Honorable Chancellor Mr. Ramani, honorable vice chancellor, members of the board and governing council of the university, deans, faculty, students, parents, and members of the media. It is a tremendous honor for me to be here as the chief guest for this function.
Dear students, it is a very important milestone in your lives. This day marks a beginning of a new journey. So I want to congratulate all of you and your parents for what you have achieved. A big round of applause for all of you.
I also would like to thank Dr. Sharma, the board of the university, for considering me worthy to be the chief guest for today's function and also honoring me with the honorary doctorate. I'm very grateful to you, sir.
I want to share a few thoughts, dear students, which I have imbibed over the journey of my life and reflect about it all the time. Today you are at the beginning of a new adventure, a new journey. Each of you will pursue different paths. Some will go into the business world. Some will become entrepreneurs. Some will go for higher academics or anything else that may interest you.
But whatever you are going to do, you got to remember the journey that you are going to begin is different from the journey you have traveled thus far. It is a time of great change. I'm going to use this word a few times: pressure. For the first time, you will start to feel what is called pressure because there will be goals, there will be targets, there'll be things to achieve and you will start to work towards it. But you will start feeling the pressure till you achieve and then the next goal, whether it be in the corporate world or in academia.
But I want to tell you this: to earn the right to feel the pressure is a privilege. Pressure is a privilege. 26 years ago, a young tennis player, Lindsay Davenport, I don't know how many of you watch tennis, she was about to compete in the final of the 2000 Fed Cup against a rival who she has always struggled against, who she has never beaten. So Lindsay went and asked the legendary tennis star Billie Jean King for advice. Billie Jean simply said to her, 'You are feeling the pressure, and pressure is a privilege.' What she meant was by reaching that final against the world number one, Davenport had earned the right to feel the pressure. It also meant there are great expectations of her, by her and by others. With her talent and performance, she had a real chance to win it. And she did.
I say the same thing to you. Graduating from this special university, Symbiosis University, proves that you have earned the right to feel the pressure, and this will continue and you must enjoy it all through your life from now on. People expect you to leave this place and be brilliant in whatever you do.
So how do you live this pressure? Again, I have two things I have learned and imbibed in my life. I'm going to share it with you. I am a runner. There is a very famous marathon runner, Juma Ikanga. He once said, 'The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare.' So it is not about whether you have the willingness to win. It is always the willingness to put in the effort to prepare is what is important. This applies in sports. This applies in life. So you put in the hard work, understand what it takes to win, and you got to put in the preparation to make yourself ready and give yourself the chance to win.
It also means failing sometimes, and every encounter will always have setbacks sometimes and disappointments. But with every setback and disappointment, you have to learn from that setback. More importantly, you will learn to put in more effort. Fear of failure will always stop you from progress. Every failure is a step forward, and every success is a step of confidence forward.
The second example or second lesson is from another runner. It is me. I took up running almost about 18 years ago. One thing I have learned in running, it's so important that you run your own race. Each one of us when we start our journey, we have our context, we have our skill sets, we have our strengths, we have our areas of weakness, we have our target. So you can't get distracted by the guy running next to you. The guy running next to you may be running for a sprint, you may be training for a marathon. So your goals should be towards what you want to achieve. And you got to measure yourself with yourself.
How was I yesterday and how am I today? How did I do last year? How am I doing this year? Not only numbers but in terms of the things that you focus on in the preparation. I don't know how many of you are runners. If you run a sprint, a 100 meter race, people will run as soon as you finish, they look back and see who was the next guy or the guy ahead. But if you watch a marathon runner, when he finishes, immediately he looks at the watch because he knew last time I ran at 4 hours and 23 minutes. Have I done 4 hours or 22 minutes this time? So you got to measure yourself on progress, continuous improvement, push yourself towards what you want to do.
I think these two, the willingness to prepare and willingness to make progress every day and running your own race, will help you handle the pressure. Then it is not a coincidence that I'm talking about marathon because your life and career is going to be a marathon race. It's a long journey. It will have its ups, it will have its downs. Gain the confidence when you're up. But when that confidence comes, be careful not to get arrogant. Always remember there will be a down. So that confidence should be used to build resilience.
Success always does not come purely 100% because of our effort. We always have tailwinds. Failure always does not happen because of our lack of capability or lack of effort. But it may be due to forces beyond your control. So you got to separate the two. Every time you are up, enjoy it, but use it to build resilience in your thoughts. And every time you are down, don't get disheartened. But the most important thing is you got to enjoy the journey every single day.
You are stepping into a world which has a very changing global economic, technological, disruptive, AI revolutionary, regulatory, and other changes that are constantly evolving. You're almost starting to prepare a marathon even before you have started. But I tell you the world is full to the brim with possibilities. It may be unnerving to read the negative stories of job losses due to AI and so on so forth. But I'll tell you the number of sectors that are opening, the art of possible that is becoming clearer and clearer every single day with AI is going to throw up so many things that you would not have imagined today. In fact, five years from now, there will be industries which don't exist today. You will not even know the terminology today.
And India is in a very strong position. I'm not saying that all of you will be in India but India will have an economic growth which is going to be unparalleled in our own history and unparalleled with any part of the world. This will be for the next several decades. So I think what is important is to have a mindset of running dual races. You need to have a mindset of a marathon where you are continuously working towards a future where you want to achieve big things. But also you are running a little bit of speed runs to have quick wins because you want to win and feel energetic every few months.
So I'm going to again share six things I feel are going to be very important for the future. Number one, as mundane as it may sound, keep learning. If you are from a computer science background, you may do something else for one year and if you're not keeping pace, you'll get outdated. Even if you are an economics student, the new economic theories are always evolving, new models are evolving. So learning is a habit. No longer you'll have textbooks and exams. So you got to think through what is your learning discipline going to be because everybody is going to be busy whether you like it or not. You are going to be in social media 24 hours of the day and we will all watch something. We will all read something. We just have to make sure we are reading what we want to read and we are seeing what we want to see. We are listening to what we want to listen and that measurement is required. It is not to say that don't watch a movie. It is to say that are you balancing it. So learning is fundamental. I will tell you it is more fundamental to your generation than my generation.
Second, stay curious because the world is evolving so so fast. You are going to have a lot of possibilities which people would never have imagined. For example, if you live for the next 25 years, there will be medical technology which will extend your life. There will be medical technology which will give you a physical body to stay at the same age for the next 5 years. You become 40, you can say I want to be at 40 for the next 5 years before I go to 41. That level of disruption will happen. So stay curious.
Third, we are getting into a world where the problems are complex and progress can be only made with collective work. So be open to ideas. Don't ever think you will know everything or you need to know everything. It is all about working with people. Mr. Krishna was so kind to talk about his role in the board. With every board member, I learn and I depend on something. I can never do that because I'm not trained and I'm not the one who has done this before. So you need to surround yourself with people with all the skills that are necessary so that the right team can achieve what we need to achieve and achieve the destination or at least move towards the destination.
Fourth is creativity. Creativity is not only for arts and literature. Creativity in business is premium. Those of you entrepreneurs, I really really would like you to nurture this and develop this skill. See all these skills can be developed but you got to think about it. If you don't think about it, you cannot develop. So when you say develop creativity, immediately people will wonder what it is. Then if you're serious about it, you start reading about it. Maybe you take a course on it. Then you join a team and do an internship. So it's so important.
Then the next two qualities which I feel most important, in fact I practice it all the time. One is remember to reflect. Writing is all about self-reflection. You got to reflect. What you have done? What did you learn? How was the last year? Could you have done something better? Always. Could you have avoided a mistake? Always. So reflection is most critical at periodic intervals and each person has to develop that frequency.
And the last: aim high. Think very big. Be bold. Be audacious. Michelangelo once said, 'I am not worried that we will not meet our aspiration and not achieve it. I'm only worried that we will set up our aspiration so low we will achieve it all the time.'
