Vivek Srivastava, CEO, Health Care at Home India, home healthcare services company

As the story goes 

When I was working with Ambit Corporate Finance, I got a call from a partner of a PE firm called GTI, asking if I could fly in for an interview the next morning. Since I had worked hard for the last two days without having slept a wink, I requested for an additional day. However, he responded saying if I wanted to join as an associate, I had to come the very next day for the interview. I had never applied for this firm and I didn’t have a clue of who might have referred me. Later on I realised that a friend’s friend had referred me. Typically, at PE firms, the interview happens over six to seven stages and it takes months for it to close but it turned out that the interview which I attended without any preparation and turned out to be the only interview I had to undergo and I got selected. This lucky break and working with the partner helped me gain so much experience that I accelerated to become a CEO today.

How you see it

I believe that luck favours the brave. If you don’t take chances, you cannot get lucky in the first place. Having said that, I believe that many a times, you have to be at the right time and at the right place to be successful.

In a measure

Luck is an important ingredient to achieving success but it is not the only ingredient. I believe you can potentially achieve your goals by sheer perseverance and hard work without being extremely lucky but it is very difficult to achieve your goals just on the basis of luck alone.

What’s your Plan L?

You have to venture out and explore the world to be able to increase your chances of hitting a goldmine. Hence, you need to take risks, put in the hard work and persevere in whatever you do, and this would improve the probability of your success. Mathematically speaking, if you have 10 doors and one of them is your door to success, as you put the effort into opening more doors, your chance of hitting the right door improves. If you don’t put in the effort to open the doors you will never reach success.