Narendra Barhate is an electronics and telecom engineer from COEP who followed it up with an M.Tech from IIT Bombay. He started his career with DRDO, where he worked for more than a decade. Not happy with his career in the government he left in 1994 to lay seeds to his entrepeneurial career. His father, who is a farmer, was puzzled as to why his lad left the security of a Class I Govt Gazetted officer post to jump into the fool-hardiness of business. In our society, there is very little respect for failure \u2013 and this discourages entrepreneurship. Why entrepreneurs, even bright engineers are not being attracted to startups. And on top of it, to get into teaching. Society still abides by the dictum \u2013 those who can, do; those who can\u2019t, teach.<\/span><\/p> <\/p> Narendra started business, by first getting into fire-cracker sales with an investment of 1500. He managed to get a 100% return in a matter of month and was ready to get into business full time. He got an opportunity to teach Fortran to engineering students. The accident of teaching stuck on, as he thought he did a good job of it. 4 partners got together with a capital contribution of 25,000 each and started SEED Infotech \u2013 SEED standing for Software Engineering Education and Development. Trouble happened in the first year itself when one of the partners backed out. He was a guarantor for a 5 lakh loan that the company had taken \u2013 and the banks called in the loan when he quit the business. The remaining partners had to scramble for funds, but they just managed to scrape through.<\/span><\/p> <\/p> The opportunity that SEED grabbed was a simple one \u2013 almost 90% of graduates in <\/p>The company was on the verge of closure, when it met with a white knight in the form of a Japanese company that came looking for trainers who could couple training in IT with training in Japanese language. SEED jumped at the opportunity \u2013 Narendra traveled to <\/span> <\/p> In 2006, Times of India picked up 10% equity in the company. Later they also got an investment of 7 m $ from a <\/p> What drives SEED? Narendra mentions that 70% of business in education is word-of-mouth. What drives word-of-mouth is the quality of teaching. He believes that most of his competition has run itself to ground, because of the overspending on advertising. SEED spends in marketing on social and digital media with value added events. <\/span><\/p> <\/p> Recognizing this, SEED\u2019s business model is to have all the centers owned by the company itself \u2013 they believe that franchisees will not be able to maintain faculty quality standards. Also having company owned centers ensures that systems and processes are consistent. The other Key success factor of course has been placement support. In fact most students don\u2019t join SEED for the learning, they join the company course for the job.<\/span><\/p> <\/p> About 10% of the workforce at SEED has been with the company for the last 10 years. Having said that, it is important to induct fresh blood into the system. It gets in fresh ideas. Also the challenge is to keep getting employees out of their comfort zones. Sensitizing the newcomers to the values of the organization is done by having them listen in directly to the founders talking about company ideology. (One lacuna which the company is trying to address is to make newcomers understand the consequences of not following the values of the company) <\/span><\/p> <\/p> What does the future hold? SEED has grown to 40 locations, 600 employees (out of which 250 are trainers). Ambtions remains of paramount importance for an entrepreneur \u2013 and today Narendra\u2019s vision is to outgrow NIIT, the only player ahead of them in the IT training space today, to become the number 1 in IT training in <\/p> SEED has started training on soft skills in addition to technical skills. Here they work in building self-esteem, self-confidence and communication skills of students. They have already gone in for backward intergration \u2013 with tie-ups in 70 colleges \u2013 so that students can be trained in campus \u2013 and SEED can help drive companies to campuses. <\/span><\/p> <\/p> He also sees a shift in IT recruitment away from engineering to science graduates, and roles like <\/span>data scientists taking on higher importance.<\/span><\/p> <\/p> He sees SEED teachers doing less of teaching and more of facilitation in future. The onus of learning has to be more with learners now. 80-90% of learning happens outside classrooms \u2013 so why not shift classrooms to open air! Another trend he sees happening is online synchronous e-learning. 100% e-learning has not woked out \u2013 so what would be required would be blended models.<\/span><\/p> <\/p> Apart from SEED, Narendra runs another company called Palash, which is into hospital management software. They have an ERP system which is running for about 150 hospitals \u2013 working on the Microsoft Platform<\/span><\/p> <\/p> Narendra is a deeply spiritual person. He is a believer in nature and its curative effects \u2013 to the extent that he has not been taking any medicine for the last 4 years. He has been a follower of Vivekananda from his childhood days \u2013 and one of his current interest areas is stress management. Narendra believes that most stress management skills get built up in the first 7 years of our lives. He talks of how there are 3 parts in our brain \u2013 the reptilian, the mammalian and the human. Stress happens when the mammalian part of the brain hijacks the human brain by secreting cortisol and adrenalin. This leads to what is called the flight-or-fight syndrome. Your heart starts pounding \u2013 blood supply to the extremities increase and rational thinking takes a back-seat. The solution to such stressful situations is actually quite simple. When you oxygenate the amygdalla (the mammalian brain) enough \u2013 the cortisol-adernalin secretions stop. In simple language, all you need to do is to take 10 deep breaths \u2013 and that gets your rationality back, as the secretions stop. As Narendra likes to put it \u2013 in any problem situation it is not the resources that matter, it is the resourcefulness.<\/span><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"