Chapter 9Rohit MehrotraFounder & CEO, CPSG Partners
The most powerful leadership truth is that failure almost always precedes success, yet the most powerful leadership irony is that success is often the first step to failure.
—John Mattone
INSPIRED BY HIS FATHER, ROHIT MEHROTRA'S ethics, vision for technology, and passion for mentorship have defined his career and his life.
Rohit grew up in a middle-class family in Lucknow, India. By the young age of 17, he had developed an uncanny ability to find innovative solutions to challenging problems: he could find clarity while others would get lost in the noise. He attended the prestigious Indian Institute for Technology (IIT), where he earned a degree in electrical engineering and then joined a college graduate rotational program at a company that built tractors.
Rohit looked at the tractor engines and said to himself, “If we took this engine and put an electrical winding around it, we could create individual power generators.” Rohit recognized the potential to create a profitable, inexpensive generator using parts already at hand. Moreover, he saw an opportunity to provide rural Indian villages with affordable electricity and change lives.
Several preliminary discussions ensued, but ultimately, Rohit voluntarily left the company to pursue other opportunities. Shortly after, the company designed an engine that loosely echoed Rohit's concept and called it the Flywheel Mounted Generator or FMG.
Even though he no longer worked at the ...
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