WELLESLEY, MA– Babson College’s third India Symposium was truly an inspiring affair. Bollywood actor Anupam Kher made an impromptu visit to India Symposium and gave life lessons to Babson students and budding entrepreneurs.
Mr. Kher talked to the students about the power of failure and said it was an enriching experience.
He told students that he himself did not score marks more than 38 percent during his student life, and suffered many setbacks and failures. He said success is one dimensional, but failure is multi-dimensional.
“Don’t intellectualize,” Kher told the cheering students. “Life is not about thinking. Life is about doing…Don’t worry about failure. There is no alternative to hard work and honesty.”
After his talk at Babson, Mr. Kher twitted: “Thank you students, (Babson) President Kerry Healey and organisers of India Symposium at Babson College, Boston for your love, warmth and appreciation.”
He added: “It was a great learning experience for me to talk to you about power of failure and life lessons.”
Anantshree Chaturvedi, an entrepreneur and Vice Chairman of Flex Films, also talked about failures and mistakes in the entrepreneurial journey. They are okay as long as entrepreneurs learn from them.
“Early failures and early mistakes are the biggest gifts,” said Mr. Chaturvedi.
The day-long event was held on March 10 at the Sorenson Theater of Babson College in Wellesley, MA. The symposium drew about 300 people, several keynote speakers and accomplished panelists, who came from both India and the United States and talked about topics ranging from the future of Fin-tech, Big Data, and Analytics to Opportunities and Roadblocks of Doing Business in India.
Abhinav Bindra, olypmic gold medalist and entrepreneur, could not make to conference but addressed the audience through a video.
“As a teenager, Olympic gold was my only goal,” said Bindra. “I was not a natural athelete…but I did have patience.”
He said just competing in the Olympic was not good enough, “I wanted to win.” He said shooting sports and business are similar in certain ways as they both require “stillness of mind and stillness of body.”
Other speakers included Malini Agarwal, founder and Blogger-In-Chief, MissMalini.com; Preetish Nijhawan; co-founder, Akamai Technologies & managing director, Cervin Ventures; Prashant Prabhu, President, Michelin Africa-India-Middle East; Navjot Singh, managing partner, McKinsey, Boston; Aditya Khurjekar, founder & CEO at Let’s Talk Payments; Lakshmi Nambiar, partner at Anthill Ventures; and Ahmed Naqvi, CEO & Co-founder of Gozoop; and Harsha Agadi, president and CEO of Crawford & Company, the world’s largest publicly listed independent provider of claims management solutions to insurance companies.
The Babson India Symposium is a platform for business leaders, future entrepreneurs and academics to exchange their experiences and thoughts on the promotion of entrepreneurial ecosystem in India.
Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader for entrepreneurship of all kinds. The top-ranked college for entrepreneurship education, Babson is a dynamic living and learning laboratory where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society.
