DECODING the BUSINESS RISK with an ex Army man | Col Samrendra Kumar | TBCY
Welcome to another episode of The Brand Called You. A vodcast and podcast show that brings you leadership lessons, knowledge, experience and wisdom from hundreds of successful individuals from around the world. I'm your host, Ashutosh Garg and today I'm privileged to welcome a very, very accomplished veteran from the Indian Army turn entrepreneur and professional Colonel Samrendra Kumar. Sam, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Ashutosh, indeed, huge honor to be invited to the show The Brand Called You. I believe it's the third-largest
brand in the world, and personally hugely honored because I know you're a son of a very decorated soldier of brigadier with Kirti Chakra the second-highest. And then I'm hugely honored that my name figures with him in the Chetwoode Hall. Thank you. So very nice. and you have been a corporate leader, you've been an entrepreneur, so hugely honored. Thank you so much. Sam is the co-founder and managing director of MitKat Advisory. He's a distinguished veteran, and he won the sword of honor and the President's gold medal at the Indian military academy. And all of us know, to get the Sword of Honour and the President's Gold Medal
is a huge, huge, huge accomplishment, only the best gets it and once a year, I think. So, Sam, let's start talking about you and your journey. What was the motivation to leave a promising career in the armed forces and start off on your own? I think the informal conversations before we began this show, took me about 36 years back, it took me back to my first day in Military Academy. So, I must admit I came from a
very humble background in Bihar. Bihar was the most laggard and I used to sit on ground and study and I started studying English in Class 6th only. When I reached NDA first day, I found all these sons of generals, air marshals, admirals, people from Doon, Stephen's, Modern School, DPS, so they all spoke fluent English look much more polished and accomplished. And I was really having a complex I thought, you know,
I'm just not going to make it. And then God intervenes. You know, God always helps you when you need it. And, yeah, so they took us to barbershop, and they gave us a crew cut, and they took off all our jeans and fancy dresses and gave us Khaki dress. So we were all now has been leveled on day one. And then four years down the line,
as you said, very, very kindly introduced, when I passed out and commanded the passing out parade, and received the Sword of Honour and the President's Gold Medal. in the presence of my parents sitting in the first row. I think the overwhelming feeling was, wow, it didn't matter where you started from, what you do and what you accomplished, that matters. So thank you for taking me. Well said. So now, I will come to your I think your question,
that you asked me. I represented the Indian Army at the staff course in UK, which is a prestigious, staff course 93 countries represented there, my batchmates from Air Force and Navy are still in service, both are doing very well, both are three-star, you know, South Air Force, and three-star in navy. So they're doing very well and I chose to hang uniform on the last day of command of my own unit in which I was commissioned. So it was a huge honor, probably high point in life. So military, if you're aware, you know, last day of command is a very, very special and if you're hanging uniform, the whole battalion lines up when really ceremonial send-off, they pull you out in a jeep. So it was a high, I always wanted to leave on a high.
When people still ask you why are you leaving? And not when they start asking you why didn't you leave? And I think it's something that you have also followed in your life. Correct. Well said, well said. So let's move to now MitKat Advisory. Tell me about this venture and what is the background of the name MitKat? Oh, so do you want the official version or unofficial version? Whatever you want to. So so, you know, when I was leaving army, I was very busy till the last day of command, you know, so your command is in combat inactive operations, very, very busy. So I had no time to think about what I will do. What I carried with me what just the learnings from the army which have stood me well in corporate career and just the attitude that you can do it, you know, so nothing is impossible. Okay. So MitKat is a leading Asian risk consultancy and in this consultancy we work collaboratively with our customers to de-risk their businesses and protect their people assets, information, brands, such things. Now when you talk about risks, when you talk to a banker, they
will talk about liquidity risk, financial, credit hedging those kinds of risks, so we don't do that. Talk to lawyers, they will talk about litigation. So we are more into operational risks the geopolitical risks, security risks, integrity risks, things like cybersecurity, physical security, fraud risk management. So those kinds of stuff we do. So we wanted to get a name and we're not getting a name and then I had two friends, one was Mittal and one was Katragadda. So let's make it MitKat and Sam, you run it and I said, now what will I do with this you know, useless name, people are saying it is like KitKat, you know. But then we made it mitigating knowledge threats. Now we're mitigating knowledge's threats. Very nice, very nice, very nice. And, you know, you work with 50 of the top 100 global companies.
What is the kind of work that you do in mitigating risk? So, very quickly, I'll tell you how we got started, what was the motivation to start because you know, security and when I left army and 26/11 happened soon after that, just seven years after 9/11 that happened in the US, so that time security and risk consultancy was completely dominated by foreign players who had very little understanding of India. So if a bomb blast happened in Kashmir or some incident happened in Nagaland, so there'll be travel bans to hood basically Chennai and Bangalore. So, we said this must change and we have capable people in India. So, it was our desire to build a great brand you know, with a deep understanding of India, the developing markets, the Asian continent, which we can take to the world. So, that is where we started from and what the kind of work we do essentially we that time thought we saw that security was very proactive, it was like non glamorous, it was just associated with guards and other things. We wanted security to be business relevant, employee-friendly, very intelligence-led, tech-enabled, very consistent and give a great employee experience and save people's money, save business' money.
So the kind of work we do is essentially we started out as a consulting company, so that gave us a little bit of brand and traction with the customers then we switch to services. Now we are largely a technology-led, we are largely into you can say a technology company. Very interesting. What have been some of your challenges as you have scaled up? So I think that's another excellent question.
In fact, I am tempted to ask you the same question because a huge amount of entrepreneurial learning. When you start your podcast, I will answer that. So let me start with the beginning you know, first-generation entrepreneur you understand, you know, didn't know where to start, didn't know how to form a company. No talent wanted to join us. I told you people used to tell us the name is similar to KitKat. I use to tell them Tata-Bata has worked, this will also work. And in fourth month, on top of that, we lost a lot of money.
Very great sporting project. And I had to sell my house to keep the company afloat. Actually, we had 22 people, and we didn't want to let them go, you know, just we didn't want to fire them. It was something which was very, very, kind of, we just couldn't think of it as a Fauji. So I think that decision was more motivated by Fauji background. But I think it turned us good reputation. Let me talk about the entrepreneur learnings. I think that's the important bit of the question. I think you will agree with me I think entrepreneurship involves a fundamental mismatch
between resource and ambition. You would absolutely agree with that. So essentially, what I learnt is technology has to be at the core if you want to scale up, we started as a consulting to service and now we are more a technology company, on the way to becoming very asset-light, data-heavy and algorithmically inspired. I think that's the way to go. One thing I learned is focus, you know, and we call it do less to do more. Because you meet entrepreneurs that will tell you I want to do three things, and one will succeed and I tell them, none will. If you do one thing, purely focus on that, and then your chances and you're passionate about and you can rally people around your cause, then the chances of success exponentially increase. People, peoplem peoplem I think people
are the backbone. You must surround yourself with people who are brighter than you and don't feeling secure in their company. Let go is a very important thing. I heard Late Mr. Jasvant Singh, saying the graveyards of the world are full of people who thought they were indispensable. So we must let go. Cash Flows are important because one of my
co founders used to tell us who is no longer with us. He has to tell us top line is vanity. Bottom line is sanity and cash is reality. Wow. What a great line. COVID actually taught us to segregate good and bad costs. I also learned that,
there is no right or wrong age to be an entrepreneur because the whole lot of entrepreneurs who start early, and then there are people who start in the middle, some people like you. And then there are people like the founders of KFC, who started 66 or my own chairman. After leaving Army as Lieutenant general, he started at probably 61-62. And he is five successful entrepreneurial ventures. Wow. And a lot of job offers in government
and private sector. So again, you can and finally, I learned that never waste a crisis, because it takes a crisis for leaders to shine, because when times are good event donkeys look like horses. It's only during crisis that you can figure out who is a leader. Well said. So moving on, Sam, as a security and risk professional, how do you de-risk client business and protect vital assets for them? Okay, this is getting little technical, but I will try to keep it very simple. So, Ashutosh, you understand
it well, but just for the benefit of listeners. So risk is about five things. So firstly, every organization has got asset, something of value, people, material, information, brand. So these are all assets. Now there are natural and manmade threats from crime or interstate conflicts to
hackers, bad guys who exploit vulnerabilities or weaknesses, to create risks to assets. And these risks could be strategic, operational, financial, legal, reputational. And these risks have to be basically brought down or mitigate it to acceptable level by application of countermeasures controls, which would be technology, infrastructure, or processes. So that's what we do, we identify assets, you know, of businesses, and see how threats, exploit vulnerabilities to create risks to those organization, and how we can mitigate them in a cost-effective manner. So that the business interruption is minimal, and then business flourish.
Interesting. So, you know, you spoke a few minutes ago about technology and risks, the risks that, you know, when I was in the corporate world, three decades, two and a half decades ago, it used to be someone coming and taking away or you know, IPR and we used to be very conscious of the fact that any kind of confidential documents had to go through a shredder and then we started to find that people would collect the shredder waste and collect, can you be able to combine those pieces and get the secrets of the company out. What are some of the major security and risk challenges businesses face today? So essentially, let me look at risk is very context-specific, the what you call that is called dumpster diving, you collect garbage and you can really put pieces together. Risk is very context-specific. If you go to oil and gas or chemical environment, you will probably see a lot of emphasis on fire safety because they're inflammable, a lot of things on environment, a lot of environmental pressures and concern will go to factory setup, it's more about unions, if you talk to bankers, I told you they talk about all those financial risks, liquidity, hedging, Forex, etc. If you go to IT and data sensitive organizations like banks, they're very, very worried about cybersecurity.
If you go to an E commerce guy, it is more about you know, the whole lot of last mile delivery guys, you will see floating and that introduces people risk, they have assets which are lying all over the ground and all over the supply chain. So that introduces asset risk. So when people and asset risk combined, then they have operational risks that leads to financial and brand risks. So every organization faces. Now, if you look at more strategic level, if you look at from a national level, and you know, large enterprises, I think they could be categorized more into geopolitical risks, which is more like interstate conflict or, you know, US, China not getting along well, or terrorism, or one of those things, or socio-economic risks, which could be something like crime, or it could be naxalism, the environmental and health risks from pandemic to climate change, which is a ticking time bomb, there are cybersecurity risks, which will fall under technology risks, there are travel related risks, physical risk to employees. So you could go on and on. Everybody sees it from their own lens. Correct.
And you're involved in all these areas? Yeah, we are involved. Across the whole country? Across the country, and we're now working in 40 countries across. Wow. Wow. Wow. Fantastic. So one of the other things that, you know, when I talk to business leaders, one of the big concerns they have is that while technology is very, very good for growth of their businesses, there's also huge risk associated with technology, either through hacking, or through over-dependence, or just through technology getting old. I'd love to get your perspective on how are you using technology to manage the risk for your clients? I think that's a wonderful question. And if I were to break your question
in two parts, I think you're asking me two things. How is technology, increasing risks, and in turn how do we use actually technology today? Absolutely, yes. Two separate questions? Yeah. So, let's look at some of these terms, you know, which are very much bandied about these days, digitization, automation, digitalization and digital transformation. Now, these are all terms, you know, which are used, and they have slightly different connotation, but what they all do is, and we can come to that, but what they all do is they increase the surface area for attackers. Now, attackers now can operate over much wider front, so there will be about 20 billion devices, IoT devices, now each device is a vulnerability. And you add to that, you know, 5-6 billion users of which
four and a half billion have no idea you know, what security? So that kind of makes the job of these bad guys very easy. And to see the amount of data you know, you have UPIs, you'll have millions of transactions daily, 40 billion transactions in a year. So they have to be lucky, you know, 0.00001%. So by sitting in Jamtara, I can hack into the system. And it's kind of much easier to procure these things, procure the technology, it's much affordable, so you can actually buy a commercially off the shelf drone and one guy brought Gatwick Airport to standstill in summer 2018 was attack on Indian thing. Even militaries are, you know, still learning how to grapple with all the challenges of the bad guys just getting access to technology. So how do we actually, how do we turn it around? So as I said, most of the attacks are now machine-led, you want sophisticated defenses, whether at national level or at enterprise level, you know, large enterprise I'm talking about.
So defenses also have to be machine-led. Because over a period of time, you know, tend to kind of get tired, get things, so it has to be very, very consistent. The technologies which are showing promise are machine learning and deep learning technologies, self learning algorithms.
So we have an AI assisted platform that is able to give customized, you know, intelligence to alerts and advisories to each of the command centers and to large organizations to stay ahead of the game. For example, if it is a logistics company or E commerce company, if a tree falls down on a road, they must know and they should automatically get and they should be able to reroute so as not to lose business or Mumbai, if it is going to rain tomorrow, and it's going to be a high tide together and it's going to lead to flooding then you can leave employees two hours earlier, if you knew that, then blockchain is another. So we provide these kinds of intelligence analytics that is subscribed to the world's largest corporations. So blockchains, I think blockchains are putting out the intermediaries and preventing tampering with ledger's is another very kind of used for something in high-security things and very popular in banking and finance. Biometrics is showing another lot of promise and you know, you could have whole world actually everybody's biometrics taken and you could have passports and other things. Cybersecurity, defensive
technologies are proliferating, and again, AI and all at the center. And then you at national level were having a proliferation of these bodies, certain sectoral certs and all. So they're also using these technologies in a sophisticated way, I could go on and on. But just one more question. I think, as a military guy, and you have some military background, too, you will always understand there is always the race between good guys and bad guys. So there
was tanks, and then anti tank weapons came in, and then tanks increase their mobility, firepower and protection. And then anti-tank got more sophisticated, this race goes on. And you have drones and then counter-drone technologies, and then counter-counter drone, and you had electronic measures and then came electronic countermeasures electronic counter-counter. So that I think that will go on and on. Very interesting. So you know, all this technology, and
everything that we're being exposed to as human beings brings in this big element of privacy. And a lot of people certainly in the urban centers around the world feel that their privacy is being intruded into. Which also means there is a challenge of your own security and you know, someone coming into the world that you are living in either as an individual as a family or society or as a corporation. But you also look at some of these? Yes, so let's go back a little step, let's dissect what you said. Firstly, nations, organizations and business leaders across the world started realizing the value of data.
And I have statistics research by a very respected organization. It says that there'll be more value accruing from data rather than from global trade over the next few years So now all these valuable assets have to be protected. So now data is your crown jewel, so you need to protect it. So they started putting legislation. Last year, you would have seen China went into overdrive regulating, you know, big tech So data localization is becoming the next big thing, global phenomena, we see it all across the world and on privacy also. So, there are laws which are
combining security and privacy and as you will be aware GDPR is the most famous among them. Legislations let me look at it there are two types, one is the horizontal which applies to everyone which is like GDPR or something like that, then there are sectoral, so healthcare, you will have HIPAA or India is enacting its own Disha. I love this government, they have got a lot of these acronyms. So, so you will have various kind of regulations to regulate banking or finance sector to healthcare sector and tech sector. So, our own individual Data Protection Act law that has been in the inbox for some time now, and hopefully, it will see the light of the day, next session of parliament. Okay,
so, I'm going to move to a few questions for you personally, my viewers, and listeners love to get to know my guest a little better. So let me start by asking you that as a successful Fauji, successful businessman, recipient of such a high amount of recognition within the Army, what would you say are three key milestones in your life for your career? So I think I will not take the milestones, as I would not take the milestones, let's say as a particular event. I'll probably take three phases in life. So I think firstly, just as a village boy, I said started as a village boy and getting to army was a big cultural change. And I would say a shock and then probably getting to being a commanding officer of combat unit, very decorated distinguished unit, so that I think completely changed my life. But in between, there was one more phase which I want to draw attention when from an Indian citizen, I became a global citizen. First time that I went to UK to attend my staff course and did my masters
from King's College London, you were exposed to 90 countries people thought differently, you learnt about the importance of diversity, you know, the important dignity of labor, to get over pettiness, you know, some of which we had been brought in being in a very enclosed environment. So that was, I think, the first kind of thing, which was transformation from village boy to that. Second is, I think, entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship gave me the, you know, I think it was my calling, it gave me a chance to express myself, my creativity and ambition, put my expertise, whatever I learned for the greater good of society, business, everyone helped me to democratize wealth, create job opportunities. So I think that has been very satisfying. I think, families, I'd be failing in my duty, if I didn't say family, I think education
is the best gift you can give to children. Let me just give you one interesting anecdote. I was an entrepreneur and my daughter wanted to go overseas, and I didn't have a diamond in my pocket. Even I did not get education loan. Okay. And on top of that, you know, when you don't get education loan, and through your platform, I want to tell government of India, if you don't get an education loan, if you're poor enough, and if you're still there to send your children, you have to pay a 5% surcharge. Wow. So I have no money, my daughter wants to study and happy to say that day after tomorrow, I'll be paying her last installment of her education.
Congratulations. So you have to kind of give the best to your children, they shouldn't have suffered the consequences of my career. So these three things. Wonderful. So you know, I've always been very, very appreciative and partial to Faujis. Because I
know, irrespective of what your background may be, the values that you stand for are very similar. I want to ask you, what are some of the core values you believe? I think is integrity, which I think will come top as a Fauji, teamwork is very, very important. I think together, we win. And then one more thing that I feel is human potential is limitless. And again, I want to give you a story very quickly in 30 seconds.
So jawan, from my battalion joined my company, and he didn't know how to operate a computer. So I told young person in my company, please teach him computer. He says he can't learn. I said, Okay, if he doesn't learn in seven days, you find another job, because then you are a co leader, leave you in six days, he actually learned computer. And when he went to his home, he was trying to open daughter's computer and she would say, no papa, it will break. And he really opened and put the password and he was able to do that Word and Excel. So amazing.
What an amazing story. So let me move now. I've got time for two more questions. So, combined two questions. And I'm going to ask you that what does success mean to you and what inspires you? I think success, it's a very, I think, very broad question. So I'll just try to put make it very narrow answer. I think it's just about fulfilling my roles and responsibilities and roles and responsibilities, you wear multiple hats to family. Like I said, give best education to the children learning and help them pursue their calling and passion like I did to my organization with MitKat. We have a shared dream as a team, and we have to help realize and as the head of the family, I have to help. I lead the marketing and branding. And so we have to make it a great brand which
is continuously admired by customers, which continuously re-invents itself and continuously attracts and retains the best talent. So that's my job to the nation, I was a soldier first and been honest, taxpayer and responsible citizen who abides by laws and to a society as entrepreneur, I think use my skills and creativity. We democratize wealth, we create high-quality jobs, I enter veterans and entrepreneurs and finally use networks to kind of add value to each other. And for the less fortunate, have a sense of empathy, and if you can give back something. Wonderful. And my last question to you, and this is a question on failure. I also have a book on failure, I've often said and spoken at conferences that people in South Asia, or East Asia, don't teach children, it's okay to fail. We are always taught first in class, head
of the line, etc, etc. And then that manifests itself in our behavior patterns, yet we fail, we learn. My question to you is Sam, what have been some of your learnings from some of your mistakes? Oh, so on just a very generic statement, I'm quite okay to fail. And I allow my team to fail, but I just tell them fail fast. Don't lie on lingering death. But let me come to
your question. Firstly, the first time as entrepreneurs, we all make mistakes, I would agree with that there is nothing, you know, I'm talking to a fellow entrepreneur. So we all make mistakes. So first time is learning cost. Second time is stupidity. Third time is super stupidity. So now
you're talking to a guy who is super stupid, I'm super stupidly, I became entrepreneur people told us don't do this, experienced entrepreneurs, like you mentored me, I still did the same mistake. So it was no longer learning costs, but I still counted as learning cost. When I joined up with some other partners, they made the same mistakes, which I had already made. So we are now entering super stupid league and one of the ventures went NPA, and we actually, we still kind of we just today morning, I paid off the last installment with one time settlement. So, you know, kind of whatever you learn, you know, please keep learning costs low, fail fast. Now, let me just take a story from my family. And I just want to take two more things because failure is very close to my heart. My grandfather was doing well, he had few
bit of landholding and he was doing okay, till the time he decided to be signatory to somebody, you know, he was the guarantor to his loan, and he ran away. And thereafter whole life balance of life, whatever, five, six years he lived, he was most of the time in the court, and he was drained of all the money, and that must have taken a toll. And he almost died a poor man. And he told us that never take loans, I still did the same mistake, I was director in
a company where I knew people are not doing well. And I was hoping that it will kind of turn around and it didn't. And so again, I've told you that I've joined the super, super stupid league, and hopefully, my children are listening, they will not make the same mistake. On the specific mistake, I think wrong hiring is the worst mistake you can do as entrepreneur, probably you will agree. And so now we have tried to correct that. So finally,
we have bitten the bullet and we said no. So we now when we hire, we have seven zero rule. Seven people see a person and vice versa, he or she gets to see seven people in the company. And if it is, it has to be 7 zero, if it is six, zero, or one guy says maybe not, it's curtains. So that's how we try to learn. Well said. On that note, Sam, thank you so much for
speaking to me. It has been an absolute pleasure and a privilege talking to an army officer who's achieved so much in life. Thank you for talking to me about MitKat Advisory about all the stuff that you're doing for security and risk mitigation for so many companies from around the world. And thank you for talking to me about some of your values. Thank you and good luck. Thank you very much, Ashutosh it's been an absolute delight and honor of talking to legendary entrepreneur like you and somebody who values military so much. So thank you very much. I want to just end on one note,
that from 3500 BC to 1700 AD, India was 25% of global GDP. So flattening of the world demographic dividend, the young people I see the fire in their eyes, the young entrepreneurs. So I'm very, very bullish about the future of India. I think we must seize the moment and to my young friends. Our time has come. Thank you. Jai Hind. What a positive note to end on. Thank you.
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2022-02-04 20:38