I recently met Mr. Bharat Desai and Mrs. Neerja Sethi - the co-founders of Syntel. Mr. Desai is also an IIT Bombay Alumnus (the famous 1975 batch) and he happened to visit IIT Bombay because he helped set up the Desai Sethi Center for Entrepreneurship (DSCE) at IIT Bombay. Needless to say, they’re both billionaires.
Since I had been an active student in the Center during my college days, I was also given the opportunity to meet them.
A few points that I observed that simply amazed me about them:
- Extremely down to earth: they both were very humble. Even though I am nothing in front of them, they both talk like a friend - asking for feedback and suggestions about DSCE. They had ZERO air of arrogance of being a billionaire.
- Dressed as a common man: looking at them, you won’t believe that they were both billionaires. They were dressed like any other person you would see.
- Open to new ideas: it blew my mind to see that the billionaires themselves were asking me for feedback on how we can improve the center and other related ideas. They could have directly spoken to professors. However, they wanted to interact with students of the center to get their feedback.
From that day onwards, they’ve both become an inspiration for me not just in terms of creating that big of an impact, but in terms of being humble in nature.
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