Sharing his thoughts on Narayana Murthy’s 70-hour work week advice, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, the founder of Info Edge, which owns Naukri.com, said entrepreneurs in India need to be ready to work very hard to succeed. However, he mentioned that he did not look at 70-hour work week as a “religion”.
In a conversation with Jivraj Singh Sachar on the Indian Silicon Valley Bank podcast, Bikhchandani emphasised that there was no entrepreneur in India who was successful without a ‘work-life integration’.
“70 hours a week is not religion. I think the concept was to be prepared to work as hard as required and that may be much harder than you’re working right now,” Bikhchandani said.
He said in the early years as a start-up founder there is typically no work-life balance.
“If you look at any entrepreneur in India right now who has succeeded, ask ‘tune kitni mehnat ki’ (how hard have you worked?). He will say ‘maine bahot mehnat ki’ (I have worked very hard’). Because to make something work in India you got to put in the hours. The truth is if you’re doing a startup, there is no work-life balance. There’s only work-life integration. You live for your work for the first few years.”
Bikhchandani explained the rigour involved in building a successful company.
“You can’t push off at 5 pm and say ‘ab ho gaya’. You can’t say ‘Saturday, Sunday main kaam nahi karta’ (I don’t work on weekends). Apko karna padega (you will have to), if you want to succeed. Ek kamyab entrepreneur dikhado (show one successful entrepreneur) who in the first 5-10 years did not have this work ethic and succeeded. It doesn’t happen. So, nobody is saying work 70 hours by the clock, but you may have to,” he said.
Bikhchandani shared his early years as a professional when he slogged it out over the weekends.
“If I go back to my career. My first three years in advertising. It was technically a 5-day week – 9:15 to 5:45. But, I used to be in office till 8:30. Why? Because [there were] manual type writers in those days. We had two-three typists in the office. Everybody used to share them. Now, you want to write your letters to clients – your memos and your letters, which are typed. Typing was a scarce resource. So, the guy could only turn out 8, 10, 12, 20 documents a day. [It was] First in first out. You would get in early in the morning to make sure your letter was on top. So, you came 8:30 [am], hand wrote your letter and made sure before the guy comes in, you’re on top. Now, others who didn’t come in, didn’t get the letters out in time. I went the extra mile. I didn’t take a single day’s leave. I worked all Saturdays, maybe Sundays, for 3 years,” he said.
He also spoke about working late shifts to avail company facilities such as dinner and transport.
“I didn’t feel it was a burden I was enthusiastic about my work. The work demanded it. I was transferred to Bombay and I was living with a paying guest and my salary just wasn’t enough. But, if you ended up working late, beyond 8:30, you got dinner and transport back home. You came on Saturday, Sunday, you got dinner, you got transport back to and from and you got lunch. So, I would volunteer. I simply needed to. I didn’t complain,” he said.
“I don’t think 70 hours is a religion, but I think the message is that if you really want to succeed as an entrepreneur, aapko mehnat karni padegi (you will have to work hard). Hopefully, you won’t mind doing it, because you want to build that startup. This is not a lecture, this is reality.”
Earlier, in an exclusive conversation with India Today, Infosys co-founder Murthy affirmed his statement that young Indians should commit to a 70-hour at work per week.
“Absolutely, 70-hour weeks should be there as a way to give back to society,” Murthy said.
“My view has always been that those of us in India who have received so much benefit from the country, from the taxpayer, have an enormous responsibility to work very, very hard to bring a chance for the betterment of life for the poorer sections of society,” he said.
Murthy also said that he used to work 85 to 90 hours a week till he retired and said the number 70 was not important, and that the focus should be on productivity “like the Germans did after World War II, like the Japanese did”.
Also Read: ‘You have to be productive’: Infosys’ Narayana Murthy clarifies ’70 hours work’ comment, says those who received govt benefits should work harder
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