How To Build And Scale A Business Ep1 Manoj Kohli Rohit Kapoor

TITLE: How to Build and Scale a Business? Ep.1 by Manoj Kohli, Ex-CEO - Airtel & Rohit, CEO - Swiggy CHANNEL: Classes At Masters’ Union DATE: 2026-06-11 ---TRANSCRIPT--- So my name is Manoj Kohli and I somebody has made me chairman of masters union. I don’t know whether he did the right thing or not but for the last few years I’m helping Pratam and Swati and others to run this very very fine educational institution into a great school and our objective is to make it top 10 management schools in the world by 2030 and that goal is very very important for all of us and it’s very for Me personally it’s it’s because I’ve done 47 years of my professional life now. So it’s very exciting to work with young people like Shah Rukh Khan like Pratam Swati and so many others. I can tell you real life stories of how I built businesses, how I built AEL, how I built Lenskard, how I built Ola, how I built Zumato, how I built so many policy bazar and so many other companies. how I funded them, how I built them, how I helped and now I’m coaching about 50 60 founders all over the world. How I helped them to scale up 10x, 20x, 50x, 100x because I scaled up ATEL from 0 to 650 million customers in 20 countries. So I’m my domain is more a scale up domain. I grow businesses make them very profitable and one of the aspects I teach I help is business model. So this program series of six six programs six six programs we have are about business model innovation business mo model digitization digital disruptions in business model. So I thought I’ll just help you understand this new concept. I don’t know if somebody else is teaching you this but I have done this personally for last so many years so many decades actually and uh not an easy thing to do but it’s very exciting thing to do. So I I hope I am able to help you understand fully. My only request to you is that you should ask all the questions all the doubts you may have. Don’t hesitate. Stop me. Ask me when you finish this program. By the time you should be absolutely crystal clear on how is business model built, how to make a innovative business model, a profitable business model, a digital business model. Is that is that what you have in mind? And I’ll give you at least 10 examples between now and then so that you can have understanding how various models are made, how they fail, how they succeed, what makes them fail, what makes them succeed. So uh so see this is this is the theme navigating disruptions, scaling strategically and building brands and insights from various industry leaders who will come here personally and who will help you understand this concept. uh who will come here we calling very very smart guys you seen these smart guys in actual life they look smarter than this you picture but they look smarter today we have very very uh exciting guy called Rohit Kapoor he is the CEO of Swiggy unfortunately he could not come personally he’ll come online but all others are coming personally and and you’ll meet them, you can ask them questions, etc. This is the guy of today. Uh he he he looks gray but he’s not that gray. He’s much younger than me. And he earlier was in OO where I met him first time with reto and then he left Oo and joined Swiggy and he’s doing a great job. First tell you about business model. So basically business model is how a company makes a product or a service. Firstly you make it okay and then how you deliver that product or service to the customer’s hand so that it reaches customer’s hand and then how a customer gets a good experience of that product and service and in this process how the company makes profit and company should make profit if you don’t make profit then it’s it’s worthless so I believe in stunning profitability So when we invented the new business model of ATEL which I’ll not talk about today I’ll talk about in the next session when we made that my target was stunning profitability the global average profitability in telecom is 30%. Aida you know Aida

and ATAL achieved 63%. Which is double of world average. So my objective is that my objective is not that because we have good minds. Indians have good minds and I think Indians should use minds. Indians are frugal frugality. So that is business model. Are you clear? Any questions on the business model? You’re clear what it means? Very good. Now there are two three aspects about business model which I want you to share. What what is a good business model? Whether it is a physical business model or a digitally run business model. First is that business model should be scalable. Scalable means that you can have a business model for Gura. It may not work outside Gurong or you can have a business model for Delhi or you can have business model for North India or you can have business model for India or you can have business model for Asia and finally you can have a business model which works across the world. For example, inel I went I took from one country India to 20 countries. So that model worked in 20 countries. We had to change the model. When I went to Nigeria or some other countries, I changed the model a bit but it did work. 90% of the core model was same. 10% we customized or modified according to the local conditions. So one is scalability. So scalability is most important. If the your model is not scalable and it is more local or more limited then it is not a good model because you will not be able to grow that model and business is about growth. It’s about scale. Today the biggest problem of India is that our companies are good but they don’t have scale. I mean which companies of India have scale? I think Reliance has scale. Ital of course has scale. HDFC has scaled but not many companies have scaled. I’m talking about world class world scale and I think India has started the journey but we are slow. I think in the next 10 years we have to build hundreds of such companies. I think Indian companies it’s 80/20% is government support and earlier the government support was not there. Now government is supporting many many companies a lot. For example, in electronics, in smartphones, the PLI, production link incentive scheme given to Apple, given to Samsung, given to so many uh smartphone companies is so good that they have today 25% of iPhones are made in India. But I think 80% is the industry issue. It is not a government issue. In my view, Indian industry has lagged behind because Indian industry is happy with domestic market. They’re making good money in domestic market. They’re saying I’ll translate. Don’t worry. Their aspirations are not very high. Their investment into R&D is not very high. the investment into being global. Their hunger to be global is not very high. For example, I’ll tell you took acquisition of Africa for $10.7 billion. At that time, it was the biggest acquisition of any foreign company by Indian company. We had guts. [snorts] So, Indian companies have to have guts. For example, Sun Sunarma is taking over 11 billion. That’s 11 billion 12 billion 11 11 billion I mean it’s fantastic this is what we have to do we have to go global it’s industry responsibility government yes should support but government can’t support everything you have to run the industry you have to grow the industry for example when took over Africa 17 countries 10.7 billion government didn’t support us we did it ourselves and you can do it so you are absolutely Right. Rohit are you there? So Rohit, you know how I’ve introduced you already? Okay. Okay. Uh I’m on full volume here. Okay. Good. Good. Now the volume is good. Can you hear him? Okay. Let me tell you how I introduced you. I told them that you are a very handsome guy and you’re a young guy and this gray hair you have done artificially. You’re not that old. This gray is artificial gray. It’s not real gray. And uh you are a fantastic guy and you did a great job in OO for some time and then now you’re leading Swiggy and doing a fantastic job. So this was the introduction. So now I leave it to you. I would like you. These are very very bright students of masters union. They are trying to understand from you how business model disruptions are taking place in various industries in India and the world. How AI is being utilized by many companies. How you have made these very exciting initiatives first in OO and now in Swiggy. What do you think of next few years in next 3 to 5 years? how you what more changes are coming in how technology is elevating or disrupting the business models and uh because you know these young guys are lucky they didn’t they didn’t see the physical world which you and me have seen in the past they’ve only seen the digital world so how the digital world will further evolve and make it more exciting to businesses to grow and scale up so that is the theme which I thought you are the best person to talk about is that okay? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I’ll keep it brief. I’ll love to have some questions. Um time for that. Look, I think uh it’s such a such a wide subject that it’s really hard honestly and I think when a lot is changing in the world, it is important with both saying to say that one should change and one should recognize what is changing and really rapidly move in that direction. I’ve always had the personal to live to that but it’s equally important to have the stability to understand what is not changing right and what is quite eternal right so people talk about artificial intelligence I’m also as curious about natural stupidity for example um uh and it’s a understated topic nobody likes speaking about it but there is plenty of it all around us right Um uh so let me talk about what is eternal and what is changing in terms of what I see from my vantage point which is I must warn you it’s very limited right uh the overall scheme of things I think what is eternal is the pursuit for understanding the un I’m very consumer guy so when I say consumer you can extend it to industries as well I’m not a person that much So I will talk more consumer terms. Um I think that intense desire to understand that what is the unstated need of the consumer which is at some point can be monetized. I think it’s very important to understand the word some point right because it’s it’s very easy to monetize and become profitable at small scale. there is no fun in that right India is full of such companies right in fact we have this culture and mindset of sort of reigning upon companies which are investing for long term right and I don’t think it’s a healthy mindset that’s one thing I would like to actually spend time on and and hopefully leave an impression on you somewhat okay but let me let me talk urban metro black millu okay and if if you have your eyes wide open and if you’re actually not on your 6 in screens but looking around you Right. Uh which I which I advise as a recreational activity once in a while that just keep the phones in your pocket and roam around the city uh and actually see with your eyes wide open. Right? [clears throat] There are some thing and these and the other thing is that you will not find any moral judgment in whatever I’m saying. Right? Because my job as a marketeer and a CEO is to observe not judge people and just trends because the moment we start judging we become a victim of our own biases. What is irrefutable around us that urban cities are getting more and more absolutely tougher and tougher to live in. It’s a statement of fact. Barring couple of large cities which I will count Hyderabad in it and maybe some parts of Bombay that statement is almost universally true. There is no going back. Right? Traffic is going to get worse and worse. Right now if I tell you in my business a bad traffic situation is actually a tailwind. You’ll you’ll probably be very surprised. But we um my business runs on the the desire right or wrong for people to stay in at home as much as possible and go out only for certain tasks. It just creates a demand and and one of the you know organic demands for us is bad traffic. But we won’t think like that right. It is all around us and we’ll say oh we’ll about it saying oh that’s bad traffic but what is the business opportunity coming out of bad traffic and I can tell you it is not delivering doer to the car that’s illegal right that’s for PR what are the other things but so I can give three four more examples right um there is an economy which is the trend of agradient to urban migration continues unabated. Okay. So every city is now composed of large parts of migrant labor almost every city. Right. Um and and that presents a unique housing and co-l livingiving opportunity which has never existed before because see the Indian whoever the Indians will search for a better life next year that is guaranteed in this country right that is universally true irrespective income strata in respective educ education. What is the other trend? Pollution is one trend. Right? So what I’m trying to say is that if if you’re observed enough, there are some things which have nothing to do with air, nothing to do with technology. These are simply large consumer problems. [clears throat] Like if I dissect consumer segments further and look at the top 2 million 3 million which is almost um at least PPB adjusted for sure is as rich as anybody saying stay staying in Singapore or Hong Kong or even London right the classic money rich and time poor problem is intense right and and India is a is a unique situation where People who have money can can get labor easily because labor is plenty and is at rates which practically is impossible in western markets. But equally having all that still cannot arrive at a standard of living once this like I like like Gura since we’re sitting in Gura Gura has created this beautiful Singapore inside Gura where you get in and you forget the world as they surround you. Every condominium in Buddha operates like that. But there is the moment you step outside you you face the real. So your standard of living is protected only to the extent that you are within that world garden. Your standard of living normalizes to uh middle class pretty much as soon as you step outside until you of course take everyone once again. [clears throat] The [snorts] average speed of a mark is 23 in Delhi, 17 in Bangalore. It is autos in into Jakarta or Jakarta is a bad example but autos in a decent Southeast Asian city like Manila go faster. Think of this. You got a 2 cr car which moves at 17 km an hour. a Euro which is a range limited bike moves at 25 maximum speed. What I’m trying to say is that these are macro trends. I think observing macro trends is the first will help identify large consumer problem. So if if a rich consumer is time poor then my focus can be on thinking of how to take away everything which is a tax on that individual or consumer or what they have to do and they don’t want to do and create a massive opportunity out of that. And the other thing is that most large industries get created for by identifying consumer problems which are large but the market is very small. Right? And the the the thing which I which actually is probably one of the worst concepts in venture capital investing is something called TAM. Right? What was the time of quick commerce four years back, 5 years back? Zero. Literally zero. 5 years back, if you anybody had evaluated a quick commerce company basis time, the answer was zero. There was no time. Nobody had figured out that in 10 minutes people want all kinds of things. The time was zero. In fact, I can go there and explain to you why because this is often a question why does quickcommerce work because for many logical reasons it should not work. Why why will anybody work with anything in 10 minutes? And I go back to the famous Bezos statement when he made a statement saying what have [clears throat] you learned in like I don’t remember the exact words but the sentiment of it saying what have you learned building Amazon for 25 years he says customers every year want things cheaper and faster right as simple as that right that’s all that was a single line he had learned for 25 years of building Amazon I think works for density reasons etc etc people are those are all the wrong it basically reduces friction from In what way? You ordered from home and within the same span of attention of 10 minutes it is delivered. [snorts] [clears throat] Any form which is half an hour, 1 hour, 2 hours can mean you are not at home. You have gone to sleep. You are there’s a coordination and a friction which gets created in e-commerce which quick commerce took away completely and then there are multiply multiplicative effects of that. So I just notice I have not even come to yet right because I want at least students to think of a world and things which will not change. AI is not going to change traffic. AI is not going to change pollution. AI is not going to change. Okay. It will impact people are going to get more time rich. Yes. So the the impact on people will be there will be more time rich. If I look at adverse things, if I’m a personal loan company betting on young undergrads coming in into white collar jobs, right? I should be a little worried, right? Because white collar jobs are the ones disappearing the fastest. In fact, the blue collar jobs are zero impact. uh that demanded I call a I can certainly tell you that he’s getting tougher unless but there is a there’s a park ahead of you through that so that’s my core message or whatever my learning is I I’m very conscious not to get blown away by AI and say everything AI because there’s a lot happening in our country I’m just focusing on our domestic markets and I’ve not even gone rural life I travel to four five cities every month of cities which have different use like a varasi or there are similarities and dissimilarities but let’s stick for in the interest of pan to maybe met urban examples now let’s let me talk about what is what at least I’m seeing on AI and uh I personally think that anything which is in such a serious change and and a serious hype cycle needs to be needs a huge sense of responsibility from leaders to navigate because there is a risk of leaning too too far forward and blowing up a lot of money and there’s a risk of not being far and reaching far and wide and fast enough and losing competitive advantage. Both risks are real right. Uh and there is like for example people talk about co-pilot or many such things but which vendor to bet on no clarity right uh the winners are changing every 3 months. So there is a of course everybody talks about anthropic but but there are multiple uh like hundreds of companies that that are pitching their products and services in the market on AI. So let’s try and again conclude on yeah what is not what is absolutely certain and what is experimental and will get a great clearer and then clarity is emerging every two weeks every month it’s not like quarter and 6 months number one expertise is dead experience is toast right it is just gone, vanished. And anytime you hear people say, “Oh, I have of of course any I carve out specific things which require hand skills to be very specific like a chef cooking. I still don’t know what the impact of AI, right? But uh let’s say media manager with 10 years of experience, toast designers, toast um software developers, toast that that is gone. I can tell you with full certainty. I can bet that if any of you are curious enough about AI and dedicate your one year of life to it, you’ll be as valuable to a company as a somebody with 5 10 years experience in any domain. Right? So I’ll frankly say all kinds of specialization in B school was very long back. So this marketing, finance, I think people students always care a lot about it but industry never did. Um so that’s a that’s something which is I’ve seen for the last 20 years in the so so one one conclusion is definitely that second conclusion is there will be people who will become tremendously rich and by understanding what AI the power of AI means and there are people who will judge it and not and I’m including anybody like for example Example, I have a uh AI mentor who’s 25 years old actually, right? I take lessons from him every single day. That that’s one hour on my calendar which is fixed. It doesn’t move, right? anything everything else moves and interestingly that person is not a com science or engineering graduate person with a BBA went and worked with Nandan Khani’s voice AI initiative for 2 and a half years and it’s fantastic right um the second second is really differentiated careers can happen by people who understand how to leverage AI right uh and the simplest way to do this is not to talk about it too much just please please start reading don’t talk about AI and please do not confuse using chatg prompts as AI right that I can tell you just walk across the road the panala is also doing right it is completely undifferiated it may make you feel smarter at that point in time it has no meaning whatsoever right it is about using things like for example plot code building context building you know uh and really learning how to use that very powerfully. I think what is very what is going to be very liberating is that the startup cost on new businesses will collapse dramatically and I mean not just startups which are VC funded startups like somebody wanting to set up a shop, somebody wanting to set up a interior uh showroom, somebody wanted to launch a small bed service. Just imagine designing uh procurement everything is basically can be done 20x faster and 100x cheaper. So it will it is already creating a tons of opportunities and the the most democratization will happen the the obviously the money will is still flowing to the fang kind of companies right but using those tools the democratization will happen atme a lot more the friction friction is already going away like somebody can launch their website today in like 3 hours time you don’t need any website agency I can do it. So my uh in terms of company transformations I think hence we are thinking my my my framework is the following on AI navigation right now is one for the top four 500 leaders in the company have no choice but to become completely I doesn’t matter which function you sit in there could be a slight bit of degree of gradient between a product function journal let’s say a public policy function but it is slight that’s number one and I can in the interest of time I will keep the specifics out but I can tell you that we are having both characteristic approach to make that happen second is wherever the world has already proven that AI is working we don’t don’t want to question it we just want to 100% adopt move fast and and just like for example contact centers right or voice AI for any kind of calling uh or co-pilots the the real job inside cooperation is actually to build more and more context for the tool because else it hallucinates still a lot right and the the second part is to have an engine inside the company which we have to engage with hundreds of people working on AI and different things and understand what could be relevant for us. This is not a hype cycle. I think obviously given the billions of dollars flowing into these these areas there is substantial amount of PR and marketing machinery deployed on top of that to make that sweat a lot more by companies which are right in the center of that revolution. So one has to discount for that right but one should not get discounted so much that nobody should be a skeptic on AI. Let me put it this way. If you’re a skeptic on AI, you’re just making life harder for yourself like tremendously. Um, it’s not worth it. How much of an optimist you can be depends on who you are, where you are placed, and what you’re trying to do, right? But more or less, I I do feel that your core degree is pretty much sort of tables. whatever you’re learning um unless until you are absolutely AI native and ready and those who will be will get outsized rewards in the new workforce uh and the same applies to companies I think um for example any new business we are building a conc 1% to 2% of India it’s called crew I don’t know if you heard about it that vertical we are bringing we started with a few people but we are now building it 100% AI in the vertical like literally challenging why should uh we start with a premise saying everything in that vertical should be done by AI um and only if it can’t we deploy somebody against it right and there are multiple experiments I can tell you at least one small city we are running where um AI AI is telling every morning what to the city team what to do and for 2 months they will not ask questions. They will execute what is told to them by air. It’s not a the co-pilot is the human being. The co-pilot is not AI. So I genuinely feel that um that we don’t know whether succeed with that or not but it’s a it’s something that we want to learn very fast. asked if that gold is indeed arriving. How do we get to that? I’ll stop there. I I’m happy to take questions here. I think I’ve run for about half an hour, but very happy to take questions or add any perspective. Mr. Koh, if you have any questions or anything that you want to add, comment on whatever I leave it to you. No, I’m already 27. So, I’m two years older than your your guy. So, I have not many questions. I think uh the students here will definitely have many questions for you. So over to all of you. This is this is a guy who has fantastic experience talking about this major transformation of AI in businesses. So please do ask any questions or doubts you may have in your mind. Hello sir, my name is Kushbu. My question is you were talking about chefs not being replaced with with AI. Now we can all be aided you know because we all have more time in hand and I would just build a recipe. So I think it’s helping both ends no. So yeah I think personal productivity wise if you’re in home kitchen I I totally think that you can leverage AI to uh access more and and probably cook better. But look uh if chefs were uh just appended by availability of recipe that would have happened that happened long back but it’s still an art. I think my my premise is that AI will be used in aid to them but wherever there is uh handcraft involved or labor involved with hand those are the there the most are the highest. Okay others thank you uh Rohit next next question coming up. have just one quick question around and the person contract service. We started off today’s lecture without telling us that every business model should be scaled in and by the first class person contact doesn’t have that at least in my but I’ve seen me a lot of that in the past look I think when you start any business first of all that business is DMF right so all questions are questions on that business because by definition it hasn’t right Um I think if there is a large enough consumer need the job of management is to scale it come I’ll give you an example a very good favorite company of mine called many of what they ver at home right uh very hard to standardize and scale but today it’s a fairly large vertical uh so I can give 10 examples like that so is absolutely right I don’t know what what context you mentioned it but um let me give an example of something what what is a so we through the air concept we are trying to solve the time po problem. Okay. Now if somebody if I we convinced that time poverty is a big big deal. Now what shall we find in I don’t know any business that launches ultimately when it scales scales with a very different version of where it was launched. So one of the things I when I invest in startups I never look at a business model. I never do an Excel sheet because there’s almost zero chance that what is presented on day Z is the ICO story if the company were there almost zero chance it could have like 10 times at least so right I think it’s a fair question to asking how do we scale it I think we believe that uh if AI was not available to the world I think it’s it’s absolutely true that it is very hard to scale but with AI being available and becoming the better and better wages. It’s a it’s a short but it remains PBMF. It’s a any such venture succeeding in becoming large is a is a at best a double digit probability outcome right but that that was the same for full stack photo that was same for instant we always have you take six 10 such shots one works two works okay last question Rohit coming up hi Rohit say as you mentioned that you’re building which is completely AI based uh as far as I know for service. So how are you following for that as business model wanted to understand that how% of India reacted to not utilizing the service or trying it first but paying for it first. Yeah, right now that question specifically on that one it’s a invite only program we not even open up to it’s not like download and because we want to run that at a certain scale only till we figure out the exact model we confident enough to take it to a what is classically called a CG like a closed user group I don’t think it’s ready enough to launch a full scale uh acceleration business. But assuming you start with a complete pay without any such pay before any kind of and your point is like in India people want to try something first before paying for anything and if you as are able to source for something that people are paying for then trying it is a big uh like change in the Indian country. Yeah. Yes and no. Right? There are enough examples of people playing before trying. But honestly, pricing is a very easy thing to switch, right? That the harder thing to do is to deliver consumer experience, deliver the right level of cost structure with quality on on each assignment. Pricing is experimental. Today, I can run a like just to tell you like for example, I can run a cohort which is without a suspicion. run a bit like the scale is so low that uh and it’s a CG business. So uh it matters pricing matters is also one of the easiest vectors to experiment and pay around. So you may be right we may end up pay right we don’t know enough today but what happens is in our learning so that we know why we kept it that way we found much higher frequency of use. Okay Rohit great response. Uh finally one young lady wants to ask you a question and this definitely is the final one. No problem. Go ahead. Hi sir. Uh thank you for the really captivating talk and my name is yes somehow aspiring and I have a really selfish or selfish question to ask you. Uh in your talk you said that a lot of jobs are coming to especially if it’s a person who’s like a media brand manager media head. So now the um the expectation when people are coming and applying for cleaner companies let’s say for example sweetie I just want to pick your brain on what are the expectations what are you looking those candidates and that was the first half of the question and the second half of the question is what do you suggest we do like I think you said right now you know don’t learn how to create ad go just try making one of your own so if you have any other suggestions then you can really start working on from today onwards that can make us better prospects in the future that be really helpful to all of us I think u let me say this because it’s very hard for me to advise all of you I think but if I were to advise a younger version of myself existed right I will completely dump it down and say do not worry about things you have no control over like for example how will companies recruit can you shame companies you don’t pursue. Can you make yourself fully ready for my message? I I want to leave no confusion on the table on what my message to each one of you is. And when my son is 22, I tell him the same thing, right? It’s I’m telling you exactly what I told my son last night. Just spend take keep your phone aside. Take your laptop. Get a good connection. Get a laptop with a decent processing capability. Spend money on subscriptions to AI tools. Right? This is much better than any money you’ll spend ever, right? Tell your parents to fund that, right? I I strongly encourage parents to fund that. Right? And just build build 5 hours every day. Just build. Do not be with your friends. Please do not groups if you want like learn from each other but personally build don’t see somebody else building it personally build because the profile which is going to be the hottest profile market is not going to be a brand manager not going to be a marketing manager it’s going to be the builder and after that you can choose your orientation saying which space do I want to be in [snorts] it could well be brand marketing or you can choose your orientation to say for me the sales is when you communicate something else. Understood. Understood. Thanks. So, Rohit, thank you for your time. Uh I am I am amazed. I think your responses have been loved by people here. I can see on the faces. But this virtual uh discussion is not acceptable. You’ll have to take out time to come here personally and meet these young boys and girls whenever it’s convenient for you to come for an hour or so. Uh it’s not far away from your office. So we invite you. You tell us when it’s convenient and we’ll block time of the students. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. So grateful to you for your time and we meet again very soon. We’ll be in touch with your office. Thank you. [applause] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All the best. Okay. Now, you heard an experienced guy who’s running Swiggy every day. What he’s trying to do to change his business model of Swiggy, what experimentation he’s doing. All experiments don’t work. Uh all times don’t work. He he said it very very well. By the way, you know, in 95 when I got into telecom, McKenzie gave a report on telecom in India, mobile and they said India will have 50,000 mobile consumers and this was Mckenzie by the way the best guys in the world and today India has 1.2 two billion mobile users. Now you know how much time work, how time works. You have to create time and that’s what he’s saying. You create time. Uh you know blinket didn’t have a time. It was zero. Created time. We intel created TAM. [clears throat] So just to start with the last question this young lady, what’s her name? Vasuda. She she asked a very good question and I think I I’ll spend a minute on that and then I’ll continue the session. You know I unfortunately am not as young as you. I want to be wanted to be as young as you because today getting born in this situation today I think you are very blessed and lucky that you have resources you have technology you have everything going for you. I remember my time when I was your age. It was not like this. It was tough. What I will do? I want to tell you this was firstly his advice on AI is fantastic. Do it. He basically saying do it. Do it yourself. Don’t try to overarn. Do it. Uh you’ll make mistakes. You’ll not do it properly. Maybe second time, third time, fourth. You’ll do it. You make an ad. Make an ad. It didn’t happen in one go. It took days and days and months. So obviously you will not click in one go. You will learn. And he’s saying pick up all AI tools to learn and do it. Once you do it 4 hours, 5 hours a day, maybe 6 months. In 6 months, you’ll be an expert. You will have the domain expertise. which not many people have. So I’m saying you have an opportunity, a very very great opportunity to start doing it with your own hands, using AI tools with your own hands and creating something of your own. That’s what he’s saying and that’s what I’m saying. I will do it if I was your age. Second, this is the first. This is AI. AI, by the way, takes away the need for IQ. And I’m not saying you have to be dumb. You’re very smart. You have lot of a IQ. But AI adds to your IQ. If your IQ is 100, AI makes it 150, 200, whatever, depending on how you use it. So on IQ, you are super. Second thing is EQ. Now emotional quotient. Guys who have high EQ will be far more successful in AI era compared to low EQ. Why? And that’s what he’s saying. He didn’t say it like this, but he said it in different language. Go to the real market. Go and meet people. Go and meet shopkeepers. Go and meet dealers. Go and meet consumers. go and go and go go physically interact don’t be virtual get out of virtual world into real world understand the need of consumer and that’s what I do as a CEO I I used to travel 20 days a month and all 20 days first half of every day I used to be with the consumers in the market in the showrooms meeting consumers meeting dealers meeting shopkeepers and listening to them. What do you want? They’re articulated demands. They’re unarticulated expectations. Some expectations are not articulated, but you have to talk to them and understand what they mean. And that’s what you have to do. And that is where you will develop your EQ further. I believe that if you have strong EQ, emotional quotient, you will be far more successful in the AI era. Number three is something called which is my invention by the way. It’s not in the books. It’s called AQ adversity quotient. If you are hungry, you will succeed much more. If you are not hungry, you will not succeed. Hunger is the difference. And that is why I’ll tell you the bad news now. Some of you may not like it but I’m sorry if you don’t like it. Guys who are coming from metros, metro cities like Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore have low hunger. Guys coming from small towns have much higher hunger. And that’s why in the last maybe 20 30 years I have recruited more people from small towns. I know the guys from metro cities will hate me but I am going after hunger. I am going after passion because I believe hunger and passion are more important than MBA in life to succeed for [clears throat] a company to succeed for a business to succeed. [snorts] So a aq is the third. So can I repeat? I’m just summarizing what he said. AI is equal to higher IQ. Clear? Clear. Or any doubts. Your IQ plus AI’s tools make you higher IQ. Clear. And do it yourself. That is first part of the formula. Second part is EQ which means get out of virtual life. Get into real life. Understand consumer. Understand future expectations. Understand unarticulated expectations. You will know the problem in the market. You will know the solution in the market because you are interacting. You know this is part two of the formula. And part three of the formula is AQ. Adversity. If you have faced adversity, that is your biggest bloody strength. Okay. Now coming back to business model. I said the first most important thing about business model is scalability which you asked him very good questions and he explained to you. The second thing about a business model is profitability. So I believe as I said earlier that if your business doesn’t make too much money then it’s worthless. That means you don’t know the art or science of making money. And that’s what you you you that is the that is the really cutting edge of using technology to make money. If you look at Mag 7 in US so I I met Jensen you know the Nvidia guy. I met Shantanu who’s the Adobe because I’m adviser to Adobe. They were there and I met so many other guys from Google, Meta, Microsoft. I spent a lot of time with them. So basically what Jensen has done and he’s a grandfather of AI. Nvidia is a fantastic company. It has beaten the out of everyone. But what he’s doing he’s explained to you is from the evolution from generative AI to agentic AI and how agentic AI will actually do the work. Whereas agent generative AI is more about knowledge information data but agentic AI is as a coworker doing the work with you and getting it done faster getting it done precisely getting it done better. So that’s what he’s this is the summary of what he said. [clears throat] Maybe you didn’t understand fully but I thought I’ll explain to you and this is what he’s thinking. This is just three days back, four days back when I was in Las Vegas with him and then I spent time with him over lunch and u I feel that what these two videos have taught you one what Rohit Kapoor said what you should do and what second what Jensen said what you should do is the I will say summary of your plan for next few years. how you should fully leverage agentic AI for your personal learning, for your personal knowledge and IQ enhancement. And secondly, how you you should leverage that for business model improvement in whichever business you are planning to do or whichever company you are planning to work in. And you will be ahead of others if you add those two elements which I told you the elements of EQ and AQ. If you add those two then you’ll be ahead of other people around you in terms of because in every company in every group there there’s a bit of a competition questions we talked a lot about speed and I’ve been in today’s world where we also talk about agent. So agent is all about evolving how speed used to play a very key role. Now it’s speed plus execution with the help of genkins but now as a consumers we are prioritizing efficiency and even companies are prioritizing efficiency over speed because in in back it was like ideation phase then design phase and then product was going to the consumers but now the speed has changed a lot. So how do you balance speed and efficiency both today’s time in the world of journey? Excellent [clears throat] question. Very good question. You have to balance three things. Number one speed which you’re right AI brings lot of speed and in those days when I used to manage without AI etc. It was difficult not easy to have speed. Number two quality. We cannot give to customer a poor quality product or poor quality service. Therefore, one has to monitor quality and set a benchmark of quality so that you are not below that benchmark. You are at least at the benchmark, minimum benchmark. And third is cost efficiency or efficiency. You can’t do it at a very high cost because you need to earn a good margin, healthy margin. You are absolutely right. So these are three things. So let me tell you a day we had a slogan called speed first quality always. So quality was the basic benchmark but the qual without quality you you cannot even think of going to customer. So what we did was so many of my employees used to ask me what do you mean by this formula? This is a very vague formula speed first quality always. What do you mean be be precise? Okay. I said I said you’re developing a new product and it’s a good good product and you think the customer will love it. Now one way is that you wait to develop it 100% perfectly which takes lot of time let me tell you lot of time and we don’t have time because ATEL was a smallest company and a lossmaking company by the way smallest lossmaking company if we have to come up and beat our competition we need to be speed so we said I told them I said they go you have to build that product to 90 95% % efficiency not 100%. I can’t wait customer will not wait and we have to tie our laces while running. Let me repeat. We have to tie our laces while running. You can’t you don’t have tie time to tie laces and then run. So you have to be smarter. You have to be more agile. You have to be swift. And if you launch a product at 90% 95% perfection that 5% you can do it within next 1 week 2 weeks 3 whatever time so that you are 100% there in matter of two weeks but customer should get the product immediately don’t wait for 100 because 100% so that is how I I I manage the situation and sometimes it 90% it clicked very well. 10% customer got unhappy because there was some bad experience. So we corrected that. So all three things are very important just to prove to you. Speed, quality, efficiency, but you have to balance them. It can’t be you. There’s no formula for a perfect balance. So thanks a lot. I hope this was a good opening opening because today I wanted to introduce the subject in a very light-hearted way. Today was not that serious but I hope you’re going back with some good understanding of a business model and how AI capabilities will be good for a modern business model. We meet again on 4th on Monday strategic scaling and operational excellence and we have invited yeah Sahil Goyel very smart founder as smart as him and maybe more uh he built shiprocket you know ship rocket fantastic guy and I will give you my view on how AEL scale up from 0 million to 650 million happened and how operational excellence was achieved.