You Have To Do Things Differently To Succeed

HABIL KHORAKIWALA , Founder Chairman, Wockhardt Group; Chancellor, Jamia Hamdard University, Author, Odyssey of Courage

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In a business there are many dimensions of change. Apart from organic growth, firms must explore opportunities arising out of inorganic growth; as growth brings many changes and learnings. As a company, we went through four stages of transformation – survival, growing to a reasonable size, going global and lastly, getting into drug discovery. Through this journey, which spans across 50 years, I learnt few key philosophies that can make or break an entrepreneur.

SURVIVAL AND GROWING TO A REASONABLE SIZE

In early 70s, I realized that our premises in Worli were becoming increasingly restrictive in terms of space, and opportunity cost of being in Mumbai was going up. Around this time, the Maharashtra government introduced backward area development incentives and I thought shifting to Aurangabad would be a great idea. But before I could think of raising funds, I had to think of ideas to convince my father and community elders. For my father, Mumbai was his comfort zone. Naturally, he was not very excited about it and tried to dissuade me. It was a period of tremendous self doubt. I went up to him and said I wanted to die one day and not every day.