posts we wrote that went live.

But there was a time when the Indian Rupee was the king of the Gulf.

Dubai. Oman. Kuwait. Bahrain.

All of them used Indian currency for their daily trade.

But that dominance ended because of two big mistakes.

The first mistake was a massive gold smuggling loop.

Gold was cheap in the Gulf but expensive in India.

So, smugglers created a simple system:

1/ Buy gold in Dubai using Indian Rupees.

2/ Hide it in their luggage to avoid taxes.

3/ Sell it in India for almost double the price.

India didn't even realize how big this issue had become.

Until Gulf banks started sending huge amounts of extra Rupees back to India.

They asked the Reserve Bank of India for Dollars and Pounds in exchange.

In just one year, in 1957, India lost around $2 million dollars because of this loop.

To stop the bleeding, in 1959, India introduced the "Gulf Rupee."

These were special notes printed only for the Gulf. There was even a separate note made just for Hajj pilgrims.

This solution worked for a while.

But the second mistake happened in 1966.

After wars and poor economic decisions, India devalued the Rupee. Once that happened, the Gulf Rupee also collapsed.

People in the Gulf suddenly saw their savings lose value overnight. They were super angry.

One by one, these countries dropped the Rupee.

They started creating their own currencies.

Within 10 years, the entire Rupee system in the Gulf was entirely gone.

Today, most people don't even know this ever happened. But for a long time, Indian money actually ran the Middle East.

"Your product is useless."

That was the feedback from our biggest client. They were right.

We promised a 12-month shelf life. Our sealant was drying up in 8.

The market was angry. Our orders dropped to 20% of projections. We were bleeding credibility.

We checked the sealant. It was perfect. We checked the machine. It was perfect.

So I flew to other countries to find what really was the problem. I met a bottle manufacturer who showed me the truth.

It wasn't the sealant. It was the plastic tube packaging.

Suppliers were secretly adding "calcium granules" to the plastic to cut costs. The calcium reacted with the acidic sealant. It corroded the bottle from inside. Air got in.

The moment a sealant touches air, it turns to rubber.

I learned the biggest lesson of manufacturing that day: You can have the best product in the world. But if the packaging fails, the product fails.

How to ruin a celebrity interview in 3 steps:

1/ Believe the PR agency's schedule. (We waited 7 hours).

2/ Believe the guest list. (1 guest became 3 guests instantly).

3/ Trust your new equipment. (It failed).

I learned all three lessons in one day.

We were prepared for a one-on-one conversation. My team had researched the actor deeply.

Then, minutes before the shoot, the agency said: "The two lead actresses will also join."

Panic mode. We didn't have the mics. We didn't have the camera angles.

We scrambled. We rented gear. We survived. (Only to find out later the audio didn't record properly anyway).

The content game looks easy on screen. But behind the scenes, it is constant crisis management.

You can plan for the content. But you have to prepare for the chaos.

That is the learning.

7 years of no work. To earning 50-60k per episode.

The story of a beloved Indian sitcom actor is a masterclass in resilience.

Before he became a household face on one of India's most-watched sitcoms, he was struggling. He had worked with some of the biggest stars in the industry. But then? Silence.

For 7 years, he had no work.

He told me his first paycheck was for playing a Charlie Chaplin character. He earned 500 rupees.

Today, he is an essential part of a cult show that defines a generation.

It was a massive win for me to host him on the podcast. Not just because I am a 90s kid who grew up watching him. But because his journey proves one thing:

Your current "gap" doesn't define your future career.

You can go from 500 rupees to being a household name. You just have to survive the quiet years.

PS. I even asked him for his secret soda recipe. (And yes, he actually gave it to me).

My first real decision after taking over the company was walking away from a $100,000 project.

My dad had stepped back in August for health reasons. He sent an email that basically said I make all the decisions now.

A few weeks later, one of our biggest clients was sitting on a 210 sqm booth for a flagship show. The team had been chasing them for over a year on this particular project. We'd already built for this client at the same show last year. The ticket was over $100,000.

The problem was he wouldn't sign. The show was three weeks away, the vendor was pressuring us, and everyone in the company, including my dad, kept saying the same thing: but it's so much money.

I remember walking around a park near my apartment one night, completely stressed, and realizing there was no middle here. Either we burn the company to the ground or we rise. We weren't going to keep being slaves to a number.

So I messaged the team and said I'm not taking this project, no matter what the client says.

They came back offering more money. I called the client myself. He had no idea who I was. I told him I'm the one making the calls now, and we're not doing it. But we didn't abandon him. We handed over every design and technical drawing, he found a new vendor, and he had a fantastic show.

That made me happier than if we'd built it ourselves.

We said no. First time. Not the last.

On my dad's birthday, a 10-year client sent one email that wiped out 80% of our revenue.

It was the 29th of September. My mom saw the email at five in the morning her time. Her heart dropped, and then she called me, and mine dropped too.

This wasn't just any client. It was the only real account we had. My dad had chased this company for three years before he ever said yes. He grew that account from a hundred thousand dollars to two million. We had basically become an extension of their company.

And the CEO emailed my dad to say they were done with us.

I could hear my dad almost tear up on the phone. He was trying to be strong about it. I went the other way and got overly optimistic, because in that moment I didn't care about the revenue or the company. I just wanted to be there for my father.

That was the first time the roles switched between us. The first time the weight of it landed on me instead of him.

It took my dad three months to shake the shock. Took me about a month and a half.

We made it tho, bigger and better than ever. Happy father's day pops ❤️

I was almost FIRED in the first week of my first job!

In the early days, I got my first job through a tweet from [the CEO of a large creator media company].

I edited my first assignment, and in a meeting full of people it was being reviewed (including [the CEO]).

[The CEO] is blunt. Bad work gets called bad work.

He watched the edit and asked, "Who made it? Please fire him."

I kid you not! I FROZE!

My manager said it was my first video. Then [the CEO] said, "In that case, the one who gave the brief and approved it needs to be FIRED immediately."

He said, "0.5 out of 10. Take this video away from here."

That line stayed in my head for days.

I was not a strong editor yet. Basic tools. I did not know what "good" meant yet.

I sat with the problem statement for a long time.

Designers with 10 years of work were sitting there. They explained one thing: "GOOD TASTE."

How to make something look premium. How the process works before creative ideas. Everything.

A writer intern joined around the same time. We ran the same loop again and again. Brief. Edit. Reject. Fix. Rebuild.

This went on a few times. Then that one video came.....

[the CEO] asked again, "Who made it? We need more of these!"

We were like FINALLY!

The team liked it. The VP said this should be the quality benchmark for premium content.

After that we made a lot of videos. Some of those shorts were still in the channel's most-popular list years later.

I never got a clean "you are promoted" day.

I did more than my job description until the work was good enough. That is how I ended up leading content.

By the time I was leaving, the salary offer was double the initial pay. This happened in 6 months. Yet I joined a creator at literal ZERO PAY! (This thread is for some other day hehehe)

Learn to take good criticism. That will teach you far better than anything else. Doesn't matter how brutal :)))

At 17, I pretended to be a guy from the Netherlands so foreign clients would pay me.

It worked. I was making ₹80,000 a month, as a teenager.

The problem was:

→ I was an Indian

→ The internet was openly racist back then

[...]

So I built a fake version of myself:

→ A guy from the Netherlands

→ A thick American accent (you can hear it in my old videos )

→ A different name and a new backstory

We are still being taught that Kalidasa was the Shakespeare of India.

Kalidasa existed 1000 years before Shakespeare. A full millennium.

So why do we define the original by the sequel? Why do we name the ancestor after the descendant?

It's like calling the sun the "lightbulb of the sky."

And it doesn't stop there. Samudra Gupta is called the Napoleon of India.

But check the timeline. He lived 1500 years before Napoleon.

How does that make any sense?

It only makes sense if you realize who wrote the history books. It was a narrative written to make us feel like "versions" of Western greatness rather than the source of it.

But we know better now. We can edit the books.

So let's correct the record.

Shakespeare? He's the Kalidasa of England.

Napoleon? He's the Samudra Gupta of France.

The timeline doesn't lie. And neither should we.

6 things that are normal in India but impossible in America.

I noticed these after seeing how both countries handle daily life.

1/ UPI

In India, even a coconut seller takes UPI. Instant transaction. No fee.

In America, cards still dominate. Banks make over $30 billion a year just from transaction fees.

2/ 10-minute delivery

In India, you can get vegetables to iPhones delivered in 10 minutes.

In America, same-day delivery is still being figured out.

3/ Home services

In India, you can book a plumber, deep clean, facial, or massage at home through an app. Same day.

In America, a plumber alone costs $200-$300 just to show up. Home health is so expensive most middle-class families can't afford it.

4/ Aadhaar

In India, one ID is linked to everything. Bank. Phone. Government records.

In America, people still carry physical social security cards and fill paper forms at every government office.

5/ Walk-in hospitals

In India, if you feel sick, you walk into any hospital or clinic and get treated.

In America, you wait months for an appointment. Without insurance, one hospital visit can cost thousands.

6/ MRP

In India, the maximum retail price is printed on every product. Selling above it is illegal.

In America, retailers can charge whatever they want.

Maybe we don't appreciate enough of what we already have in India.

A customer may already trust Apple and still have no reason to trust a renewed iPhone from us.

People know what an iPhone is. They cannot know the history of a particular used one just by seeing the Apple logo.

That is the part we have to earn. For the models we renew, we need the right components, diagnostics and a process that can deliver the same condition again and again. We concentrate on iPhones because demand is strong and we can go deep on that work, alongside selective Android devices.

The customer is still buying an iPhone. But the promise about its second life comes from us. Its condition, warranty and service experience have to give them a reason to trust that promise.

Apple made the phone they want. We have to take responsibility for the phone they receive.

I met the founder of Balaji Wafers recently.

Chandubhai Virani is the one who built 40,000 crore snack brand, he told me young founders should avoid entering the traditional snacks business.

Not because there isn't demand. It's what a new brand has to compete against.

1/ Production, automation and distribution built over decades.

2/ Huge volumes that give an established player more purchasing power.

3/ Cutthroat margins, with oil and raw-material costs adding more pressure.

A new brand has to build all of that while selling at a price the customer already expects.

There are brands like Too Yumm!, Gopal and Diamond in the market too. But a new brand doesn't start with Balaji's volumes or purchasing power.

Your packaging might look better. Your Instagram might look better. Neither fixes the cost of getting that packet onto a shop shelf.

I don't take this to mean nobody should enter snacks.

But “it's a huge market” isn't enough of a reason to enter it.

What advantage do you have?

1/ A different product?

2/ A customer the existing players aren't serving?

3/ A distribution route they haven't built?

If you're selling a similar product at a similar price, better branding alone won't solve the problem he described.

You're competing with the business behind the packet, not just the packet.

Of course, you can enter the healthy-for-you category with a similar or a new product. Whether that becomes a business worth thousands of crores is the question.

During our conversation, I also found out that even the family's 3rd generation is exploring a newer product line or product innovation.

I don't think a first-time entrepreneur can easily match the resources a legacy brand like Balaji has built over decades.

Exciting times ahead!

How I hire video editors that scale YT channels to millions of views.

I don't look at their portfolio.

I don't look at their skills.

I look for obsession.

I am in a unique position where I can train anyone to edit in three months.

We have trained 4,000+ editors in the last three years.

So technical skill is not the bottleneck.

The bottleneck is finding someone who can go down a rabbit hole for weeks on end.

I live in a 2 BHK in Mumbai.

And last month my electricity bill was ₹7,672.

I decided to dig into the details to see where the money is going.

The result was frustrating.

Almost 50% of my bill has nothing to do with the power I used.

Here is the breakdown of the "hidden" costs:

1/ The Journey (Wheeling Charges): ₹1,617.

This covers the distance the electricity travels from the plant to my meter.

2/ The Taxes (Electricity Duty + State Tax): ₹1,184.

Government charges that sit on top of your consumption.

3/ The Fuel Hike (Power Purchase Adjustment): ₹744.

A charge that fluctuates based on global coal prices.

4/ The Rent (Fixed Charge): ₹410.

The base fee for the connection.

Total for these extra charges: ₹3,897.

My actual Energy Charge?

₹3,775.

We complain about rising costs.

We scold our kids for leaving the lights on.

But the reality is that the system is expensive.

You are paying for the wires.

You are paying for the losses.

You are paying for the old system costs.

So next time you pay your bill.

Remember this.

Only half of that money kept your lights on.

The other half just kept the system running.

I pitched my first startup idea to Ritesh Agarwal for an investment.

Yes, OYO Founder & the Poster boy of Indian startups!

And yk what, I failed at my first idea. (2021)

Other founders made similar ideas work, but I could not because they knew the market better and had more experience.

A good idea matters. The founder’s experience and network also shape the odds.

I got that opportunity from a course of Nas Daily.

After the pitch, I thought we were going to do something big.

The idea was good. The opportunity was there. I was simply the wrong person to pursue it at that time.

Why did I fail?

- I did not know the market well enough.

- lacked the right experience.

- void in the network that could help me fill those gaps.

That’s what forms founder’s “right to win”.

It means having a few things in your favor before entering a market. You may know the customers well, have experience in the industry, or have people around you who understand it better.

This matters because building a business takes time.

You need to understand the market, test the product, and get the timing right. Once you solve one problem, another one appears.

A weak base makes this process much harder.

Now I ask myself a few questions before working on an idea:

1/ Am I really passionate enough about the problem statement?

2/ Do I understand this market well?

3/ What experience gives me an unfair advantage?

4/ Do I know people who can help me fill the gaps?

5/ Can I find a partner who understands the market better?

6/ Can I stay with the problem long enough to figure it out?

My answers tell me what to do next.

I can move ahead, find the right partner, or build a stronger base first.

A good idea can work in the market and still be a poor fit for me.

So before asking whether an idea can win, I ask whether I have a fair chance of winning with it.

We scaled on IG from 0 to 1.5 Million in 3 years, and created a category!

People ask what I learned building the content team with [the creator].

Four things.

1/ Go all in

If work is only clock-in clock-out, the company stays average. Hard work is common. You still have to do the dirty work yourself. There is a Marathi line people know: "स्वप्न पाहणं फुकट असतं पण ते खरं करण्यासाठी मोठी किंमत मोजावी लागते." (Dreams are free to imagine, but you gotta pay a huge cost to make them a reality)

2/ Frugality

We ran bootstrap. No big funding. When money is tight, you think better. Saving money starts in your head before you see lots of red cells in your excel sheet.

3/ Care for the team

Money alone will not keep people. Respect them. Give clear feedback. Ask what they want in life and shape work so good performance helps them get there.

4/ Train your own people

Most early teams treat training like wasted time. I treated training as the main work.

I hired for energy and curiosity. Then I trained editors myself.

In about 15 days of serious practice, a hungry, curious person can pick up a usable editing skill. One simple standard I told my editors: the same video might take 10 hours on day one. In a few weeks, the same kind of edit can come down to around 2 hours.

Later, reels went out with almost no help from me. Some hit 5-10 million views/day. As people learned, quality and volume climbed further, and they already knew our taste and speed.

Wrong hiring stays costly forever.

Hungry people with training become your strength.

If you want work that matches your standard, train your people like the work depends on it.

Because it does.

I made a mistake with my sales team. I was asking them to be logistics managers. That is a waste of their talent. My top closers were spending hours on the phone with the factory floor. So I made a change to set them free.

Our salespeople are passionate. They want the best for their clients. So they used their direct lines to the production managers.

"Delay his order." "Ship mine first." "I need a huge favour."

It worked for the loudest salespeople. But it ruined the workflow for everyone else.

We created unintentional chaos:

→ Schedules shifted hourly.

→ "Non-moving stock" piled up.

→ Quiet clients got delayed.

I realised I was asking my sales team to be logistics managers. That is a waste of their talent.

So I removed the burden of logistics from their plate.

I centralised everything into "One Brain."

We moved stock to a single warehouse and restructured the communication flow. We effectively disconnected the direct line between Sales and Production.

We installed a new hierarchy:

- Production focuses 100% on making the product.

- Logistics decides 100% of the shipping schedule.

- Sales gets notified the moment it leaves.

- The "favours" stopped. A disciplined process began.

The result?

The sales team could stop fighting for slot times and start fighting for new business. The production team could stop reshuffling and start manufacturing.

My father has 30 years of experience in manufacturing.

So when we decided to launch a tape brand in the Middle East, I was confident.

We saw the market leader.

We saw their price.

I went back to the lab and developed a clone.

It was the exact same quality.

But we sold it for less.

I expected a quick win.

Instead, I got a lesson in human psychology.

The customers refused to switch.

They told me my product was inferior.

They said the way the tape came off the roll felt wrong.

It was in their heads.

But that didn't matter.

Because in their heads, the incumbent brand was "safe."

Even for a simple product like tape, the risk of switching felt too high for them.

I realized that a brand isn't a logo.

A brand is a history of reliability.

You cannot remove a prominent brand easily.

If you are set in someone's mind, they will defend you even against a cheaper, identical alternative.

We realized we had two choices:

1/ Burn our margins and offer a massive 30% discount to force a trial.

2/ Create a product that was undeniably superior, not just equal.

We chose the second path.

We made a product that was significantly better than the leader.

Double the quality.

That was the only way to justify matching their price.

If you are a challenger brand, remember this.

"Just as good" is not good enough.

I hired a photographer to work at a company that builds trade show booths. Everyone thought I'd lost it.

She won us our biggest design account.

For the past two decades our company hired people who knew the software. That was the whole bar. They could run the tools, but nobody ever asked them to have taste. It worked fine while we sold to agencies.

Then we started working with direct clients, and they all wanted the same thing. Show us good design, and we'll sign. Money wasn't the issue anymore. The work was.

So I started hiring for taste instead of for tools.

The first was a photographer whose eye I'd always admired. She had no idea how 3D design works or how our industry runs. She just brought the aesthetic, taught herself the software, and trained some of our designers along the way. We won a major Italian brand purely on design.

Then I hired interior architects, and that genuinely changed the game. They carry spatial taste and technical knowledge at the same time.

A project that used to need seven people suddenly needed three.

Same output, better quality, half the team. The people who'd called me crazy went quiet pretty fast.

Shelf space is the most expensive real estate in smartphone retail.

Apple and Samsung each have revenue of about ₹1 lakh crore in India.

Oppo, Vivo: 35k CR +

Xiaomi and Realme ; 20K CR+ .

They have spent decades earning the front of the dealer's counter. For most companies, competing for that space has been close to impossible.

So this is worth noticing.

[our company] is now on the shelves of:

1,000+ authorized dealers, 300+ cities and towns

We are tiny next to those brands, and we would rather say so. But a dealer's shelf is the most honest vote in retail. Nobody gives space to a product customers do not ask for.

The reason is simple. Premium renewed is easy to sell. A dealer handling graded phones has to inspect, explain, price by grade and handle disputes. A dealer handling like-new phones has none of that. One standard, no compromises, a twelve-month warranty behind it. It sells the way a new phone sells.

That simplicity is what lets a network grow. We think this is the start of India's biggest parallel distribution network for renewed devices, running alongside the one built for new phones. We know of nothing like it before.

It is early. We intend to deserve the space

We launched [our company]'s online store in May 2022 with iPhones only. OnePlus was next.

By normal retail logic, that is a weak catalogue. We kept it small on purpose.

The constraint was never finding phones. It was renewing them.

Every device needs different technical capabilities, different tools and a long list of components. Renewing a phone is not one process. It is one process per model.

So a big catalogue is not the same as scale. Total volume can look large while every model sits at a handful of units. The real economies sit at the model level. Buy one component in volume and it costs less. Renew the same part again and again and repair stops being a workshop job. It becomes a process you run, with steadier quality and lower cost each time.

That is why we can offer premium renewed. Like new. 100% battery health. A 12-month warranty. A narrow range, repeated at volume, is what makes that promise possible to keep.

We never treated how we renew and what we stand for as two separate questions. The process decides what we can promise. The promise decides which models we take on.

A brand gets remembered for one thing or it gets remembered for nothing. Every model we add has to strengthen that one thing, not stretch it. Adding one still takes months of preparation and quality checks.

We gave up range to earn a word.

Depth first. Breadth after.

You won't be able to buy an iPhone this Diwali.

The festive sales begin today. All the buzz is around the newly launched iPhone 18 Pro. The flagship, the launch, the headlines.

But that is not where most buyers are. Our estimate is that 88% of iPhone buyers in a festive season take a discounted older model or the base model. Only about 12% buy a Pro.

For that 88%, Diwali is the one time of year they buy the iPhone they have always dreamed of, usually on EMI. About 70% pay that way.

Cheapest iPhone on sale:

Diwali 2024: iPhone 13, ₹41,999

Diwali 2025: iPhone 14, ₹40,000

Diwali 2026: iPhone 15, ₹68,000

The 13 and 14 are discontinued, and these are sale prices. Without the sale, each costs even more. The base iPhone 18 has not launched.

Here is what it means for the customer. They expected the usual, the older phone about 20% cheaper. They expected the iPhone 15 to come down to ₹40,000 or ₹42,000 for the sale. It is ₹68,000, about ₹65,000 even after offers.

For the consumer, it is not a 20% drop. It is a 70% rise, ₹28,000 more in a single year. Between ₹42,000 and ₹68,000, there is nothing on the shelf.

Now see it from the counter.

You put the inventory in your store, and much of your stock came from online sales, and your own investment. Now you cannot know how the customer will react. They have three options. Pay more for a downgrade. Look for an alternative. Or don't buy at all.

If you are confused right now, that is a fair reaction. It is a year of disruption, and the trade is where it lands first.

But there is hope in it. Your customers still want the iPhone, and they still have the budget they saved. About 4.4 million buyers, roughly ₹26,000 crore of demand, are looking for somewhere to go.

That is where premium renewed comes in. An iPhone that is like new. 100% battery health. A 12-month warranty, backed by 700+ service centres across 551 cities, with free pick-up and drop across 18,000 pin codes. No grading, no compromises, at a price closer to what your customer saved.

All figures are estimates. Details in the images.

[tagged journalists and analysts]

The telecom trade is being redrawn. New phones cost more, the cheapest iPhone is up about 50% in a year, and every dealer is asking the same question: what do I sell now?

In Delhi, 300+ people filled the room to answer it: the top dealers of NCR and the [finance partner] leadership team, together with [our company].

Our view is simple. Renewed devices now offer the highest margin and the strongest consumer pull of any product or category on the counter.

And the customer gets certainty:

Like new.

100% battery health.

A 12-month warranty, serviced at 700+ centres from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

From ₹999 a month with [finance partner], up to 24 EMIs.

For the dealer, it is simple. One standard to sell, nothing to inspect, and a customer who is covered wherever they live. For the customer, a premium phone at a monthly price they can plan for.

Thank you to the dealers who made time, and to the [finance partner] team for backing the idea.

A warranty is a promise. Service is how it gets kept.

Every [our company] phone comes with a 12-month warranty, the most comprehensive in the industry. To keep that promise, we expanded our authorised service network to 700+ centres across 551 cities and towns. It is the biggest service network in the country.

If something goes wrong, you do not have to travel. Pick-up and drop is free across 18,000+ pin codes nationwide.

We are not only in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. We are in the small towns of Bharat, where good service is still a luxury.

That is the base layer. A premium renewed phone can only be sold nationally if the buyer is covered wherever they live. Service is what makes that possible, and it is what lets a dealer in any town sell with confidence.

Trust first. National distribution follows.

https://lnkd.in/d-wXKShW

[tagged colleague]