A Fatherpreneur is a man who is a dad and an entrepreneur and performs both the role with ease. Even if he is breaking underneath on the surface he must be cool, calm and collected. On this Father’s day, we have collated the mantras of Entrepreneurs who have successfully balanced their work and home:
Mr. Uttam Malani, Executive Director of Centuary Mattress
“Being a fatherpreneur is serious business! Neither job can be taken lightly – that of being a father or being an entrepreneur. However, I have found that there are tremendous synergies & common learnings in both. You need to have immense patience, dedication, and empathy to do justice to both these tasks. Maintaining the balance comes easy once you learn to enjoy both and recognise the importance of each of these roles individually.”
Mr. Vikas Chaturvedi, CEO of Xanadu Realty
Me and my Son Aadi’s bond is evolving with each passing day, as he is teen now. He converges on many things like music. He has got me fascinated by his kind of music which is very pop, rap and the whole K-pop frenzy. He is also learning Piano so we sometimes jam together. We were both into cricket till we came to Mumbai but once we got here, Aadi got hooked on to football. And he made sure that he also involved me ina football. Now as the Euro Cup is on, we discuss players, game strategies and I make it a point that we watch at least one match together during the weekends. Basically we are all foodies and avid cook. And my son loves my cooking. He is very fond of the Chole-Kulche and Dal Makhani I make. We play on PS3 while cycling together, it’s a different affinity we share now and it’s a nice feeling. Largely being a teen’s dad we are now in a friendly zone.
Mr. Amith Aggarwal, Co-Founder & CEO, Agribazaar:
Wfh also brought out my culinary skills, and I am the chef of the house, especially on weekends; I am good at preparing delicious food, be it pizzas or dosas. Being a Fatherpreneur, I appreciated the importance of home-cooked nutritious food, and now I encourage my colleagues the importance of clean, timely and healthy meals.
My daughter, who is in school, is learning to code, taught me quite a few things about coding and technology. It helped me relate better with my business agribazaar, which is an online agritech model. My much younger son always comes up with curious questions, and it taught me patience to answer every time he asked me something. I relate to customer complaints and queries much better nowadays. I try to schedule a call every few days with colleagues to discuss non-office topics. It has helped me become close with my colleagues. Similarly, every day as a family, we try to sit together to either play games like chess or ludo or watch a movie. The importance of family and personal life, be it in office or home, has made me a better Fatherpreneur. I am more sensitive, caring, and aware person in the office and home. After recovering from COVID19 while losing few dear ones to the pandemic, I am calmer and believe that destiny and acceptance are essential to lead a balanced life.
Mr. Bikky Khosla, Founder, Tradeindia.com:
I sincerely believe that you must be true to yourself. The advantage of being a fatherpreneur is you have the freedom to plan your own agenda. I recommend it’s best to savor every second to the fullest. When you’re with your kids, be with your kids. Do not let anything else concern you at that moment. You need to follow your passion, and you mustn’t shield your entrepreneur life too much from your family. Your kids deserve to see you as you do your work. They would naturally want to share the various highs and lows with you. Of course, you must also devote sufficient attention to them. As your children grow up, you can bring them closer into your profession if they show any inclination of the sort. But I don’t think you should expect them to follow in your footsteps. They need to make up their own minds, just as you yourself did. Once that is taken care of, you can guide and support them in whatever path they choose. My work life is not that disconnected from my family life. I am always thinking about new ideas and look forward to meeting startup founders. I love hearing out novel ideas and visions and leave no stone unturned in helping them create their own path. I like sharing these concepts both with my employees when I am working and also with my family at the dinner table. We discuss recent trends and the latest happenings in technology. I also like sharing our day-to-day experience with my family with the hope that my kids will imbibe the various life lessons from my life.
