We continue our week-long #GEW16 celebrations by sharing with you with one of the most (if not the most) inspirational speeches we've ever heard! If you're looking to start up or involved in enterprise then PLEASE read this!
Entrepreneur Lord Bilimoria CBE, DL, co-founder and chairman of Cobra Beer, took to the stage at the Converge Challenge 2016 Awards Dinner and wowed the 220-strong audience with his motivational speech about why his vision, values and integrity are central to making his business a lasting, global success.
The guests, including many of our 'Class of 2016' and alumni were captivated from start to finish and flocked to speak to 'The Entrepreneur with the Midas Touch' afterwards. It certainly was a Converge night to remember.
So without further ado...here it is! #behumbitious
Following 9 years (I am a slow learner) at the Cranfield School of Management, the London Business School and the Harvard Business School, we had our Harvard graduation lecture. There was a talk from, what the Americans call, one of their rock star professors, Prof Clay Christianson. If you look at a list of great business thinkers, he will invariably come number one, so we had all heard about this legend.
He said, ‘I apologise when I start because I have been very ill and this is the first major talk I have given since being ill; I had cancer and I beat it and then I had a stroke and I have just recovered from my stroke. You can see that it hasn’t affected my movements but it has affected my mind and when I speak I sometimes can’t find the words I want to say and if it happens during this lecture it might help and save some time if you shout out the words.’
Well we had to shout out the words many times and at the end of the lecture he was in tears and we were in tears and I just wished I had heard that lecture many, many years ago. He had some very simple messages. Have you ever stopped and thought, what is the purpose of my life?
I’d also ask you that question, how many of you have actually stopped and thought what is the purpose of my life? Also, how will you measure your life? It’s very, very individual and there is no right or wrong answer.
When I was brought up in India I went to 7 different schools and my father was in the Indian army so we moved around a lot. I ended up at a boarding school in south India called Ooty, the last British boarding school left in India. Founded in the last days of the empire and they carefully chose the location, in south India, 8000ft high where it rains…a lot! They went even further to replicate being in Britain, the food was dreadful - boiled meat, boiled potatoes it was horrible! British food is of course the best in the word now.
With many scholarships and despite skipping my A-levels I went straight to University in Hydrabad at the age of 16. Graduating at 19, I came over to the UK with lots of scholarships, then qualified as a chartered accountant, with a firm called Arthur Young McClelland Moores. Of course it is now known as Ernst and Young.
Coming over here in the early 80’s, I remember that the India I left was a country that was closed, protected, insular and inward looking; it was seen as a loser economy that had no respect in the world. Look at India today! India is a country the whole world is looking to, with the fastest growing major economy in the world today, growing at a rate of 7.5% a year, overtaking China in growth. What a transformation!
The UK I came to in the early 80s was known as the sick man of Europe. Also seen as a loser economy, it had no respect at all. Friends and family said, if you decide to stay and work in the UK after your studies, you’ll never get to the top as a foreigner because there will be a glass ceiling. I’m ashamed to say this, they were absolutely right. Three decades ago, there was a glass ceiling. Today this is absolutely wrong, that glass ceiling has been shattered. Anyone in this country can get anywhere, regardless of race or religion of background. Far from being the sick man of Europe today’s UK is the envy of Europe.
When I came in the 80s entrepreneurship meant Del Boy, second hand sales man, looked down upon. But now look at UK and Scottish programmes like Converge Challenge 2016, it’s cool to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is celebrated.
When I qualified as a chartered accountant my favourite subject was Law so I went to Cambridge and graduated in Law. And it was at university that I came up with my big idea!
Big ideas often come from consumers, dissatisfied with a product or service who think, ‘I can do this better or differently’ and they change the market place forever. It also comes from being passionate about something on the one hand and hating something on the other hand.
When I came to the UK as a 19 year old I went to a pub and tried out all these famous beer brands. I was hugely disappointed. I found a lot of the lager absolutely disgusting –fizzy, gassy, bland and bloating. I missed my Indian food but couldn’t cook when I came here so I would go to Indian restaurants a lot, where you drink something cold and refreshing – a lager. But here with Indian food it was bloaty beer, spicy food…very uncomfortable!
Then a friend of mine introduced me to ale – WOW I loved ale immediately. Smooth and delicious in a pub, but with food I found it difficult to drink because it was too bitter and too heavy. And that’s when the idea came to me. Why don’t I produce a beer that has the refreshing taste of lager and the smoothness of ale combined, and will accompany all food, particularly Indian. It will appeal to men and women alike and will have a globally appealing taste.
Why didn’t anyone think of that before? Beer has been around for thousands of years and that’s the beauty of innovation and big ideas. 100 years from now people will come up with ideas and say ‘why didn’t someone think of that before?’ I am happy to say that against all the odds, we are now 6 times bigger than Kingfisher in the UK… Kingfisher, the biggest beer brand in India to this day, who were here eight years before we started! The craft beer revolution is wonderful news…but we started it 26 years ago!
Studying at business schools I found there was not a single case study on luck, and a lot of luck comes into it. As a professor at Cambridge said, ‘serendipity’ he defines as ‘seeing what everyone else sees but thinking what no one else has thought’. As for luck, my favourite definition is ‘when determination meets opportunity’.
Here’s an example, my partner and I (a childhood friend), imported products from India and were building up experience before we went for our big idea. We went to our mentor Uncle a retired Indian business man in London. ‘Tell me your problems’ he would say, ‘we’ve run out of money again’ we replied; then one day we told him we would import seafood from India, hearing that India was importing lots of seafood and that it was big volume and high value. ‘I don’t believe this boys, look at the luck of this, one of my best friends from Bangalore has opened up a sea food factory in Cochin (Kochi) in Kerala and has said if anyone wants to import seafood put them in touch with me’. Looking for the brochure, he said I would post them and the next day they arrived. I looked at the brochure, for PALS seafood. At the end of PALS seafood was a division of the Mysore brewers, producers of the famous PALS beer.
Luck - We asked PALS if they would be interested in exporting beer. So there is the luck. They said yes they would be interested...they had never exported beer before. They were the most successful independent brewers in India, more luck. They were the biggest independent brewers in India with the best brew master in India - more luck. And then they said:
‘You can have PALS beer.’
We said, ‘This is the name of a dog food, so no thanks.’
‘You can have our best selling beer Knockout, 8% strength.’ They replied.
We said, ‘No thank you.’
They said, ‘You can do it under any name you want. They thought we were going to fail like all of their competitors, had failed (except Kingfisher) and that when we failed we did it under our own brand. So if we’d had one of their brands I would not where I am today. Out most valuable asset is our Cobra beer brand. There are no case studies on luck but it is very real.
Trust. I was sitting next to one of the biggest industrialists at the Knockout Derby in Bangalore when we were starting. ‘Young man, remember empires are built on trust’. My partner Arjen I would trust him with my life. And then I discovered one trait that successful entrepreneurs have that others do not. We phoned up a successful entrepreneur from Hyderabad, from my boarding school days, and said, we need some inspiration please. He said ‘come and see me’. So we got into our company car, bought for £295, bright green and battered, needed push starting every day, but it could carry exactly 15 cases of cobra in the front and back seats and the boot. So we drove to the station and took the train to Leeds and he picked us up in his very smart car. He drove through the streets of the Leeds to his house and he pointed out all the houses he owned, 250 properties. His model was very simple – he rented them out to Leeds University for its students, solid customers and repeat orders…he was a multimillionaire. So we sat at his kitchen table and he said, ‘you know I have almost lost everything and then I realised that one trait that entrepreneurs have that other people do not, they have – one word - guts!
You need the guts to do it in the first place, but more importantly you need the guts to stick with it when others would give up. Looking back now, I know this because I nearly lost my business three times. You just never ever give up. By then my father had become commander in chief of the central Indian army, 350,000 people under his command.
Every time there was a break in the development of cobra beer I’d say, ‘Dad isn’t this great? My own beer company, my own business!” I was looking for emotional support or encouragement but no… ‘All this education and you’re becoming an import export wallah. Get a proper job! Become a banker.’
But when cobra beer succeeded my father was my greatest fan. When no one knows you or your brand, you have zero credibility. How do you cross that credibility gap? How do people finance you, buy from you when you are in that position? I believe that they do it if you have the faith, confidence and passion in your product, in your brand, in yourself and in your idea. Then you cross that creditability gap.
I am going to ask you a question now. There is no right or wrong answer; be honest with yourself, how many of you think you are creative?
When I was a child growing up at school I was told, you are good at academics, you are good at your studies, keep at it and you will do well. But, I was told, you are not creative. Why? Because I couldn’t draw and was useless at art. Then I was told you have to learn the piano and passed grade 1 – so again, I was not creative. All through my youth, I was told ‘you are not creative’.
Yet, when I started my own business I realised I had the ability to be creative in abundance. I am really creative and all through my youth it had been supressed. Why don’t we encourage all creativity from an early age? So, if I can be creative you can be creative. Our GDP would go up several points if we could just encourage everyone to be creative. Isn’t it a shame that creative accounting is a bad word?
Before I conclude, I said I had lost my business three times and that there are three things that enabled me to survive each time:
- have a good brand - never once did the cobra beer brand flinch, our sales never went down
- I had support from my family my wife and my great team
- most importantly, I had the right values and (that word) integrity
Integrity is often loosely used, but I’ll give you the best definition of integrity I know. When I met the (then) Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams at a Zoroastrian Parsee community in London, where I am patron, he said, ‘Lord Bilmoria has used the word integrity in his speech twice…the word comes from the Latin and Greek word integrum /integer which means wholeness. You cannot practice integrity as an individual or a company or an entity, unless you are whole and complete.’
I believe that it is better to fail doing the right thing than succeed doing the wrong thing.
Here is a poem I wrote called:
An ‘Ode to the entrepreneur.’
Oh to be an Entrepreneur, oh to do or die! To defy.
Where others dare not, where they say no, you say go…for it!
You make your luck, where determination meets opportunity.
You fight the might by not just doing the things right, but by doing the right thing;
With a large heart, trying to be the best in the world, but also the best for the world.
Where success is not a destination, but a journey;
A journey, where good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement.
A journey of serendipity, where you see what everyone else sees, but think what no one else has thought.
Where you have the guts to never give up, never ever give up.
Where you aspire and achieve against all odds with integrity;
And as they say in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,
The Entrepreneur’s journey will always be alright in the end,
And if it’s not alright, it’s not the end!
I’d like to congratulate everyone in the Converge Challenge, the participants and the winner. What you are doing is inspiring others and that inspiration creates aspiration, and that creates achievement and the virtuous circle goes on. Be happy with winning, be confident but not arrogant. Be ambitious but also humble. Be humbitious!
The final thing I would like to say is on our vision at Cobra Beer, to aspire and achieve against all odds, with integrity. That is what it’s all about. You come up with an idea; you want to get somewhere; you have all the odds stacked against you; you have little or no means; you go out there and you make it happen, and you do it the right way – values!
My favourite saying, from Mahatma Gandhi, a great inspiration to the world, was (if I may paraphrase), ‘your beliefs become your thoughts, your thought become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits form your character and your character determines your destiny.’
-end-
Thank you Lord Bilimoria for your inspiration. Converge looks forward to our paths crossing again!
