Enterprising Enterprises

 I am not fluent in Oriya language, and yet, last week, I found myself tuned in to a series of bilingual interviews titled "Startup Story".

The key to my interest in these interviews was one person - Subroto Bagchi. For the past 20 odd years, I have been keeping track of this remarkable entrepreneur and public-spirited leader, who is perhaps best known as one of the founders of Mindtree. 

In the mid 2000s he had made a commencement speech titled, "Go Kiss the World", at IIMB which had become something of a phenomenon, and one of the first 'viral' forwards I had seen on the internet. It describes his own humble beginnings in Khoraput, a remote district in Odisha where his father served as a government employee. A quote from this speech that stayed with me was this - “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”. A simple lesson he had learnt from his father about showing consideration to others. 

Over the years Bagchi moved on from Mindtree to become the Chairperson of the Odisha Skill Development Authority (OSDA), an organisation focussed on the issue of livelihoods - providing skill training to children who are unable to continue their schooling due to various socio-economics reasons.

This series of interviews seems to be part of that effort, to showcase success stories emerging from Odisha, to inspire a generation of youngsters to become job-creators instead of job-seekers:

1. Amarendra Sahu, NestAway Co-founder & CEO Amarendra Sahu - https://youtu.be/O4M_3e7lvEQ

2.  Amiya Samantaray , Phoenix Robotix Founder & CEO - https://youtu.be/ESFPsZPz65Y

3. Arvind Pani, Co-Founder  & CEO of Reverie - https://youtu.be/ESFPsZPz65Y

4. Nusrat Sanghamitra, CyGenica CEO & CSO - https://youtu.be/vg2xtJ8KOsM

5. Gautam Kumar, Co-Founder & COO FarEye - https://youtu.be/dJ8kl3NR_-4

6. Asish Mohapatra, Co-Founder and CEO of Business Unicorn - https://youtu.be/Z5u89fn4eJQ

7. Amit Acharya, Co-Founder and CEO of Zetwork, a Global Unicorn - https://youtu.be/JQ1ac5-hmZQ

8. Soumendra and Samarendra Mishra - Co-Founders of OVO Farms - the largest producers of eggs in Eastern India - https://youtu.be/w3NP6q8UQh0

Among the ones I have seen so far, the one I liked best is Episode 7, the interview with Amit Acharya, the founder of Zetwer, a global company that offers design and production services for manufacturing of consumer goods and precision parts.

Each interview could be considered a masterclass on how such interviews ought to be conducted - gentle, engaging, gradually drawing out the thoughts and experiences of the interviewee, rather than the agenda-driven, aggressive interviews that seem to have become the norm on news channels and the social media. 

Most of the episodes are about an hour long and in each of them the language is constantly switching between Odiya and English. While Odiya is not much of a problem for those who are familiar with Bengali. The producers of this series, OdishaLIVE could certainly improve the reach of this series by adding the option of subtitles in multiple languages. 

This is one series that needs just a little nudge to transcend the language barriers. 

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