Anant Joshi is the youngest of three brothers. Dad worked with ARDE. Mom was a housewife. Most of his early life was in government quarters in Aundh and Pashan – incidentally a location that he still continues to stay in. His dad retired in 1990, around the time we completed our engineering.    Unlike today, in those days the median age of buying a house was when you were in forties or fifties. The family then moved to their own house in what was then this little village on the outskirts of Pune – Pimple Nilakh. Anant stayed there from 1992 to 2000. Marriage to Jyoti happened in 1995. Between his engagement and marriage, Jyoti got an offer from Bank of Baroda. The first 10 years of his marriage were tough for Jyoti. She started off in Panvel.  A year later she was transferred to Pune division, on compassionate grounds. But her posting in Pune was at Khandala, Satara. A daily commute of 150 km. The next few years were spent in Theur. And only then did Jyoti finally get an assignment in Pune proper. 

The story of Anant’s entrepreneurship starts with Jyoti’s job. Anant had been doing well in Blue Star, averaging a promotion every 2 years. By the time Jyoti actually managed to get a transfer to Pune proper, Anant had outgrown all roles in Blue Star, Pune. Blue Star management kicked Antya upstairs to a regional office – which at the closest meant Mumbai. The choice was between being with naukri or being with chokri. Our friend Antya chose the latter. One of his colleagues at Blue Star had once asked him recommendations for dealers. Antya thought that it may be a good idea to become one himself. And that is the genesis of Everest Air Systems.

In keeping with the lofty name that he chose for his company, today Everest has scaled well..Antya feels that the brand COEP has helped open doors for him. With 80+ employees, and offices in Pune and Mumbai, Everest is one of the largest airconditioning players in the Western region. So what clicked? Antya’s world view about a lot of things is quite different from the rest of us. Most of us have a stereotype that a Maharashtrian Brahmin, coming from a service class background, would be a total misfit in the world of business. Surprisingly, Antya agrees. He believes that a person’s DNA is a major determiner of success in business. And that is when he let us into a secret. Antya’s mother tongue, even if he can’t speak it, is Marwari. If he had adopted his mom’s surname, he would be Anant Dhoot today. That leads me to a discussion about why we don’t start a movement of one kid having the dad’s surname and one the mom’s one – but will keep that for a different blog.

But the one thing that has crept into his managerial style is the Marathi Manoos’ ethos of fairness and equality. Everest DNA ensures that customers are always sold the right solutions at the right price. In the 20+ year history of the company, there have been no quality or price complaints by customers. The other thing that sets apart Everest is its employee-centricity. Marriage was the reason he became an entrepreneur, marriage was also the reason he converted his proprietary company to a Pvt Ltd one. Although his company started doing well within the first 3 years of formation, his mostly bachelor employees of that time found it difficult to convince prospective fathers in law of their job stability. So the suggestion came from their side – and Antya immediately okayed it. And the twist in the tale – he made his own father in law a director in the company. Antya is one of the rare entrepreneurs who declared that payday will be met for all employees, no matter how long the lockdown is. He has simple rules that he follows when it comes to his team. The foremost is to ensure a good workplace culture. Antya sits down one on one with team members, and charts out individual career plans. Any employee who considers Everest as a long term career, should be in a position to get married, buy his or her house, and give a decent education to his/her children. The house is important because a majority of the team at Everest come from outside Pune. And for them settling down means having their own house in Pune. For quite a few of the employees, Everest actually pays part of the EMI on house loans and part of the tuition fee for their kids. This is in addition to the salary. 

Antya was asked about his definition of a true friend. Ever the diplomat – and friends to the world at large, he claims to not have any true friends. Antya feels that a true friend is one who you can share everything with. The fact that most of us did not know about his mother tongues means that he has only good friends in this group. We hope to become true one day. I can vouch personally for Antya’s generosity to his friends. In 2003, I was renovating my office and I thought it would be a good idea to impress my walk-ins with a swanky AC. Like Antya, I live a simple life, so the AC is really against my own values. I have never had an AC at home – and I hope that global warming does not force me to get one in future. Coming back to my office, it’s actually in the basement. Now basements face tough times when it pours in Pune. In 2019, our neighbourhood kids would regularly come for swimming lessons to our office. We actually have an underground stream flowing right below our office. But the corollary is that in summer we are actually quite a cool place to be in . So net net, we didn’t really require an AC, but we still thought that it may be good for impression management. So today, thanks to Antya, you can be amazed by the only split AC unit in Pune, that does not require a condenser! Antya still refuses to take payment for this fantastic piece of frugal engineering.

However, I may have some difference of opinion as far as AC tech is concerned. I narrated to Antya an interesting experience I had in Jaipur in the winter of 2019. I had taken an evening train from Kota to Jaipur. i reached at 2300 hrs – and walked down the 5 km to the hotel near our office. It was about 10 deg C ambient, but the advantage of walking is that the body warms up – and you don’t really require too many sweaters. I checked into the hotel – and decided to have a good hot water bath early next morning, before I walked to our office for a 0700 hrs session. I switched off a power switch which was installed outside the bathroom and went off to sleep. On waking up the next morning, I realised that the power switch actually belonged to the AC. And when I opened the door to the corridor, the corridor was distinctly  colder than the room. The temperature had been set to 22 C on the AC – and I wondered how the room had warmed up. I asked this question to Antya, who hypothesized that this AC would probably have a built in heater. My hypothesis differs. I believe that all ACs can act as heat pumps. As you compress the refrigerant, its temperature rises. The temperature drop happens when you pass this high pressure gas through a venturi, By changing the size of the venturi, you can change the output temperature. So the venturi output temperature can be actually more than the ambient temperature. Mukesh Bhat can help us with an answer by putting to use his wisdom from the M.Tech in Thermal engineering at IIT Bombay.

Another interesting question was raised by our friend Sandeep Kulkarni, aka Bond. He complained of the central AC design in his office. In Mumbai’s sultry weather, Bond arrives all suited to work. You may think sartorial taste is expected of someone who is nicknamed Bond . – but the suit is thanks to his cubicle being bang in front of the AC duct. Antya talked of a minimum air velocity that is required for comfort. The air velocity gets hampered by complicated ducts routing. Antya usually gets his constraints in duct design set by the interior designer, who in turn has to follow the broad guidelines that reflect the customer’s priorities. There is nothing like an optimal solution when it comes to interior designing. For a customer whose priority is aesthetics, the office has to have a clean look. And this may create problems in duct routing – and hence lead to non-uniform cooling of the room.

We ended with a few questions on Antya’s personal life. Satish Jain wondered about Antya’s sabhya language. Makaad and Pagal are the highest order derogatory words that Antya has used in his entire life. The airconditioning industry is renowned for its colourful language. BCs and MCs populate the conversations of all AC technicians. Except if they work for Everest. Antya believes that language is a reflection of our emotion. And anger is one emotion which does not help most times. If you see Antya working harder than usual, you need to realise that is how he lets out steam. Another deadly anti-anger weapon that Antya has is humour. He feels that any problem when looked at the lens of humour, becomes a more fun one to solve. Ajay Jandial wanted to know why our friend is a teetotaller. Like me, Antya used to be a beer drinker in the early nineties. But he saw people in his own family, who had not been able to control their appetite for alcohol – and suffered. He decided that it was better to switch off from alcohol than to constantly self patrol the brain about alcohol intake. This means that Antya prefers breakfast meets to dinner ones. He has manged to transfer these morning values to some of us in the COEP gang – early morning Sinhgad climbs and IMDR canteen breakfasts.     

Ajay Bhosale, Antya’s colleagues at work, wanted to understand from Antya what patriotism means to him. Some background may be required for this question. The Everest team celebrates all major national events in the office. Be it Diwali, Id or even the lifting of Article 370. Antya is the real chhupa rustom philosopher of our group. His philosophy is that a patriot is a person of action. Most of us spend our entire lives complaining about what is wrong with this country. The patriot’s response is to do the right things. And for Antya, that means improving the lives of people around him. Rather than donating money to charity, patriots should focus on taking care of the needs of people who are around them. That’s a great call for action for all of us. What can we do to improve the life of the maid who comes to our place? Of that security guard who stands at your society gate? 

Antya Chat, 11-Sep

20 questions – 

A)   FAMILY AND YOUNGER DAYS (4)

Anil – Tell us something about ur family, your school days and your college days 

Ajay B – Your favourite moment with mom & Dad ?

Ajay B – Tell us about your college or any Memorable memory ? ( Happy, Sports, Emotional, Academic ) 

Ajay B – Your favourite teacher from school or college and your memories with him/her 

B) COEP (4)

Satish Jain: How many subjects do you remember from your final 8th semester. 

Milind – What memories do you have of boat club elections? Did that experience help/benefit you in later stages of your life?  In what way?

Ajay B – What is the definition of true friend ? 

Anil – How has COEP helped you in business? Like how many classmates or batchmates have been helpful in getting orders, or getting a pending government issue solved or something still different type of help or motivation given?

C) ENTREPRENEURSHIP (4)

Sameer A – What prompted you to leave your job at Blue Star and start business in just a couple of years of getting married? 

Satish J: Who was your inspiration to go the entrepreneurial way AND Anil – Was it your father in law or you had some instinct already in you?

Milind – What attitudinal/behavioural adjustments you had to make while transforming from an employee to an entrepreneur?

Anil – What do you think are your strengths in entrepreneurship?

D) BUSINESS OPERATIONS /  AC TECHNOLOGY (4)

Anil – Yours is mainly a project execution type of work. That is what is we think. Or does it involve hard core designing. The basis to ask this question is how do you stand out amongst your competitors? 😀

Anil – Please highlight some bad experiences in business

Atul G – You are in a Rajasthan hotel room. It is cold – 10 degree C outside. You switch on your AC – and set the temperature to 24 C. Will the room warm up?

Sandeep K – In what way Central AC is economical? If crowd is less it chills and make us sweat if crowded. Also duct facing people have headache or cold and to wear jacjets in humid Mumbai( so funny and trouble some outside that hall) What is solution on this for offices having large central AC halls?

E) EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION (4)

Anil – Have you ever been bullied by say your customer or your contractor or your team member (staff)

Ajay – Antya and I have travelled together in his BMW for 3 college reunions Vashi, Nashik and Lonavla. These journeys have been an interesting exchange of thoughts and anecdotes. One such anecdote that Antya told me was how he wishes a particular employee during Diwali. I would like him to share that with the rest of us too!

Anil – What all motivations you have been doing for your staff so that they are with you, means retention and give good output? AND Irfan – What are the kind of people who tend to stick around at Everest?

Ajay B – Your company has 80+ Employee on roll and you have paid all of them an advance salary. So what are your plans for cashflow management when the future of lockdown is so uncertain.

F) FUTURE (4)

Irfan – What are the ambitions that still remain?

Satish Jain: If you were to go back in time,  would you have still become an engineer. AND 

Milind – If you get a chance to go back in time and change any one event in your life, which one you would change and why

Ajay B – You always celebrate every national achievement ( Ex:- Removing of Article 370 ) in the company. As a businessman and as a patriot, what’s your vision for India and how are you going to help?

Anil – Could you also throw some light on your Nest away type venture

G) PERSONALITY (7)

Satish Jain: Amongst the most virulent abuses that you have hurled are stuff like pagal or maakad. Is this due  to DNA,  upbringing or just close friends like me

Ajay K – We have all been impressed by your wit and humour. Is it something that you use even with customers? What role do you think humour has to play in the workplace?

Ajay B – Favourite Book? Favourite Movie?

Ajay B – Traveling experience which you never forget ? 

Ajay B – What is your health secret ? And how are you maintaining your diet in this busy work schedule.

Ajay – How come you don’t drink?! Ajay – Last question – How is Salome?