Dhruv Sharma: Alright, listeners. It's Monday. We're also starting our final 100-day sprint in 2026. Yes. There's just 101 days left for this year to get over today.

Utsav Somani: I know that. Thanks for bringing that number up.

Dhruv Sharma: Are you logged in and stuff?

Utsav Somani: Not yet, man. But now I should be after that hundred-day reminder.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. Alright. As our guest, and we're gonna bring him up on the screen just now, Anirudh from Agentic Universe. Welcome to The Offline Network.

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): Hey, Dhruv. Thanks.

Dhruv Sharma: Wait. What are you building, Anirudh?

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): So, Dhruv, we are a full-stack AI platform that, answers and enables BFSI enterprises to solve one key area, which is how do they become an AI-native organization themselves. We fundamentally look at this problem in three different layers to start off with the infrastructure, then the model, and then the application. At an infrastructure layer, we, you know, question the fact, you know, is your data compliant? And all these model providers and hyperscalers who are providing you the service, are there incentives aligned in the right way to utilize and keep your model your data in a secure enough manner? When it comes to the model layer, there are plenty of choices. There is a paradox of choice today. There are 25-odd voice models. Every other company today is becoming a model company in one way. How do we simplify this? How do we control cost? And how do we drive outcome is something that we ask ourselves. The third layer, which is the application layer, while there is definitely a large opportunity for many boutique players to come up, I believe that providing a high degree of control while being able to giving them the flexibility to scale is something that is very domain specific for BFSI, and that's what we do.

Utsav Somani: And, I mean, so the application layer that you're focusing on, the BFSI layer, why why did you choose that? Because I remember checking your website out before the show. You had a bunch of logos, and, I mean, TestBook was also one of them. So the from various various different industries as well. So why zero in on just BFSI?

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): So also, out of BFSI, we are we've actually picked up insurance to start off from. To give you an idea, you know, ₹1.6 lakh crore, you know, was spent in insurance as a market over the last one year. Out of which ₹60,000 crore has gone into enabling commissions. This is also one of the biggest areas where a mis-selling happens. Insurance penetration has actually gone down over the last two years where it's dropped from 4% to 3.7%. And for some reason, insurance companies are always in a mode of transformation. That is why we saw insurance to be actually a a greenfield for us to get into and to start, and we found, you know, quite a lot of traction. At the same time, you know, you would already know the kind of revenue pools that exist within these, you know, verticals or sectors that companies like ourselves can, you know, get into.

Dhruv Sharma: Talk to us about what AI agents are doing at, you know, at different legs of the journey from onboarding to claim processing.

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): Very interesting. So, you know, for the largest, private life insurance company in India today, we actually, manage a process called as, PIVC, which is a pre-insurance verification call. This is actually a process where every time a new policy is sold, you need to actually verify if the if the policy has been missold and at the same time if there is any fraudulent activity or not, which is actually a video verification call. We have an AI avatar here that actually comes alive on the screen that, you know, asks a series of questions and verifies whether, you know, the person is in is in the hospital bed and attempting to buy a life insurance policy. I think that's one of the most interesting cases that we've been able to get. At the same time, renewals collection is, you know, a vanilla case, you know, that we started off with where we found that early traction. Post, you know, claims is actually broken down into, you know, many layers. To start off with, there is FNOL, which is first notice of loss. Second, there is a big time, you know, problem in terms of collecting the right documents to be able to have the right OCR to transform it into our digitally readable version and then to process it. That's another layer that we get into. But, you know, most probably we've got traction within these three layers. The last one and the most interesting one is today in India, there are about 56 lakh insurance agents. To be able to enable them, empower them, and hire a lot more is a task, you know, that's been given to companies like us. And it's been a beautiful opportunity and a journey with many of the large life insurance companies today that we've, you know, embarked upon.

Utsav Somani: And your website mentions a zero hallucination claim. What does it mean from an engineering perspective?

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): Zero hallucination is, you know, fundamentally, one, how do you control the model to, one, not perform the wrong actions at a customer level? See, all of the journeys that we do are, you know, customer facing in nature. So there's a great degree of risk that these companies actually have to underwrite when they deploy a solution like ours. Now when we look at hallucination or zero risk, we actually look at it from a data workflow and a model, layer aspect and controlling all three to be able to ensure that the model does not operate in the wrong way or the AI doesn't suggest something that's not real. So one is ensuring that your data is as accurate as it could be. The workflow has all the guardrails possible that are domain specific in nature. And finally, the model, having the right right set of checks so that the model doesn't respond on the wrong way. This is what it means engineering wise.

Dhruv Sharma: Can you walk us through, when you sign up for an engagement, How do you, how do you initially, identify the scope? How do you grow the scope? Because from what you're telling us, the scope seems very, very wide. But my guess is you get there slowly, steadily, sort of one step at a time. Talk to us about that, the sales journey as well.

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): So I think, you know, when we start off with anything that is customer facing and not an internal workflow, we actually, you know, first go after a business stakeholder because, it's usually a business user who's buying an agentic solution today, then passing it on to a CIO. The business user actually picks up a very small scope where he's trying to automate, you know, one cohort in a five-cohort journey for renewal. Like, for example, in a renewal or a life insurance persistency journey, you've got pre-due, soft lapse, deep lapse, and an engagement phase before that. Renewal leader actually thinks about, hey. What's the first cost advantage that I could easily get where the frequency is high enough, and it makes sense for me to put in the effort. Because usually the preview phase where it's just a simple reminder call where you've got to guide the customer to be able to complete the payment. They usually start off from a high frequency, low value workflow where they can underwrite the risk. Once they build trust, you know, with these agents and with the platform, they slowly move up the ladder, and they end up automating the entire workflow. Once a workflow is automated and, you know, they trust the agent, that's where, you know, we've got the customer entangled completely, and they end up utilizing the very same context across our workflow marketplace that's been templatized for these verticals that allows them to deploy multiple agents at one go.

Utsav Somani: And how do you think about human in the loop when you're thinking about these workflows and designing these workflows for your customers?

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): I believe, you know, human in the loop is a flawed concept, and, you know, enterprises have been against human in the loop for a very long time, but it's not coming out in the best possible manner. I believe human-on-the-loop is the best part possible way to go about it because humans, in the loop in the workflows that I am talking about is enabling or transferred when the agent is not able to do the job. Then what was the purpose of me putting in so much effort as an enterprise trying to set you up, trying to scale you? Right? It defeats the entire purpose, which is where they actually want to use human in the supervisory layer rather than using them to complete the task or achieve the outcome in itself.

Dhruv Sharma: But I'm gonna stay with this. What if it what if the ask comes from the customer? What if the customer says, here, I wanna talk to the agent. I wanna talk to, you know, person behind the scenes. Does the agent do a handover?

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): I believe that in there are you definitely need to be sensitive to the situation that the end customer is in. And the verticals that we exist in, they don't take any risk, in terms of, you know, customer trust or brand overall. So they never really put us in a situation or the workflow in a situation where a transfer is even possible. Like, for example, if there is a grave claims case, an AI agent is just not possible, to be deployed there. And I think it's gonna take a lot of time for companies to reach that place. So I believe that the workflows that are getting automated today don't require a human in the loop. And, you know, and if it and if they really seem like human in the loop is something that they want to do, you've got you know, we've got those features today where, you know, you can do a conference call, have a agent human and the customer on one side, all three of them speaking to one another. So these are feature functionalities that are definitely there on the platform today.

Utsav Somani: And assume that I'm the fifth largest insurance provider health insurance provider in the country, how long does the process to sell me on your offering last, and what are the steps required?

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): I believe that, you know, to start off with, it's taken us almost eight months to get our first, insurance company. It was Chola MS. They're one of India's largest motor insurance player today. But post getting the first one, the next, you know, five were very easy to get. POCs today are getting signed, you know, in under two months. As a matter of fact, pricing, procurement, infosec—everything is being brought into one single session for us. And, I believe it's only because, you know, AI has definitely moved from hype to a reality, and all these executives are really thinking about what can I do best and how do I experiment as much as I possibly can? So these POCs that we get are actually, you know, very light in weight. And once the POC is done, they, you know, take us through the entire procurement and infosec part, which, you know, which will make us an embedded vendor. So that's usually the process. It takes us about eight to nine months to become, like, you know, a proper vendor that they are going to scale, but POCs begin within two to three months now.

Dhruv Sharma: You said something very interesting initially about balancing costs and outcomes, Anirudh. So what are the learnings been? How much are banks willing to spend, and what outcomes are they seeking in return?

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): I think the the first outcome to start with is, you know, everybody is looking at cost reduction to be, you know, the primary area, you know, on the Internet. But I believe that, banks are actually looking at services that they did not automate or they did not even do before. How do they do it with AI today? Because the cost and the scale just comes together and makes sense. There are a lot of processes. I'll give you an example. Right? An insurance company today would have, you know, six lakh agents who have registered on their portal to to sell an insurance policy. But out of the six lakh agents, only 20,000 or 40,000 people would be actively selling the policy, which basically means you have 4.4 lakh to five lakh people that you could reach out to reactivate, enable, scale. This was not possible before with human beings. But today, they demand that from an agent to KI solution. So outcomes like that, which were not possible before is being caught up. And I believe at a cost layer. Right? I don't I don't think people have really wrapped their heads around what, tokens or what minutes, you know, as a concept really is, which is why it becomes difficult to connect the dots. At the same time, when you work with larger BFSI players, they don't want to share an upside with you. Because, you know, when when I when we are dealing with insurance companies, they are like, hey. I know this process is gonna make me a ₹100 crore. Out of which, why do I give you 5% of that, right, if I get the solution right? Which is why we actually change the model into saying, I I don't need a share of the success, but I take a transaction of the success, which has actually been one of the most successful models for us. It's abstracted the total layer completely where I am saying, hey. When a renewal happens, don't pay me 5%. They pay me ₹100. Right? And these pre renewal calls, well, we've got to do our math in every single case, which has been tedious. But it's definitely been an advantage in getting these larger logos given that, you know, we are a emerging startup or emerging brand today.

Dhruv Sharma: Are these AI agents coming to expect the same commissions as insurance agents? The tricky term to use in the insurance business. No. I'm kidding.

Utsav Somani: Anirudh, that's the final closing one. You've publicly been quoted saying that, your aim is to be a one person company at some point.

Anirudh Arun (Agentic Universe): Oh, yeah. Definitely. I believe that, you know, this is actually a model, that, you know, is contrary into something TCS or TechM is, providing today. Today, you know, if you sign up with one of these consulting players, while outcome model is being spoken about heavily in the markets today, when you really look at it, they still charge you per project per person per hour. Right? But contrary to the belief that you have been tasked to make them as efficient as possible. So if we, as a company, are not as efficient as we could be, I don't think we can help any other company out there to be able to achieve the same. So that's why I believe that, you know, that belief as a company that, you know, we are gonna stay as efficient as possible, utilize AI in every single process, in every single role. I think if we don't own that, I don't think we'll be able to deliver that for our customers as well.

Utsav Somani: Alright. Wishing you the best on this journey. Thank you so much for coming on TON. Thanks, Thanks.

Dhruv Sharma: All the best.

Utsav Somani: Alright, listeners. We're moving on to our next guest. We've got Captain Raghu. Captain Raghu, thank you for joining us on TON.

Raghu Raman: Hey. What's up? How are you?

Utsav Somani: All good. We're here with my cohost, Dhruv. He's also an army kid, by the way.

Raghu Raman: Oh, yeah. So you got a lot of fauji brats.

Utsav Somani: So much to cover with you, but I think let's start with something that we did recently for offline members in a room full of startup executives. You did a session workshop for us, leadership at 26,000 feet. What were the two major highlights that you wanted our members and the founders and the executives in the room to take away?

Raghu Raman: From that session?

Utsav Somani: Yeah.

Raghu Raman: One, of course, because it was a session on, storytelling to talk about how storytelling is the glue that, enables any leader to actually motivate people to give their best or or rise to their best potential and and work together. That that is the only glue. And the other that, because storytelling is such an essential part of a leader's repertoire and because it can be learned, it is also an asset that a person should add to their, competencies, and learn because it's a bit like saying that I'm going to be in charge of, I don't know, Asia as an FMCG head. Why won't I learn Mandarin? Why won't I learn the languages of the countries where I will be operating in? So if, and and and especially in a day and age where a lot of our communication is gonna happen like this exactly like this online. And, and I was listening to your guest before this, when we are talking about, making efficient efficient organizations. And, they have a difference of opinion because efficient doesn't necessarily mean lesser people. Because that way, you could take a football team of 11 people and say, let's make it efficient and just do sudden death one on one. Right? So I think, to to offer that, counterargument to be able to communicate to actually, with the one area where, perhaps AI will not be able to replace human beings, which is the area of communication and storytelling. Yeah. That's what I wanted to sort of communicate.

Dhruv Sharma: Fantastic. So we're gonna talk about leadership, of course, a lot during our, our time with you, but I wanna start by asking you about your journey across the Urals. I believe you went, Trans-Siberian or almost you called the breadth of Russia. Tell us all about that journey.

Raghu Raman: Well, this was, the month of July. I traveled of course, when I say I went to the group of, 13 other riders and a few people who are in the support vehicle, more for logistical reasons because normally you try to do this kind of a ride yourself. Of course, later on, I realized that it is perhaps best done with a smaller group, just two or three people, and you can do a it's a it's a safe safe, quote, quote, quote, safe country, underlined safe country, country to the perception that people had or at least have even now with the war and all of that going on. So, yeah, we started it. It's always been on the bucket list because this is considered the the road to do. Not not just because it's the longest road and all, but it's a historical road. I mean, this road has seen Russia gravitating. This is the road through which Lenin came. This is the road through which Stalin came, and Siberia, of course, is legendary in terms of, you know, sort of its role in history and stuff like that. So, yeah, so it was a motorcycle ride, spread over thirty days. Some days, we were doing about 700, 800 kilometers every day, every single day. And, amazing experience. You should do it. If not by bike, at least by car, you should do it. It had many side benefits. You know? One of them was, like, startling. I didn't, I only realized it after I came back, spoke to a couple of doctor friends and stuff. So yeah, before I went, I've been having the elbow pain and a couple of pains here there, which normally, you know, we all get thanks to our modern posture. And what happened was that for 26 or 28 of those thirty days, I was riding 24 by seven inside a jungle. Right? Because even when you are camped for the night, camped as in you're staying in a hotel for the night, it's in the middle of a jungle. So there is this whole theory called forest bathing, you know, with, I don't know if you've followed the Japanese idea of it. And, of course, that's the theory of the whole avatar concept that we are all interconnected with the forest and all that. And if you have any form of injury or any form of cancer also, they say that if you just go and inhabit a forest, not not a modern planted tree kind of a thing, but a genuine forest, then the forest sort of exudes those hormones or enzymes or whatever to cure you. But I don't know what it was. But the fact was for 26–29 days, I was inside the jungle, and it actually all those pain g and then all went away. Yeah. So

Utsav Somani: I remember you telling me the story when, we were at the offline event. And, you mentioned something very connected to the workshop also that you did that now that you've been through that road trip in Russia, you have this lived experience, which will Yeah. Be in storytelling. Like, I mean, somebody can, of course, read as much material as they want about that particular road or about that particular thing. But unless they've lived it, their story will never be as impactful as yours. And then you connected with an Uday Uday Kotak example on a flight as well. You wanna share that perhaps?

Raghu Raman: You know, it it it's the it's I'll I'll give you an example. I was actually with a very big IT company just two days ago here in Bangalore. And, like many other organizations, they're dealing with the challenge of multigenerational, workforce. So on one side, you have the old timers who've been around for twenty, thirty years now, in their mid fifties, late fifties, some of them more than 60 also, you know, advisers and hanging on to the organization, or maybe the organization keeping them for services past retirement. And you have, the younger generation also who are jumping on the bit to do their own stuff, and, there is the typical generational divide. And, this trip, I could narrate a story which happened, and it's a fascinating story, you know, because, so there are about 10 of our seasoned riders. And, obviously, to do a trip of this sort, you have to have, you know, put a few few thousand kilometers under your belt. It is after all continuous riding through, unforgiving terrain, and, it's Siberia. So plus, all said and done, it is a war zone. So while it was absolutely safe, we had fuel shortages, fuel rationing, so you might suddenly end up with, you know, whatever. Later on, of course, we realized that was in our head more than ground reality. But when you are doing this literally on a daily basis and, one of those days, what happened was that, I was riding from Lake Baikal, amazing place. Literally, you can drink the water. People drink that. It's it's as clean as that. Riding towards a city called Irkutskkk, and this is about 400 kilometers, and you gotta visualize this. If you ever done that road, then it's like that one stretch of barren, you know, but except it's very 400 kilometers. It's not, like, seventy, eighty, which is what lay that that, highway is. But this is, like, huge. And you are at it, and, this, coursemate's daughter my coursemate's daughter who is about 28, 27, 28. She's with and, we have. And, we had a check post in front of us. And because of the check post and because we were riding at a fairly, you know, high speed, and when I jammed the brakes, the bike stopped, of course. And this is a BMW GS, and it's important why this bike. We stopped, and, after that, the checkpost were for some military movement, whatever it had happened. The convoy moved, and then everyone started their vehicles, and they started, and everyone's vehicle started, and my bike doesn't start. And, like, I'm wondering, it's a keyless bike. So you can't really do anything other than look at the battery and heat it. And, like, you know, I'm frantic now because it's getting dark, and we are desolate, and all the traffic has moved. And now it's just me and, this young girl for whom I'm also responsible. I'm looking either of the cracker now, and light is flashing you. And suddenly I hear this young lady with me. How did you ask Chad Gebetty? And I'm like, you know, pulling my hair, I think, but you're in the middle of Lake Baikal, but back of beyond rented bike. And this person who has never sat in a bike in her life before is giving me gyaan. Eventually, I know that option because I've tried everything batteries at least a good time. I didn't have ChatGPT; I had Claude. I asked Claude. Claude gave me some cock and bull answer. Insert the key into the keyhole, turn it like this. Then I type in this particular keyless bike. Yeah. Then I say, oh, in that case, it's pretty simple. Hold the front brake, the start button for ten seconds. I'm, like, almost embarrassed to do it, but then I say, okay. What I'm gonna do is I press it, press the switch: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Yeah. Boom. The bike starts. Now two morals of this story. The first moral of the story is that I now don't diss anything. I mean, not now, but this story reinforces the fact that one should not diss any sort of an advice which comes from anyone regardless of how we think of that person's knowledge or domain in any subject. And this is constantly reinforced when you travel. Because when you travel, you have to have the humility to ask people. How do I get to some place? And that could be anybody. It could be a kid. It could be an uneducated person. It could be anyone, you know, anyone who comes to your help and to the second is you also recognize how little you know. Because when I reached Irkutskk, I asked all the remaining riders, and that was the reason why I told you everyone was a seasoned rider because they everyone of us familiar with this motorcycle. And I asked every one of them, was any one of them? Did any one of them know about this hack? None of them knew. So this whole belief that we have that we have tribal knowledge, of course, we do. There is no doubt about it. As muscle memory, there is no way that this young lady would have been better in terms of riding the bike. No way. But in terms of innovation, in terms of thinking of solutions, in terms of having the space in our head to think openly, whereas I may have been panicking that shit, I'm not able to solve this problem. And in addition to myself, I'm responsible for someone else. What do I do now? Because I have the command accountability on my shoulder, whereas she's free of that command accountability and therefore more open towards thinking. I think that's the hybrid vigor and that, you know, sort of gets reinforced when you travel. Plus you have a very strong story to illustrate that point.

Dhruv Sharma: So, you know, typically on this show when we talk with founders, we are talking to them about the here and now and the day to day of their businesses. With you, I think we have a chance to sort of go up a little bit, maybe 30,000 feet, maybe even higher, whatever your favorite altitude is. Just scan the globe for us and tell you know, walk us through what's going on. I mean, everyone knows, like, if you start with America, Trump is all America first. There's a hot war in Europe. You know, the global order, this is changing. There's an energy transition, underway in India. Gen Z are becoming more politically active. AI is everywhere. What would it take to lead through times like this?

Raghu Raman: I mean, there's that Billy Joel song, We Didn't Start the Fire. And I guess, if you play that, it's it's valid for every era. And every generation believes that this tumultuous things that's happening right now never happened before and never happening hereafter. I think the two or three things which have changed is knowledge about what the hell is happening into ecosystems that are way, way, way beyond our, you know, sort of, realm. And, even in many cases, impacting us, it doesn't really matter. I mean, I very often say, does it really matter what Donald Trump thinks about you? I think what your mother-in-law thinks about you is more important. Right? Because in your universe as a leader or your universe as a, as an individual, it's it's limited to a far smaller circle than what, we have got access to or what our brains are bombarded with. So that's point number one. Point number two, leadership is about, tumultuous times. Leadership is leadership is about, roller coaster. Because if, if it's a straight, you know, that thing which goes between two places on a like a gondola on a which takes people on a ski lift. Right? Usually takes you up a mountain. You have it in various different places. Right? I hope somebody says I'm the pilot of that. That's a predictable path. I mean, we inherit an organization or we inherit a portfolio or we inherit a time or we inherit a a field, where it is all going to be plain sailing. At that point, an Excel sheet, or a clown can run the organization, and usually, they do. Leadership is actually really required during, you know, sort of roller coaster times when situation is tough, when you have to compete for talent, when you have to compete for clarity, when you have to compete for resources, when you have to compete for a better story. And I think the second thing we just changed is because it has become so easy to tell stories, the time in which that impact has to be made. The that's what we were discussing. In in the short period of time, the impact that you leave is, become more important now. It's become much more important. And I think there are two metaphors which explain this well, which is, why it's extremely important, to first is that, leadership, is a bit like a torch. So torch has got a bulb, it's got a reflector, and it's got a battery. A lot of people believe that if we polish the reflector, you know, dressed up snazily, added an accent, learned how to do a little bit of PowerPointing on a screen, a little bit of body language, we become better, communicators. The problem with that is if the bulb is dim, then polishing the reflector only reflects the dimness of the bulb more. So it's very important for, firstly, the bulb's wattage to increase and, therefore, the battery to increase, which basically means that the bulb has to work at becoming intellectually deeper, reading more, listening to better stuff, attending more events which are outside their domain. If they're an engineer, they should perhaps enroll into something that challenges them in a different discipline like arts or music appreciation or theater or something like that. But because it it it sort of bounces them in a very different kind of way of thinking, and that requires effort. You know? There are people I know, there are leaders. I know I have worked with leaders who have a very poor memory, a very poor, memory for names. And therefore, they work every day with a stack of cards in which they have a face of one of their colleagues and details of, the name and the family behind because they are not good at it. So they work at it. So I think it's that kind of a rigor which is common. And, in the military, there is a very easy way to explain this. They say that there is battle procedure, and there is battle drill. These are two separate things. Battle procedure is what you do if you, as a battalion or you as a company commander or you as a leader, have been given a warning order that, okay. You we are now going for an operation into, let's say, Kargil that in somebody infiltration that has been spotted, and troops are being rushed over there. So you, mister, you know, would say we just came back from Kashmir to recoup in, let's say, Jodhpur. Pack up your bags and be ready to be airlifted to Srinagar Airport, by tomorrow morning. And that's your battle procedure you begin. You know? You call in your troops and you give them instructions and prepare for with the winter clothing and, you know, okay. We call people from leave. All of those things. Battle drill is what your muscle memory is. You come under fire, you dash, down, crawl, return fire. Now this dash, down, crawl, return is embedded into you. And why this sequence? When you are somebody opens fire at you, you dash. Dash means you run-in a zigzag way so that he cannot fire at you after that. You go down. You go down under a bush, and then you crawl because you don't want the enemy to know, oh, this is where you went down, so I must keep looking. He should keep looking at you there. You must crawl away from there, and then you return fire. Now this dash down crawl is embedded so hard inside the brain that the moment the crack of a bullet comes near you, that that's the way people will react. So any leader who trains himself or herself in battle drill will definitely be a better better leader in the tumultuous time. As a matter of fact, such leaders will enjoy tumultuous times. They look forward. They're like surfers who like windsurfing. They like big waves. If you give them placid ocean, this is this is an outboard motor. There is nothing to do here.

Utsav Somani: Let's take you back to Siachen Glacier, and I'm enjoying how you're telling all of these leadership lessons via stories. So was there a time I mean, I'm sure there are many times, during your time there where you were less confident than the people that you were leading, and how did you convince them?

Raghu Raman: I genuinely feel most leaders are, in varying degrees, less confident of the people they lead because of three reasons. First reason is they know the consequences. You know? When you're a small boy, the reason why your parents do not allow you to lean outside a car or put your hand outside a bus or your teacher does not allow you to experiment with certain things is because they know the consequences. So one is that the leader always is usually more aware of the consequences just like a parent is. The second is the leader usually has the accountability just like the parent has. I mean, you could have a, you know, second lieutenant, who is trying to outlive his father's shadow or who has got a girlfriend back home who is promised a medal. But you as the company commander are responsible for the lives of the 40 Jawans that that lieutenant is leading. Those Jawans are married. They have children. So the foolhardiness of this young lieutenant can put the lives of those 40 in jeopardy, and therefore, as a commanding officer, you may have to overrule that lieutenant's foolhardiness at at some point of time. So, I and and and the only other reason why a leader will not be they are not they are not taking a target or a aim or objective, which is audacious enough. If it's something that they've been doing every day for the last twenty years and you're looking at 10% growth because the whole market is growing 10%, then, yeah, the leader will not be afraid because the leader is not encountering any new situation. There is no challenge. So why should the leader be a threat? But I think fear is an essential component of courage. And, in leadership, there is there is courage has to be that's why you find some in some shape or form in the core value of any band of people who who try to cross the Dunbar number. Any band of people when they emulate or extoll or, you know, talk about their core values, you'll find courage somewhere present there. And the reason why every society lauds its people by giving them purple hearts and medal of honor and Vir Chakras is because they say that, look, if you give up your life, if you sacrifice the most valuable thing, to a human, which is, by the way, completely contrary. And so in this is this is also a a a sort of a dichotomy of anthropology, and it's very important to understand this in human dynamics. That at one level, a human or or for that matter, any living creatures, quintessential quest is to stay alive, survival. But there is one emotion that overrides survival, and that is the propagation of its genes. And that is why a human being will give his or her life for his child or her child or by extension, the larger side before maybe in a burning bin or or a or a creature or whatever. So this is that by extension. This is the there's the innate nature. And at the same time, there's that innate nature of survival. So these two emotions have to be balanced. And to balance these two emotions, every leader has to recognize that, he or she is eventually accountable for the ask that they are asking from their subordinates. And he or she is responsible for the consequence. So, yes, I think many times in my life, I have been quite healthily concerned about, the fear because I know the consequences.

Dhruv Sharma: Fantastic. Cam, you know, as a as a student of leadership, I'd be very curious to know who stand as your reference points, and we, of course, have to get some book recommendations out of you.

Raghu Raman: You know, it's it's it's kind of, it's kind of difficult for me, to of of course, I go to rattle off a few books, and a few come to mind. I just look behind and I look at a bookshelf, and I can narrate this. But my sense is that if we are able to develop the art of discovering leadership moves. I'll explain what I mean by that. So, it's not a very well known fact, but amongst a few other things that I'm passionate about, I'm passionate about magic and, specifically card magic. And it goes back almost, almost fifty years ever since I was, like, 10, 12 years old or maybe even younger. And I've studied it as a science and really deeply as a science. And like music, in card magic, the masters the masters say that you can perform miracles if you just know three sleights of hand, just three. And those three will take maybe about half an hour to master. That's it. And the rest is completely about how you leverage those three skills. So, similarly, if we have an ability to study the leadership moves, it's a bit like if you're a good chess player, very good chess player. What does a very good chess player mean? A very good chess player means that this very good chess player has memorized in muscle memory, few tens of thousands of moves whose combinations they have in muscle memory a result of a few million combinations. And so, therefore, when a certain play happens, they can respond in a certain way in muscle memory. These set of moves are formed layer after layer after layer over a period of time. So it does take a certain amount of time. There is no doubt about it that, these, master algorithms are generated and, learned over a period of time. So I think if we have the ability to identify the master algorithms, then we will be able to discover leadership lessons from any event that takes place in front of us. Right? And and to, you know, sort of provoke you into that thinking. I'm just provoking you into that thinking. This is a piece I've written a long time ago, but just to provoke you into the thinking. Suppose I took these five names. Think about it. Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Prabhakaran, and let's let's say let's say let's say let's say welcome to our fifth name. But let's take this, let's take Adolf Hitler. He's a corporal in the first world war, and within twenty years becomes the Führer. And at one point of time, he his writ runs in half the world. And but for, you know, cards being played in a certain way, otherwise, we were equally rooting for Subhas Chandra Bose. Right? And if you actually know your history, Subhas Chandra Bose was looking at, an alliance with Hitler. He had gone and met Hitler. And then, you know, they had worked out a situation. Okay. But but he will attack the British, but it was set up primarily to attack, the British, army. So in many ways, he conquered literally half the world, from a corporal in the first World War to the Führer in the Second World War twenty years time. Right? And he's not even German. Austrian. Osama bin Laden fought one superpower, brought it down to its knees, But I am, you know, Soviet Union. Many people argue that one of the major reasons for the failure of the breakup of the Soviet Union was actually their Afghanistan defeat because it showed the in previous the the mighty Soviet Union's army being defeated by a bunch of ragtag, you know, Mujahideen. And that's what gave the Georgias and the Azerbaijan and the Kazakhstan and we'll make we can also take it on now. Come on. We can make it happen. And the operational maneuver group, the legendary operational maneuver group of the Soviet Union was stopped to a standstill, and that's, Osama bin Laden's, you know, ilk. Not him, particularly, but he fought in that. And he also took on the second biggest superpower of the world. And if you just extend the battle timeline, it is his descendants who are ruling Afghanistan, and they defeated The US. Similarly, you look at Prabhakaran. He could get his, troops to commit suicide ten years later. You know? Years later, blow yourself. And many of our founders have a tough time getting their people to report to work on time. So in many ways, I think we can learn leadership from anybody. We cannot say okay. Of course. You can say what they did with the leadership is a separate story. We're not getting into that. You know? You can have a view of Genghis Khan and say he was a demonic person, but he created the largest known empire and, you know, look at you know, many times in my leadership, it's a it's a great thing to do sometimes. You know, you just walk over to a monument the next time. You know? Go to any monument. And project management forget about the beauty. Just think of project management. How would a Red Fort to build a Red Fort? Drawings no WhatsApp, no messaging. You if you have a photo copy, if you have to give what same plan to five people, no photocopy. How do you communicate with people? Tomorrow is off day. How do you communicate that to people? How do you respect the festivals of different people? How did how did they manage that? Right? Even if you telescope, what would you do? How would you do that? And that kind of thinking is a leadership lesson yet because they are trying to solve puzzles. Right? And that's what a leader is supposed to do. We're supposed to solve puzzles. We're supposed to solve, puzzles actually, not even problems, puzzles.

Utsav Somani: Phenomenal. And you've lived multiple lives in your professional career

Raghu Raman: as well.

Utsav Somani: I mean, Siachen Glacier, Mahindra First Choice CEO, then Reliance, then Adani. And you described three operating systems, the army's authority, the corporates in corporates, incentives, the government procedure, bureaucratic and stuff. So can a startup founder or a startup executive or a startup leader have many of them in his head at the same time, or does he need to be either a dictator or something who's driving people within ease ofs and incentives, or can it be something that, plays a different role in his leadership style?

Raghu Raman: I mean, so for you, you you would recognize to one? You you would recognize, as I'm sure any listener would recognize, that these are kind of, buckets to understand rather than a bucket in which any organization will find itself, falling into in totality. Obviously, in the armed forces, there are moments where rigid authoritarianism is required and moments where there is got to be extraordinary innovation on the spot and empowerment, and that's true for pretty much every environment. And there is incentive, which may be material, but, it could also be promotional. It could be climbing up a pyramid in an authoritarian environment and all of those elements. So I think those carrots and sticks have their own ways of manifestation in all of the three different elements. But all the three elements, nonetheless, have very good leaders and very poor leaders. So it is not that good or bad leadership is the prerogative of any one kind of a domain. Right? I mean, let's let's let's take this example to a funnier state to illustrate a point that let's say that there is this you know, you keep having these lists that come out of 100 best places to work. You know? Now there is a company which is there in the hundredth place also. Right? But that company is still returning a 17% ROI or whatever. You know, somebody is leading it. So it's not that leadership is not happening there. And to my mind, maybe those organizations, the leaders are to be lauded more because they are leading, and delivering a performance despite some of the elements not being there. So I would look at it in a much more holistic fashion than to be prescriptive about, oh, this is what counts as a good leader. You know, there's I I am sure you must have read The Kite Runner. And those of our listeners who haven't read it, it's a fascinating book written by Khaled Hosseini. And, anyway, it's still I won't do a spoiler for you, but there is a moment in that in which, he goes to seek the child of his childhood friend. He goes to seek his childhood friend's child and the the protagonist, and he's feeling guilty. And he goes to an orphanage, and in the orphanage, he finds that the caretaker of the orphanage sends one kid to the local, warlord, you know, the local military chief who obviously sends a boy to him, who he's, sexually abused, and he is sent back after two or three days. And so when he reaches over there, he finds that that boy for whom he's coming comes to see. The scaretaker has sent him there, and he goes into a blind rage, and, you know, kind of and when he goes on a rage, the as you, the reader or the watcher of the film, will also go into rage at this at this caretaker. What kind of a, you know, what kind of a demon he is. Of course, that guy is a demon, but pimp. But then the caretaker turns around and says, you know, I'm responsible for these 800 kids, man. And if I have to look after their lives and this guy is like a demon out there, and then there is this story there, which is there in our own, you know, about this demon which is out there. And a village has to send one family every one family member. And then you suddenly realize that these narratives, they're all common in different, in different stories. They're common. And leaders they're all teaching us the same thing, that leadership is about, about compromises, about doing one thing in a certain situation and another thing in another situation. Right? I mean, there are these stories. I'm sure if you have studied a bit of military history, there is stories in Vietnam where there was rampant planting of, land mines. There are stories of farmers who would walk their daughters ahead of the bulls of the bullock carts in the rice farms so that in case that there were mine explosions, it's their children who would get wounded and not the bullocks. Now that seems fucking heartless except for the fact that if a bullock goes off, they stop, the entire family stops. Whole family goes. Now imagine the leadership pain required by that father to actually make the child do that. Now and imagine the complete ignorance of anybody would viewing that from, you know, 30,000 what kind of father is he? Because they have no visibility of the entire picture. So in a way, that's what I would, look at when I'm, I don't know if that answers you.

Utsav Somani: No. Yeah. I mean, it's a full complete picture and, I mean, narrative. Right? I mean, point of view. I mean, the same story can be repeated from both sides to a same coin also.

Dhruv Sharma: Do we have time for one final question maybe? I I do have one, which is, which is, you know, also talk to us a little bit about for like, one of the most important things leaders can do is cultivate and nurture other leaders within the organization. So we'd love your learnings along the way, both from, you know, your time in service, but also in the corporate world about that about that aspect of leadership, cultivating other leaders.

Raghu Raman: I think, of course, I I was extremely fortunate, to be mentored by, I believe, some of the best leaders in corporate India. I've personally been mentored by, the likes of mister Deepak Parekh, mister Anand Mahindra. I'm not doing name dropping, but, I'm talking about how these leaders are great leaders, mister Ambani, mister Adani. They're great leaders because they take time to develop, leaders. They actually take the time. Amongst such leaders, I've seen, some political leaders also who take the effort of really reading up, really studying, the material, being multitasking in their head, constantly having the radar turning, watching something which we all see, but suddenly saying, hey. If I connect this and that, I'll be able to find a way to improve the service to a citizen or a feature to a product or, you know, a value to the bottom line or a service, whatever it may be. I mean, so that that constant thinking of one and a half portfolio, that is a trait that I found is common amongst, all such leaders. They are, you know, constant learners. They are very and being able to explain that learning in crystal clarity to people with far different intelligence than them. Please note I'm not using the word in a hierarchical way of more or less or wider or narrower, but indifferent. And and their ability to literally cross that Dunbar number with a narrative and and build that larger than 150 people, larger than 1,500, larger than 15,000, larger than a lakh and a half people in one unified narrative. I think that's what, I've found is, amazingly different amongst and, again, not just as these people, but people who can actually move, teams to do extraordinary stuff.

Utsav Somani: Captain, thank you so much for coming on your show. Before we let you go, how is the podcast doing journey of leaders? If, we were to point our listeners to your show, any one episode that you would like us to check out first?

Raghu Raman: No. I'm I I think, we we are pretty selective in our episodes because we recognize that time is of essence for people. And these aren't episodes which you can do short forms of, because for some stuff, it does require rigor to be able to capture. So pick up any one of them, whichever strikes a chord with you and, see whether you like it. Each one of them is gonna be different. But, looking forward to seeing you there or here or wherever. Thank you.

Utsav Somani: Thank you so much, captain, for coming on our show as well. Wishing you the best ahead.

Raghu Raman: Take care.

Utsav Somani: Alright, listeners. That's it, from us today. We'll see you on Wednesday. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a wonderful start to the week. Bye bye.