary to the cannibalisation fear!
Who can ever think of Africa in the context of food production? At a time when arable land in India is depleting, a group of enterprising businessmen went to Ethiopia to grow food. They are not just happy about leasing thousands of acres of land but are thrilled to notice that African soil has more organic content.
Ms Gopal said only those who challenge the assumptions do. Giving a perspective on the topic she said that even a strong economy like the US is reeling from the 2008 financial meltdown triggered by Wall Street crash and sub-prime crisis. That is because the US did not challenge its assumption on the robustness of its financial system.
Her advice to students was that they should periodically revisit their assumptions and challenge them. She mentioned that students should challenge assumptions such as “great careers are for only those who graduate from top business schools' “ and “to be an entrepreneur you need to be from a rich family”
GuruNanak Institutions' MBA courses Director, Appalayya Meesala was present.
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