with my dad would come home from the
office and I’d charge you know running
into him being a tiny tot play a game
called hips with him he would lift me up
settle me down take me by the shoulders
and say champion I didn’t really know
what the definition of champion was and
what he was getting at but I felt a
sense of pride I said I felt a sense of
empowerment and a limitless ability when
he used that word with me I went on and
my entire family went on to pursue
professional tennis
I grew up between Mumbai India and
Princeton New Jersey and then we did the
big plunge and went for those tennis
academies in Florida splitting our
family between two different homes five
girls two parents two different homes
the family committed just making sure
that my younger sister Nia and I
succeeded in playing world-class
professional tennis so naturally I
thought champion meant champion and
tennis therefore I could equated my
success with tennis and that I had to
win a Grand Slam and that I had to be
number one in the world to fulfill the
definition my father lovingly called me
champion through a lot of downs and ups
and downs again I tried I sincerely
tried I got to top 100 in the world I
won us a silver medal at Asian Games in
2006 and then started to slow down
things weren’t feeling right I didn’t
necessarily have that burning desire to
want to win anymore
chasing a fuzzy yellow tennis ball got
very redundant
playing the same girls over and over
again in various glamorous locations
actually got boring from the outside it
might seem beautiful and might seem
really romantic big lights big stadiums
a celebrity lifestyle but it does get
redundant and for someone like me who
felt that I wasn’t a part of the larger
conversation who wasn’t a part of the
world on some level and really had a lot
more to give I started to find out that
that definition of champion was no
longer mine and mind you it wasn’t easy
you know we did the big shift the whole
family got involved and now for me to
betray this whole mission and vision
took a long time for me to really own
and I believe it was on one of my
comeback matches and hot El Paso
like 140 degree weather in a small ITF
tournament that goes parallel to
Wimbledon which I was just playing two
years before but I had to make a
comeback because I lost my ranking
starting all over again and extremely
bored on the court bored angry
frustrated and in those backhand down
the lines and they didn’t give me that
pleasure that they used to I realized it
was time to change it was time to
transition as painful as it was going to
be I had to move on I did my freshman
year at Princeton University in 2000
2001 then took a decade off to pursue
professional tennis and had to make the
difficult decision that it was time to
go back
lucky for me I already knew what I
wanted to do because there was another
passion that was burning inside and
keeping me up at night and waking me up
in the morning early to journal my ideas
wanting to create purposeful programming
that catalyze change in a hurting world
in a world where Millennials were
feeling passionate but a little bit lost
under
where they were supposed to go and how
they were supposed to achieve this cheat
excuse me this change that we need I
told my younger sister Nia who was also
on the tour with me at that time and
went back and was already in college as
she decided to retire from the tour and
I said Nia I want to create and really
change the world through the medium of
television and digital formats and I
don’t mind hosting one or two of them
either so she’s a tall you want to be
like the Oprah of India I said sure
she’s okay she could Edie you’re going
to be Oprah Chopra let’s do this so I
decided to go back to college and going
back as a 27 year old was not exactly
easy when my classmates were about 17
and 18 and it was extra tough when my
sophomore year they called me chica dee
dee then my junior year they were
calling me Chacon auntie and then by
senior year I became da dee I don’t know
how I aged that fast but they were
always teasing me but during my three
years the second part of my career at
Princeton I explored everything I didn’t
have to take six classes I only had to
take three or four but I did I didn’t
have to run for president I didn’t have
to start clubs and really stretch my
mind and go beyond knowing the world
that I knew with these blinders in this
myopic view of what I was supposed to be
as a tennis player and on that Princeton
campus and everything it gave me and
everything I gave back to it I became a
champion more so there than on a tennis
court I wrote my thesis on Satyamev
Jayate day I made six short documentary
films as well on unsung heroes and made
the show that originally was called
world heroes and the India launch was
called gone Banega hero which then
turned into the real deal the real deal
for me was one of the most defining
moments of fulfillment that I’ve ever
felt in my life it was a show on social
entrepreneurs one of who you’ll be
hearing from later today
start on the show as well and it was
about finding them featuring them and
funding them but more importantly I was
able to enable them I was enabled I was
able to enable an ecosystem that was so
powerful and so meaningful and so needed
it was everything I wanted to do and be
side by side with that an opportunity to
co-found a tech startup and mind you I
didn’t do very well in technology
classes at Princeton but the point was
that I believed that I could do
everything and anything I wanted to be
and do and I started to understand what
my father when we played hips together
and we did all these fun games together
he was talking about champion right he
wasn’t necessarily talking about tennis
he was talking about empowering telling
me Shikha you can do and be anything you
want to be luckily as Ajith was saying
earlier I was born into the parent
lottery so being able to transition from
professional tennis to Princeton
University to making TV shows and now
co-founding a tech startup called Indy
comm has been I would say significantly
easier for me than it is for someone
maybe coming from India unincorporated I
get asked a lot how did you transition
from tennis to entrepreneurship and I
don’t think it’s quite as big a leap as
people might think it is the values a
professional tennis player takes on from
hard work and resilience and persistence
and a lot of losing a lot of innovation
on the ground quickly moving and
hustling being the product and the CEO
of your very own company which is you
and the team around you your coaches
your nutritionists and what not really
our micro examples of what an enterprise
looks today for me to be able to
confidently apply decades of being a
professional tennis player and an
aspiring professional tennis player into
Indicom has actually been a little bit
of a seamless transition
I think to wrap up it’s important that I
express that not everybody as Emily WAP
Nick says she’s a multi potential ID and
she somebody I learned from on a TED
talk I didn’t realize there was such a
thing but I like to call myself a
multipotentialite because I’m able to do
various things and express myself to
fulfill my entire personhood knowing
full well that I’m more than just a
tennis player despite it being 25 years
of my life if I can leave you with one
message it’s about defining your own
champion being a champion is about
defining who you are with the passions
and limitless expressions of yourselves
create your own champion in you be
yourself and victory to you thank you [Applause]