You Know the Glory, Not the Story

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Towards Ikigai

An accomplished child, Aarti Kumar grew up in Bhopal, where her father worked for Union Carbide when the 1984 gas leak happened. Her search for meaning began in the university, and continued though a corporate career, further studies, and a research position. She found her path when she met her husband, Vishwajeet. Aarti and her husband work in rural Uttar Pradesh towards eliminating preventable deaths in mothers and newborn children by integrating cutting-edge science with deep empathy.

Abhishek Gupta was 10 when he got his first scholarship. Apart from learning and growing, he imbibed the values of hard work and competitiveness. A minor in business along with his engineering degree allowed him to explore his inherent interest in business. After years in consulting and private equity, he co-founded Circle.Life, the world’s first, fully-digital telecommunications company. From a startup of 10–20 people, the company now has 500 employees in six Asia-Pacific countries.

Born in a lower-middle-class family in Coimbatore, Anoj had to take the public buses to reach his school 15 km away. Meeting people in the buses sensitized him to the plight of the masses. At university, he gave up chasing grades, and took a vast range of subjects. During a leave of absence, he discovered that small loans could impact the lives of people in rural India. In 2010, he co-founded Milaap, India’s largest crowdfunding platform, that has raised 12 billion rupees (165 million USD) for around 290,000 causes.

Born in Udaipur, Anuj Jain was drawn to the Gulmohar trees of his school in Kanpur. A biology course in university connected him to the Nature Society (Singapore). The ‘3 Idiots’ movie helped him convince his father to switch from engineering to wildlife. As a tropical ecologist and biomimic, he learns from nature to solve human design problems. His work ranges from designing the world’s longest butterfly trail, conserving butterflies and birds, fighting illegal wildlife trade to nature-inspired, biomimicry design.

Living in different Indian cities, and with story books hidden within school books, Baisakhi Saha daydreamt and pondered over life’s big questions. At University, she suffered a crippling back injury. A spontaneous recovery changed her outlook. She not just traveled, but lived across continents, experiencing cultures and differences. From a Computing graduate to a marketing executive to an English teacher, German interpreter, and Spanish translator, she is now an international speaker, author, and performer.

Growing up across Mumbai and London, Gautam Rao was bullied throughout his childhood for not fitting into either city. As a child, he was passionate about astronomy. Persistent health issues made him realize that he wanted to do meaningful things, and not just work for an investment bank. A volunteering trip to Nepal helped him make a decision — if no one else was going to take a chance on him, he would. He embarked on a series of entrepreneurial ventures that took him from Singapore to Chile to Silicon Valley.

Growing up by the beaches of Goa, and playing multiple musical instruments, Jason Noronha found himself in competitive Bangalore when he was 10. After university, he gave up his job as a financial consultant in Singapore to become a volunteer in Africa, and then South America. When a frog jumped at him in the shower of a guesthouse in Goa, he decided to start India’s first backpacker hostel. Guest No. 7 at the hostel was to accompany him in entrepreneurial ventures. He now bridges technology and hostel.

Growing up, John Gomes had collected thousands of stamps from all over the world. A gray envelope with a Singapore stamp would change his life. As a computer engineer, John has four patents approved and is the inventor of an early platform for connecting phones to other services. Constantly reinventing himself, he has combined innovation with business strategy, and is a Partner at A. T. Kearney. His love for nature has seen him hike, climb mountains, travel countries, and capture the journey with his exquisite photography.

Growing up in Mumbai, Karthik Natarajan loved playing cricket and quizzing. Having missed the state merit list by just one mark, it was unclear which university he would get into. From electronics, he moved back to his love for applied Mathematics as he pursued a collaborative Ph.D. between Singapore and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and taught across three universities. He develops mathematical tools to solve problems in optimization and probability. He seeks to positively influence people through academics.

Growing up in Bangalore, Kiran never understood silos. He could be seen studying physics before the history exam or doing math instead of poetry. Drawing interested him more than playing. He accidentally picked up dance when studying to be a mechanical engineer. With two Masters degrees in media and arts, and training in Hatha Yoga and Odissi, Kiran is an acclaimed artist, writer, and researcher. His work involves unpacking and blurring various boundaries in understandings of the human body and mind.

Kurien Kalarickal was born in a Catholic family in the port city of Kochi in Kerala. It took many years, and a move to Singapore, for him to change from someone who prayed it was a passing phase to just accept himself. By 26, he came out both as gay and atheist in a society where homosexuality was taboo. He gave up a cozy job to freelance in user experience design. He likes to date men, draw, take photographs, sing, and practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He continues to stand confident and not care about what others think.

Son of a father who led India’s Light Combat Aircraft project — Tejas, Manik Gupta grew up with a love for computers, and surrounded by technology. An early entrepreneur, he rented out books at 50-paisa a book, and joined a friend in selling fridge magnets to shops. After Junior College and University in Singapore, he co-founded a company BuyItTogether, and worked at Hewlett-Packard. Manik helped millions map and travel their journey through his work in Google Maps and as Chief Product Officer at Uber.

Growing up in the Himalayan hill town of Gangtok, Sikkim, Naresh stood first in class throughout his school days, topped board exams, and became head boy and best all-round student. After his computer engineering in Singapore, he worked for 6 years developing technology. He did his Ph.D. and moved to Boston, USA, where he is a tenured professor. A leader, painter, author, poet, speaker, and learner, he researches human interactions with information and technology, and strives to see everyone as a part of him.

Growing up in different Indian cities with people from all backgrounds, Nitin Pai’s worldview surpassed boundaries of money, caste, and religion. He wanted to join the army and do medicine. Instead, he went to Singapore on a newly-started scholarship. Moving across satellite payloads, pagers, managing grants, video hosting, and blogging, he co-founded Takshashila Institution — an independent center for research and education in public policy with more than 4,000 alumni, and a project to transform India.

All Praneeth Namburi knew was that he had to be independent as soon as possible. Serendipity played an important role in his life, taking him to Singapore, and giving him neuroscience and dance. By the time he had finished his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scientific research and dance had merged into one entity for him. There was nothing to balance. Both these pursuits became about learning to question, test, and undo preconceptions to become a better version of ourselves.

Pranoti Nagarkar-Israni is the inventor of Rotimatic, world’s first fully-automatic roti (flatbread) making robot. Brought up in Pune, India, she is a fourth-generation mechanical engineer who graduated from the National University of Singapore in 2006. She and her husband Rishi spent 8 years perfecting the product technology and authoring 37 patents for Rotimatic. Labelled by The Spoon as the world’s most popular food robot, Rotimatic is enjoyed across 70,000 homes and has made more than 70 million rotis already.

Growing up in Chandigarh, a city with bureaucrats everywhere, aspiring to work for the government came naturally to Puneet Gulati. The valedictorian of his mechanical engineering class at Nanyang Technological University, he fell in love with economics during 6 months at the University of Washington. After a decade overseas, he returned to India to join the Indian Revenue Service and became a taxman. At the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, he is working for better tax policies.

Saurabh Wadhawan was born in New Delhi to incredibly young parents. He wanted to become a movie star, and then a cricketer. Instead, he flies the skies as a pilot with Singapore Airlines, and also walks, reads, and thinks. In spite of the countless takeoffs of the past and many more in the future, the maneuver of taking off brings him the greatest joy. Being airborne, for him, is in some ways getting to that home away from home. In 2019, Singapore Airlines presented him with a 20-year service award.

From Calcutta to Brussels to Hyderabad to Bangalore, Sayan Chaudhuri’s childhood spanned many cities. Graduating twice during financially-hit times — once after his computer engineering and the second time after his MBA, a chance application and an unlikely phone call got him a job with the United Nations. Moving from Geneva to New York, he manages and monitors the budgets and fund utilization for the betterment of children in about a quarter of the 139 countries that UNICEF operates in.

Growing up in small towns, most of Sudhanshu Ahuja’s friends and family had their own businesses. Later, his grandfather became a successful entrepreneur. This solidified his intent to become an entrepreneur as well. A solar-car project at the university made him believe in himself. In his first job after university, he focused on saving money so that he could lower his financial risk when starting his own business. Today, he runs a business that crossed USD 1 million in annual revenue in just 2 years of starting work on it.

‘Experiment. Grow. Care.’ — this motto has guided most of Surya Ramkumar’s life. As a child, she loved sports, books, and numbers. Training 4 h a day, she played national badminton, while topping 10th-grade exams with a record 98.2%. Traversing successfully across the corporate world — from Accenture to Citigroup to McKinsey to Microsoft, she is also an author and has published her first book. Gender equality, ethics in technology, and using technology to empower the marginalized are important to her.

Born in Cameroon, West Africa to parents with multiple talents, Sussan De’s childhood was spent moving across different Indian cities. By the time she was fifteen, she had scored an All-India rank of 7, learnt Odissi, Kathak, and Bharatanatyam dance forms, and recorded her first song for a Hindi movie. Along with a career in investment banking, technology, and entrepreneurship, Sussan is a dance professional, a TV host, a singer and vocalist. Off-beat and pro-fusion, she refuses to have her creativity slotted in a box.

Swami Turiyananda is a monk. Growing up in Kanpur, he would spend hours by the holy river Ganga, contemplating on life’s questions. He had inner revelations during meditation while at final year at his university in Singapore. He became an investment banker, was ranked as the youngest high achiever, gave interviews and got featured in financial newspapers, started a million dollar private fund, became among the highest-paid investment bankers, and then gave it all up.

Growing up in Bangalore, Varun Viswanath liked to figure out how everything worked. Success, to him, was about being well-rounded, and not just academics. He liked being behind the scenes in theatre and performing arts. After graduating as an electronics engineer, along with day jobs in a bank and as a headhunter, he produced and edited a feature film and eight short films. After film school, he started a new life in Hollywood. Based in Los Angeles, he is a film editor and member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

Graduating with first class honors, Vishrut Jain embarked on a career in consulting, financial services, arts and digital transformation. During a hike in Nepal with his wife Priya, he realized that the 8-year old girl hand washing sheets in cold water was a little slave girl sold for $130. He co-founded ‘Kanya’, a charity that adopted 18 extremely poor girls and ensured holistic nutrition, healthcare and education for them. Vishrut lived for 44 years but effortlessly packed another 44 years in accomplishments and impact.

The following sections are included:

• Afterword
• Find your Ikigai