This Indian CEO’s Inspiring Talk On Success And Failure Is What We All Need To Hear Today

By YKA Staff:

Ankur Warikoo is the CEO and Co-founder of Nearbuy, that is a part of Groupon Global, an e-commerce marketplace. He gave a very inspiring and motivating speech at Youth Ki Awaaz’s flagship event, CONVERGE 2016. There were huge rounds of applause throughout his speech.

Ankur has been an entrepreneur for about eight years now. He said that being an entrepreneur was about ‘managing people’. Yet, the talk wasn’t about him or the company he founded. It was about how someone can be successful in life. Based on his valuable experience, he shared his optimistic vision of how life must be led, with a very enthusiastic and young audience.

The motivating talk began with an exercise. Ankur asked everyone to close their eyes for a moment. Then he said that when one closes their eyes, one has no idea of how the world is looking at them. It’s possible to be completely yourself.

He asked everyone a very important question. “How many of you are genuinely scared of failing?” After everyone closed their eyes, he pointed out how nobody could see them. What really scares people is what people will think. During the course of the speech, he said that the reason most were scared of failing was because of what people thought. The problem was external and not internal.

People should learn from Ankur on how one should view failure. He said, “Most of you are scared of failure. There is no measurement of failure. We fear of what people would think. We are not bothered by failure.”

What he said later on will definitely inspire the generation spoilt by modern technology. “We think that if we don’t have five likes, we are a failure. You are being told that there is a certain measurement. Don’t let world define failure or success. Go ahead and define your success and failure,” he said.

Apart from being an entrepreneur, he is also a professor at a business school in Gurgaon. For many years he has been asking one question to his students at the end of his course. List at least three things which you have learned in this course? Over the years only six students have answered to his satisfaction because they were the only ones to list more than three things that they had learnt. This shows how much modern society has limited and restricted our ambitions.

Ankur realised how the entire system is ‘messed’ up. “This system will define what success means to you. We’ve been dreaming someone else’s dreams every single day. Each one of us are told what each one of us should be doing.”

In a scathing criticism of a a society which is becoming more and more consumerist, he said, “We create values by connections, not by building goods.“

Ankur Warikoo ended with a line which should be memorised with the same passion that a devout Christian remembers the Bible. “Don’t let anyone’s opinion of you become your reality.“