Thanks for showing so much love to my book – The Anexas Story. Based on many requests to publish chapters of the book on LinkedIn, I continue to write a series of articles based on these chapters. Please read on and keep believing that there is an entrepreneur in you…and everyone!
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I love Thai food.
Yes, again I mentioned food. Pardon. But we all identify life with some or the other food, isn’t it? That is probably because, as you know, I had spent five years working in Thailand. Anyone who has been that long in Thailand would love Thai food. Though it was long back, I still reconnect with these memories making it a point to eat in a Thai restaurant and speak to the chef in Thai, whenever an opportunity presents itself.
One fine day, while sitting in ‘Kruay Thai,’ one of the popular Thai restaurants in Riyadh, I received a call from Denmark. I had just finished my Tom Yum Soup and was about to lay my hands on the most awesome Green Curry and Ka Pao Kai. I wiped my hands and answered the call, which had an HR consultant on the line. He had gotten my reference through the largest shipping company of Denmark. This company wanted to rollout Lean Six Sigma in the organization and wanted a consultant on a contract. There was a possibility of increasing the team’s strength after a successful rollout.
With Riyadh operations well settled, I considered it an excellent opportunity to venture out into Europe and said yes to the assignment. Within a month, I arrived in Denmark which was at 1°C. I rented a three Bedroom house in Copenhagen expecting some more consultants to join me soon. (See how upbeat I was about the possibility!)
Soon I was handling trainings and projects not only in Denmark, but also in US and China for that Danish company. This increased my travels further, covering more continents. With two more potential clients including a pharmaceutical major in Copenhagen interested in us, it made sense to register Anexas in Denmark as well. So, one fine day I went to the Danish government’s company registration office. At the reception, I informed about my intention of registering a new company – Anexas Denmark. I was told to go to a counter and fill up a form. It took around ten minutes to fill up, which I then submitted at the desk. After five minutes I was called to the counter and was handed over a single sheet of paper. I asked the staff, “By when will the company be formed?”
“It is already formed,” came the reply.
“No, I mean, when will the company be fully functional, when can I start operating the business?” I asked again.
“That is for you to decide, sir! I think you can start the business immediately after a company is formed, are there any more complications?” he looked puzzled.
How could I tell him that I was habitual of dealing with complications, so expected more than a few to approach me even here! I was not ready to accept the fact that company could be formed so easily. He should have asked me to run around from one desk to another, should have asked to wait for at least few days, if not months, and asked for something more lucrative!
Frankly, I didn’t feel like I’d done something as momentous as registering a foreign company, a European company on top of that! He snatched away the pleasure I would have derived after registering the company after going through some struggles. How could I explain this to him! Anexas Denmark started conducting the business on the same day of its establishment with a free introductory training batch launched in the evening, with the help of a group called ‘Expats in Denmark’. Followed by a batch next week where some of the Indian friends also joined as attendees, increasing the batch size to ten.
And the next European assignment was in London, a one- day training, where I invited my brother Shashank to attend, who had settled in the UK. That further led to possibilities of future consulting assignments. With the operations in place in Saudi Arabia, Denmark, and India, we could claim that an MNC venture was truly up and running!
And all of this happened without any formal business plan or strategic thinking by any of the thought leaders, the so-called think tanks, which none of us could claim to be.
It simply happened! Articulating “thought leaders” now does have a cool quotient, does it not? And I thought only Reebok running trainers had cool quotients!
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For subsequent articles, please watch this space.
You can buy the book directly from its website on https://www.anexasstory.com
or on Amazon on https://www.amazon.in/ANEXAS-STORY-There-Entrepreneur-Everyone-ebook/dp/B07ZGLN8C7
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Amitabh Saxena is founder of Anexas, a well-known lean six sigma and project management consulting organisation. He has trained over 50,000 participants and has 30 years of experience in consulting more than 300 organisations around the world including Fortune 100 companies across industry domains. With a strong team of 25 Master Black Belts, his organisation Anexas has been helping individuals and organisations achieve eminence through excellence since 2006. They can be reached on enquiry@anexas.net