Another Client Trip

Like any other job, my job has its own perks and pitfalls. One of the better perks, like most client-oriented jobs that one gets into with a background similar to mine - consulting, investment banking, wealth management, etc - is to get to interact with the senior most members of an organization.

During my three months at my present employers, I have got a chance to get to know some amazing people, who are either first-generation entrepreneurs and have taken their companies from scratch to a well-respected position in the industry, or are children of such entrepreneurs, who are ably guiding the growth of the enterprise started by their fathers.

It is a very humbling experience knowing these people on a first-name basis, having access to their unlisted personal phone numbers, wining and dining with them, but most importantly, getting an insight into how they think.

Now, none of my clients are Fortune 500 companies, and with all due respect, won't get there in the next few years by any long shot, but they have still created value and made good use of opportunities. Which is not any less admirable than being a Birla or an Ambani.

A common element of the personalities of all these people is the confidence in their abilities that they have, and the belief in their ideas. Some of them are MBAs from the best schools around the world, some are commerce graduates from ordinary Indian colleges and one or two maybe left studies after school. But they never stopped working hard, and painstakingly, gradually, saw their venture reach levels they probably did not even imagine when they started off.

One interesting thing that I have seen is that while most of them would have expensively decorated offices, imported cars, palatial homes, would travel executive class around the world visiting their businesses spread across countries, and do a lot else associated with the really wealthy, I have yet to find one promoter, one MD (though my experience is very limited as of now), who does not retain the taste for simple food - that curd rice, that bisi bele bhaath, who does not retain the ability to crack a good joke at his own, or your, expense, and who does not mind being patient with a novice stumbling his way through his companies' confidential documents.

I feel great when I realize that at some level my firm might be adding positive value to their business. I also feel like one of those smaller animals of prey - a hyena, a fox - that go and take a small part of the flesh once the lions and the tigers of this world have had their fill.

As I keep cribbing to my close friends, especially when under the influence of Bangalore's own UB's concoction, I would really want to move on to that level some day. Maybe not have enough money to buy a BMW, but enough to pay a dumb banker's 2% fees.