THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The young bureaucrat who shrugged off the coziness of babudom to follow his heart and made it big as an entrepreneur - thus maybe summarised the story of C Balagopal and Penpol, India’s first blood bag - manufacturing company. While this is the conventional narrative that everyone would want to believe in, the real-life version is a far cry, says the former IAS officer and ex-CEO of Terumo Penpol. “If I write it well - I hope I do - it will be about how a young guy with no business background built a company from scratch in the pre-venture capital days,” he says.
The civil servant-turned-entreprenuer-turned-author hopes to put it all down soon in a book which will follow ‘You Can See India on a Clear Day’ - his memoir about the days in government service published by Harpet Collins in 2013
“Writing books have filled up the vacuum I feared retirement would create,” says Balagopal, who stepped down as Managing Director of Terumo Penpol in 2013. “I had decided to retire at 60 like a good government servant.
And I did. But it was not easy to confront the fact that I would not be going back to the place, the room I have been using for the last 25 years. But then, like you do with your children, you have to learn to let go,” he says.
“Writing, book readings, travelling to Manipur after 31 years with my wife Vineetha - I am on a break I had not taken for so long.”
Building Penpol was not made easier owing to his status as former civil servant, says Balagopal. “It in fact made things more difficult. I was the fool who gave up IAS and this fool then goes and starts a company. The people I knew before avoided bumping into me. They slipped into shops - fancy stores in some cases! - if they spotted me across the street. Failure is a very lonely place to be.” Ask him what kept him going and he gives it some thought before saying - “the fallacy of optimism”.
“We don’t take decisions based on master plans, though in hindsight it would appear so. Its more about those impulsive things you do. As they say, chance favour the prepared man.”
And all he would say in favour of that young man who walked out of the coveted civil services is that he was on the look out for something that would challenge the doer in him. The chance meeting with Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology’s founder-director Dr M S Valyathan persuaded him to enquire about blood bags and the paucity of technology to manufacture them indigenously.
“I walked into Prof Ramani’s room, HoD, Biomedical Technology Wing of Sree Chitra to discuss the plausibility of the idea. And one hour later I walked out convinced that I was born to do this. It had nothing to do with me, it had to do with the kind of guy Ramani was”.
There is also another reason why Balagopal thinks a dialogue on entrepreneurship is important, and sets his book in a context.
“Of late, I notice that the flavour of the day is entrepreneurship. That worries me. Most importantly because, we do not have a social set up where failure is accepted, let alone respected. We are not ready to accept it if a child fails in an examination. How then do we expect every other youngster to start a business and take all the good and bad fare that comes with it?”
Not used to letting questions hang in the air, Balagopal says he is hoping that a platform for aspiring entrepreneurs to raise doubts and seek guidance will be formed in the bear future. “we can utilise the knowledge-base of experienced hands. It will function as a sort of coaching centre for young entrepreneurs, just to point out the pitfalls and give suggestions.”