My Experience

Identify and illustrate one process you have used to deal with a specific problem or difficult situation(s) in your life. In other words, explain your process for resolving a specific problem.

My conclusions regarding facing a difficult situation:

Careful assimilation of facts related to a problem and their analysis is a must. A problem today could turn into an opportunity tomorrow in case one is not bogged down with depression and no action.

Vinod Malik

I will discuss a specific case here when I had ventured into a career change – involving shift from a well-paid job into establishing a Business venture of my own. Selection of the line of Business was made considering my Engineering background as also a feeling of comfort in venturing into areas I was most familiar with. Being an Engineer, I started a development workshop for small components for the Tractor Industry as well as Import substitution of machinery spares for the Wool combing and Process machinery companies. My introduction into possible outlets for selling these was easy but small component’s development took complete toll of my funds availability. Buyers were many and the trap into achieving challenging developments left a hole in my pocket.

Although the orders started flowing in, situation into funds buildup or capital’s growth was nil, Efforts and costs into this left very little to show that I was in Business? Speaking with some acquaintances and friends already in business made me feel that I needed a Bank Finance to get me into better Backups, as maybe I was too small financially to achieve better volumes and growth.

After careful assessment of my situation then, I was able to get some credit facility from a Bank and I felt secure for a short time of only a few months. The trap was not revealed as I continue with better zeal and gusto into the same pattern of working as before and funds erosion continued. Small value items clubbed with soaring costs of tooling and delayed payments from buyers left me totally grounded. The scenario became very bad and I was almost into a do or die situation. Totally confused, I did not know what was needed and what was the way out. My involvement was total, both into money investments as well as process and manufacturing.

Self analysis of the situation was ever alarming since the more I analysed, the more I realized that I was into a vicious circle and there was no way to come out of the worsening situation. My areas of Business were getting limited and becoming smaller, every time I tried to diversify into a newer avenue. The gut feeling was either close down for good or do something entirely different to spring back into profitable business. This is the time I started looking into my educational background and experience thus far and look for better business venture as I was still not convinced that I was a failure.

Having come from a Machine Design and Development company, where I had put in a decade before starting on my own, I had never seriously looked into this as a possible alternative. I always thought that this was too tall a task to venture into with the kind of investments and the infrastructure I had built up. It definitely looked like a mountain too tall to climb. In spite of all that I decided to weigh out the possible and worked around:

1. Machine development to automate customer requirements in labour intensive industries.

2. Overhaul existing automatic machines to attain better insight into engineering designs and complicated mechanisms.

3. Understand customer requirements of degree of switchovers from manual to mechanical systems to evolve into better product outputs.

4. Work out cost scenarios to achieve end results in line with customer thinking.

5. Learn and adapt Technological innovations to achieve simple and easy solutions thereby the term User Friendly.

This then became my foremost obsession and I started the activity wholeheartedly. Only question at that time which was worrying me was if the system fails then what? Machine development is an activity which defies all time parameters since all pitfalls cannot be predicted beforehand.

Challenge was in projecting in detail what the customer would get and at what cost. This also was selling my ideas to customers and convincing them that my system would work. Getting fund support from customers was essential but Buyer always wanted to have a fair idea about what he was getting. My costing of the systems was also based on my conclusions about what the customer would be willing to pay. Having recently come from a background of component manufacture with small value additions, here