EP2: Social Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Rubanomics ft. Madan Padaki

you can't throw an app and say you know what you shop everything I had a very these weird thoughts about you know what the future of things could be like 18 years way never held a penil in their lives has never seen an English alphabet in fact in a few Villages the villagers thought we are kidney Harvesters I wanted to talk a little bit about social entrepreneurship what's different till I realize maybe we're looking at it the wrong way that's truly giving back to the ecosystem right how should we treat others this is the the actual essence of life die without knowing what Treasures

Li with it I have to shut down the company tomorrow I won do something now I'll probably never wonder why is it such a big deal is that it doesn't matter where you come from The Young students would be sold into slavery help me change the way I look at world today every youth is an empowered youth every empowered youth is an entrepreneur is a change maker romics which is of the entrepreneurs for the entrepreneurs by the entrepreneurs when we were onboarding customers on UPI one out of three transactions fa they don't care about anything anymore so the compassion

is coming down truly believed when Gandhi g vision of Graham Sage the path we will do to get there to me is more important now I'm I'm looking at things from a very different perspective thank you so much if we can inspire a few people like that I think our job is done this is what I was talking to you about D this is the [Music] one the hustle Groove company let me introduce you to the hustle Group Company it's a Lifestyle brand that's redefining Street Wear through the power

of fashion self belief and resilience the second one being discover dollar which is an AI driven tech company that helps Brands and retailers recover hidden dollars from overpayments and leakages docn now's intelligent platform empowers businesses of all sizes to rapidly collect manage govern and collaborate on the data front transforming your documents and making sure there's an impact on the business bottom line all in a secure and a single environment [Music] ladies and gentlemen welcome to the

innovators and disruptors podcast I'm your host abai attendant today we have with us a true Maverick of social entrepreneurship a man who is rewriting the rules of rural development and Youth Empowerment in India meet Madan padaki serial entrepreneur angel investor and The Mastermind behind the concept of ronom XS from transforming uneducated rural youth into skilled professionals to Building Bridges between urban and rural India mother journey is nothing short of extraordinary he's the founder of onebridge co-founder of game Global Alliance for Mass entrepreneurship and

the driving force behind headheld High Foundation get ready for an inspiring conversation with a man who's not just dreaming of change but actively architecting it please welcome mad thanks thank you thank you abai thank for hosting me on the show pleasure sir it's been it's been such a pleasure I've seen you you know drive so much of change uh being a charter member for a few years now Tha Bangalore plus I have heard your conversations talks at various platforms both nationally and internationally and it's just been a pleasure to have you here today thank

you so much for taking our time thank you it's it's truly a honor to have this conversation and looking forward to covering a range of interesting topics and issues definitely uh sir before we get into specifics about your background and um amount of work that You' have done I want to talk a little bit about social entrepreneurship you know people have different definition of social social entrepreneurship in the ecosystem you know what's yours that's a interesting question that I grappled with when I moved over to the dark side or from the Dark Side when I

sold my previous Venture and started out on this journey a lot of people ask me so what's different right right how is it different being a social entrepreneur and I kind of grappled with that question for a for an year or so mhm till I realized maybe we're looking at it the wrong way I think the world should not be cleared into Enterprises and social Enterprises the world must be cleaved into Enterprises and antisocial Enterprises right so I believe that every Enterprise must be social by its DNA by its heart true and once you embed that cause deep into the organization or

the Enterprise you must behave like an Enterprise true right you must be profitable you must grow your revenues people must value the service that you're bringing or the product or whatever right and you must be sustainable right so I I think that in my view uh every Enterprise is social must have a social purpose right that's that's uh a very interesting uh perspective that you know every organization needs to be a little conscious about what they're contributing to the economy right to the society at large right and uh on the

same note I've just been thinking because I worked for some large organizations too and I've seen a lot of uh friends working in Enterprises we because of policies and regulations have brought and CSR budgets but do you see do you actually see that there's a culture of uh you know contributing toward social causes for the sake of the policy or because of the national bent or the DNA of the organization again um you know the CSR law to to me is both good and bad uh the good part is it mandates 2% right right uh the flip side of it is it mandates

only 2% right so if I were to go by the definition of an Enterprise then I don't have to say only 2% of what I do is toward social good 100% of what I do must be toward social good makes sense right uh not just 2% uh what it also does is it legitimizes the remaining 98% that you're not doing good by doing 2% CSR right so to an extent I think it kind of boxes us right uh ideally yeah uh you know 2% is only a guideline uh but it's it's a good guideline at least you do 2% but my dream is that uh we evolve as a as a entrepreneurial Society we evolve as a society where I

can proudly say that everything I do in my company is benefiting someone of the other makes a lot of sense makes a lot of sense and that's truly giving back to the ecosystem right because I think that's the need of the r just being too capitalistic in our own Pursuits to forget how we contribute towards the larger good of the society at at at any point of time yeah yeah exactly and and to a large extent uh I think we are all a part of the same system H right so this giving back taking more whatever the give and take business does not exist when you elevate

it to a larger level I mean I'm uh you know for me one of my most inspiring uh dialogues or quotes has been apparently when somebody asked Ram Mahari the great saint of tunal uh saying how should we treat others right his answer was simple there are no others it's such a profound answer very true so if I see myself as a part of a larger Cosmic system then there's no difference of saying I'm doing this for you or you're doing this for somebody else right we just doing it because we are all together right I think it's very

interesting you spoke about this right because in Hinduism we have spoken about this for centuries Beyond right Millennials as well uh but now with science also Al looking at particle physics a lot more deeply they're realizing that this is the the actual essence of life that you know we all interconnected yeah and uh yeah I mean I think this this is such a profound statement you just made I think this should reach a lot of young entrepreneurs and understand uh how they how they take up their courses of Education as well as going forward how

do they really contribute to the society at large amazing so mad uh your journey from meritra to headheld high foundation and onebridge is very fascinating I I think it was early 2000 that you started marit track I've been one of those people who's actually experienced mer track right I've been there for multiple examinations other things as well so one is for our viewers sake if you can just talk a little bit about what Merit track was all about because in my head the first time I saw a digital edtech so to say company or platform in in the country that I was exposed to was many

track we could just shed a little bit of light on that as well sure uh yeah 200 U I had just come back to Bangalore from uh uh I was selling software to the Japanese out of Tokyo oh and when I came back to Bangalore uh I was like stunned by the entrepreneurial energy at that point of time though very nent but uh you could hear that hey this guy has gone and raise some money doing some stuff M so I said was if I don't do something now I'll probably never get started out uh as an entrepreneur um so tried to look around for ideas and through a bunch of

serendipitious uh interactions stumbled on this idea of why don't we build India's first testing and assessments company right hypothesis is simple uh you know I think the Indian IT industry in 2000 was less than 100,000 people there was a McKenzie report which said by 2010 we'll have a million workers therefore you are adding a million people right and then you realize that the selection ratio was at least 1 is to 10 so which means 10 million people needs to be processed right so we looked at and said what if we were to design the test and process

these 10 million people without being a training entity or a recruitment entity right that was the Insight that got us out started with meritra absolutely uh didn't this whole sector industry itself didn't exist exactly and uh in a way we were naive it was great because if we had realized what we were getting into we would have never got into it and that's how meritra was born you know tracking Merit and therefore Merit track uh yeah and that's been a crazy roller coaster ride for the first 5 six years when uh very very early in the entrepreneural ecosystem our first

investor was a agriculturist from shimoga W uh who kind of invested in us because of three very coincidental reasons one um we happened to be uh in gadhi Bazar okay right next to a company called mry uh and our company name also started with an M right and uh we were also using computers therefore we were an IT company okay right our friend who the investor uh was influenced by one of the First Investors in mry V sidhart who came from shimoga right so his point was if sidhart can invest in mry in Gad Bazar right which is an IT company why

can't I invest in Merit track in Gandhi Bazar which is an IT company true that's how we got our first investor amazing right and uh we uh of course you know we went through some near-death experiences uh 2001 911 post 911 we were literally on the verge of a shutdown till I happened to go into a tie meeting met somebody sitting next door next to me and uh when he saw my small face uh he asked uh why are you so sad and I blurted out saying I have to shut down the company tomorrow all he did was put his hand on my shoulder took me to the side and said boss and I told him that's

idea he said that's a great idea I don't think you should give up so early that's what made a huge difference and that's why I'm so beholden to networks like because I think all it requires and I think entrepreneurs require a lot of love we Face very lonely Journeys right right we need somebody who can reassure us saying that we are here so Merit track subsequently went on to become one of India's largest skills assessments and testing company as you said at Tech we we went online in 2002 when we had done online exams through cifi uh info centers in Andra Pradesh

and so on and so forth we had experimented with online much before it was fashionable to call ourselves a tech right uh and 2005 uh we had released India's first employability report which is still now referenced amazing and uh we had raised about $5 million which looks like a lot of money then from and even now from HSBC private Equity wow and scaled it up of course Bal got interested we started working together and the rest is history manipal acquirers in 2011 so that's been one hell of a journey as an entrepreneur barely you know Same

album at graduated of in 9 yeah and just started the Venture a year later right that's amazing that's that's such a beautiful journey in fact uh I've just spent a year in entrepreneurship in the last one year and I could even in one year and this is no way close to the kind of experience that you you come with right I test to the fact that uh you know the Journey of an entrepreneur is very lonely there's so highs and lows and you know this this brings me to a point where till about a year I mean till about 2 years back as you think about a lot of these

entrepreneurs you know with the small win supposedly also pushing out on LinkedIn and calling it as a big win you wonder why is it such a big deal for them till I realized about 6 months back I was doing the exact same thing because for me that win was that came after a very long period of time you need to celebrate everywh yeah and that was the one which was keeping my and my team's moral up yeah so you have to do that but coming to skill assessment uh I had a very weird I am see I come from Innovation background so I have these weird thoughts about you know what

the future of things could be like right so one of those predictions that I made in 2018 16 something like that a bunch of years ago was the fact that uh since I studied uh human genetics and biotechnology M I had a feeling that in the capitalistic world that we live in or capitalist world that we live in uh there would be Enterprises which will look at Gene mapping and understand what kind of a DNA do we inherit what is the likely IQ and EQ that we are going to uh inherit and what is it that is the potential you

know that we carry to keep horning on that in the right induced environments right and keeping that in mind you will you know young students would be sold into slavery very early on keeping in mind these these DNA profiles and then their education would be taken care of by these large Enterprises so that the rest of their lives they can be enslaved with those same Enterprises right do you do you think that something like this is possible or this is just crazy science fiction now there is an underlying philosophy which I subscribed to for a long time mhm and I realize how wrong I

was essentially in a testing and assessments in the skill assessment space at a very fundamental level that's what we were trying to do you know you get 100 applicants we were trying to find out who are the five or the six was most likely to succeed in that job right and therefore we recommend them through a series of tests to the corporate right and then they are hired and enslaved or whatever and then we used to say the remaining 94 995 are unemployable H and therefore you are left to Fed for yourself right I carried that worldview till I stumbled on to this experiment

that we did through the earth I mean before we even called it the head die Foundation where we went and said let's set up a rural BPO in the deepest inlands of Karnataka and let's find Talent who is deemed the most unemployable H and is it possible to transform such an individual into an English speaking digitally literate knowledge professional I laughed my head out when I first heard this saying it's hard for me to find BPO graduates from BPO workers from graduates of Bangalore right you know let alone somebody from

be Yi and but when we embarked on this exercise and um and and really looked at the definition of the most unemployable and we said 18 years of AG never held a penil in their lives has never seen an English alphabet right in fact we went to the extent of saying even though the person has seen a train forget getting onto one he's not as underprivileged as we think you know we should look for we F A lot of people who met that criteria and uh we managed to find eight people six boys two girls who are brave enough to come with us in fact in a few Villages the villagers thought

we are kidney Harvesters they said we're going to take your 18y Olds after one year take away one of the kidneys and send them back or something like that right but we kind of convinced got these eight kids what happened the transformation that I saw in these eight and we have not touched about 40,000 people is stunning all eight of them in 6 months could sit in a podcast or a stage speak confidently in English with without any grammar but we're communicating we're super confident amazing and from the n9th month we were doing insurance claims processing for a

large insurance company out of couple and 12th month we were meeting the metrics that their Bombay office was doing H and these kids came from nowhere from annual monthly incomes of 3,000 they were earning 15,000 rupees a month wow so what it pro to me was that it's not the DNA it's not the gene pool it is that that every individual every human being has unlimited potential makes a lot of sense right but a lot of us as Professor mammad has told beautifully die without knowing what Treasures lie within right so what I've come to believe very strongly is that it doesn't

matter where you come from who you are if we can unlock that potential through confidence building through agency and saying hey you can do it right right the sky is the limit in fact a coward from a village in gadag I was there last week now runs a 60 beted Hospital in Cel as the Chief Operating Officer H and he's funded our training center amazing wow right all in a span of 12 Years brilliant so I think this uh myth that some people I think the universe the the Lord has given in equal measures right to everybody

but it's only that some of us Discover it some of us don't makes a lot of sense it's very deep and profound and I think I like like you mentioned you know I can personally attest to that as well because I've seen a few very interesting stories come out this way as well that it's only you know and that's why you need people who can Shine the touch so to say exactly to help them discover their own potential exactly you know because of work in poverty I've been asked several times how do you define poverty and we' had this poverty line at 32 rupes 4 rupes the one that I love the

most was what Amar said it so beautifully he says poverty is nothing but capability deprivation and opportunity deprivation right if you can create capabilities and connect to Opportunities that's what people will grasp it I mean if you really look at our Lives having come from middle class lower middle class families that's what we did our parents insisted that you need to build capabilities right therefore education exactly or whatever was super important yeah and then the colleges that that we went to ured Opportunities very true or

the ecosystems ensured opportunities very true right and the hunger made us hold on to both capabilities and opportunities and kind of you know rise up in life totally totally I mean I come from a middle class family too I mean I I I don't know if I can say I was privileged or I was underprivileged because my parents no matter what they made sure that me and my sibling my younger sister we always taken care of right fairly well enough that from a from a ected that we always had uh the shelter we had food we had clothes right so there was never a problem around that

but there was always a constant push seeing that you you need to figure out a way to skill yourself that allows you to be employable that allows you to make enough money to sustain a good life yes this was a constant doctrine that was you know pushed into our head hammered into our head all through our growing up right uh and that is why uh it's it's very strange today to see uh youngsters look at education from a very different lens I looked at education from a lens of employability right not necessarily utilization in the the right way right it was about seeking a job today uh the

genz so to say is looking at skill sets in a very very different light right they're looking at it from more from a utilization standpoint I mean this this movie 3 Idiots talks about that as well right Amir Khan he says I don't care about the degree I I care about what I pick up what skills can I hor when I'm I'm in this education educational environment and that for me will help me change the way I look at world today yeah so thank you thank you so much for for that coincidently mother I was at manipal uh just a few days back there's manipal entrepreneurship Summit going on

yeah and I was there I was invited I interacted with a lot of students there brilliant to see the kind of ecosystem that's flourishing in that part of the world which is not limited to the students only from um you know MIT or manipal ecosystem but a lot of young students and entrepreneurs getting an opportunity to showcase their talent showcase the kind of work that they're building and learn from that environment as well your journey post marit track was in manipal and then eventually uh I'm assuming through one of the experiments that you spoke about may

have led you to a path which you took up later right and and into the world of social entrepreneurship could you talk to us a little bit about that yeah uh I think yeah it was really fortunate that we that manipal happened phenomenal experi experience and you know manipal came on board almost in 20 2007 and I stayed on till 2013 working within the manipal ecosystem but at 2013 the experiment that I had done that we had done with held high had started to take shape and I felt a huge urge to say you know I should spend every waking minute and every breath towards doing this

because that felt more complete right so 2013 I literally asked myself the question what would I do if I took money out of the equation right fortunately that coming from a lower middle class background had completed one cycle at least that time I thought that I had enough to last me for a long long time though my Chartered Accountants now disagree to say you know it's only outcome where is the out outflow where is the inflow right but the last 10 years has been on that Evolution I so I looked hard and said uh you know youth potential is something that I should

work on so it's like peeling the layers of the onion so head high Foundation started right then I realized that it's not enough to just give capabilities you also need to create opportunities without the need to migrate because I'd seen the horrors of migration right right you'll get a kid from tier 3 tier 4 town to come and live in Bangalore even at 15,000 rupee salary it's hard for that person to make both ends meet right right so then realize that listen can you create opportunities in The Villages and that's how we started a rural BPO way back in 2014 wow saying

that let's set up a business process Outsourcing Center ran it for a couple of years but did not scale we broke our head against that wall saying that this is not going to work and then you you you you looking at uh you know what can you do to grasp a straw right and Amazon had entered India that time and happened to meet the India head of Amazon okay who my who was a client of mine in my previous life he said give me some B work he said all I can do is to give you a job for a guy who can read eight addresses of a tab can you go deliver that packages I said how hard can it get

right we are doing insurance claims processing my guy will read a uh address of a tab and we can go deliver so what started with one guy delivering 8 package a day in hosu uh today we have an army of around 4,000 people delivering 18 million to 20 million packages perom wow just in tier 3 ti4 so again Senate Deputy we had stumbled on to this huge opportunity where we were building capabilities but we were looking for local opportunities right and that's how one Bridge happened and we conceptualize one Bridge as the one bridge between

urban and rur and we are very clear that we will service only rural markets makes sense right we have not touched a Bangalore or a Hyderabad or a Chennai right it's been only in rural so it's evolved from there right so it's like uh you know you you figure out one solution and you realize that hey there's a problem that more needs to be solved makes a lot of sense in fact uh while you're speaking about this modet struck me a lot of gcc's are still talking about tier one environments to set up shop and with some of the examples that you've just

given it it is so obvious to me that you know why are gcc's not looking at some of these environments some of the tier three tier four cities because the cost of living and thereby their costs and expenses are reduced creates a lot of livelihood creates a lot of decongestion in tier one and tier 2 cities and gives a lot of opportunities for people to grow and you know contribute more towards the economy and their own livelihoods as well so more GCC should now start looking looking at these environments and you know probably if I can connect a few of them to you I'll

definitely do that absolutely logically it makes sound sense uh in fact uh you know if you look at several of the employees of gcc's and map them out they would be coming from the same colleges and cities from these T three TI four towns right right very true infrastructure is now improving dramatically exactly right uh again if you look at towns not even the tier 2 tier three towns tier four towns M mobile internet connectivity is not a challenge roads are not a challenge right right a phenomenal quality of life uh clean air water right so I think it

is only logical that work will move should move right right and there's only so much that are Bangalore or a or a Chennai or a Hu even can take right in fact U as per some of the conversations that I've been seeing with KM and ITB ministry as well Kara uh there have been multiple zones that identified where you know there'll be incentives created for people to now stop looking at Bangalore as a hub but start looking at these other three or four hubs including if I'm not wrong Mangalore yeah yeah Mangalore Bela H darad yeah myo yeah you know it's

amazing the kind of success stories that are coming out from Mangalore right uh robosoft was one Rohit uh who's our president for Tai mango built robosoft roll it to a Japanese Consortium for $100 million right completely out of would be H right and now there are many success stories you know a friend of mine who was with me in Merit track went on to go found ni solutions that recently out of wupi mango got acquired by entity data so and there were a thousand people chop right so I think uh what you know what we're calling as democratization of talent

democratization of Entrepreneurship itself and democratization of opportunities is super critical else we have very very lopsided growth very true very true and that that takes away a lot of natural resources from our environment it doesn't give give nature the time to balance it out in fact coincidently a week 10 days back uh one of my friends that I worked across four organizations where his name is subu he's the founder of a startup called as discover dollar right and he had his first office setup in Bangalore now he has a 30 people team but he invited uh

sanjie Gupta the CE of km saying that he is originally from Mangalore and while the one of the first offices is happen here in Bangalore right uh in the next 6 to 12 months he's planning to set up a 100 people office in mango wow and I think it's because of that that uh sanjie was also very keen to be a part of that initiative because he was like wow this is brilliant because subu comes from mango he wanted to give back to that ecosystem he said why don't I set up 30 people office in Bangalore but 100 people office in Bangalore that's so fantastic and

coincidently one of the startups which is focused on genz and Marketplace uh is coming out of mangalo I interacted with them over the last few days and I'm thinking of investing in them because uh of the way they are structured and the the niche that they focused on so a lot of new opportunities coming across you know newer regions in in the state I'm sure across the country as well completely with you in fact brings me to a very interesting point aai I think see for maybe 20 years we've copy pasted the Western model of ship right right the Western model was simple

you know it is the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur Centric view that you need to build scale Flip or sell right then you had the second model of the investor H who came in with an with the with the tag of a VC right who came one layer above the entrepreneur to say I'm going to put my money yeah and I'm going to take a risk on you but whatever rewards come to me first right right and third was technology was held very close to one card you know you held the cards very close and said this is the IP right but if you see what's happening now you're

seeing very purpose div entrepreneurs coming from tier 2 tier three towns they want to solve local problems true very true right you know it's not uh you're not sitting in and saying I want to solve something but we I see a lot of entrepreneurs in Mangalore wanting to solve local Mangalore challenges very true right yeah the dream is not that I will one day end up end up being a unicorn but can I build a sustainable one or $2 million business can I employ 20 30 people true right can I be profitable y right and then the journey will take you yeah second we seeing a

lot of local Capital being available right it's no longer a Bangalore was VC who's writing a check as you said you go to Mangalore you say I'm an angel I want to partipate the number of angels that we seeing emerging from a Mangalore belal darad gadag is very interesting so there's local Capital being available amazing right and third with democratization of tech with open networks onc okan account aggregator models whatnot right uh technology is an enabler it's no longer a mo makes sense I can build a lot of businesses on technology without trying

to rebuild the whole thing exactly right now ai and no code no code tools will make it very easier for to build anybody can build an app very true right so I think we are at a fascinating intersection true inflection point in the Indian uh the democratization of Entrepreneurship true very true in fact uh going from entrepreneurship to skill development and since you spoke about EI towards end right in the last few years we are seeing EI evolve at a very rapid Pace or us utilizing EI or new variant of EI in a way that we have not seen for decades before

that does this mean that you know the the whole leverage that India has of having employable people in the right age group available to this which is one of of our biggest Trends mhm do these people now need to be trained or cross trained into leveraging eii it's not NE they have to be eii data scientist ET but leveraging AI in the right way uh to be able to contribute to a different world that's shaping up today yeah the and the analogy is very similar about 300 or 400 years ago mathematics was considered as an esoteric science in Europe there were aassists who used

people used to go to help solve ma problem wow right so it was considered a very um uh Elite group but what's happened today is you can't dream of anything without mathematics mathematics has got democratized right I believe we are on the similar uh trans trajectory of course much much faster for AI right where it's not only a few who will be AI scientists and of course there'll be mathematicians right right or experts in mathematics but mathematics is a common skill right similarly I truly believe that AI should and will become a skill

that everybody must have whether you are a housewife whether you are a farmer an msme a student you must understand how to use AI exactly yeah right because that will get you more productive much ahead in life right so in fact uh at the foundation one of the big initiatives that we doing is AI for all in fact I was just in trip ID dwad uh 2 days ago and we are now taking an initiative to train thousand common folks Farmers msmes Housewives SG group women members and uh government school students on the fundamentals of AI and we're going to train about 2,000 people the next four

months and see what how are their lives changing H right and therefore how should how are they adapting and using AI very true because I think the application are just widening on a daily basis daily basis yeah daily hourly basis very true I mean it's uh it's just too difficult to comprehend what's the next model that's going to come in and how exactly is it going to be reasoning out better than what the previous model was doing so yeah I mean it's it's amazing I mean we talk about podcast I was just realizing that there's a tool

which is in a position to just look at the highlights of a particular video and in the next 10 minutes craft out you know Snippets I mean the youngsters today like reals on YouTube or Instagram right so 60c reel can be C out of that very simply just by the EI doing the sentiment analysis of the whole podcast and figuring out what needs to go out as a de I like wow okay that that is brilliant right I mean I don't have those skills uh I have to depend upon my dear friends that go to do that and they definitely going to do that so human element is always going to be adding

that Advantage exactly but I'm just seeing that you know even professional who are going to be doing posted it can now leverage EI so fast to deliver that at speed yeah so that's that's brilliant and and mother I'm going to come on a very interesting term that you have coined particularly which is rubics right right uh I have a basic sense of that but I think that you know the audience the viewers today would love to understand more from you what was what is romics why did you coin that term and how does it how does it apply to the scenario today we spoke about some of

the the device between the rural and urban environments can you talk a little bit more about that yeah so when I started working in rural Hinterlands with youth Etc in my head I was trying to come out with the framework how do you make sense of this because that's what Frameworks help you right right then I slowly started realizing that there are four elements that are super critical if you want any initiative to succeed in rural India okay the first is that I realized that not many of us were listening to the aspirations of rural people

right right we were putting our own filters right and saying rural needs this rural needs that nobody's really asked them what you want right or listened hard enough and their aspirations if not higher are equal to what we feel and think because we exposed to the same media right they see the same WhatsApp forwards the same Facebook posts true right so aspirations and understanding aspirations became a very critical component one critical comant the second thing which I which I which I work with very closely was talent I realize that there's no

difference between urban and rural Talent except their confidence and exposure right but we always underestimate rural Talent all things being equal we'll say We'll hire somebody from XYZ College in Bangalore versus ABC in gak right right there's an inherent bias right uh towards Urban right whereas talent in rural I think is far more hungry and malleable makes a lot of sense yes third entrepreneurship has been long associated with Urban cities but I've seen far more entrepreneurial resilience because rural has been entrepreneurial

forever right I mean nobody went there with a job we've got used to the job culture here right but farmer faces as much as risks as any entrepreneur does or more right uh you're running a small kirana store you face the whole elements of risk so there is far entrepreneur residents and lastly their ability to absorb technology is far higher than what we deem it to be right we you know you come the from from The Meters world you remember about 2 years ago we had done a meters in mandia in a village in mandia called cathal and we had onboarded about

8,000 customers onto a metaverse platform where they were interacting with an EV showroom and a avatar of a sales guide and E showroom very comfortably wow right and we ended up selling some 40 odd EVS through that whole experience right so what I realized was when you put these four elements together aspirations Talent entrepreneurial spirit and Technology you're creating a new Rural and that rural I called it this Ruben or Urban right which is which does not resemble the old rural anymore which is a new rural or a Reuben right and therefore

the model I called it as rubics amazing right to say that if anybody is thinking of building a rural business please keep these four elements in mind which is what I do every time I look at some business model and says is it capturing the aspirations of people are we leveraging local talent are we really working on the entrepreneural energies that exists right and are we using technology to the fullest amazing if we do these four then there's a high probability I think of a success of that model there fantastic I mean that's such an amazing framework I I think I I glan

through some of these aspects but then putting that together as a framework is uh so so uh interesting I mean now I'm I'm looking at things from a very different perspective thank you so much uh in fact uh uh brings me to a very interesting uh question right uh which is uh did you uh encounter some very funny nuances uh or incidents around your perception about the rural environments of what they wants or needs were like versus the reality of it because I've seen that in live Commerce yeah uh you know my perception about what rural would have ideally wanted you

know because we work on Innovation there's a lot of consumer research which is necessarily needed right because you have your inherent biases correct and uh live commerce was such a hit in rer environment that we thought that you know today if you shop via I mean today in you know Urban environments you're not shopping as much via nap tool or isia t shopping and stuff like that right or digitally web as well right but in rural they're shopping the same products almost at the same price but their aspirations are clearly aligned with

what you just mentioned so did you come across any such incident oh lots and lots of it and and that's where we started to get shocked by how little we knew H right and and and several uh things we take for granted I mean many years ago uh we were trying to sell cars and Tata Thiago it just got launched uh we went to this dealer in myo okay and said give us a car we want to do a test drive and very he said we said in the Villages around uh you know uh far beyond my chamar and places like that he said no no don't take the new one nobody will buy you take the slightly older

model and he gave us a Tata Nano now we took the Nano and the villagers were laughing at us to say what old car have you got what do you think we'll all buy Nano nobody's buying an urban only uh why should you bring this car and we barely did some 10 10 12 test drives and uh we went back to to him and said well nobody wants to test drive this can you give us your Thiago for one day H and very grudgingly he said okay I'll I'll send somebody we did about 80 or test drives in a day end of the day this guy had two orders from a village name he had never heard and this dealer was

shocked he says I thought I knew my people right I never expected my first two orders will come from this Village wow well nobody's bought it in my yet wow that's amazing right so what I realized was that and there are several examples where we put our filters and say this is what rural needs without even listening to what you want very true right I mean you've had uh cases where I think many many years ago I read a news article about the single largest order for Mercedes b coming out of some TI in shimoga is it okay wow uh where 100 B were delivered in a span of

a few days wow right because the people decided that we'll all come to together and order these cars together wow right uh and and you see this happening every now and then but we also uh don't sometimes look at the practicalities that they face I mean we've done a lot of work in UPI well we assume that it's very common UPI usage here yeah the villages are still very cash driven in our uh researches that we've done barely 8 or 9% of transactions are UPI okay makes a lot of sense any any particular reason behind that

see the point is I think uh we we've onboarded about 200,000 customers we did an experiment with WhatsApp trying to onboard customers I think there were three lessons for us one is it's habit changing it's everybody uses cash I use cash right two bank account usage itself is low it's used mostly for direct benefit transfers right and access to bank is still a challenge got it right you want your ATM is not too far away so people say it's easy for me to deal with cash it's with me I don't have to go and queue in a bank try to withdraw money and the last thing is sometimes I think

technology uh trips you know uh when we were onboarding customers on UPI uh one out of three transactions failed okay some Network issue a backend infrastructure issue so when you're trying to onboard someone and and and you say let me show you something cool and the cool doesn't work right and the I says boss if I had tried this and my money had got stuck who will I go to right you I made a transfer of 100 it not reached you yeah what is my recourse right uh so there's that fear there's that fear I'm assuming there's also a certain lack of trust as well lack of

trust as well absolutely so we need to create so that's why in one Bridge we started creating trusted networks we'll say okay you want to do a UPI if it doesn't go through here is your trusted entrepreneur who's our guy go talk to him he'll help solve it right right so that will encourage people to do more so building trust and adapting technology for that uh you know set of constraints right uh is important otherwise many times as products we say I'll develop something for Cora I will knock off a few product features knock off a few

Frills Etc and then say a diluted product for Kar right uh will not work will not work yeah I I had a very similar uh experience uh you know a few years ago I was in a company called as ABN Bev it's a largest world's largest beer brewer and uh we were trying to retrofit every cooler with certain iot and cameras devices together so that you know we were able to look at any displacement or theft of the coolers itself also for shelf Purity inventory replenishment a bunch of these use cases right which could be Sol through computer vision and iot devices and uh

we identified 2030 Point of Sales or shops environments in both rural and urban Bangalore where we wanted to you know push it out H and I remember one of my teams was in a rural Bangalore based uh wine shop and they called me up saying that you know boss it's difficult to deal with these guys like what happened and uh you know they were like they are just saying that you take your budw a coola along with you we'll call one from king fisher one more and I said why what happened and they're like and then I spoke to the owner I had to actually drive down again to that

place to to sort things out and I remember the owner saying that you know your guys are idiots they are seeing that they want to deploy this at uh 11:00 a.m. or 12:00 p.m. and I like yeah but 11:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m. who is going to buy your beer like you wrong this is the time when most people come and buy the beer and I was like wow okay that's that's shocking for me and we realized that you know there are certain inherent issues that we sitting out of our corporate offices never thought about right we didn't think of the whole value and were people who soldiers in ABN who

would actually go to all these Point of Sales and this perspective did come out we ignored that exactly exactly so there's so much there that you know we sitting out of these cities and corporate offices are ignoring exactly but the world has changed quite signic there's a big populace out there which is asking for the convenience that we looking at in cities as well they're asking for the same set of solutions that we looking at here but like you said with trusted Networks becomes much easier to deploy that exactly no I so resonate with what you're saying I mean

if you look at the whole e-commerce Journey the last 10 years as well when it's really taken off we barely soled for the first 150 200 million people right very e-commerce need to be soled for the remaining 1 billion people in India right and my belief is that requires a completely different approach you can't throw an app and say you know what you shop everything on the zap right you had to factor in the trust you had to factor in the technology constraints and you got of factor in logistics Last Mile right which is again a huge challenge which we've been

working on to solve over the last 8 n years makes a lot of sense makes a lot of sense no that that's a really good point to think over and pond over and I think a lot of people should reach out to you to to get your help in that right because as you said you've working with Amazon and a few other e-commerce environments today d2c is looking at getting their products out there in a more meaningful way even someone like a ship rocket while they have par in certain markets there's a lot of PIN codes that they have not covered yet right and I think uh these are mutually

beneficial environments or synergies that can be created very very well that exact serves the End customer very well yeah and there is massive consumption that's happening aspirations are there but not being served makes a lot of sense awesome uh I'm going to go into a different angle now you've been involved with unicef's jua initiative MH how do you see this partnership shaping the future of Youth Empowerment in India see I got uh pulled into UNICEF uh in a conversation that we were having on entrepreneurs and youth as entrepreneurs

and UNICEF had launched something called as generation unlimited globally and they wanted uh some help on creating this platform for India right I come firmly from the belief that uh every youth is an empowered youth every empowered youth is an entrepreneur because we need more job cre creators right and every such job Creator as an entrepreneur is a change maker makes so this resonated with the UNICEF team well and we said let's create a platform which any young person can find a way and a set of tools and a set of Partners through which I can say listen

I'm I'm able to build my skills right use those skills to be either employable or find entrepreneural Opportunities right and from there can you really become a change maker a community leader makes a lot of sense so it's been 5 years and the journey at UNICEF has been fascinating UA is now one of India's largest youth engagement platforms brilliant uh we work with various Ministries uh we enable young people to engage it is youth first so you know one of the things we talking about is we go and ask youth what you want rather than saying here is what we have right and

we've been able to design and co-create a lot of programs together with Ministries with youth at the center makes a lot which truly empowers youth H right so very interesting and since you're talking about youth Madan do you do you foresee a a change in the way they are looking at uh skill development as against how we were looking at it how how's youth today because there's a there's a burning issue for a lot of companies across the globe today as we are going higher up the mass Low's pyramid of hierarchy right and a lot of Basics are solved for us you know or the

younger generation has been soled for them with the parents in a economically better situation than than what their predecessors were they are I I should not call them privileged but they are definitely more involved exactly uh than than what we were exactly our in our generation yeah so what nuances are you noticing when when it comes to skill development or Youth Empowerment yeah so my sense I get is see I think when we look at skill development H we are still looking at it from our when I say our the the economic

perspective rather than what youth want right right uh and then we are forcing down models just because I need plumbers I'll say Plumbing is a great skill it is a skill but how many people aspire to be plumbers right how do we factor that in how do we sell that well right right we haven't attempted to do H so I'm going to flip it around to say listen especially in the age of AI and Technology changing so fast and we are at the cusp of several exponential Technologies right you know you take drones which have last 2 three years uh We've started to see a lot more happen

and a lot more will happen you take robotics uh industrial automations true uh even personal uh robots uh or you take uh 3D printing which is I think we barely scat the surface right I think these exponential Tech Will Truly change the way consumers and societies interact makes sense and what we need to do is therefore for youth for us to focus on elements that are non-changeable H which stand the test of time so for example confidence you know no technology will replace your confidence very true how do you build confidence right is a critical

skill set very true how do you communicate will never go out of fashion irrespective of happens it's your thought and your articulation right how do you develop creativity H you know how do you develop that Innovative mindset right right how do you develop compassion H because if you want to solve problems you are to understand again compassion can never be programmed right right and and lastly how do you develop collaborative skills H because you and I working together is more important than me saying I'll do it on my own right so I think these are

unchangeable skills that we need to build in our education system and skills right the moment you have confidence you can communicate you are creative you can collaborate you know you are compassionate you'll pick up the next thing automatically makes sense nobody does not have to come and teach you oh here is AI of course there will be some training right but you've equipped that young person with a capability right to stand with their head held ey and say listen any challenge the world throws at me I'm ready to face amazing very true right rather than saying oh today I'll

teach you whatever you know industry 4.0 by the time I hit the market that industry 4.0 would have become 5.0 the way technology is volatile and transing evolving today very true no so brilliant in fact is it safe to then uh state that the human EQ the emotional aspect of a human is what is going to differentiate us with in terms of the future with AI 100% in fact I'll add another layer which I think we're missing as a society and I'll call it as SQ okay which is a spiritual CIP oh wow brilliant okay it's EQ is one but I think if we can I think we losing uh

that next level also to say why do we exist right what what is my role in the world what is my swadharma what is my what is my purpose right and therefore what should I be H is a much deeper or a much higher level of Consciousness very true right and and I think we are losing that right uh you know you take our own constitutional values or take what we used to call as the uh you know as our Dharma right right what does Dharma mean in this context um I think what's happening is uh we need to elevate conversations to that level h because at the rate at the which the world is

changing and the rate at which we're seeing schisms and divisions come right if we are not able to approach it with this cohesiveness right with this SQ I think we'll we will we we're going to inflict a lot of fragmented challenges makes sense yeah that's that I know when you speaking about Dharma and Sarma uh it it g me a very interesting perspective I mean I I have thought about these Concepts separately and suddenly it made me think that you know are we not I mean when we talk about first principles and second order thinking we just doing exactly

that because back in the day why do we exist what is our mission in life is what used to be the most pertinent question exactly and we are no longer doing that anymore exactly and that Discovery is happening willy-nilly in some by some hook or cook later in our lives H but imagine if that power if that was discovered earli right and you build everything around that yeah so accident versus accidental versus intentional exactly makes a lot of sense I think I think you today should think a lot about that because I see either they are much more exposed or aware of what

they're doing or I see a polarization of the other type of Youth which is which is just flowing through exactly they don't care about anything anymore so the compassion is coming down yeah and and to your earlier point also abai see the good part about economic growth hm is that the levels of privileges so to speak is going up our children right are not uh that in difficult conditions relatively speaking very true than what we were yeah and that is great as economic progress goes yeah right which also means as an economy we opening up a lot more choices right but the wisdom

that comes along exercising those choices right exercising those privileges and entitlements I think is far more important today right they're not answering those hard questions they're not coming across those hard questions exactly and when life throws you curve balls we get into a lot of mental depressions uh health issues right you know confusions so this is this is a very uh elevated state of mind that we're talking about in fact uh funnily enough uh I have almost a 4-year-old I mean my

son is about to turn four and a few weeks back he had his annual Sports dat okay so we go there lots of parents there young kids till the age I think class of 8th or 10th and this guy is in his uh you know he's a toddler so he's probably in his pre- primary uh as we call it today and uh he had a race and at one point of time in the rush to come first he falls down and we had not seen him take that fall well in the past coincidently one of his Partners you know gives him a hand saying that get up and this guy had a bad fall on his chin the audience which

were a lot of us parents were like oh you know there was this moment and me and my wife standing and looking at like oh God is he okay and he gets up doesn't even dust himself and he runs to the Finish Line with a smile on his face and interestingly he comes to me and my wife and he tells us this that you know Mama D I just got up and I ran I didn't worry about the pain it was such a learning for me because I think sometimes I forget that you know I need to do that too and a four-year-old was teaching me this and I how do you even know this

something like this amazing no and what you say is so true I think children are born with it and we educate them out of it right innate learnings are already there yeah and and somehow we try and chip away all of that and say hey that's not you this is something that you got to do and and I think it brings to a question of our entire education system itself very true how should we design the system for the world that we're hurling into right because we're still stuck in the ' 50s and the 60s very true there have been a lot of

conversations around you know a lot of these genz folks asking these questions should I do my MBA should I not I said see the value proposition of a MBA back in the day versus the value proposition of MBA today is different vly different and I I do not know what advice to give you because it's a question of your career you know you need to ask ask these questions for questions to yourself I can just talk to you with the pros and cons of it but it's at the end of the day each individual has to take this call but when I was pursuing my MBA back in 1113 for me MBA was also an

environment to upskill myself but at the same time network with a lot of people and because I was part of a global course that also gave me a perspective about learning the cultural nuances around me and not everyone was as enthusiastic about those cultural nuances or other subtle nuances a lot of them were just in it for the jobs cut to today I tell them that you know if you're an entrepreneur at the age of 21 in the next 3 years without investing as much of money as you would probably do in a good B School you could

probably learn a lot more or even if you join other startups probably you could learn a lot more through the early stage Journey but the structure that you need to probably learn can come from the B school so you know it depends upon the time in or state of your life that you need to invest into these kind of learnings upill yourself no I think it's it's fascinating I was reading a book few years ago called social physics H and uh and this guy's been a researcher uh at MIT or one of those schools for a long time and he argues that the Paradigm is no longer that the

smartest person in the room wins he says the person who can interact with others Harvest ideas connect the dots right collaborate with others carry everybody forward right is most likely to win than the brute power of smartness makes sense right right uh and I think unfortunately uh you know many B schools still focus on individual uh smartness or whatever whereas real life teaches you these things much faster right right and and therefore it also looks to how do you how do you then change the The Learning System itself right to enable every

young person or every professional to be that way makes a lot of sense fantastic mother I've seen Tai Bangalore evolve over the years and I just can't say enough the amount of transformative role that you have had in shaping Thai bang to what it is today the contributions to the overall economy the contribution to uh grassroot level impact that Thai Bangalore is doing and recently the global Thai Summit as well right uh Tha Global Summit as well do you want to just talk a little bit more about uh you know your role at Tai and now as a global uh you know board member

as well just share some perspectives around how Tai is shaping up the whole ecosystem and how how do you feel how proud do you feel about the change that you have brought in sure no it's been uh it's been f is a phenomenal brand you know started 32 years ago probably the oldest uh network of entrepreneurs right we are the largest and uh it's the only Network which is of course a nonprofit and uh which is of the entrepreneurs for the entrepreneurs by the entrepreneurs so when I took over as the president of Thai Bangalore The Challenge in a city like Bangalore is that it's such an

entrepreneurial City energy there are events happening by Myriad organizations day in and day out right and I felt that uh we were losing the positioning of TI hm which is all about fostering entrepreneurship right so we try to focus on three things one that time must truly represent the voice of the entrepreneur because we are the entrepreneur Network itself right right so how do we truly understand pain points how do we make uh programs which entrepreneurs can use to become more successful right right so we sharpened a lot of our

programs the second thing that happened was that we have to make entrepreneurship much more inclusive Bangalore naturally gravitates towards Tech right but entrepreneurship was far beyond that true right so how do you bring in other networks of entrepreneurs into this larger umbrella called Thai right how do you make it more inclusive and democratized right uh was the second lever and the third of course was that it has to result in some changes how do you contribute at a policy level how do you contribute at the thought leadership

level I mean we've been engaged with almost every initiative of the state government right uh from the it BT uh entrepreneurship startup from the beginning right uh since uh the last four five years right uh so we took some of these as key learnings and key challenges to say we will uh truly contribute and therefore Tha will become relevant and of course the I think for me personally the Capstone right uh was the Thai Global Summit uh we said hey if it's coming to Bangalore we B for it 15 months ago and said we have to make it the world's

largest celebration of Entrepreneurship wow uh because Bangalore deserves it and Tai Bangalore is the Forefront and uh it was fascinating I mean the over 100 people spent as volunteers time over an year and uh we pulled off the ti Global Summit in December with about 28,000 attendees wow over a 4-day period about 1,500 our Global delegates about uh 6,000 plus students 4,000 5,000 entrepreneurs we had rural youth innovators coming from all across Karnataka women entrepreneurs uh it is magical and I think it's generated a lot of energy

yeah for me personally it is payback time in the sense that I benefited a lot from like the story that I was sharing from being a part of network like Tha right and I think genuinely believe that entrepreneurs uh odds of success will increase if they're a part of a network like this which is truly giving in nature right very true and I think uh your Tha Global Summit was had all the eyeballs in the country on bangal for those 4 days you know people just looking at what's happening in that City from the pmo or PM's letter that I saw that came in yeah so I mean

everyone was keenly looking at the outcomes that were being driv and I think there were brilliant outcomes there were brilliant conversations I think lot of synergies that happened all those 4S were just fantastic to see it was such a energizing uh week right and I think there were some activities just before that as well yes we had done a lot of runup to that event the whole city was we were ensuring that the city was buzzing and of course we took the last day to myour which was like brilant we celebrated cultural entrepreneurship in my which better City to do it than my

very true I mean they were BS in the city they were they were coming in the I mean the front page of newspapers and I was actually my father was in town and I was telling him this is what I was talking to you about Dad this is the one right this is happening in the city so exciting right so there's there's this innate sense of excitement I could see in the in the city at that point of time with people walking in you know people were excited about going to IC yes right and learning so much because those conversations were not your daily typical conversation they were so unique

conversations as well exactly we had we had actually created uh each of the conversations in a very meaningful way we had 400 speakers over these 4 days and we had gone into depth like democratization of Technology you usually don't hear about that right we had talked about agre abundance not about agre tech which really how do you benefit Farmers by actions of everybody right uh we had as I said one of my standout moments was uh you know government school kids from across the state coming in and interacting with entrepreneurs right and The Gleam in

their eyes I think for me if you can inspire a few people like that I think our job is done amazing that that's so so such a such a strong message and I think uh uh it it kind of shows in your eyes how Soul satisfying it must be it was uh it's fun I think it's once in a lifetime experience uh but it was uh I think more than the event I think for us and sanjie who you were talking about Kem was a co-conspirator for us we were very clear that this event must change the face of Entrepreneurship in the country and in our state and we've really taken the democratization of

Entrepreneurship we announced the 10,000k uh 10,000 startup program for beyond bangaluru that we are now taking very seriously in the next 3 years can we really Unleash the Power of 10,000 entrepreneurs right from uh the rest of Karnataka to power up uh we've taken an initiative around specifically around women entrepreneurship so I think a lot of these elements will now start accelerating makes a lot of sense and I think that's so beautiful to hear that because these are very specific steps that are that are you know being crafted because a lot of times the call to

action is not as impactful but these steps are very very formalized structured ways of going forward right in that direction where where where the whole country is growing yeah thank you so much for that thanks to each and every one of our chter members you know you being a part of tha and several other members who came together beautifully including of course we had phenomenal support from the state government we had phenomenal support from the ministry of it and Electronics so it is uh it is truly the the ecosystem coming together that's so so

beautiful to hear that and specifically when we talking about the future of the country what do you believe will be the next big disruptive innovation in the social entrepreneurship space that is going to change the way we look at doing things in India see I've truly believed when Gandhi vision of Graham swaraj I believe that unless and until every village is self-sufficient every village is economically

empowered and and there are opportunities in every village right you know we will not get our paaj right it's not about whether India will become a 40 trillion 30 trillion whatever economy right by 2047 I think we will yeah the path we will do to get them to me is more important right how do we again to take Gandhi G's terms the S and an right how do we make sure that everybody Rises and how do we make sure that the last person in the line benefits right so I think therefore the

disruption especially in our population scale thinking technology will play a massive role in making sure that the benefits of economic growth and social progress reaches every last individual right right more importantly also I believe that uh it is just not technological disruption but we also need a social movement right where you can really create young people almost like our Freedom Movement right to be able to be touch bearers of Entrepreneurship and social innovation in every village makes a lot of sense right I mean that's how we got our

independence right the whole nation you know when the when the dandi March happened right uh people laughed at Gandhi g and said uh you know do you think people will get galvanized around Salt right but the idea was so compelling and simple right so I think our Innovation will come when we discover what is our next Salt for the country makes a lot of sense yeah and I think the answer to that is in my mind Mass entrepreneurship that we need to create every village every taluka Tel as hot beds of innovation and uh

entrepreneurship that's so beautiful and that that's such a powerful statement to make because galvanizing everyone through Mass entrepreneurship could could could be the motto that that has to be transcribed in every every chapter of every book these days absolutely so in fact at uh you know with with leaders like Ravi venkatesan and Mak maheswari three of first co-founded game and that's our vision the Global Alliance for Mass entrepreneurship is how do you ignite the spark and the fire of Entrepreneurship in every nuk and corner of our country

right right how can we bring that enlightened spaces where every young person can dream to be an innovator and entrepreneur and how do we make that happen that's so amazing thank you thank you so much for such a bold and compelling Vision that you know the youth should follow and I'm sure that you know all of us listening to this would be very inspired by this thank you no I think uh we have a unique opportunity at this time to do a lot of things and uh you know the more the marrier who join us on this journey I'm sure a lot would be inspired by this

thank you thank you so much M on a on a slightly more fun note right there were a bunch of questions that I thought that you know I should ask you and and uh you know dwell into the other side of mad who's not just a cal entrepreneur but it's also you know a very very fun orator right there lots of experience that you had and I wanted to tap into that so M your life journey and general specifically your entrepreneur Journey has been fantastic there have been so many different uh you know areas that you have created impact in if your journey was a

Bollywood movie what would be the title of this movie um yeah so one of the philosophies that I follow which I think is a very very key entrepreneurial trade and therefore resonates to that movie name at least is nice yeah because I think entrepreneurship or any mission that you want to accomplish is all about lager hoing right it's not going to happen easily if you give up it's gone right right and you need to do it in the right Spirit true right so that's one the other thing is um sometimes you look at

all the crazy things that one does and of course the kab Kushi kab gam but sometimes I've changed it to kabi Kushi kabi K Kushi I hope now that Kushi is not the right you look at some of the yeah and hopefully when you when you still survive from that K Kushi you will get Kush I mean you look at some of the crazy initiatives and say what Suicidal Thoughts did I have before uing on this why did I do this very true but I think that is the entrepreneural madness very true I I think it's it's about uh taking a rebirth yeah and and I think every um

crazy thing that you pull off I mean you know we never mised a TI Global Summit as an example would become like that many many days in the run up to the event I wake I woke up in cold sweat to say what was I smoking when I said we'll do all this right why should we you know you had resource constraints you had to raise money you had to pull this off that scale too yeah and that scale but I think that's the fun part that when you pull off something or when you attempt to do something like that it elevates everybody to the next level amazing yeah I'm sure that that you know what do you

call it that milestone in your elevates next Lev brilliant one last question mother uh if given all these things that we are seeing today if there was a very fresh new subject that could be introduced to the youth today what would that be very fun subject that that that teaches them and yet uh gets them to you know gets them to enjoy life as well so you know I've been trying the stunt out in a few colleges mhm I'm saying if every student in this country can go interview 10 people who are not like them

H completely different right it could be a small vegetable vendor it could be um a a kid in a slum right I'm speaking let's say a a kid who goes to a convent school or whatever right right uh it could be an elderly person who's living in a uh in a uh elder care home and if that student were to come and present Life Lessons Learned wow from these stories of 10 very different people right uh it opens up their eyes why I'm saying that is sometimes in our rush we forget to see and hear and listen to

what others are going through to me compassion uh cannot be taught it has to be experienced it's okay to sit in a class and say you have to be compassionate right or you have to have empathy yeah but uh yeah but imagine now and we're talking about reals imagine uh millions of movies and reals being made of stories of these Heroes because there's a hero lurking in every story very true very true that's beautiful and what would you like to call this subject yeah maybe you can just take it as uh you know I I think we had uh when we were growing up we had this serial

called Mary Kahani right right or something like that right uh it it is just storytelling right right uh I think we should have really uh yeah a Mary Kahani kind of a movie being made by every kid nice very nice and sharing that this is what I this is what the hero of my story does makes a lot of sense for all the Educators out there who are listening to mother this is a fantastic suggestion and I think this is this is so brilliant for all the young students out there to pick up this as a life skill thank you so much mad on that note I will give you

a imaginary hamper uhhuh our hamper is yet to be delivered in the city today so this is the heavy oh man thanks a lot but I'm going to ship it to you shortly this week as well I think you gave me a hamper full of love and uh and wonderful conversations thoughts thank you so much no it's my pleasure I just would want to call this out that this hamper is highly personalized to you and it is brought in by Cupic design which creates unique personalized and premium corporate gifts that make a lasting impression to to them and uh when you get it I'm I'm hopeful that you like it

because it's very very personalized to you know some of the things that you've been doing wonderful thank you so much for joining us folks please do look at what M has to share it amazing amazing Gan in the short period of time that mad has shared such amazing Snippets of information knowledge and wisdom and do follow us share feedback and reach out to M for amazing contributions that all of you can make thank you so much M again for joining in thank you thanks for hosting me here and really enjoyed the conversation thank you thank you I loved it I loved it so much of so much

of his it was good fun and we kept weaving in and out of topics I think I decided to go against the FL that [Music] feel free to share your perspectives through comments subscribe to the channel and do send us some suggestions as well thank you