Lessons from Rahul Garg, Blog By Siddharth Kumar Gopal

Think of Mowgli and his struggle of growing up in a jungle fighting enemies like Shere Khan, befriending Bhagheera and others – we all love that Jungle Book story, don’t we? Well, inspired by this story, Mr. Rahul Garg named his company Moglix ! And we, the top 125 students of the youth ideathon contest had the fortune to attend a session by him. Here are a few key lessons from the session:

  1. Never be Shy; make use of every opportunity: He spoke about his childhood when he was passionate about learning and sports and advised us to participate in a lot of activities in school. He spoke of the many things he learned by participating in sports such as team work and how these are important skills in real life too. He encouraged us never to leave any opportunity unturned. He also gave an example of creating a moving car game when he was just in 9th
  2. Try Your Best Always: Whether it is studies or our passion, persistence is the key to success and Mr.Garg told us how he would spend hours and hours doing mathematical problems. When it comes to business ideas too, one should look for challenging problems to solve and be persistent trying to solve them.
  3. There are No Failures, Only Failed Experiments:Garg also shared the many failures he had experienced in his entrepreneurial journey such as the GST Tool that was developed, but did not succeed in the market as there were other players who managed to capture the market faster. However, he advised us that there are actually no failures, but just failed experiments – so if one idea doesn’t work, one must know when to stop working on it and try something else.
  4. Be Fluid with Your Time and Priorities:Garg also gave us some very valuable advise around time management and managing our priorities, with a wonderful example of a glass being filled with rocks, sand and water. Imagine a glass, and you have a few rocks, some sand and some water. The glass is the amount of time you have in hand and the rocks, sand and water are the different tasks you have with different priorities, with rocks having the highest priority and water the least. When you fill the glass with rocks, you will feel that there is no more space in it. But you can add sand and it will fill the gaps between the rocks. You can then add water which will soak up the sand and also fill the remaining gaps. Similarly, we need to decide the rocks, sand and water that we want to fill our glass with – and this has to be fluid. For example, just before an exam, we might spend additional hours studying, while just before a competition, we might have to put aside our books and prepare for the competition.
  5. Don’t Think Big Companies Have all the Answers : As an answer to one of our questions, Mr.Garg told us that we must not be afraid to create a startup thinking that bigger companies with more financial strength and sales muscle will be able to solve the problem faster and better. This may not always be the case, as no one, including the big companies can solve all problems. They will also be prioritizing their focus areas and filling their glass with rocks, sand and water. What is least priority for them as a large company maybe our highest priority as a startup and therein lies our opportunity to succeed.

Thus if we play to our strengths, and prioritise our passions and ideas in a fluid manner and be able to work hard and persistently, then we can surely make our startup a success too.

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