Turning failure into success: Harsh Goenka, Ananya Birla, Aditya Ghosh share their slip-ups

Not all errors lead to failure. Business leaders share some of the slip-ups that put them on the route to success.

Sir Martin Sorrell - Executive chairman, S4 Capital
“In 1989, we [WPP] funded the acquisition of Ogilvy, half in debt and half in convertible preferred shares. And we forgot that a convertible preferred share in a recession becomes debt, not equity, because the share prices fall, and the shareholders don’t want to convert.

So, we had to restructure the company in the early ’90s. Now, Ogilvy turned out to be a very good acquisition. It was $825 million then and it was worth — even today — considerably more than that. But initially it looked like a little bit of a boo-boo.”

Harsh Goenka - Chairman, RPG Enterprises
“Our acquisition of Spencer & Co was seen by many as a mistake — it was a 100-year-old company that was grappling with complex problems. It [our investment] was into hotels, which was a non-core business for our group... But we were able to turn it into a successful buy. Through that company, we pioneered organised retailing in India.”

Jonathan Gray - COO, Blackstone Group
“We bought Hilton Worldwide — at the time the largest hotel company in the world — in 2007, and by late ’08, early ’09, people said that that was one of the worst investments ever made. Fortunately, we had bought a great company and we had a terrific management team.

We reinvested, believed in the business and it ultimately became our most successful investment and the most successful real estate private equity deal of all time. We made $14 billion dollars for our investors, but it was one of those situations where you had to keep faith in the darkest hours. For me, the moral is if you own a great business or property, you’ve got to have staying power.”

Aditya Ghosh - CEO, India & South Asia, OYO
“At one point [while working with IndiGo], people told me that I was in an operationally intensive business where margins were wafer thin and ensuring operational efficiency would mean identifying every possible opportunity to cut costs even if that means cutting on people’s benefits. I was told that ‘all this people stuff is a waste of time’. When I was asked to run the airline, I wondered whether I would be able to do justice to the role. [But] I would like to believe that empowering people helped create one of the most profitable airlines in the country.”

Ananya Birla - Singer and entrepreneur
“I think retrospectively anything can seem good or bad. Dropping out of Oxford initially felt like a mistake to a lot of people because who drops out of Oxford University? But it turned out to be the biggest success for me since I got into music and am now actually living my life. I’m fulfilling my purpose step by step. Dropping out really turned my life around for the best.”