Insurance agent plans airline

Truly inspiring article in Business Standard (here) !

Radhakrishna Shetty didn't let his humble beginnings come in the way of his dreams.

Radhakrishna Shetty, 44, is an agent of the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation as well as a financial advisor operating out of Mumbai, the financial capital of India. Don't expect this one to be lurching in corridors waiting to pounce on you with a new policy offer. Shetty is a millionaire agent, driving around in an expensive car, something many of his clients cannot afford.

More than that, Shetty has plans to start an airline. He has placed the order for a 180-seater Boeing aircraft and has asked a consultant to draw up a business plan for him. Meanwhile, his personal helicopter is on the way, making him, perhaps, the country's first life insurance agent to own one.

His plan is to start a budget airline that will fly on domestic routes. His hopes are pinned on an upcoming airport in Shimoga, 60 km from his hometown Chickmangalur. He is not too worried about the clutter in the low-cost aviation business and is confident of pulling it off.

For now, the project has been handed over to a consultant who will chart the routes and business model for him, which will be finalised only by March 2009. What he is sure about, however, is that he wants to fly and will stop at nothing.

Had someone met Shetty when he was a child, nobody would have believed that one day he would join the ranks of Vijay Mallya and Naresh Goyal.

Shetty's parents were labourers in a coffee plantation in his hometown. Despite the struggle to put enough food on the plate, his father would go to great lengths to educate his two sons, Shetty being the younger. He recollects growing up with just a bowl of Ragi porridge as the day's solitary meal. "It used to pain me that my family had to sacrifice food for our education," Shetty recollects.

He was on the verge of quitting studies, when he heard of the night school in Mumbai. Working through the day to support his family and studying in the nights appealed to young Shetty.

In Mumbai, he found himself a day job in a canteen at a fish market. His job entailed cleaning tables and vessels and also help in the kitchen, earning Rs 300 a month with the day's meals on the house and a small shack to sleep in. "My day would start at five in the morning with work in the canteen till 9 am.

From 9.30 am to 5 pm, I worked in a chartered account's firm. The rest of the day would be spent at college," he says. The day would end only after 11 pm, when he would finish cleaning the canteen.

"I hardly got four to five hours to study and to sleep. Those were very tough days for me," he says.

A chance meeting with a development officer in LIC changed his life for ever. The first four years as an LIC agent did not make any difference to his life. He managed to maintain his agency by meeting the minimum norms. In 1990, his income was less than Rs 10,000 a month — a decent sum but not enough to set up a sizeable business.

Things started changing after he met Logan Naidu, a motivational speaker in Bangalore in 1995. He learned about the trade association Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) from Naidu, which became a source of inspiration. In the same year, he qualified for MDRT by earning Rs 2.88 lakh as commission. After that, there was no looking back for Shetty. His insurance commission alone for the year 2007-08 was around Rs 1.3 crore.

"Your need can be the best driving force for the customer as well as for yourself," he says. Shetty never wants to be financially comfortable so that he can keep running the race.