Nishant: Hi Ajay! You seem to be intently focusing on something on your phone.
Ajay: Was just checking some news updates.
Nishant: What have you been following lately?
Ajay: Many things. The Russia-Ukraine war, Elon Musks interest in Twitter but I have been particularly watching the Sri Lanka economic crisis recently.
Nishant: I too had seen some news around it. Quite a dystopian image, isnt it?
Ajay: To say the least!
Nishant: The economic crisis triggered by the pandemic was devastating. Yet, I didnt expect it would lead to a whole country itself crumbling.
Ajay: Its true that pandemic has been one of the reasons behind what Sri Lanka is going through now. Ten percent of the countrys GDP was contributed by tourism, which came crashing down during the pandemic. But wrong policy measures have played as big a role as the pandemic in bringing Lanka to its knees.
Nishant: Oh, is it?
Ajay: Very much. While I wholeheartedly hope the country bounces back at the earliest, I also think this whole episode in itself is a big lesson for entrepreneurs like us.
Nishant: Enlighten me, please.
Ajay: Well, on one side we are boasting about businesses that are too big to fail. But on the other side, a whole country itself seems to be crashing, which is clearly proof that nothing is above failure. No matter how successful you think you are, a few ill-calculated steps could push you to the brink. And then a small nudge by bad external factors is all it needs to push you down the cliff.
Nishant: Thats scary.
Ajay: Relax, my friend. Im not here to predict doomsday. We are all humans, we are bound to err and we learn from it. But the roots of the Sri Lanka crisis lie in the economic mismanagement over decades. Similarly in business too overlooking our mistakes and letting them pile up could sound the death knell of what we had been building up.
Nishant: Thats very true.
Ajay: We must definitely enjoy what we are doing and have fun while doing it. But we are on a mission here and a lot is at stake, so we should also know better than to get carried away by money, profits and success.