SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Beyond the Case. This is a podcast where global leaders from Harvard Business School's OPM community join in a personal capacity and they share the real decisions, life lessons, mental models that go behind building enduring companies. My guest today is Nafisa Muluboy. She was in OPM 66. She's just transferred to OPM 67, which is the backstage I am in. And so we're gonna be meeting very soon in person at Howard Business School, and hopefully we get a chance to meet in Bombay as well before that. Nafisa, it's a pleasure to have you here. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Thank you so much. I'm so honored and privileged to be here. And I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to coming to Boston and at Harvard and you know in being part of the OPM 67. I fortunately have never been apprehensive about making new friends, meeting new people. I've always found that very exciting. So, in a way, though I'm gonna miss all my old stalwart friends of OPM 66, and some of them I really grew very close to. But it will be lovely to make more friends and newer friends and with, you know, as you say, shared experiences, benefit with that. And I think that's exciting. So I think I'm going to come back with a double whammy, you know, pearls of wisdom and great friendships of OPM 66 and repeat the same in OPM 67. So all of you, most of you will go back with 186 friends. I'll go back with double the number.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

You're getting the best of both worlds.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

But I do think this is a ploy, you know, that you've come up with to avoid the cold winters in Boston and not go in February.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

No, I I love the cold and I would love to have been uh there on it for the February uh thing. A lot lot of my friends, you know, messaged and said, try and come, especially my LG. We had such a superb LG. I mean, I love them dearly and we grew so close. But unfortunately, I couldn't make it. And there's another lady in my LG. We were two ladies, and the rest three of them were men, or four of them were men, sorry, four. And both of us couldn't make it. I couldn't make it for a personal reason, and I'm going to share that with the group. I probably am the only Harvard participant of the OPM who has four grandchildren to her credit. And the reason I couldn't make it in February was my youngest daughter was pregnant and was delivering in February, which she did. I have a beautiful granddaughter called Ahilia. And so I decided that family first, like all Indian traditional women, and sat and held her hand instead of opening the case studies and listening to all the fabulous professors at Harvard. And I think I don't regret my decision at all. Every time I look at the baby, it was well worth the sacrifice.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Great choice there, great decision. And congratulations on being a grandmother again. Ahila sounds like a very beautiful name. What does it mean?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Well, Ahilea was one of the characters, I believe, who really went through a lot, endured a lot with Lord Shiva or something. It's based on Hindu mythology. I am Muslim, but my daughter is married to a Punjabi. And she comes out victorious. And I think that's her main uh claim to fame, that going through hardships and then coming out victorious and coming out being successful. And think that's what my daughter was inspired by and therefore named her that.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Since you speak about hardship hardships, Nafisa, I'll come to your professional life, of course, but how important do you think are hardships in an individual's life in molding their character?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Put it very simply a necessary evil. I wish I had a life without hardships because that would be ideal. But I have no regrets about the hardships that I went through. And yes, you're right, it certainly helps you evolve into a better human being. But sometimes I have this constant argument with God that He can do anything and everything. So why can't He make us better human beings, more evolved human beings, without putting us through the hardship of going through the hardship? So, because when you're actually experiencing the hardship or the or the crisis or the problem, it really is very devastating, very debilitating and emotionally depressing. But certainly when you overcome it, it makes you more resilient. I think in my own instance, I would say one of my strengths, personal strengths, is that every time I was knocked down, sort of recovered with added vigor and determination. And I think that helped. But that's my type of personality. I know that it may not be the same with my daughter, or I have two daughters, so you know, or with my son-in-law, whatever. So sometimes I feel I wish life was kinder and God was kinder. But as I said, it's a necessary evil.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Great, thank you. Okay, now introduce yourself, please. Your business as well. Tell us what you do, what your business does.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yes, I I um well, actually, I married at nine, engaged at 19, married at 20, which is why I have uh so many grandchildren now. And uh in those days, we're talking of 46 years ago, being a Muslim, coming from a traditional home into an evening into a reasonably emancipated uh family, but still Muslim and traditional. Nobody would have thought, and I wouldn't have never ever imagined that I would be sitting where I am today, married into a a well my husband, I came from a simpler family, a higher middle class family. My husband came comparatively from a very wealthy family. And when my mother got the proposal, we had an arranged marriage. Again, something you people don't relate to, but that was those were the days that we I had an arranged marriage. Okay. All right, good. So we had a purely arranged marriage, and um, you know, obviously because of the jump that I took, it was considered to be a coup. My husband was supposed to be the catch of the Muslim community for that decade. So everybody was very, you know, well, were ad uh there was some bit of admiration, a bit of jealousy or whatever, but I got married. And unfortunately, after a couple of years, my husband, being the only son of the family, went through a family separation with his cousins, etc. And I helped him a lot during that stage. That's when he realized I did have a flair for business and a flair for, you know, understanding the nuances of various transactions, negotiating skill, etc. And a couple of years later, after the separation, he had a minor stroke, like his father, who was paralyzed after a stroke. And his father was brilliant. I mean, he was in those days was the personal pew, he interned with Frank Lloyd Wright. So you can imagine the vision and the forwardness of the family. But he was a very arrogant man, I think, and you know, very, very proud man. And I think that's I've learned from him, pride always comes before a fall. And one on the first 31st of uh December 1990, he went to sleep and 1st of Jan he woke up with a massive stroke and was paralyzed ever since. With that, the business also got badly affected, the family was badly affected, but I suppose that's the way it was. In that respect, my husband started showing the same signs, not of the arrogance. My husband's a very humble and good human being, but of the of the of the the attack and slight bit of paralysis, and then we thought better he retires from active business so that additional stress, etc., which could be a cause of further paralysis, would be eliminated from his life. So he took premature retirement. He was the only son, and our company in those days was 96 years old. It's a legacy company established in 1905. And I just thought that when your company is 96 years old, how do you close it and wind it down? I mean, it's unfair to the employees, it's unfair to the founders, it's unfair to the numerous people who have put in so much of effort into the company. And so everybody looked around, and here was I like a real mutt. I was hardly, you know, I'm much, very much younger, no experience, no education, because as I said, I gave it all up to marry my husband. And I was on the threshold of one of the most important decisions that I took in my life that should I wind down the company because my husband also had a lot of property, etc. So financially we would have been okay. But how do you wind down, how do you wound bound up, wind up a company and so many employees would be told to go? So I decided, let me give it a shot. Let me see if I can run it. And uh so I stepped into the role of managing director of one of the companies. And everybody, I mean, every single person could have bet their last dollar that I would fail. Because 46 years, uh well, not 46, but I've been working now for 26 years. 26, 30 years ago, no women entered the maritime industry. It was purely a male-dominated industry. And there I was a completely uneducated woman, not from the maritime world, and stepping into this position. I mean, everybody wrote me off even before I started. And as I told you, if you put me down, I sort of recover and I bounce back very quickly. That's one of my greatest strengths. So every time everybody wrote me off, it made me more determined to prove that gender is immaterial. It's merit and performance that really decides on how successful you are. And I decided I'm going to stay here, I'm going to grow the company, and I'm going to do what I have to. I took on the challenge, and I have quoted this very often, that in the beginning, because a lot of our business comes from tender business, because we serve the Navy, the Coast Guard, you know, public sector, SCI, etc. So when I used to quote for the tenders in the beginning, people used to laugh and say, oh, she wouldn't even know how to fill it. And uh, well, I did my best and, you know, started winning small ones, then bigger ones. And today there's a there's a saying in the market that Molo Boys are participating in this tender. Okay, who's handling it at Moleboys? Because we have quite a few employees. Who's handling it at Moleboys? And if somebody says this is being handled by madam, then the industry will turn around and say, let's not participate. We don't want to waste our EMD and money because she'll grab the tender and take it however it, you know, but whichever way she can. So it's it's sort of that makes me smile because from being written off as a woman, now I am told that uh, you know, you shouldn't participate if she's handling it herself, because by hook or by crook, she'll win and take the order. So I guess life comes full circle.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Incredible, very, very inspiring. How old were you when you took over as managing director?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Well, I'm 63 now, so you do the maths. I've been working for about 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

And was this your first professional experience in your life?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Absolutely. I married at 19. I was in college.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

No, no, no company.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

I was in college when I got my husband's proposal, married him. I was in the first month of SYBCOM. I gave it up and married him, so I'm not even a graduate. So, you know, for the OPM, when I applied, the minimum qualification was you needed to be a graduate, which I wasn't. So I said, you know, please can you wave it for me because I these are my experiences and this is what it is. I also gave my reference of my LinkedIn profile because I have about 15,000 followers on LinkedIn, all maritime. Nobody else is interested in what I do except maritime people from the maritime fraternity. And I think they got convinced and so they accepted me. So I don't know whether I'm the only exception or there are more people like me, but no degree to my credit at all.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Great. You know, I didn't even know there were 15,000 people in the maritime industry. Because you don't hear about it so much, right? Like I don't know anyone else in this industry. And it's great that I've I've met you before the podcast started. You were telling me that in the entire world there is only one woman.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

In this space, yeah. So we we do uh we are in the business of supply, installation, missioning, service, and manif service of electronics. So, you know, just as you have the cockpit of the plane, we do the bridge of the ship. We don't manufacture it because there are only three or four companies in the world that do it is highly technical, but we import it and we set it all up and we then manage it, we look after it, and it's really quite complicated. And we manufacture the life savings. So we do the light boats, the Davids, the life rafts, the full suite of LSA, what we call life-saving appliances. That we manufacture this we'd we sort of supply and install and commission. And so in this space, recently, I think two years ago, we put up the MRCC. So that's called the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in India. There's one in Mumbai, one in Port Play, and one in Chennai, and that's been done by us. And that really helps today when all the ships are plying, and if there's any uh, you know, like the 26-11, this was a fallout of 26-11. There's a cent these are these three central rescue centers which help the Navy and the Coast Guard to rise to any exceptional uh uh circumstance, urgency circumstance. So we've had a lot of these that we've sort of achieved. And so 26 th28 years ago, the concept of having a woman in the maritime industry, and that to one who was not a who had no marine background was completely unheard of. So in this space, I am probably the only woman in the world. There was another lady before me, a Greek lady, but she retired and you know exited from the business. So now that leaves only me.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Incredible. Nafees, I want to go back to, you know, your husband's family. You mentioned your father-in-law's health deteriorated, your husband's health was not too well, and you you took the decision to step in. Is your husband the only son? Only son. Only son? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

And he has one sister who is uh married into the Juma Boy family. So again, he was a brilliant man. He was the person who brought in the concept of food courts in Singapore and the Ascot, which is on Orchard Road, and there's another brand that he's built, was all his baby. So he's he set up the first service apartment in Singapore, and then actually the first even in Asia, and after that, there've been several more. So he was also a really brilliant person. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Um, we've all done, you know, succession planning. At least I've done it in Unit One, a portion of it. I'm sure you've covered that maybe more. Um, how does your family look at that, right? Given everything you all have seen. Is there a very conscious effort on giving thought to succession, or are you all still um trying to figure it out in terms of let's see how the business evolves, how life evolves?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, so I am one of those planners, you know, I I sort of like to plan my life and I'm a typical Virgo, so I pay a lot of attention to systems, processes, uh, what are the next 10 years going to be like. And I actually wanted to retire at 60, but couldn't because unfortunately, or fortunately, I know this sounds terribly, terribly not fashionable, if I may say, but I don't have a son. I have two daughters. And I, in the maritime business, first of all, I'm larger than life. And now with my two daughters who worked with me, and they say they worked for me and not with me, but I say they worked with me. And so they they each have worked with me for 10 and 12 years, both of them. Right now they're on a sabbatical because the children are young and the one has got an 18-month, she's got twins 18 months, and the other one has got a two and a half-year-old and 10-day-old, 10-15-day-old baby. So they're on a sabbatical right now. But not having a son really made me think because what am I going to do? How am I going to take it further? And then we then decided I I requested my brother to come in who was from the corporate world. He's joined me as CEO. So we were a family-run business, which I'm now transforming completely into a professionally run company. I've got PWC in. They are sort of helping me make the transition. After that, either I will sell the whole company or I'll list it on the stock exchange where I might still be, you know, sort of chairman or whatever, but operationally no longer involved, and let the team run the company and, you know, only sort of be an advisor or whatever. Because I really put in very long hours. As I told you, I'm sorry to change the time, but I've come home today at quarter to ten at night, you know, and then just I was fasting, it's Ramzang. So open my rosa and then I said, I'm gonna I promised you today, so I wanted to stick to my word. And so they're really long working days, and I don't think I can sustain that forever. I enjoy it now, I love what I do, and I'm good at what I do. But I want to leave when I'm at the top. I don't want to start, you know, declining in my abilities and in my management skills and decision makings, and then have people say, oh God, now she's been around for too long. So before that happens, I want the track want to pass on the baiting to another set of people who are equally competent or perhaps more competent and let the company keep growing. I actually first thought of selling 100%, but I know a couple of share brokers and merchant bankers, and they keep saying, Why do you want to do that? You've got a duel, so why don't you retain it, keep it within the company, retain it 51%, sell 49%. So that's something I'm looking at, but I haven't quite decided.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Got it. Okay. Um, what do you make of the current world order, you know, with wars, etc.? How does that affect business for you?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Very, very good for us because one man's food is another man's poison, something like that. So the minute there is war, we deal a lot with the defense. So minute there is war, every country goes into overgear and sort of to beef up their defenses. So the kind of shipbuilding that we see now happening in India, I have not seen in my 26 years. And it's lovely because I always I sit on many boards and I'm part of many government think tanks, etc. And I always say, you know, that when an airplane crashes, it makes the headlines of every newspaper. And when a ship sinks, it rarely even makes the fine print of a newspaper. So the visibility that our industry has. Like you said, I didn't even know there were 15,000 people in the maritime industry. I mean, there are there's probably lacks and lacks because think of the seafarers, think of the ships that we have. But nobody knows about them. It's always been an invisible industry, yet an industry without which you wouldn't be able to eat your next meal. Don't forget, we are the energy carriers. We are the ones who carry oil, we carry gas, we carry uh, you know, bulks like sulfur, etc. Things with without which you would not be able to live. But we have never been acknowledged as an important cog of in the wheel of in this in the supply chain wheel. That's always been one of my pain points. And I always tell the ministers and I tell the government, when will you give us our rightful spot in the sun? But I must say that the Modi government is the first government that is extremely conscious of this. And Modi actually loves shipping and shipbuilding and is give helping us get more visibility and more, you know, public awareness about the industry. And I hope that in the next decade, India Indian maritime industry will really reach its pinnacle.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Nafisa, you've spoken about how unique the industry is, the level of responsibility you all carry as well. Could you comment a little bit about the safety requirements that the industry expects from you when you're working with highly reputed organizations like the Indian Navy being one of your customers? What kind of protocols or standards must you comply with when you are serving such critical clients?

SPEAKER_00 20:33

So I tell you the highest level of safety standards is for the aviation. That is really because in aviation you are carrying, especially for passenger planes, you are really carrying a plane load of people, and therefore the safety norms are the highest. In the shipping industry, sadly enough, you know, you don't carry that many passengers. And if you have a passenger vessel like from Port Blair to Chennai or Port Blair to Calcutta, it's for the very poor because normally a person like you or me will not use a ship to go from one place to another. We'll go by air. So it's the very the very poor who or the or I won't say poor, but the the lower lower class that really travels by sea and their lives are so cheap, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, I mean I hate saying this and I've always fought against it, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. So when 26-11 or when it happened, we had the the Pakistan invasion, because they attacked the Taj and the Oburoi, it made headlines. If they had attacked some small little motel in some God knows Bhivandi or something, it would not have made the headlines that it did. So the same applies for the ships. Unfortunately, and I've been always fighting with the government on this and advocating that safety first should be made absolutely mandatory and should be taken very seriously. But there are many guarantees. And many shortcomings which people, you know, resort to because the government is not strict enough. And I think it will evolve over the next 10 years, especially now with Modi being so vocal about this industry. Another very interesting aspect is that today, for the first time in our lives, we are seeing public and defense uh PSU shipyards and defense shipyards woo for business from the European and American customers. Otherwise, they only built for India and only built for the defense industry. Today, these same defense shipyards are wooing the European customer, the American customer. So they have to raise their level of performance, delivery, efficiency, etc. And I think that will bring about a big change in the landscape and in the the industry as of now.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Safisa, could you comment a little bit about what it means to be a woman leader, not just an entrepreneur, woman leader in India? Um and you've also sort of touched on, you know, how in the Indian culture, maybe worldwide, businesses are passed on to sons. I have a daughter myself, so um I understand the sensitivity here. But businesses are usually expected to be inherited by the son. How do you think does society look at that today now that you know there's there's so many more women leaders? They might get married and have a separate family that they settle into in a few years, but does that change the expectation or the responsibility they could get in terms of business operations from a parent and leading a company?

SPEAKER_00 23:42

So, you know, my mother, funnily enough, used to always say, and I I mean, I'm not talking because she just died last year and she was 94. And she used to always say, I I'll say this in Hindi, though I don't know whether your your your the rest of your team will understand, but she used to say, better a woman's I'll say it in English, sorry, I'll translate it. A woman's place is always in the home. And that sounds so traditional and sounds so, you know, old and stoic. And I'm I'm actually a working woman, but I would agree with that a hundred percent. Reason being that today, if you are a woman and you are at home, you can spend all your time with your children, with your grandchildren, and do them justice. But today, when a woman steps out to work, then she is juggling the home, the family. Uh, you know, children do tend to get neglected. So the balancing, the juggling is really challenging and very stressful. If you read Indra Newey's book, she writes about the innumerable times where she was so conflicted between home being an Indian woman, being an Indian parent. I'm sure all parents, uh, whether you're Indian or not, feel this conflict. And it's very difficult to make the choice and then come home to the fact that, you know, maybe your daughter or your son could have done better had you been around a little more. And so it's it's something that I've regretted in my life, though I I made a very conscious and conscientious effort to be the best parent ever, given my circumstance, and sacrificed the company's growth and my career growth to ensure that my children are good human beings, stable, grounded, and I was always there for them. Like, let me give you as recent recent choice. I was dying to come to Harvard in the February, the month of February. My friends were there, my LG was there, I was a good student, and I had a very nice experience at Harvard, but I had to once again sacrifice because I was a woman and my daughter was giving birth to a baby. I'm sure if it was the reverse, if my husband was the one going to Harvard, he would have gone to Harvard and said, you know, send me photos of the baby when she arrives and whatever, whatever, and you know, all the best, and I'm gonna pray for her, etc. And that's it. But as a woman, yes, I could have gone to Harvard. My daughter had a whole, you know, she had a nanny and she had a n she has a live-in nurse and a live-in nanny. But that's not the same. You need your mom. And being there for her during these last 10, 15 days meant a lot to her, and I wouldn't have it any other way. But that again becomes a woman's responsibility. Even as my children were growing up, I remember my one daughter has studied at USC, University of Southern California. The other one was at Emory. And I would come every quarter, fly down. Both were across the continent, and they're two years between them. So they overlapped being in America at the same time for two years. And I remember flying across from Los Angeles to Atlanta, spending six days with one daughter, and then taking her and flying to the other one and check spending another six days or five days with her. I would see the environment, see their friends, see everything, and then fly back. I would reach Bombay at say 2-3 in the morning and 9.30 in the morning, I would be in the next morning, I would be on my de at my desk. So look at the juggling a woman has to do. And then I would come home from off from there would be it would be day for my daughters because of the time difference. I would have my dinner and then quickly come onto the TV. Uh those days we had, you know, Zoom or what I know, not even Zoom. I don't know how we used to talk. No, we used to talk on on uh just talk. It was not a video, it was just a talk. And uh I would be listening to the what they did during the day, falling asleep during the conversation. Thank God there was no video, so they couldn't see that I was sleeping. And I would say, yes, yes, yes, yes. And so all this takes a tremendous toll on you. And very I think very few people really succeed in giving the same attention that is needed at home and the right amount of attention at work. I know that I would have been far more successful if I did not have the responsibility of being a wife. I probably not a very good wife, so I'll leave drop that, but of being a mother and being a house housemaker. I run an efficient home. You can walk in anytime. It runs like a hotel, and people say it's like an army chief, you know. She runs her home on um ISO procedures. It's a lot of effort. So running a home, running the business, bringing up the kids, now looking after the kids, their in-laws, whatever. All of it becomes the woman's responsibility, at least in our Indian society. I don't know what happens in the Western world. And it really takes a toll. So I think if I had a choice, perhaps I would say that I would like to stay at home and, you know, spend all my time with my family because that's so important. But having had to go through the journey of working and juggling all these various things and with my mother who was a great support, I have also grown a a lot as a human being and into a versatile human being, which perhaps I would not have been otherwise. So all's well that ends well.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Thank you. If you could speak to a younger version of yourself, the 19-year-old, what advice would you give her today, having seen how life has shaped out for you till today?

SPEAKER_00 29:11

I would say that uh, you know, so when I started out, it was all about IQ. You had to have a good IQ, you wanted to be on top of your academics and you know, all that. Then I matured a little bit. When you sort of the business grew, I realized what you really needed was a very high adversity quotient because life threw so many challenges at you. So from an IQ, I graduated into having a high what I think is a high AQ. Then I realized that that was still not the right approach to leadership. You also needed to have a high EQ, that is an emotional quotient, because businesses are made up primarily of people, and people like emotion. So today we have a good set of people and we treat them all like family. And I think that binding has helped us find good people and retain them. And then in my last leg of my journey, I mean, as I said, I intend exiting in the next four or five years. I realized that just having a high EQ is not adequate. You really need a high, do you know what the next quotient is? No, okay. So you really need a high SQ. That's a spiritual quotient. When you really learn that everything is in the hands of the Lord and what you do, the good that you do, really comes back to you. So today, if you have to see the young Nafi Sand business where I was all determined and aggressive and I was right, and it was all about winning, then I grew to the portion where, you know, you challenge me and I'll show you, and I'll, you know, take on this, and no matter what happens, I'm gonna put this up and, you know, establish this. That was high adversity quotient. Then emotional quotient where I had succeeded and I wanted to share the success and, you know, realize I needed to retain the people. So became the mother figure to some, the sister figure to some. That became the emotional quotient. And today I feel highly spiritual, and I feel we go up with nothing. So let's take the whole company and ride the wave. And at the end of the day, it's not about me benefiting and getting so many more zeros to my bank balance. It's about taking the whole lot and raising everybody's lifestyle, give sharing the success with everybody. And so today, when I sit to negotiate, as against what I did when I was young, I was a very aggressive, very energetic, and a very tough negotiator. And today, when I sit to negotiate, I say the best negotiation is when both parties feel they've won. So it's it's a completely different take. You realize that you need to be a good human being, and that itself spreads such good vibes that success comes automatically. So there's a lot of change in me, as you see.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah, absolutely. Are there any quotes that you live by, Nafisa?

SPEAKER_00 32:10

I have always believed that a workplace should be ELP. It's not my concept, it's it's a corporate uh concept. ELPF. And as long as a corporate environment or an office experiences ELPF, you're okay. E stands for earnings, earnings need to be good. L stands for learning, you have to keep learning. P stands for pride. If you don't have pride of work, then there's nothing. And F stands for fun. You need to have fun at work. So if you have this concept of earning, learning, pride and fun, then you're good to go. Then, like us, you last another 121 years. We have completed 121 years this year. In fact, uh some about four years ago, I was asked by the Guinness World Book of Records if you if I would like to participate, because we've never had a lost quarter, touch wood. And except for COVID, which was recently in 2020, where India was shut for three months. So obviously there was no business. But for the year we still made a profit. So, but no, I I refrained from it.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Congratulations. That's an incredible track record.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Not mine, of the families. I'm just the last bit who's now going to pass the baton on forever.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Now, Fisa, with all the success that you've seen, with the responsibility you took on at a your early age, what then inspired you to look for education and consider the OPM program? How did you come across OPM and why apply for it?

SPEAKER_00 33:45

One of my col uh one of my business partners, uh, a Danish gentleman by the name of John, he had done the OPM a couple, two, three years before me. And he went on and on of how life-changing it was and how fantastic the experience was. And um he says, Why don't you do it? And I said, Really? And he says, Yes, you always wanted to study. I love learning. There's nothing that excites me more than learning. And I thought about it, and so I made my application literally at 1 a.m. in the morning after having dinner with him. And then I wrote about that prerequisite of graduate uh be having a degree. And I sent in my application, I think, to 2.30 in the morning, India time. And I was quite sure that, you know, I would would not get in because he had told me they received some 2,000 applications and they take 180, 180 or something. So I said, anyway, let me put it in. And I sent them my application. They asked me a few questions or clarifications, especially on the degree, I think. And uh they said, you know, we're happy to have you, and that was it. So I think sometimes things are destined.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Certainly. What's a takeaway from your first unit that has stayed with you or you find yourself revisiting, or any professor who left an impression on you?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

No, a lot of them left an impression on me. I think one of the things that I learned is to really dream big, if you know what I mean. Very often we hesitate from really visualizing a really big picture for the company because you feel no, but you know, there's a risk and this and that. They showed you so many examples where people have succeeded because they thought big. So something that comes back to me when they say, no, you aim for the sky, you fall on the tree, you aim for the tree and you fall on the ground. So it taught me that, you know, simple people have made such huge successes because they had the dream and the vision and strategy, of course. And as long as you're clear in where you want to go, you're determined, and you just find a way, and businesses offer you that opportunity. I also um think it made me doubly confident that the route that I was taking was right because there has to be a proper plan, you know, so that a legacy company like us continues for the next hundred years and the kind of things I should be careful about, what I should take into consideration, etc. So I think it just made me more aware of how to proceed further.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

Got it. Uh Naveesa, my last question for you is is there a book that you think has left an impression on you, or you want to just share a name of a book which you've uh found helpful towards your leadership journey?

SPEAKER_00 36:25

I've always been very impressed with Li Kwan Yu. So whatever I can get to read about him, I always do. I think he was one of the greatest uh I call him a benign dictator, and I think that's what the world needs at all times. A benign dictator with uh as unselfish as you can get, though he did hand over the reins to his son, but it was no dinner, you know, view that is my son and my son and my son and my son. He built Singapore into what it is today, simple man, and don't forget they were all Chinese. And if you ever try to, you know, work with the Chinese, now they are very disciplined. But in those days they were not that disciplined and that organized like the Japanese. And he got the Singaporeans to really become organized, sophisticated, and you know, created the city, the country of Singapore. I have a lot of respect for that man. And anything I can learn about him, J.R.D. Tata was another thing, another person. So I I love reading about these stalwarts, and I try to figure out what it is in them that makes them not only successful as leaders, but successful as good human beings. I think that's a very important and an integral part of the equation. Just being successful, just being rich is not enough. You need to be successful, rich, and a good human being. And I think that's that's the icing on the cake.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Amazing. Great way to end the conversation, Nafisa. Thanks very much. For anyone who doesn't know, it's almost close to midnight and you've had a full workday, plus you've fasted all day. So really appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

It's been my privilege, and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to meeting everybody in OPM 67. I'm going to learn from you all because I'm sure you're more educated than I am and more successful. But life is all about learning. It never stops till you reach your grave. So I'm sure each one is going to teach me something new which I'm going to imbibe and hopefully emulate. And that's it, that's the exciting part of OPM.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Thanks, Dampfe. See ya.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Bye bye.