John F Kennedy (JFK) and the freedom of the free world

John F Kennedy (JFK) was the torchbearer of the free world at the height of the Cold War. The New York Times hailed him as someone who “reasserted American leadership of the free world”. When JFK visited the Berlin Wall for the first time on June 23, 1963, he said, “There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the communist world.” JFK paused and then added, “Lassen sie nach Berlin kommen!” (“Let them come to Berlin!”) What did freedom mean to JFK? I got a glimpse of it when I read the then New York Times bestseller, “The Dark Side of Camelot,” written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh. Some of the claims made in the book are disputed. However, the broad tone is not. Here is what I gathered from the book about what freedom meant to JFK:

• Freedom to manipulate elections: Chapter ten is titled ‘The stolen election’. Hersh argues that JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, contracted with Chicago mafia leader Sam Giancana and got help from the organized crime syndicate to manipulate the election, especially in Illinois and West Virginia. It involved vote fraud and vote buying. Not all historians agree on whether the Kennedys had a deal with organized crime. However, most agree that there was localized vote fraud. But then the fraud might have been there on both the Democratic and Republican sides. And perhaps vote fraud has been a part of the democratic election process from the beginning. In Hersh’s words, “Money bought Joseph P. Kennedy enormous personal freedom, and bought his son the presidency.” My takeaway is that the Kennedys had the means to manipulate the election, and they exercised it.

• Freedom to overthrow and kill foreign leaders and civilians: Hersh and most historians agree that JFK approved and sustained intense covert efforts to remove Fidel Castro from power, including operations that explicitly involved assassination. The first major operation, the Bay of Pigs, was a major disaster. The CIA recruited and trained 1400 Cuban exiles in Florida for attacking and overthrowing Fidel Castro. On April 17, 1961, the CIA-recruited army made an amphibious landing at the Bay of Pigs, on Cuba’s south coast. The expectation was that there would be widespread revolt against the Castro regime. Instead, two days of fierce fighting resulted in 114 deaths, and 1200 from the exile army were captured. Hersh quotes Kennedy saying, “If we have to get rid of these…men, it is much better to dump them in Cuba than in the United States, especially if that is where they want to go.

Another major overthrow operation supported by the JFK government was to outlive not only JFK, but would consume three more US presidents and eight successive military governments in South Vietnam. JFK approved US support for a coup against Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu in 1963. Ironically, it was JFK who had strongly armed and supported Diem during the early part of his tenure. American troops in Vietnam went from 900 in 1961 to 16,000 in 1963. They were officially classified as “advisors”, though many were involved in combat-related operations. With US support, Diem was expected to fight against communist-backed opposition; instead, he started fighting Buddhist and other independent political groups. On November 2, 1963, Diem and Nhu were seized by General Minh’s troops in a Roman Catholic church, blindfolded, and executed by gunshots to the back of the head. “Americans are gratified by a sense of joy that they find in Saigon,” the New York Times commented in an editorial on November 4. While the number of people (civilians + military) killed during the coup was small (less than 50), over the years, the Vietnam War would cost the lives of close to 3 million Vietnamese (military + civilians) and over 50,000 US soldiers. 

• Freedom to use women like painkillers: “You know, I get a migraine headache if I don’t get a strange piece of ass every day,” JFK is quoted as saying in the book. Whether true or not, historians agree that JFK was extraordinarily promiscuous and compulsive in his pursuit of women. JFK’s partners included women from the glamour world, such as Marilyn Monroe and Judith Campbell Exner, who was also a friend of Mafia don Sam Giancana. But they also included a nineteen-year-old White House intern (who published her memoir in 2012), and numerous others whose names JFK couldn’t remember. So, he would say, ‘Hello, kid. How are you?’ One of his lovers recalls in the book, “I was just thrilled. Here is this handsome older man. He’s interested in me. But in retrospect, it’s really sad. I was just another girl. There was a compartment for girls, and once you were in the sex compartment, you weren’t a person anymore. I got declassed and depersonalized.”

So, what did freedom mean to JFK? Was it about using money, power, and position to fulfil one’s desires? Was it about changing the world to match your desired image, one in which there is no communism and the US is ruling the world? Perhaps, it was all of this. Daniel Kahneman says in ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’, “We can be blind to the obvious, and we can be blind to our blindness.” Whether JFK was blind to his obvious biases, I don’t know. From his actions, he appeared to be a prisoner of his biases, yet he successfully managed his image as a hardworking chief executive and an attentive husband. But then, who is not a prisoner of his biases?

Learnings from Khushi Chandak on her electrochrome-based startup journey

Khushi Chandak was a second-year Electrical Engineering student when she attended my course "Managing technological innovation" in Spring 2025 at Desai Sethi School of Entrepreneurship (DSSE) at IIT Bombay. After the first or second class, she told me she had a startup on sustainable e-ink displays. I was surprised. In the second year of B.Tech., you don't start a company on display technology. I would have been less surprised if Khushi had said her company was into JEE mentoring marketplace or genAI-based animation. Anyway, she was absent for most of the course. Then I bumped into her this Spring when I was back on campus teaching the same half-semester course. I was curious about her startup journey, and she readily agreed to share it with the class.

"Imagine these class walls are made of glass, and with a tap of the switch, I can make it opaque or change its tint. Power consumption is an issue in commercial buildings with a high window-to-wall ratio. A tint can reduce sunlight entering the building and make it more power efficient." - This is how Khushi started her talk. We were curious now.

Here are the key points from Khushi's startup journey:

• Finding the right technology & experts: It began at the start of Khushi's second year, when she and her co-founder thought they could make eyeglasses in which a tap could change the lens color. The idea was selected for the IDEAS program run by DSSE, where selected teams go through customer and technology discovery over six months with the help of mentors. While researching, they realized that they needed to use electrochrome technology, in which material properties like color change with electricity. They found that IIT Bombay has a faculty working on the technology. They approached the professor for advice, and the discussion led to the professor joining them as a co-founder. This was a turning point.

• The danger of attachment to an idea: Khushi and her friend met between 100 and 150 people - potential customers and opticians, local vendors, as well as branded ones like Lenskart and luxury brands. They tried to find out if the idea is interesting and how much people would pay. They also started building a prototype and realized that 500 ml chemical costs Rs 35,000. Working on the prototype during Dec '24-Jan '25, they realized the glasses won't sell below Rs 20K. Then they reached out to experts working on electrochrome technology, mostly within India, but a few outside India. Three research groups were working on it in India. But the technology had not scaled like battery technology.

But the team decided to go ahead with prototyping plans. They were able to demo small glass prototypes changing colors. For three months, two of them were working late nights, with 2-3 hours of sleep. Their project got selected at an IIT Madras competition in the top 25 out of 200 applications. Here, they got a strong negative feedback and were convinced that the product won't sell. One month was spent in frustration, but finally, there was an acceptance, and they decided to pivot. "Don't get too attached to the idea," Khushi said.

• Learning to fail fast: They decided to work on flexible plastic sheets. In two weeks, they realized this idea is not viable. The market for e-paper displays was still in its infancy in India. This was faster. What next? Then they looked at buildings with high glass facades and with openings for natural light. They talked to architects and builders. The market looked promising. However, they realized they needed to move from a 5cm x 5cm prototype to a 4 ft x 6 ft window. This would take 4 to 6 years and significant capital before they reach the market with a product.

They incorporated the company in May 2025 and received multiple grants. They could demonstrate a 5 cm x 5 cm display for 5K cycles, perhaps a first time in India for the type of electrochromic technology they were working on. However, at this juncture, the girls asked if they are ready to make a long term commitment to this venture and decided to back out.  

• Productizing small wins: Looking back, Khushi felt they could have considered productizing the small glasses they had prototyped, perhaps as part of a larger painting, such as a Varli painting.

Despite the setback, Khushi and her co-founder are still together, looking for their next idea. Khushi, who made the presentation in my class last January, was definitely more mature and more confident than the Khushi I met a year ago. While she had put in a lot of effort for the venture, she had been wise enough not to borrow money or dip into her savings. Wishing her the best in her journey ahead.

Insights from a deep-tech entrepreneur, Dr. Darshit Parmar, CEO, Flash Cryogenics

It was a pleasure to have Dr. Darshit Parmar, Co-founder and CEO, Flash Cryogenics, give a guest talk in my class at Desai Sethi School of Entrepreneurship (DSSE), IIT Bombay, a few months ago. Darshit is no stranger to the campus where Flash Cryogenics (FC) is incubated. In fact, the campus has been virtually his home since he came here from Rajkot almost a decade ago to do his M.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering. By the time Flash Cryogenics was officially registered in 2024, Darshit had spent 8 years researching and maturing a cryogenics technology. He was the third PhD student, working on this technology, at the cryogenics lab led by Prof Milind Atrey, who is a co-founder and mentor at FC and presently the Deputy Director of the institute.

Darshit began our class with the question: What is cryogenics? When you use refrigeration for creating spaces below -150 °C, it involves cryogenics. MRI machines with cool superconducting magnets, preserving biological specimens like stem cells, liquified natural gas (LNG), and rocket fuels such as liquid hydrogen and oxygen, need cryogenics.

Here are my four key takeaways from Darshit’s talk:

1.   Need to perfect the technology before taking it to the market: Darshit began his research with the question - Can we use HVAC materials and reach cryogenic temperatures? Like most of his classmates, he thought he would take up a job after finishing his Master's. Prof Atrey used to bring visitors from industry and academia to the lab, and the students would demonstrate how a normal HVAC compressor can be used to achieve -200 °C. The visitors used to be surprised. This convinced Darshit that this technology is likely to have commercial potential. However, it had missing pieces. Darshit spent the next 4-5 years maturing the technology.

2.   Customer discovery is very important: In 2018-19, Darshit realized that he needed a business plan. He joined the I-NCUBATE program jointly organised by DSSE (DCE at that time), IIT Bombay, and GDC, IIT Madras, which nudged him towards customer discovery. He dropped out in the middle, perhaps due to demands from his research; however, he realized the importance of answering the question – Who is my customer? One possibility was blood banks. They said they were ready for pilots. However, no one submitted a letter of intent. Healthcare is a heavily regulated industry, and hence, not a good place to start your journey. Then came the pilot project from the chemistry lab. It was completed successfully. However, there was also a realization that the market for such refrigerators is very small. This is when, in Darshit’s words, the shit hit the fan. It led to introspection – What is our USP? 3 things came up – 1) temperature flexibility  -40 °C all the way to -200 °C, 2) energy efficiency 20-30% cooling efficiency, 3) sustainable refrigerators when one combines ozone depletion potential and global warming potential. Could LNG be a market? Yes, very small in India right now, but growing. Could data center cooling be a market? Yes, mostly outside India right now. Could Liquified Bio Gas (LBG) be a market? Yes, potentially. During customer interaction, a new problem was discovered, biogas separation – separating CO2 and Methane. Could FC solve the problem for the customer? Could FC build a cryotherapy chamber for a resort? As the FC team began interacting with customers, new avenues opened. Now, FC has reached a point where there are orders, and the FC team needs to deliver. And eventually see which option scales.

3.   Cost and speed of experimentation matter: A company like Zepto gets started with two people, two laptops, and starts generating revenue from day one. A company like FC works differently. Simulations do get started on a laptop. However, the proof of pudding lies in showing a physical demo. For Darshit, the prototype was built when he got a couple of grants, one from the institute itself and another from Nidhi Prayas from the Department of Science and Technology (DST). Many experiments didn’t work. For example, the compressor module worked well, but the freezer cabinet failed for a couple of iterations. For an energy solution, it is important to have your own test lab. If there are claims to be made about energy efficiency, it helps to be confident through internal testing before going for an external energy audit. Initially, FC had to outsource the freezer chamber. It cost more, it had quality issues, and each improvement iteration took longer. For example, the local vendor didn’t understand what vacuum insulation means. Eventually, FC built its own workshop and testbed with cutting tools and a welding machine. Darshit knew a bit about fabrication, which helped.

4.   Patent where it is really important: Patenting is expensive. Filing a patent for India region costs about ₹1.5 Lakh, and filing a patent for protection in the US costs ₹20 Lakh. If you want to cover all regions, such as the UK, the EU, Australia, etc., it will cost ₹70-80 Lakh. Moreover, big organizations easily find ways to circumvent a patent filed by a startup. For example, if FC files a patent to protect a refrigerant mix that improves energy efficiency by 30-40%, a big player can easily change the mix a little bit and get the advantage. Hence, Darshit feels that startups should patent where it is really important. Does it mean you should not patent at all? No, a big player is also worried about its brand being damaged if found infringing on other players’ patents. Legal battles are very expensive. It is best not to get into it in the first place.

With an energy crisis looming large across India, we need companies like Flash Cryogenics, which can play a role in liquifying biogas and natural gas. Deep tech is a game of patience, and FC is still exploring its product-market fit. We wish Darshit and the FC team all the very best in their journey ahead.

Electric Vehicle: To go or not to go for it?

By mid-2026, our Maruti Estilo Zen will be fifteen years old, and the registration will expire. It was bought in 2011 by exchanging a 12-year-old car, guess which one? Another Maruti Zen! When I mention Estilo in my class, students say, what? The car has run 48,000 km in 14.5 years, that’s 3.3K km per year. ChatGPT says, “That’s extremely low usage.” And, it is in excellent shape.  Now, I have two options: to renew registration for five more years or to go for a new car. And, if it is a new car, should I go for an Electric, an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), or a hybrid model?

I checked in our apartment parking lot; we have 0 electric or hybrid cars, many electric two-wheelers, and a total of 40 cars. Maybe all of us living here are late adopters. So, I checked the Manipal Hospital parking lot, which is within walking distance from my place. It had 3 Battery EVs (BEV), 3 hybrids, and a total of 40 cars. In 2025, BEVs accounted for around 5% (up from 2.6% in 2024) and hybrids another 2-3% of the cars sold in India. Fast charging stations may be quite limited once you leave the city. Overall, the adoption is growing but low.

In the US, the Big Three, Ford, Volkswagen, and GM, have scaled back their EV strategy recently. Ford has taken a huge write-off of $19.2 billion. GM’s charge on reassessment of EVs is lesser $1.6 billion. One sector where car-related anxieties get amplified is rentals. In the US, Hertz went public in 2021 after emerging from bankruptcy. In the same year, it made a pivot to electric and made a bulk purchase of 100,000 Teslas – estimated to cost around $4.2 billion. In just two years, range anxiety, charging station paucity, and unfamiliarity all had a combined effect of customers not opting for EVs and resulting in higher-than-expected collisions and damages. Hertz declared in its 10-K filings that it would “significantly reduce the size” of its global EV fleet. It finally took half a billion in write-downs and disposal losses by end of 2024.

On the regulatory front, on December 16, 2025 EU moved away from its 2035 100% EV mandate to allow for a 90% reduction in CO₂ emissions by 2035, which creates a 10% 'flexibility gap' for highly efficient hybrids and combustion engines. The EU was following the footsteps of the Trump administration, rolling back the “EV mandate” in early December. US automakers are now required to meet an average of 34.5 mpg (miles per gallon) across their model fleet by 2031, a dramatic drop from the average of 50.4 mpg 2013 mandate proposed by the Biden administration.

In India, the EV policy favours BEVs. FAME II subsidies apply to BEVs, not to hybrids. Tata and Mahindra have taken the BEV-only route so far, while Maruti and Toyota are pushing for hybrids. The 2023 IIT Kanpur study and the 2025 International Council on Clean Transportation report on life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions indicate that HEVs may be at least comparable if not better than BEVs in the Indian context. Such studies are region-specific, where “cradle-to-grave” analysis consists of vehicle manufacturing, usage, maintenance, recycling of components, and finally, disposal. The “well-to-wheel” analysis includes oil extraction, feedstock cultivation, transportation, refining, fuel production, blending, and supply. IIT Kanpur study considers India’s electricity generation mix from thermal, nuclear, solar, wind, and hydropower plants in different regions. Why do Indian policies favour BEVs?

One thing I learnt from the Epstein saga is to follow the funding sources. Epstein donated money to Harvard, MIT, Clinton-related entities, etc., and, in turn, received money from Leslie Wexner (Victoria’s Secret), billionaire Leon Black, etc. Could India’s EV policy be influenced by the big corporations? Yes, it is possible. During the 2024 Lok Sabha Polls, Tata Group-backed Trust donated ₹757 crore to the BJP and ₹77 crore to the Congress. Who knows how favours get returned? Or, could it be a bias due to the "Make in India" initiative, favouring Tatas and Mahindras against Suzuki and Toyota? The IIT Kanpur study was supported by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Japan. Could there be a bias in this study towards hybrid due to the sponsorship? Yes, it is possible.

Currently applicable (2022-27), the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency-II (CAFE-II) norms require an average efficiency of ~113 g CO₂/km. That is 48 miles per gallon (mpg), which is roughly where US norms were before being relaxed this month to 34.5 mpg, corresponding to 158 g CO₂/km. Maruti’s R C Bhargav may have a point when he said last month, “The norms of CAFE, as they have been framed, actually favour bigger cars. As weight decreases, the norms become less and less favourable for smaller cars.”  The smallest Tata car (Tiago 1.2, 1050 kg) weighs 25% more than WagonR (850 kg). Mahindra discontinued the compact car of a similar size (KUV100 NXT, 1085 kg). For Tata Motors, compact cars account for 16% of its passenger car sales. Small cars is a shrinking market in India, while SUVs is a growing market. It is in the interest of Tata Motors and Mahindra to sell us the dream of SUVs.

I drive occasionally. I purchase all groceries by walking around, use a cycle for going to the Metro station, bank, post office, and anything within a 2-3 km radius. Taking the car out to a nearby restaurant is problematic because finding a parking space is a challenge. My maximum mileage may have come from commuting to the IIM campus. In the coming year, the metro line to IIMB may become operational, and my car usage may reduce further. I travelled to Kallianpur (near Udupi) and Gokarna this month for holidays by train and bus. I take the KIAL bus to commute to and from the airport many times. I don’t see any reason for buying an SUV. I feel it is too big to maneuver, less efficient than a compact, too cumbersome to find a parking space, especially if you don’t have a driver. And, BEV is not suitable when the usage is infrequent. Unlike an IC engine, a battery degrades even when parked.

In short, my best bet is to renew the registration for Estilo for five more years. If that doesn’t work out for some reason, I will go for a compact IC car or wait for a compact hybrid like Maruti Fronx due in 2026. Is it possible that I was convinced of the answer to begin with and went looking for data to support it? Yes, that is possible😊

A reflection on 2025 through management of innovation, design thinking, and mindfulness lens

This is my reflection on the year that has gone by through the lens of three areas of my work: management of technology and innovation, design thinking, and mindfulness.

India is just waking up in deep-tech; it takes ten years: 2025 was the year of tariff and trade wars. In India, various industries were impacted due to the trade war. For example, Textiles and apparel, logistics, automotives, pharma, IT services, and more. Markets have bounced back since then. However, the uncertainty remains high. I was really impressed by China’s response. Nelson Wang, Vice Chairman of RimPac and Asian Studies, mentioned in an interview, “China has been preparing for this situation for ten years.” (5:30) Over the last decade, China reduced its dependence on the US export from 20% to 11.5%. It controlled rare earth magnates, and it was in a dominant position in the Nexperia crisis. It has made strategic investments in key technologies like batteries and EVs, AI, semiconductors, telecom, renewables, space tech, and biotech. Fighting against the century of humiliation that began with the defeat in the first Opium War (1839-42) remains the central theme in CCP ideology. China has demonstrated strategic foresight and execution in tackling American imperialism. China’s R&D budget is 2.7% of GDP while India’s is 0.66% of GDP. And China’s GDP (USD 19.4 trillion) is almost five times India’s GDP (USD 4.1 trillion). India is just waking up. For the first time, Indian government has allocated ₹10,000 crore deep-tech Fund of funds in Union 2025 budget and RDI scheme has earmarked ₹20,000 crore in FY25-26 for deep-tech sectors. Several VCs, including Celesta Capital, Accel, Blume Ventures, Premji Invest have created an India Deep Tech Alliance with a USD 1 billion commitment. Like Wang said, it takes ten years. Let’s hope the focus remains unwavering. A couple of 2025 bright spots: Pixxel launched a satellite constellation doing hyperspectral imaging at 5-metre resolution with 150+ bands and ePlane signed an MoU reportedly worth $1B to supply 788 VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) air-ambulances.

The year of stampedes and a case for design thinking: I started conducting design thinking workshops for Social Entrepreneurship students at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai in 2011. That time, IT services companies in Bangalore said empathy was not relevant to them as their customers are far off in the US and Europe, and agile implementation was more important than rapid prototyping. Things changed during Vishal Sikka’s tenure as Infosys CEO (2014-17). In a short time, Design Thinking became a buzzword. I was a beneficiary and did many workshops across the country. All along, I knew that anything fashionable fades after some time. However, to my surprise, DT didn’t fade away. I continued to do workshops. 2025 convinced me that DT won’t be going away anytime soon. This year, India witnessed 9 stampedes in public places, costing over 100 lives. The year began with two stampedes in January: the Tirupati temple (6) and the Maha Kumbh (30). Then New Delhi railway station (18), Goa temple (6), RCB stadium (11), Jagannath Puri temple (3), Hardwar temple (6), Vijay rally in Karur (41), and finally Andhra temple (9) last month. The chaos and vandalism at the Messi event in Kolkata this month didn’t result in any casualty but 17 people got injured. It shows how poor we are in designing stampede-proof public places and crowd management solutions. I remain committed to studying, teaching, and applying design thinking to solve complex social problems.

Mindfulness research enters toddlerhood, and mental health becomes a fundamental right: Mindfulness traces its roots to Buddha’s teachings. However, secular forms of mindfulness emerged in the late 19^th and early 20^th century in Burma (now Myanmar) from the Theravada tradition and in Japan from the Mahayana-Zen tradition. Given various dimensions of mindfulness, such as religious vs secular, seated vs on-the-go, goal-centric vs journey-centric, group vs individual, therapeutic vs soteriological, it is not surprising that there are several ways to be mindful. Neuroscience of mindfulness as a discipline emerged in 21^st century when the brain imaging techniques became more accessible for the researchers and subjects became available after the adoption of clinical intervention programs such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Goenka’s Vipassana. It is generally believed that the neuroscience of mindfulness is in its infancy. 2025 marks the publication of one of the first major meta-studies on mindfulness. The paper is titled “The mindful brain: A systematic review of the neural correlates of trait mindfulness” by authors from MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and West Chester University, Pennsylvania. It assesses 68 correlational studies across various forms of MRI and EEG. It identified some consistent results and many gaps in understanding. In my opinion, this year marks the neuroscience of mindfulness going from infancy to toddlerhood.

IITs and Kota-like factories have witnessed several student suicides in the past decade. India’s Parliament passed Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, which guarantees the right to access mental healthcare. However, the implementation remained poor. In the July 2025 Sukdeb Saha vs Andhra Pradesh case, the Supreme Court found systemic gaps in how institutions handle student stress and mental health. In the verdict, the Supreme Court declared mental health as an integral part of the constitutional right to life (Article 21) and issued binding guidelines to protect and promote psychological well-being in educational settings. Let’s hope the needle moves.

Founder and CEO Madhav Krishna on three key turning points in the journey of Vahan, India’s largest blue collar recruitment platform

By the time I started my course “Strategic management of technology and innovation” in September at IIM Bangalore, generative AI had come down from the peak of the hype cycle. It had been a couple of months since the MIT Media Lab report was out, highlighting that ninety-five percent of genAI investments are seeing no business returns. I started looking for a concrete use case where genAI is making a difference in India today, and I wasn’t optimistic in my search. That’s when I came across Madhav’s interview on YouTube. Madhav Krishna is the Founder and CEO of Vahan, India’s largest blue-collar worker recruitment platform. Vahan enables over 40,000 placements per month. The Vahan team is proud to have Airtel as a strategic investor, and it was part of the 2019 cohort of the Y-Combinator accelerator program. Through YC, Madhav met Vinod Khosla, and now Khosla Ventures is one of the investors. Through Khosla Ventures, Madhav met Sam Altman, and now OpenAI is a strategic partner.

In this current scale-up phase of Vahan, Madhav must have been very busy. However, he graciously agreed to come and talk to the students in my class (On September 25). Madhav shared three turning points in Vahan’s journey.  Here is a summary:

1. Moving from offering vitamins to painkillers: Madhav started programming at the age of 12, did an MS in AI from Columbia University, worked at E-commerce and Edtech companies for 7-8 years before returning to India with an ambition of making a real impact on society. Vahan was started in 2016 with a voice bot offering for learning to speak English. Anybody with a feature-phone could call Lakshmi, the virtual teaching assistant, and practice speaking English and get feedback. Then, Vahan created verticalized training programs to train the sales force and drivers, etc. They got paid pilots from Uber and FMCG companies. However, pilots didn’t get converted into contracts. That’s when Madhav and team realized that while spoken English is a nice problem to solve for blue-collar workers, the burning problem is finding a job. It is the difference between a vitamin and a painkiller. Vahan decided to go for the painkiller and pivoted to the recruitment space.
   


2. Aligning with the dominant business model: India has 600 million blue-collar workers. 200-250 million are in Agriculture and related areas. And the rest are in construction, logistics, retail, etc. Recruitment of blue-collar workers is a highly unorganized market, and hiring is done mostly by thousands of local agencies, especially in tier-2-3 towns. Vahan was able to repurpose the technology built for skilling towards lead generation. Initial customers started paying on a per-lead basis. However, this business model received pushback from the market. In India, hiring services don’t get paid on a per-lead basis, especially for blue-collar jobs where the churn rate is high. You get paid on a per-hire basis. The Vahan team tried pushing a pay-per-lead model. Lead generation is where they have more control. Moreover, in the pay-per-hire model, payment happens after 30/60 days to rule out the place-and-churn tactics. However, after a year and a half of fighting, Vahan finally embraced the dominant pay-per-hire model. Zomato, their lead customer, agreed to send the recruitment dashboard daily. Initially, not every customer was willing to put effort into preparing and sharing recruitment data in real-time. Vahan guys had to chase them. But over time, the process got automated. Now, Vahan gets live data from almost all customers. Madhav says, “Generally, it is not a good idea to fight a dominant business model, especially in markets like India.”


3. Solving high-value problems in a low-trust society: With the pay-per-hire model, Vahan started scaling. However, they realized that the efficiency of the product was low. From the set of candidates Vahan recommended, only a small number got hired. Given the hiring requirements of these companies, this was puzzling. Vahan decided to probe further. Ultimately, they realized that the root problem was a lack of trust. In India, especially in the blue-collar segment, hiring happens through referrals. It is a very human-driven discovery process, either through friends, family, cousins, etc., or through local recruitment agencies. These are typically solo entrepreneurs with a small team. And they will be on the phone all day making calls. Most high-value expenditure in India, like opening a bank account, buying insurance, a loan, a car, or a home sale, etc., happens through humans, not digitally. In fact, 60-70% of customers of Zerodha, one of the leading stock brokering platforms, are brokers, not retailers. Vahan tried personifying the bots, but that didn’t work. Eventually, they decided to build a platform for recruiters, and that worked. Today, Vahan has a network of 2000 recruiters who use the platform, access demand data, match candidates, and track the progress of the hiring process. Recently, Vahan re-introduced their original offering, a voice-bot, in a new avatar. The bot talks to candidates, asks basic questions, qualifies them, and answers FAQs. It currently supports English and Hindi, and Vahan is planning to extend the support to at least eight more Indian languages and their dialects. This voice-bot has increased recruiters’ productivity. Madhav feels that in low-trust societies like India, it will be human plus AI play for some time. AI will automate the repetitive tasks, but humans will play an important role.

As Vahan scales, it will need to grow its recruitment network and offer more value-added services to recruiters, recruiting agencies, and blue-collar workers. Personally, it was a great learning experience, and I am sure the same was true for students. I wish Madhav and Vahan the very best in their future endeavours.

Remembering Ganesh Prabhu, a friend and collaborator

It has been a year since Ganesh departed. It was as if Ganesh had negotiated the details of the departure time. His course was over, and the grades had been submitted. Ganesh liked to work out details. He would call me to check if I am available on a date ten months later. Initially, I would double-check with him if the year is correct. Slowly, I got used to it. My calendar would have a huge empty space followed by some slots that are blocked for a program with Ganesh. 

Ganesh's detail orientation stands out while talking to his old friends. Utkarsh Majumdar and Jose P. D. are two of them. They were neighbors in the IIM Ahmedabad hostel during FPM days. Jose continued to be his neighbor even at IIMB. Both of them collaborated with Ganesh through executive education programs, some of them lasting multiple decades. Ganesh would have worked out the program details, so it was easy to run those programs, they recall. For Jose, Ganesh was the go-to man to clarify any institute policy or regulation. And Ganesh would approach Utkarsh to check if a particular answer was correct, even though Ganesh had set the exam paper. 

Ganesh and I would meet often in the Staff Canteen, either for breakfast or lunch. For breakfast, he would come on his signature Ather 450. I asked him why he didn't walk from his house; it is such a green campus. He said "Naah" with such conviction, I didn't dare to ask that question again. Once, he seemed excited as we were approaching the canteen. I asked him if there was anything special. Ganesh said, it is Saturday, there will be masala dosa. He was fond of guessing the items during the executive program's special lunches. "There will be mutton biryani," he would declare much before arriving at MDC, "or Malabar fish curry." 

Ganesh would carry a serious face with his thick mustache ninety percent of the time. And, once in a while, he would burst out laughing, mostly at his own joke. I wouldn't have been able to guess that he was the prank master in the Ahmedabad hostel. Apparently, he went walking around dressed like a sardar and many people didn't recognize him. Ganesh was a big fan of Govinda during college days. It is not clear if he got any company for Govinda movies. At least once, he had pulled reluctant Utkarsh into watching one. 

Ganesh, Jose, and Rishikesha T. Krishnan joined IIMB together in 1996. Next term, in early 1997, Rishi and Ganesh offered an open executive program, Creating Successful New Products (CSNP). It was a big hit. The program led the duo to first study the challenges in product development in the Indian industry, and then they focused on the software product development. The study outcome was first published as a set of challenges faced by the Indian industry and later as a set of lessons from six cases in the software industry. Interestingly, many of the six software products studied in the paper twenty-five years ago still exist in some form. For example, Infosys BANCS2000 (now called Finacle), Ramco's Marshal ERP, and even the niche Urdu word processor from Concept Software are still around.  Subsequently, Ganesh ended up leading the CSNP program and ran with it till last year. I started participating as a co-teacher in the program in 2014, and we did one in November 2024; it was our last program together. 

Ganesh told me once that when he joined IIMB, he didn't enjoy teaching. But he liked research. And pretty soon, he got a paper in the Academy of Management Review, one of the most prestigious journals in management literature. This work was done in collaboration with Gerard (Gerry) George, who was at that time at Syracuse University, and the paper explored the role of Developmental Financial Institutions (DFIs) as catalysts of entrepreneurship in emerging economies like India. "What I really loved about Ganesh was his 'self-starter' spirit," recalls Gerry. Ganesh took the initiative to reach out via email (in 1998) when Gerry was an assistant professor to work on a project involving Development Financial Institutions (DFIs). They met at the Academy three years after they started working together! "Now we advise the new generation to network and build relationships before projects, but our relationship was built on getting projects done first, even before we met in person. I haven’t had a coauthor like Ganesh in thirty years! A person who delivered diligently on a terrific collaboration based on trust and competence," remembers Gerry. Looks like he didn't pursue this line of research. But this AMR paper isn't Ganesh's most cited paper; "Social entrepreneurship leadership," published a year earlier (1999), has three times more citations. This was way before social entrepreneurship became fashionable in India.  

By the time my interaction with Ganesh began in 2014-15, his research enthusiasm had come down, and he was enjoying teaching. At least that is what he told me. Ganesh's signature course for PGP was New Product Development. This is where he started using short video cases. In fact, he uploaded his entire NPD course on Vimeo much before the MOOC and IIMBx started. I borrowed some of the video cases from him. When I showed interest in the Zipline drone video, he would tell me how he uses it from timestamps 2 minutes to 9 minutes. If you ask him why, he would have a detailed reasoning ready. He also taught qualitative research for the FPM students for multiple decades. Ganesh was part of the doctoral committees of a couple of dozen students. Some of these relationships might have started from this course on qualitative research. Jaykumar, who had Ganesh in his FPM committee, remembers that his research direction emerged while discussing his qualitative research course paper with Ganesh. 

Ganesh was the placement chair three times. Perhaps this is where he built his intuition on career advice for MBA aspirants. We were discussing non-research writing, and he knew I blogged regularly. Ganesh said he doesn't write blogs. And then he added, "But I answer questions on Quora." And then he sheepishly added, "I have forty-eight thousand followers." I looked at him in disbelief. I find giving career advice very challenging. So, my admiration for Ganesh grew multifold. He was clearly a career influencer. 

Design Thinking took us to places like IIM Visakhapatnam and the Indian Oil Corporation in Delhi. This is when I discovered that Ganesh and I live in two different time zones while being in the same city. Ganesh used to start the two-day program, and I would start from the third session. Participants would ask me questions like, "I am a left-brain person, can I learn design thinking?" I realized that Ganesh had covered left-brain-right-brain stuff earlier. I carried a strong belief that the creative thinking-right-brain and analytical thinking-left-brain classification is a myth created by folk psychology. I attended Ganesh's sessions to understand his perspective. It prompted me to study this topic further and write a blog on it.  

Utkarsh remembers Ganesh as a deals man. He would keep track of who is offering the best deal in the town. I wanted to buy a laptop a few years ago. And Ganesh immediately had the top 3 suggestions ready with trade-offs associated with each of them. He was fond of Ather e-scooters. I used to call him first-day first-show Ather fan. He had 3 Ather scooters. And he had bought some of them on the day of launch. For most people, e-scooters are a recent phenomenon. Ganesh owned e-scooters since 2005. But he used to ride the scooter only inside the campus. Utkarsh asked me if I ever sat with him on his scooter. I hadn't. Apparently, Ganesh never crossed 40km/hr, causing irritation to everybody riding with him and driving around him. Ganesh could talk about the EVs for a long time. So I decided to interview him and uploaded it on YouTube. Even when Ola Electric had a fifty percent market share, Ganesh would tell me, "It will not succeed." He was plugged into the EV owners' network.  When someone asked him for advice on buying an e-scooter, he said, "Buy anything other than Ola." I used to marvel at his intuition.

As I was talking to Ganesh's friends for this article, the most surprising find for me was his passion for Hindustani Classical music. Like Rishi-Utkarsh-Jose, Vidyanand Jha was Ganesh's FPM batchmate at IIM Ahmedabad. But his association with Ganesh goes back even further. They both did an MBA at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). Vidyanand remembers they both attending all night classical music concerts, starting at the back row and then slowly moving toward the front as the night proceeded. Vidyanand wrote a poem on Ganesh in his condolence note.  

I had health issues last year. Stomach infections, weight loss, insomnia, etc. It resulted in my withdrawing from a course I was scheduled to teach in the June term. It was the first time for me. Ganesh was my sounding board. We had a program scheduled a couple of months later. I checked with him whether we should cancel that too. He was confident we would do it, and we did. He kept nudging me to take a second opinion. I eventually did, and the second doctor suggested that I didn't need any medication. And that's what I did, and slowly things came back to normalcy. Ganesh had this great gift of helping. We will miss him. May time grant Ganesh’s family the strength to move forward, carrying his presence in quieter ways. 

Acknowledgments:

Appreciate the inputs from Rishi, Vidyanand, Utkarsh, Jose, Jaykumar, and Kajoli.