Headquartered in Mumbai, CASHe is the fintech platform that grants fastest loan service using proprietary algorithms that help in assessing the eligibility of the borrower by decoding their social profile, merit and earning potential.

Eight out of ten startups fail within two years of their founding across most industry verticals. Most businesses fail to take off within three years of their launch. Similarly, many countries and states fail to evolve into successful nations and economies post attaining independence and autonomy. Having founded a startup in 1998 with an initial investment and having successfully exited in 2012 for over a billion dollars, I have my personal views on why some entrepreneurs, businesses and nations succeed and others fail, despite having abundance of talent, resources and opportunities. The three magic words to explain this phenomenon are Passion, Perseverance and Grit.

Without Passion one should not embark on any venture. Quoting Richard Branson, �When you have an 'aha' idea, pay attention, perhaps the idea will help you to identify a market gap or even to disrupt an industry. But an �aha� idea implemented in an area that you are not passionate about is bound to fail.� Branson then gives the example of the launch of Virgin Money in 1995. It was not banking that Branson was passionate about; customer service is what excited him. It was through Virgin�s passion for customer service that Virgin Money set out to disrupt banking. Not just aiming to make a profit but instead instilling their passion for customer service into an industry that was known for lack of it. Travis Kalanick of Uber, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook are outstanding examples of entrepreneurs with extreme passion to disrupt.

Angela Duckworth, author of Grit, Passion, Perseverance and the Science of writes, �Achievement is the product of talent and effort, the latter is a function of the intensity, direction and duration of one�s executions towards a long term goal.� In other words, perseverance, as Malcolm Gladwell argues in his 2007 seminal work Outliers, "Beatles, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs,- how did they build such impossibly forceful spheres of influence? Lots and lots of practice, 10,000 hours to be precise.� Even with seemingly prodigious talent, you are required to put in 20 hours per week over 10 years or 10,000 hours of practice that will produce an Amitabh Bachchan, Narendra Modi, Sachin Tendulkar or a genuine Unicorn. Such kind of practice must have purpose,a long term vision that is pursued passionately. Of course, in the long haul, in the pursuit of success and greatness, you are going to stumble and you will need to get up, wipe the dust off and remount the proverbial horse. Therefore, perseverance is a combination of resilience, confidence and optimism and a never say die attitude!

Grit in psychology is described as a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's passion for a particular long term goal or end state coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve the objective. Grit is the reigning buzzword in education policy circles courtesy the psychologist Angela Duckworth. Grit or as I call it �10,000 hour� rule as homage to Malcolm Gladwell, you need focussed practice and a fierce will and tenacity to hone talent and genius. A fearless approach to practicing that lets you identify and fix mistakes over and over again makes for a successful athlete, actor, politician, businessman and student. It's ultimately not abundance of talent, resources and genius that guarantee success but passion, perseverance and grit. The three steps to success are �One�. Identify a burning interest. Two-practice it a lot with a fierce commitment to excel. Three-have a sense of higher purpose, a purpose that will improve the world.