Ms. Sonu Bhasin, renowned Business Author, Family Business Historian, Independent Director, Founder, and Editor-in-Chief of Families & Business, graced Lovely Professional University with her charisma on the 13th of April, 2021 through Women Empowerment Conclave organized by the Society of Management Learning.
For a brilliant sixty minutes, she interacted with the audience, and narrated her life chronicles, shared the social and familial struggle that she had to conquer being a woman, reminisced on the experiences.
She elaborated the generation gap, lack of choices that she faced with a very narrow spectrum of professions open to her, a scholar, doctor, charted accountant, and MBA as a far shot. She pondered what she wanted to do with her life. But she knew one thing, whatever happens, she will give it her best shot!
She elaborated on how she developed an affinity towards family businesses. She explained how intra-family dynamics and the inter-personal relations between the family members thwacks the family business and the finances. Through her experience, she concluded that the challenges faced by family businesses are the same irrespective of their scale and location. She elaborated how the predicaments faced were utterly similar via a unique case of Indian business tycoon Sh. Dhirubhai Ambani and comparing it with a local spice trader at Karol Bagh, Delhi.
Through her venture, Families & Business (FAB), she aims to engender awareness in the family business, especially in the SME segment, or the issues they need to address if they wish to build a cross-generational venture. She also discussed her interview with the Economic Times, the correct way to make verdicts in the corporate world, by following your intuition, then using data to validate it. She elaborated on the role of emotions in marketing and how marketing has been affected with time by giving an example of how Lakme figured out their target audience read passionate novels and exploited it to expand their business. She also shared some lovely insights while working for the Axis Bank, especially the attrition at the middle & the top management was kept minimal, also a nourishing work-life culture.
Later during the session, she shared how she developed an affinity towards writing and literary work. She also talked about her first publication while she was in 5th standard, which was in a kids magazine Champak, where she earned the princely sum of Rs. 20 in the 1970s. Later, she wrote articles for a magazine named Children’s World, then during her time at The Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, where she used to bring out a college fun magazine named The Rag.
She’s the author of two books named The Inheritors – Stories of Entrepreneurship and Success, & The Unstoppable – Kuldip Singh Dhingra and the Rise of Berger Paints.
Ms. Bhasin concluded that nowadays youth should work smart to attempt, comprehend, and interpret things they do. They should focus on their priorities instead of just rushing through things. They should avoid arguing about what they don’t know and make statements on the spur of the moment. It is crucial to double-check what we are doing or going to say. Slow and steady is the way to go. Our work won’t get acknowledged in the blink of an eye. To see results, we must be reliable.
In those wise words, this wonderful lady of substance signed off and left us all thinking about little details that followed us like utterly trivial trails, as well as how we struggled to see tiny perils, small attempts, and little love that this planet needs from us.
