Theme “Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Way Forward for Emerging Economies”

1. WELCOME Theme “Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Way Forward for Emerging Economies” Venue University of Nairobi, School of Business Lower Kabete Campus, Nairobi, Kenya July 10, 11, 2014

2. ENTREPRENEURSHIP & ART OF MAKING THINGS HAPPEN UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI 12TH JULY 2014 Jyoti S Mukherjee CEO Software Technologies Group of Companies jyoti@stl-horizon.com

3. 24 YEARS OF JOURNEY: One minute for each year experience in next 24 minutes.

4. LEARNING: Learning to do business does not only come from schools and universities. I have learnt best business lessons outside a class room.

5. LEARNING: • So my first lesson of business was instilled in me that no business is small in the beginning. Start however small your idea may be. If you believe in doing the business in an innovative way, YOU WILL SUCCEED. • ANY SUGGESTION FROM ANY CORNER OF YOUR ORGANIZATION - HOWEVER SMALL CAN BE VALUABLE TO THE CORE. LEARN TO LISTEN.

6. Imagine a person with: • Limited capital • No mentors • No influence • Not known personality • No agency • No orders on hand • Limited technical knowledge

7. An organization that: • Is the largest software house in the region • Has over 120 people working for it • Has a customer list that reads like the Who’s Who of the region • Has its own brand of solutions and services • Owns millions of dollars worth of intelligence property • Is always one step ahead in technology • Have re-sellers across three continents • Always leading and bringing innovative solutions to Africa. • Winner of 5 consequent years – Top 100 awards • And ENTREPRENEUR of 2013 – Emerging markets

8. In 1990, I was one of those people who imagined. Since then, I have dreamt, and have pursued that dream for all these years.

9. The Journey: • The journey has been a lifelong teaching experience. No university, no educational institute and nothing other than the experience itself would ever be able to teach these lessons. • More importantly, this experience can only be enjoyed when you include as many people as possible around you.

10. Businesses grows: When the decision makers think globally. When their vision is wider. When they think ten years into the future. So I became one of them.

11. My imagination of the world<>business:

12. My imagination of the world<>business:

13. My imagination of the world<>business: That calls for: (Social, family & all stakeholders)

14. My understanding of the Ethics: Ethics should be fundamental thread of our lives while dealing with: Ourselves, Our parents, Our spouse, Our children, Our family. Our mates, peers & seniors, Our work, business, all stakeholders. Our community, Country and The world. Last but not the least: Our conscious.

15. My understanding of the Ethics: Ethics should not be a decorative piece of report in our Financial statements. Ethics is a simple word but complex meanings to different people.

16. To start the business: • I needed to analyze myself • Know my strengths • Know my weaknesses • Be conscious of where am I leading to • Need to learn skills • Technical knowledge • Which pillars should I focus on

17. step 1: analyze myself • What do I need? • A goal • Focus on that goal • Belief in my goal and in myself • A team – attract right people to work with me • A path to reach that goal • Patience to built around that goal

18. step 1: analyze myself • What were my internal strengths? • I had: • A convincing approach • Continuous planning • Social Awareness • Positivity • An analytical mind • Technical skills • People networking capabilities • The ability to think big • An inspiring personality • Recognizing people potential

19. STEP 1: ANALYZE MYSELF • What do I need from myself? • 100% commitment – all of myself • Be myself • Contribution in all aspects • Balance between my family & Business • Improve my skills & as a being every day • Continue learning

20. step 1: analyze myself • Who did I need to be? I needed to: • Know myself: • Know my knowledge • Know my confidence • Know my capability • Know my aura • Know my boundaries & limitations

21. step 1: analyze myself • What I should be capable to build and develop? • A vision for my team • A team – growing leaders around me • Continuously plan • Social Awareness • Create strong foundation

22. step 2: What DO I need be conscious OF: • Temptations • Rigidity • Ownerships • Emotional attachments • Stagnancy • Negativity

23. step 3: Process of self-learning: • Technical knowledge • Process Oriented <> People oriented • Leadership • Observe myself and others • Learn to let go • Own the failures and share the successes • Always learn to find potential in people • Learn to thrive in chaos • Look back and learn but not dwell on it. • Learn to inspire people

24. step 4: the 5 PILLARS of my focus: Besides shareholders, who puts money in your bank?

25. step 4: the 5 PILLARS of my focus: CUSTOMER

26. step 4: the 5 PILLARS of my focus: Customer Product People Processes Finance

27. Customer: • Most successful businesses have attributed their success to the fact that they have understood their customers. • I went one step further. I tried to understand the “customers of my customer”. • Always emphasized to my team to get worried about the customers of our customers. • It’s simple: when you make your customers’ customers happy, you will automatically make your customers happy.

28. Who is the customer? • You and I – the people. • If we assist people to meet their goals, they will love us. • We developed each product and each service to add value to our customers. • We showed them the benefits by working with us. • We created uniqueness to our services.

29. Make your whole Corporate unique. • Not just one service or product. • Bring uniqueness to the whole of our model. • Now when anyone copies us and thinks he’s hit a goldmine • (“I’m a better competitor to STL, because I have their information/their secret”), • By the time that person puts this information in practice, STL is already 3 steps ahead. • The dynamism we have in our plans, products, services and in our processes makes us improved better company year by year.

30. Customer: We keep our customers; our competitors keep the information and stale model. Through our uniqueness, customer satisfaction has become the biggest marketing tool in STL.

31. Unique Competitive Advantages: • So in totality we brought operational effectiveness by creating: • Operational Effectiveness • Integrated global operations, better technologies, better trained personnel, effective management structures • Reduced Costs • Strategic Positioning • created competitive edge by • Doing things differently from competitors in a way that delivers a unique type of value to customers • Increased Economic Value • Every activity interlinked in totality of company culture brings uniqueness that cannot be just copied

32. Unique Competitive Advantages. • Interconnected Corporate Activities brings uniqueness. • Integrated process of sales force, delivery, suppliers, channels, customers reduced Costs & added values • Every activity has pervasive influence on the value chain • And this totality brought Unique Competitive Advantage. • It became difficult for competitors to replicate in “me-too” or copy and paste our one or two services or products.

33. Win<>Win situation: •  There are four situations in business: • You win, customer looses, (customer will loose trust after 2,3 deals) • Your customer wins, you loose, (You will loose interest to service the customer after 2,3 deals) • Customer looses, you loose (You will not like each other after 2,3 deals) • The best situation for all to benefit is • Customer wins and you win. (You will have your customer for long time and your customer will like your services because they will be able to afford it) • So we must create this awareness to our customers • to arrive at WIN <> WIN situation.

34. PRODUCTS: • Built with best domain knowledge. • State of Art • New trends and technologies • Continuous maintenance • Customer oriented • Leading way to business trends • Competing with international products/services • International standards • Futurist solutions • Grow with customer needs

35. PEOPLE: • Attracting best talent • Retaining by continuous training and job satisfaction of development and technology • Give tools techniques and success path • Growing freshers to Managerial position • Process oriented approach • U SUCCEED <> I SUCCEED

36. PROCESSES: • International standards • Continuous maintenance of our products • Not heroic success. Team success. • Longer product shelf life • Successful version controls • Brings uniqueness to our operations

37. Finance: • Keep tap on our costs • Keep good relations with our vendors • Keep good relations with our banks • Always encourage repeat customer sales • Always bring new customers • Don’t depend only on few customers. • (if you lose one, large effect on turnover) • Train every manager to be commercially conscious and give incentives for good work.

38. CSR: • Education • Telecenters in community centers • Scholarships in our institute • Internships • Support communities of 100 children (parents with aids)

39. What else? • CHAOS • Don’t panic. • Think afresh and recognize the opportunities this chaos has brought. • Thinking anew also brings flexibility and changes: • We learn to let go of bad moments. • Believe - we must continue and never lose our focus. • Never forget where we have to reach. • Whenever there is chaos, try to refresh process, trying to make them more process oriented than people oriented.

40. Failures? • Are there any? • Each failure was a consultancy bought for a price. It may be an expensive one. But it was the best consultancy you bought from your own experience. • Each cheating was a lesson learnt. • Each downfall was one step down and two steps ahead

41. When the market is slow When we knew the sales is at large – • We never gave up. • We grew internally. • That was the best time to plan fresh to look at our products and QA closely. • We came up with new services, new products, we talked to our customers more often and more closely. • There is always something waiting out there for you. • Challenge is to SEARCH that something. • Never give up.

42. Monotonousness: • This is one factor that I fear. • When the company experiences monotonousness I get all jittery. • We need to create momentum. • We need to inspire people when they feel dry, • when they are short of ideas. • How? • By motivating and boosting them, • giving them something new to think about. • Something new to reach, something new to play. • We People are basically children in their minds. • Children like new toys. • That is why the IT industry thrives. IT industry leaders know how to give new toys to people and refresh their bored minds.

43. Lesson of Positivity: • Don’t sing negative songs all the time. • When you ask anyone in Nairobi nowadays “How are you?”, you hear them complaining. • “The country experiencing a bad phase. Recession is everywhere. Roads are bad. There’s too much competition - we cannot survive. This is the worst year we have experienced.” And so it goes on.

44. Lesson of Positivity • I recently read in the CWG: • “If you speak negative things and think negatively – you create negativity. And soon you will begin to experience these negative things. What we think, what we say and what we do all feeds into what we experience. So sing song of shortages, the world will hear that, and give you back exactly that. So beware.” • That was one of the best lessons of my life: • “Think, Say and Do what you want to experience. The universal forces will return you what you want to create. The condition is that you believe in what you want to experience. If you say repeatedly, I want money, I want money, I want money, the universal forces will tell you: so be it. Keep wanting. That’s why we have to learn to say that there is abundance. And you will experience abundance.”

45. Last word: I know it is difficult to conceptualize such a wonderful truth in such simple words. I think that is the whole problem with the human race - We want to make things complicated. But remember, the world is nothing but reflection of our own minds. “SO KEEP IT SIMPLE”

46. Last word: for women: • Word WOMAN has a “man” in. • Word FEMALE has a “male in. • Not the other way! • So women, wake up and recognize your strength. • Don’t give up because you are women. • Give up the labels and YOU CAN BE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE. • Remember MIND AND BRAIN don’t have a gender. • Don’t compete with men. Just complement them.

47. summary To summarize, main factors can be attributed to success are: Focus Patience BE 100% in the moment Delegation High quality processes Go ahead – don’t sit and sulk on any failure Positivity Group consciousness Find potential in people around you – love people Plan – Do – Check – Act - continuously

48. A poet in me says: Leaving aside all “business talk”. I strongly believe that: “Life is a game, play it, Life is a war, win it, Life is a pleasure, enjoy it, Life is a moment, be in it, Life is a present, accept it, Life is a suspense, be eager to find it, Life is a creation, create it. Life gives us an opportunity each minute to create ourselves what we want to be and it has offered us a lot. The fun part of life is – a lot is yet to come. Let us enjoy it”.

49. LIVE IN GRATITUDE

50. THANK YOU.