BY VIVEK PATNI
Director, Wonder Cement Ltd.
I was born in a family that has been promoting sports, especially cricket, in Rajasthan for over a decade. After playing cricket under the sunny heat of Udaipur for over two decades, I developed the sportsman spirit, which I keep implementing now in my professional life. Facing defeat is inevitable at some point in everyone’s life, but the important thing is what action one takes to overcome that defeat.
When you head a company, you undergo a lot of stress. One wrong step on your part would affect the families of all those associated with your company. My family believes in the ideology that we came into this world empty-handed and have to go back empty-handed. So, whatever we have, we should share it with everyone. I applied the same ideology in my professional life, and that has helped me and my company grow at a rapid pace. I think first for the benefit of my employees because they are the ones who will make my vision a reality. As someone rightly said, “What goes around comes around” - good deeds done out of my own will have always helped me in trying times.
Cricket is a religion in India. The game has gone through multiple rounds of evolution over the last few decades. After being a political country, India is a ‘cricket nation’. Anyone who claims to be into sports, others assume that the person must be playing cricket. Cricket has brought the people of India together like nothing else has. True patriotism can be witnessed in every home when India plays against any other country in a World Cup match. At the same time, being so significant for every Indian, the game also has a sensitive context, since strong sentiments are attached to it. The game started off with Test cricket - excellence during this period demanded attributes such as patience, persistence, technical expertise. Then came the shorter One Day format, demanding innovation, flexibility and an ability to make quick decisions... Finally, advent of the era of Twenty20 cricket, when the need for all these attributes got magnified manifold. All along, India stayed glued to the screen, while marketers naturally cashed in on each format and used it as a tool to connect with consumers, be it the World Cup, the bilateral Tests & ODI series or the IPL.
At some point of our lives, we all have experienced cricket in diverse ways – we have used tyres for stumps, wooden planks for bats... those were the best times of our lives. Just recently, I engaged with cricket professionally - holding the ‘Wonder Cement Saath:7 Cricket Mahotsav’, an endeavour to endow rural India with the power to unlock their potential and help the stars of the future in turning their dreams into reality. It was a large consumer engagement initiative, involving more than two crore people across Rajasthan.
That was my bit. At an individual level, everyone should do their bit for society. At a very early stage in life, I realized that it’s more joyful to give love than to receive it. You can make a watchman feel good by smiling or saying ‘Thank You’ every time he opens the gate for you.
Meanwhile, all I hope is that I keep creating wonders in every human’s life and a positive impact. A smile on a person’s face will always give me immense joy and happiness.
@ FEEDBACK
vivekpatni@wondercement.com
