How can networking lead to lifelong connections?
Go with an open mind and low expectations
Every Sunday I share what I learn about health, money and business. Here is what I learnt last week:
How can networking lead to lifelong connections?
Can mindfulness-based cognitive behavior therapy reduce insomnia in people with depression?
How did this company turn each $1000 of investment into $2.5 million?
You can access previous editions of my weekly emails here. Let’s begin!
(1) How can networking can lead to lifelong connections?
Last week I got to meet the one and only Dilip Kumar from Rainmatter. A great example of how virtual connections lead to physical meetups.
I also mingled with some smart entrepreneurs. I went around the room, introduced myself and asked the attendants what problems their businesses solve. The person I was more intrigued by was Arpit Asthana. He is an engineer who is trying to create devices which help Indians get better care from doctors. He is also trying to indigenize a number of very expensive foreign medical equipments. He is doing this by working with AIMS doctors. I liked his vibe.
I also met Nitin Dua, Abhimanyu Dhakal, Swapnil Vats. Vandit Jain, Rishav ., Hriday Thakur, Sonali Saraogi Singh, Shaurya Verma, Harshank Parashar, Akash Manu Srivastava, Charu Sharma, Sangam Upadhayay, Rachit Bir - BIRa Fitness. Everyone is on a journey to make a dent in the health space in the country.
At the end of Friday night, the person I ended up spending the most time with was Rahul Parakh. We both met and realized that we had met in the past. We also shared a common friend, Jatan, who we both admire and like. The chit chat lead to dosas at Sagar Ratna followed by icecremes at Gianis. It is rare to connect like I did with Rahul. I felt like I found a very good friend in him.
I had gone to this gathering at 6pm. I ended up home at midnight. It was totally worth it because serendipitous meetings lead to connections and lifelong relationships that you cannot foresee.
When you go to a "networking" event next time, just go with an open mind. Share, listen and connect. Keep your expectations low so that you can be pleasantly surprised.
(2) Can mindfulness-based cognitive behavior therapy reduce insomnia in people with depression?
I got an email from Gargi, a reader of my Sunday emails.
She said: "Please continue these posts because insomniacs like me need every bit of encouragement we can get. Might I suggest increasing your focus on the mental challenges and fatigue that come with working in corporate environments in your next few correspondences?"
Gargi, this one is for you!
"Can mindfulness-based cognitive behavior therapy reduce insomnia in people with depression?"
To answer this question, 51 adults (41 women, 14 men) with recurrent depressive orders were studied. After a period of 8 weeks, research found that the severity of insomnia - the time it takes insomniacs to fall asleep, the number of times that they wake up after they have fallen asleep, as well as non-restorative sleep and daytime sleepiness, all improved when they did mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) exercises at home for 45 minutes per day, 6 days per week. This also had a cascading effect which reduced the risks related to a depression relapse.
Here is the research study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38312915/
P.S. My friend Rahul shared a 5-minute Youtube video link with me and said "This has worked wonders for me. Immediate relief from stress and anxiety." Here it is ->
P.P.S. Gargi, thank you for making my Sunday and encouraging me to keep writing. I write for myself but knowing that others find what I write useful, feels good.
(3) How did this company turn each $1000 of investment into $2.5 million?
If you had invested 1 lac with this company 40 years ago, it would have grow by 2500x today and become 25 crores. That's insane!
This company is the most successful global compounder in the world. It has done better than Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and the rest.
The founders of this business are two brothers who named the company Danaher, after the lake in Colorado where they went fishing.
They initially made money by just putting 10% of their capital and borrowing the remaining 90%. Within two years they were doing revenues of $450 million and entered the S&P500. They then used their brains to either turn around the loss making businesses or made the barely profitable businesses very profitable.
Here is where the story becomes even more interesting. They have changed their entire business every 10 years! In the early 1990s, they were an industrials company. In the early 2000s, they pivoted to becoming a testing and analytical measurement devices company. By the the early 2010s, they shifted into diagnostics. And today the balance is tilting towards becoming a life-sciences business.
They learnt that if they can nullify the cyclicality of their businesses then they can keep on constantly cutting costs and increasing profit margins. They have developed a proprietary system called Danaher Business Systems (DBS) which is the core engine through which they have kept on constantly improving. This system has done to marketing, sales, operations and M&A, what Toyota did to manufacturing. Through this system they have also been able to develop home grown leadership; CEOs and CFOs that have had a material impact on the company through their strategic thinking and checklist-style process-driven decision making.
Going forward, the business fundamentals for Danaher look very promising. Their businesses have tremendous pricing power. They are not cyclical. They are protected by regulation. The culture is hard to copy. So on a conservative basis they are expected to compound earnings per share at a conservative 18% per year in rupee terms. That is 5x investor money in 10 years. If biotechnology comes to the forefront of humanity in the next 20 years or so, one can expect a hockey stick like growth in their share price because they would have built the monopolistic moat of not only providing the technology and consumables needed to discover new drugs, but they will also be the ones bringing those discoveries to market by manufacturing them.
Only time will tell whether Danaher will become the Nvidia of biotech, but all signs seem to suggest that they will. This shows how implementing a Kaizen style system to run business works like magic!
Case study source: The Danaher Phenomenon: Coffee and investing with Saurabh and Arindam.
Harsh Batra (LinkedIn)
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