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Inspire Someone Today
Inspire Someone Today
E143 | From Passion to Profession to Community - P1 | Arun Pai
Step into the streets of Bangalore as veteran storyteller Arun Pai reveals how he transformed from corporate consultant to the city's premier walking tour guide. After six years in the business world, Arun boldly decided to create something entirely different—a premium walking experience that would reveal Bangalore's forgotten histories and global connections.
What began as a simple observation during his time in London—that quality historical walks didn't exist in Indian cities—evolved into a two-decade passion project. Through meticulous research and countless hours exploring the streets, Arun uncovered fascinating stories that challenged the popular narrative about Bangalore's origins. "Bangalore has always been a global city. Always," he explains, pushing back against the idea that the city's significance began with the tech boom of the 1980s.
Arun's methodical approach to entrepreneurship offers powerful lessons for anyone considering an unconventional path. Rather than seeking investor funding during the dot-com bubble, he committed to building slowly with his own resources, testing his concept with 100 participants before officially launching. For over a decade, he conducted walks every Sunday at 7 AM without fail, creating consistency in an industry where it didn't previously exist.
The conversation explores how Bangalore's geography as a crossroads city shaped its development, why premium pricing signals value, and how Arun's specialized knowledge eventually led to representing Karnataka during India's G20 presidency. His journey embodies the philosophy he borrowed from cricket legend Rahul Dravid: "Just keep batting and things fall into place."
Ready to discover the hidden stories beneath your feet? Join us for this inspiring conversation about seeing familiar places with new eyes and finding success through patient persistence.
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As a Bangalorean, you have to leave the city for a few years to fully appreciate it. If you've always grown up here, then you want a lot, but when you go and live elsewhere you really appreciate what this city is all about. It applies now, it applied at that time. I quote this often, but you know, raul Drabid is my one. He's also a childhood friend and he would say we just keep batting and things fall into place. Right. The same way. You focus on the product, just keep on doing it. Make it better, things will fall into place. So the other thing that hit me was that Bangalore has always been a global city. Always it has had global connections, always. It is never presented like that. When you ask people the story of Bangalore, they will say nothing happened till one day. Texas Instruments set up a plant in 1985, and then Bangalore.
Speaker 2:Boom. That is not the story. Welcome to Inspire Someone Today podcast, a show where we dive into the stories and insights that has the power to create ripples of inspiration in your life. I'm your host, srikant, and I'm thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration. Thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration. Imagine walking through the streets of Bangalore where echoes of the Wadi al-Famili's footsteps still linger on, where colonial era churches whisper stories and where a simple road can transport you through centuries. Today we walk through Bangalore's history with the man who made it an experience.
Speaker 2:It's an absolute joy to have Arun Pai joining this episode of Inspire Someone today. Arun, thanks for joining us, thanks for calling me Srikant. Well, you reframed what walking is all about. While it took us a lot of time to stop you walking to come on the show, but you definitely reframed what walking was all about. While it took us a lot of time to stop you walking to come on the show, but you definitely reframed what walking was all about. Before we get to that point, you had a great corporate life and then you decided to call it quits and started something completely different. Maybe we'll start from there, arun. So how did you kind of get to this moment of doing what you are doing? When did you decide or what made you to decide about? Enough is enough with the corporate world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually great corporate life is a loaded word. Yeah, just to give some context, I graduated in 1993. I'm pretty old in that sense, and that is the same time India's economy opened and I did my MBA, which is a new idea at that time, and we were the first batch of MBA students who graduated when India's economy opened. It was a heady time. Infosys had this and this publication in Bangalore but interestingly there were no jobs in Bangalore so I moved to Delhi. I worked with an American multinational firm doing consulting, which largely meant when companies came to India to decide, do we want to invest here? They would send the junior guy to meet with the CEO or show him the Taj Mahal or run around. So I scored a lot of face time with senior people. I spent time in the Ministry of External Affairs helping write a book on how to look at India stuff like that which I'd never been trained to do in my MBA. But I got exposed to a world I had never seen before about how a country has to be presented.
Speaker 1:So much of my corporate life was actually talking about the country, helping people when they come to the country, set up shop, find land all sorts of things that you do when you enter a new country. So I spent time in Delhi and in Bombay, away from my beloved Bangalore, for the first time, and it was a heady time because I don't know if you know, but people of my vintage will know that before the 90s there weren't too many corporate jobs in India and suddenly it exploded. We were the first guys who saw what a corporate salary was, which meant that you would typically earn more than maybe what your father earned at the time and from Gurgut service top of mid 90s. And I still tell young people I meet today that when I was in college the top salary for the guy was one lakh and they say, oh, I say one lakh per year. You know so even in the premier MBA colleges we must understand that India has moved from a situation where salaries were not very high in absolute terms but very high in relative terms compared to the other options. So I lived the corporate life for six years. I traveled the world on the business account. I got a Maruti 800 on EMI, which is such a big deal in 1997 that you actually buy a car in three years into your work on EMI. So these were the times when this was new and I did that and at some point I felt this is not what I like to do, this is not my thing. I don't want to rise in this corporate world and while it was financially nice at that time to be able to buy a car and buy a mobile phone which not everyone could do in the late 90s in India it was not what I like to do.
Speaker 1:But as part of my brief corporate stint I was posted for a year in London. You know, when I was fairly young and I just got married. We moved to London for a year and I saw a new country with a totally different eyes, you know, and a lot of the experiences I picked up in my impressionable time. India was still not fully liberalized and open yet. You know we were way behind in many things. So I started, I went to Europe and London with wide-eyed admiration, like you always do when you go abroad for the first time. But after a year I think I began looking at things more critically and saying, like most of us fail when we go overseas. We say, wow, these guys do a good job of so many things, but can't we do it back home? So I think that seed got into my head that you know we are capable of doing more things.
Speaker 1:And then in the year 2000 was the famous dot-com crash, and those people who are younger than me, who have not lived through that don't know what it was like. It was a heady period for two years when, you know, every sort of company was getting funded. People were doing crazy things. I was in the thick of it in Mumbai. I used to hang out with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs and go to cafes and money. You know, business plans were evaluated on napkins and all those things were going on. Google was just founded. It was a heady time globally, everywhere amazon, google when all these companies started at that time and the impact was being felt in bombay, where I was, and it became fashionable to quit a job and do a startup in 2000 and so many of my colleagues said, you know, did precisely that, and so I think, when there there is a sort of flavor of the days that it's not fashionable to be in a job, it should be your own thing.
Speaker 1:I think I got my burst of inspiration to do something different and but in contrast to what most people were doing, which was going and raising money and selling dreams, which people are still doing. I saw the internet boom up close as something that I didn't like at all, because it was all about young people taking other people's money, selling dreams, creating, you know, building castles in the air, which all collapsed. And I saw it up close and that really troubled me a lot because you know, theoretically, as an MBA you learn about. I still remember Goldman Sachs brought out a report on how to value a portal and really went public. You know, and we did the math, the Excel sheet behind it it's all nonsense, basically, you know, if you look back in perspective, right? So a lot of people lost a lot of money. I saw that up close and I said, no, this is not what I want to do.
Speaker 1:So when I got my urge to do something entrepreneurial, which a lot of people go through after a few years in the corporate world, I took a very different line. I said I first want to go back home to Bangalore. I'd been away for 10 years. See, I think as a Bangalorean, you have to leave the city for a few years to fully appreciate it. If you've always grown up here, then you want a lot, but when you go and live elsewhere, you really appreciate what this city is all about. It applies now. It applied at that time and I'm from here, my family's here.
Speaker 1:I wanted to come back to my roots, back to my home, and I decided that I will do something where I will not take anybody else's money. I will use my own time, talent and any savings I have which was quite small and I will do a business where I earn it through actually dint of my own hard work, through sales. And one thing they don't teach you in business school is how to sell. I was recently called to speak on stage as an alumnus at the IIM, bangalore and I kept saying I told my profs who were sitting behind me you did a lot of good things. You did not teach us how to sell, like literally go out on the street and sell something to somebody, make them part of money. So these were the realizations I had when I left the consulting world, and so I and let me do something I really like.
Speaker 1:And I discovered when I spent a year in London. I used to go on heritage walks in London. London is excellent for not just walks, for it's Sherlock Holmes or it is, you know, reading other English authors or playing the Monopoly board game, I realized that somehow or the other, the English had found a way to create an impression on a young Bangalore boy in a very positive way. And I go there and I go on. I was a big fan of the Beatles, so I'd go on these tours to all these roads where you know John Lennon did this or Paul McCartney did that, or there's somebody who would take me on a road where Jack the Ripper potentially killed somebody, and you get back and think and say they're just walking on a street and telling you a story. They do it so well, it's a performance art. So I really love that. And so somewhere in my mind it hits you that why don't we do this in India? Because in the year 2000, if you think about it, even now, the ability to go to a city in India and enjoy a storyteller who's a performer, this, like you know, it was just not there.
Speaker 1:So I think when I took my break somewhere, something in me said let me do something to present India. And so, as an MBA, you know India is the product. We have to just package and promote it. So I said I don't need to create anything. I just want to tell people the story better. So long answer. But essentially I just worked in the corporate world for six and a half years. That's it. So you know, by the age of 30, I was done. I said, let me try my own thing. And you know I haven't looked back since. It's been almost 25 years. I have not worked for anybody else, and so my corporate life was a very small part of my career so far, and once I quit I never looked back. I never felt like ever working in a large corporate again.
Speaker 2:That's an inspirational start. Not only did you kind of move away from corporate, wanted to do something on your own, but something on your own terms in a very, very unconventional way, and that was the birth of Bangalore Walks. Tell us about Bangalore Walks.
Speaker 1:So I decided I want to stay in Bangalore. That's a call I took. There were some personal reasons as well. We'd been married, we had two kids. We had to go to school At some point. You can't be as footloose as you'd like to be once you start bringing up family, fine. You can't be as footloose as you'd like to be once you start bringing up family. And so you have to take some decisions, and so the decision was that, yes, this is where we're going to be in Bangalore. Our families are here. And so once you get into that anchor where you decide where you want to stay and where you put your kids in school, then you start thinking about, if you're an entrepreneur, how do you make that work? And sometimes it's good to be in the right place at the right time. The first Lufthansa flight into Bangalore came in 2001. The boom of India opened in 2004. And I always say I'm so fortunate that I decided to become an entrepreneur in my city the same time. My city boomed and the whole world showed up here, and so, since my idea was broadly to do with presenting my country, it's very interesting.
Speaker 1:I'm a runner, I love running, distance running. I've always liked to run around the streets. Wherever I've been, I ran and in 2004, 2005, when I was jobless and looking for something to do, I began running with a few friends and we'd run on this new road called Inner Ring Road which connected Indira Nagar to Koramangala. It was brand new and Outer Ring Road was an idea. I still tell people in 2005, outer Ring Road was an idea. Large parts of it were mud track. There was one building called Intel. It was unbelievable how Bangalore was and people said something is going to happen here, and if you lived through Bangalore in 2002, 2003, you would never have guessed the way it's turned out now. But actually, new to Bangalore, they had migrated here for work and so, as a local, I would start telling them stories about my city, just for fun.
Speaker 1:And I discovered I was good at that. And what's interesting was I was in my 30s. I'd never been a good public speaker. I'm not a debater, I'm not a speaker. Basically I was never trained in theater storytelling, but I guess, for whatever reason, I found that I could tell people's stories simply by being a Bangalorean, and so when my idea came to do something, the obvious thing was let me go to a place like Hampi World Heritage Site. I'd just been to Athens and Rome and Stonehenge. You know what really stunned me about England is Stonehenge, which is basically a bunch of stones. Really think about it, that's it. But I spent an hour there with such a beautiful audio tour and I came back so transfixed and I said, gosh, we have got so many monuments in India which are similar, right, why don't I do something?
Speaker 1:So I went to Hampi for a week to just spend time and figure out what to do. Must remember those days in 2005,. There was no mobile phones of any quality, there was no audio tours, in fact, I just did. Wikipedia did not really take off in India till about 2006. Google Maps was not there in 2005. So the world was very different, so information was not available at all, and so the value was there in actually providing information, seeking it out.
Speaker 1:But after spending time on Humpy, I said, hey, listen, why don't I do something in Bangalore itself? It was not obvious. So I did a very simple survey. I still find it quite funny. I called up the three five-star hotels in Bangalore Leela Palace, west End. So this is my market survey to start a new business. You know, you have to do a little bit of market survey right. So I called up Leela Palace and West End, who are just about.
Speaker 1:The boom was beginning. Everyone is showing up in Bangalore, ceos of companies, and I called Leela and said I've got some guests coming in. And the Leela Palace said let me transfer you to the travel disc. When I called the travel disc, his first question was sir, do you want Innova, ac or non-AC? So the immediate thing was I have a requirement of some senior British colleagues coming. What can I do? Was AC, non-ac? I said okay, ac. Then I said what will you show me? They said as though it was a very strange question to ask Sir, same sir, kapanpal Klaipur. I said okay. I said who will be the guide? He said the driver. So the five-star experience in Bangalore, where they were charging huge prices to present Bangalore as a great place to invest.
Speaker 1:The moment somebody wanted to yook out, it basically became a taxi hire service where there was zero responsibility for satisfying the intellectual curiosity of the visitor. And so it struck me then that the tourism industry was about providing AC cars. So, regardless of your IQ or your experience, I will give you a car, I don't care who you are. I was so wrong because people were coming to understand India. They didn't care about creature comforts anymore. So I remember making my first PowerPoint presentation.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately I was an MBA. I had to make a PowerPoint to say and I drew a tourist and said are you appealing to his body or to his mind? Because our whole tourism industry is about appealing to his body, giving him that time it was largely him a good hotel, good food and hiding him away from India, air conditioning. And I said what about the curious person who's talking to them? So I said I will create a product. So you, you know, classic MBA and find the market need I have to find a product that appeals to the curious traveler. And who is the curious traveler to India? A person who's coming to India for the first time, like because Bangalore has got its international connection, who wants to understand the country in a language and perspective they understand.
Speaker 1:So I said, let me do that. But how do I do that? How do I get people? So I said I start doing walking tours because it requires zero investment. But just go on the road and walk. So zero capital investment is a good business to start, especially when you don't have any money right, and you're saying I'm not going to take money from anybody else, you go for it.
Speaker 1:And so I said let me just go on MG Road, which is the least likely place that you would find any surprises. Everyone thinks you know MG Road in Bangalore. I've cycled there all my school life and I said let me start walking and looking around. And I was absolutely stunned by what I found. So what I discovered was when you start walking and looking, you have to create a story for somebody to put pressure on yourself. It's not that there is a book to read or there is a you know someone to ask. You have to figure it out.
Speaker 1:And then Bangalore was fascinating. I still remember walking into a few churches on MG Road and I was absolutely stunned with what I saw inside A, because I had never been inside myself all my life. I never was curious, but the moment I was curious I found so many things that stunned me that I remember there was no Wikipedia. I had to go to Mythic Society Library. I pulled out old maps of Bangalore. The joy of discovering my city was so intense that I spent months just getting excited, pulling out old maps, looking at what was here, and it was so easy.
Speaker 1:I won't call it research, it is just curiosity. Okay, I have no degree in this or knowledge of how to do these things, it's just common sense. But looking at a map, walking on a street, reading the name of a house, reading something on a church wall, stuff like that. So I came up with some theories. I read a bit and within a few weeks I said, wow, this is just too good, let me call my friends. So I anyways used to run regularly. So I called 10 of my runner buddies and said tomorrow, let's not run, let's walk. And they said what's wrong with you? I said no, just come. I said 2005. They all came, very nice of them, and the deal was you listen to me for two hours and I'll give you a free breakfast. It seemed to work, all pictures.
Speaker 1:We walked from one end of MG Road to the other and I told my stories and then at the end I gave them a piece of paper and said give a little feedback. And they did it very honestly and the questions were would you pay for this, how much would you pay for it? Business questions apart from did you like it, not like it, stuff and I got some very interesting feedback that people loved it. They were very engaged and so I think that gave me the confidence that I had a product idea. But I delivered an actual sample to people I knew on the ground and it worked very well. And then I said okay, in classical, what I've learned in college you know, now we have to do some testing. So this is a story I tell often to young entrepreneurs. I said let me just refine this product to the point where I think I can take it to market. To use a phrase, in those days, you could buy a good breakfast for 100 rupees had to believe now, but 100 rupees you could get a nice breakfast, a buffet breakfast in MG Roll.
Speaker 1:So I took a decision that I will put capital of 10,000 rupees of my own that is, 100 breakfasts and I will try to get 100 customers to experience my walk. But I will do it in a way where I test out everything involved making a website, how to communicate, how to call people. I will test everything out. So I said I will do it over 10 weekends. Every Sunday I will conduct a walk and on that walk I will call 10-12 people and I will do my walk, I will give them breakfast, I will take feedback and only after I finish 100, will I decide what to do. I mean, there was a lot of rigor in it which you know sometimes people forget nowadays a lot of rigor in a startup. So I did it very rigorously.
Speaker 1:And the other thing which I learned, which I liked always, was to create a scarcity situation, that it should be so cool that everybody should want to get onto it, and you have to work at that. So my first bunch of friends I said each of you can tell one person about this walk next week. There was no WhatsApp in those days, you must remember. Today it is extremely simple to market something. You just put it on Instagram or in an era if it's only SMS, it's very different. You can't just spread the word. We forget the world before WhatsApp and social media. It's very difficult to reach 100 people.
Speaker 1:I sat and made hundreds of calls and told people I'm doing this thing, would you like to come? And I called friends, friends of friends. You have to do very hardcore sales, telecalling, literally. And on the next Sunday I got another 10 people and within the third Sunday I got another 10 people and within the third Sunday it got booked out. It was free, so it was invitation only, right. And then I realized I'm on to something. And on the third Sunday a person shows up, who's a British guy, who says my boss is coming next week, can he come on your book? And slowly I understood that who the customer is for this kind of thing.
Speaker 1:I found lots of Indians came who were very curious about their own city. I'd never expected that. And I found a lot of folks saying I've got a visitor coming, this is, there's nothing else in Banyo to do. And so After my 10,000 rupees with exhausted and hunted customers and feedback, some of whom were very influential people in Bangalore Influential in the sense of Bangalore is a pretty small town actually. At least in those days, anybody who was everybody had come on the walk, especially in the space of history, art, culture, business. It became a thing to go on. I said now it's time to launch. So how do you do that? So I had a launch only for the media. I still remember that. So I think PR is a big business.
Speaker 1:Today I guess I don't know how it works, but I simply said I'm having a work only for the media 7 am on Sunday. I mean not to disrespect the media people, but not many senior journalists will show up at 7 am on a Sunday. You know, anywhere the media world starts a bit late in the day and I still find it fascinating that about 15 journalists showed up and I was very strict. I said I'm starting at 7 sharp and if you come late. So I found that if you're very firm and professional in communication, 15 journalists showed up, which I think is a dream for anyone who's launching a product. 15 journalists came, all Bangaloreans. They spent three hours and I got incredible media. Everyone wrote about it and I think that really launched it. So this is to explain to you and I, as I do to many people, that a simple idea where I spent a few months doing it rigorously, it seemed to click and I'm still doing it 20 years later. So that's the, that's the genesis of it.
Speaker 2:No, fantastic, I think. Not only did you talk us through the launch of Bandleworks, you have also given a lot of the listeners out there contemplating to start something on their own, a template of sorts that there has to be some method to the madness, and there are definitely some of those elements involved in what you have been able to do.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'll just add one thing as a reflection. See, when you don't take somebody else's money, when you do it on your own, you think differently, right? So when you are the boss or the entrepreneur and you're not beholden to somebody else except your customer which sounds very obvious, but it is not. When I look around, and if you say customer is king or queen and you honestly take customer feedback and listen and try to do your best, it sounds very straightforward. But I think maybe people falter at that and you do it steadily, incrementally. You know so I quote this often. But you know, raul Dravid is my one, he's also a childhood friend and he would say we just keep batting and things fall into place. Right, the same way, you focus on the product. Just keep on doing it, make it better, things will fall into place.
Speaker 1:I think the moment, having seen the vagaries of the dot-com world, where people were selling dreams and ideas and market will grow so fast. Nobody knows. So when you're in a new space, you are the expert who nobody else knows. I mean, I discovered that. So the idea of being an entrepreneur is to do something new. The moment you're doing something new, nobody else knows about the space and you can define how you move in that new space. The moment you talk to experts who have not done it themselves because they are parting with money or advice, the risk is that you might go wrong right, and I'd seen a lot of that. So, having seen that, I felt trusting yourselves, being patient and being humble. That listen to the customer is where I think I got it right, because I'm still doing it, so obviously I was happy with it.
Speaker 2:I am still doing it and I can definitely watch for being part of some of those tools that. How cool and how unique it is for you to just know the city, know the city, know the history of the city. And one thing I would want to ask you is was there a moment on the Bangalore streets when you did these works that changed your life forever?
Speaker 1:See, I think I'm in the service industry. I charge money to people to give them a good experience and make them feel happy about the city they're in. That's essentially what I do, so it's a bit of a performance art. It's not just about history, it's not about sharing knowledge. I'm not a professor. I'm creating the experience and I'm competing with other experiences.
Speaker 1:So I was very clear when I began this that in 2005, the best family experience you could go was PVR Gold Plus. That was all 500 rupees for the ticket, and I said I want to challenge myself to make a walk which is the guy talking on the road of MG Road, and I will charge 500 rupees per head. It was a target I set myself. So when you say I want to be as good as the competition, my competition was not walks. My competition was other entertainment options for people on a weekend, which was PVR Gold+, Coram Mall, I think, came in 2004,. Again context. So it was a time when, you know, people went for movies and all there's a thing to do on a weekend, not go for a walk at 7am, right. So but by doing that, by trying to create a premium experience, you have to deliver, otherwise it won't work. And when you do that, you get the sort of people who value it right. So again, to some extent my background in MBA was that when you create something of premium value and can pull it off and people pay for it, your product has to be very good. The moment you compromise on its premium nature, then that is one background where I started saying whatever I do will be really top class.
Speaker 1:The other idea which I've internalized from a young age is that whatever you do, we be the best in the world, whatever it is. And how do you do that? First, find out what the best in the world does. So I had spent a year in London and seen who I thought were the best walk performers and I critically analyzed what I didn't like about them. And what I didn't like about them was I was an Indian in England going on a tour and they would tell me about George and Elizabeth and Edward. Without they, Edward, without they assumed I should know these things. They didn't speak to me, definitely because I was an Indian, right, and I said no, I have to personalize my tours. I will speak to my audience. You have to connect to your audience.
Speaker 1:You cannot deliver the same script every time. It won't work, especially in an international setting. And Bangu was getting people from and a guy from New York would land up in the 7A but happened so fresh first experience in India. Then the guy next to him will be a 65 year old guy from Basungudi who's lived all his life. How do you conduct the same script for a hardcore Bangalorean and some Americans without losing one person or the other right?
Speaker 1:And so Bangalore, being so cosmopolitan in terms of the popular showdown, forced me to create a universal script, which is very crucial in my business, A universal script which can speak to all audiences, whatever their background, engage them. So I started with what I thought was the best in the world and I said I'll make a better product. So I tell also young people that you know just try to be the best in the world. It's a very audacious way to think, but it's a good way to go. So in some way, by tagging my goals very high, particularly examining what I thought were weaknesses in the global model, I came up with scripting and delivery and I basically make people happy.
Speaker 1:So when you are in the business of making people happy and they are not happy, that can be very troubling, but every time. So, if you're a performer and you say something or sing or dance and people smile and go, you're happy. So what keeps me going? I mean, this morning I did not even a tour, I did a walking, I did a running tour. Can you believe it? I ran, I did a fire. Keep running tour with 90 women. Today is March 2nd for Women's Day. Right, they were all happy, they gave feedback. I'm happy. Tomorrow I do my next one. So it's a very transient happiness. So I think and this is what makes you want to do it If you are in the service business and your clients are happy, your customers are happy. It's the energy that keeps you going.
Speaker 2:Awesome and have you piqued the interest of a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of youngsters in other cities who have reached out to you saying that, okay, we want to do something similar to this in our cities. Has that happened it?
Speaker 1:happens. All the time, I mean from the very beginning. I get requests for partnerships. Every travel agency wants to go and I say hello. No, you do your thing, I do my thing.
Speaker 1:I think this is maybe a personality issue in me also, having seen the dot-com world where everyone thinks collaboration is easy, but collaboration is basically having shared business ideals. You know it's very important, like collaborating between people is having a shared business ideal, and business styles are different, working styles are different and I discovered that the city of Bangalore, the other big decision I took was, which you will relate to, is that Bangalore is not a monument city. We don't have Taj Mahal, we don't have gateway of India, so tourism industry revels in having landmarks. It's built. So in Bangalore, because we don't have stunning landmarks, we end up showing what we think is important. We show the Bangalore Palace to a lot of people, which to me no disrespect to the ODIRs, but it was built by an Englishman and they bought it from him. It's built like an English castle in Tudor style. So when you call it the Bangalore Palace and you take an American or someone from outside who's seen about Indian palaces and he says, this looks like an English house, which it is right, and so we don't have the humility or the perspective to say that, and I do that. So when I think of my audience, an English guy who's come to India and he comes to see a palace and he sees our palace, I tell him the truth it's a house built by an English guy called Reverend Garrett, and then it was bought by the Warriors and it was their house. Of course it was, but you know, it's not an Indian palace. And so the thing is, if you don't do that, you don't explain it in perspective. You, I mean, recently I had a Gujarati friend who said my parents Came from Gujarat and they wanted to see something. So I said let's go see Tipu's palace. I don't know if you have seen it, srikant Tipu's palace and they go there, and then he says you know what this is like? A Haveli, our house is bigger, you know. So that's the thing.
Speaker 1:Now the trouble in Bangalore Is we don stunning landmarks, apart from the Vedanta, of course. So I took a very strong call. I actually said there is nothing to see in Bangalore in terms of monuments, but there is a story and I can tell it anywhere. So it was again, I guess, a strategic call on how to present a city. I said you take me to any street in Bangalore. I can tell you the story of the city. I don't need to show you monuments. There is nothing to mess in Bangalore.
Speaker 1:I would joke, because in Bangalore if you're a tourist, the taxi guy takes you to Vidhan Saudha on the way from the airport. Everyone takes you there. So most visitors to the city within day one they have seen Vidhan Saudha. But even if you go to Vidhan Saudha today, there is no board saying what it is. So everyone goes to the Vidhan Saudha, takes a photo and then they don't know what to do. So while we have a wonderful structure, everyone has seen it. So if you're in the business of tourism, no one's going to come with you. If they say I'm going to share with Anshul, I say come with me, take a risk, I'll take you for a walk. So by being very different, it's very difficult for me to collaborate with somebody in, say, delhi or Bombay who is largely monument-based.
Speaker 1:The other thing which happens a lot in heritage walking tours is that the kind of people who conduct it and go for it are architects, people from artistic backgrounds. The way heritage tours are often conducted. There's a lot of historians and architects in this world who conduct it and people who go for it also similar. I'm a regular engineer MBA guy who doesn't have any of this stuff. I hated history in school. It's only when you travel the world you understand that history is irrelevant, and so my take on history is very different than an architect. If I go to a building, it does not matter to me if it is Ionic or Doric or Vichira. What matters is who lived there and what is the relevance of that building to my city. So my take is very different than a classical heritage walking.
Speaker 1:So I found that because I am not from the field, I have redefined the field in my own way. Because I go on foot, people call it walks, when actually it is actually a city, it is a field and in some way there is a large number of people who want to be exposed to this in a different way than the traditional way. So I have also broken the norm in many ways. So, for example, sometimes people say I have a heritage walking tour. What are you going to show us? I'll say I won't tell you, just come for a walk with me.
Speaker 1:So I refuse to be drawn into a discussion, even when I propose my services to a large company, as to which monuments will you see? So I tell my patient you've seen them all, they'll come with me, I'll make it interesting. So a lot, lot of this being unconventional is risky, but you know, that's what disruption is all about and I think to some extent I've been very disruptive. I continue to be. I know a lot of people classical folks will be quite, you know, shocked by the way I do things. I use a lot of humor. I'm quite irreverent and I'm quite irreverent and that's what people seem to want to hear yeah, and there is charm in that disruption as well so we have spoken a lot about the genesis of Bangalore Walks.
Speaker 2:How did it kind of come to the fore and for the benefit of all of our listeners and our listeners are just not Bangalore across the globe let's do an audio walk through your favorite hidden spots in Bangalore. Please narrate one of your best. You won't believe this kind of a moment story that all of our listeners can hear out.
Speaker 1:Oh there are so many. I'm so tied to my scripting that every line I say has to be a wow, I don't know. So in my walks and talks, every few lines there has to be an aha moment, and that's also in the way I script it. So, to answer your question, there are so many, but in a way, since most of the stories I tell I discovered myself, you know, it's like being an original artist when you compose something, you can feel it and say it well. Same way, most of the stories I tell I them and I explained them in a way that created wonder for myself, to my audience. So it's not somebody else's story, my script is entirely original.
Speaker 1:So when I was in the UK I went to Edinburgh, capital of Scotland, and they have something called the Royal Mile and you know, wherever you go in Scotland there's a board which says this happened here in 1745. Or Somerset Mom drank up here in this pub. I mean, england has got signage everywhere. Every place is historic, it's beautifully done. And when I went to this pub in Edinburgh there was a board which said in 1555, nothing happened here. Okay, I loved it and I met the bartender. I said can I take it home as a souvenir. You know so this sense of self-deprecating humor. There is so much signage in England saying this happened here that you had to make that joke. And it struck me then that there is no signage at all in Bangalore saying this happened here. It's as though nothing happened here. Right, and that's not true.
Speaker 1:And so when I walked on MG Road I chanced upon the fact that MG Road was a batty field and that hit me. I'd heard about something called the Battle of Bangalore, which I had no idea about. Most people in Bangalore do not even know that there is an old fort in Bangalore. I often have fun on radio shows asking people to guess where was the fort of Bangalore. So I discovered there was a fort. I said let me go and see it. Then I found an old map of the fort. In the mythic society. There were no. You could not even photocopy maps those days. It's so difficult to get data out. There were no phone cameras, you know.
Speaker 1:So I memorized this map in my head, I sketched it out and I said let me go and trace out the fort of Bangalore. And I actually went and walked and I said this is the moat and this is the fort and you could not do Google map overlaying in those days. So the absolute thrill of finding out your own city's defenses which are buried under a road. It's an amazing thrill. And then you find some names. So I found that there was a battle at Alsur Gate, which Bangaloreans know as the police station, but that was a fort wall, right. So that, wow, was amazing.
Speaker 1:And then I said there was a fort wall, there was a battle outside, and then I discovered the battle fought in what is today Bangalore was a battle that actually changed history, right, the battle involving Tipu Sultan and the British. And history is a very sensitive, contentious subject, as you know, and a lot of our history is not written by people from here. It's written by people who are either from Delhi or elsewhere. But I found some British sources talking about my city and they said it's so differently. So suddenly I understood two things that there was something consequential that happened in Bangalore in terms of military history, because it was reported around the world. It was not taught to me in school. I went to ICICI schools in Bangalore, where if you go to ICICI first, you don't learn about your own state number one. So that's one drawback. I went to good schools but you know, the syllabus was very international and I suddenly discovered that my city was important in the world 200 years ago and places that we all walk on every day has tremendous significance. Right, and once you internalize that and start looking, it is very it's goose bumpy. Actually, even today I get the goosebumps when I run along tempe goda road because I visualize I'm running along the the fort walls of my city, you know, at a time when it was attacked. So I think once I realized and I said if I had the ability to put signage, I'd put all over MG Road. This battle took place here, this guy died, here, this cannon was placed. I got into that mode let me meet the government and figure out how to put signage.
Speaker 1:So, to answer your question, what was life changing for me was the knowledge that I'm sitting in a very important historic place and we have not told anyone about it. It's just a secret, it's my secret. So a lot of my stories are what I feel are my aha secrets. I'm sharing with everybody and when I see people's faces when they hear the story, when I see their jaws drop and it applies to people who are local, who are shocked that their own neighborhood was so interesting and they'd never realized it. But it equally applies to somebody, say, from around the world, because they see the connection to our city. So the other thing that hit me was that Bangalore has always been a global city. Always it has had global connections, always it is never presented like that. When you ask people the story of Bangalore, they will say nothing happened till one day Texas Instruments set up a plant in 1985 and then Bangalore boom. That is not the story. And so I also realized that I was discovering there is no book on Bangalore. With history it's either ancient history, medieval, or it's contemporary.
Speaker 1:So one of the earliest experiences I had is I found out how to meet Ramchandra Guha, who even today is easy to meet, very accessible person. But you know, I had read his books and I said let me meet him. And I'm scared to meet him, I'm a young person who doesn't know history. And so I went and said I'm planning to do walks of Bangalore. Can I have your support, will you join me? And he said fantastic idea. And he gave me an endorsement I still have. And he said it's a wonderful idea.
Speaker 1:So when I made my very first brochure I said I need to. So you probably heard of Paul Fernandes, who's you know one of Bangalore's favorite artists, his you know distinctive style. But in 2005, not many people knew about him. His work was not as well widely known as it is today. And I told him I want to do this and I need you to make a poster of Bangalore for me, a very cool map of Bangalore, a quirky map, and I don't know how I convinced him. I don't know how a man of that stature agreed to do a map only for me. I wanted to create a map of Bangalore with nice artworks, with nice clues hidden at different corners. So just by seeing the map you say wow, I didn't know all this existed. So when I started off, I managed to get Paul Fernandes to make an original map. I got Ramchandra Gowda to give a testimonial and Peter Colasso had just written a book on Bangalore. He gave me a testimonial because they liked the idea. You know it was not that they liked me or they said someone needs to do this. So the other thing which I often tell young people I meet Someone needs to do this. So the other thing which I often tell young people I meet. It's my favorite.
Speaker 1:First question is what's the difference between marketing and sales? And most people think it's the same thing, and this is one thing I might take away from my MBA education. The very fundamental thing which you know sales is when you have something and you want to sell it, and marketing is you find what people want and you build it. And I realized when I started talking to people like Ram Gowap or a lot of people, that there was a gap in the market. Nobody was delivering a good, international quality walking tour in Bangalore, which is an understood product around the world. The product category exists. No one was doing it here.
Speaker 1:So, in a sense, by being a bit of a pioneer in doing it this way and being in the right place at the right time and maybe sussing out that this opportunity exists and taking the risk, all those things put together, but I still get the goosebumps even now.
Speaker 1:And so I think maybe I you know, I think it happens to many people I speak to when they find, as a culture, we, when we talk about history, we are always talking about the ancient past. It's good, but how many of us know the history of our street, our own street, where we live from the last hundred years In England every street is documented. I used to see these books and people know we have family trees In India. We don't have details before 1947 of anything. So the thing is there is a certain thrill by finding out something that you can relate to that is 30, 40 years ago actually, by finding out something that you can relate to that is 30-40 years ago actually. So I found that all these different sort of trigger not even trigger, I mean people love to hear about their city something they didn't know, and that, essentially, is what I created into a business model.
Speaker 2:What a precious business model it is. And talking about city, this has been one experience of sort to know about the city, to know about what you have done. If Bangalore streets could talk, given the fact that you have walked so much on these streets, talking rich history of this city if Bangalore streets could talk, what do you think they would say about how the city has evolved?
Speaker 1:If Bangalore street could talk. That's a nice question. I think the distinctive thing about Bangalore, which I often also say, is that Bangalore began life as a very small town because we have no, you know, there's this now. Okay, now I mean, I'm just I don't know when you're going to air this, but yesterday was the famous Zelensky Trump meeting, right. And suddenly everyone is interested in Ukraine. Most people who don't know where it is on a map are also talking about it, right.
Speaker 1:But I still distinctly remember four years ago, a few weeks before Russia invaded, I read this book, which is quite well known, prisoner of Geography, where it says that history is determined by geography. And it says very clearly in that book printed that Russia is always going to be worried, there's going to be an attack from Paris because Ukraine is a buffer zone, flatland, there is no mountain separating Russia from Europe and historically, whether it was Napoleon or whether it was Hitler or anyone, this Russian, western European dynamic is driven by geography, that there is no effective barrier. And in all these books I read they never talk about India or Bangalore. I read the Clash of Civilizations long back, the famous book that you know, and in the Clash of Civilizations Samuel Huntington has analyzed every civilization but never come to India. So there is a guns, germs and steel, all these famous books. India is always not in their thinking right. And so I said to let me start thinking about my city using these frameworks that you know, people who explain the world do, and you start realizing that Bangalore's topography and geography has been a huge determinant of its history. So Bangalore is actually on the crossroads. If you draw a line from Kanyakumari to Delhi, bangalore is on that line and historically, the Dakshinapatha. If you had to walk from Kanyakumari to Delhi, you had to walk via Bangalore. And similarly, bangalore was in the east-west axis of India from Bangalore to Madras, chennai. So Bangalore has always been a place where people. It was an intersection point, and intersection points are where people come to trade and do business, and so the streets of Bangalore have been trodden on by people from all over India for centuries because it was always on the way from somewhere to somewhere. It was that kind of place. The other thing was, from its inception, from Kempe Gowda's time, bangalore has always been an immigrant town where a reason to migrate to Bangalore to live, to do business, to be employed has been core to the DNA of the city over the country and now all over the world, who have come here seeking something.
Speaker 1:Bangalore is providing answers to people. Bangalore is providing something to people. They come here for a purpose. No one comes here casually, because it was always a very small place there. We don't have enough water now. We never had water.
Speaker 1:Life was difficult always, but despite the difficulties in Bangalore, like lack of water In the early days, we were at a high elevation. Getting here was difficult. You know railway lines and all began only you know 1870s, 1880s. So Bangalore was not an easy place to come, like a port or on a river. The river valleys are easy to go to. So it required effort to come to Bangalore, but people still came.
Speaker 1:That's my take. And so the streets of Bangalore have offered something to people. They still do. They have seen people from all over the world. The streets are creaking under the load of people coming, but we should never forget our city was designed before the motor car was invented, especially CBD Bangalore, where you know horse carts would go up and down, and 200 years later it is still the core of a 12 million, 13 million population city.
Speaker 1:So yeah, if our streets could talk, they would say a lot of things. It's a nice framing of the question. I've never thought about it that way. Maybe I can add that to my. I talk about the rock in Lal Bagh and some of the older trees and what they have seen, but the streets? That's a good way of putting it, because I mean I just add one thing in which people don't fully understand.
Speaker 1:They say that Kempegoda built four towers in the four cardinal directions. That's not true. If you actually go and see where the towers are, you'll see one in the north, you'll see one in the south, you'll see one in the east, but the fourth one is not in the west. So I discovered this when I went to look for the towers, and a lot of our information in Bangalore is not questioned by you know what primary research walking is primary research it just gets cut and pasted right. So there is no tower in the West.
Speaker 1:So, fundamentally, why did he do that?
Speaker 1:And then I understood that the four towers are at the four high points in four directions, which follow the roads that lead into Bangalore, which is part of the natural topography, which is how armies would have come in to attack Bangalore, and hence they built watchtowers and so they were basically the topography of Bangalore determined where the watchtowers are and determined everything. So Bangalore is an up and down city, a lot of contours, so the streets of Bangalore are also defined by its topography. Old Madras road starts in you know MJ road and goes to Madras and it goes downhill all the way, basically from thousand meters to zero, and its gradient and its contours follow the natural path. So in some way, bangalore being a hilly place, not a flat place where you could define the roads, the roads were defined by the topography. So going back to my pet theme, that history is determined by geography, I think I found a way to answer your question by saying the streets also were pretty much defined by our topography, at least the older planned parts of the city.
Speaker 2:So that's a beautiful answer, Great insights in all of it. You have been at this for little over 20 years now. At any point of time did this thought occur to you?
Speaker 1:Is this worth it? It is hard work, I can tell you that. So I can add one more thing which I didn't say earlier was that I wanted to create something different and I said in London walks, the walks are held every day rain or shine, that's the word they use and there's a lot of rain and land. Right In India, we did not have the concept of a walk every Sunday without fail. It did not exist in the year 2005. And I said I am going to do the walk every Sunday 7 am, without fail, which itself was a huge statement. Whether one person comes or 100 people, I don't care, I'm just going to do it. So that requires a lot of doing.
Speaker 1:I had to sacrifice my weekends for maybe 10 years, I think for 10-12 years. Every Sunday you'd see me at 7am at MG Road. Anyone could just walk in. It was the days before GPay. People had to come in with cash in their pockets and I'd collect the cash. It was a very simple cash model Okay, and they would come or they would not come. There was no guarantees.
Speaker 1:So financially it's very difficult. I often tell people I mean, I graduated from my MBA 32 years ago If I had stayed in the corporate world and you're aware of the corporate world. You know people of my peers would either leading companies or many have retired financially now because they've done very well for themselves, right? And I was going out in the morning and collecting 500 rupees from head from 10 people who showed up. 5,000 rupees is not very much if that's your only income for the week, because you can only do this on weekends. So you start thinking that if I do very well and get 50 customers, I'm making 20,000 rupees, which was far less than what any job was offering for my professional qualifications. So, yes, you go through these moments of self-doubt when you're doing something good, but it may not financially compensate you for your time and intellect and it's an opportunity cost because you're dropping something else to do it. So of course there are these periods of self-doubt. But this is what I come back to, my Raoul Drabot analogy that if you think you are doing something well, stick to it. The world will conspire to find openings for you. Sometimes it just happens and I had a lot of lucky breaks because I was the only guy doing this.
Speaker 1:So the example I give is in 2005, when IBM first came to, not first when they came for a big town hall meeting. Sam Parmazzano was the CEO chairman. He came. It was a big deal because he had a, I think, a town hall and investor meet and you know that was one of the tipping points of the IT revolution in India, where Sam Parmazzano from IBM comes and Sam's wife, missy Parmazzano, accompanied him. And IBM has a company policy that the CEO's wife cannot be shown around the city by an employee. So they had to find an external vendor, so they start looking around. And then I still remember someone, I think in the Western world, said there is this guy who speaks good English who conducts tours. That was my only qualification. There's a guy who speaks English. So I go for an interview with the IBM guys on satellite link to the US and they check me out on the phone and say, okay, this guy speaks good English, we can trust our chairman's wife with him for eight hours.
Speaker 1:And so very early on into my career I had spent a day with a very important business personality spouse explaining my country, and one thing led to the other and I discovered so I had not planned to be in a niche appeal and I did several I call babysitting tours for spouses of important people, both men and women of senior businesses. When they came, lot of expats who came to Bangalore first they'd come with their families and to understand the country, and that has finally ended now just being in the right place at the right time. India was the president of the G20 two years ago. Bangalore got 17 delegations after Delhi the largest number and I represented the government of Karnataka, so I was the host for the who's who of the. You know the and you know I had the pleasure of spending a day with Amitabh Kant planning how to show Karnataka to visitors the Sharpas of G20.
Speaker 1:So I love telling people that I'm doing the same thing I was doing 20 years ago. I'm storytelling, but this city that I'm telling the story of is something that everybody wants to know. So, because I am in the right city and it's also my city, I'm just lucky that my city is a city everyone wants to know about and positioning myself as the person who does this. Well, I'm getting opportunities today by sticking to what I did. I have not varied, expanded, diversified or done any of the things as a consultant I might have advised myself to do. In fact, if I had approached someone in a consulting position, I've got lots of ideas on how to expand and grow. I said no, I will specialize. And so these are calls which, if it works out, it's fine.
Speaker 1:But, to answer your question, I never felt it was not worth it, ever, I think, when your passion is your profession and it's truly a passion. So today, for example, I do a lot of work for free because of passion. I do it because I think it is the right thing to do, and so I have always believed that my needs are limited. It's important, as an entrepreneur again, that to have an understanding of what lifestyle you want to achieve. And if you, I have always believed that my needs are limited. It's important, as an entrepreneur again, that you have an understanding of what lifestyle you want to achieve. And if you get caught in the corporate world where I've never taken debt in my life, it was one of those things I never took a loan. I always said I should be able to live within my own. So it's a personal discipline. And it's helpful if you're doing a business on your own Because there are bad times.
Speaker 1:It's helpful if you're doing a business on your own because there are bad times and you've got to figure it out. So, because my lifestyle requirements are affordable to me, I'm comfortable. But a lot of people in my position are not comfortable. They have aspirations financial aspirations which a profession like this might not. So the tragedy is that if you read business reports, their tourism is the biggest employment generator multiplier. All these big words, right, Nobody wants to become a guide. So it's crazy. I'm turning down requests every week. I just look at the business travelers into Bangalore and say there are hundreds of people coming. Each one of them is a potential customer. Why is it not a thriving industry? And I tried initially to go to colleges and tell people.
Speaker 1:I went to tourism colleges and everyone wants to join a hotel and live and sit in an air-conditioned office and go for meetings. Nobody wants to be in the grime and dust of the streets of Chikpeyte showing people around. So that is an important personality aspect here that this is a tough business. You have to be on the ground. So if you have airs about who you are and you can't do these things, you have to. So even today, at this age, I'm actually haggling with bus drivers, I'm sitting with policemen, I'm getting parking. I'm not delegating it, I'm doing it personally myself. So while I'm delivering a high quality intellectual tour in the market area of Bangalore, I'm also dealing with the police and the hawkers and the. You know salesmen who show up and all the complexities. Salesmen will show up and all the complexities. So some people like that, some people don't, you know. So it is tough but it's always very satisfying.
Speaker 2:So, lawley, you made a very pertinent point. If passion is your profession, then anything is possible. On that note, this conversation is not complete without talking about how that passion has led you to do something more bigger than just the walks, which is making a societal impact. Then to us, raw passion, the heady times of dot-com, to being an entrepreneur creating a niche market. And if this was entailing hold on for the next part of this conversation, where arun talks about walkaluru bengaluru, how he has turned his passion and profession into spread something that is very dear of which is giving back, giving back to his favorite city, bangalore. What did he do? He talks about being crowned as footpath mayor. What does that mean? All of it, and more in this two-part series. Come back again for part two of this wonderful conversation with Arun Pai.
