Dots

For a while, I used to believe that elite colleges don’t necessarily create excellence — they select it. They admit the top 1% of driven, intelligent, resourceful students. These students would likely succeed anyway, because of their mindset, discipline, and social capital. So when Ivy Leagues or IITs claim “our graduates are world leaders,” that’s partly because they chose world-leader material to begin with. This creates what’s called a “selection bias” — the college’s success is entangled with who they let in, not what they do for them. The real measure of an educational institution’s quality isn’t how their top 1% perform, but how far they can elevate their bottom 50%. If a college can take an average, uncertain, unmotivated 18-year-old and transform them into a confident, skilled, purposeful individual, that’s actual educational value. It's unfair, and there's no actual impact created if you only take in people who are already capable to begin with and who could have anywa...

When I started Rentux.in, it was just a random project I was exploring. Slowly, I got attached, I wanted to make it work, no matter what! Reality hit me and I realised it's a capital intensive project if you plan to own the assets and if it's a marketplace, you'll have to burn a lot initially to get that scale. Also, the fact that it's gonna be really tough to raise funds as people had messed up in the past. Many Investors had burned money behind such rental platforms. All of them, eventually failed or are struggling! Things didn't align. The timing, funding, ability to scale were missing, even though there's a market demand - this is proved because today I have thousands of people visiting Rentux to rent the products without a single rupee spent on marketing! And this pattern continued whenever we pivoted or tried a different project. There was always something major, that didn't align. Sometimes it was lack of demand, thin margins, capital intensive nature...

Well, today's my birthday, and it is the most special day for me. I mean, what are the odds of someone being born on the same day as Sir Ratan Tata, Dhirubhai Ambani, and Stan Lee? But as much as it gives me pride, it gives me a lot more than that. Most importantly, a responsibility. I always feel that not many people have a chance to be born on the same day as the few legends they look up to. Whenever I think of giving up, this thought, this feeling of responsibility hits me, and I keep going. I don't know if it's just random luck—maybe it is. But in the direction I am going forward, things have been connecting and aligning towards pushing me to continue on this path. Here's a quick look: In the final year of my college, everyone around me was applying for placements and getting placed. Even the people who had startups had shut them down and applied for placements. And for a fact, you can't beat peer pressure. I was about to give up and apply for placements. But I ...

Let me start with a cliche - A Startup is a child of your marriage with your co-founders . Well with that logic, I have had many failed marriages. This is just a brief curation of learnings from the same.  The Journey began in the first year of my college, when the idea of Rentux hit me and I wanted to try it. The college was online and I found someone who was interested in this, let’s call him Person A . He said he knew coding and building websites, so I took him on board, and 30% equity, we made a deal. Such a naive move. When college started offline in the second year of my college, I launched rentux.in and it was working really well. Now, Person A was supposed to join and take over the tech part. A couple of months passed and there was no output from his side. Now it was time for a serious conversation and maybe a separation. That was my first marriage that didn’t work out along my startup journey.  For a couple of months, I was running it alone and the response was real...

For quite some time, I have believed that nothing is right or wrong, it's all subjective. Maybe, this is true. Or maybe I was just trying to please both sides by staying neutral. I asked some of my closest friends: why do people have casual hookups these days? Isn't it bad? For me, having a physical connection with someone is really precious and special, and I believe it should be the last step in a connection. These days, people get physical first and then try to understand each other if they decide to meet again. I got some answers from my friends. They said it's social media that's degrading people. People do it for stress relief; everyone around is mentally stressed, and these are coping methods, whether it's sex, alcohol, or smoking. Some people said it's bad; some people said not all hookups are bad if they are keeping you out of depression, stress, or mental disorders. What I realized is that the right and wrong side of this depends on whether you have do...

Let me hit you with a classic - What would you choose? Fame or Money? Aah, whatever you choose. But what if there's another option - ' Access '?  And that is what I want, Access. What if you had access to the most important people, places, resources and advancements? Isn't that a superpower ?  Maybe deep inside, Money and Fame also unlocks some of it. It gives you access to many of these things. But what if, we switch these things and rather than chasing money or fame, chase access? I believe if you are a smart person with a great network and access to some of these things, money follows and fame is optional.  Opportunities are proportional to the access you have. The higher the value of access you have, the higher the opportunity to turn it into monetary outcome, followed by fame.  So what is the difference? If I go after chasing money (because I believe it's easier to do that than going 'the fame way'), my metric would be how much money I would make, and ...

Hate , when you think about it, first thing comes to your mind is negativity . Maybe, there's more to it. Hate - " to have a very strong feeling of not liking something at all " At least that's what the defination says. But is it bad to hate something? I don't think so.  Every solution comes out when somebody hates a problem badly. So bad that it doesn't allow them to rest. It's a combination of obsession and hate. Hate the problem and get obsessed to solve it. Sounds easy right? We'll, it's not that easy.  It's easier and more satisfying to just talk. Brag about how well can you criticise something in front of people to look cool . And that's majority of us. How many of us hate our college, the education system, the job we are doing, the country, the government and everything else? Almost all of us. How many of us like talking about why and what we hate about those things with our friends (both real and fake social media friends) and colle...