Celebrating Father's Day Father's Day stands out as the Day when you talk to your father and tell him how special he is to you.
By Aniket Deb
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Human beings by definition crave for inspiration. We seldom realize this, but almost every endeavor that we undertake during our lifetime is because we receive inspiration in some form or the other from our role models. For a child, his/her father happens to be the first person he/she looks up to. There is an incessant transfer of wisdom that takes place right from childhood to the teenage years continuing up to adulthood.
I am an entrepreneur. I run a B2B eCommerce company based out of the sprawling Powai Valley area in the outskirts of Mumbai. People live and breathe startups here; there have been a bunch of successful companies to have come out of this ecosystem in the last few years.
I harbored a dream of starting something of my own towards the fag end of 2014. We started off on a mission to empower the Indian SMEs with technology and currently, as I write this, Bizongo comprises of a 50-member strong team who firmly believe in the organization's mission.
Tracing back, how did all of this come to be; how did a college graduate with a comfortable job find enough motivation to tread the unconventional path? A large part of this motivation, directly and indirectly stems from my father.
He always told me to persevere, to not be deterred by obstacles and to keep surging ahead. I remember those family trips I used to make with my parents from when I was a child. Whenever we visited a Museum or a Fort, my father used to take out a small book detailing the History of that place.
The two of us would then get engrossed. And that insatiable thirst for knowledge I developed as a child only kept amplifying as I grew up. An entrepreneur's life is filled with struggles - you fight day in and day out, and the only thing that can keep you going is this thirst for knowledge which refuses to subside easily.
My father is a Doctor. Being a respected profession, for a long time I was enamored by how he dealt with his patients. I developed a deep sense of empathy within me. I was highly sensitized to the kind of problems people faced, in general. This, now beautifully translates into a strong sense of empathy that I feel for our customers. Your nature as an entrepreneur is strongly impacted by the kind of person you are, which is majorly shaped, in most cases, by your father.
As I recount all these memories, to me Father's Day stands out as the Day when you talk to your father and tell him how special he is to you. At least this is what I am going to do.