Dots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thought this deserved to be preserved, that's why I'm dumping it here. Because it was beautiful. A fews days back, I had a dream. It was raining heavily and there were thunders. It was a dark night and I, saw a rainbow! It was beautiful and glowing. It wasn't like a typical circular rainbow, I could just see some part of the curve and I was too scared to go out and follow the trail to see where it goes.But, I went out, followed it. I don't know where it was leading, as I went out, I saw many many rainbows similar to it, glittering in the dark, rainy and scary night.  I remember that feeling being out there. I was scared, exited and curious to go out there and see where it leads. I don't know where it would have led me, the dream ended before that. I don't even know what it meant. But it definitely meant something. Something beautiful!

There's a saying, ' you are an average of 5 people around you '. I believe it's true. But everything has to evolve with time, and that applies to this saying as well. People in India spend around 6-7 hours in front of the screen and if you are from this generation, most of it would be social media. You probably spend more time on those apps than with your best friends.  This changes the perspective entirely for that statement. Because now you have to consider the social media factor while considering the average.  When you are going through a phase in life (which is almost always) and you come across an Instagram post which is soo relatable and so called, ' motivational ' (which is also, almost always). You get motivated. You feel that you got a solution. It ' feels good '. You change your thoughts, your beliefs infact your values (temporarily).  The next day, you see another post, this time it says something different (maybe the first post told you, ...

By Anomaly, here I mean someone who's trying to do different, follow a different path. And that's sometimes scary. It sometimes hits you. You see people around you getting placed, getting settled and you are still hustling around your dream.  Being in final year of engineering, where I believe most of the dreams die and people now start to settle for whatever placements they get (of course, here I am talking about mediocre people, exceptional is rare at our college, and Anomaly is rarest). Me being one of the very few people doing a startup. I mean sounds cool right? A startup! CEO! Founder! Funding! Valuation! It's all bullshit.  Sometimes you are mentally exhausted managing college stuff (most of it is useless) and trying to survive with a very early stage Startup.  If you are preparing for Competitive exams or even placements, there are a huge people around you who relate to you. For me, hardly anyone because of course, I am an anomaly. Sometimes I feel it's too risk...

People ask me this question a lot of times after knowing my CET Score, why did I choose mechanical. I could have easily secured admission in EnTC Engineering or even Computer in the spot rounds. So here's why I chose mechanical over other branches and why now I feel it's a huge mistake I made.  I am very much interested to learn a lot of things. I have a lot of interest in supercars, superbikes, planes, spaceships and many other things. Also, in AI, Metaverse and Robotics. I wanted to become an aerospace engineer because I love rockets and spaceships. So, it was a dilemma for me choosing a right branch for engineering. After some thinking, I decided mechanical because I thought I could learn computer science online through courses. But mechanical can't be learnt that way, it's a hands-on activity. Online courses won't help there.  So, I got admitted to COEP Mechanical, because of course, it's so called the best college you can get in the state through CET. I was...

Zero maybe an End of something or a new Beginning.  Let's begin with me in brief, I was born in a middle class family, I have no sibling and Grandpa was an intelligent man. Everyone in my family thinks that I will achieve what my grandpa wasn't able to achieve, Success. I was a studious kid from childhood, was a topper in my class, had big dreams, which ofcourse, I still have, and I have always been an obedient, sincere kid. Got good grades in 10th board exams, not enough though to get admission in the so called best Junior College in my town. My parents had to pay a donation to get me admitted. Just because I got 0.2% less grades than the cutoff. I actually regretted that moment.  But that was not what I wanted, I actually wanted to study in Pune to prepare for JEE. But that didn't happen, that's a different story. Still, with a regret, I got admitted in that college. Decided to study hard, which I actually did. I got more score in 11th than in 10th and a even higher ...

I am damn interested in knowing how differently people are raised. Some come from a privileged background, some just travelled places with their parents' transfers, some people are like me, who were raised in tier 2, tier 3 cities or towns, whatever, and the are exposed to an entirely different world of tier 1 cities. I feel grateful to the way I was raised. I have seen all extreme aspects of India. From poverty to luxury, from vilages to metro cities and the people at these different places. I believe my environment was very crucial part in shaping me. Maybe if I was still at village or town, I wouldn't have started a startup. I would have been just doing engineering and looking for a stable job with good salary. Being able to see underdeveloped and developed India, helped me understand how startup can solve different problems at different levels. That's why I am building Leafora.  I was lucky that my parents didn't force me in being a thiest and following the religio...

Why do they exist and how are they being used by the people (specially Indians)?   I have been thinking about this and realised that I was also somehow falling for this trap of social media. Sharing stories on Instagram just to impress a girl I liked. I kept checking if she had seen my story. And that's not healthy . Digging deep I found that people share stories to brag, flex about how they are enjoying life and you are missing out if you are not with them. Of course majority of that stories aren't intended to hurt someone. But once we peel off layer of human behaviour, we can slightly see where this all is going.  Maybe I feel it's somewhat good that I don't use Snapchat and I don't really share stories anymore or post something on Instagram. I just use it for the purpose of news, and some content that some amazing pages posts. And that's a relief knowing that you aren't unintentionally hurting someone mentally, by flexing about your fancy food, outings, ...

Why did I start this blog? Who will read it? Who will like it?  I don't know. In this world of social media, where people are showing off their lavish or pseudo lavish lifestyle, I just wanted to be away from that shit. Here, hopefully, only intellectual people would visit. Here, I shall dump all my thoughts, my life incidents, my goals, my values, my life lessons, my mistakes, my present, past and future. I don't know who will benefit from this. But I'm just doing it.  Thank you for reading this.