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Badri Seshadri is Managing director and promoter of the regional publishing house New Horizon Media. This Chennai-based publisher is also the co-founder of Cricinfo. com. Book Link, in a two-part interview, asks this versatile publisher, why is that an Indian student who can write a good SOP for his higher studies can’t write out a Business plan when he graduates? How adept are we to the startup culture? What kind of impact is the current political turmoil going to have on Chennai catching up?

Karthikeyan Pugalendi
Proprietor, Vanavil Puthakalayam


Badri Seshadri: I will contest the first point itself. Can the Indian students really write a good ‘SOP’? Writing an SOP to get into an American University is one thing. But to really distil one’s thoughts and write out a good educational statement of purpose is another thing. Indian attitude (if I may generalise) is one of learning how to find the crevices in the system and sneak through that; not being honest to themselves. This is where they get into problems when it comes to writing a honest business plan. This calls for a lot of conviction. You can write what pleases the investors, but most investors see through such flimsy attempts.

When it comes to building modern businesses, we are too young a nation. We have a long way to go. We do not have the ecosystem of support services. If I have a fantastic idea and a decent funding and I want to hire two or three smart and experienced individuals to take the idea forward, I won’t find them today. If I want to outsource some crucial ideas to few third party companies, I will struggle to find them. So we spend months and months building things we should really be outsourcing. This sets us back by years. I am hoping this will change in the coming years.

Chennai is not too far behind Hyderabad and Bengaluru. In fact, in the cloud space, Chennai is way ahead. Chennai has an advantage in the mechanical manufacturing space while Bengaluru will score in the electronics space. Otherwise, all three south Indian cities are great places for startup. The TN political situation is not to be worried about. Most of the time, startups happen outside the purview of governments.

"Book as a format, of a few hundred thousand words, on a single topic is the only way to get people to learn the fundamentals of a subject"

You have often said that you dread money. From Cricinfo to regional book publishing, is this a transition signifying that the success with Cricinfo helped you get over the materialistic drives? Do you see publishing as a way of giving back to the society, changing things at the grassroots?

What I meant about dreading money was that it will force you to take decisions which are not for the long-term good of the entity you are building. Materialistic comforts will also make you slow and dull. I make it a point to not own a car (I used to own one but gave it up for Uber/Ola), walk if possible, use bicycle/scooter, public transportation or hail a taxi. Basically, stay away from what I see as trappings of money in food, clothing, living place, meaningless creature comforts etc.

As far as the regional publishing is concerned, I never looked at it as ‘giving back to society’. It is to me, a full-fledged business venture; not a charity initiative.

But I miscalculated badly about the space. I thought things move fast in every space. But what takes three to four years to establish in an online space takes more than a decadePublisherSpeak

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to establish in the publishing space. So it is going to take a long time to build a successful venture in publishing. Probably thirty or forty years. That is a lifetime. But I am sticking to it.

I see publishing as an important way of educating people. Newspapers, TV and Internet magazines cannot really educate people. They can at best inform and entertain people. Even a long form article today is at best only 8,000 word long. That is hardly sufficient to develop a complex idea. Whether in print or electronic form, books will remain for a long time to come. Some of my friends and colleagues talk about audio and video formats and I can’t see how such formats can be deeply educative. There is very little time to think and contemplate because audio/ video drags you along at its own speed.

In the digital era, do you think the role of an entrepreneur is more to do with the creative part—ideation, thought leadership and he\she should leave the mundane things to SMEs? What is your current portfolio like? What are the ventures that excite you beyond publishing?
We know about Rockefeller or Ambani only because they built large-scale enterprises and expanded their empire within a short span of time. Having a vision on paper is not good enough. You have to execute the same. Many of us (including me) have not done that. Let us not compare ourselves with the giants. At my own level I am excited by a few things. They are closely related.

Publishing is one. Education is the second. Human resource/hiring is the third. Software services is the fourth.

To be continued in the next issue-Ed