A deep conversation with Sumeet Mehta, co-founder and CEO of LEAD group, India's largest school Edtech company with a current valuation of INR 10,000 crores! Sumeet's mission is to make excellent education accessible to every child, by transforming schools across India.

Born in Pathankot to teacher parents, Sumeet learnt innovation in education early on when his father used to teach him fractions on the dining table using a Roti. Sumeet went to Punjab Engineering college for a degree in electrical engineering, where he had his first tryst with exclusion and realization that one needs to help themselves as no one else will. He then went onto IIM-A where he really found his niche.

Sumeet started working with P&G and spent a considerable amount with the company but in 2005 took a sabbatical and travelled to India to focus and find his inner calling. During this 6 months, he tried out different things and realized that education space is the most rewarding for his ethics compass. In 2007, he quit his job full time and moved to India to dive head first into the education ecosystem. From 2007-2012 he was the CEO of the Zee Learning group. In 2012, he decided to take a break again and found his true calling during a 10 day Vipassana which helped him clear his blind spots. Soon after he started LEAD with his co-founder Smita Deorah.

According to Sumeet, the path to becoming a founder needs to go through the following-

a. To be a founder, one needs to care about a problem and persist with it. Persistence defines if one cares about that problem deeply;

b. As a founder, one needs to be open to feedback as that is the only way to continual growth and creating a worthy product;

c. As a founder, it is imperative to always surround oneself with people who care about the same problem.

Sumeet is a believer in, no failure is final, that failure is just an event and failure doesn’t define anyone. Listen in to this unique story of a humble founder.

A deep conversation with Shashank ND, co-founder of Practo, India’s leading healthcare app. A ‘youngish’ entrepreneur, Shashank started on his start-up journey at the age of 21!

An engineer from NIT Surathkal, Shashank’s tryst with entrepreneurship started when he became part of a college club at NIT called EUPHORIA (which got him interested in entrepreneurship). During his early years, he saw the gaps in the medical ecosystem from up close when his father was medically mistreated. This instance got him involved in solving the myriad problems in the healthcare infra in modern day India which led to him starting Practo in 2008.

Shashank believes that to sustain growth and success, one needs a constant “source of energy” to channel creativity and drive productivity which eventually forms the bedrock of any startup success. He opines that to create great products, one simply needs to persevere with a sense of obsession towards solving a problem and not quitting till the solution is reached.

Shashank further shares that one is ready to start on their own by focusing on solving the problem and being content with only a handful of happy customers. He says that this threshold was his litmus test when he started back when he was 21.

A firm believer of focusing on the quality of input to ensure the quality of output, listen to Shashank’s fascinating and inspiring journey.

A deep conversation with Rhea Chakraborty, actor and survivor. In the episode, Rhea speaks in a no-holds barred manner about the sequence of events which culminated into the controversy around Sushant’s untimely death. Rhea also opens up on how she coped with the relentless witch-hunt leading to her being jailed and subsequent bail. 

Rhea speaks of her experience in jail, how day 1 of being in jail was like a relief (of sorts). She recounts her first sentence which she penned in her diary when she got to jail and how the people on the inside are so much better than on the outside.  

During her time in jail, a feeling of helplessness slowly crept in but Rhea took solace in the book autobiography of a Yogi. The life lessons in the book became Rhea’s directional compass. 

Rhea believes that the only way to heal is to acknowledge, feel and address one’s emotions. According to her, the only way to remain authentic is to keep listening to one’s inner voice and staying curious to continually grow and be sane in life. Tune in to the episode and listen to Rhea for a crash course on dealing with chaos, healing and thriving.