“I Had No Grand Ambition to Become a CEO; I Was Simply Afraid of Failing” | Avinash Kaul

[music] The title of the book is the next mountain. But there's already a mountain that has been crossed so far. [music] There are only two motivations that people usually have. Either it's the year of success or the fear of failure. [music] If you were to look at this book, it's less of a biography. It's more of a field guide on the art of mountain climbing applied to the art of corporate climbing. [music] Hello and welcome to this special podcast. Uh today I have a very special guest. Uh he is a media leader and author Mr. Avin Kh. And we are going to discuss about his new book the next mountain which is a deeply moving personal account of displacement leadership and resilience. Thank you Mr. Cole for joining us. >> Thank you Roel. It's always a pleasure. >> Let me uh begin with the title itself. Here's the book. Uh the next mountain. Tell me what exactly was the thought behind this uh title and what is the mountain that you are trying to climb. Now >> so Roel let me in two parts since the topic talks about the next mountain. The title of the book is the next mountain. But there's already a mountain that has been crossed so far and I can take you back into that journey and which is why it's also titled the next mountain. I think the journey of my book actually traces from the time that I left Kashmir in the middle of turmoil on 19th of January 1990. Earlier everything was peaceful as you yourself know that everything was very nice and peaceful and nobody had any ambitions of life apart from getting into an REC and maybe joining a PWD or a PhD department and retiring and dying there pretty much that was that kind of summed it up. So my journey was no different. I had absolutely no ambition. Never thought that one day I would be doing anything else apart from just being in Kashmir. Hadn't really even traveled outside of Kashmir. I mean maximum Jammu and maybe once Delhi and never probably beyond that. So the exposures were very limited and then one fine day life altered dramatically and uh the exodus happened. Uh so overnight I had to leave my home. My father put me behind a scooter at 4:00 a.m. in the night and literally smuggled me to Lalok where the KMD bus depot used to be there. So in two buses were going and on one bus both the buses were full. on one bus he entrusted me to a driver and made me sit on the bonnet. The bonnet at that time if you remember used to be inside the bus and it used to be really hot. Now on one end you have the heat of the bonnet and the other have you have the winter of Kashmir which is as brutal. >> So that is when my mountain really started because I had no idea where I was going. There was obviously no place to go to. I knew that I was going to Jammu and I was going alone. My parents were not with me. There wasn't a place to live. So we were constructing a house. We had just done a plinth and a neighbor was kind enough in Jammu to give their garage for us to live in. So that's where I stayed. I stayed for around 3 months in a garage literally by myself. My parents joined in later because you know the terrorists came to you know hit my dad uh while he was at work. So then he escaped literally with everything that could come in a Maruti 800. That was much later in March. But those few months I was pretty much on my own. And uh that is when you realize that you know I had never thought that this would be the situation. I thought that you know it's a normal few things few days here it will happen and it'll settle down. So I never took anything with me. So everything that I had accumulated in my life till now as you know any things that pictures or anything or clothes anything else everything got looted because after my dad and mom came uh to Jammu whatever would come in Maruti 800 two trucks lined up and cleaned out the entire house. So that is what the story was. Now in Kashmir we were in a very posh locality bagulah you know a three-story house 12 15 rooms with some land there and then suddenly you find yourself that whatever you took for granted or whatever you thought was security was taken away one day from you overnight now it's very difficult for anybody listening in or anybody living their lives in Mumbai and Delhi to comprehend what happens and almost no imagine if you close your eyes and you you see what happened last year when the India Pakistan war broke out missiles were landing in different places. Now, God forbid if something were to happen tonight, people don't have a plan B, what happens then? Because suddenly all your neighbors, everybody turns hostile on you and you got to leave and then you don't get to start from where you started from. You go from underground. So, it pretty much started from there as a garage. And then I was failed in English because I had written 11th exam in in Kashmir and few of us were failed in English and hence I couldn't really get an admission in Jammu. And then the government started a camp school. So it was pretty much on the outskirts of a of a uh you know the stadium in the heart of Jammu. There was a water tanker filling station around that they put the tents and that is in 47 48° is that's where I studied my 12th. Now you can well imagine what a person would study in that. We also constructed our house and five six families descended to live in the same house. It was a two-bedroom house. Now in that you can obviously imagine everybody has lost their livelihood. My grandparents from my mother's side they had shops and they were suddenly without any income. I was standing in cues at Gaban to get the registered as a migrant getting the dole money as that was reef it was known as even though my parents had a bit of a salary but we all got added then the ration would come in. So you had no normal teenage life right you were just busy trying to do these things and at that time is when the government of Maharashtra stepped in and gave one one seat to each Kashmir pandit in one of the disciplines and engineering colleges and I myself am a beneficiary of that and that is how eventually I've ended up doing a subsidized engineering my brother was already doing his engineering in my sore and there wasn't enough money to do for both of us now that is where the mountain comes to you because I had no ambition I didn't have it. I didn't have anything in me that one day I want to become X or Y. That day when I crossed the Banial tunnel, the mountain came in front of me and I had only one choice which is to climb the mountain. I didn't know how to climb the mountain. I couldn't even speak in English because I was in an English medium school, Tindel Bisco school. But spoken English was hard to come by because people never used to converse in English. You could write in English, very excellent, but you couldn't converse because you needed more than one people to just, you know, converse about it. So from those handicaps now when you look back at life then those are the odds that you are faced against and then you decide that okay fine now I have no choice I have to climb the mountain and clearly you don't have a skill set so you climb up you climb 2 ft you slide 3 ft down your knuckles are hurt your knees are bleeding your shins are bleeding but you don't have a choice you cannot give up so from that day onward you know later on many years later when I became a CEO for the first time in 2010 which was 12 years into my journey from starting in media I became a CEO. God has been kind. Somebody asked me, I said, "What drives you?" So I said, "There are only two motivations that people usually have. Either it's the lure of success or the fear of failure." For me, it was very clearly the fear of failure. I didn't want to go through the same days that I had gone through with no money in engineering college. I used to get 450 rupees a month from my family. 400 would go in the mess. The 50 rupees was left for drinking. You know, I used to have, you know, fruit custard. Alcohol was far away. There was no money. M >> that's what I used to have and the balance money I used to put three rupees used to be the ticket for a VCR let those video halls used to be there and my college was in between Pune and Nasik on the highway a place called Sangamir Amrutini College of Engineering Sangam now what happened there is all the truck drivers used to watch the movies at three rupees there sitting on the on the stones literally with a tin roof and a basic VCR and just a you know a a screen there and that that was the cheapest form of entertainment and that was the only thing that I could afford. And there are days because obviously every Sunday the mess used to shut down in the evening and I had no money. So me and my friends sometimes used to go and get the onions from the ground and literally eat them just to survive. And sometimes my friends were kind enough because I was also the cultural secretary and general secretary of the college. I was closer to the principal thanks to my academic you know performance. >> And my job was to take them back into the hostel after they were drunk. because I never used to drink and I never could afford. So they were kind enough sometimes they used to pay not every time actually they used to pay for my food otherwise I would have never seen a restaurant you know till I did my MBA. So sometimes these kindness helps this kind of motivates you and that is the climb that it started and this came from my school because in my school every year I used to go for high camps >> right >> and there's a very harder 6 days 7 days high really high altitude camps and at that time I never understood why are we doing these things I never understood that it builds character it builds the resilience the strength that I had no name I didn't know the word resilience at that point of time >> we all used to curse the teachers Why are we doing this? Why do we need to? We are skin-drenched in the rain and the sle and the snow and still we are walking right >> now. Those lessons are what came in handy to me on my corporate journey. So if you were to look at this book, it's less of a biography. It's more of a field guide on the art of mountain climbing applied to the art of corporate climbing. >> Right now I I'm coming to those points. Um, you know, I also want to uh get a sense of uh when you left your home as you mentioned, you know, on that cold night, January 20th, 1990, uh what part of you you think was permanently what what permanently changed on that day? >> I think many things changed permanently. The first of them being that security is something which is just a notion. You think you pulled your lifetime to make something secure, safe, now nothing will happen. Things happen. And that got shaken that day, that belief. Ever since that day, I don't think I've always had a plan A. I've always had a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, and a plan D. Because I don't know when the avalanche will come again. >> And you still have you still have the same, right? >> I still have that same approach. And I don't think it's going to change ever because it also shows you respect for the mountain because I didn't go climbing as a picnic. This was my only way to not go back. >> Mhm. >> And I climbed forward and I kept climbing every day. Bad bosses, good bosses, helpful bosses, nasty bosses, all kinds of things have happened around me. But the only thing that hasn't changed is my optimism that the only thing that I know bereft of everything. I don't have a fancy degree in some IIT IM or any foreign university. I just have the basic knowledge of how to climb a mountain and that's how I treated my career. When an avalanche is coming, I keep all my senses on the mountain. You can probably sense an avalanche and step away. Let the avalanche go away. So, I've been lucky that I have been living to tell my story till now. >> Right. You left the privileges uh back home and you went to Jammu. You stayed in a camp. Uh what how did you find the strength to continue as a young boy? >> Well I to be honest Roel you don't think of it as strength at that time you are completely surviving right. You are not thinking that one day I will write a biography and then I will use the word that I had inner strength. I didn't have I have cried. I have questioned myself every single day that whether you will even do it and I didn't even know what I was going to do. I had no ambitions to become a CEO one day. Absolutely nothing. I just wanted to survive and I wanted to do climb one step higher than the previous day because otherwise I felt that I would be slipping back into the same issues. So I wanted to be further away from the issue as much as possible. And lo and behold when you put one foot in front of the other and you keep climbing you never realize when the summit came. And that is the biggest thing that you learn in life that you know you never realize when a summit comes and you realize that a mountain is never alone. It's always a range of a mountain. And since then I mean I would like to be always as a mountain climber and not a summit dweller because I don't think the summits are made for dwelling. It's very harsh environment. It changes you as a person and I don't want to change as a person. I would always like to be a climber. Summit one come down summit another one come down summit another one. That's the entire philosophy and that's a journey of life that I would want to embark on. >> Right? You know, uh resilience is a recurring word in the book, a kind of a theme in the book. Uh it also the way you present is something which is a lived experience, right? >> Absolutely. >> Um tell me how do you define real resilience? >> See, resilience isn't the ability to withstand or to be against something. Resilience in my opinion a first of all I didn't know the word existed till the book was coming about and then you realize that what was happening there was there was too much extreme pressure and the extreme pressure was changing me as a human being and that adaptability or that survival as as Darwin's theory of survival that made me fit and that I think in retrospect when I look at it I can call it resilience But at that time it was just trying to survive and dodge and every time I dodged and survived I never made the same mistake again which meant that I was adapting I was changing and that changing under pressure is perhaps what I would call as resilience which means I wasn't brittle I didn't break I just changed and changed for the good and I think in my terminology that's what I would call resilience >> right tell me what What is the most difficult failure or rejection uh you have honestly confronted in this book? All of it. If you look at it and I now keep telling people I said if you look at my LinkedIn you will know my success story. If you read my book you will have my failure story in full glory everything. And it has been very difficult because imagine after you had a reasonably good run in your career having been 16 years a CEO in media and you know probably the youngest CEO and many other things that have been a first of of that nature. >> But it was all probably worth it to give it all up and do the book. And when you look back you have a choice. You can be stoic. You can say I always knew the plan and here is what it is. typically what people will do when they retire and they publish a M a memo or a biography. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do while I was in the saddle so that if these principles are anything to come by the principles that I have climbed my first mountain with I want to climb my second mountain in full public light with the same principles. If I fail, don't read the book. If I succeed, maybe there is something that you should read. And why am I confident that there will still be something to read? Because rohel mountains have been here thousands of year before us and will be there thousands of years after us. doesn't mean doesn't matter what generation you are in doesn't matter media came in media went m digital TV print all of these things happened the mountains didn't change their nature and these learnings which are very basic which are not a you know a a big four kind of a jargon these are life skills and if you apply that to your corporate life I think no matter what even 100 years later some of it probably all of it will still be relevant because the avalanches will still be coming. The bad weather will still be coming and people will still be unprepared as they go up the mountain. And this time I wanted that somebody else who follows in my footsteps with no privilege or with privilege and lost it and had nothing can reclaim their footing. And I wanted to draw the map backward for people that I was lucky I survived all the tsunamis and all the avalanches. Maybe somebody isn't. So when you are feeling down, when you think life is very harsh on you, read a chapter. It will tell you there are many degrees of harshness and nothing has really happened in your life that you need to really make so much song and dance about. Chin up, stand up, climb the mountain. The climb mountain is not going to be soft on you just because you're from a US or any international university or from an IIT IM. It remains unchanged. It remains resolute and firm as always. And people have to bend down to it. Which means any climber has to respect the mountain. You treat it lightly. You don't listen to the signs around you, the elements, the rustle of the wind which signals the next avalanche coming in, the rock shifting below your feet or the smell of rain in the air. You will be the next one off the mountain and you won't even realize. And most of the people in corporate careers tend to go through with blinders and with literally headphones on their head thinking that nothing will go wrong as if they are walking in a park. It doesn't happen like that, >> right? happens. It happens, >> right? You know, you've also seen phenomenal success in your career, but every uh success kind of demands a price at the same time. So my question is what did your professional rise cost you personally? Well to start with if I were to tell you nothing comes easy. If I crossed a cr in 7 years it came on the back of at that time there was no AI and I wanted to learn everything about the business that I was stepping into. It wasn't a choice. I had joined earlier a 100 rupee job and then a 3,150 rupee job then a 6,000 rupee job and then landed a two lakh rupee job in HTFram right I left it because I didn't have the money for my wedding and I bought secondhand furniture outside Indian oil nagar you know at a kabadi shop literally that's how I started my life and my folks my my friends in discovery were kind enough to give me 10,000 rupees so I could buy cane furniture and start my house so when you see those things then you are never keeping a core. The cardinal rule of mountain climbing ro is that you never look back and you never sit down and take selfies and you never even see the distance. You are not allowed that right? You have to respect the mountain and if you look back you will get vertigo. You'll fall down. So I've always looked forward. So whatever you are terming as successes probably has happened behind my back because I wasn't aiming for them. All that I was trying to do was to survive even in the corporate world because the mountain was hard and it kept changing you know sometimes digitization sometimes something else happened sometimes durish sometimes something you know we have seen 50,000 challenges coming every literally 3 months 6 months there are you know litigations happening day in day out the mushrooming of news channels now all of these are some things that are mini avalanches in their own fashion but if you are focused on I need medal success. I haven't been a poster boy. I don't think there is ever a you know a full page where you will see my poster that oh my poster is there on the thing. I mean Andraji had been kind enough one time to give me one small space in some thing and that was the only time that has ever happened and I have never looked at those things because those for me are not the criteria for success. The criteria for success is not even personal success. It is just that you keep doing something better than what you were doing yesterday. If that happens to create records, if that happens to create some success, then so be it. Now the price, the price is obviously my friends very earlier in my career, they used to go and have a good time, party, you know, leave at 6:00 and the usual parlance which probably still holds to my philosophy used to be different. I said company and he used to do their work. I used to do the distribution work. work. I used to do the sales work making decks late in the night going back changing diapers for my daughter in the night and take a flight in the morning present to clients come back done all of those things and I have never complained about it because I was grateful that I'm learning I learn technical how does the signal get up linked how does it get down linked the distribution the finance the legal the HR when you learn about all of these things decision making happens very quicker and that I think led to a faster rise because then you are not waiting every time for somebody to tell you, oh this is good, this is not good because you have a functional level expertise in almost all of the divisions that exist and that enables probably a faster climb, >> right? Uh Priyakumar of course uh is a central part of this book. Uh did she ever push you to confront or reveal something uh you would have preferred not to write about? Well to be honest the conversations always happened and uh she used to tell me are you sure you want to say all of these things and I on [laughter] the other hand would tell her you know there is nothing wrong in it I'm happier by telling people that I'm just like you I just happen to be lucky right so there is no this thing that oh I was actually on the other hand she used to tell me it's little harsh the book and we need to little make it soft and I said no I don't want to make it soft because if it is soft then that's not my life right A mountain is never soft, it is hard. So we had a good conversation, but she's she's brilliant with her choice of wood and her skill is her craft is what has brought it into the stage that it is. It's already with God's grace a bestseller. 19th ranked in Amazon in all books in India which I had never ever imagined. Number one in six categories including autobiographies, biographies and many other categories. Never expected and it's already in 10 days gone for a reprint which I'm told is a rarity. Doesn't happen usually. and I had no idea how to make it happen because I've never ever written a book or I've never ever thought about writing a book in that sense. >> Right. Let's talk about the media mountain. Um how does Avinach Cole the author understand that Avin Cole the young co did not and how did you deal with the media mountain? Any memories any anecdotes from there? >> The media mountain has been fabulous because it's an everchanging mountain, right? It's a very tricky mountain. It's not like a banking industry that you enter and regulation changes only once in X years and things happen and things happen. Now I remember when I entered media there were 32 million households in India and it was a diary people meet a system and today we are sitting with 210 million households and by all measures an advanced measurement system. It has its own short shortcomings as do any system will have but look at the evolution. Look at the changes. At one time it used to be the sunrise sector of India. Everybody would clamor 1998 KBARY 2000 you know all of those kinds of things have happened the mushrooming of news channels. Now this has been a mountain worthy of you know keeping any climber on their toes and keeping on shifting keeping on moving with so many amount of climbers on the same mountain it is really tough to make your spot. Imagine 200 news channels and all of them at least with thousand odd people all trying to climb one mountain and there are only it it narrows down at the top. So you got to be at your razor sharp to stay ahead of the pack and that keeps you sleepless nights that makes you paranoid and that paranoia eventually leads to success as seen in the eyes of the world. So I mean 16 years as CEO long it's a pretty long stint but what would you attribute it to the success staying on course all these 16 years >> choice you stay there you climb the mountain and you keep climbing and you keep climbing and you keep climbing right and the mountain is morphing so you have no time actually to think about where you are going in life that's the beauty about a news business it keeps you so busy that you cannot think about am I getting paid less am I getting paid more am I doing this am I doing that is there any other thing you can't think of anything the moment you are distracted by thinking of anything else probably will signal your end in all likelihood so in my career I have tried never ever to take my eye off the ball and perhaps that has led to me staying a little longer or me surviving a little longer I think that's the only thing that I would I would credit it for. >> Um having led to large news business uh businesses, what must Indian media leaders unlearn according to you to stay relevant? >> The unlearning is you know there is those you know things that keep passing you know first content is God then distribution is God and then back back again something. Now look at today. Today billions of dollars spent in a newsroom cannot buy you credibility. But one independent news creator can actually command more credibility than the billions of dollars. What does it mean? Distribution muscle is pass is gone. content and the credibility because you're talking content can include entertainment content but credibility in the sense of news is that the truth what you stand for and that is something which is shining across and this is something that traditional media businesses then tend to gloss over because there is so much amount of investment that you will not see it otherwise because you already built an infrastructure. Reality is people don't need 24-hour news channels perhaps and they don't need 200 of them. Right now when do you what do you get when you put a hyperco competitive environment like this and then you have measurement system which can't keep pace mistakes are made. Mistakes happen then and then the entire fraternity tends to get the blame for that. While not looking at all the brilliant stuff that has been done by the industry in making sure where it reaches. The nation's growth is not just a a nation's growth. News channels have a large role to play in that in educating, informing, in doing a whole lot of things that have happened. But yet there is a whole lot of things that will also attract negative attention. Right now what I the only thing that I can tell everybody is like the last four months for me is been an immersion in AI. Right? My entire life has run away by AI. If I was still continuing to run the business, I don't think I would have been able to do what I've been able to do. I mean, I took up a new mountain which is the book publishing division, I had no idea. I have never written content. I have never done creatives myself. And here I am now a single loan person trying to do everything from doing podcast to making creatives to writing content to you know doing finance, starting companies to everything and all thanks to AI. If claude wasn't there, I don't think I would be sitting here. Now that is an enablement which is available for everybody at a price of course. But yet many of the people who are sitting in the jobs do not understand the impact of all of these kinds of things. And now if I was to look at things differently, I'm probably a much more nimler. I have shed a whole lot of baggage in the last four months physically as well as proverbally because you tend to look at life that I'm now climbing a new mountain and the cardinal rule of mountain climbing is you first empty your hammersack you cannot take the same hersack that you had on your previous mountain in the next mountain you collect a whole lot of expectations of the world around you collect the expectations of all your people colleagues in the industry har a call what is his next step I don't know I may fail But I'm just a human being. I'm a climber and I want to climb my next mountain. I don't know whether I'll succeed or not. So there is too much of you know sometimes scrutiny sometimes of everything I know what will happen, what is there. I just wanted to unbburden myself. I unburden myself at all levels and I want to climb because you cannot climb the mountain with a heavy habac. Your center of gravity gets displaced and you will fall down the mountain. So my own expectations I have lowered. I'm expecting okay fine I had my best behind me I don't know what will happen later but doesn't matter I want to keep climbing the mountain may be smaller but it may be more treacherous but I want to climb and by God's grace the the book became a bestseller and I had no clue about books right and you know it is gratifying sometimes I mean I have uh you know people from Harper Collins also here I mean sometimes I had no clue about how to do book marketing and maybe I have not done such a bad job as they keep telling me that you've done decent job which is where the book landed up where it is >> right >> so it's all about learning it's all about unlearning and learning both and I have enjoyed both the journeys because I think if you stay on the summit for far too long you become complicent and if you don't move on the mountain too much the cold will get you the frostbite will happen you will lose your limbs and I left before my limbs were cut off because of the frostbite >> um [clears throat] Sorry. Uh for someone who's watching this podcast and facing maybe a failure, displacement or uncertaintity, uh what is that one lesson from your book you would like to tell them about? >> It's in the title. The next mountain, it doesn't matter where you are. Your mountain is still ahead of you. If you are assuming in that Mariana trench, you still have a long way to climb up. If you are halfway up the mountain, you still have a mountain to climb up. For people like me who've been to the summit, there is always a next mountain to climb up to. But the only thing that you need to do is to move because if you don't move nothing will happen and movement alone is not progress because that's just movement. Movement in a positive direction in a vertical direction is progress. So my word to anybody is that for heaven's sake please move. If you are stuck at the job for the last five years and you are blaming everybody around you including your bosses or your colleagues or everybody and sometimes drinking to it in happiness or in sadness, you are to blame because nobody asks you to be there and you are standing still. Standing still is death on the mountain because the avalanche will find you then. Please move for heaven's sake. Which doesn't mean that you change jobs every 2 days or every two years. You change if you are not on the right mountain and change fast. Make all the mistakes very early in your life and the mistake that you make never repeat it again and then just focus on the mountain and keep climbing. Don't expect the results. Results will come. Don't chase money. Money will come. Chase learning because that's the only way you will survive on this mountain and you will live to tell your story. That's the only advice I will tell. So what about doing a rapid fire? All set. Okay. >> Of course. >> Uh the hardest mountain you have climbed. >> The hardest mountain I have climbed is the one which I'm climbing right now. I think the previous one I was younger. I could climb faster. I'm 53 now. It's not easy. >> A failure you are now grateful for. >> Oh, many of them. Many of them. Right from even my 10th standard earlier when I failed in math. If I didn't fail in math, I wouldn't then be doing engineering and I wouldn't top the college. So, every failure has taught me something. So, life is replete of failure. I can't even measure one. There are hundreds of them. >> The most important quality in a leader, >> the most important quality in a leader I think is introspection for themselves. Because when you get into an echo chamber and you start thinking there are yesmen around, you begin to think that you're infallible. You begin to think that you are God. You're not God. You're just a climber who happened to be lucky. Humility is an understated, you know, value in all leaders. Please be humble because the next avalanche can get anybody. One habit that keeps you grounded. >> Introspection. I'm very brutal with it. I just did a you know somewhere I mentioned in in some shoot that way back in my career I used to introspect every week and I used to literally slap myself because I used to replay my entire week and what could I learn or what could I do better than what I did. I was the most brutal self appraiser in my life and I have continued that appraisals all through my life. >> One mistake young leaders should avoid seek because not everybody below you is an idiot. Not everybody above you is an idiot. But as long as you have the humility to keep learning because you will never learn enough. The leaders tend to believe very early in life now I arrived in life now I have three people reporting into me. Now I will play God. Never play God. There is always a God above. You are just lucky that you have the three people and they are the one packing your parachute for the next day. If leaders forget their roots, they will be thrown down to find their roots sooner or later. >> One change Indian news media urgently needs >> perhaps just the pressure to do things which nobody's asking them to do. It is just the negative bias or the negative algorithmic things that is happening which is that bad news travels fast and bad news is what scores always. So there is obviously the rush which is obviously given the measurement system and that's how it is. It's created a mad rush within that mad rush find some you know islands of good things and try to build those out. branch out, embrace the new media. There are now individual podcasters who are branching out. We've seen, you know, the likes of Pulki, likes of many other people who are stepping out to do their own things. It's a sign of times to come in many ways because that kind of unshackles from the pressure of running a 24-hour business. Now, imagine if all the news channels were deciding that now we'll only do 3 hours every day in the prime time, right? or four hours and we will not keep our shop open all through the day. The costs will be significantly saved because you are not endlessly churning, you know, content and content. Your repetitions will go lower, your shrillness will go lower and better quality of content will shape up. Who asked us to do 24-hour news all the time? That was good for 20 years earlier. Maybe now is a time to reflect differently. And finally your next mountain. >> My next mountain is the next mountain and beyond that where it takes me very honestly right now I'm in the path where I want to give back or I want to make sure that I will provide a map to anybody who didn't have a map. For many of the people who don't come from great privileges I would be very happy to do that. Whether that takes me in the role of mentorship, whether that takes me in the zone of coaching or keynote speaking or advisories or any such things, I'm more than open to anything. I haven't really closed my door. For all you know, you might find me back in a corporate job soon. But the only difference Roel this time is that if you look at my book, it's got three words. It's got resilience, which was 1990 January till 2010 January when I became a CEO for the first time. 20 years. 16 years is the second word leadership when I was a CEO and now I'm living the time of purpose that's the third word in it so for me purpose will always be paramount even if I take up a corporate job bag again I won't lose sight of the purpose which is to spend my time trying to spread that word and one of the key things you asked me a question just now before that you know one thing to the leaders the other thing I will tell leaders and this is one thing that I have learned the hard way after leaving what I could have improved or what I could have done better. Right? I always thought a leader is supposed to be very strong and hard and firm and not show emotion. In hindsight, after being 4 months out of my current role, whatever my last role was, I think that it is very important for leaders to show vulnerability that they are human and I embraced it headlong. I took out everything that I was not so you know proud of in my life and I put it right there for everybody to do that so that they see that I'm a human. I also have the same blood I bleed. I also have the same sentiment that they have. It's just that what I decided to do with those sentiments was little different with what they do. So my word to all the top leaders is it's okay to show vulnerability. I don't think it costs us so much. And I was really afraid to show that I was vulnerable in my job. And if I had to do it all over again, I think that is one area where I would like to improve. >> And it takes a lot of courage to do that. And uh >> that's the best part about it. Now that everybody knows about it, it's a whole burden off my back. If I can't speak in fluent English, people will understand that this guy couldn't even talk in English till his MBA. People used to make fun of him. I mean, I remember going in my hostel and there was a pink paper there and I asked them, "Why is this paper pink?" Because I had never seen one. And there was Kiki Daddy's article and I said who is Kiki Dadi set? And there was one more where there was a you know green shoe option written and I said why not red shoe why not orange shoe and my roommates they were commerce grads they joked they were like making fun of me ripping me apart and my all my MBA so the ability to take a joke on yourself and then to learn and then lo and behold I launched NTV profit I ran now and I was part of CNBC for such a long time including Forbes that's a full circle right I had never imagined so I'm grateful beyond measure that this industry could actually take me in who gave a chance to a 17year-old boy who came from a refugee tent and made a CEO. So I'm forever grateful to this industry, the media industry only here is where I have seen such miracles happen and forever in my I'll be in gratitude to the entire industry. All the people in the industry right from the junior most watchmen to the senior most CEOs or the founders owners such brilliant people such visionaries that they took a person like me in who couldn't even talk in straight English and ended up becoming the youngest CEO in media and also the longest lasting. I don't think miracles like this happen in every industry and I'm grateful that I'm lucky to be in this industry along with all of you. >> Wonderful. It's been a pleasure talking to you and pleasure is all mine and thanks thanks for uh taking time and discussing this with us. >> Thank you.