Early Days
Sunil Handa's
family came to Ahmedabad after partition. And they started life here
from scratch. His father is a refugee from Pakistan and when he reached
Ahmedabad, he lost his parents. His father started his life as a mill
mazdoor in a textile mill. In the morning he would go and study while in
the afternoon he worked as a lab assistant in a polytechnic called RC.
This is how he completed his matriculation, then BSc and LLB. And
although he was always a salaried employee he took up a variety of jobs.
These jobs took the family all over India. By the time Sunil completed class 12, he had been at seven schools in all.
They
always lived not in the main city but away from the main city. In
Calcutta, they lived in a place called Budge Budge, which is outside
Calcutta. In Delhi, they lived in Gurgaon. In Ahmedabad, they were in a
small town called Kalol. So they were always in a small place and they
didn't have many friends.
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There was an elder brother and a younger sister, and they were good in studies. But Sunil declares he was 'sleeping in life' until he joined Hyderabad Public School in class XI. Sunil was an average student of 45-50%...
But once Sunil
started he devoured every book he could lay his hands on. He was mad -
fourteen years of his life had been wasted and they had to be made up!
There was also a lot of ragging in the school hostel. Sunil
was very thin, weighing only around 40 kgs at the time. What's more,
his English was very poor. If he opens his mouth in the class and asked a
question everyone would laugh at him. He had one heavy rural accent.
Mr. Tiwari, Hindi teacher and hostel warden, changed his life. When Sunil went to him crying that he could not speak English Tiwariji had one simple piece of advice: "Learn it!"
Initially taken aback Sunil
took this as a challenge and joined the English Drama club and Public
Speaking club where all would laugh at him. But within a year, he was
among one of the better speakers in the school.
The second thing which left a lasting impact on Sunil
was Tiwari sir relating the story of Japan. After being totally
devastated by the Americans, Japan decided to take revenge by becoming
better than America in whatever they were good at. In research,
industry, manufacturing. And how does all of the above tie in with
entrepreneurship? Well, the sum of these experiences toughened up Sunil Handa, made him a fighter.
This has come from Tiwariji. So a good teacher at the right time in your life can make a frog into a prince!
And
the frog who got 45% in class X graduated from HPS as one of the top
ICSE students in India. In some subjects like Physics he was an
all-India topper and thus easily got admission in BITS Pilani.
The next five years were wonderful. In the fourth year, Sunil became acquainted with solar energy. In the summer vacation, he stayed back at BITS with a friend. Sunil
and Bharat researched a lot of literature and identified one idea
called Honeycomb Collectors which the Russians had invented in 1929 but
didn't give results. They decided to pick up the idea and work on it.
After
two months, it turned out to be a brilliant success. The duo got
temperatures on a flat plate collector, which nobody in the world had
ever achieved. One afternoon the whole apparatus actually caught fire!
In the next semester, in addition to studies, they worked on the idea
and wrote a paper on the findings.
The
paper was published in an international conference in Italy - at the
International Centre for Theoretical Physics, a very reputed institute. Sunil
and Bharat were called to Italy to present it. But they would have to
bear the travel cost, which was Rs 8,000. But they didn't have eight
thousand rupees. He wrote a letter to Kasturbhai Lalbhai. He sent a
cheque of Rs 250. Then he wrote to Jyoti R&D and Hindustan Brown
Boveri, which is now ABB. They said "you come and give a talk on your
work in solar energy to our scientists, and we will pay you some
honorarium". That was another Rs 900.
In this manner they collected Rs 3,000. By this time, Sunil
was studying at IIMA and it was clear that there wasn't enough money
for both of them to make the trip. So Bharat cobbled together another Rs
5,000 and attended the conference.
But
the whole effort was all about entrepreneurship. The desire to do
something new and path breaking. The struggle against the odds to make
it to the conference. And even today Sunil is extremely proud of what they achieved.
Then Sunil's
father took him to Jyoti R&D, a leading company in Baroda at that
time. Their personnel manager, Vijay Vannikar, was an MBA from IIMA. He
took Sunil to a garden in Baroda called Kamatibaugh near Baroda University.
Sunil took the CAT exam. 2,200 people wrote the CAT exam in 1977 and Sunil
was 13th on the wait list for IIMA. He was also on the wait list at IIM
Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, XLRI, Bajaj and Punjab University. Eventually
he got into IIMA, but with some inferiority complex.
At the end of three days, Sunil thought he was in the wrong place. Then the old habit came back. Sunil came seventh. But as always he also participated in many extra-curricular activities.
When Sunil
finished IIM, he could have got day zero kind of jobs, but he did not
want them. He did not want a tiny role inside a large company but a job
where he would get to look after everything. And that is how Sunil
joined FAIR - 'Foundation to Aid Industrial Recovery'. At the time FAIR
was a hot organization to join – four seniors and 10 batch mates from
IIMA had joined as well. The salary was low - in fact the lowest in the
batch at Rs.1, 250 per month (gross). But the idea was exciting. The
concept of FAIR was to take a sick industrial unit from a bank, put a
young MBA in charge as the chief executive and turn around the company
in two years, retaining all the existing employees.
Sunil
spent six months going all over India looking at various sick units.
Finally, he zeroed in on a company in Bhavnagar and told his boss, "This
is the company I want to run... I will revive it; I have a feeling that
I will be able to do it."
But there is an even more wonderful thing the young graduates did which, says Sunil, and has become his 'style in life'. Now the ladies were organized, there was an association.
But getting back to FAIR, Sunil
worked with Merchants Steel Industry Pvt. Ltd in Bhavnagar. The company
had four plants and it made stainless steel utensils, tin containers,
drums and rolling mills. After the first one or two months, Sunil
shut down the stainless steel utensils because it was loss making.
Then, he shut down the rolling mill and concentrated on the remaining
two units.
After 19 months, Sunil
realized that this chapter of his life was over. The question was who
would run the show? Even the former owners agreed that the best course
of action was to sell the unit. An ad was put in Mumbai Samachar and one
Kediaji, who owned other steel plants as well, bought the unit. He made
an offer to Sunil to join him, but he declined. On 31st December 1981 Sunil left Bhavnagar for good.
Sunil
joined his brother. Both became equal partners in a small company
called Core Consultancy Services. A couple of months afterwards, it
became 'Core Consultants Pvt. Ltd'. Along with management
consulting, the company started consulting in the area of computers.
Clients
were extremely satisfied. Business was good. The turnover of the
company was over Rs 1 crore a year (which was big money at the time).
And consulting is an industry with a fat profit margin, so profit was at
least Rs 60 lakhs. And yet in 1986, they closed it all down and got
into the pharmaceutical industry.
Many
options were discussed but in 6-8 months they had zeroed in on pharma.
The fact that they didn't know anything about pharmaceuticals was not a
deterrent. Sunil has always loved the challenge of
mastering something new. He will read up, meet people, visit factories
or wherever required and figure it out.
Today,
Saurashtra produces maximum groundnut oil of India and it is still sold
in 15 kilo tins that we used to manufacture. "If you go to any
dabbawala factory in Saurashtra - there are literally hundreds - some of
the practices I started are still being implemented by everyone," he
says.
Sunil
recalls "you go anywhere in India, 95% per cent of what they are doing
in the factories is things which we had started. If you ask them what
the batch size is, they will say 5,000. If you ask them how many times
do you sterilize - they sterilize in two lots of 25 a day. If you say,
in one box, how many do you pack, they say 24."
Due to some reasons Sunil and his brother separated, and then Sunil decided not to take up business anymore.
When the brothers separated one of the deals was Sunil would put up a packaging factory and supply to Core Parenterals. It never materialized. Sunil did put up Core Emballage in 1996 but says he lost a substantial amount of money when Sushil's company didn't pay up.
The
factory was set up on a very large scale because the Core Parenteral
requirement was very big. Suddenly there was no big customer. A mineral
water manufacturer could have been a client but this was a location
sensitive industry, so it did not work out. "This factory is over
designed; it is not doing as well as it ought to have done."
Sunil went into depression after separation from his brother.
Birth of the Spark
But
he came out of it. Thanks to his wife and parents. Then he decided He
doesn't want to do this business and corporate thing. That's when the
idea of Eklavya School was born.
Actually, before that Sunil
considered starting an old age home, but somehow he didn't like the
idea of people not looking after their parents. He didn't want to
encourage that trend. So he plunged into education and in characteristic
style started by hiring the right people - three young IIMA graduates.
They spent about 15 months going all over India and all over the world,
to understand what made a great school.
Eklavya
school began functioning in 1998 and today, it is the most admired (and
most sought after) school in Ahmedabad. The first batch of class 12
students graduated in March 2006. "Eklavya is not a profit
making company but it is very entrepreneurial." Running a school has as
many challenges as running a regular business.
Some
of the innovations at Eklavya include 'small classrooms' and financial
assistance for low income students to make the school a more inclusive
and diverse place. The school has been divided into four different
portions - pre-primary, junior, middle and senior school. What is unique
is that each portion has its own personality, its own library,
resources and even its own principal.
It
is a very high quality school. A child in Eklavya gets fantastic
exposure. In 20-30-40 years, when these children are older, the impact
will be felt.
No
doubt about that, but this is a paradigm shift from running a business
where profit and loss, success and failure is measured for more on the
challenges faced while setting up Eklavya.
Eklavya is 'stable' and in a sense self-sustaining but it still thrives on the energy Sunil Handa invests in it. He goes to the school everyday and spends a lot of time with teachers and students.
What is a big deal is the impact Sunil
has made not only with his school but as a teacher of entrepreneurship
at IIM Ahmedabad. He has been taking the LEM (Laboratory in
Entrepreneurial Motivation) course on campus since 1992. The course - as
you can expect - is different from what is 'taught' anywhere. There are
no textbooks, no exams. It's more about sharing of experience, of
inspiration and motivation.
Of the 400-500 students who've taken LEM over the years, Sunil estimates 150 have become entrepreneurs. And what is the one 'most valuable' piece of advice he has for these young people?
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