Inspire Someone Today
Inspire Someone Today
E154 | Building Founding Fuel | Indrajit Gupta
Indrajit Gupta shares his journey from advertising to journalism to entrepreneurship, highlighting how career pivots often require intuitive leaps rather than perfect planning.
• Career shifts should be based on solid principles, connections, and a hunger for learning
• The entrepreneurial mindset isn't just for startups but essential for everyone in today's business world
• Creating a "community of givers" yields greater returns than hoarding knowledge
• Founding Fuel serves as a bridge between established corporations and startups, helping them learn from each other
• Learning happens best through action—solving real problems builds entrepreneurial leaders
• In a world of information overload, focus on quality content that separates signal from noise
• Knowledge today lies in networks—identify smart people and build relationships with them
• Breaking hierarchies and silos is essential for innovation
• Retirement is an outdated concept—wisdom accumulated over decades remains valuable at any age
Don't believe you're on this journey alone. Find and surround yourself with amazing minds, draw inspiration from conversations, and maintain an inclusive, open approach to continuous learning.
AI 171 Story : https://www.foundingfuel.com/article/ai171-human-error-design-flaw-or-something-else/
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Sometimes career pivots don't happen in a very planned way. You just got to take the plunge based on what you believe intuitively. Here was an opportunity to present an Indian view of capitalism which is softer, kinder, more humane, because capitalism as the economic model had delivered results. If you share, you get a lot more in return. If you share, you get a lot more in return, and you are far more powerful because of what you share.
Speaker 2: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, shrikant, and I'm thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration. That's the thought that occurred to me when I started having conversation with this wonderful guest. From the high pressure deadlines of a new school to the long-haul thinking of building a community of entrepreneurs, my guest today has lived at the intersection of storytelling, leadership and innovation.
Speaker 2:As a founding editor of Forbes India, he helped launch and shape one of the country's most respected business magazines. Today, as the co-founder of Ornick Fuel, he is on a mission to convert knowledge into value, creating a platform where ideas don't just get published, they get practiced. For three decades, indrajit has worn many hats journalist, editor, mentor and now a voice helping leaders and organizations navigate change. We explore in this conversation with Indrajit his career pivots, the lessons from building respected institutions and why he believes entrepreneurship is a mindset as relevant to the corporate world as it is to startups. Indrajit, welcome to Inspire Someone today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Mishra Khan, for having me. Pleasure to be here, Mishra.
Speaker 2:So, as I mentioned in the intro, indrajit, very intrigued with so many career pivots that you have made to your illustrious career, we'll jump right in on that first very element of that, which is about your own career journey From advertising into business, journalism and entrepreneurship. What signs told you it was time for you to move on and how did you prepare for each of these leaps?
Speaker 1:Thanks, vikant. I wish there was a method in the madness. I tried to kind of ensure that it was well thought through. But sometimes career pivots don't happen in a very planned way. You just got to take the plunge based on what you believe intuitively.
Speaker 1:In my case, before I went to business school, which is SPJIMR in Bombay, I had already worked for a year with the Times of India group, not so much in editorial but in space marketing, what they call response, and I was also kind of I had moved to Bombay fairly recently, in 89, I remember, and you know, already been exposed to the world of management education because my uncle taught at Bajaj, so I used to visit Bajaj with him. So I was fairly immersed in that world already and my elder brother had also had a fairly illustrious career in advertising. So all of those together seem to suggest that advertising would be a great career to pursue. So even before I went to SPJAN I was clear that, look, I would kind of move to an advertising career because I was kind of already in response, seeing one side of the ecosystem, the sellers, media sellers, perspective. And I think the SPJAN experience was which validated some of that, because the course on advertising. I was the student coordinator and clearly got immense value from the industry folks who came there. Some of them were stalwarts in their profession Ivan Arthur, rahul Kansal, kt Gupte you name it Pranesh Mishra all really fantastic minds. So I landed up at Hindustan Thompson Associates, which was the number one advertising agency back in those days green job.
Speaker 1:And guess what? Within a year and a half I realized that things weren't quite the way I had imagined it to be. It was a bit of a rude shock, the way I had imagined it to be. It was a bit of a rude shock partly because I think the profession was already feeling the whiplash of disruption, as we keep calling it, and it was kind of losing a little bit of its professional moorings. An advertising agency needs to stand for something right. It believes that it brings the voice of the customer into the whole creative process. And here we weren't quite standing up for what we believed in. We were taking what clients told us and trying to get creatives done, and it was a hit and miss in many cases. So I did get honestly quite disillusioned with the work because, having said that, JWT and HTA in those days, as it was called, had some brilliant strategic planning tools, but they weren't necessarily applied in the work that they were doing for their clients. So I learned a lot of that at HTSO and I've met some fabulous people as well, and those relationships continue even today. But the work wasn't exciting. So what do I do then? One and a half years, two years, out of business school?
Speaker 1:At that point in time Business Standard came looking for people because you might recall, this was almost a year, year and a half after the liberalization, india was opened up Right and business journalism was also, I think, at a fairly important inflection point. It needed, in some ways, people who could be analytical chops to really look at business and markets and consumer markets as well as stock markets, very differently and with a far deeper understanding. And I had been following business standards journey at that point in time and I was convinced that it had the quality parameters kind of worked out. It stood for quality journalism. It had a fantastic, very well-known team. It was very small, extremely small.
Speaker 1:So I used to live in YMCA those days and a friend there was a very well-known journalist, govind Etiraj. He connected me to the good folks at Economic Times. They made me an offer as well. So I had to choose between Business Standard and Economic Times. It was a crazy choice because Economic Times was Times. They made me an offer as well. So I had to choose between business standard and economic times. It was a crazy choice because economic times was at least 20 times or 25 times bigger.
Speaker 1:But something in me told me that, look, I'd probably learn a lot more if I went to a smaller outfit which had very high quality standards. And I took that plunge and I never looked back since then. It was a risky gambit. I did have conversations with people in journalism, people who'd done MBAs and then gone into journalism. In those days. Some of them said join, some of them said stay away. So it was. Finally. I had to believe in myself and my courage of conviction to take that plunge. And there were lots of very close friends who said don't come here, what are you doing? You've got to be crazy after an MBA to consider business journalism. But something in me told me that I would enjoy this work. The mind was, I think, clearly active. The work at JWT wasn't so. It wasn't inspiring, it wasn't stimulating enough.
Speaker 2:So that's the long and short of it. What I kind of decipher here is that career periods, career shifts, has been on the back of very solid foundation of principles, very solid foundation of connection and learning. I think you're kind of based those changes on these elements. Of course many more, but fundamentally, from what I kind of gathered, is around connection, is around discipline, is around learning. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I would agree. The only thing I'd add there is that there are industries that are going through disruption and they're not adjusting quickly enough. Industries that are going through disruption and they're not adjusting quickly enough. And if I were to look back now at what, JWT has been snuffed out as a brand entirely thanks to the machinations of its holding company, WPP, and we've covered it at Founding Fuel. If someone's interested, it's worrying, right. So you did not get the wake-up call. I did it as an individual and I moved on, but a lot of people friends of mine who still remain there have, you know, kind of moved, tried to move with the time, with the tide rather, and I'm not sure that that's quite being as exciting as it should have been.
Speaker 2:And how do you read the transition from being a journalist to an entrepreneur?
Speaker 1:I think we were to some extent prepared for it in my earlier assignment as the founding editor of Forbes because, unlike my previous experience, both at the Bennett Colvin Group, which is the Times of India Economic Times, or the Andhra Bazaar Group, which ran Business Standard and Business World back in those days, network 18, which owned the Forbes franchise, they'd taken the license from the Forbes company in the US for the magazine to launch the magazine. It was a really remarkable entrepreneurial exercise and culture right. So you were really in charge. The single line brief that I got from both Raghav Vahel and Harish Chawla was that we'd like to create a world-class like you, to create a world-class magazine out of India business magazine. That was the single line brief. They let you be, they believed in you, they allowed you to put together the team, set strategy.
Speaker 1:You know, kind of connect with the good folks at Forbes US, but they themselves, the Forbes team, was very entrepreneurial, right. They believed that when they get into a relationship or a partnership they would kind of support the licensee in building out the Forbes brand, which was a little unlike perhaps Time Warner, which also brought in Fortune magazine around that time. A lot of controls, centralization and all of that. This was about empowering. So I think what it did to me is that made me far more responsible and accountable, that I was in charge of budgets, of hiring, of taking all the key decisions that really mattered. Obviously I'd be held accountable for results at the end of it, but it was liberating and so it set me up really when those five and a half years were probably the best years of one's career in some ways, till I got to founding fuel.
Speaker 2:So if you were to go back to that particular period in the JIT, what are some of the standout decisions or standout interactions that you can recall that shaped you in what many ways can be can be professional, so let's look at two or three.
Speaker 1:One is, of course, the period itself, 2008,. We'd already started to see the world change because of the global financial crisis. Capitalism itself had a very bad name at that point in time and, believe me, both Forbes and Fortune were struggling to respond to that kind of reputational crisis because Forbes called itself the capitalist tool, right, and capitalism itself had a bad name. So we had to go back to basics and say, now that we're bringing in the Forbes brand into India, how do we kind of present the brand with an Indian touch, right? And that required a fair bit of deep thinking about what the purpose of the Forbes brand in India would be to restate it without losing any of the identity that Forbes carried globally. That was very interesting. And how did we do that? We invited some really smart thought leaders into our newsroom to have conversations with us. Allow us to frame it. There was Arun Maira, there was Shiv Kumar, who created e-chopal at ITC all brilliant minds and from those conversations, I think, emerged the germ of an idea that here was an opportunity to present an Indian view of capitalism which is softer, kinder, more humane, because capitalism as the economic model had delivered results. It's just that it had unfortunately hit certain extremes and those dysfunctionalities became evident when the world cracked and the global financial model cracked. So I think wealth is important, creating wealth is important for a nation, for entrepreneurs, but there's another side to it which is about philanthropy, about giving back. Both sides of the coin are important. So I think that was really something which we, I believe, built out very well, not just take and cut and paste whatever had worked in the US and India, but to go back to basics and come back with a slightly more Indian ethos of what a business magazine ought to be.
Speaker 1:The other issue was that the business magazine space itself, srikant, was in comatose, completely comatose, because I think, by and large, there was an exodus of talent from magazines to newspapers. The talent cupboard was bare. We had to hire very, very carefully and find people who captured that ethos of being able to, you know, do the kind of magazine journalism that we needed to. But magazines had lost their reason to exist. Right and I'm stating this with great care because a magazine cannot run as fast as a digital output. Back in those days, because print was still the center of gravity, why did people consume magazines? Why did they come to a magazine, it was really to slow things down on things that really mattered, right.
Speaker 1:So the two things here one is the whole reflective part of it, which is that you get an opportunity to step back and understand what's going on in our world on things that really matter. So there is a certain sense of distillation as well as reflection that needs to be built into the product. But if you're trying to compete with the newspapers and doing incremental stuff right, and you can't beat them at their game because of their periodicity right you had to in some ways figure out a new way to compete. And it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:And this is something we learned under my editor at Business World, who was a master, tony Joseph, who was a master at product differentiation. He would encourage us not to look at the newspapers and come into an edit meeting with ideas, because then you will only do incremental stuff Important for you to follow the news. But the ability is to try and step back and reframe the debate and make create new value right and make people sit up and say, wow, I never thought of it, this in this kind of way. That's what I think we were able to accomplish as a team in Forbes India and building that shared culture and hopefully we can talk a little about that later is the important part of that journey.
Speaker 2:I think that's a very important critical call out is when you're in a certain segment, it's important for you to do the comparison in that segment. So often they're not. We tend to get lost out. Say, okay, newspaper is doing good in the current world, this particular channel is doing good, so we got to compete with that particular channel. Rather than losing that essence of who we are, we tend to kind of get dictated by what the world around us is kind of doing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I agree with you entirely.
Speaker 2:And having done all of this in the JIT, having led editorial teams as well as new ventures, what are some of those guiding principles? It was true then, it is true even today is to balance the editorial integrity with commercial realities. And how has your leadership style evolved across the newsroom as you do all of these things? Or as you did all of these things?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what have I learned today? I think some interesting stuff there, because I think what I've learned is that entrepreneurship journeys tend to be iterative, right. You can't kind of get bake everything and then launch, as we often used to do at Fort Glendale was a classic case. I think it's you've got to evolve right, and it is through that process of style and error that you will get it right. I think that is one clear learning that it has to be iterative. You can't expect to launch a perfect product, hit the market, test out the product, collect feedback, iterate and get better. Right. That's something that we should have done a lot more of in FoundingFuel as well. I agree that that would have given us a much quicker entry and uh, but I think we've continued to do that to listen very closely to what our users, like you and others, are saying and uh, because that's who we're serving, right.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we lose focus on what the purpose of the organization is. It is to serve a certain defined set of users. It's not meant for everyone. We cannot go chasing, and sometimes this transition to digital as we are now in digital first, as it were, makes you greedy. You believe that you can amass very large volumes of audiences and you can satisfy all of them.
Speaker 1:No, there are people who come in with a certain set of sensibilities. They're looking for a certain set of higher value, if you like, right, higher order skills, the nuance, the sophistication of the argument, data and a set of arguments which are compelling right. So, by definition, we've chosen to, I think, focus on a slightly more evolved set of users, not for everyone, but we will certainly make our work accessible. So if someone wants to come there, they will certainly understand everything that we're saying. We are not going to kind of keep a very high technical threshold that only talks to a select bunch of people. It will be accessible. But at the core, we've got to be clear who we are creating for right and what. Like you rightly said, what do we stand for and not get deviated from that.
Speaker 2:And you're in an industry that is praying for everything that is happening in the world today. There's so much of information coming at us at breakneck speed, so much of tidbits, insights. It's very difficult for an ordinary individual to decipher between what is true, what is not true, what to kind of take, what not to take and, wearing your industry lens, where you have become pro at deciphering information, what they call is cut the clutter. What are some of the tips that you can share with our listeners to say that, when you're indomitated with so much of information coming at you, how do you decipher? How do you kind of skim through it and go to the cracks that matters?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, srikant, you've talked about two things. One is clutter, which is a reality, surrounded by clutter, and it's going to get worse with AI and everything else, because the sheer volume of content will just explode, right. The other is the information asymmetry is gone. So, as a journalist, as a content creator or a curator, I have access to the same things that my users have access to, right? So how on earth am I going to be able to differentiate, right myself and ensure that? So there are two things that we certainly stick to. One is this whole thing of stepping away from this endless stream of content and believing that less is more. So do a few things, but do it well, right. Curate it well. You know. Kind of research it well, right. Curate it well. You know. Kind of research it well. Fact check, clearly. And we do that very consistently as a team, as a network of contributors, so we don't publish a heck of a lot of stuff in a week, right. What we do will command attention, because we're fighting for your time, effectively. Right, and a lot of our stuff is in-depth stuff, but produced and presented and curated in a way that will ensure that you get value. If you didn't, you have the choice not to consume it. Right, you have that power within you. Why would you come and how do you build that trust that every time I consume a founding fuel content or a piece of content, or a story, as we call it in our parlance right, you will get value. So that helps build trust, right. And the other trick is really, from our end, about being very judicious about tuning out the noise, because this is really about the signal rather than the noise, right? So I think the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff is an important skill that any manager must acquire over a period of time, because we are exposed to so much of stuff now on Facebook, on X, on LinkedIn, right, a lot of it is AI-generated content and you don't know whether it's true or not, because machines do hallucinate, as we know. So how do you trust the mediums that you choose to follow and how do you supplement it with conversations and I think this is an important part that I must tell you that I do regularly, which is to talk to people. Whatsapp lulls us into believing that everything in the world out there will end up in our WhatsApp account. Yes, that's partly true, but a lot of junk also turns out. So how do you tune that out? As a conscious rule, I have stopped, I've pulled myself out from many WhatsApp groups because a lot of it is very superficial, feeding stuff which has no value and adds no value to my life.
Speaker 1:So tuning out the noise is as important as it is about picking up credible sources of information and wisdom. We compete in the insights and wisdom space right and using, like you rightly said right at the start, storytelling very powerful tool to really ensure. But storytelling doesn't mean that you, you know, kind of give short shrift to facts and accuracy. No, it has to be accurate, it has to be factual, it has to be well thought through. And how do you distill that? By speaking to a whole range of people who are really on top of their game is the critical thing. I hope that answers your question.
Speaker 2:It does, and I would want to stretch it a little more. What practices do you adapt and do recommend to practice these disappearing news distilling into the news?
Speaker 1:So I think the key thing, as a again from my lens, I think what we try and do is to look for gaps, what is not being talked about in the public narrative today, that we can step in and add value to, and assuming that that's something which is important. A good example of that is the Air India AI-171 crash and investigation. Right, like Operation Sindur, this was a wall-to-wall coverage, right? People were asking, unfortunately, the wrong question and trying to answer it which is what caused the crash? Neither do you have the data, nor you do you have the evidence to back any of it, so the entire media narrative got stuck in. What caused the crash? Right, we stepped in there, spent almost two weeks diligently looking at every piece of story that had come out at that time, talking to a whole bunch of people, and we reframed the debate to say we cannot answer that question what caused it?
Speaker 1:Over time, when the investigators start to work but do you know how an air crash investigation is actually conducted? But do you know how an air crash investigation is actually conducted? It is almost, in some cases, a one-year exercise, two years in some cases Very, very meticulous, like a forensic crime investigation where there are so many factors and that resulted in a three-part series, almost 10,000 words, which unpacked everything that people should know to be a better informed reader, or a user in that sense, or a public, a citizen right. So we recognize that we must jump into this story because it's in public interest. It is an important story because all of us are traveling by air. Many others who are kind of around the world are curious.
Speaker 1:It is a global story. It's also a story about regulatory failures and flaws, so there are multiple aspects of it and this really brought focus and this again went viral because people, when they see it, they really know that once they start consuming it, they know that this is adding value. Of course, it's a long read I mean for sure but we, like Netflix, dropped it all three parts together, saying that you want to binge read on a weekend. Here is something that will certainly be of interest and people did right Not everyone, there are still people who are reading it but it did gain traction.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think that's a great example of how do you access the same information but have a completely different take by value research, by value conversations and the value of storytelling. So we'll definitely make sure that we leave the links to the articles in the show notes. In this segment, the conversation takes an exciting turn. As Indrajeet unpacks the art of career pivots, why stepping off the beaten path isn't a risk, but reinvention Coming up. We dive into the power of entrepreneurial mindset, not just for founders, but for anyone who wants to think bigger and bolder. Also, we spoke about how true impact comes from when we learn to convert knowledge into value, turning ideas into engines of change.
Speaker 2:In a world drowning in noise, indrajit shows us how to cut it through the clutter and find crystal clear insights. These are not just survival skills, my dear business, but superpowers for anyone navigating today's chaotic landscape. More of it as we jump into the remaining segment of this conversation with Indrajit, see you on the other side. And as we're talking about it, it is important to talk about founding fuel. So what is it? How did you even get to this point of? Okay, this is time for me to have this platform called as founding fuel, and what was the ethos behind this?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, shrikant, the temptation was to take the plunge into another mainstream media platform, but we felt that there was. We were at an inflection point where things were headed south, and that was a call we took that, look, the media industry is in the vortex of a disruption. Unless we decide to do things differently, finding that space, like we did at at Forbes, is not going to be easy. So FoundingFuel got broke out and we had, also because of the work we did at Forbes and even before, that sense that the big idea on which we wanted to sit on was entrepreneurship right. Wanted to sit on was entrepreneurship right and entrepreneurship, the mindset, more than just entrepreneurship per se, is not, as I've often said, not about not the preserve of just startups, right, but of everyone right, as individuals, as organizations, large or small, medium-sized, and startups as well, right. You need to embrace that mindset. And at that point in time, the dam was about to break and there were a whole bunch of startups that were coming in. So the assumption that a lot of people made was that you guys must be about, you'll probably think startups are the audience that you want to attract. So I said no, we're not necessarily looking at only startups.
Speaker 1:By then, srikant, the crossover had already started. People were quitting large companies, moving to startups. Startups needed to shift gears and become more professionalized in their pursuit of scale, but it wasn't really happening. These two segments did not talk to each other. So let's say, if N Chandra was presenting at NASSCOM, right, the startup founders would leave the room saying that what do we have to learn from him? Right? And I remember the ET Awards many years ago when some entrepreneur, some startup entrepreneur, was given an award probably Sachin Bansal, I think the folks at the front two rows were wondering who is this guy? We've never heard of him. Right, the two worlds were very different and they weren't talking to each other, which is dangerous.
Speaker 1:And we felt that there was a role that FoundingFuel could play, which is to sit at the intersection and be a bridge between those two worlds. How is that? Largely because large, established companies needed to be more startup-like. They needed to build the agility and the nimbleness to compete in this new world. Startups needed to learn how to scale from the large enterprises. Right? So there was a beautiful fusion in some ways, and we believed that this world would eventually start to kind of come together and feed off each other's strengths right, and that was the hypothesis with which we launched. There's a little more stuff on the business model which we can discuss separately, but in essence, this is what was the community. We wanted to bring a diverse set of people together, so that conversation would ensue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wonderful, Wonderful to see two different segments coming together. Like you said, there's a lot of cohesiveness that can happen. There's a lot of learnings that can happen between an established corporate and a startup. As you are doing this, how can companies foster their entrepreneurial thinking amongst the employees while still maintaining the structure, the accountability, whatnot? In a large structure?
Speaker 1:So that's the kind of work, honestly, which we did under the hood, srikant, which we may not have talked about very much, but we had created an adjacency apart from the publishing business that you're familiar with, an adjacency on learning, right, but learning with a very different kind of mandate and a different purpose to drive entrepreneurial learning in some ways. And how do entrepreneurs learn? We try to mimic that. Entrepreneurs do not learn, srikant, by just reading a Founding Fuel article or a story, right, they read it, yes, it stimulates their mind, but they're geared and wired to solve problems, right? So the essence of what we created at Founding Fuel was a entrepreneurial learning model which was based on action learning. So you create business challenges inside an organization and there is, as you know, a tendency to call in consultants every time there's some problem. That happens, you are part of one of them. Of course, that's good, because it brings a whole new perspective, but what you miss out on is the ability to challenge the minds of the very same leaders within right To solve that problem. So we created and designed this whole human-centered design approach right, design thinking, if you like the tools of it. We worked out a partnership with a global learning company from Pittsburgh called Luma Institute, which worked with us and assembled a set of fine minds to help enterprises create these platforms, if you like, for problem solving. By creating cross-functional teams inside right, some of their best minds would come together. We would, in some ways, guide and shape their work to solve their problem. Now, we believe that this is a very powerful way to learn, and many of the directors in those companies would be sponsors, they would mentor, they would kind of supervise, monitor, review the work that this team would do. But over a period of three months to six months, these actual learning projects would start delivering results. And, believe me, there is no better way to build leaders from within, entrepreneurial-minded leaders, than actually giving them live projects to work on, because every company has challenges that they face.
Speaker 1:Now, instead of just outsourcing it, can you create an environment where you throw down the gauntlet at a bunch of people that you can find? Bright people from hr, from operations, from sales, uh, production, you name it and we worked with some of the leading frontline organizations to actually make this happen, right, um, which was, which is really something that we're proud of. The other thing that we've done which is useful for companies to think about is to look at, and some companies do this quite well. We used to host delegations from South Africa, particularly senior folks about 15 to 18 years of experience, from industries like retail and wholesale telecom, et cetera, and host them for about seven days in India on an immersion to India, where they would come in with specific learning goals and we would tailor the entire learning experience for them. They would visit companies, they would go and see things for themselves, including the micro-entrepreneurship cluster at Bharavi, meet some of the best business leaders that India had and really soak in, but it was tailored for their learning goals because they came in with action learning projects as well.
Speaker 1:Now, this is another wonderful way to learn, instead of taking a lot of executives senior executives kicking and screaming into training rooms right, where they don't want to be subjected to yet another half a day session on training, which has sometimes very little to do with their lived experience. Right, these immersions actually force you. So these immersions can also be baked into the action learning projects that I spoke about, to open people's minds right To how someone else has been solving the same challenge, right, and we've done some of that, where we invited an Asia-Pac head of Uber say, for instance, to come in and talk to a team of very senior leaders and a leading insurance company one of the largest general insurance companies to understand how to design go-to-market strategies for corporate insurance right and very segmented kind of approach as well. And it sparked new thinking because typically in a corporate setup you believe that you've got access to a lot of people you can hire. Every time you need someone, they ask this guy, how many people do you have to service about 5 000 customers that you stay, that you're that you serve, so he. We have a team of 20 people and a lot of it is outsourced and there is a method in how they've kind of created that structure.
Speaker 1:They fell off their chairs because for them they would have wanted to hire 100, 100, 200 people to manage this large elephant Doesn't work. I mean you've got to do more with less. That's where innovation really comes in. That's entrepreneurship, right? Nitin Paranch often talked about this in our conversations about ambition and resources, and he quotes CK Tarlad about it that your mission will invariably be much more than your resources. That's the stretch that you need to make happen. And how do you? Leverage and stretch are two wonderful things that any entrepreneur should think about.
Speaker 2:So, very true, how do you leverage and how do you stretch? On the fundamentals of everything that you stated, nothing beats experiential learning. You can have as much learning as you want, but experiential learning takes it to a whole different level altogether. So if we are ready, we'll get started with the Power of Three segment. Having had the opportunity to work with so many entrepreneurs, so many leaders across the spectrum, what three advice that you can kind of connect to from your mentors or coaches, from any of these leaders that has come very, very handy in your own journey?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one is about creating a community of givers. All the people that I've been in touch with and have built strong relations have been unflinchingly givers before they take, so give as much as you can to others who need the help, right? So that's one. Two, ambition Do not sacrifice ambition, because today, sitting out of Mumbai, as I am currently, I can reach thought leaders from around the world. The digital technologies allow you to do that and we've done that consistently right. We've posted some very fine minds, so that's true, right, because that ensures that you get the best that's available around the world.
Speaker 1:Three, I think it's about really about purpose, right, being very clear about your reason to exist. How do you kind of fit into your user's life, as it were, and what role do you play and how do you augment it? Because it's an ongoing conversation with a community that's important, so that purpose will also get shaped based on what you hear from them, right? I can't unilaterally decide that. Look, this is who I am and I will not budge from this position. I don't know if that answers your.
Speaker 2:Three, questions it does. I am just a little more intrigued on the community of givers comment that you made. Can you elaborate a little more on that? What do you mean by that? How do one kind of embrace that mindset?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so obviously you've got to have something compelling to give in the first place. So you've got to shape your mind and do all the hard yards of actually building expertise and experience. But, more importantly, I think I find a lot of people try to hoard what they know in the hope that you know that's their competitive advantage. It doesn't work. If you share, you get a lot more in return and you are far more, you know, powerful because of what you share. People come naturally and gravitate towards you. There is a conversation that gets stimulated and invariably you learn right More than if you were to hold that and keep.
Speaker 1:Of course, the other side of the coin is the taker. So what I've typically done on that is that I've thrown problems back at the community saying look, we're struggling with this, can you kind of help us think through this? It's not as if everything that they say will necessarily be relevant, but it just stokes my thinking right. So when you create this community of givers right, which we've done at Founding Fuel curated community. It is not come one, come all, and we'll obviously we've had some conversations with you we'll definitely love you to be part of this community at some stage because you're doing the same thing. You are creating a community of givers through your platform and your book. Much the same with us that if you create a shared purpose in this community of givers, then they feel that they are attached and associated with something that really is trying to make a difference to this world. Right? This is not a transactional relationship to this world, right? This is not a transactional relationship.
Speaker 1:And conversations fuel that, and that, unfortunately, in media platforms, in publishing platforms, has kind of disappeared. There is no conversation with an op-ed or an edit page writer anymore. I can guarantee you, they are just, and I used to do a column till recently in a leading business newspaper. There was never a conversation about idea at all. So that is kind of disappearing and we're becoming mechanical, like an assembly line. An assembly line will not offer differentiation, it will produce more of the same right. It doesn't have the ability to renew itself and raise the bar, as it were. So that's my two bits great.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. The next question in the power of the round is looking back at your journey with founding fuel. What three lessons stand out for you?
Speaker 1:As I said, a little earlier as well. I wish we had kind of got off our starting block sooner, hit the ground running, gathered feedback on the product. We wasted almost a year, if not more, trying to launch the perfect product. There's nothing like that, right, if it ain't going to meet the demands of demanding users like the ones we were aiming for. So I wish we'd followed a slightly more iterative model, right, which is what we learned from the work we did with the whole startup world, and lean startup model and design thinking, which is much more iterative, by definition, right.
Speaker 1:The other, I think, is that knowledge today lies in a network, right, and how you build those networks are very critical. I think. If I've learned, one thing to do well is to reach out and connect and build relationships with people on a continual basis. Identify the people who are special, who have special ideas, are givers primarily, who have been there, done that and are still keen to do things better, right? So how do you attract them, how do you retain them, how do you build strong relationships with them? So that's a very vital part of my, at least, summary, and I know Founding Fuel does that as a team as well, and we get recognized for it. In some ways Because these guys bring something special right. Some ways because these guys bring something special right which you know, unfortunately newsrooms or publishing businesses aren't able to leverage fully because there is no conversation right. That happens.
Speaker 1:So how to create some things together? Spoon iterative means you're not going to get it right first time, but as long as the purpose is clear, why we're doing certain things, it will happen. I think this whole thing of bookish knowledge, shifting that from the world of ideas into practice how do you make that happen? How do you actualize, you know, and this whole problem solving mindset that I spoke about, how do you create action? Learning as the vehicle to solve problems internally is a very powerful thing that we work with to do that as well, because you can't push everyone, as we tend to do, into a training session and expect them to suddenly emerge with a hello around their head. It doesn't happen, right. What goes in from one ear goes out from the other. So it's important for you to actually do it yourself and, like the word you used, experiential learning is a very powerful way to be as a state of being, as it were.
Speaker 2:So true. Thank you for sharing that. The last of the part of the round question for you, indrajit, is I think we are in a world where disruption seems to be the second name for all of us, and you have gone through that path, either by intuition or having that kind of a foresight, and disrupted your own career, disrupted the way you have been operating. For all the listeners who have been hearing this conversation and were in the midst of a lot of disruption happening in their own world, what three mindset shifts that you would recommend them to practice for them to embrace disruption?
Speaker 1:Very good question, I think I'd say first is learning humility right, and the fact that you don't know answers to a lot of things right. But, as I said, two is to socialize this with a community of people you trust in, who believe in what you believe in, right, and find the answers from those conversations right, because there are lots of things out there that aren't necessarily available in books or movies or whatever right Archival content. You've got to find the answers because the world is continually changing, right so, but there are smart people. You've got to figure the answers because the world is continually changing, right so, but there are smart people. You've got to figure out a way to identify them and build relationships with them so that they trust you right and they're willing to help you solve what you've identified as a problem statement, right. That's second. Third, I think is really about taking some of these problems and actually working in teams to solve them right. This whole action learning mindset that I've spoken about in a little while ago as well is a great way to operate in this world, because, unless you try something out and you, there are many tools that allow you to do this.
Speaker 1:Design thinking is the school that we kind of are quite fascinated with. But the issue, srikant, is not about the tools. A lot of people get obsessed with the tools, saying that we will learn this, we will learn that. It's not about the tools. It's about remaining focused on the problem that you're looking to solve. The tools will follow.
Speaker 1:Don't get obsessed with the tools, but you know, the thing that I notice in organizations, trikant is that there a lot of them are siloed. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. So there is a coming together that needs to happen of different perspectives, different specializations, different departments, if you like, young and old. You've got to break hierarchy right. Innovation will happen only if you're able to break the hierarchy. Not easy to create that kind of culture, but that's what great leaders do, and we worked with many great leaders who had the courage of conviction to say we've got to do this. We've got to address the business challenges that we're grappling with and we'll do it in-house. We will do it to our own people. Much the same applies to us as well. That's what we do at FoundingFuel.
Speaker 2:It's become a second nature some wise soul mentioned this, saying that for you to embrace deception, you got to get deceptive first yes, you have to be willing to, and it will happen in our lifetime many times over.
Speaker 1:It will keep happening, so accept it, don't. Don't resist, because moment you start resisting you become rigid and then all the other attention problems come up.
Speaker 2:What next for Indrajit, on the wonderful life journey, career journey that is unwinding.
Speaker 1:I'd like to keep pushing the envelope to see what new we can do, and I haven't stopped. I think it's a myth that at a certain at the wrong end of 50, that we have to retire. I think that concept is our kick. There's a lot that one can give back, and I've been engaging with a whole set of people from Bangalore, and the rest of the world as well, who are trying to see if there is a way to tap into this wisdom that exists. Especially India will, by what? 2047, have about 300 million people who are going to be in the 50 plus 60 plus range. Right, we are going to live longer.
Speaker 1:So how do you lead a productive life? Right, we are going to live longer. So how do you lead a productive life right and not just kind of sack out and enjoy retirement? I didn't think the concept of retirement has to be challenged, so I'm looking to essentially, if you ask me, build a portfolio of things. I've already begun. So farming fuel is an important part of it, but not the only thing. There are other things that I will do, including teaching, which I like, and many other things, coaching and others, mentoring, which is pro bono I don't charge for it, but there are many things that you can do to lead a meaningful and extremely satisfying life, even if your age catches up with you. I think it's about keeping the mind fresh, not about the actual age.
Speaker 2:Exactly as they say age is just a number. It is what you do with that number is what matters Absolutely. Before we sign off Indrajit, this show is all about creating ripples of inspiration. What's your? Inspire Someone Today. Message to all the listeners.
Speaker 1:Good question. I wish I could say something profound, but it'll have to go back to what I've learned, and that's really that. Don't believe that you're on this journey alone. There are many people who are walking down this path. Find and surround yourself with these good, amazing minds. Right? I have drawn inspiration that way because when I meet and talk to some of these fine minds and I'm doing this almost on a weekly basis I'm finding new people like yourself and many others, and through those conversations and by building deeper relationships with some of these people, I learn a heck of a lot which I can't do on my own or even within our team and founding field. So I've got to have a slightly more inclusive, open charter towards learning, and it's continuous. There is no end to it, right? So that's what I'd say.
Speaker 2:So beautifully put out there. I think, in the times, that each one of us are in a solo act is not something that we would want to go with, but what we got to do is, like Stephen Covey says, we are in an interdependent world, which means we learn, we share, we give and we take everything in back as well. So on that note, indrajit, thank you so much for sharing this wonderful journey of yours. Founding fuel as a metaphor is for all of us to find our own fuels. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Inspire Someone today. This is Srikant, your host, signing off. Until next time, continue to carry the repulse of inspiration, stay inspired, keep spreading the light.
