Interviewer: Mahmoud Mansi
“If businesses can identify signs of forthcoming recession and take pre-emptive measures to secure their future, this will definitely help them steer ahead of their peers and help them survive and thrive hence there will be no loss of jobs…”
Uma Mansharamani
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE:
Uma Mansharamani is a Serial Entrepreneur, a Motivational Public Speaker, A Certified Trainer and a Business Growth and Profit escalation expert with 35 years of business experience.
She is helping business owners and practicing professionals to grow their business or practice by working with them on strategy, implementation and execution.
Starting from scratch without any resources and financial help she took her Apparel manufacturing and Exports company public in 1995 with Public issue being oversubscribed by 300 times creating a history, followed by Presidential award in 1996.
Her mission in life is to empower businesses which will in turn empower people by providing them employment opportunities.
With 35 years of accumulated Successes and learnings from failures, Uma helps business owners cope with strained growth, depleting margins, and hefty overhead expenses, paving way for their bounce back to profits with resilience.
THE INTERVIEW:
1-HR Revolution Middle East: How do you believe your current job or role in life is contributing to humanity?
Uma Mansharamani: People’s lives are greatly impacted by their careers. Small and Medium Enterprise Businesses depend majorly on the Founders and it’s important to help them systemise and develop processes and provide them growth ecosystem so that they can support more employment opportunities. To me this is a great service to humanity.
2-HR Revolution Middle East: From your personal observation, what do you believe are the common challenges in today’s workplace in India? How to overcome such challenges from your personal perspective?
Uma Mansharamani: The most common and understated problems are scarcity of financial support or resources for businesses at affordable interest rates, negative outlook of society towards business failures or struggling businesses, and the lack of work-life balance for both genders.
Lots of efforts are being put in by government and initiative being taken at various levels to make ease of doing business a reality, policy changes are being discussed to support strained businesses and improving work scenarios specially for women for improving quality of life. Personally I’d say more awareness towards updated policies and available resources and alternatives will help businesses and both employees and employers can benefit from reforms.
3-HR Revolution Middle East: Recently you were a speaker at a TEDxVCE conference in Hyderabad, what was your talk about? How do you believe this topic can be applied on an individual and social level?
Uma Mansharamani: My topic was “How to Survive and Thrive your Business in a Recession Economy”, with a short preface about how to identify signs of forthcoming recession.
Employment opportunities depend on business and businesses are impacted by state of economy. If businesses can identify signs of forthcoming recession and take pre-emptive measures to secure their future, this will definitely help them steer ahead of their peers and help them survive and thrive hence there will be no loss of jobs. This will be a great service to business owners and employees specially those whose families are dependent on them.
4-HR Revolution Middle East: Tell us about one activity you like doing, and why do you believe this activity is special?
Uma Mansharamani: I would like to talk about two activities I like doing:
1- Public Speaking: This can actually lift people from their lows. We organise “Tajurba Talks” and it just started as a passion, as a one of the events we wanted to host on a Sunday. On the following Tuesday one of the harrowed business owners called and told my husband, “I want to Thank You immensely as I have been struggling with my business for quite sometime and was almost ready to give it up and end everything, but after listening to struggles of Speakers I literally pulled my hair, that I didn’t go through 20% of what they went through and I was already exhausted and loosing out! Now I have pledged that I will work even harder and smarter and will be a successful business owner.” That was the biggest joy to me and my husband and we decided we will continue doing this to empower those who are losing hope.
2- Mentoring and Trainings: In one’s career life, many Small and Medium business owners and even top CXOs of large businesses struggle with various issues they cannot openly discuss with everyone of cope with by themselves. They don’t have time to enroll in Universities to sign up for studies to get over their constraints in respective areas, hence short term courses or experiential trainings with accelerated learning actually come to their rescue. If they need further handholding, then they sign up for mentoring. Basically it is pure joy when you can empower others and help them improve the quality of their lives.
5-HR Revolution Middle East: From your point of view, what makes a TEDx talk so special?
Uma Mansharamani: TEDx Talks are about sharing “ideas worth spreading” which can impact scores of people to benefit again to improve their lives.
6-HR Revolution Middle East: Can you share with us a situation you have been through, where it was a learning experience, perhaps learnt a new wisdom or inspired you to think differently?
Uma Mansharamani: There’s a very powerful saying, “As the fool didn’t know because it is so difficult it can’t be done, he went ahead and did it!” Coming from most conservative family where I hadn’t stepped out to the market alone, I decided to take a trip to the US on my own to market our products, and on that first trip I opened up a very premium account and bagged INR 10-Million order in 1993 with great margins. This made me realise my own potential that was latent inside me and made me think, whether you believe you can or you can’t, either way you are right!
7-HR Revolution Middle East: The meaning of leadership can change from one era to the other, how would you define the meaning of leadership today?
Uma Mansharamani: Leadership today means creating more leaders, it’s about transforming others from being followers to becoming leaders, to not only show the path but lead them and empowering them on the way so they can transform and empower more people.
8-HR Revolution Middle East: Can you share with us a challenge you have been through at your work, and how you overcame this challenge?
Uma Mansharamani: One that’s close to my heart is when one of our very big clients gave us big orders for many apparel styles and one of the styles order got cancelled on him by his client due to their issue on one of their previous shipments not shipped by us. His manager tried to blame it on us and make a quality issue, but as I was very particular about following all highest quality standards, with proper checks, measures, inspections, lab tests of each lot with documented test reports, we took up the matter with all proofs with the Founders of company and they could not penalise us because goods were of marvellous quality hence released our payment.
9-HR Revolution Middle East: What do you think are the main threats that could be facing India’s economy? What would be your strategic suggestions to mitigate such threats?
Uma Mansharamani: Answer to this can be fairly detailed and most economic experts have been citing various challenges and suggesting solutions. I feel that at the very base level, declining GDP and rising inflation are major threats, can be mitigated by improving business friendly and supportive measures to promote growth and profitability of businesses which will promote increased job numbers, increased spending power and boost economy.
10-HR Revolution Middle East: What is your advice to other people who are enthusiastic to become TEDx speakers?
Uma Mansharamani: When you have ideas that can positively impact other people’s lives, you must go out and share at TEDx to reach a larger audience.