This piece distils a discussion by Mr Sunil Kanoria on what it takes for entrepreneurs to grow a company and make it succeed — drawn from the three-decade story of SREI Infrastructure, from its first financed excavator to a world-record telecom-tower rollout.
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Eight lessons, one entrepreneur’s playbook
Lesson 01
Focus on the work, not its result
The first lesson: work with devotion and start what is right — rather than freezing at the thought of consequences.
Analyses every angle
Keeps examining each detail in such depth that momentum stalls. Certainty is demanded before the first step — so the step is rarely taken.
Acts on conviction
Does not fixate on the outcome. If it looks like the right thing to do, the work begins — and the results are left to the future.
Lesson 02
Motivate people — and lead to their strengths
Identify each person’s skill and will, then give them the time and support to do what they are best at.
Keep people happy
A motivated team starts with genuine wellbeing, not pressure.
Lead with empathy
Meet team members where they are and understand what drives them.
Talk strengths and gaps
Discuss each person’s strengths and weaknesses openly and honestly.
Give them your time
Leaders who invest time to understand their people lift the whole culture.
“An organisation is built on the strengths of its people — never on their weaknesses.
Support people’s strengths and they work well and stay happy; when leaders start truly understanding their teams, both the work and the culture improve.
Lesson 03
Uberizing the equipment-rental business
Some contractors had machines but no projects; others had projects but no machines. SREI built the platform that matched them.
Quippo
An equipment bank: an informal common platform connecting contractors who owned machines with contractors who had projects, so both sides gained.
iQuippo
A full-fledged platform — a website where a company can sell its equipment and a customer can buy it, take it on lease, or finance it.
Lesson 04
Understand what your customer will need next
In business, empathy is vital. Customers often don’t know what they want — so anticipate the problem and design the solution.
Empathise first
Understand your customers and their real needs before proposing anything.
Anticipate the problem
Most customers can’t articulate what they want; foresee it and solve it.
Deliver a clear benefit
Every solution should give the customer an efficiency benefit or a cost benefit.
Case study
SREI’s first customer
One financed machine turned 25 days of manual labour into 5 — and proved the whole model.
Financing an excavator no one else would
Sunil Kanoria was in talks with a Larsen & Toubro salesperson selling excavators. The salesperson had a customer — a labour contractor loading iron ore into railway racks from the mines — who needed the machine but had no finance.
The contractor was using 400–500 people and taking 24–25 days to load a single railway rack: high cost, high time.
Sunil Kanoria financed the equipment. The same job was then done in just 5 days, the contractor won more work, and productivity jumped — the efficiency case for financing, proven in the field.
By the numbers
Construction & mine equipment sale
From a niche financier to a market SREI helped build — two decades apart.
SREI played a vital role in expanding this market — not just riding the growth, but financing the machines that created it.
Lesson 07
Share your risk and CAPEX
A mobile operator asked SREI to finance a tower. Knowing operators shared towers in the USA, Sunil Kanoria turned that into an industry-wide model.
A discount that grew with every operator
SREI would finance the tower and give the operator a discount if a second operator shared it — and the discount deepened as more operators joined.
SREI approached Airtel, Vodafone and others. Convincing them took time, but once they agreed, their CAPEX fell drastically and growth accelerated.
By 2008–09, SREI had installed 18,000 mobile towers across India — a world record.
Lesson 08
How an entrepreneur gets financed
Storytelling is a must. A strong story about your products and services is what drew national governments to a tiny SREI.
In summary
Key learnings
The entrepreneur’s playbook, in five lines.