For founders, the emotional connect with the company they established will continue to remain even after they exit the entity, Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan said on Friday.
Besides preparing themselves, as the decision to relinquish is what they agreed and wanted to do, founders need to get involved in something else, begin a second innings, he said at the Indian School of Business here.
“That’s what I did. I found other things that keep me completely occupied,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan, who is associated with various work and is chairman of Axilor Ventures, said. It, however, was not easy, he sought to underscore, replying to a query from the floor after delivering the ISB Dean’s Speaker Series talk on ‘ Is Entrepreneurship for You?’
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Walking away
“You cannot emotionally walk away from something that you have built over your lifetime... 33-35 years,” he said. The transition process should be defined to ensure there are no hiccups in the business. “Ideally, it has to be planned, predictable, you don’t want to be driven to make a change. That’s a wrong way to make a change,” he added.
At Infosys, the founders had decided on the transition to the next generation of leadership. “The only way we can attract the next generation is if the founders decide to leave and separate themselves from the organisation. So we created retirement rules and that’s why we transitioned to Vishal Sikka.”
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Validate ideas
In his talk, he highlighted need for start-ups to validate the ideas. “You thought there is a problem and solving it the proper way, but does the customer think so?” he asked. The founders, he said, should be on the same page with regard to the purpose behind setting up the start-up.
On role of information technology, he said the next 30 years would be exciting than before as IT would touch every aspect of life. Innovations will transform industries and disruptive ideas would come from new business.