Latest Post
How to break the habit of stress eating
Here is how to break the habit of stress eating. Every time you unthinkingly shove some snack into your mouth, ask yourself: Am I hungry? Or just bored and anxious? Stress eating is a classic mindless action that we do on autopilot. Here is a...
Recent Posts
What is holding our country back?
At the private equity fund where I last worked, in about half the investments where we lost money, the culprit was fraud by the promoters (i.e.,...
Leadership is not a ticket to comfort and luxury.
For all practical purposes, my first job out of college was to head the Trivandrum City Police as its Commissioner. Prior to that, I had only...
Life is not a zero-sum game
Envy is an amazing thing. I never envy the British Queen, who has inherited this massive fortune and privilege without having worked for it for even...
What freedom feels like
When I left my last job to do a startup, a new reality hit me – no more Car Club pickups, business class flights, expensive hotels, or unlimited...
More Articles
What makes us special is our convictions
In early 2009, I attended a townhall at McKinsey. This was just a few months after Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, and the US was still in the midst of a horrible recession. The partners running the meeting assured us that all was well – in fact,...
Don’t let other people’s judgement decide your life
In the 2nd year of my MBA at Wharton, I asked a finance professor for advice on landing a job with a private equity fund. When he learned that I had only worked as a cop, he told me bluntly – “With your background, it will be very difficult.” I was...
The ethics behind profit
Once, while driving in Trivandrum City, I saw a shop with a big banner: 'Margin-free shop’. Presumably, they don't keep any profit margin. On seeing that, you almost get the feeling that 'profit' is a dirty word. In fact, my daughter even asked,...
RDX or Detonator?
If you set fire to a lump of RDX, it does not explode - it just burns harmlessly. To unleash its killer explosive power, all you have to do is - hook it to a detonator (a thin pencil-like explosive device). Similarly, to achieve our life goals, we...