Saturday, February 11, 2012

Simi's Journey

What are the learning lessons from Simi's life? Is this a unique case or most of the entrepreneur's have to face similar situations? How difficult it is for women to be come entrepreneur? I would like to have comments from female students in the class on how they see Simi's case and compare their life situation with Simi? We could not complete our debate on meaning of 'success'. May be if you have divergent views on how to define success in life? Is there anything else that you would like to bring beyond self, family, community and work/organization as variables to redefine the context of success?

29 comments:

  1. Learning; to be successful entrepreneur, one need to be decisive, need to prioritize, should be ready to take the plunge in a wise manner. As a women entrepreneur, one need to go through the juggle between family and ambitions, and family support plays an important role.
    Success is more about contentment and happiness. For few it is out of materialistic things, while for others it is out of intangibles like respect, and the proud moments that they bring to family, workplace or to community. It definitely bring sense of achievement to them.

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  2. Learnings from Simi's life: 1.) Keep your fundamentals strong, you may get a right opportunity anytime in life to use them.
    2.) Embrace change and make the best out of given constraints.
    3.) Never let the circumstances douse the fire within you.
    4.) Relationships and networking always play a vital role.

    I feel most of the entrepreneurs face similar set of difficulties, the exact situations may vary but the hurdles are always there. Opportunities for women to be entrepreneurs is a function of the socio-economic and cultural environment, its a lot easier in USA than say in India. However, the biological factors like motherhood puts greater challenges to them but the case of Simi demonstrates how to tacle this.

    Regarding success, I believe it is a relative measure. It greatly depends on the personal parameters an individual defines for himself to be called successful. Alternatively, if an individual is driven by the rules drawn by society for 'Success', more often than not, he may find it to be a Mirage, or a more fitting word -'Mrigtrishna' in hindi.

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  3. One can learn plethora of lessons from Simi's life and, like Simi's case, I feel, for the reasons given below, most of the entrepreneurial forays are offshoot of Job Dissatisfaction . Some of the lessons from Simi's life are as follows:-

    1. Passion/Obsession
    2. Clarity of the goal
    First two characters are very essential because most of the people start new ventures because they get frustrated from their jobs and get excited from all the entrepreneurial success stories.

    They start ventures which are doomed to failure (unless they have a very strong luck factor). This can be partly because:
    1. They lack the fire that is required to run a venture successfully.
    2. After starting the venture they realize that running a new venture is more frustrating than their old jobs.
    3. Resilience
    4. Conviction

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    Replies
    1. Mayank, were 3. Resilience and 4. Conviction lessons from Simi's life, and not reasons for failure of ventures, right?

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  4. I’m sure a lot of women today see a reflection of their struggle to strike a work-life balance as in Simi’s case. It’s not just about being an entrepreneur but for any working woman there is a constant pressure to balance both aspects of her life and to manage them exceptionally well. What I found really endearing in the case was her struggle in managing a high demanding job and her newly found motherhood bliss. It’s touching how she said that there was an element of guilt when she had to be away from her kids and when meetings stretched unnecessarily.
    Marriage and motherhood are the two happiest phases of a woman’s life. It’s sad how people perceive a woman’s career to go the downhill path after either of these two phases. It’s funny to see people professing a “woman-centric” culture during meetings and then boasting as to how they would prefer to have an all-men team since women employees come with their excess-baggage of problems (ie. Husbands, in-laws, kids). For all such pig-headed creatures, there is just one answer, what you perceive as an excess- baggage is someone who leads a much more accomplished life than you and is trying to do well in both her personal as well as professional life.

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  5. The major learning from Simi's life are the following.
    1. need to be tough in life
    2. re-evaluate the priorities of life and act according to the situation
    3.follow the passion in life & make the best of the opportunities available

    I feel that every entrepreneur faces this dilemma of leaving a settled life and then set out to do something new. Generally the society does not encourage new ideas and rarely supports entrepreneurs with ideas.
    Being a woman, Simi faced the additional burden of striking the perfect work life balance. She was also acting as a single mother in the absence of her husband, so it became even more important for her to look after her young sons.

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  6. The major learning from Simi's life are the following.
    1. need to be tough in life
    2. re-evaluate the priorities of life and act according to the situation
    3.follow the passion in life & make the best of the opportunities available

    I feel that every entrepreneur faces this dilemma of leaving a settled life and then set out to do something new. Generally the society does not encourage new ideas and rarely supports entrepreneurs with ideas.
    Being a woman, Simi faced the additional burden of striking the perfect work life balance. She was also acting as a single mother in the absence of her husband, so it became even more important for her to look after her young sons.

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  7. She was a believer. She followed her passion. She was focused. People around her had belief in her that she can do things which made her strong in her determination.

    In some sense it is a unique case but quite possible there would be similar or even much more complex cases. Women entrepreneur like Simi will obviously face similar issues. As discussed in class a woman will have to play the role of a wife, mother and a working professional not just when she is startinga business but when she is working in any organization. There could be other roles like a daughter which also she might have to play when she has to support her parents for some reason.

    It seems for Simi, success could be managing her time and maintaing her work life balance where she devotes time to family children friends work & self. It showed in the case that she had kept days in the week to evenly distribute for the various roles she played.

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  8. The major takeaways from Simi’s life would have to be:
    1. Knowing ones priorities
    2. Making things work for you
    3. Continuing to follow your passion
    4. Be slightly selfish – many a times women forget to live for themselves because they are so busy juggling their family and work life. It is important to make time for oneself in this case

    Simi’s case is probably not a unique one I feel since quite a few entrepreneurs today started their venture after having some kind of life changing moment or situation. All of them at some point in time had their “AHA” moments whereby they stopped in their tracks to think and realized that a gap does in fact exist and that they are there to fill that gap.

    In my opinion it is as difficult for a woman to become an entrepreneur as it is for a male. It all depends on whether or not the socio- economic environment is conducive for new businesses or not. The only additional difficulty that women probably face would be when it comes to balancing out their personal and work lives.

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  9. Simi's life teaches us that clarity of goals,optimism ,self-belief, passion, a strong sense of conviction and a 'never- say- die' attitude are some of the qualities that one should possess in order to be successful in the struggle towards one's goals, more so,if one is an entrepreneur. However, the idea and definition of success is hardly set rigidly in stone . Instead it keeps changing across different stages of life as we slip into newer roles and cross newer milestones.The giant leap or the big picture of 'success' per se, ,at the end of the day, is made up of every little step that we take along the way.
    In a sense, Simi's story, as rightly pointed by Javedika above,embodies every woman's struggle to successfully juggle the various 'hats' she has to wear during her lifetime, more so, after assuming greater responsibilities as a spouse and mother.
    For every one step that a man takes, a woman has to take double the number of steps in order to carve out a niche for herself in a still largely male-dominated world where the glass ceiling is yet to be broken despite all our tall claims of gender equality.
    Finally, I believe that our social conditioning according to the environment we grow up in is a deciding factor of our perception of success. Though broad generalizations are often unfair, however since Western society puts greater emphasis on 'individualism', I believe that the perception of success in the west might be more heavily skewed towards personal achievements as compared to the East and other developing nations where social validation and inclusive welfare are deemed more important than individual achievement. Even our definition of success is more society centric which might explain why we are a great believers of mass-manufactured dreams and arranged marriages. Even throughout Simi's life, there is a strong underlying thread of family and social responsibility, be it her need to achieve in order to validate her parents' expectations early on in life to giving up her job for the sake of her sons later on. Also, her strong sense of giving back to society has been reflected in all her endeavours throughout her life so far.

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  10. A predominant factor which comes out of Simi's entrepreneurship is how she is determined to find a significance of her job in every aspect of her life. It could be very easily marked as a sense of achievement or satisfaction when we see the results of what we have built or worked for, but what comes as a learning to me is to identify how one's work is also an important contribution in elevating the meaning of ones own life, family, work and community. As once in the case it was mentioned "It is difficult to leave everything from America and settle in Nigeria for a new venture it is further more difficult to start a non-profit new venture" clearly signifies that success is not synonymous to profit, its a culmination of happiness which instead comes from contributing to a larger idea called society and family than just limiting it as self satisfaction at work.
    Women entrepreneurs face a bigger challenge considering the various facets of life that they are expected to handle and not just their work. It becomes even more difficult because in life not everything can be prioritized. When I compare my mothers life at large, I realized that both being a mother and a lecturer of political science for a community college stood as priority one for her. Being a home maker and a part of social service group were equally important when it came to allocation of time. Simi's life is a window to understand the difficulties all women entrepreneurs face juggling through different hats at the same time devoting equal amount of time with equal importance and then excelling at each of them. Profoundly excellence again is not a measure of the outcome but a measure of the journey that one undertakes to accomplish her goals.
    On a concluding note, success cannot be defined within the set boundaries of self, family, community and work. It transcends to a higher meaning of understanding of ones self. for few its the sate of happiness or elation which is not just because of contributing to a cause or being good at ones work. It comes from knowing that after you there would be many to walk your path, that no matter how small is your contribution to society its a huge contribution to an individual. My mother ones said, "to a society a doctor is just an employed profession but to an individual he is a God, a soul savior. So what would success mean to a doctor, A satisfaction to be a good at his duty or an elation to be able to give directions for a suffering life?" Simi's success would be too easy to be measured in terms of the success of her venture. What actually would define her success would be how significant her contribution is to her two sons, her family, to Nigeria and how equally it would justify Simi's capability.

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  11. A predominant factor which comes out of Simi's entrepreneurship is how she is determined to find a significance of her job in every aspect of her life. It could be very easily marked as a sense of achievement or satisfaction when we see the results of what we have built or worked for, but what comes as a learning to me is to identify how one's work is also an important contribution in elevating the meaning of ones own life, family, work and community. As once in the case it was mentioned "It is difficult to leave everything from America and settle in Nigeria for a new venture it is further more difficult to start a non-profit new venture" clearly signifies that success is not synonymous to profit, its a culmination of happiness which instead comes from contributing to a larger idea called society and family than just limiting it as self satisfaction at work.
    Women entrepreneurs face a bigger challenge considering the various facets of life that they are expected to handle and not just their work. It becomes even more difficult because in life not everything can be prioritized. When I compare my mothers life at large, I realized that both being a mother and a lecturer of political science for a community college stood as priority one for her. Being a home maker and a part of social service group were equally important when it came to allocation of time. Simi's life is a window to understand the difficulties all women entrepreneurs face juggling through different hats at the same time devoting equal amount of time with equal importance and then excelling at each of them. Profoundly excellence again is not a measure of the outcome but a measure of the journey that one undertakes to accomplish her goals.
    On a concluding note, success cannot be defined within the set boundaries of self, family, community and work. It transcends to a higher meaning of understanding of ones self. for few its the sate of happiness or elation which is not just because of contributing to a cause or being good at ones work. It comes from knowing that after you there would be many to walk your path, that no matter how small is your contribution to society its a huge contribution to an individual. My mother ones said, "to a society a doctor is just an employed profession but to an individual he is a God, a soul savior. So what would success mean to a doctor, A satisfaction to be a good at his duty or an elation to be able to give directions for a suffering life?" Simi's success would be too easy to be measured in terms of the success of her venture. What actually would define her success would be how significant her contribution is to her two sons, her family, to Nigeria and how equally it would justify Simi's capability.

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  12. A busy and complicated life is not necessarily a burden... It can be fun in its own way...

    Simi has shown Passion right from her childhood... Be it books, studies, job, marriage, friends or family... She had a clear perspective and a passion to achieve in various realms. one remarkable facet was that she was flexible in adjusting her priorities and act accordingly. That's what one calls-"Embracing Change".
    Another thing which I admired about her was the way she handled her day-to-day activities which included job, social life, children, travel among others. For those who complain of insuffiecient time this is something to learn from.

    The beauty of Success lies in that it can be endless... it shouldn't be limited to few constructs or parameters. One different version of success can be sacrifice.... How Simi left her lucrative job in Goldman Sachs and came back to Nigeria...How Simi gave priority to personal life and came to Nigeria at a time when her venture was catching up pace...

    In all Simi is an example of stretching one's capabilities and achieving more and more difficult targets.

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  13. Simi's case seemed to be of great relevance to me because these are the kind of questions which often occupied my mind. As part of growing up, a woman always know the multiple roles that she has to play (the case captures it well by stating - Simi's life was an act of juggling roles) eventually and so the struggle somewhere is a bit different for a woman professional. The very clichéd philosophy of 'everything is possible' seems to stop playing bells in one's head as we have overheard it again and again for a million times. But, Simi's case so beautifully depicts the same idea that determination, passion, grit and clarity can make anything and everything possible. It was commendable to witness how she attempted to manage her relationships, career and societal contribution. Alongside that, she made sure that she does not even leave behind things which most of us tend to take for granted as we become busier in our lives and that is our friends and above all 'oneself'. Such subtle aspects too were not ignored by Simi and this further convinces me that if one wants, everything can be managed. Another thing that struck me was that Simi had a plan for everything - from how she wanted to spend time with her kids to how she wanted to manage her business. This clearly is indicative of the level of clarity that she possessed and I feel that in order to have such a clarity, conviction in oneself plays a massive role. As a concluding note, I would say that Simi's case has reiterated that everything is within reach, the idea is to define' our reach' and just go for it!!!

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  14. "Focus on your strengths and never get diverted from your objective".

    If we look at people's perception about simi, her strength lies in building relationships, good rapport with people around and her objective was to have a good work life balance so that she can spend good time with her family.

    So, she went for a profession which was totally dependent on relationships and rapport with her clients. She was the person from 2hats who was majorly focusing on customer relationships.

    When she planned to move from US to Nigeria one observation which i had is that, her clients thought it will be difficult for her to continue from nigeria. But because of her attitude and the confidence which she built with her clients she was able to take such big decision without major impact on business.

    So, her business was build on her strengths and she never compromised with her objective of supporting family. Be it moving from US to Nigeria.
    From Simi's example we can also see that if the foundation of a venture is strong and the lead person is clear about the primary purpose behind the inception of the venture it becomes easier to take decisions and move ahead.

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  15. Simi's story teaches us self-belief and to never undermine your strength and capabilities as a woman. When situations demand significant changes that force her out of her comfort zone, she takes the challange head on and tries to figure out new opportunities and alternatives that do justice to her caliber rather than giving up on her ambitions or settling for less.I believe most career oriented women would be able to identify with her story and learn from it. For any woman, having a career, being a wife and a mother is a difficult juggling act, that becomes all the more challanging with an entrepreneurial venture that makes more demand on her limited time. Simi's does a smart balacing act and succeeds in taking out time for herself and her friends. All the four components of success find a place in her current life and her planning for future ahead.

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  16. The learning for Simi's life are:
    1. Even if you are born in an under privileged environment, if you are intimately connected to the pursuit of knowledge, you will overcome the limitations of your under privileged environment and progress towards the top. With reference to Simi's life, I am referring to her journey form a poor third world nation to Harvard Business School.

    2. Follow your passion. Simi's always had a hidden teacher in her and after quitting Goldman Sachs, she returned to Nigeria for the JA program because it was her passion to be lead the education revival of Negeria.

    3. Follow your heart. After 9/11, she was worried about Obi and travelled to NY to meet him and take their relationship forward. Work and career is very important but so is one's personal life. One should not be at the cost of the other.

    4. Motherly responsibility is a part of women's life and perhaps her success will be measured not just by her office metrics but also her family metrics.

    5. If you have gone through a difficult situation, use your expericen and knowledge to guide others so that they are prepared to face a similar situation. Simi started 2Hats after facing the difficulties of world life balance and understanding the of difficulties faced by a woman in on-ramping.

    6. A supportive family and husband is equally important for a woman to achieve professional success as is her professional abilities.

    I do not believe that it is difficult for woman to become an entrepreneur as compared to a man, especially in the start-up phase. But I do believe that eventually there come a time where she will have face the question of marriage, starting a family and motherhood. It is at this point of time that the support of her family become paramount in order for her to continue as an entrepreneur. In addition of this, she also need her office colleagues to maintain the same level of faith in her professional abilities in her after her return form meeting family and social obligations. With these two supporting forces, a woman should face no difficult in becoming an entrepreneur.

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  17. Major learning from Simi's life are:

    1. There is no written rule for success or satisfaction. Its all depends on how you act according to the situation you are in and how you take advantage of the opportunities you get along your life.

    2. You should be honest to yourself in defining your priorities, which of course keep changing during different phases of your life and then act accordingly.

    3. Always follow your heart because in the end it is you who need to get satisfied, one cannot be satisfied by satisfying only others. This can be seen in Simi's example when she leaves Goldman Sachs and return to Nigeria for JA and again went back to America for Obi after 9/11.

    Difficulties that an woman entrepreneur may face are the lack of support and acceptance from the society and her family. It is nowhere related to her ability or intellect to achieve anything. The doubts or questions regarding her ability to cope or perform in the corporate or business world post marriage or motherhood are societal psyche and does not hold rational grounds. If she got enough support there is no reason why an woman cannot become an entrepreneur.

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  18. In addition to all the aspects already discussed above, there was an observation that i would like to mention.

    India, like Nigeria is a close knit society and the family values that we share are on similar lines. Also, every women in Indian society faces this dilemma - of choosing WORK V/S FAMILY.

    In Simi, we see an excellent example of how women have a choice of entrepreneurship, which allows them to play both the roles without compromising one over other.

    This is amazing option that women of India have. This also explains the rise in the women self help groups across India - and also women opting for art works when professionals move over to being house wives.

    All they need is some motivation and lot of self belief.

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  19. Simi's case is sort of rare because she has to face the extra struggle of moving across continents and running the business virtually. Now the nature of her business does entail her to run it mostly remotely, but I am not too sure if that delivery model is sustainable.
    As far has her source of inspiration, research has proven that more entrepreneurs come out of families where either or both the parents are entrepreneurial. In her case, her mom ran a restaurant and she probably built character while growing up, looking at her parent.
    What really came out strongly was the fact that how well she made an attempt to balance work and personal life, which in turn became her source of strength.
    -Siddharth V.

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  20. Looking at the video i personally feels that may be after job marrying Abi, Simi got too involved in her family life and in the event she realized that going back to her work life doesn't entice her anymore. Her experience with Nikelodeon made her realized that she won't be able to maintain proper work life balance if she joins the corporate world again. This situation I believe is faced by all today's world women. To break this phenomenon she joined Harvard to made herself intellectually up to date to start something of her own. Such that she would be in a better position to maintain work-life balance and idea of business came from her own suffering I think. Helping women to off ramp and on ramp.
    Till she joined Harvard i feel that her life was like any other career oriented person trying to earn a better life. The qualities of life came more forward when she started 2Hats. The journey of establishing 2Hats and shifting to Nigeria reflected her will power and commitment. Also the events in her life reflected an honest scenario that occurs in everyone's life like family goals & personal goals.

    The case touches with the life of millions of people who are facing or would face similar work-life issues.

    -- Manish Garg

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  21. As per me, to be successful entrepreneur one should be ready to take challenge, and be prepared to deal with different obstacle coming on the way (There are lots of other requisite traits already mentioned in the blog ) . Almost everybody, who starts a venture faces few sets of difficulties, so it will be difficult for a person if he or she is not ready to deal with the situation with a positive outlook. However for a women the journey is little more difficult as she has to take care of her kids, family. Work life balance is more important for a woman. Even in case of Simi, we see that she has to plan her schedule and meetings keeping her kids into consideration.

    Manisha Mani

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  22. For me Simi's life is an inspiration. She is a go getter and an achiever. The best part of her life's story is that she didn't compromise on anything. When she couldn't manage her job and family at the same time she gave up her job and started her own business. In our society women usually just leave their job and then never enter the work force again. They compromise on their career for the sake of their family. Similarly when she found out that she has to shift to Nigeria to keep her family together, she didn't leave 2Hats. She decided to make it work. That is an admirable quality and gives us good perspective on her life management skills.

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  23. Simi is a mother of two young boys and also runs her own firm. Like Simi, working moms have to juggle work and family lives. Entrepreneurship requires even more time, effort and commitment. In countries like India, factors like lack of support and acceptance in the social system add to the difficulties. The fact that Simi plans to move to Nigeria and operate her business which is in the US, makes her case relatively unique.
    It is interesting how Simi found business-opportunity from her life-experiences and learning. Simi stayed focussed on her education as she didn’t want to let her family down. Later she decided to return to her home-land as she wanted to give back to her community. Driven by her desire to devote more time to her children, Simi made the tough decision to quit her lucrative job at Nicklodeon. Having been a coloured-working-mom in the United States, she understood the hardships and tough-decisions that women in similar situations faced. This gave birth to the idea of 2Hats.
    Her priorities and goals changed over time and depended on her life-situations. She chose to move with her husband while continuing to be an active participant in her business. This way not only would she be ensuing income but also she would be able to pursue her passion: her business. Like Simi mentioned in the case, she needed to have an identity of her own.
    She had confidence in her ability to make things work. She strongly believed in her business plan and modified it when the need arose. She adapted to changing situations and was sure of herself and her priorities. This, in my opinion, makes her case a unique one which offers many learnings as take-away.
    Success is a relative measure. In my opinion, financial measures aren’t sufficient to assess the success or failure of a business. For some, Simi may have failed to give her 100 percent to her venture, while for others she may be doing an incredible job of balancing her work and family. I believe that as an entrepreneurial-mother, Simi is going an incredible job of balancing the two hats she wears: that of a mother and an entrepreneur. That, in my opinion, is success!

    - Ankita

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  24. Simi's story is just another story.. Another story of a woman entrepreneur facing a multitude of challenges from almost every sphere of life - family, workplace or be it society. The case though does not talk extensively about her husband, it also shows us in bits and pieces, the challenges that he is going through in order to set up his business in Nigeria. Both the partners have their own share of tasks to resolve, and i do not think that the lives of any other couple entrepreneurs are very different from this. From an individual perspective, I can see my life going forward that way and the take-aways for me are 2 - a) To have great courage to handle the situations that would unfold during the course of my personal and progfessional life and b) To set the right expectations for myself from my personal and professional life so that i feel a sense of true happiness at the end of the journey.

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  25. This case was amazingly inspiring and personally it made me retrospect on similar opportunities here. After all this is the case with most females and looking from the perspective of the working men, i suppose perpetual counselling tuned with industry's best practices would go a long way to keep them up to date. TCS has similar workshop as told by Mr Gopalkrishnan when he came to take classes on learning what's not taught.

    ~ Shashwat Rai

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  26. I found this interesting article which bares some resonance to the issues raised in Simi's case :

    http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/17/opinion/look-inside-not-out/index.html

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  27. The need to plan your life is the important take away from Simi’s life. Looking at the complexities in her life , the way she has managed her family life and the business is an example for many others.
    Simi’s case is a must read for all the budding entrepreneurs , as it talks about not only the obstacles in setting up a venture but also mentions the personality traits such as determination , self confidence and the ability to stand for a cause which are required for a person to come out of a well paid job and enter into a venture.
    Simi’s life reflects the extremes of complexities and the social and family pressure which would have made it difficult for her to leave the job and start venture, however, the way she has planned her life is a lesson for many others.
    I am personally impressed with her habit of reading which she has developed since her childhood ,and I am sure that this habit has helped her not only to get admission in one of the top B school but also has helped her to excel in every aspect of her professional life.
    ~ Mandeep Singh

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