Having completed writing a book about some of India’s biggest and most successful entrepreneurs, I was asked about what differentiates them from the rest, which isn’t as straight forward to answer as it seems.

However, having attended an event yesterday evening hosted by my friend Deepak Haria at Deloitte for the promotion of  TATA Jagriti, which is an Indian NGO that literally takes a trainload of enterprising Indian youth across India (on a yatra / journey) to expose them to subjects of importance to India’s development and introduces them to entrepreneurial thinking, I’m pleased to say that this question was posed, albeit in a different way, to Mr Gopalakrishnan who is a Board Director of TATA (http://www.tata.com/aboutus/articles/inside.aspx?artid=vyj45RCRud4=).

He was asked whether the Jagriti Sansthan – the NGO (http://www.jagritiyatra.com) – equips the participants in political skills that help them overcome political problems, which the TATA man rebutted by explaining that a programme like the yatra doesn’t aspire in providing such training, as in his mind, entrepreneurs – by definition – find ways, by themselves, to overcome obstacles and achieve success.

Interesting, I thought.

Let me know what you think characterises a successful entrepreneur. Please leave your comments on this post.