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Swear By the Deep Sea

Swear By the Deep Sea

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DQW Bureau
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I met Ajay last week, a successful, confident young man of 40, with a new-found aura of wealth and affluence, as he stepped out of his chauffeur driven BMW 3 series at a Central Mumbai 5-star hotel as I was waiting for the valet to bring mine from the car park.

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A few years ago, I was Ajay's sounding board and unofficial mentor of sorts; his small firm wrote add-on software for a large investment banking firm (we'll refer it by a pseudonym: Access). Access is an arm of a foreign company and operates on core system from its US parent but Indian scenario (not to mention compliance, statutory and laws) required Access to add many features and plugins to generate market intelligence and data specific to India.

Ajay's firm received massive amount of work from Access, but was struggling. Struggling with finances, with massive workloads, unrealistic deadlines and a CIO, who would doggedly bargain and settle for an impossible price with no SLA relaxation. Ajay was fed up but could not dare to let go of the continuous feed of work Access virtually guaranteed. But then, he lived under continuous duress, would not get paid in time and never enough. Plus, there would be tens of tense moments for project deliveries. Despite all this, Ajay would lament that his efficiency, his dedication, hard work, taking ownership was never appreciated by Access. Instead, one mistake and he would be bombarded with calls demanding explanation. In Ajay's own words, "I am that loyal dog whose master bites him."

The appreciation, if any, were that the CIO never once invoked penalty clauses in 4 years despite multiple borderline violations and delays. And the work continued to flow. Ajay thought, it was because his firm was a low-cost alternative to expensive large IT service corporations.

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Ajay had other clients too, but almost 70% of his business was Access. In a way he was dependent upon Access to pay salaries and continue being in business. In the same way, Access work never gave him the breathing space to go out and aggressively market his accomplishments making him even more vulnerable. The only business he received in addition to Access was by way of references from his old customers, friends like myself and through family ties.

Despite the obvious risk of too many eggs in one basket, Ajay was sure of not losing Access. I had even discussed the possibility of CIO leaving Access and new professional team replacing him; somehow this never appeared real to him.

One fine day, just weeks before Access CIO was about to assume role of co-CEO, he gave Ajay an option to join Access as IT manager. Ajay could not contain his excitement and called me from outside Access Towers to share the 'great news'. I trashed CIO proposal, quashed his excitement and stressed him to continue with entrepreneurship despite all struggles. Ajay was sore with me despite me explaining that with the peripheral code he had developed for Access and with understanding of the vertical, he was on the verge of creating an entire India market intelligence system by just writing a core to that code periphery that would be his ticket to gold; an opportunity no corporate job security would provide him with.

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I distinctly remember the night we discussed this at a fancy Dadar restaurant and got into a heated argument. Getting a job at Access, Ajay thought, was the only solution to end all his problems; no more business to maintain, salaries to pay, payments to chase. Perks were many: fixed income, stress-free existence, coming home at 7 every day instead of working 11 hours a day. Ah!!! The comforts and position of power of a corporate citizen.

Eventually he got drunk, dared me to buy out his company if I thought he was sitting on a golden goose or take over his firm and pay him what Access was to pay him as an employee to develop the product I saw a great future in. I now knew Ajay had already discussed salary with Access. Too late, I thought; he had decided to commit suicide and just wanted me to endorse his wrong decision. There was no way I could any more stop him. I was angry; so was he; and adamant, he accused me of malicious intent, of jealousy, of misguidance. Now, what I cannot tolerate is someone accusing me of ulterior motives for I rarely have one.

That day we fell out with each other and fell out of touch...that day was the last I saw of Ajay before l met him again 6 days ago.

He greeted me warmly. I curtly congratulated him on achieving a BMW status and rising the ranks in corporate in less than 3 years. He laughed, I read sarcasm in his laughter. He insisted we have coffee together, I gave in after a minute; "Let him pay for a coffee for having helped him without a dime for over 2 years," I spoke to myself.

Once at the coffee-shop, I asked him how it felt in corporate life as compared to being an entrepreneur! Ajay again laughed, this time throatily. Then enquired if I never checked about him, after all some of his clients were referred by me and my company still did business with them. I told him frostily that he was insignificant (NOOOO, it was quite the opposite) and I didn't really care to know (Oh! I did, but I was angry, and I didn't have to tell him so).

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The worst thing about 5-star coffee-shops is they take too much time to deliver coffee but cookies come in faster. Did not do me any good about my feeling of shame of having failed in correctly guiding Ajay. My ego, even self-respect had taken a beating, cast a self-doubt about my ability as a business coach, of being a guiding light, of being a thought leader. For 20 minutes, we spoke about everything under the Sun, even about the night we had that ugly public spat, but cautiously avoided the core. Coffee was served, I hadn't touched a cookie yet.

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Taking the 1st sip, I gave up as anxiety and curiosity got better of me; I never liked cat and mice game anyway, especially when I was the mouse.

I blurted out, "So, when did you finally join Access?"

Ajay took a deep breath, enjoying each moment of my edgy unease.

"I never joined Access", he dropped the bombshell and an explosion sounded in my heart... What the...!!!

"Yes KK", he took another deep breath (I swear I could have strangulated him just for the time he took to take each of those deep breaths), "I listened to you the next morning once I was sober, and I never joined Access".

"And how did the CIO react?" my heart wanted to scream - Yes! Yes! Yes!

Ajay was in the past: "Oh! The CIO told me I have taken the right decision, but wanted to know, "Why?", he continued, "I told him all that you had argued the earlier night, about wanting to offer same services to Access competitors".

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"You'd love to hear what the CIO told me next", Ajay looked at me with his patent mischievous twinkle in eyes, "He told me: Now go write the core to integrate the add-ons and sell that entire system as a product," he paused for a second (that felt like an hour at least).

"The rest, as they say, is history," Ajay ended.

We shook hands and he went up the elevator while I waited for the valet to bring my car 2nd time in 75 minutes I realised that I could only motivate and guide Ajay, but it was the CIO who went ahead and built a product for my friend. I looked at my Maruti Swift and wondered at how people can buy a BMW in less than 2 years and immediately reprimanded myself for being jealous.

That's the success I had envisaged for Ajay.

PS: Last night as I was writing this piece, Ajay's email popped up, it read:

"There are two people who made my destiny, one who made me think I can do it, another who made me do it"

I am still trying to figure out which one is me and which one is that CIO.

Kshitij M Kotak

Author's question: What do you think is Swear By The Deep Sea? How is it applicable in Ajay - Access story.

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