Rushabh Vora co-founder of SILA sat down with Mudit Pant to share the journey that led him to create and grow SILA. SILA is a Real Estate Services and Development company in India. Started from scratch, it now operates in 75+ cities in India, and has more than 6000 employees.
Some of the key takeaways from the dialogue are as follows:
- Rushabh talks about how being a student athlete at Trinity College helped him shape his personality through the years. Squash has played a very important role in his life. Working with people and teammates from diverse backgrounds has helped him to deal with different culture and become open minded. Some of the things that he learnt through this experience are work ethics, dealing with pressure etc.
- Rushabh talks about taking a leap in your life to pursue your passion. For him it was the time when he decided to move back to India and work at SILA along with his brother.
- The dialogue touched upon challenges that a new business faces:
a) Nothing really according to the business plan - one needs to be flexible and make the required adjustments
b) Periods of no sales Crunches with cash flow
The important thing that is to be kept in mind is to always try to learn from mistakes. Best lessons are learnt from mistakes. There is no problem in making 100 mistakes, but it is important to analyze them and not repeat them.
- As the scale of the firm changes (eg small to medium etc), the set of challenges that face also changes. The business challenges at SILA 10 years ago will be much different to the set of challenges that it faces today. However, each stage requires a different set of skillset in order to move upward.
During uncertain times within the business, the key is to be process driven, get the right people (corporate culture is very important as culture drives organization)
- An important attribute that you learn from playing a sport is how to lose, and how to understand and deal with losses. This directly helps in dealing with failure at work - when you lose work, lose bids etc.
- The only way to keep growing is by enhancing your skillset. As a company grows in scale, one needs to do less and delegate more (to improve efficiency within the business). It is also important for a company to hire the right people, have the right processes and tech. As the leader one needs to continuously be open minded to learning new things. As the firm grows, you need to learn how to scale it in the right way and be able to crack big deals to take the business to the next level.
- Rushabh mentions the importance of employees who are working at SILA. It is people who make a company, and therefore it is important to have the right people on board. It is important to continue to learn and experiment with time. At SILA hiring is based on two things: candidate needs to have the required qualification, align with the company's culture, and look for people who can and are open to learning (have an high IQ). These are the people who can pick up stuff and learn fast and can also fit in well within the culture of the company. He shares that getting hiring right is one of the hardest thing within the business. If you make a hiring mistake then it is your fault, and thereby it becomes important to live with it and train people the right way (through training, leadership development activities etc.).
- Rushabh shares something that drive him everyday is to build good will. Good will for him matters more than money.
- In terms of one of his biggest failure, Rushabh shares that he got into a business and realized in a few months that it was not the right place for him. He did not have the right skillset for the business. He mentions therefore it is very important to know what you do not know. He also shares that even though that specific business could not be a success, but a lot of the relationships that he made during that came in handy in his current business.
- It is very important to work on your mind and body, and keep the work-life balance going.
- A word of advise: Do what you like to do. Be flexible and be ready for change! Whatever happens, happens for the good.
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