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MakeMyTrip’s Deep Kalra on bowling, resilience and going against common sense

Deep Kalra is the founder and CEO of India’s leading online travel company MakeMyTrip.com. Founded in 2000, the company is now the largest e-commerce business in the country and listed its shares on NASDAQ in August 2010. Prior to founding MakeMyTrip.com, Mr. Kalra has had corporate stints with GE Capital, AMF Bowling Inc. and ABN AMRO Bank. He holds an MBA (PGDM) degree from IIM, Ahmedabad and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

Read on to find out about the true test of an entrepreneur, the importance of knowing dhanda at a startup and going against common sense.

[Innovate Delhi] You believe in turning what one loves doing into a business model. How did you figure out what you love and turned that into India’s leading online travel company? 

Deep Kalra[Deep Kalra] For all entrepreneurs you have to focus on something that you love. But it definitely took me three jobs to figure out what I loved – I worked in banking, I worked in a very entrepreneurial role at AMF Bowling and I worked for GE Capital. Between these three roles, I figured out that I enjoyed the untrodden path. I was excited by stuff that had not been done before or at least not been done before in this part of the world. My second role was very entrepreneurial and I enjoyed that the most despite the fact that it was not financially a success. But I really had the time of my life which made me realize that I rather be doing my own thing.

What did the failure at AMF bowling teach you? How important do you think failure is in an entrepreneur’s journey?

AMF Bowling was a game changer in my own mind in terms of approaching different problems. Here was a problem that had not been thought about – How do you sell a family entertainment center around bowling which had not existed before? Addressing this problem was a learning curve in doing dhandha which is different from corporate business. Overall, it was a good learning experience in terms of a start up and solving problems that had not been solved before. It was also very personally fulfilling to me and I didn’t want to give it up. In hindsight, common sense would have dictated that I called quits within a couple of years but I worked with AMF Bowling for four years. So it also taught me that I can keep my head and chin up during a period when things are not working.

How is doing dhanda a unique challenge in itself? I read that you have bribed repairmen with bottles of rum to fix rat chewed cables. What challenges does the Indian entrepreneurial space pose and how do you deal with them while ensuring that you don’t lose sight of your larger goals?

I didn’t make a habit of bribing repairmen with alcohol but did so some unconventional stuff! The important lesson is that in the first many many years an entrepreneur should be ready to do anything and everything. And a lot of people are not. It’s better to start your entrepreneurial journey earlier than later because you have lesser hangups. At the same time, there is something to be said about good work experience. I don’t know what is a good amount. For me it was 8 years. But some entrepreneurs have never worked for someone else. I would recommend, especially in the Indian context, to work for a couple of years in a good company. It will help you later in life- you want to hire good people, you want to keep them motivated, you want to do the right things. I don’t think any amount of education prepares you for those kind of decisions.

In the initial years, an entrepreneur spends most of the time doing non-core business because you don’t have a team. And in India, things take longer. But hopefully with more interest and infrastructure in this space, the processes will get shorter. For instance, its getting easier to hire good talent. A startup is no longer a very unusual career. As an entrepreneur you have to be an excellent seller because you are selling all the time. Even if you are not doing the traditional selling of your product, in the early stage you are selling to get good talent. You are selling your story, your company all the time. You have to convince people to give up their great job at GE Capital or a think tank or Unilever etc to join one’s company. And then you need to sell to raise money. Each time you go out to meet current investors and potential investors, you are selling without realizing. And you have to work harder to sell your story in India because there are fewer startup success stories here.

You have clearly done a great job of selling to potential hires, MakeMyTrip has consistently been ranked amongst the the Top 10 “Great Places to Work for in India” by The Economic Times in the last four years. What is the culture at MakeMyTrip that make it such a great place to work?

The culture at an organization is related to the founding team or founder. One of the titles that the founder carries through life is Head of Culture. The founder has to walk the talk. I think it really comes down to passion and personal values of the founding team. Because then you end up hiring people for values. Then you start percolating down those values among similar minded people into a “culture” or whatever you want to call it. Over time it becomes established and you can talk about it.

In your corporate and entrepreneurial journey, how do you think the Indian entrepreneurial space has evolved and what are the most promising trends today?

There has been tremendous change in the last 3-4 years. The quality of entrepreneurs is improving. People have a much better overall view of what they want to do and what they need. There are lesser and lesser people who want to do something that’s cool. So folks are coming in for the right reasons. I love that there has been a great increase in the amount of angel funding that is available but there is big gap between angel and early and Series A and Series D deals. You can get your first round of capital fairly easily if you are an individual with a good plan but you have to be ready to perform in the next 12 months to get your Series A.

Do you think entrepreneurship can be taught or are entrepreneurs born?

I think its largely inherent. When things are going well, anyone would rather work for themselves everything else be equal. But that is typically not the case. Everything else is not equal. Let’s say you are going to make 50% of the money. Then what is it that you really want to do. And I think that is the test for if you want to be an entrepreneur or not. And yes, entrepreneurship can be taught but I think entrepreneurship has to be learnt more than it can be taught. And you learn it on the job. Ultimately, if you are happy being on the job, everything will work out.

If you were a judge at Innovate Delhi, what would be the top three qualities you will look for in an entrepreneur?

Agility and flexibility is one. There is a fine line between stubbornness and resilience. You have to believe in your idea but also be practical enough to make changes as you go along. You have to be wired analytically. I don’t know of any other way to run business. Creativity is important but if you are not fundamentally analytical then you will end up making decisions that are sub-optimal. And the third one is being a very good people’s person. It goes back to culture and teambuilding and it is something that comes to entrepreneurs naturally.

This blog post was written by Sonal J Goyal for Innovate Delhi Entrepreneurship Academy. Innovate Delhi is a three-week long academy that works with aspiring entrepreneurs to hone their skills in innovation, team-building, and strategy. Applications are due on 1st February. Apply at http://www.innovatedelhi.com/apply/

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Day 2 of NPC: Attempting to Steer in the Right Direction

As NASSCOM Product Conclave 2012 drew to a close, Sharad Sharma reiterated that product technology will eliminate poverty in India. The social consciousness and import of this statement, usually reemphasized as electoral slogans of gharibi hatao by politicians, points to envisioning a future in which the role of product technology encompasses not only growth of global companies, impacting the world (changing the world!), in India but also its increasingly central role in the nation’s development. M. Rangasami is the visible face of NPC, curating sessions with childlike enthusiasm. He wants to pay back his home country, from which he grew up for the first 20 years of life, something substantial and impactful. And he sees product technology as one means, as it is likely to explode in the coming years. The Valley has about 30% plus of Indian cofounders in startups and innumerable successful product executives and entrepreneurs. If they are inspired by MR to pay back to the nation, imagine its impact. In a way, NASSCOM Product Conclave brings some of them into the sessions to inspire the product entrepreneurs in India.

India—what is happening really?
As predictions are glorious of the future, what is happening on ground in India? What prompts envisioning a game-changing future for product tech? Maybe success of companies like InMobi. Naveen Tiwari, InMobi founder, was generous with his time to explain how InMobi succeeded and was seen in the hallways talking to people wanting to strike a conversation. In the breakfast session, he explained the InMobi way of global growth and scale. InMobi did not go after developed markets like US and Europe to start with. They identified huge white spaces in markets like Southeast Asia and Africa where customer needs were identified by online sales first. Then one of the founders would typically fly to that country to understand the market. This is not an easy task and over time, InMobi would hire a local person to run its operations. And thinking big and not content with growth, the InMobi team constantly brainstorms on how to usher in say 10x growth. Any big achievement starts with thinking big and following it up with risky initiatives. And you should stay undaunted by failure and missteps. There was a mention by Niel Patel, founder of QuickSprouts in his keynote in the evening, that product ventures don’t succeed at first iteration. They turn successful at third iteration. And product ventures cannot hit scale on a template model like services. In addressing the press, to showcase apps that promise to be game changers, Sharad Sharma said, “TCS showed the way and everyone followed it [in services]. But in products, it cannot be done.” Each story is different and each endeavour unique. Naveen Tiwari and InMobi can inspire product entrepreneurs to think of huge possibilities if one goes cracking. And identifying the sweet spot to achieve that takes multiple iterations. Deep Nishar, the star product manager at LinkedIn, earlier in the keynote, pointed out that no first iteration was successful. For example, PayPal started initially to enable payments on handheld devices and then changed to Internet payments. YouTube started as a video dating site and became a social video site later. Some have vanished on the way too, due to various reasons.

Where is the market?
Market evolution and customer adoption are crucial to succeeding in a product venture. Deep Kalra’s story is well known. When Internet was still in nascent stages, he started a web-based travel site. Sensing that opportunity exists outside India, he first served NRIs travelling to India. It took close to five years to find that customers will go to Internet to book tickets in India. Effectively, MakeMyTrip took off in India only in 2005. Indian product technology skill sets are not in question. But is the market ready for your offering? That is another question to keep in mind. Apps are exploding. Child prodigies are pouncing on to that space. But where will apps lead India into? Will it stay a diverse apps market with thousands of apps or will something like a global rage app (say Angry Birds) come out of India?

The kind of pertinent questions that are asked at this stage is how to move to the next stage. A vast number of sessions addressed challenging questions such as pitching right to the investor, a novel reverse pitch for investors to find suitable entrepreneurs, how to take mobile apps global, hiring the sales people, and metrics-driven marketing. When the question to Deep Nishar was put forth on what to focus upon to build a business in products, he pointed out to disruptions in enterprise software and building over it. His take was that enterprise products could be tested in India and taken to the rest of the world. The sense one could get out of these types of propositions and expert speak is that the market is in a flux. Enormous product tech activity is happening. But for some products, the market has to mature (adopting Indian products in enterprise) or be created for others (for example, SMBs). Deep Nishar pointed out the new smart phone like iPhone and Galaxy as not overnight innovations. A combination of earlier developments only results in a new innovation. Palm top, touch screen, iPod all combine in a new visual and spatial thinking to result in an iPhone. Can you think of a combination of such innovations to create something new and create a new market for those products?

Building products for India or the world?
A common prescription of experts like Amar Goel and Deep Nishar is that you stay close to the customer for whom you are developing the product. There is another school that thinks customer care shouldn’t be needed as the product should be simple and self-explanatory for users anywhere in the world. Deep Nishar laid seven components of a product to create a product bliss. Simplicity is one overarching principle. He opines that too many choices would make the product unattractive. Focus on select features and build on them. He showcased several LinkedIn features to validate his statement. For example, when LinkedIn was on mobile, the team did not adapt Web into mobile. They sought to understand what LinkedIn would look like on a mobile and created a new look. And sensing that customers log on to mobile devices such as iPad and smart phones early in the morning or late at night, news was added to mobile LinkedIn. Moreover, a feature shows the day’s appointments too.

Given that there is a possibility of Cloud to build a product and sell it all over the world, what kind of products could be developed without needing customer in proximity is an innovation that could be thought of. And most Indian product companies now have a global market. But scale is the question.

More questions than answers
By showcasing successes outside India and bringing in product developers like Tarkan Maner of Dell Wyse who has sold his company to Dell for a billion dollars, there is an endeavour to instil right thinking and point to pertinent directions. And by engaging several people in the ecosystem to understand their experiences of what worked and what hasn’t provides a clarity picture for the product entrepreneurs. At this moment, though, there seems to be more questions asked than answers given. The important need of the moment is asking the right questions. So it is the hope that answers will evolve and such answers would lead to a product tech revolution, as in MR’s prediction, or it would even answer India’s societal concerns of eliminating poverty, in Sharad Sharma’s extrapolation.

Both predictions are not imaginary but understood from the success of products and its greatest impact in the United States. The wealth that Bill Gates created is being channelled into health care concerns of the world and when iPhone 5 was released, there was a report that its sales across the world would contribute a significant percent to US GDP. Such developments set the context for India to take the cue and look ahead.

Contributed Venkatesh Krishnamoorthy, Product Tech Ecosystem Enthusiast