THE GAME CHANGERS

Often a paradigm shift is influenced by the simplest of circumstances and brought by questioning the existing set of ‘rules’.

It so happened a couple of years back and started just as a casual discussion amongst colleagues entailing an athlete’s preparation for his next important goal. We talked about an athlete belonging to a small place having limited resources but a fire to succeed. What does he do? After a lot of brainstorming, the story comes out like this:

After he starts beating his local competitors regularly, he decides to raise his preparation to a new standard. He starts by increasing the track length from 100 meters to 110 and thinks if he outdoes their 100 m time by his 110 time, he is definitely on the next pedestal. The story of his perseverance and smart strategies stays continued. One day, after a few weeks, when he happens to compare his 110 m time charts against  others’ 100 m, he jumps with excitement to find each of his last fifteen timings better than others’ 100 m timings and even his own best 100 m timings. “I never knew this was possible,” he thought, “But, man! Is it my best?”

As a restless forward looking guy he decides to beat his best himself by adding other hurdle. Along with some friends, he spends next few days toiling with spade and soil. Finally he succeeds in giving slight elevation to his entire track. Now it’s 110 m, elevated track and a self motivated guy. Could anybody come in his way? Again straight ‘A’s in two months. Own records beaten every day.

‘Won’t I forget the actual event because I am not practicing anything simulated now ‘, he thinks one day sitting a little worried. Well, he decides to try one more thing and last time before he decides to break away and come back. He adds small equal weights on each foot.  Imagine! 110 m, elevated track and added weights. But who can stop the ones with this attitude. Practice, strategy, improved inputs were all that he needed. After all this when he unshackled him self a few weeks before the real event, within a few days anybody could bet on him. No wonder, not only did he blaze the track on the D day but in each and every event after that till Olympics.

Perhaps, that was the only trigger of analogy & motivation that my colleagues needed. It took two years flat, and a wonderful co-coordinated effort amongst almost all departments to roll out ‘Test Generator (www.TCYonline.com/CreaTest) – the indispensible tool for a student to generate topic, subject specific tests, combined tests and MOCKs’. This was TCY’s answer to ‘How to become an Olympian in any Competitive Exam’.  Its usage was like wild fire. Ever since its launch, we had good problems like shortage of server bandwidth, requirement of bigger and bigger tagged pool of questions to name a few. Nothing gives a team more satisfaction than creating something worth while, we have observed.

The team just needed this kick start as the next product ‘Challenge Zone’ (http://www.tcyonline.com/LetUsChallenge) – the online tool to compete with the friends on the same test - was out of their own imagination and observation. This tool was inspired by the idea of how learning can be fun and peer competition can be educative and healthy. Students sitting in any part of the country are benchmarking against students in other corner of the country, real time. Another, marvel! You observe in morning, after noon, midnight or whenever, it’s on and on and on. In some test categories, the entire family is glued to ‘Challenge Zone’ for hours and parents thank us for taking their children away from idiot box.

All this while, the real differentiator was being created underneath. We have been creating TCY Analytics (http://www.tcyonline.com/subscription/) very scientifically using our sophisticated testing engine. What every student today needs is – High Return on his Time Investment. TCY Analytics give you exactly accurate path of test preparation. It monitors your performance on each question (let alone a test), displays it in the form of the most comprehensible graphical formats and suggests the future course of action based on your strengths and weaknesses. It’s becoming the de facto method of preparation for every competitive exam in each and every part of the country.

All these ideas were small efforts from our side out of our passion and experience of student results; without knowing that more than 450,000 students would enroll in the first  18 months, we’d need around a million tagged questions or would create more than 4.5 million  Analytic points. Our guess is that arguably www.TCYonline.com is one of the most used testing platforms in the world.

When students, parents and sector experts tell us that TCY and our team have changed the game in test prep; we look at one another in surprise ‘Is this how Game Changers think and work’? If yes, may be we’re a big story in the making.’

If endorsements and feelers from outside are any indication, though we never looked at any, yes we got quite a few:

Our franchisees telling that the response in their centres has gone up in the last one year owing to all this;

Highly talented human resources joining us from various parts of the country;

VCs and PEs contacting to understand what we do;

Foreign and Indian universities and colleges approaching the platform to reach out to these students;

Schools and colleges wanting to tie up for testing services.

Rightly said “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come”

The species called ‘FOUNDERS’

When I took a plunge into a new business venture, ignoring lucrative offers for employment, I had no idea what type of circumstances and people I would run into. When I did stumble upon both, my respect increased: first for business, later for businessmen whom I happened to meet in the course of my own business pursuit. This respect was more pronounced, bordering on awe, for a particular species of businessmen, the first generation entrepreneurs. It was only after I came across some such extraordinary members of the species that I noticed:

–  how challenging their journey is
–  how arduous it must be for them to reconcile their steely resolve (interior) with  their moderate demeanor (exterior)
–  how onerous it must be for them to manage contradictions such as multi–tasking (that is in their blood) and the focus (that is expected of them);
–  how obsessive and ultra-radical they are in their single–minded pursuit; and above all
–  how exciting they are to deal with!

Let us take their ability to manage contradictions first. What they have in their genes is a canny sense of opportunity, though they are well aware that they can’t do so many things, all at a time. Obviously they started with their venture only after they had sensed the opportunity. They have per force to say no to opportunities that fall their way subsequently as they need to focus and fight any tendency of shifting interest.

Their 24 × 7 drive also has to be reconciled with patience, for the former is need for team and the latter for external environment. They carry the burden of expectations of their family, friends and peers, and have to balance their personal and business lives. For them their personal life is just an extension of their business life as they are wedded to their ventures. How else could 24 × 7 focus be possible? Any deviation could be just like telling Sachin Tendulkar not to concentrate on his batting, say after 7.00 pm or to tell Mr Ratan Tata not to think about Nano at home.( This analogy is to explain passion for their respective fields)

They are prone to spells of virtual solitude when they just have to be with themselves. For them, connection with self is an absolute must to allow for end to end thinking that gives them clarity of purpose and a focus for the target. They are prone to have similar spells of association with their teams so as to translate their thoughts to them and carry them along the path.

They remain disquieted for as long as they don’t find solutions to the problems that put them out of balance in the first place. Obviously such angst, such end to end thinking, leads to offbeat results. Could Aamir Khan not have made a successful movie based on conventional formula and star power? Sure! But he was obviously looking for an unbeatable model where he could win on the strength of a theme alone. He didn’t give in to the commercial temptation and conventional wisdom and continued with the courage of conviction.  And the outcome was Taare Zameen Par which could easily aspire for and more easily get an Oscar nomination.

The founders, in their pursuit of the big picture, give up on small things like social gatherings and even routine family matters. Does this mean they don’t love their family and friends? It only means that they are looking at the larger frame which may benefit them all. Likewise, they don’t look for short cuts that might make more economic and business sense to their team and to others. The purpose is not immediate and transient, but ultimate and lasting success.

There are disconnects with family, friends and others for another reason. The species keeps trying to connect the seemingly unconnectables – that it can’t even explain to them. There is a strange dilemma, even a risk of ridicule, where others around may not be able to link up the wood, the stone and a strange amalgam that the entrepreneur is trying to bring together. It is much too early for them to realize that he is aiming for the match stick. So the team has to be pushed and prodded, half willingly at times.

It is quite common to find people who are anxious to work with founders and become part of their core team. But often enough such enthusiasts are not able to come up to the founders’ high expectations. The latter are as demanding from their core team as they are from themselves. The enthusiastic riders on the founders’ bandwagon often get disillusioned and desert the ride, sooner than later.

Change is in the blood of this species. They never think of the trivialities. They are not much obsessed with resources, which they consider as nothing but the means to reach an end. They are the change agents that the society so desperately needs to reach one threshold after the other. The journey never ends for them. Achieving one goal marks the beginning of another journey. Where a project approaches fructification, they get rather detached from all the adulation with a sense of ho – hum. They start getting restless because now they are more concerned about the next big idea.

That’s it for now !!