Nearly five years ago, a few of us took a brave and crazy decision to start a new school. Inspired by the criticism against modern industrial schooling, where children are forced to be domesticated (or you could call it forced social adjustment), we felt empowered to challenge this setup by…

The grand architect of digital India, Nandan Nilekani has been credited with transforming the country, taking it straight from the 19th to the 21st century. His 2008 thesis, “Imagining India” laid down the foundation of how technology has the potential to transform India. Mr Nilekani earned his stripes building one…

The definition of a “startup” is a small company chasing high growth. A startup is harder to run than a small business because it is extremely hard to chase high growth. There is a simple way to explain this. Risk and reward are inevitably interconnected. The number of people competing…

The typical company is run like a ship. The captain is primarily responsible to ensure that the ship reaches its destination in good shape, and the crew are responsible to do their own jobs to maintain the course, and listen to the captain for any direction. The ship is one…

In 2012, when our first-born one was a year old, one of our friends, Aravinda, had invited us to join the “Learning Societies Unconference” (LSUC) that was happening at a farm near Palghar, about 100 km from Mumbai. Aravinda was homeschooling her child and had introduced us to the idea…

2022 will be remembered as the year when we finally came out of the pandemic. The pandemic forced me on a journey of introspection like never before. I asked existential questions, I binged on social media and streaming platforms, I read some wonderful books, I discovered the value of good…

Before I visited Auroville in Pondicherry, I had always thought of Pondicherry as Goa of the east coast of India. A beach place for Europeans to see India, booze and party, along with some interesting architecture. So when we packed our bags for Auroville, I had no other expectations in…

Dear Zoomers, Over the past few years, I have seen very brilliant, mercurial, energetic, talented people like you take mighty falls due to poor mental health and burnouts, and I am alarmed. Seeing Marvel fed “fresh” graduates with hopes of changing the world with their superpowers and their social feeds…

We survived 75 years! A lot of progress made, but a lot of promises yet to keep. While the challenges always seem insurmountable, personally I am very hopeful that we can fix some of the big problems in the coming years. Here are 25 ideas I would like to find…