Khatti Meethi Baatein

One day in April 2003, I received an inland letter written by the son of a mill-worker, asking me to consider him for an employment in chaste Tamil. He was a 19-year old boy, J Nithyananthan by name with 10th std. as his qualification. I had all reasons to ignore that application, as there was nothing in it to make it stand out amongst the hundreds of other applications received. But he happened to be the son of Mr. K Jayaprakash, who was my classmate for 8 years in school. So unenthusiastically I called my franchisee in Coimbatore and told him to offer him a job and left it to the franchisee to decide about the payment. Miss R. Kavitha employed him as Office Assistant (a dignified version of Peon) with Rs. 750/- salary per month in May 2003. She assigned him the work of picking up samples and delivering reports using the bicycle (which incidentally was the one I had used to travel to my college). Says Kavitha, “there was a no need to tell him to learn anything but within no time he learned phlebotomy, tests , technologies, diseases along with handling computers too.” I met him after one year of his service and asked, “how come you have picked up so many things so fast”, and he answered, “every word you had written in the form of communications to franchisees by mails, broadcasts and websites, I studied them sincerely- that is all.” My sister lives in Coimbatore and he found her too as a resource of ingredients for growth. If a flight ticket had to be booked, a car to be driven for a franchisee meet or a gift to be delivered to a relative, he did it all, for the entire family with a magnificent smile. Providentially for him, one of the franchisees in Coimbatore fell sick and my sister told him to take care of that centre till the franchisee resumed. The sick man never resumed and Mr. J Nithyananthan, within a period of 3 months amplified the business towards a 100% growth and within one year, a 300% growth. Happily with all my respect to his undiluted devotion, I felt justified in transferring the franchisee rights in his name and thus an entrepreneur was born. This boosted his morale and confidence and he started working on every instruction and guidance of the management. An innovator, a relationship manager and a go-getter is Mr. Nithyananthan. Joining for a mere Rs. 750 per month in May 2003, he reached Rs. 10,000 per month in 2005 and managed to buy his dream bike. When I last visited Coimbatore, he came to receive me at the airport (as a driver) and when I saw a glittering new Maruti Omni with the ‘Thyrocare’ label on all sides, I felt compelled to ask, whose car it was and he said, “I bought this, sir”. Says Kavitha, who has seen him evolving, that he has amazing energy levels and positive thinking. Incidentally he is now her competitor since both of them operate in the city of Coimbatore. Says Mr. Balakrishnan, another Thyrocare franchisee, “He has taught all of us, how to create a new market”. Mr. Nithyananthan now has ten employees and a qualified pathologist to run his newly started routine laboratory (in March 2007). Last week when I had a talk with him he said, “I am growing 50% per quarter for the last 8 quarters”. Why I am writing about him is, because my dream has been to create great entrepreneurs. He was never given any favors- monetary or strategic though he was deserving. I called his father to assess how happy he was and his words were “I was worried that he was not adequately educated but my son has done in 3 years, what I dreamt for 30 years”. Many, I have seen growing around me, some because they are qualified, some because they are supported, some because they had big parentage or big money. But this man stands out as he has proved that an “opportunity” is all what one requires to succeed. At 23, he is a self-made successful medical businessman. Mr. Nithyananthan is available at tam29@thyrocare.com for those of you who would like to wish him further success in his journey ahead.

Often the question posed to me was, “why do you choose to work in the nights?” Little did they know that I didn’t have a choice. When I established Thyrocare, I was the only employee in my organisation for the first couple of months and I had to carry out the testing as well. If I did the testing during the day, then obviously I could not attend to the marketing needs. Hence I used to meet the laboratory owners between 10 am to 8 pm and do the testing at night. In my marketing experiences, one gentleman, Mr. Shah, a B.Sc. DMLT, stood apart in my memory and I would like to narrate about the same now…. In the western suburbs of Mumbai, in the year 1996 when I started my operations, one person got my special attention solely because of the size of the illumination board he displayed. I thought I must visit him and I used to start out early to meet and convince him to procure some business from him. One young, beautiful Malayalee girl was working as an assistant with him. For two consecutive days in her typical Malayalam accent she told me, “ saab abhitak aaya nahi!” I did not give up that easily and I asked “Swati” (name I could manage to or dare to ask her) about his usual timings. She explained that being a busy share market operator he rarely came for around two hours. After making 6 attempts, I was fortunate to see him once in his cabin and Swati was happy that finally I could make it. I gave my visiting card but soon she came out and said he was not free. I asked for an appointment for the next day if he was too busy then. Swati confided that he was not busy at all but he preferred not to waste time with anyone who came to meet him. As I put pressure on her, she dared to go in again and seek an appointment for me. Soon I heard his raised voice and through the glass cabin saw him throw my visiting card on her face. She finally emerged and stated that he had no interest in meeting me. I felt sorry for putting that girl in distress and I too lost interest in meeting him. It was exactly 10 years back and in these last 10 years, what I have never done is ‘refusing to meet’ any person. I have never gone home if someone was waiting for me. Be it an employee or a franchisee or a supplier or for that matter anyone who seeks a few minutes of mine and at times ends up talking for even an hour, I have never ever turned them off on the pretext of being busy. I feel I am enriched by these meetings.Meeting people and talking to them helps one to see and understand life, society, business and relationships better. It makes for a complete and confident human being is my view. Last week, I was travelling from Coimbatore to Mumbai and as I checked in, I heard a stranger who greeted me “Hello, Dr. Velumani, I am honoured to meet you.” I did reciprocate but I was trying to recall where I must have met him. Inside the flight he did not sit in his seat and asked my permission to sit next to me. I did accede to his desire and he then started talking to me. I thought it has to be some laboratory man or a doctor since hardly anyone knows me outside this industry. I was very reluctant to ask, what his name was and I tried to find out indirectly. I asked him a lot of questions gathering clues but it did not work. Finally I asked him, what his good name was and when he said his full name, I did not have to ask anything further except asking, “how come, you recognise me even when we have not met before?” He said, I am a fan of your Khatti Meethi Baatein. I only asked him where Swati was nowadays, and he was shocked to know how I remembered her. I was thinking that he would now ask me a lot of questions on quality, cost and speed of my operations or on tests or technologies and a lot on what my future plans were. But, not surprisingly, he just enquired, “When will Thyrocare come out with an IPO(entering the share market) and at what rate could he get 1000 shares of the company if he wanted it now?” While he was waiting to collect his baggage at the airport he insisted and took my visiting card. I gave him an additional one and told him to hand it over to Swati. 2015 toyota corolla

Interacting with job seekers can be an interesting experience. One learns a lot pertaining to the social, technical, commercial and emotional aspects of individuals and the industry. Recently an advertisement was released in all major south Indian newspapers for posts in various departments of Thyrocare Technologies Ltd. at various levels. In fact the response was so good that the HR department struggled to put the 3000 biodata received in 10 working days in order. The following ar the observations and experience. Though we had called for graduates and postgraduates, 80% of the applications were from postgraduates, the breakup being 50% Biotechnology, 30% Biochemistry and 20% Microbiology. Expectedly 70% of the applications were from female candidates. 60% of the applicants used courier as principle mode while 30% used e-mails and 10% used both. In the e-mail based applications, 328 of them added only a biodata, an MS word file as annexure without even mentioning a single word to whom the application was addressed, based on which advertisement they applied and what post they were applying, emphasising how casual they were. Interestingly 28 applicants (postgraduates) sent a similar annexure, with a CC to HRD departments of Deccan Airways, Biocon Limited, Blue Dart and also Reliance Infocomm which communicates either their laziness or their desperation. Some even had copied the same biodata annexed mails to all competitors of Thyrocare in the same mail. Funnily the data also showed that in a dozen situations, the candidates had sent at least four applications for their colleagues using their individual mail ids. 10% if the applications were patiently compiled stating what they wished to do with the company and given a chance what all they can do and a majority in this class also sent the same thing as hardcopy through courier. Whether it can be stated as typing problems or language problems but more than 50 e-mail applications had 20 errors in a mail of merely 50 words. More than a dozen candidates sent at least four mails thinking that more the number of applications, more will be chances of selection! In the courier mode, 80% of the candidates did not sign the applications. Some enclosed a standard cyclostyled paper in the envelope with neither a ‘to address’ nor ‘a single word’ written on it. Most surprisingly, ten applications had no ‘from address’, either on the envelope or inside it. Out of the 2000 applications by courier, around 500 had a decent, error free covering letter for their curriculum vitae which communicated that they were not only serious but they had patience too. Out of these 500 good applications around 200 had all annexure, proof of age, proof of qualifications, proof of residence, a photograph, and more than anything else an impressive letter which communicated what they were keen to achieve making them worthy to be called for an interview. Among the 200 good applications, 50% of them were graduates though in the total applicants there were 80& postgraduates. Twenty-three candidates just walked in without a call letter, majority of them were post-graduates and 50% of them came with father, mother or both. Not being in a hurry to rush into appointments, it was worth studying the spectrum of applicants and analyzing them deeply. Finally call letters for a written examination and interview were sent to the 200 (less than 10%) candidates who had taken up the job of applying for a post bit seriously. Of course we have completed four batches of such written tests cum interview and the experience is really worth sharing because 99% of the readers of Health Screen may fall into one of the following categories: Looking for employees Looking for employers Looking for jobs for their family members It has really been a good experience to sit at HRD and interact with the young and ignorant. Here is a collection of places you can buy bitcoin online right now.