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India deserves decent winners and decent losers, not conmen
Two years ago, a dotcom investor funded a serial entrepreneur to the tune of more than 200 cr and lost it promptly in less than a year. That begs the question -- what did the investor see in the entrepreneur? A great idea? A track record of solid...
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Commitment of Leadership
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...
Overcome envy
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...
Freedom
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...
Conviction
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...
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Conventional Wisdom
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...
Margin-free shop
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,...
Straightforward path
Yesterday, I picked up a small rock lying on the road, and it is now sitting on my table. How much will you pay for it? Probably nothing. But what if you believed that someone else would pay 20 rupees for that rock? Now, you might happily shell out...
Opportunity for gaining experience
From the many 180 degree turns I have made in my career, the one big lesson I have learned is this: Life is to be experienced, not optimized. Life has no objective function to be maximized – it is not a calculus problem. It doesn’t have a...