By Hemisha Morarji.
Sanjeev Ahjua is the president of TiE (UK), a charter for entrepreneurs who have either conquered the world or business or are venturing into it with fierce ambitious and ideas aching to be brought to fruition. Sanjeev met up with Asian World newspaper to discuss the young people TiE mentors, why Asians are succeeding in business and how entrepreneurial acumen is not always in the blood.
Business people keen to share their knowledge or to help their children, nephews or nieces up the ladder to success cannot find a better charter to be a part of.
Since it was founded in 2000, TiEUKhas grown to become one of the largest chapters across the globe, with two offices in London and in Manchester. The organisation now has 100 Charter Member, 500 Regular Member and big names sponsors such as HSBC Bank and the Ontario International Marketing Centre.
With informal relationships with universities and schools such as theLondonBusinessSchooland the London School of Economics, students may already have heard of them. But Sanjeev assures that TiE UK is hoping to make these academic bonds more formal. He says, “We have informal relationships with a number of business schools. But we have developed new strategies and programmes aimed to formalise these relationships.”
Having just celebrated the crème of UK business talent at their annual awards, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) UK Annual Awards 2011, Sanjeev tells us that being part of the organization has an array of benefits, and that their programmes are designed to help hone young talent into polished perfection…
What are the benefits of becoming a member of TiE UK?
We have two levels of memberships. First is the general membership, which is aimed to attract young people into the entrepreneur profession and that costs £50 per year. For that, they can join a variety of Tie programmes, as well as getting access to our charter members who are there to mentor them. They can also attend our selected events, which brings all of our community together and our young member can get what they want out of entrepreneurship and to connect with like-minded people.
The second level is the charter membership, which is for existing successful entrepreneurs. They can then act as role models, contribute to the agenda of time and pay an annual fee of £900. Amongst these, we select those who are able to facilitate the agenda, mentor our newest additions and overall, contribute back to the Tie community.
Tell us about some of the programmes you have for young people?
We have a number of programmes. The most prominent one is the Tie Business Plan competition. It is a global competition and each chapter conducts one locally. Then winners are put forward for the global competition, where they compete for the prize money of £25,000. From the runners up, we select five or seven teams – usually composing of A level students – and they go through to classroom training for 6 months. Modules include marketing, business plan creation, operations and technology.
Each team is mentored by one charter member and he or she can also pull in other charter members to mentor in areas which they have better knowledge. It is one of the many ways our members volunteer.
How has these programmes benefited the participants?
At TiE, we have always sought to grab entrepreneurs while they are young, at a time when they are still figuring what they want to do. It is a joy to see the light in their eyes when our mentors help them convert their business plans into high quality documents that they can take to investors.
TiE recently held its annual awards. Why do you think Asians are becoming so successful in business?
Fundamentally, I think it is for two reasons. People who are coming in fromAsiaor are second generation Asians tend to come from a nurturing environment. One of the most important things in business is to be able to take failure in stride in a way someone would take success in stride. So when you encounter a failure, you need to have someone to support you and to give you the energy to get up and go again.
Also the second thing is that Asians tend to be extremely driven, because of the culture they are brought up in. They want to be successful and they want to make something of themselves.
A lot of people believe that business acumen is something that someone either has or doesn’t have and cannot be taught. What do you think of this?
At TiE, we believe that there is a healthy mix between ‘nature and nurture’. Entrepreneurs are sometimes born, because they have parents in the field. But there is so much knowledge of business that can be required and honed through education, such as structure, planning, organisation and creativity. Also, risk is an integral part of business and almost all professions and it is important to teach students how to handle such situation.
Your programme aims to nurture participants into becoming well-rounded personalities. How important is it to have such a personality in business?
It is very important, because having the right attitude and personality is one of the major fundamentals in business. When the first idea doesn’t work out, you need to look for a second idea and if that doesn’t work out, you need to look for the third. You also need ambition – I don’t mean conquering the world, but rather the need to take control of your own destiny.
The other important thing is relationship management. You can’t have success if you can’t relate to others and you are single minded in pursuit. You need to be able to maintain good relationships in order to work well in a team and make good connections.
