At McKinsey, when I was once in a really tight spot, a young woman at one of the Firm's specialist groups came to my rescue. Under an impossible deadline, I had to geo-map hundreds of branches of a bank (our client). But this lady got it done. So while thanking her, I...

Can losing a job be an opportunity? I don't want to sugarcoat or give a feel-good answer. But let me share a few experiences. When I was running my last startup, the first Covid lockdown forced us to shut shop. Within a week, we had no business, no revenue, nothing....

During the compulsory military training in Taiwan, recruits are seemingly trained with a singular objective – to pass the exams. When practicing the bayonet drill, you practice a chant for each movement, which is what they will test for in the exam. But unfortunately,...

When I was leaving my last job to do a startup, my family asked me to reconsider because ‘doing business is not in our genes.’ Do genes predispose us toward some professions? At first blush, this hypothesis seems fairly tenable. In the US, I saw that a lot of motels...

To put it politely – the startup world is messed up. Big time. And we need to fix it. In my last startup, when we were fundraising, we met a particularly aggressive (‘sharky’) investor. During our discussions, they constantly told us to follow the model of an investee...

In 1998, we went for our first counter-insurgency patrol in Nagaland very excitedly. We were a bunch of IPS trainees attached to an army unit fighting militancy. Unlike in the Police Academy, the dangers here were very real. So we put on heavy bulletproof vests and...

Years ago, during my first startup, I took a shared office space in Bandra (Mumbai). Every morning, on the way to work, I would see a retired-looking person (in his early sixties) idly sitting in his house by the window, with some jazz music playing in the background....

I knew an IPS officer who had cultivated the reputation of being a ‘crime fighter.’ And he did that by chasing petty criminals at night. But alas, all he was doing was the job of a head constable. Admittedly, he was good at it but that is not what he was hired for....

During my childhood, since my father was in the armed forces, I ended up moving cities and schools a few times. And whenever I started a new school, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. In the first few days of a class, if I raised my hand to answer a question, I kept...

You need a non-zero failure rate. And here is an experience of mine to prove that. In the second year of my MBA, as I was selecting my courses, I was faced with two options: Option A: Take a quant course that I could easily ace. Option B: Take up a course on...

During my MBA, a college classmate visited us in Philadelphia. He seemed happily settled in the US, doing a conventional tech job at a bank, drawing a $90k salary. His was a predictable job, with no growth prospects. Every year, his salary would go up by a few...

Years ago, we visited my wife’s aunt in California. When we opened her fridge door, it felt like the whole world came tumbling out – it was so jampacked. And that was not it – they had another industrial-scale freezer in their garage which was just as packed. In fact,...

If you have ever been in a rut, you know what it feels like -- nothing is satisfactory, yet nothing changes. Life is unhappy. Days just go by and nothing much gets done. You set goals and resolve to change 'tomorrow,' but alas, 'tomorrow' is just a repeat. It is as if...

Before my wife leaves for her office, I usually ask her, “How is your day looking?” And her typical response is, “Really bad. Whole day meetings!” Even though she heads her team and has full autonomy, she has little control over her time. And she is not an exception –...

On a vacation near the Gujarat frontier, I went for a morning run with a BSF (Border Security Force) company commander. He was so fast that running with this former commando literally took my breath away! In fact, every morning, I would see him leading his men for the...