Turn down any bustling street in Indiranagar, Bandra, or South Delhi, and you’ll spot a familiar sight: fresh paint, warm yellow Edison bulbs, and a shiny new acrylic signboard. It’s either a artisanal café serving oat-milk lattes or an boutique showcasing “handpicked pret couture.” Flash forward 18 months, and that...
When people think about starting a business, they often imagine opening a trendy café, launching the next unicorn startup, or building a luxury hotel. These businesses look exciting on social media. But behind the glossy photos and success stories is a reality that many people never see. Some industries have...
A famous brand can disappear. Your money can disappear with it. “If a company is famous, it must be safe.” Millions of Indian investors believed this. They invested in companies that dominated television advertisements, cricket sponsorships, airports, education, telecom, aviation and banking. Some were worth billions. Some were India’s largest...
There is a moment familiar to almost every ambitious person. You are sitting inside an office, attending a meeting that probably could have been an email, while somewhere inside your head another meeting is happening. “Is this what I want to do for the next 20 years?” Then you open...
At my age, I sometimes look at the startup world and wonder whether we have made entrepreneurship look far easier than it really is. Open social media and you will see young founders raising millions of dollars, companies becoming unicorns, billion-dollar valuations, luxury cars and stories about people becoming millionaires...
When I first imagined Handlooom.com, I thought I was building an ecommerce company. A place where people could buy authentic handloom products. A platform that would connect artisans with customers. A business. Nothing more. Or so I believed. The more I travelled through weaving communities, the more I realised I...
One of the most common questions I hear is: “Why should I spend ₹5,000 on a handloom saree when I can buy something similar online for ₹999?” It’s a fair question. But it’s also a question built on an illusion. Because the two products are rarely the same. One is...
If I wanted to make money quickly, I would never have chosen handloom. Category: 🧵 Building Handlooom Published: July 2026 Reading Time: 10 Minutes “Sometimes the most meaningful journeys begin with a decision that makes no financial sense.” People Often Ask Me One Question. When they learn that I work...
For centuries, a handloom product carried a story. A story of a weaver. A story of a family. A story of a village. A story of heritage passed down through generations. But somewhere along the way, that story began disappearing. Today, the biggest enemy of genuine handloom is not changing...
Every successful business you admire today has one thing in common that nobody talks about. It survived long enough. People celebrate billion-dollar valuations, successful IPOs, and founders on magazine covers. What they don’t see are the thousands of days when those founders questioned everything. The unpaid bills. The sleepless nights....
