One Goal. Infinite Learnings

Hey there, I am Keshav Maheshwari.

Thanks for being here.

No matter how you found me, you’re here and I got you.

And if you want to know about family businesses, how it works, and how it’s surviving—I bring you The Keshav Konnect!—my humble attempt towards making the otherwise strange and sometimes confusing life of second generation family business leaders, slightly simpler.

I’m all about combining the proven family business principles of the past with new and innovative ways of doing business. It’s what today’s businesses need to stay relevant, in my opinion.

A few years ago, I embarked on a family business career and started to build Allen 2.0 from scratch...

Well, now I’m sharing everything that I learned along the way…

I was born and lived most of my childhood in India. My parents raised my brother and me practically within the offices of our family business, Allen Career Institute (ACI)—a business over 3 decades old that offers unmatched pedagogy. After a few years, I moved to Dubai for college where I studied engineering in computer science. During my time studying in Dubai, I always longed for something big. Hoping to find what would shape my career and change my life forever, but was it business or finance? I chose business—a highly competitive field with no real guarantee of success—but that never stopped me from trying! I joined Zomato. With this newfound job opportunity available to me, I learned many useful skills that are helping me achieve my professional goals even today.

I like to think of myself as a person who is unafraid to try new things, which has helped me in the past. For instance, I was passionate about music during my earlier years and even created a YouTube channel to upload some of my songs. With time, I could express myself through music and build confidence in creating something from scratch that people could enjoy listening to.

Think about a time when you were passionate about something. Maybe it was even a passion for cooking or coding or anything. You were driven to be the best at what felt like your own unique thing. Most of us can probably relate because it’s one of those feelings everyone has experienced at least once. Next thing you know, your life isn’t just about passion anymore; other things come along that allow you to feel excited. For me, it was education and business, which lead me on an amazing journey starting out as a teacher and then moving into organizational consulting and strategy.

I grew up surrounded by businesses which you could say defined my family’s legacy—this meant that I was always exposed to the world of education. Perhaps it was this environment that encouraged my passion for teaching and learning. I spent some time off in Dubai, working as a teacher. The purpose of teaching was not only to understand something different from what my family has been involved with; it also allowed me to see how things were functioning at the school level overseas. While teaching allowed me to gain valuable self-experience in the education sector within Dubai, I wanted to discover more about how things worked so I set off on an adventure. This took me from being a teacher to immersing myself within one of the Fortune 100 companies—EY. The period I spent at EY gave me the chance to learn more about large organisations and how they operate within present-day business climates.

How I took the plunge into my family business

In the years leading up to my engineering, I was supporting an intense agenda of reorganizing my own family’s business and governance. My family was preparing for the succession from the first to the second generation, which I was a part of, and this was a gradual subtle process that demanded empathy, resilience and emotional intelligence from all parties involved. Handing down the age-old business came as a huge responsibility for me. I was expected to prove myself worthy of it and thereby secure the legacy. This is not something that can be achieved overnight. You see, I come from a family where the first generation was running the show but by default that meant that from the second generation onwards, I was also responsible for adding to the success of our family business and making it even better than how it was before.

From trying to fill in the big shoes to forging new tracks

The first thing my father, Govind Maheshwari said when I joined him on the family business journey was, ‘know your customer’. We can always plan the cleverest strategies and tactics, but we must make our customers our priority. That was very easy for him to say because he formed our foundation with great care, years before I became involved. But at ACI, we don’t just want to be another name in a sea of big coaching brands. We started from the ground upward and when I joined full-time as an executive, I first learnt about our business of coaching by tutoring students. This helped me to grow up from an executive role to a leadership role. And I appreciate my father more now because he never trusted me blindly with anything—he only trusted that through my hard work and dedication I would overcome any challenges ahead. It is a trait he has kept alive in ACI even today.

As a second-generation in a family business, you are responsible for strengthening the core values that built the business and especially for keeping the entrepreneurial spirit alive. As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Nothing worth having comes easy.” Over time, I was able to gain the first generation’s respect and trust, and as a result, became the Director of Allen Digital. From there, I continued my passion and achieved my dream as Managing Director of Allen Career Institute Overseas. It is my job to keep not just the intellectual property alive but also maintain standards in terms of ethics and values that go with being part of a family business. I do this by upholding certain principles when taking on new directions or making decisions regarding expansion which will ultimately make the business stronger than it already is today. As you all now know that I studied for my degree in Dubai and it helped me build a small base and a network that I could call my own. Having received a good sense of what the market had to offer, as well as understanding the psychology behind the multi-ethnic population and Indians living overseas made it easy for us to expand into six Gulf countries—and this is how Allen Career Institute Overseas was born. The foundation that my father and uncles had built diligently also helped pave the way for entrepreneurs like myself to prosper. Allen Career Institute Overseas has a mission to facilitate quality education by bringing its methodological expertise and pedagogical high standards to students in the international curriculum.

I‘ve always believed that part of growing up is learning how to adapt and by doing so, I have made plenty of mistakes, learned tons of new things and gained invaluable experiences along the way. By pursuing opportunities in a variety of work environments where I could learn and grow, I was able to realize that sometimes companies need entrepreneurs to take the business forward. I had acquired relevant work experience but decided to pursue MBA in Family Business to gain more knowledge and skills that are required to progress in this career and help my family from challenges that the future might bring. I saw a major improvement in my career. Now, I can truly discover how my education and my varied exposure make me find innovative solutions to a problem. The thought of creating something new and innovative is what excites me the most.

My journey is one full of ups and downs and I am still on it

Moving from India—the place where I was born and raised—to Dubai was one of the most challenging and fruitful experiences I have ever gone through. It resulted in an extremely useful skill set that is currently helping me navigate the waters of the complex education sector and also heading our family business overseas. I have always looked for ways to aspire and grow. Let it be through my pursuit of learning music, or working for a wide array of businesses from startups to multinationals. Ultimately, I have found ‘my place’ where I can use my education and experiences to pursue a career where I innovate, solve problems, and inspire others on a daily basis.

P.S.: Thanks for taking your time out to read the blog. I’m going to try and share my experiences unfiltered as that helps me too to put things in perspective. I will be back with some more updates on family businesses. Look forward to konnecting with you…

Until next time!