Coding a Community, Not Just Software
The narrative of India's tech ascendancy is often dominated by tales of urban innovation hubs and billion-dollar valuations. Yet, nestled in the hills, Prateek Narang, founder of ColoredCow, is authoring a different, perhaps more resonant, story. His company isn't just another custom software development firm; it's a deliberate experiment in social architecture, a "human resource company" disguised in tech clothing. Prateek's journey, from a conventional engineering path to a self-described "accidental entrepreneur," has led him to challenge fundamental assumptions about where talent resides, how it's nurtured, and what constitutes genuine business success. By consciously choosing to build his "tribe" away from the allure of Silicon Valleys, real or aspiring, and by prioritizing attitude over aptitude in his hiring, Prateek is not just coding solutions; he's coding a new model for sustainable, community-centric enterprise.
From Corporate Corridors to a Hilltop Philosophy
Prateek's early career, with stints at Tata and establishing NCR's Gurgaon development center, offered a deep immersion into corporate mechanics. However, it was a growing sense of hitting a "treadmill," a feeling that "this is not what I want to do," that propelled him towards an unconventional path. A solo cycling trip with Bertrand Russell’s "Conquest for Happiness" provided a critical insight: "forget about the big plans... You just do whatever you want to do in a simpler and easy way." This clarity, born from introspection, guided him towards leveraging his core coding skills to found ColoredCow.
The initial foray into "Manage My NGO," a software product for the social sector, was an "accident" that, despite its limited commercial success (“I don't know how to sell. I know how to create”), revealed a crucial market gap and set the stage for ColoredCow's referral-driven growth. This experience underscored a foundational belief: "Once you create a value, people pay back you with value." It also highlighted the unique challenges of the social sector, where the value of technology often clashes with tight budgets and a primary focus on beneficiaries. "For an NGO the tech is still not the core, right? So the money should go to the beneficiary, not to a tech company," Prateek explains, articulating the tightrope he walks in pricing his services to be sustainable yet accessible.
The Anti-Resume: Hiring for Attitude, Training for Skill
A pivotal divergence from mainstream tech recruitment came from Prateek's evolving perspective on talent. Having experienced the pressures of hiring the "top 1%" in multinational corporations and finding the results often indistinguishable from hiring less credentialed individuals, he began to question the model. "Okay, 1% is fine," he thought, "What's happening with the rest of the 99%?" This led to a radical decision for ColoredCow: instead of "stealing the talent, we believe in creating the talent."
This philosophy found its most concrete expression when ColoredCow established an incubation center in an engineering college in the hills of Uttarakhand in 2017. The rationale was clear: "Let's go to tier N, not tier 2, not tier 3... traditionally, if there are hills that are normally neglected... it's more tourism rather than economy." This move was not about finding cheap labor but about unearthing and nurturing potential where others weren't looking. The "CodeTrack" program emerged, a hands-on approach where students and fresh graduates work on real, open-source projects, "putting the code in Github, getting it reviewed, doing the Devops thing, launching the product." It’s a stark contrast to traditional retraining programs, offering immediate, tangible experience. "The beauty was that... it was the actual thing," Prateek emphasizes.
The core hiring principle became "hire for attitude and train for skill." While acknowledging this is "very tough when you are growing," ColoredCow remains committed. They look for individuals who understand their current skill level, believe in the company's values, and are open to a learning curve. This approach, Prateek believes, fosters natural loyalty and has resulted in an attrition rate that is "probably the lowest in the industry." People who joined in 2014 are "still hanging around and they're building the team further with the same tenacity."
"Rather than stealing the talent, we believe in creating the talent. It's a very long-term approach, but it worked pretty well for ColoredCow."
The ColoredCow Tribe: Community, Sustenance, and Slow Scaling
This commitment to long-term development extends beyond technical skills. ColoredCow has cultivated a unique, almost "tribal" culture. With 80% of its workforce now from the hills, the company has established multiple offices in these regions. A significant part of this culture is ColoredCow Farms. What began as a desire for healthier, trustworthy food for the team – "eating good is our priority" – evolved into purchasing farmland and growing their own organic produce. "We set up, let's say, a flour mill and the oil mill, and you know we are making our own chips, fruits, and veggies and everything. So it's coming to our offices now."
Shared meals are a norm, fostering a deep sense of community. "You don't feel to go out that much. You're happy that you know within your circle," Prateek describes. This self-sustaining ecosystem, where the team eats together, often food they've grown themselves, on a hilltop office overlooking a lake, stands in stark contrast to the transient, high-pressure environments of typical tech companies. It's a model built on quality of life, not just output.
This approach inherently influences the pace of growth. "Our hiring is slow," Prateek admits, a direct consequence of their commitment to nurturing talent and preserving company values. While there's an understanding of the need to scale – "if we are doing good, why we should not do good" – it’s tempered by a refusal to "dilute ColoredCow value just for this training." The challenge, as he sees it, is to build systems around their talent creation model, to find HR partners who understand this unconventional, value-driven approach rather than imposing traditional, often misaligned, HR practices. He firmly believes ColoredCow is "not a technology company. It's actually a human resource company... we are bringing good people. We're giving them shape."
"If you look in totality, you will see ColoredCow is not a technology company. It's actually a human resource company."
Redefining Success: Craft, Purpose, and the "AI First" Future
For Prateek, tangible business goals, like doubling revenue by 2026, exist. However, his deeper definition of success and scaling lies in improving the "craft of creating software" and becoming more proactive rather than reactive to client needs. He envisions a future where ColoredCow doesn’t just execute on ideas from "glamorous founders" from top global universities, but increasingly anticipates and shapes those solutions. "What if I become proactive?" he muses.
This forward-thinking is now keenly focused on the next technological wave. "AI is something like Internet. It's changing the world order. And I can sense it," Prateek states with conviction. His strategic response is to pivot ColoredCow towards an "AI first" approach. "Whatever we build, what if we think that? Think about AI first." This isn't just about adopting new tools; it's about fundamentally reorienting their creative process, recognizing that "the world needs more thinker rather than that... AI will do a lot of harm to the non-thinkers."
Ultimately, Prateek’s entrepreneurial journey is guided by a core value he wishes to scale: the genuine belief that "everyone wants to do good." If this belief is foundational, "no one can stop ColoredCow, or anyone." He operates with a long-term commitment, unburdened by external investor pressure due to being bootstrapped. "We are not dying. We don't need to answer anyone. That's... a beauty about [being] bootstrapped." This freedom allows him to prioritize craft, community, and the continuous, patient development of people – a model that might seem unconventional in the fast-paced tech world, but one that is building a resilient, loyal, and deeply purposeful "tribe" in the Indian hills. Prateek Narang isn't just coding software; he's cultivating a sustainable ecosystem of talent and value, proving that true impact can be built far from the madding crowd, rooted in the simple, powerful idea of helping people, and the company, "get better every day."
"The world needs more thinkers... AI will do a lot of harm to the non-thinkers."
What I learned from Prateek Narang
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Building a "human resource company" that creates talent, rather than just consuming it, can foster profound loyalty and sustainable growth, especially in unconventional locations.
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Prioritizing "hire for attitude, train for skill" can unlock potential in overlooked communities and result in a deeply committed workforce, yielding lower attrition than industry norms.
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A bootstrapped model, while potentially implying slower initial scaling, offers the freedom to build a company deeply aligned with core values, unswayed by external pressures that might dilute its mission.
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Integrating aspects like local food sourcing and communal living into a company culture can create a powerful sense of "tribe" and well-being, contributing significantly to employee satisfaction and retention.
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True long-term vision in technology involves not just adopting new tools like AI, but fundamentally rethinking how a business operates to cultivate the critical thinking necessary to thrive in a changing world order.
Turning Perceived Inability into Market Strength
Dr. Sanjaya Kumar Pradhan’s nearly quarter-century journey is a profound study in the alchemy of potential. From the challenging terrains of Kalahandi's tribal areas to the strategic echelons of the Tata Group and the policy corridors of India's Ministry of Skill Development, Sanjaya has consistently sought to reframe societal perception. His work culminates in eKalakaar, a digital platform for traditional performing arts, but its mission transcends mere technological enablement. At its core, eKalakaar is the operationalization of a deeply held conviction: that the perceived "inabilities" within communities often mask unique strengths, which, when astutely identified and cultivated, can be transformed into potent solutions for the market and powerful catalysts for social and economic upliftment. This is not just social work; it's a sophisticated form of human capital engineering, taking art far "beyond entertainment" to address tangible needs with creativity and cultural resonance.
From Deficit to Dividend: A Foundational Shift in Perspective
The genesis of Sanjaya’s unique approach lies in his extensive fieldwork. Years spent in direct engagement with vulnerable populations revealed a critical flaw in many well-intentioned development efforts: an overwhelming focus on what communities lacked rather than what they possessed. "Most of the time people from the development sector think that we serve the disabled side," Sanjaya observes. "Something has to be done. These are the disabilities they cannot do. Therefore something has to be done." This deficit-based model, he realized, often overlooked inherent strengths and resilience.
A pivotal experience cemented this understanding. While working on inclusivity initiatives, he encountered a steel plate manufacturing company struggling with extreme noise pollution, forcing them to hire two workers for single-shift roles, effectively doubling labor costs. The conventional view saw only the problem. Sanjaya saw an opportunity. By training and deploying hearing-impaired individuals for these roles, what was perceived as an inability became a distinct advantage. "The inability of the person we utilize as a strength and provide it to the market," he explains. The result was a clear win-win: the company gained reliable, focused employees at a reduced cost, and individuals who previously faced significant employment barriers found dignified work. This principle – identifying and leveraging unique capacities, even those arising from apparent limitations – became a cornerstone of his philosophy.
This "greatest learning," as he terms it, naturally extended to India’s vast and varied artistic communities. During his tenure with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), engaging with artist groups revealed a similar paradox. These artists possessed incredible skill and passion, the custodians of ancient traditions that form the "root" of India's diverse culture. Yet, many faced profound economic hardship. The initial thought was skill development, but deeper engagement showed the "much bigger issue is, they do not get any money, they do not get any work." Some artists, he found, earned less than a hundred euros a month. The problem wasn't a lack of skill, but a lack of connection to viable economic opportunities.
eKalakaar: Art as a Market Solution, Beyond Entertainment
The COVID-19 pandemic, while presenting immense challenges, also acted as a catalyst. It highlighted the precariousness of artists' livelihoods but also, as Sanjaya keenly observed, shifted audience consumption patterns. As big-budget Bollywood films faltered, smaller, culturally authentic productions like "Kantara" found significant resonance. This observation, combined with the wisdom of ancient texts like the Natya Shastra – which posits art's purpose as "entertainment, for impact and for education" – crystallized the vision for eKalakaar. "How do you take art beyond entertainment?" became Sanjaya's central operating question.
eKalakaar emerged as a digital platform for traditional performing arts – classical, folk, and tribal, including fusion. Its mission, however, extends far beyond simply showcasing talent. It is about strategically deploying art as a versatile solution for contemporary societal and business needs. This includes leveraging artistic expression for mental well-being, leadership coaching, and, crucially, for social behavior change communication (SBCC). Sanjaya saw a further, potent application: "How do you use art for rural marketing?" Recognizing that nearly 70% of India's population resides in rural areas, representing a large and economically growing market, he identified a disconnect. Corporates struggled to reach this demographic effectively, often relying on generic, translated advertising campaigns featuring urban celebrities that failed to resonate culturally. "In rural India, people need longer time to understand," Sanjaya notes, pointing out that a 30-second ad, even with a famous face, often doesn't translate into "cultural communication."
eKalakaar’s approach is to act as a "cultural communication company," taking a corporate message and embedding it within locally relevant art forms. He recounts a project with Tata Power in Odisha, which was facing low adoption of its mobile app for online electricity bill payments. The issue wasn't the app itself but a lack of trust stemming from past financial scams in the region, coupled with the practical difficulties rural customers faced. eKalakaar designed a half-hour "Dance Drama" using local artists. This performance first entertained, drawing the community in, and then seamlessly wove in messages about the app's benefits, security, and ease of use, followed by on-the-spot assistance from company representatives. The results were tangible: increased app downloads and online payments. "The company promoted its product," Sanjaya explains. "Artists got... 500 work days... we reached out to 5,000 people... the community, they had entertainment, and they also got the message." This is the essence of eKalakaar: creating a tripartite win.
"The ability of a person we utilize as a strength and provide it to the market."
Naam, Kaam, Daam: An Ecosystem for Artistic Dignity
Underpinning eKalakaar’s diverse applications is a core commitment to the artists themselves, encapsulated in the philosophy of "Naam, Kaam, Daam."
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Naam (Recognition): The digital platform itself is designed to be user-friendly, allowing artists, many of whom are not digitally savvy, to create professional profiles, showcasing their work through photos and videos. This provides crucial visibility.
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Kaam (Opportunity): eKalakaar actively seeks and posts paid performance opportunities on its platform, connecting artists with corporates, government agencies, and other organizations. This transforms visibility into tangible work.
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Daam (Dignified Payment): A critical differentiator is the commitment to timely and fair remuneration. Sanjaya understands the hardship artists face with delayed payments, often waiting months. eKalakaar strives to pay artists on the day of performance or within a week.
This holistic model aims to address the fundamental challenges artists face – lack of recognition, inconsistent work, and undignified compensation. By tackling these systematically, eKalakaar is not just a booking agency but an ecosystem designed to empower artists economically and professionally. Sanjaya proudly notes that in the last year alone, they organized 350 performances, creating 2,500 artist days. The platform was even involved in the Mahakumbh Mela, using art to disseminate awareness about government schemes to an audience of millions.
Balancing Sanctity and Innovation: The Future of Tradition
A critical aspect of eKalakaar’s work is navigating the delicate balance between preserving the sanctity of traditional art forms and innovating for contemporary relevance. "There are two schools of thought," Sanjaya acknowledges. "One they expect, you know, let the art be purist... And another set which I personally strongly believe art should have an application, and it should come as a solution."
For classical art forms like Odissi, Kathak, or Bharatanatyam, eKalakaar is careful "not to distort anything," ensuring performances maintain their traditional integrity, often showcased in "elevate" offerings designed for enlightenment and experience. However, with folk and semi-classical forms, there's more room for "fusion," adapting narratives and presentations to convey specific messages for clients or to engage modern audiences. This innovative approach is guided by a board that includes national award-winning artists, ensuring that any adaptation respects the core essence of the art form while allowing it to communicate effectively in new contexts. This thoughtful approach is also helping to revive "many extinct arts," bringing lesser-known forms and their practitioners to larger platforms.
The future, as Sanjaya envisions it, involves deepening this work. A significant upcoming project is the "Kalagram," an art village planned in Odisha in collaboration with the government. This 10-acre campus aims to preserve tribal cultures by capturing indigenous knowledge systems and then promoting these through traditional dance, music, and art. It will also house training centers for local artists and offer immersive experiences for tourists, creating a vibrant hub for cultural preservation and economic generation. This mirrors his earlier analogy of yoga: just as ancient yoga practices were customized for modern accessibility and benefit, traditional arts can be adapted to retain their soul while serving contemporary needs.
"Art is infotainment. We do entertainment edutainment, we, you know, send a message."
The Enduring Power of the Real
In an age increasingly dominated by Artificial Intelligence and virtual experiences, Sanjaya remains a firm believer in the irreplaceable power of live, human performance. While AI can be a tool for collaboration or script refinement, he asserts, "the performance has to happen in real life." He points to the enduring popularity of traditional open-air theatre forms like Jatra in rural India, where audiences willingly pay premium prices for all-night performances, seeking the "real things." This hunger for authentic, tangible cultural experiences, he believes, will always exist.
Dr. Sanjaya Pradhan’s journey is a testament to the power of seeing beyond conventional labels and limitations. By identifying the latent strengths in individuals and art forms often marginalized, and by ingeniously connecting these strengths to market needs, he is not just creating a business; he is fostering a more inclusive, culturally rich, and economically vibrant society. His work with eKalakaar demonstrates that the most profound impact often comes from understanding that true value lies in human potential, and that art, when wielded with wisdom and purpose, remains one of our most powerful tools for connection, education, and transformation. His career is a living example of the Bhagavad Gita's teaching: "you work on your own. Don't wait for the result. The result will come on its own." For Sanjaya, the work is the reward, and the impact is its undeniable validation.
"Believe in yourself... when you get an opportunity, do not try to confine yourself... contribute back to the people."
What I Learned From Dr. Sanjaya Kumar Pradhan
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Identifying and transforming perceived "inabilities" into marketable strengths is a powerful form of social and economic alchemy.
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Traditional art forms possess immense, often untapped, potential as potent tools for contemporary communication, social change, and economic empowerment, extending far beyond mere entertainment.
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A holistic "Naam, Kaam, Daam" (Recognition, Opportunity, Dignified Payment) model is crucial for the sustainable empowerment and preservation of artistic communities.
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Successfully bridging traditional practices with modern market needs requires a careful balance of respecting cultural sanctity while embracing thoughtful innovation and fusion.
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Lasting social impact is built on a foundation of deep empathy, on-the-ground experience, and a commitment to creating win-win solutions for all stakeholders, from grassroots artists
Achieving Happiness
In the relentless pursuit of professional success, particularly within the high-pressure environments of technology and startups, certain narratives dominate: the visionary leader charting a decade-long course, the relentless hustle demanding near-total sacrifice of personal well-being, the linear climb defined by escalating titles and compensation. Priyanka Gupta, engineer turned serial startup contributor turned fitness entrepreneur, offers a compelling and rigorously constructed alternative.
Her journey isn't defined by adherence to these external scripts but by an internal compass consistently oriented towards personal happiness, underpinned by an unwavering commitment to physical fitness as a foundational pillar, and executed with a pragmatic acceptance of her strengths as a focused implementer rather than a far-reaching visionary. It's a case study in building a high-performance life and career based on integrated personal values and disciplined execution, rejecting external validation in favor of internal alignment.
The Happiness Compass: Navigating Career by Internal Alignment
Priyanka's career trajectory appears, from the outside, almost deliberately non-linear. Armed with an engineering degree from a top Indian college (VIT Vellore), she entered the corporate world at Tech Mahindra, a standard path. Yet, within three years, she identified a misalignment. "I realized that... I am not cut out for these big organizations," she stated, "I want to do something that I can see the direct impact of... I want to connect to people more." Against conventional advice valuing stability and compensation, she pivoted to a startup, Global Shaper. This pattern repeated: three years later, feeling boredom set in ("the moment it stops making me happy, I quit"), she took a year-long break – a decision many would deem risky. She followed this with another three-year stint at German startup Couponia (now Voucher Cloud), another year break, another three-year role, before finally launching her own fitness venture, We Shape.
What appears as restlessness is revealed, through her articulation, as principled navigation guided by a single metric: genuine happiness and connection. "I think from the very beginning, I was very clear. I want to do something that makes me happy, not something that pays me really well, or gives me status," she asserted. This consistent prioritization of internal fulfillment over external markers (salary, title, company prestige) required what she herself terms being "fearless about taking extreme decisions," specifically rejecting the fear of financial insecurity or career discontinuity that paralyzes many. Her career isn't a ladder; it's a path charted by an internal compass seeking alignment between work and well-being.
"I want to do something that makes me happy. And the moment it stops making me happy, I quit. It's as simple as that. I don't overthink. I don't over analyze. I don't operate under fear."
Executor vs. Visionary: Strategic Acceptance of Strengths
Societal and corporate narratives often lionize the "visionary" leader – the individual with the grand, ten-year plan. Priyanka, demonstrating remarkable self-awareness, explicitly identifies herself differently. When asked about long-term vision, she was unequivocal: "Am I good at maybe predicting? What's going to happen 10 years down the line? I'm really bad at it. Honestly, I cannot do it." Conversely, she recognizes her strength lies in focused, short-to-medium term execution: "Tell me. What are we going to do for the next 3 months? I'm excellent at it... Tell me. What are we gonna do for the next 6 months? I'm again very good at it."
Crucially, she doesn't frame this as a deficit against the "visionary" ideal. Instead, she accepts it as her operational strength and consciously chooses to focus there: "I focus more on my strength, which is execution... I would not call myself a visionary leader because I'm not good at it." This represents a strategic decision to leverage her core competency rather than conforming to an external expectation of what leadership "should" look like. She pragmatically suggests hiring or partnering with someone possessing complementary visionary skills if needed. This self-acceptance allows for greater efficiency and impact within her identified strength zone (the 3-6 month execution window), directly challenging the notion that only long-range strategic thinking constitutes valuable leadership. It posits that exceptional execution within a defined timeframe is a critical, perhaps undervalued, leadership capability in its own right.
"I think for me it's very important to focus on what I'm good at. Instead of what society thinks leaders should be like."
Fitness as the Operational Bedrock: Powering Performance and Longevity
Underpinning both her career pivots and her execution focus is a foundational commitment spanning over 15 years: physical fitness. For Priyanka, fitness is not an optional add-on or a mere aesthetic pursuit; it's a non-negotiable pillar enabling her entire professional and personal life. Her journey with fitness mirrored her evolving priorities, moving from initial visual benefits and confidence boosts, through recognizing tangible health gains (stamina, strength for activities like mountaineering), to viewing it fundamentally as a practice fostering discipline, consistency, and stress management – essential traits for navigating a demanding career.
She employs a "reverse engineering" approach to fitness goals, rejecting short-term metrics like weight loss in favor of a long-term vision based on desired future capability. "Fitness for me is that when I'm old... I should be able to live my life to the fullest... Physically," she defines it, envisioning an active life in her sixties, seventies, or eighties. This future-state visualization becomes the anchor for building sustainable habits now. By identifying the required physical attributes (stamina, strength, mobility) for that future life, she works backward to establish simple, consistent daily practices (like starting with just 15-20 minutes of exercise). This deeply logical framework transforms fitness from a chore into a strategic investment in future agency and life enjoyment, providing intrinsic motivation far more powerful than external validation. This disciplined, long-term perspective directly fuels her professional life, providing the sustained energy, mental clarity, and resilience necessary for high performance and navigating career transitions fearlessly. It’s the engine that powers her ability to execute and maintain demanding schedules without succumbing to burnout.
Disciplined Boundaries: The Antithesis of Hustle Culture
Priyanka's commitment to well-being directly informs her sharp critique of the prevalent "hustle culture," particularly the expectation of 14-16 hour workdays she observed in India. She labels this expectation "sickening" and fundamentally unsustainable. Her analysis identifies a potential paradox: long hours often mask inefficiency. She contrasts the Indian norm ("long lunch breaks... long coffee breaks... chit chatting") with perceived European efficiency, where shorter, focused workdays yield high-quality output. "It's not about the number of hours you put in, it's about the quality of work you deliver," she insists.
Based on this analysis, she implements rigorous personal boundaries as an essential component of sustainable productivity. Her non-negotiable 9 PM rule isn't just about ending work; it's a deliberate shutdown of mentally stimulating inputs (work, screens, news) to facilitate recovery. "Recovery is also very important, right? If you don't recover well, you can't perform well the next day," she logically argues. This extends to actively managing her informational and social inputs, consciously avoiding energy drains like "negative conversations," "gossip," or activities like drinking/smoking that compromise physical and mental energy reserves. These boundaries aren't restrictions imposed by weakness; they are disciplines chosen from a position of strength, designed to conserve and optimize her limited energy for prioritized activities, ensuring she operates at peak capacity during focused work periods and maintains overall well-being. This disciplined approach enables her to deliver high-quality execution within her chosen timeframe, directly challenging the "more hours equals more value" fallacy of hustle culture.
"I'm very strict about my boundaries. You know what? After 9, I'm not available for work... Because I need that time to unwind... I need that time to recover."
The Integrated Philosophy: Happiness, Execution, Discipline
Priyanka Gupta's professional life emerges not from following a standard playbook, but from constructing a personal operating system based on clearly defined principles: happiness as the guiding metric for career choices, pragmatic execution within her identified strengths as the operational focus, and disciplined fitness and boundary-setting as the foundational system providing the necessary energy and resilience. Her "fearless" career pivots were possible because her definition of success wasn't tied to external validation. Her effectiveness as an "executor" stems from self-awareness and strategic focus. Her ability to sustain performance while rejecting damaging work norms is enabled by a deep, long-term commitment to physical and mental well-being, operationalized through consistent habits and firm boundaries. It's a compelling example of how integrating personal values with disciplined practice can forge a unique, sustainable, and fulfilling professional path, proving that success doesn't have to come at the cost of happiness or health.
What I Learned From Priyanka Gupta
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Happiness as a Valid Career Metric: Prioritizing genuine happiness and connection in work over conventional markers (status, salary) can be a powerful, albeit unconventional, driver for making "fearless" and ultimately fulfilling career decisions.
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Strategic Self-Awareness Trumps Societal Expectations: Consciously identifying and focusing on one's core strengths (like execution within a specific timeframe) is more effective than attempting to conform to idealized roles (like the long-term "visionary") that don't align with personal capability.
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Fitness is Foundational, Not Peripheral: Treating physical fitness as a non-negotiable, long-term investment in future capability and daily energy provides the essential bedrock for sustained professional performance and resilience.
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Boundaries Enable Sustainable Productivity: Rejecting unsustainable work norms ("hustle culture") and implementing firm boundaries (time limits, energy conservation) is a logical strategy for optimizing focus, enhancing recovery, and ensuring long-term effectiveness.
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Integration Creates Coherence: A professional identity built on the conscious integration of personal values (happiness), acknowledged strengths (execution), and core disciplines (fitness, boundaries) results in a uniquely coherent and sustainable operating system.
Health Engineered by Logic, Delivered with Humanity
India's healthcare system presents a complex equation: immense potential for innovation squared against entrenched, systemic challenges. Prasanna Akella, founder of the Belong preventative healthcare venture, approaches this not as a disruptor launching just another wellness platform, but as an engineer systematically attempting to rebuild the very foundations of well-being. His journey—marked by a multi-continental education and formative roles in the data-intensive, systems-driven cultures of Apple and Uber—has equipped him to confront what he bluntly terms a "very hard problem statement": making preventative health genuinely accessible and truly impactful in India. Prasanna’s strategy is a precise fusion: the uncompromising logic and scientific discipline from global tech, interwoven with a sharp, critical understanding of human behavior. This architecture is for a new reality where data empowers empathy, and systems serve human needs.
Forging the Lens: From Global Systems to Grounded Insights
Prasanna’s distinct way of processing the world was evident early. His decision to return to India from the US during the 2009-2010 recession, a path diverging sharply from familiar narratives, signaled a mind already prioritizing independent analysis and genuine alignment over conventional pressures. This analytical rigor was further honed at Apple and Uber. There, the imperative for "methodically breaking that down into at least some amount of explainability" and an unwavering "attention to detail" became fundamental to his operational thinking.
Yet, mastering algorithms was not the endpoint of Prasanna’s intellectual development. He acknowledges an early career phase predominantly focused on "data tracking, explainability, measurement," a period where he felt he "did lose a little bit of my emotional side." The practical application of theoretical models, particularly in a field as intrinsically human as health, forced a critical expansion of his perspective. The insight that "a lot of people don't make decisions just based on data," but are significantly influenced by "powerful people who also have powerful emotions," marked a pivotal shift. Recognizing the critical role of "emotions and ego" in the "people's side of decision making" was an augmentation of his logic, not a departure from it.
He understood that even the most data-validated solution requires sophisticated "systemic thinking" to navigate the human landscape, fully grasping that "no mathematical model will ever tell you" about crucial variables that are "not really driven by data." This potent synthesis of incisive analytical skill and cultivated emotional intelligence now forms the intellectual architecture of Belong.
"Many decisions are made by powerful people who also have powerful emotions. Sometimes. No mathematical model will ever tell you that."
Belong: Seeing Past "Illogical" Choices to Engineer for Dignity
With Belong, Prasanna directly confronts the often-perplexing gap between health knowledge and actual human behavior. He poses the fundamental question: why, if preventative health is logically the "most affordable way to stay healthy," do so many people make daily "illogical decision-making sequence[s]," such as smoking despite knowing the severe risks? Belong’s core belief is that everyone "deserves the dignity to lead a pain-free, drug-free life." This baseline, Prasanna observes, is often obscured by a health and wellness industry that tends to focus on the already motivated or offers superficial, feel-good interventions that ultimately fail to move tangible health markers.
Belong is engineered to bridge this chasm, specifically targeting individuals who might have "given up on themselves," perceiving good health as "extremely inaccessible." Prasanna’s strategic solution is to embody the "nurse and doctor combined." The 'doctor' component delivers the scientific, evidence-based methodologies. The 'nurse' provides the essential empathy, the human connection, the behavioral understanding required to integrate these strategies into the fabric of lived reality. "My job is to make the hard things easy or easier, mentally easier to navigate," he clarifies, adding with pragmatic directness, "But let's be honest... you still have to get the hard thing done."
This philosophy directly challenges what Prasanna identifies as critical "incentive misalignments" within traditional healthcare. He asserts that "a hospital wants you to fall sick because their incentive structures are designed for that." Similarly, in the preventative sphere, he notes that some entities "don't want you to become independent of their health, because if you do become independent, then you stop consuming their service." Belong, by its very design, aims to be "truth seeking and to be an ally or a companion," its success intrinsically linked to the measurable health improvements of its clients. This is an operational imperative driven by an ethical stance.
The Logic of Motivation, The Art of Sustainable Connection
Prasanna’s astute awareness of the Indian cultural context—where immediate pressures, for example, might frequently eclipse long-term health planning—is deeply embedded in Belong's operational strategy. He observes the common short-term focus: "Hey, what's the hottest job right now, like, how much money can I make today? That's not about how much money can I make in five years and then work backward."
To effectively engage with this reality, Belong employs a strategic "hack": leveraging immediate, relatable short-term motivators—an upcoming wedding, the ambition to run a 5k, the personal satisfaction of a first pull-up—as powerful entry points for building lasting health habits. "We sort of use that short term motivation to find them the next short term motivator," Prasanna explains. The ultimate goal is to guide individuals to a point where "this person has actually gotten addicted to what they're doing." It is a considered strategy of "microdosing... instant gratification" to achieve profound, sustainable changes in well-being.
This requires rigorous critical thinking, particularly when dealing with constrained resources like client time. If an individual can only commit 45 minutes, three times a week, the pivotal question is not if they can make progress, but "What is the best 45 min they can do?" Crafting that answer draws directly on his analytical background, now applied with a deep layer of empathy. The solution is never a generic high-intensity plan; Prasanna astutely points out that such approaches can be counterproductive for those not conditioned, potentially leading to adverse hormonal responses or increased cravings. Instead, the focus is consistently on "things that are explainably rooted in science," even if these methods are "contrary to what the industry does." This dedication to demonstrable efficacy over fleeting trends underscores his entire approach.
"You can't make common people behave like athletes... but neither is it fair to give people unmeasurable help back."
Architecting Resilience: The Individual, The Venture, The Leader
The name "Belong" deliberately articulates its core philosophy: creating a space of genuine accessibility for "almost anybody." The mission transcends simple fitness; it empowers individuals to discover "what's the best for you, so that you can go ahead and do things, and not be constrained by having an unable body." This inherently means architecting resilience in users, fostering a positive feedback loop where consistent, achievable actions yield measurable improvements, thereby fueling sustained motivation and commitment.
This principle of sustainable, resilient growth is also reflected in Prasanna’s own entrepreneurial journey. While financial metrics offer near-term markers, his guiding framework is one of regret minimization. "There's no harm in defeat," he states with conviction, "but there's a lot of harm in regret." His considerable ambition is consciously balanced by a pragmatic insistence on a life that allows "enough free time to spend with myself, to do the things I like to do for me and my family." For Prasanna, this integration of professional drive and personal well-being is not a compromise but a vital component of any meaningful definition of success.
His leadership style reflects this same intricate balance. He champions the often-undervalued strength of vulnerability in leadership, advocating for sharing the "anxiety while still being a leader." Such transparency, he believes, cultivates trust and offers teams a clearer understanding of the complex realities behind executive decisions. In Prasanna’s view, a high-performing team is not merely an assembly of the "11 best players"; it is about the meticulous structuring of a group to "deliver significantly higher value with much lesser potential." This focus on empowering individuals to transcend their perceived limitations is a direct parallel to the empowerment he seeks to instill in Belong’s users.
Prasanna Akella’s work with Belong is far more than a conventional business plan; it is the tangible output of a deeply honed philosophy. He is channeling his formidable analytical capabilities—forged in the demanding arenas of global technology and refined by a conscious cultivation of emotional intelligence—not to design another depersonalized algorithm, but to architect a system where science and empathy converge to truly empower individuals. He tackles a profoundly human problem by understanding both the intricate logic of the human body and the often seemingly illogical, yet powerfully resonant, motivations of the human spirit. In an era saturated with information yet often starved of genuine connection, accountability, and empathetic guidance, Prasanna is engineering a space where individuals can, finally, belong to a healthier, more resilient, and self-determined future.
"I don't think the world needs more information. I think the world needs more handholding... more accountability... more empathy."
What I learned from Prasanna Akella
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True innovation, particularly in human-centric domains like healthcare, is born from a sophisticated fusion of rigorous, data-driven analysis and deep, actionable empathy.
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Unmasking and systemically addressing inherent incentive misalignments within any industry is fundamental to unlocking pathways for more effective, ethical, and genuinely beneficial solutions.
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Lasting behavioral change is most effectively cultivated by understanding and strategically leveraging relatable, short-term motivations to build and reinforce enduring long-term habits.
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Leadership effectiveness and the resilience of an organization are profoundly amplified by fostering a culture of appropriate vulnerability, transparent communication, and a commitment to understanding the complex human dynamics that shape all decisions.
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A founder's legacy isn't confined to financial metrics; it's more accurately measured by the sustainable, positive impact on individual lives and the intellectual courage to persistently challenge and reshape conventional, often inadequate, systems.
Evolution from Manufacturer to Activist
Public perception often simplifies complex realities. Individuals become known for their most visible actions, sometimes obscuring the deeper, perhaps more foundational, aspects of their work. Akshay Deshpande presents a compelling case study in this phenomenon. Widely recognized across India as the "Lake Cleanup Guy," lauded for his high-profile efforts in removing plastic waste from public spaces, this identity, while accurate in part, eclipses his core role: that of a manufacturer dedicated to creating sustainable alternatives to the very plastic he cleans up. My conversation with him traced an evolution, catalyzed by a stark environmental reality check, from a background operator in EHS (Environment, Health, Safety) and manufacturing to an increasingly vocal advocate and activist demanding systemic change, navigating the complexities of a public persona shaped by visible action rather than his primary business focus.
The Foundation: Manufacturing Sustainable Alternatives
Before the widespread recognition for cleanups, Akshay's professional life was rooted in manufacturing and the environmental compliance sectors. "Most of them don't know that I'm actually a guy who manufactures products," he stated upfront, acknowledging the disconnect. His primary business involves creating "eco-friendly sustainable alternatives to plastic". This core identity, developed over a time period of a decade through roles in EHS and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) before crystallizing into a dedicated sustainability focus, provides the foundation for his entire mission. He doesn't just react to the problem of plastic waste; he actively works on providing solutions at the source through his manufacturing enterprise. Yet, this fundamental aspect remains largely unknown, overshadowed by the more immediately visible, and perhaps more easily digestible, narrative of environmental cleanups.
The Catalyst: 9.25 Kilograms of Indisputable Reality
While Akshay had been involved in environmental work for years, a specific incident in early 2021 appears to have acted as a powerful accelerant and reframing event. During a forest cleanup near a tribal village, the death of a cow led to a mandated autopsy. The finding was brutally direct: 9.25 kilograms of ingested plastic, causing fatal choking. Witnessing this tangible, tragic consequence of plastic pollution shifted his perspective significantly. "That was the triggering point for me," he recounted, "when I realized that what we throw outside... impacts the ecosystem... innocent animals... die because of our mistakes". This visceral encounter moved the issue beyond corporate compliance or abstract environmentalism into the realm of immediate, undeniable harm. It seems this event solidified his resolve and catalyzed the formalization of his distinct two-pronged strategy: actively cleaning existing pollution while simultaneously providing alternatives and educating for prevention.
"That was the day I took a call. From this day onwards let's start working on 2 things. Number one, how do we provide alternatives? So that plastic generation can be reduced, and number 2, how do we clean up the existing plastic...?"
The Public Persona: The "Lake Cleanup Guy" Emerges
Following this catalyst, the public-facing cleanup activities likely gained prominence, leading to the "Lake Cleanup Guy" moniker. While factually true – he organizes and participates in extensive cleanup drives in forests and lakes, ensuring collected plastic is recycled under the banner "Phenko Mat Recycle Karo" (Don't Litter, Recycle) – this identity only captures one facet of his work. It highlights the remediation aspect but obscures the proactive manufacturing and preventative education components. This public perception, reinforced by media attention and even government recognition tied to the cleanups, creates a paradox where the visible effect (cleaner lakes) overshadows the systemic cause he also addresses (plastic production/consumption). While grateful for the platform, navigating this simplified public identity while managing a manufacturing core presents a unique challenge.
Education and Empowerment: Beyond Cleanup and Products
Integral to both prongs of his strategy is education. Reaching over 350,000 people, Akshay works to shift the public mindset, identifying it as the root cause: "we humans litter ourselves". His educational approach is practical and empowering. He challenges the myth that sustainability is an unaffordable, elite concern, arguing it's fundamentally about mindset and basic choices. He employs tools like the "personal plastic audit," guiding individuals to track their daily plastic use to make the problem tangible and identify simple, actionable switches. This focus on individual awareness and basic behavioral change aims to democratize sustainability, moving it beyond the realm of expensive products into everyday choices about reduction and responsible recycling.
"Sustainability is something that can be achieved as basic as possible... It's just a mindset shift that is required."
From Action to Activism: Demanding Systemic Change
"There has to be incentives for people to follow sustainability... Usually, when people follow sustainability, they are penalized... why not? We incentivize it for people...?"
Over time, Akshay recognized the inherent limitations of relying solely on individual action, cleanup drives, and providing alternatives within the existing system. Cleaning up is essential remediation, but it doesn’t stop the source. Providing alternatives is crucial, but market adoption can be slow if incentives aren't aligned. This realization spurred his evolution towards advocacy and activism. "I'm not just an entrepreneur now I'm also an advocate and an activist," he stated, "where I'm trying to push the government also... to bring in policies that are more stringently applied". The policies in place are great, the execution of these policies is lacking.
His activism focuses on creating systemic incentives for sustainable behavior. He questions why individuals aren't rewarded for positive actions, like bringing reusable bags to supermarkets ("Why don't I get a discount?"). He argues for policies that incentivize proper waste segregation and recycling at the household level, perhaps through discounts on utilities or other tangible benefits. His logic is that voluntary action, while commendable, often falters without supportive structures. "When you try to provide some kind of additional benefit into the ecosystem that will enhance that the entire ecosystem runs on its own," he explained, contrasting this with temporary compliance driven by enforcement ("someone is there with a stick"). This push for policy change marks a significant evolution from direct action (cleanup, manufacturing) to attempting to reshape the rules of the system itself.
Akshay Deshpande embodies a multifaceted approach to a complex problem. He operates simultaneously as a manufacturer creating solutions, a highly visible public figure leading cleanup efforts, an educator shifting mindsets, and increasingly, an activist demanding systemic policy reform. While the "Lake Cleanup Guy" persona captures the most visible aspect of his work, understanding his full impact requires acknowledging the foundational manufacturing core and the strategic evolution towards policy advocacy. He navigates the gap between public perception and his complete operational reality, demonstrating that tackling deeply ingrained issues like plastic pollution requires a holistic strategy encompassing innovation, remediation, education, and systemic change.
What I Learned From Akshay Deshpande
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Public Perception Can Oversimplify Mission: Visible actions (like cleanups) often shape public identity, potentially obscuring other core components (like manufacturing alternatives) of a multi-faceted mission.
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Visceral Catalysts Drive Strategic Shifts: Direct, tangible encounters with the consequences of a problem (like the cow autopsy) can provide powerful motivation to sharpen focus and formalize operational strategies.
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Sustainable Change Requires Multiple Levers: Addressing complex issues like plastic pollution necessitates a combination of providing alternatives (manufacturing), remediation (cleanup), behavioral change (education), and systemic reform (policy/activism).
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Individual Action Has Limits: While crucial, individual behavioral change and cleanup efforts may be insufficient without systemic incentives and policies that encourage sustainable practices at scale.
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Evolution Towards Activism is Logical: Recognizing the limitations of ground-level work often leads dedicated individuals towards advocating for policy changes to create a more supportive ecosystem for widespread adoption.
Deconstructing Education
The architecture of modern education, despite surface innovations, remains largely anchored to industrial-era principles: standardized curricula, age-based cohorts, teacher-led instruction, and success measured by examinations and credentials. It’s a system designed for efficient knowledge transfer and sorting. Aarohi Life Education, co-founded by Ratnesh, represents not just an alternative within this system, but a fundamental deconstruction of its core tenets. My conversation with Ratnesh revealed a philosophy predicated on the radical trust in a child's innate capacity to direct their own learning, a process that redefines traditional notions of subjects, assessment, and even the goals of education itself, culminating in individuals who are "work certified" by capability, not just credentialed by institutions.
Inverting the Premise: From Instruction to Observation
Aarohi’s genesis involved a critical inversion. Initial plans for programs and even a VC-funded online portal were discarded when Ratnesh and his co-founder confronted a deduced reality: children possess "such amazing capabilities and capacities" that adult-designed programs often obscure rather than enhance. The role of the educator shifted from active instructor to observant facilitator. "All we can do is sit back and actually enjoy them and marvel at them and learn from them," Ratnesh explained. The primary task became creating a welcoming space for self-directed exploration, trusting that essential learning would occur contextually. This required dismantling the foundational assumption of conventional schooling – that children require external direction and structured content delivery to learn effectively. Aarohi operates on the axiom that, given the right environment, learning is an inherent, self-propelled process.
Dismantling Hierarchies: When Football is Academics
This core principle necessitates a radical rethinking of 'subjects'. Conventional education imposes a clear hierarchy, privileging academic disciplines over other pursuits. Aarohi explicitly rejects this. "Everything is academic. Everything is worth learning," Ratnesh asserted. The determining factor isn't the subject matter, but the learner's engagement: "who decides that’s worth it? The child decides that". If a child chooses to dedicate themselves to football, music, or business, that pursuit is their academic focus. Foundational skills like language and computation aren't taught as isolated subjects but are expected to emerge organically through need and context, analogous to acquiring a mother tongue. This philosophy directly challenges the credential-focused nature of mainstream education, prioritizing depth of engagement and intrinsic motivation over conformity to a predefined canon of 'important' knowledge.
The Learner's Trajectory: A Framework for Growth
While rejecting rigid curricula, Aarohi employs a conceptual framework to understand learner development, described by Ratnesh in four overlapping stages: Exposure, Exploration, Expertise, and Enterprise. Initially, learners are exposed to a wide array of resources, people, and possibilities. Subsequently, in the Exploration phase, individuality emerges as learners gravitate towards specific interests and modes of expression (writing, theatre, specific relationships). The Expertise stage, typically arising in teenage years, involves deepening skills in chosen areas, identifying strengths (e.g., people skills vs. research skills), and potentially seeking external validation or collaboration. Finally, the optional Enterprise stage involves translating expertise into tangible value recognized by the outside world, often through projects or even early entrepreneurial ventures. This framework provides a map for self-directed growth, acknowledging diverse paces and styles ("hopping kind, the running kind...") within a structure that values eventual mastery derived from authentic interest.
Redefining Success: "Work Certified" Over Exam Qualified
Perhaps the most significant departure from conventional norms lies in how learning and success are assessed. Aarohi eschews traditional tests and grades. Instead, progress is tracked through a continuous process of reflection, documentation, and portfolio building. Ratnesh emphasized that learners become "work certified" – their capabilities are demonstrated through the tangible outcomes of their projects, their ability to articulate their learning journey in portfolio presentations, and feedback gathered from real-world interactions (like the baking enthusiast seeking mentor feedback). This shifts the focus of validation from external institutional judgment (passing an exam) to internal self-assessment and external market/community recognition of demonstrated skill.
This approach yields distinct outcomes. Ratnesh shared compelling stories: the young man lost after school who discovered a passion for vehicles, leading to internships and a career restoring classic cars despite lacking formal qualifications; the photography enthusiast whose people skills enabled him to build a network and launch his own agency; the girl who pivoted from an exhausting stint in the film industry to building a successful crochet business. These narratives highlight individuals finding viable professional paths aligned with intrinsic interests, often outside traditional educational pathways. Intriguingly, Ratnesh also noted that some students, after years at Aarohi building self-belief, successfully choose to re-engage with the conventional system, efficiently preparing for and passing standardized exams (like the 10th or 12th grade boards) if required for their personally chosen next step (like engineering or hotel management). This suggests the model develops fundamental learning agility and self-efficacy, applicable even within the systems it critiques. The ultimate marker of success isn't a grade, but when learners "start taking themselves seriously", recognizing their own capacity to learn and a
"We call these children work-certified. So their work certifies that I'm competent because I've done this and you can see it. The results are in front of you."
Future Relevance in a Changing World
Ratnesh views this model not as a niche alternative but as increasingly aligned with the demands of the future. He argues that ubiquitous access to information and tools (media, knowledge bases, AI) diminishes the need for traditional instruction. The crucial skills become self-direction, adaptability, critical thinking, and the ability to learn continuously – precisely the capacities the Aarohi model aims to cultivate through its Design-Do-Reflect cycle. While acknowledging the model currently appeals to a small segment (often families seeking alternatives after struggling with conventional schools, or those already inclined towards homeschooling/unschooling), he hopes its principles will inspire broader change, fostering more diverse, learner-centric educational approaches. His immediate focus is on reaching more children "who are struggling", believing the Aarohi environment can help heal emotional wounds (like those from bullying) and allow differently capable children to find their strengths.
Aarohi Life Education presents a fundamental deconstruction of mainstream educational paradigms. By placing agency squarely with the learner, eliminating subject hierarchies, and replacing external assessment with demonstrated capability ("work certified"), it offers a compelling, albeit demanding, model for fostering self-aware, intrinsically motivated, and adaptable individuals. It’s a system built on radical trust in the learner, supported by a reflective community structure involving peers, mentors, and deeply engaged parents – a vision that challenges us to reconsider not just how we educate, but why.
What I learned from Ratnesh Mathur
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Radical Trust is the Foundation: The core operating principle is an unwavering belief in the child's capacity to lead their own learning, fundamentally inverting the traditional teacher-as-authority model.
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Subject Hierarchies are Artificial Constructs: Treating all chosen pursuits as "academic" dismantles arbitrary value judgments and validates learning driven by genuine interest, fostering deeper engagement.
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Capability Can Be "Work Certified": Demonstrable skill, evidenced through projects, portfolios, and real-world feedback, can serve as a valid alternative to traditional academic credentials for assessing competence.
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Self-Directed Learning Develops Core Life Skills: The process of designing, doing, and reflecting inherently cultivates critical thinking, problem-solving, resilience, and self-awareness – skills often treated as add-ons in conventional systems.
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Alternative Models Thrive on Alignment: The success of such a system relies heavily on the philosophical alignment and active participation of all stakeholders, particularly parents, making participant selection a crucial factor.
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