His company was in India (a country I knew little about) in the chemical manufacturing industry (an industry I knew nothing about). While I don’t t

How To Manage And Sell A Company In An Industry And A Country You Don’t Know

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2021-06-22 08:30:15

His company was in India (a country I knew little about) in the chemical manufacturing industry (an industry I knew nothing about).

While I don’t think most people would ever find themselves in a similar situation (I certainly hope not), I thought I’d share the story and some of my learnings & observations from that time about business, M&A, teams, India, and assorted miscellaneous thoughts.

Notes: This will probably be slightly rambly and stream-of-consciousness as there are lots of thoughts rolling around in my head.

As I was going with family to cremate my father in a traditional Hindu funeral, someone who I didn’t know came up to me and said in Hindi, “ Saab, humara kya hoga? ”

But this wasn’t the time for anger or to even to think about this so I just knee-jerk responded in my heavily American-accented Hindi that “ Meh dekh loonga ” which translates to “I’ll look after it.”

And so at that point, in addition to CB Insights, I knew I was going to run my Dad’s business. To be honest, I had already thought about this possibility when he was admitted to the hospital when the doctors said the situation was looking dire.