‘I have zero tolerance for people who are arrogant’

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: of the world. Where will you find people of so many religions co-existing? The point is not that we have flare-ups, the point worth noting is that there are so few of them,” he says.

Talk of India making its mark globally and he again steps back in time, “It was not easy to build a global industry in those times. IIS came into being in a policy environment where one could not carry more than $8 on a foreign trip and you could only call home twice a day. There was 160% duty on exports. If you look at the IT industry, 99.9% entrepreneurs are first generation entrepreneurs. People with a special drive and resilience made it. Look at other countries: they had all the infrastructure and government funding. We had nothing because the government didn't know what to do.”

Despite the unfriendly environment, what made him take the big leap? “I was 40-year- old, operating the second largest IT company in the country. I couldn't move to TCS as it is also a Tata company and I didn't want to spend the next 20-30 years of my life sitting in the same office,” he admits.

Running Unisys made him think that the journey ahead would be a cakewalk. “In one year of setting up IIS, I learnt more than I learnt in my whole life. I realised if I don't paste that stamp on that envelope, it won't get posted. And I made many mistakes, too.” He adds that it is good to make mistakes and not let success go to your head. “It is universally true that everyone who is successful must have got lucky at one point of time. It is always about the right deal at the right time. So the day you start feeling that you are the most important creature, you die. Also, there are a lot of employees in all companies who fuel the feeling that you are God.” Another note of caution that Srivastava adds is that never believe your own hype, because you are the one who put it all up in the first place.