Renowned Indian author and entrepreneur Subroto Bagchi launched the Malayalam version his bestselling book “The Elephant Catcher” with his wife, Susmita, and spoke about their writing careers at an intellectual session held at Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) 2015 at the Expo Centre until November 14.Subroto Bagchi is best known for co-founding MindTree in 1999, one of the most admired consulting companies across industries in India as well as for a great deal of philanthropic work. Speaking about his inspiration Subroto narrated the story of Madhav from his first book “The Professional” to explain qualities of a professional. “Orphaned at eight in a city like Bangalore, Madhav could have become anything; a thief, a drug peddler or a terrorist but he chose to do the right thing by burying an unclaimed dead body for Rs200. This became his expertise and he buried 45,000 unclaimed bodies from hospitals in Bangalore.” Subroto explained three important qualities Madhav had that made him professional, one he never cared what state the body was delivered to him in, he always buried them properly, second he always completed what he started and third he never stopped working even though nobody was watching.A motivational non-fiction writer, Subroto says the ability work without supervision, delivering what has been promised and doing your job with full integrity when no one is watching are the true strengths of a successful professional. “Stories of people like Madhav’s teach us many lessons and are my inspiration,” he said.
Speaking about entrepreneurship Subroto said that only 4% of start-ups survive after one year. “One of the main reasons for this is that these companies look for instant gratification, dream of going public or to be bought by giant organisations instead of planning a longer future. Companies fail to scale because founders live in the fantasy that they are the beginning without an end. When you have long-term goals, you just don’t build an organisation you start a legacy.”Subroto, whose father suffered from mental health problems, launched the White Swan Foundation in partnership with National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) to build an information repository on issues from stress to more serious problems like schizophrenia and OCD, he said, “This project is really close to our hearts. India needs at least 20,000 psychiatrists, but we have only 4,500. Our country is already becoming a suicide capital of the world; studies have also shown that one in five Indians requires psychiatric help at some point in their life.”Susmita is a Sahitya Akademi Award winner in Odia and best known for her book "Children of a Better God”. She has written eight novels, seven collections of short stories and a travelogue and is translating her second book in to English. Susmita said that everybody has some story to share, but writing needs pure dedication and having a supportive family is a blessing for any women writer. She said, “To be a writer you need not publish a book because the world is reading you on blogs and social media. You are already a writer, but you don’t know it.”