PAEV kicks off

The PAEV (Planning an entrepreneurial venture) classes kicked off last week. The first class was a drag (I don't know if it was because I had already been sitting in 4 hours of class before attending this one). It wasn't just me.. A lot of people walked out after the first half. I was in two minds. I didn't know if I should drop the course or not.
The 2nd lecture of PAEV was in direct contrast with the first one. We had an external speaker to talk to us about his experiences as an entrepreneur. The speaker was Manish Sabharwal, a serial entreprenuer. He (along with Ashok Reddy) had started India Life straight out of college. Manish is a graduate from Wharton School of Business. India Life was then bought over by Hewitt. After India Life, Manish and Ashok went on to start TeamLease in 2001. TeamLease is fast growing and is already poised to overtake TCS in 3 months to be the largest employer in India. What a phenomenal growth! They currently employ about 51,000 people in India.
Manish talked about how he started off on his entrepreneurial path, and where it led him. He talked about how he kindof lost the David vs. Goliath battle against Hewitt and finally sold India Life over to Hewitt themselves, his learnings from the whole deal, and so on. TeamLease was born out of all these learnings, and he says hopefully they will gain critical mass quick enough to hold out against the Multi Nationals who're coming into India.
Overall, he portrayed his learnings beautifully, and gave his views on the do's and don'ts of being an entrepreneur. He had 250 of us held captive in the Khemka Auditorium for two hours. I'm convinced that I will learn something from this course now!