Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani recalled his entrepreneurship journey, while delivering the keynote address at the Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow on Thursday. He shared his philosophy of choosing conviction over caution, consequence over comfort, creation over conformity and conscience over convenience.
According to the business magnate, Dharavi is one of the toughest projects he has undertaken. "People told me that Dharavi is too political and risky", he said, while adding that the redevelopment project is not just a project of bricks and cement, but about uplifting the people who helped build Mumbai.
Redeveloping Dharavi is about "rebuilding dignity for those 1 million people who helped build Mumbai, but never benefited from it", he said.
Adani termed the young minds studying at IIM as the "finest of India's intellectual capital" and said that they are the "architects of new India".
"My journey has taught me that the future never unfolds as strictly as it appears in a classroom. The future is magic, uncertain and often brutal. And this is what you must be prepared to face," Adani told the students.
He encouraged them to walk a path where success is defined by being able to make your own story a case study, instead of how well you studied your business cases.
Adani elaborated on each of his projects — from Adani Enterprises to Mundra in Kutch — and said, "Looking back, I can tell you that every meaningful journey I have taken reached a moment where my resources ran dry and my support systems failed. One thing that remained with me was the burning conviction that my bold dreams were worth the struggle."
He motivated the youngsters to make difficult choices because anything worth achieving in life will test you and, "the most extraordinary lives are never built with easy choices", he said.
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