When?
July 1992
Where?
Florence – Italy – Factory floor of the Conti Socks Machine Factory
When I was 24 years old, I got a chance to visit the Conti Socks factory from where my father was planning to buy some socks machines to knit ‘tube’ sports socks.
I was a B.Com graduate from Sydenham College and had no clue in machines, equipment nor manufacturing.
Call it luck or simply entrepreneurship – I took the leap and told my dad ‘I will be the jobber (technical worker) of this new line of machines’.
It was sacrilege in many ways. The sons of a 400+ worker factory was going to be a mechanic? To work with tools and grease and repair machines on a shop floor with workers?
The night I left for Florence was Diwali night and one relative whom I had gone to visit in the day really made fun of me and my adventure. He said, “Kya, Mechanic Banega”? I still chuckle when I meet him and remember his taunt.
Mauro taught me pneumatics – precision, cad/cam (see the computer console – you could change the way the socks were knit using that dashboard).
I learnt how to make machines listen and dance to the tune of man….
This particular machine taught me the power of ‘creative’ computing – how a simple design (say a flower) drawn on a computer could then be transferred into the machine (notice the black socket connector on the the extreme right bottom corner of the picture), and made to actually knit a sock with the same flower!
This factory also taught me hard work.
The first day I arrived, after 1 hour, I was looking around – Mauro asked me what I was looking for? I said, “A Chair”
He smiled and said, “Signor Alok, on the factory floor we have no chairs. Your legs are your chairs. You will have to learn to sit on them for 8 hours“.
The first night, my legs were swollen and I was almost numbed and disoriented.
One afternoon, almost towards the end of the 2 week training, light was coming down the glass ceiling and was shining on this machine. That moment I had a mini ‘satori‘…
I realized that computers synced with creativity was my future.
In 1998, I switched lines – I became an Internet entrepreneur and launched a contesting website called contests2win.com (https://c2w.com) and the rest just followed after that.
I now run a group called the 2win group (https://2wingroup.com).
This story is just one of the many examples amongst us all of “how things start”.
So many things I learnt in those 2 weeks in the Conti factory come back to me even today and continue to guide me!
I am sure you have your own story to share… or you are in the midst of a plot that will unveil itself to you soon….
So, just wait for your moment – for your entrepreneur ‘Satori’. But for that to happen, become an entrepreneur ASAP!
*****