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 dejected but since...

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, "What’s wrong with a...

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 10 rupees. So that...

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 destination that we need to...

You can’t lose a game you never played. Then why do we compare ourselves with others, whose lives we never lived? When we get caught up in the comparison game, we forget – everybody has different starting points, different life constraints, and different objectives. A...

I am NOT building a high-growth startup. Instead, I am building a “high-happiness” startup – more happiness for our team, as well as for our customers. Not having to chase ‘growth at any cost’ sets you free. We get away without doing any push marketing. We never had...

Some days I feel optimistic and charged up. Other days, not so much. Does it matter? Not really. You do what has to be done. Some days, you do it with enthusiasm and flourish. Other days, it feels like drudgery, but you still do it. We can’t wait for the right mood...

Once, when I was working at McKinsey, someone said to me, “You are an introvert, right?” It was an innocuous comment but I almost felt like he was making an accusation – I could feel my defensive barriers going up. I said, “You are also an introvert, aren’t you?” He...

Rarely has anything good has come out of my life without an intense, 6-12 month slog. So it may seem like I lived a miserable life, gritting my teeth to push through the slog. Yet, the reality was quite different. I was always super-motivated and rarely had to dip...

During my MBA, whenever I asked my classmates about their past jobs and internships, most would invariably start with, “Oh, it was amazing!” Then as you probed further, they would often sheepishly confess that it actually wasn’t THAT great. And in some cases, those...

During my first stint in the IPS as an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), one day, an IGP (Inspector General) called me, directing me to release a bus I had seized for violating some rules. In the uniformed forces, saying ‘no’ to your boss is very hard – almost...

I recently saw a prestigious consulting firm’s post on LinkedIn about ‘sleep deprivation’ becoming a huge crisis, and how the ‘sleep-tech’ industry is coming to our rescue. Really? On reading it, I felt like irony died a (sleep-deprived) death. I have never been as...

During my stint in the police service, when senior officers called me, they would sometimes ask, “Where are you?” The implication was that if you are in office, you are working – so you are a good boy. But if you were at home, you are slacking off. Nobody said it out...

My biggest privilege has been that I did not grow up in a wealthy, privileged family. Growing up, we had enough money for necessities, but not enough for random indulgences. For many people in my situation, the hunger for success and the drive came naturally – parents...

The only thing I have seemingly excelled at in life is throwing away whatever I have done, only to restart my career, repeatedly, from scratch. I first learned electrical engineering – admittedly, not very well. The IIT professors tried hard but for lack of...