Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Badri Seshadri on his journey from a small-town in Tamil Nadu to IIT Chennai, Cornell, and Cricinfo (#003)

Transcript

Badri Seshadri on his journey from a small-town in Tamil Nadu to IIT Chennai, Cornell, and Cricinfo (#003) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome to Contra Minds.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_04: This is a podcast about people, minds, strategy, and culture.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_04: In this episode, I'm in conversation with Dr.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_04: Badri Khadri, who's a co-founder of QuickInfo, now ESP and QuickInfo, one of the world's most successful cricket websites.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_04: Budri is a pioneer in building a very successful startup in India.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_04: Way back in the 90s, when startups were not faster as they are now.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_04: It's done in IP 10X, called PSP component.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_04: Budri shares the test statistic test, high performance left, high common tests, highly performative years of course to life IT and cost.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_04: What does it take to succeed here?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_04: He also shares with us how to lead a life with passion and purpose the way he's done it all these years.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for your time, Badri.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, thank you, Swami.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm delighted to be part of this.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_04: So, Badri, tell me a little bit about the pre-IIT cool days.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_04: Who were your inspiration?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_04: How did you go about getting interest in mathematics, physics?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it'd be interesting to know where it all started.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's uh see the unfortunate thing is that you know we keep rewriting our memories.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know whether uh uh you know what I'm going to tell you now is the um the true picture of what was happening then or what I now imagine it uh imagine that period to be.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, truly, I mean, uh you know, you have to actually keep recording this and then go back to see whether I'm saying exactly the same thing, or I'm just um repackaging it as uh time goes along.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for me, uh you know I was born in Kumbakonam, that was more uh uh you know uh the place uh where my mother uh my mother's uh side of family lived nearby in a little uh village called uh Karupur.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so whereas my entire uh childhood uh was in Nagaputinam, right from the earliest time that I can remember till my 12th standard.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in terms of you know, it's a small, small town of those days, small town of small town today, uh is very well uh aware of what is happening in the world.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh we are talking about the pre-television uh era uh where the uh uh you know Nagaputnam was and is uh a big town in uh in and around that particular uh region.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was part of Tanjavur uh district then.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay now it's a district of its own.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it was a it was uh uh it was a small town, and I um I grew up.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: My father um uh was a school teacher.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, he uh uh he was um uh teaching uh for the 11th and 12th, or perhaps before the idea of 11th and 12th came in the plus two, uh probably the 11th, whatever.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, uh he was teaching uh accountants e-commerce uh BCOM uh MCOM graduate.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: My early um uh knowledge of myself is that I was a you know very good student, was top of the class, um, not just top of the class, uh but way ahead of everybody else in the class.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I guess uh uh it was there right from the beginning, and I distinctly remember that mathematics was my uh favorite subject.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh again, uh no reason why, uh, because it had nothing to do with uh family itself uh trying to teach me, or my father trying to guide me into mathematics.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: We had very little of interaction, uh, me and my father, when it came to studies.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was completely left to it.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so it's just that I know I uh took on to uh math uh uh all by myself.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's one very distinct memory.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Very early on, I could uh grasp numbers uh from the first class onwards, and I remained there right throughout still getting into IIT.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I was doing very well in mathematics.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of other science subjects, I don't know.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it there is no special uh preference towards science or uh other subjects.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Math was certainly at the top.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Ideally, if in in you know, if I had the right kind of uh people to guide me, the right role models, uh, I would have gone on to uh study mathematics and perhaps uh you know gone on to have done uh a PhD in mathematics.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: But then, uh, as is the case today, and even then, uh the only two professions that uh my mother uh and my father uh used to talk at home was medical and engineering.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and medical was a no-no because it involved blood.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it was engineering, nothing else.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the either the the uh the picture was that simple, narrow.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, you're doing well, you have to be either a doctor or an engineer, no doctor, therefore engineer.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_04: In those days, uh, who are your role models and where did you get inspiration from to kind of uh be interested in studies?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_04: Because for a child today to be interested in studies, it's so difficult because you know, in one of the blogs of yours, I read saying that teachers come to the class, they take a new subject or a new topic, they don't really understand if the children understood it, they go to the next topic the next day.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_04: You have written about it.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_04: So, given that as a background, how is it that you you were actually you know motivated and who are your inspiration and role models to be even interested in studies at that kind of a point in time?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: Because it's very difficult in that context in those days, right?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I I don't think it was actually a person or persons who motivated me into uh you know studies per se.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: They were actually books.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I distinctly remember in my uh at the end of uh my first under the first standard summer holidays.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know uh we I I wasn't enrolled into the LKG UKG, that was not even there.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but there was a there was an year program uh in uh uh in the school that uh I was enrolled in.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually called Araklas.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say uh half standard, if you could.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, uh, prior to the first standard.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh it's a this is a that is uh almost like a play school, a modern play school.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there I distinctly remember that the only thing we learned was uh uh were numbers and uh letters and some stories, nothing more than that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: In the first standard, we had books, uh, but I don't remember well.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: But in the summer holidays of the first standard, uh my neighbor uh had a box full of comic books, all in Tamil.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Muttu comics, lion comics, they're called they're they're there even now, but not in their uh glory days, really.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but at that time fascinating a box full of at least hundred um uh comics books, all uh typically these are the western comics translated into Tamil uh by uh uh uh you know a Shivagasi-based publisher who still exists today.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and they were like a threshold tropher.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I kept reading them.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It I was really drawn into a world which uh you know you have this uh ironclaw, Irumbukai Mayavi, uh you have uh all the characters, this uh you know, this magician, mandrake, I don't know what they are actually called in English, because I read them all only in Tamil.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that really took me into the world of reading and uh imagination.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: By the end of that summer, and notice that all that you have learned to read is only in the school, only in the first standard of uh just Tamil.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: English was not even a subject at that time for us, it was going to be a subject only in the third standard where they were going to introduce English alphabets.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_04: So, so uh curiosity.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_04: So you studied in Tamil medium?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, uh till fifth standard I studied in Tamil medium.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh then uh I moved to English medium, but it was only nominally English medium.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's basically uh, you know, uh we can only uh we uh you know as students we could only understand Tamil, and the teacher will read out an English sentence and then translate that into Tamil.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: That was from the sixth to twelfth period, uh but uh till fifth it was uh Tamil medium, only Tamil medium.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh and I could I could only only read Tamil alphabets at the time at the end of first standard.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and third, uh third standard is when I'm uh you know we were even going to be introduced to English alphabets.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So this uh yeah, reading uh uh this this these comics books, yeah, it was a completely new world.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: There were hundreds of characters, many of them I have forgotten now.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: But immediately uh I uh graduated to reading Tamil magazines and Tamil newspapers.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, right from my second standard onwards, I started uh reading everything that I could lay my hands on.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh every poster, uh every bit notice, paper, uh anything that I could lay my hands on, I started reading them.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh magazines took me into a great new world.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I it's something that I will strongly recommend today that the only thing that if at all we can teach our children is just reading, nothing else.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, math, but that can even wave.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And let them figure out for themselves.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I was probably constructing my own worldview of uh uh what would I have even understood at that time of many things of politics, of current affairs, nothing.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but I will read every single word from first page to the last page, uh, except the English words, which I wouldn't be able to read anyway and understand.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I did by the time I got into third standard, I started reading story books, okay, full-fledged books.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I remember reading, uh you know, but then I was also uh winning prizes in the school, uh outside the school in various competitions, sloka competition, this, that.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I used to get prizes like uh sort of uh uh you know um sort of concise uh edition of Mahabharata Ramayana, not that you know multi-volume, 18 volume stuff, but one single volume, but running into nearly 600 to 800 pages.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: I used to read them.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So literally reading was my world.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, until I uh then I learned uh once I could pick up English alphabets and English words, from 600 onwards, I started reading uh the Hindu uh newspaper.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: There was only one person who used to buy the newspaper in my street.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I will wait for him.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was working in a post office, so I will wait for him to leave and run uh to the house and then pick up the paper and read from this thing back page to the front page, starting with sports.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: My god.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's how he got into the world of cricket.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay, fantastic.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh so that's you know, so my uh you know, there was it was not a single person that I could uh emulate uh because I don't think there was anybody to follow in the extended family.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there were no doctors or engineers, they were all basically, if at all, they were working somewhere, clerks or uh teachers, or you know, even lower in terms of professional um uh you know work.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so it's it's the the world of uh reading is what I would assign everything to.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_04: Interesting.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_04: So, what you are strongly recommending is if you have a small kid around, get them to read and introduce them to the world of books, is what you are saying.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_04: Math can come later, but that's really yeah, math can come later.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, today I know that everybody starts by, I mean, most middle class, upper middle class, urban uh children start with learning English alphabets and then the um you know your own mother tongue is sort of relegated, uh, which is sad, but uh I you know I don't really care.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you if you're teaching them English alphabets, let them read storybooks, let them read cartoons, let them read comics.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh that once they get into that uh life, that's enough.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_04: It's an interesting point that you're making, which is so what does these cartoons and comics and books, what does it do to the mind, Badri?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I do I don't know.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: See, it's like you know, it it allows first of all, it builds imagination, right?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is it has nothing to do with the real world.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is a world in which there are people who are fighting with uh uh you know all kinds of uh deadly instruments that is even killing, but as a child, you don't really assign you know uh a kind of um you know what the gruesomeness of killing that you see uh in real killing, right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: You you accept it.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean uh uh the the real sad thing today is that this reading world is replaced by uh you know a visual world where people are still watching anime or the cartoons, but you are not reading, you are not reading, and that's the skill that you pick up in reading.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I assign primarily to reading and the association you make and the imagination that you build.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: See, in reading, you don't get everything, uh it's just maybe an odd picture.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: The the early comics that I read were predominantly basically pictures with uh bubbles uh in or uh bubble writing.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: But quickly I uh moved on to uh words and words and words and no picture or an odd picture every third page or something like that.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you think of a, you know, you you read about a castle and you think of a castle.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: You have no idea what a castle is, right?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or you have no idea uh of uh of anything is you know, of a mountain is of a river is of an animal is, and you start building the patchwork of information that you get from multiple sources, you construct, and that is what your visual media robs you of.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it gives you in front of you this is the castle, and you are then constrained by that is the only castle that you can think of.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_04: Fantastic.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_04: So the need for imagination when you are a young kid becomes very important, is what you are saying.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, and there are many other things, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: You learn words, you learn correct spelling of words, uh, be it in English or Tamil, uh, you build association, you you string the words together to make sense.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: The comprehension powers really, really get built up at that time.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_04: Did cricket interest you at that time, or was it largely your parents saying no, you've got to be in IIT, you've got to kind of go there and you know.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not at all, not at all.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let me explain.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: My parents had no idea about uh IIT at all, and that was an accident which I will talk about later.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh cricket, I'll it's it's a uh you know, it's this is a this is a small town, everybody plays um uh in the streets.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I was introduced to street cricket by around third standard or so.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh where you just watch them, there are uh uh older boys playing, uh, and uh we we you know the younger boys are only used for like you know uh picking up the balls and then throwing it back to them.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: But that's that's the apprenticeship model, right?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you slowly, when you are uh brought in, uh you are also given a few balls to play.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so that's how the uh the the cricket cricket is uh very much there in every part of uh the country, in every corner, every village, uh every street side.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I started looking at it, uh, but simultaneously I started also learning chess.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there were the two um games that I started.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean uh sport games, uh whichever way you look at it.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was learning chess from a um a physical education teacher who was um uh another neighbor of mine, right across uh so from one neighbor right across, I got all the books.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and subsequently, then I started getting books all over the place.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then another physical education teacher started teaching us, uh teaching me and another boy, uh my childhood friend, uh, to play chess.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And right through the night we will play chess uh until my mother calls me uh for uh you know uh coming home to sleep.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I in fact uh it was not like a very formal learning where you learn about all the moves, all the um you know, different types of openings and strategies, etc.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is just raw playing of chess and cricket by the fourth standard, fifth standard, it's just street cricket, and then it started getting stronger and stronger.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I started uh uh seriously following cricket matches on radio.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh the television access was not there.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think uh the A Shad was still a little away.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm talking about I was born in 1970.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh uh right through that period, radio was a primary medium for uh following cricket.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I started following uh radio commentary for even Rajit Rafi matches, okay.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, which was uh broadcast in those days, um, you know, uh including Tamil commentary whenever Tamil Nadu plays in Tamil Nadu.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, interesting.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So uh and uh you know I had a uh we had a radio at home and I could basically get all stations, uh basically the uh Indian stations.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So then I will follow commentary of uh in Malayalam of uh I don't think Kerala had uh been a Rajitraffic team at the time.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh Andhra, uh Hyderabad, uh Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were the South Zone uh teams, and they are all broadcast in local languages.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I would follow Kannada commentary, Telugu commentary, uh with no understanding whatsoever.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you know, every once in a while they will also have English scores, uh, you know, scores read out in English.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh cricket I I started following very closely.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I started following uh you know Buchibabu tournament that uh was played in uh Chennai.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh lot of fanfare, and I could I I was following that uh very closely and international matches slowly.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean Indian Indian matches and uh the other teams as well.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was from sixth onwards.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: The the you know from fourth to sixth, I was obviously playing cricket, street side cricket, but from sixth onwards I was closely following, reading uh long reports uh that came on Hindu uh and and BBC.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then I started following uh BBC though.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the our radio could capture uh shortwave, so uh BBC, uh Australian broadcasting, and even uh New Zealand broadcasting uh on uh on a nice uh good weather day.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: You will you will be able to even faintly uh uh follow the New Zealand cricket matches from uh News and Broadcasting.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh so uh so that was that was a period where not just me, there were uh so many people around, so many young boys around who were following all these uh matches in their uh radio.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: We will even uh come together in uh somebody's uh house to listen to the radio commentary uh from Australian broadcasting for Australia uh versus uh let's say uh England or Australia West Indies matches, not just uh India.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_04: So that's almost like an offline community of the past in the pre-internet era.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh uh you know uh TV uh came in, uh just black and white TV uh with this uh very, very tall antenna.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we could also get uh uh because um we're on the seacoast, you would also get uh Rupa Wahini of uh Sri Lanka and cricket matches of uh you know whatever they they broadcast, we'll we started getting that.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: But radio was still the primary medium uh with uh television a secondary medium till till my school.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_04: So this whole IIT journey uh because it's it's almost like a pride in place in South India that uh you know if you get into IIT you made it to the world.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: So how was the IIT's uh high IIT journey?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: So uh uh you know uh from sixth onwards I joined uh the school that my father was uh teaching.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh till fifth, it was uh so this was a high school which will uh start only from 600.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Till fifth, I was in another school, in a middle school which had uh boys only up to fifth standard and girls up to eighth standard.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so from uh from there on when I moved to the sixth standard, uh I was clearly marked as uh uh a top student, a top student by Miles.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the gap between me and the second, third, fourth student is too wide.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was then good at just about every subject, and uh all of that I assigned to my reading capabilities.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when we, you know, uh the as soon as we uh uh get new books at the beginning of the year within a week, I will read from first page to last page of every book, including math book.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So math, English, uh science, social sciences, history and geography used to call them those days, uh and Tamil.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I will read them completely, and I could also, I think uh I was uh capable of uh memorizing and uh grasping whatever was there in it to a very high extent.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So school in a sense was um you know not really adding much to me uh in terms of learning because I could pretty much uh learn things on my own.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at the time uh it was very clear that I was uh uh you know when you're when your parents say that you know you are you know you should do engineering, uh you just accept that.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh my father, because he was also a teacher, he also knew uh, but not IIT, no design.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: He had absolutely no knowledge of IIT.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: He had told me that Ana University is the best engineering college, and all you have to do is to do well in uh uh your uh final exam, 10th and then 12th, first group, uh, which is basically the you know maths, physics, chemistry, and there will be an entrance exam, which I know you will do well, and you will therefore get to Anna University or College of Engineering.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the plan.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: In uh like my first standard uh summer, okay.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: My 10th standard summer was also a very uh key turning point.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I was um uh I was at home uh you know during the holidays, and we had um I had written the exam and we're just waiting for uh results.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and one of uh uh my father's uh you know uh old students, ex-student, came home to talk to my father.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: So normally this happens, right?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like the summer holidays, uh, old students uh come and uh generally meet some teachers, they come home.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they come home and generally have a chit-chat, talk to uh teachers and generally tell them about you know where they are, what they do.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: So this boy who also had a very, very humble background.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um details elude me now, but I remember his name, Srinivasan.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, his um uh I think he only had a mother at the time, his father had died earlier, and mother really went through all kinds of difficulties uh to educate him.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he, after um uh his school education, went to uh College of Engineering India and studied there.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh when he was uh there at home, by then he had completed his engineering and had joined railways as an engineer.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Came home to talk to my father, and uh he casually mentioned, he asked about me, and my father told him that he's doing very well, he's a top student, etc.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then he said, uh, oh, there is a place called IIT.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's there in some five places, you know, five uh towns, and you should uh you know, if he is a good student, he should try for that.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: This was in my 10th holiday.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and my uh father noted it down, and you know, he's a very meticulous person, and uh he'll remember all these things, and because it is academic uh stuff, he then started hunting it.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, wherever in you know in the newspapers in those days, um you you will see advertisements for uh JE coaching from brilliant.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So brilliant tutorials uh used to advertise, and I remember also you know, YG file or something like that, one of them.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's called YG file.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh my father uh then uh you know collected such information, and in fact, uh I wrote about it in Twitter just today.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he uh in the 10th holidays, you know, he had um he was um uh doing paper correction work for the 12th standard uh uh public exam paper, and uh his exam center uh correction center was in Chennai.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he took the address and he said, you know, he will go to um uh Chennai and will uh go to brilliant tutorials and find out what this is all about.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And even before that, okay, so I have to tell you this.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: So he wrote a letter to IIT.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, he picked up the address uh uh in some tender document, whatever some advertisement.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: He found the address and wrote a postcard saying my son is uh you know uh doing uh 10th.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, rather, he's about to get into 11th, and somebody tells me that you know you conduct some examination, enter his exam.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us uh more about it?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh promptly a letter uh in an inland letter came from uh IIT responding to that uh postcard uh saying that you know we organize these exams every year, but we can't tell you anything about uh how you should prepare, etc.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, all that we can do is if you um uh you know pay some uh two rupees uh uh uh per year for four years, uh for eight rupees we will send you question papers of the last four years.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and you have to figure out uh you know this uh this the syllabus may vary uh uh a little bit, and uh it's up to you to prepare, but it's largely based on uh 11th, 12th syllabus of varying votes.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we did you know, and then he promptly sent a money order of eight rupees and uh we had some question papers that arrived.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but you know, I I couldn't make head or tail of it anyway.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um uh he went to uh Chennai for uh paper collection and uh went to this Maslamani Street Tinagar uh Berlin Tutorials uh office.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: He gave him uh the you know various uh uh different programs they had.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think they had a few other programs as well besides uh OG5.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Correct, correct.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he looked at the cost and he was shocked.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: They were in uh a couple of thousand rupees or something like that, which was like way over his monthly salary those days.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So he came back promptly and said, uh hey, this looks too expensive, and we don't even know what this IIT is.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: But let me do something, let me ask around and see if somebody had already prepared for this and had paid for it and received the material.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: I will get hold of it and I will give it to you.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And being a teacher, he spread the word around, talked to other students, senior students, and um found out that some three, four uh people in Nagapatnam uh had done this, uh had uh procured the material, wrote exams, but didn't really get there.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: So he got their addresses and then sent me.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I went there and collected meticulously material, uh brilliant tutorials and on bonus, uh, you know, also got the Zagarwalls.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I had all these materials, and we're still in the 10th holidays, we're not even getting into 11th.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all of this like fast-paced activity happening during uh 10th summer holidays.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh, and this was my world thereafter.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: When I uh you know, I I I was you know, I prided myself in a top student.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: I could yes uh any exam until that point in time.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, typically math exams, whatever two and a half hour duration, I will probably finish it in an hour and a half, 100 out of 100.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and here I was uh facing, of course, I couldn't uh understand physics whatsoever because our you know till then the uh the skateboard 10th uh would not even have problems to solve.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: But math was what I started with, and I could um I found it extremely difficult.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Extremely difficult, even the you know the the material had some explanation and then it will jump into solving problems.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the challenge really attracted me.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the next two years, I uh as usual now once I joined 11th, I got my 11th uh textbooks.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I quickly uh went through and uh mastered them and spent all my time in trying to uh work on uh uh this uh uh JE material from brilliant Chandagarva.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_04: So tell me, uh tell me, Badri.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_04: So one of the questions that I have, one of the challenges I feel is you are an extraordinary kid, and you basically you knew your subject, you are extremely good.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_04: There must be a whole set of kids around us and which I see every day struggling with basic stuff, right?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_04: Because it's not the kid does not have the potential, but they just are not able to imagine and solve uh and uh you know.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_04: So, what do you think of that?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh see today my views have changed a lot.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh, I think I think it is the uh fault in our teaching methodology.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I know I know teachers will get wild when they hear me say this, but it is it's primarily the fault in the sense that we are not getting students attracted to a subject.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we are far too concerned about teaching them a lot.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: See, there are there are always outliers.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was an outlier.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Equally, there will be students who are so bad you can't do anything to them.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's not the fault of the teachers, it's the middle, you know, in the L curve, it's the middle that we have to really target, and it is them that you have to really get them interested in a subject.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's that should be the job of a teacher.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, not trying to cover the syllabus.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, what happens is the teacher is always under stress to say, Hey, I have to complete this, I have to finish this, I have no, I have this portion, I have this test.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: What is the use of your test or your uh you know uh uh you know that that you have to teach uh so many lessons when I have not even understood a word of what you are talking about?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_04: And the re the reason I just went into that is I think it's always great to hear your story, but I am thinking of the rest of the 40 guys in your class, okay, yeah, uh, who would actually be in awe of you, but they wouldn't know how to kind of actually be another Bhadri, right?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_04: And neither their parents will help, neither their students, uh, you know, their uh teachers help.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and this and they and there's a world out for them, and you know what should we do to those middle that you talk about, right?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_04: That's really what they're doing.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let me also add something.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: My teachers were all uniformly bad, and I'm I'm not I'm not being nasty in this, but they were that's what they were, they had very limited uh knowledge, learning, and uh they were doing whatever they could in the circumstances they were teaching.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I you know I can't evaluate my father, but he would have probably been also an average teacher.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I I certainly never picked up anything of great educational value from my school teachers, but they were all uh they had great love for me, they had great respect for me, and they uh they taught me a lot of other things, they didn't teach me physics or math, I was way ahead of them, but but they had love not only for me but for all the students in my class.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, at least you know uh my my uh uh view of my teachers right through uh I was uh I can't remember now uh many of my teachers from my primary school, but I remember all the teachers from a secondary uh school all the way up to you know high secondary, they were all maybe with the exception of one or two, great human beings.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_04: We'll come back to that, but we'll get back to your IIT story of uh saying, hey, uh you know, you found the math to be very difficult for somebody who's extraordinary, like in your school.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: In a certain system, I found it I then uh as I was getting into physics, it was just too difficult.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Here I was parallelling and you know, uh polishing off my 11th and 12th uh physics book.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I found uh the physics problems of uh JE extremely difficult because there was nobody to teach me, nobody to guide me.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I had to basically hack my way through, figure out ways of solving the problem, uh, the math problems, physics problems, and chemistry was the only thing that I could I could sort of you know uh understand because it was relatively easy, fewer problems, more concepts, which because I could comprehend uh the language, uh you know, which uh uh helped me in understanding that.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: But physics, it's like you jump into problems in uh in JE.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_04: So tell me so.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_04: One question that I have is here we have an education system in India where almost the foundation is absolutely you know down in the dumps, and suddenly you have to write a JE which is absolutely world class in terms of the kind of knowledge you need to crack it.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, is that not a broken system in India?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it is completely broken.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh whatever patchwork uh that different boards are doing today, uh they're not uh sufficient at all.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but you have to also ask the question uh do you then make your uh syllabus or your approach to uh learning in classroom JE centric?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Which also I will not advocate because JE has become tougher and tougher, uh trying to uh you know it's more it's it's it's a it's an elimination test, right?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: You have uh few thousand seats and uh few hundred thousand people compete for that.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you are only trying to uh and there are people who are trying to break, you know, track the system by learning uh ways of uh you know uh speedily solving a problem without necessarily understanding concepts.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_04: Fantastic.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's it's a it's a constant uh uh you know uh police and thief uh game that's going on.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_04: So so therefore, how was your uh how was uh so therefore you ended up cracking IIT is that uh you know yeah, I I I ended up uh cracking again.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: I still don't understand how I did that.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just that um because of you know my uh you know I still was not good in physics by the time uh I got into IIT.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but in math I must have done so well relative to others.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: There is a weightage scheme by which whatever uh marks that I was getting over and above the average uh was really inflated so that my total uh physics chemistry uh math together brought me within the top 500.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: My rank was 469.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: My God.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this was a time when you know uh you need to be within about 1500 to 1800 to uh probably uh get into uh you know some some program.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh I I was uh obviously, you know, I I I didn't believe uh that you know I I had the stuff to crack that because I still remember the math paper, I would have probably attempted around uh you know, I I could only do sums totaling maybe about 30 marks in all.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: So 70 out of 100 I couldn't even touch.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: But probably that year I I was told later that math was so difficult, the average was probably in the tens.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if I had probably gotten 25, then let's say for argument's sake, that pushed it way, way beyond to compensate for uh fewer marks that I was getting in uh physics.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Chemistry, I did reasonably well.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I would have been up there.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the math, the difficulty in the math paper really helped me to qualify for uh uh the IETs.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_04: So so therefore you're you enter into the world of IIT and you actually now have a very different system of education.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_04: And so the question that I have is so, were you kind of now seeing a different uh way of teaching, you know, understanding concepts?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_04: Because from here you move and go and you know qualify yourself as a PhD uh in Cornell.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so therefore, uh, you know, how was the IIT uh you know environment for you and what did it teach you and what did you learn out of those four years?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was uh uh you know I had exactly the same kind of a problem that I had when I started with my JEE preparation.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh getting into IIT, I was getting into IIT without the right kind of solid foundation.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh, so I was building up my own uh way of uh you know solving those problems, but I had uh never heard of um the books that uh the other students who qualified uh talked about, like Resnik and Haliday for Physics.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, never even heard of you know what that actually uh meant.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and even after JE, even after getting into uh IIT, I found physics and math extremely difficult in the first year, first semester, struggled uh because of again uh the the lack of uh I this you know after I had I had gotten all this you know 200 out of 200 and 12, all that was irrelevant, really, right?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: So my first two semesters were extremely tough for me.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I uh uh was very average in my physics degree, uh C, uh, which is S A B C.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I was uh nowhere at the top in the first uh two semesters.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: I did very well in chemistry for the semesters.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, math.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: I struggled in my first semester, slightly picked up in my second semester.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Physics struggled in the first, slightly uh did better in my uh second semester.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a you know the I had to uh do something about it.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I just uh jumped into the world of books again.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh again, it was not that you know there was there were people to help me.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I had a lot of uh uh difficulties as well.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't converse in English comfortably, but sort of understand English, but couldn't really uh uh speak well.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I only had to uh you know with with my background, um the only language that I could speak in was Tamil.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we I I had a few Tamil friends, so that was it.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh classes I could follow what was happening, but they were difficult really.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: The I didn't have the right background, to be honest.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I uh spent more and more time in trying to uh address these shortcomings all on my own, but that was a great thing that I could uh uh uh you know uh resort to because pretty much I was uh uh you know uh self-learner, I could continue to do that in IIT also.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_04: The added advantage, IIT library, sorry to cut.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_04: So uh if I were to kind of put a framework to how did you self-learn?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, and I'm not I and I know it's really long back, but uh what are the three or four things that you actually put as areas that you said I should kind of equip myself so that you know when people want to self-learn, when they come with shortcomings, what are the things, four or five things that you believe you were able to crack, which you can share with the listeners saying that this is these are the four or five areas that you should be looking at.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know if I can put a uh clear uh framework or you know set of points.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but only that um I will read more books.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: For example, uh, everybody uh talked about Dresnik and Halliday for physics, right?
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh I tried reading that, but I didn't really find it that enticing.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I I hunted down all kinds of books in uh the library and found a book which taught me physics, and I've forgotten uh the author name.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but its introduction was even better.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: That is, at least it was stuck to me.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: So uh every for every subject I would find books, not one book, but many books, and keep them all on the table, just look through and uh keep reading them until that book talked to me.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then I will check that book out and then uh took it uh uh uh to the hostel.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_04: That's really lovely.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh, you know, see this is again, you know, you I was just sheer lucky because IT would give uh you know, let you take um 20 books at a time.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: That was a lot.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: That was a lot, and uh that really that means that you know I had uh three, four books on physics, three, four books on math, and they did have a great library, great library, which uh really really helped me at that point.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh uh I I only had to do enough to bridge the gap between what was being taught and where I had to be, to where I was.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that I built up myself and it took me a year.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: It took me a year, uh, but by the end of that first year, I was not first in.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Class, I was probably in the 20th in the class of about 65.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about only my mechanical engineering department.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: We had about 65 students.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably in the uh 20s, but I had built up so much of uh capability by then.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: By the third semester, I had reached first in the class and kept up that till my uh final semester.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I again uh yes, the uh whole department.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I graduated uh with top grades uh way ahead of my second, third, fourth, etc.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Once again.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that uh that was incredible, and I uh I know I could do that simply by sheer uh you know, just just go to the basics, just keep uh methodically studying.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: So how I I don't know if I can uh put point one, two, three.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_04: I just had to uh uh I think I think I think uh you make an interesting point, Badri.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_04: I think you know, did the book talk to you?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, half the time, you know, when I saw Resnick Halliday, uh I really did not understand physics when I saw that book, actually, to be honest.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and that was the reason why I was put off by that book.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_04: So the the bigger point that you are saying is find a book that talks to you rather than absolutely, absolutely people who are saying, oh, that book is good for this subject, does not mean anything.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_04: Find a book and figure out a book that talks to you so that you are able to understand the basics and crack, right?
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_04: On that note, uh, you know, when you actually then move to Connell, that must have been a different uh, you know, kind of a peak that you had to kind of crack, right?
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_04: So how was that?
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, uh actually by then I was very well equipped.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: So this is one transition where my worry was only the cultural transition, but not the uh you know, uh your academic uh skills and capabilities.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I was uh little late.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, okay, uh again, my background meant that I had no idea that I was even going to do a PhD.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I didn't even know that people uh uh did PhDs those days.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: So my idea was that uh the only people that I had seen were people who will do engineering in all kinds of engineering colleges in those days available, and then you'll go on to do a job.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that was what I was also uh thinking.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: But IIT as an environment, thereafter guides you once you are there.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed that uh there were students who were preparing for some exam.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked them and they said it's GRE.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: And my first question was what is this GRE?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is what you do to go to the US.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And my real innocent question was you know, why should one go to the US to do a PhD?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you do a PhD or master's?
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: They were completely alien ideas to me.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to get used to that.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, do I have to do a PhD?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have to go to the US?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: They have to study at all.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I uh went to my father and I told him that there are these people who are going abroad and they are studying.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: What should I do?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he was also a little confused because he didn't also know, uh, and we had nobody else to ask also.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing that I could find, uh, because it was an incredibly competitive atmosphere there, other students by the time you know in the second year I was topper in the class, and the students uh my my classmates uh will come and tell me that uh at least some of them with whom I was close, that you will easily get in.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because the primary thing on which they were evaluating uh any of the US universities was your position in your class in IIT.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: IIT were by them great brands and uh uh it didn't really matter what kind of score you were getting in GRE.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they were going to go by primarily by your uh you know your transcripts from IIT and your recommendations.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh then I uh decided okay, I should try this.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then uh I asked my father that it it means some expenditure.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um is that you know is it okay and uh would you be able to spend?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he uh he decided that you know he will he will support me.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: See, I was I was in a sense uh greatly helping him by getting into IIT because IITs were uh the least expensive engineering colleges in those days.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: My my annual uh tuition fee was 200 rupees.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, 200 rupees the year, whole year.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: We are talking about 87 to 91.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: My god, and uh I know that uh you know uh you know I knew even then that the cost of engineering education uh in an university was much more than that.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, probably uh uh you know um four or five times or ten times even or more, right?
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, you would remember what the uh government uh college uh uh and our hostel fee annual fee was 100 rupees for uh you know uh the lodging and food is the only thing that you have to pay for.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, 100 rupees.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: So 300 rupees per year into four years, my total cost of education and uh stay is just 1200 rupees.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: My god, okay.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh uh whereas I it was clear that I had to pay in dollars for uh GRE uh you know the fee, and uh there is a air ticket and all that.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: But how did he fund?
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: He did a partial withdrawal of his PF.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: He he by then realized that I was onto something big.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh it is something that you know it's uh it's worth his while to um uh partially uh uh you know withdraw a PF and uh fund uh that aspect of it.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you know I uh we never had uh a sort of um detailed discussion on it, but there was an unwritten understanding that uh you know he was he was figuring out uh some way of uh doing this, and I have to I have to do something back.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it was just uh you know, and I did that.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I the my first thing after going to the US was to uh you know, I knew the cost of uh you know everything, and um uh out of my student uh uh scholarship uh my um uh uh graduate uh fellowship that I was getting, within three weeks I paid him back on everything.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but it was still a big thing to have uh uh partially closed the uh PF and uh fund me for all of those activities.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh GRE, my scores were not great, uh standalone, uh but particularly on the verbal uh stuff, because I was always not good in English.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah that you know you there was no way I was going to uh catch up on uh the gap.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh the um the quantitative and analytical I did well.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um perhaps not 800, 800 on those two, but close enough to that.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: But they were uh immaterial.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: I also wrote uh GRE subject test, which I think I would have done very well, yeah, uh applied to about five uh five or six colleges, uh including MIT.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: MIT was the only one that I didn't get into.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: I got into uh Cornell, uh uh University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, uh Ohio State University, Rensseller Polytechnic Institute, so bunch of colleges, uh of which obviously you know I I was my hope was if I got into MIT, I would go there.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, all these names, all the seniors told us about all of these things.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: They gave us ranks, they gave us how to apply, uh, they gave us guidance on how to write these exams.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we are talking about pre-internet era.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the knowledge base was entirely coming from your seniors, yeah.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: And IIT enabled that.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not just to me, I mean the entire class.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, our uh mechanical engineering seniors of the previous year would come and tell us everything that we needed we needed to know, and we did the exact same thing to the next uh set and so on.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was just just continuing the tradition.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so Carnal uh we had uh I know some seniors, and uh I uh was the only one who got in from uh uh uh uh department.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: So two students from uh electrical uh department.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: So three of us uh again uh the network works because we're all in different hostels.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: We got to know each other and said, you know, let's take up an apartment there and uh move there together.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: And our seniors there arranged for everything.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we I don't know, I know I don't remember.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: We probably wrote them letters or uh there was certainly no email.
• 53:03
  unknown: Okay.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: Got us provisions for uh first month uh from you know rice and doll and everything, and uh they were there to pick us up uh from the airport.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: So World by Network uh worked beautifully, and they uh our seniors completely took care of uh everything, everything that we needed to uh acclimatize ourselves to uh the place, and uh academically we were all uh absolutely capable by then uh to take on uh whatever challenges that came along the way.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_04: So, how was Cornell uh you know, in degree of difficulty, and uh what did you see the difference between that kind of education versus what you had gone through for so many decades?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say that it was it was difficult, like I had to do, I had to face uh the difficulty in IIT first year.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I eased into uh my subjects quite well, uh, but my uh the the the real problem was uh academically uh their approach to going to the root and the fundamentals.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was I mean that uh there was no question that my ideas on education uh changed only because of corn.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Indian system is uh of a type which uh uh it it is it's doing well.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if if you call it that, uh in producing uh IITs or in some uh many top institutions, but the American education system is what I like where um uh you know you have everything from the teacher-student relationship.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: See, uh my experience is primarily the graduate education, the undergraduate education is quite different.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in the graduate school, the number of students per class is like less than 20.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: The relationship between the teacher and the student was very intimate, very friendly.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was uh it was uh basically a senior uh student leading all of us.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is that that was how the atmosphere was.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were treating us as almost equals, and we were uh uh we were together discovering uh you know uh new truths about uh the subject that we were studying.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was beautiful actually.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I cannot equate any education that I have received ever to my first two years of con.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_04: You talked about uh going back to the fundamentals and going back to the roots, okay.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_04: Just tell tell me a little bit about that because that'll be interesting for our children to think like that, our education to think like that.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_04: There will be teachers listening to this, there'll be you know business guys listening to this.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_04: Now, one of the things that uh ails Indian environment is we never go to the roots of anything, actually.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and uh I think that's a very important point that you made, and I want you to kind of dwell a little bit about what do you mean by that?
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh see in the graduate uh uh studies the first year, we were uh learning a series of uh mechanics courses, uh solid mechanics, um uh design courses, uh basically theoretical mechanical engineering courses.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: By then, you know, I had decided to specialize in solid mechanics and not fluid mechanics or thermal.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I was taking more courses on solid mechanics, where uh obviously, you know, if I was focusing on uh uh fluids and thermal, then I would uh be focusing more on those courses, and math was a prerequisite.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we were doing a lot of advanced math.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: When you say advanced math, it's again the same thing.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: End of the day, right from 12th standard, I have been learning uh differential calculus, integral calculus, and differential equations.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: In IIT, I was learning exactly the same thing in Cornell.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: Also, we started with exactly the same thing, but the way we approached, so I'm talking about learning something for already.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have learnt it for about six years, let's say I'm approaching the same subject and it was on a level.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: I remember the name of the professor, Holmes.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: Those classes, I uh you know, of course, we are uh talking about it some two and a half decades uh after that.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was in the mid uh 90s, uh early 90s, uh yeah, 96.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: I graduated.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: So 91 and 92, and probably early 93.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was going through these courses.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: The way those math courses uh were taken up, particularly by uh this professor Holmes, I really uh felt bad about not getting into math and uh getting into mechanical engineering seemed like a mistake to me, but it was a mistake that I could not correct.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was a you know true pleasure of mathematics in getting into uh the fundamentals of calculus.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: We were uh students from different places.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: We had we had Chinese students in the class, we had a few Indian students, uh I mean, all of them had done their undergraduates from different countries, all a cohort which included Europeans, Americans, uh, Indians, Chinese, and maybe a couple of Koreans.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I distinctly remember I did again, I topped the class, uh consistently did well in all his courses.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: He offered two math courses, probably a third one or I don't remember now that well.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the experience of learning very advanced calculus, because all the problems that we are solving in physics and math, yeah, sorry, physics and engineering are field problems, okay, which are all differential equations, whether you are talking about quantum mechanics, whether you are talking about fluid flow, whether you are talking about deformation of solids or uh uh you know electrostatics, electrodynamics, everything is basically uh partial differential equations that you have to solve.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, one single area, that's it.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Effective, whether it is Einstein's equation or Schrdinger's equation, they are end of the day, they are uh partial differential equations.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, right.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is the base for any serious graduate work in physics and uh uh engineering, okay.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh leaving of computer engineering, etc.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is it, and the kind of foundation that he gave us of visualizing that parallelly, uh, we had courses on uh uh solid mechanics, particularly of elasticity and plasticity.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: These were all things that uh while calculus was something fairly well known as topics, the approach to solving the problems, approach to visualizing that, uh I would say it was a great revelation.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it is difficult for me to get into uh you know the details and methodologies, etc., right now, but today, you know, uh let me put it this way.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: Today I feel that I am extremely strong in calculus.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: Today I don't need any book after these many years of not doing anything in mathematics.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can teach calculus to any uh school student and early undergraduates without recourse to books.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: I just have to go to the classroom and teach.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that this happened primarily in uh uh in Karnal.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_04: So so tell me, you use a word visualizing abstract concepts, right?
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_04: Is that something that we are missing in our school education?
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and this is this is uh you know, you know, we uh you you use the word vivid, you know, the uh as I have uh uh mentioned somewhere.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is is it possible to look at a mathematical space vividly?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like the way you know I was discovering at some point in time of the words and the pictures behind it, yeah, the ability to visualize a mathematical space of a functional space.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was what Professor Holmes was basically uh providing us.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that I know I could understand functions, I could understand the way functions behaved in a functional sense, the way they interacted with each other, the way we can approximate one function with another function, the way you understand things like you know, Fourier transform or Laplace transforms.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, basically, these are these are extremely abstract concepts, but they are visualizable.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that was what he was equipping us for.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that's exactly what we have to apply to the problems that we were dealing with in our mechanical engineering subject.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_04: Fantastic.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's a brilliant, brilliant one.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_04: The fact that you got to bring visualization and spatial learning in our society is so important because I went through the same thing, Badri, because you know, we have what I learned was not in the college, what I learned was not in the school, but what I learned was all self-learned.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_04: But I had to visualize it.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_04: So I think what you have made is a very important thing.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_04: How do you how do you make you know, and this I see as a gap, even in organizations where people are not able to think visually about a problem, right?
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_04: So because to give them an abstract problem and an ambiguous problem, then the fact that they're not able to visualize it is a fundamental, you know, uh gap that you carry up to the time you start working also here, right?
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_04: So uh that's something that's a beautiful point made.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_04: I'll come back to what we will do about it and what is your thoughts about it.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_04: But is that is that when uh you know, uh we'll talk a lot of has been written about crick info, but you know, where I place you, Badri, is you were the pioneer when startups were not a fashion, right?
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_04: Today Economic Times carries articles about startups, but it's the pre-internet era where actually you went out building a startup, right?
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_04: And what I read was the passion became a business.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, you know, and the fact that it was first volunteer work, and uh, you know, there is enough to be read, you know, you your you know, Crick Info then went on to become Wisden and then ESP and Crick Info.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_04: Probably uh you are not as celebrated as many of the startup founders uh you know who get the recognition today, is my view, okay?
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_04: My personal view.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but one thing what I wanted to understand is uh you know how you know, given the background, given the fact that you went and said, I'm going to be doing engineering, and suddenly you move into something which is a startup which is completely outside.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_04: So, what are the learnings that you took took from all this into a company like say CrickInfo or into a startup like CrickInfo?
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_04: And what did you apply there?
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_04: I think to me that is a more important conversation.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um again, uh, see one thing one thing this uh IIT Colonel gave me uh as a combo was that um any problem was uh you know a solvable problem.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps a wrong uh notion, wrong idea, but my uh uh confidence was so high at the time that if there is a problem, then you just apply your mind and you will solve eventually.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if it is like you know, it's either one day or one month or one year or five years.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you could basically take on uh anything and you can deal with it.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now that confidence is uh enormous, and that helped us in you know, at least helped me in doing my part of cricket.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is a it's it's a joint work, a lot of people are involved, but it is also uh you know a lot of accidents and uh uh serendipity in terms of getting into that.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was um I know right from you know, I talked talked about my cricket commentary days.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: My father uh was always annoyed with me listening to cricket commentaries, and uh really had to uh uh control me.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: During this 11th and 12th, you know, so that I will do well in the exams.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: But he did allow me uh to follow cricket.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: I could always follow the cricket scores in newspapers and also listen to commentaries every once in a while.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: But once I came to IIT, uh I could I could watch a lot of matches.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: We had a television in the common room, we had uh uh Dudarshan was uh happening.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was again pre-uh cable TV days.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Dudarshan was the only source of uh watching uh matches.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we used to follow all the matches, uh follow it in uh you know uh newspapers.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: So when I went to uh when I reached Cornell, I mean uh this is the non-academic part of it.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I really felt uh uh bad about missing cricket.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I was not a great player.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we are just tennis ball players, nothing uh really to talk about in terms of cricketing ability, but following cricket was a passion, serious passion.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I could basically reel out statistics like like so many others.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not I'm not any special when it comes to uh cricketing uh madness uh you know uh compared to anybody else out there.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there probably you could you could pick uh you know 100 uh kids at the time uh in every uh uh square mile who were just that interested in cricket.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh once I reached Cornell, uh everything was cut off.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: No television possible, the television, but cricket matches were not streamed there.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: Radio, uh I bought uh a very high power uh shortwave radio uh only to listen to cricket broadcasts because we could follow uh uh BBC, but BBC had a funding cut at that time and uh decided to stop cricket commentaries on their shortwave.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they had uh stations in Caribbean, uh BBC's uh Caribbean broadcast, okay.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but even that was uh you know, I we couldn't pick it up at that time.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: But funnily, there were some New York uh-based the Caribbean stations in FM which used to broadcast uh West Indies matches, okay, but mix it up with some uh rap reggae or whatever it is.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's like your modern uh FM channels here in uh you know in India, where you will have cricket scores and even some commentary and uh some songs kind of a thing.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I could get uh some of those Caribbean stations, but uh that was not really helping because I wanted to follow Indian cricket.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's when uh uh internet was emerging, particularly all of us had access to email.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the first thing that the university gave us.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we had our own uh uh you know personal email uh addresses and uh uh cricket uh that that was when the Usenet news group.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Usenet news group is basically you know, let's say today's equivalent of your Facebook groups where people came together to discuss on any subject, and cricket was one such.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: So there were groups called uh there was a group called rec.sport.cricket.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_00: All these are basically Greeky, so recreational sport, cricket.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a hierarchy of organizing uh various groups.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's uh that's what uh uh you know we had uh it took me about a month to figure it out.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: Then I subscribed to that and started following cricket, but then it turned out that it was not all that great because most people there were from the US.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_00: There were few people from UK which had uh very rudimentary internet around the time, and so there were more, there was more demand and uh near zero supply.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, then I did uh some reconnoitering and then found that uh there was an Asia library uh within Cornell.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: Cornell had some 10-12 libraries.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: If uh uh IIT's library was great, this was like great to the power of great.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like there were like every direction you go, there was a library, and just specializing in a specific topic.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: There was engineering library, there was uh you know, specific uh South Asia library, which had every conduitable book that you could get from various South Asian countries, including a whole bunch of uh books, and uh they were getting a lot of uh Indian newspapers but delayed by a week or ten days.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we were getting not just Hindu now, so I was getting uh Hindu Times of India, Indian Express, uh uh I know you name it, um uh telegraph, statesman, uh, pioneer.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I won't believe they were getting all these newspapers, but only by about eight to ten days delay.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, so I could be in touch with cricket by reading them and uh getting scorecard.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then I discovered that uh Carnell had uh microfished every issue of the Hindu over the last 80 years or more, which means I could go back and start following uh, and it was all accessible to all the students.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_00: You have to just show your ID card and you ask for a particular day's paper, and they will bring you the life.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_00: My god, I mean you just imagine right.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I went through uh so I got a I got a library book which had uh I think Mihir Bos, uh history of Indian cricket, or all matches played by India.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh short scorecards.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I went after every single match and read the uh match reports written in the Hindu at the time.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_03: I got it.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I went back in time and read match reports of every single uh India match, India test match.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh then uh an initiative happened on the uh on this recordsport at cricket.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we archive these scorecards?
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so few people volunteered.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I volunteered for India matches, okay.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Others volunteered for England, uh, Australia, etc.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Probably there were more than one volunteer for India because there were more Indian graduate students with access to material similar to mine.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I started typing.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we all started typing various scorecards, and uh it's it was a self-organizing system, right?
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Internet is a brilliant, beautiful self-organizing system.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: So one person became uh you know uh sort of collater and uh organizer, and you know, he would allocate work.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: He would say, Don't do this match because it has been typed by the one who is typing the all England matches.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we will we basically we typed up Scorpio and sent it in.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_00: What will we going to do with it?
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know that.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we just typed it will be there in some, you know, there's a we are creating digital footprinting.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Slowly that became uh a database uh when uh uh gopher uh we then no let me not go into the technologies side of things.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah a lot of uh databasing technologies emerged, open source idea.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, buffer was one such, World Wide Web was another.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we just kept migrating this material, and that is when uh another uh parallel uh idea of live internet relay chat happened, that's IRC.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all of this call is due to clicking flow.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh primarily the vision for this came from one person called Simon King, uh, who uh uh thought about it in depth, decided that uh you know a lot could be done by a centralized database of statistics at one end and live coverage at the other end.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then it was only a question of putting it together.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you talk about Simon King, and uh you know, I want to ask you two specific questions related to crit info.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and uh you know, being IIT educated, PhD from Cornell, there's a statement that you have made in one of the interviews that you have given saying that the donkey work was put down to me.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, when uh whenever uh you know you look at these uh you know graduates who come from these top universities, they immediately want to do strategy and not really do the donkeys work.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_04: How important is it to kind of you know get your hands dirty in a startup?
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, you know what what's the importance of these kinds of things?
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh uh that's the most important part of it.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, whatever business that you are building, there's a lot of donkey work that you have to do.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_00: You have to, I mean, if you're building a database, we will build the database.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can't you can't always keep outsourcing that to somebody.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean initially when nobody is there, nobody has uh uh nobody uh uh uh has a view that this is going to do well, you have to do all the work.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's no doubt about it.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh and when you really like that job, no, uh for me to type a cricket scorecard, it's a donkey's work basically.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a pleasure because I was really being when I was typing the score, when I was going through the scorecard, I was also watching the match vicariously, right?
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_00: A match that there was probably not even a television broadcast for that match, right?
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I was then thinking about the cricketer who scored all those runs, the wickets that were uh taken, the catches that were uh taken, the runoffs that happened.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's a beautiful point, Badri, you are making what you're saying is if you see a scorecard as a scorecard and entering it, it is a boring job.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_04: But if you think that vivid and visual that you would spoke about, but you are visualizing the same thing because you are seeing the bigger picture and that vivid visualization visualizing that you were taught for differential equations, you are even applying it on a scorecard, and that's nearly how you enjoyed it, right?
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I don't know whether I can switch it, but probably.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, why not?
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why not?
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the the that is that is really important, right?
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like you otherwise you will find it to be a boring task.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_00: You would absolutely find it to be a boring task, and you would see no point whatsoever in doing that.
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I I even today I can spend hours looking at a scorecard trying to make sense of it.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, though I I watch fewer matches today, uh test matches I continue to watch whenever I can.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the you know every ball of a test match is important to me, not just the uh the the ones where you score runs or you get a wicket.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_04: Tell me what started off as a passion for uh organizing information, uh you know, became a business, and you never thought you will, you know, build a company with this, right?
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_04: So it all happened out of volunteers, and that's really how it happened.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yes, yes, yes.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it is uh you know, thereafter, uh you see you there is there is a path that once you choose, the next step are uh, you know, even if it's cloudy to begin with, you eventually uh uh you know find some clarity and things do happen at every step.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_04: So so so you know, what do so, therefore, what would be your uh uh you know advice for say all these startups where everybody wants a clear business model, everybody is saying, you know, tell me the uh business plan, tell me the revenue uh you know forecast for five years.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_04: You know, what are what is your views on these kinds of things?
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_00: To be honest, no, I mean no business plan we have ever made.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_00: We have followed exactly this, right?
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_00: A business plan is, however, I think business plans are important, right?
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it it gives you, you know, it it makes you think, it makes you again that you know vividness, the imagination of this is the path that we are going to take.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It allows you to think through and not muddle, uh, but then you have to keep constantly changing.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: You just toss your business plan aside because you are typically the assumptions that you make are so primitive assumptions, so little in terms of what goes into that.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you then uh build a model, it's like engineering models, right?
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Your first models are always shaky.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_00: But you go back and rebuild that model, you add more uh elements to that, you add uh more variables to that.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is what happened.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's exactly what is happening in a business as well.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: You start off with some very simplistic assumptions, and then you enter and then you find that you are completely wrong.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you go on adjust, you go and change your uh finance models.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you assume that you will make so much money off one particular stream, and it turns out that it is like hopeless, zero.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_00: But then you would have also learnt about another uh segment.
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, then you immediately incorporate that.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I will strongly recommend writing down business plans, which today I have I have learned, but but in quick info, we struggled.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Simon and I spent weeks and weeks and weeks when uh when it came to funding.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, initially, we didn't really think uh we needed funding, and uh, some cricket boards and ICC will fund us.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_00: We tried hard in convincing them to fund us, and they said no.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, our great Dalmia was the ICC uh president at the time, and he said nothing doing because he didn't even understand no sense of what we were doing.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we had uh the CEO was uh David Richards from Australia for ICC.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_00: He had great faith in us, he understood it, but he couldn't convince the elected fellows.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, each cricket board then elects and sends one of uh their members, and amongst them one you know, a president is chosen, and India had a huge clout at the time.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_00: ICC was just an emerging body, so Dalmia had no interest whatsoever in this.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_00: So then we had to move out and uh look for funding from venture capital, and uh we uh there was a great interest in us.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh internet ventures with the kind of user base that we had was amazing.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_00: But everybody asked for uh projection, we had no clue.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_00: We spent weeks and weeks and weeks, wrote down.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_00: We got on uh Price Waterhouse uh Cooper's uh document at that time, probably it was called Cooper's and Librand, if I'm not mistaken, which had a document on how to write a business plan, which was typically your plant and machinery kind of uh business plan for a manufacturing output.
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was disastrous.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_00: We never succeeded in writing a business plan of our own.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Luckily for us, uh you know, um Bank of America's um investment banking division based out of Hong Kong, run by a bunch of Indians, uh, found that we were in the market looking for funds, uh reached out to me, uh a person called Prakash and uh said, you know, he will help in all of that.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And my first question to him was I don't know how to write a business plan, and everybody's asking for a business plan.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Don't even worry about it, I will write the business plan for you.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he helped us write our first business plan.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_00: First proper business plan was written by Prakash, taking inputs from me and other uh uh founders.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and uh it was uh you know, it was uh such an easy job.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_00: About a week to ten days we wrote the business plan, and uh I worked very closely with him, and that was it.
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that business plan was sent to a lot of people, various uh people uh gave their offers, and finally we chose uh C Fi, Satim Infove to uh partner and uh they invested money, and then there's then then everything else.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now you are uh uh you know you are you are a corporate, you have correct, you can uh you have money, you could hire uh investment bankers, you could hire um uh uh you know lawyers, uh corporate lawyers that is uh legal firms, and uh people talk of valuation and you know the importance of valuation and exit and things like that.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_04: But uh so when CIFI bought CrickInfo, what was the kind of valuation that it was?
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_04: Because I know it was headlines.
• 1:22:17
  SPEAKER_04: Today nobody even remembers it in India, right?
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it was valued uh at 150 million US dollars.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_00: This was in 2000, early 2000.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so 150 million US dollars.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_04: So so so so Badri, uh uh so therefore uh at some point in time from mathematics to topping the class to a PhD to finally uh running a business, uh so how do you see this transition and uh you know uh and finally you know it got sold to Wisden and uh ESP, it was VSP and Crick Info and things like that.
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_04: So, what has been the uh learnings for you in terms of uh you know fundamentals that you know we need to teach our uh children and even the startup founders, because what I find is uh you know the technical know-how, uh which is very, very critical to build differentiated uh products in uh India if you really want to dominate the world.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_04: I think there are some learnings from what you are talking.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_04: So uh you know, there is not an equivalent of a crick info ever.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, uh you would have to kind of get an employee.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_04: He would actually say, Oh, uh Flipkart is like Amazon, so let me join there.
• 1:23:33
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_04: But when you said Crick Info, I'm sure to attract employees itself was difficult because people really don't want to take the risk, they want to go right, you know, being a PhD from Connell, I'm sure you would have sacrificed a lot of your uh earnings and salary because you would have got a million-dollar job anyway.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_04: So I think these are important things that I want you to put up.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, certainly not million-dollar jobs in those days, but you would have you know, we would have certainly been at the top.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, you just I was I was just making that point to uh you know to accentuate uh you know a couple of uh discussions, uh points from you.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, sure.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it was um it was a bit of madness for me to uh have uh uh left whatever it was uh you know what was the alternate.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I could have gone to uh uh academics.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh I could have gone to uh uh research in the industry.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh see the opportunities available in 96.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_00: 99 was different, 98-99 was different.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh IT was uh like exploding, and Indians uh uh were actually an asset and not a liability, Indians in the US.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Later on, after we raised funds, uh you know we were in the process of uh raising funds uh in 1999.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Simon and I, Simon King and I, we went on a whirlwind tour of the US talking to various um uh sporting internet properties which had at the time high sky high valuations.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_00: There was a company called uh sportsline.com.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh ESPN had its own ESPN.com by then, but ESPN was owned by Disney even then.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sportsline was really making life uh difficult for ESPN, challenging ESPN by way of raising a lot of money from CBS uh and various other uh venture capital.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_00: They'd raised uh uh high tens of millions and even hundreds of millions, early I mean low hundreds of millions, probably.
• 1:25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they were offering, I mean, it was it was a great revelation for us.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_00: We went to uh Sports Lines offices in Florida, uh, looked at their operations, uh, they were very nice people.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_00: They actually wanted to buy out uh cricket for this was prior to uh cricket for uh taking uh investment from CI.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_00: So they were saying, you know, we don't understand, you know, we are American sport, but we certainly have great interest in uh non-American sport, particularly European sport.
• 1:26:11
  SPEAKER_00: They were looking at uh cricket as a European or particularly British sport, but Britain was important to them for their uh European foray.
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're never bothered about India, but at the time, the top executives of this company that we were talking to, uh they were very happy to uh see an Indian part of the whole venture.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he he was saying in 99, he was saying there was he was talking about all kinds of um uh you know startups in the US where an Indian was very much there as a CTO.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_00: But in 1996, uh the option for me uh would have been only um uh you know one of either an academic, you know, go on a tenure track uh position with some university or uh into uh you know one of those engineering research firms, uh engineering consulting and research firms, we're seeing.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but by then I was nicked deep in Crick Info.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it was so uh uh enticing to drop uh everything uh and get into that.
• 1:27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and it was a big risk because there was it was it was totally unclear.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh uh today at least you you would say that you know you would try a startup and see there's the likelihood of winning.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, you're right.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know we had no clue whatsoever.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but the draw of cricket by then I was so uh much involved in reading and uh uh following cricket around the world.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I deserve it.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see what what happens.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just jump into that.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was sheer madness, honestly.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, it was madness.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_04: So so, therefore, what you're saying is belief to you know belief in the Passion is very critical, and uh it's very critical, is very critical, is what you're saying, right?
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_04: So uh then you will find a way, you know.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and then you will have to find a way, and you you will have to be ready for volatility, right?
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_00: So things going up and down is not really a problem, right?
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, you can't complain to yourself, hey, you know, you should have taken that route, you know.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you do this?
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was eyes open that I was entering this.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_00: If things really went down, hey, you know, it's okay.
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect, we will figure something out.
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that has helped me to this day.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am not at all affected by uh uh change of fortunes or markets uh uh you know not doing as much as what you are expecting them to be.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh investment-related troubles, uh not looking good.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those things really don't bother me at all because this is a path that I have chosen, and it is my job to make it work, however long it takes to do that.
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, I think it's a lovely, and that gives me a segue into Crick Info to publishing and you know uh New Horizon, uh, you know, and uh you know, so what made you get into publishing?
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_00: See, Crick Info after uh uh CP uh Wisdom came in.
• 1:29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh again, everything has a story, but the stories will uh be too long.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll just quickly jump.
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_00: So when Wisden wanted to acquire uh they uh CP wanted to sell its stake.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Wisdom we found Wisdom was ready to take the stake.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but Wisdom had this uh thing that you know they had to acquire 100% or nothing at all.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's zero and hundred.
• 1:29:50
  SPEAKER_00: So all of us were forced to sell.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_00: So Wisdom acquired the entire company, but they asked us to continue running it.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Wisdom also had a uh cricket property at the time called Wisdom.com, run out of India, I mean India and UK.
• 1:30:04
  SPEAKER_00: So they merged the two that created Wisdom Clicking Pro, which made perfect sense because they had a strong Wisdom.com had a very strong editorial capability.
• 1:30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Clicking Pro had a very strong statistical life scoring and the account of and advertisement revenue.
• 1:30:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it was perfect marriage.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I continued to manage uh its operations.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh effectively was the COO uh you know, except that the new owners had their CO and uh CO4.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_00: For uh you know a couple of years, two, three years after that.
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it became too boring for me.
• 1:30:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was too easy to a job.
• 1:30:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had very little to do.
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, I I had to sign a few checks.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was self-running.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was happening quite well.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_00: We were by then well-funded until the previous year, we were like running for money, we had no money.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Once Wiston acquired us, we had money.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we our salary was not uh in trouble.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_00: The previous two years I had to struggle to figure out money to pay everybody's salary and wouldn't pay myself, and I waited for enough money to pay myself.
• 1:31:23
  SPEAKER_04: My god, that is amazing.
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, now you had money, uh uh enough money, and uh therefore it was boring.
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had a TV in the room, I was watching all the matches, I'll just walk out and see people doing scoring and uh reporting.
• 1:31:39
  SPEAKER_00: We had uh Bombay office, which is where business uh uh coverage, I mean business uh editorial was there, and everything else was happening from uh Chennai.
• 1:31:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know they were they were they were self-managed, our uh uh marketing was getting better, we were generating reasonable uh income from advertising, and not only from India, but uh we could also manage the operations so effectively the entire global operations were run out of India at that time, and I was heading the operations completely.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so it got to uh you know total boredom.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had probably an hour uh a day job.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think uh we had uh we had uh good lucrative deals with uh Waterphone Network for providing cricket scores of all the world's cricket to them, which was generating good revenue.
• 1:32:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean we had we were doing well overall.
• 1:32:40
  SPEAKER_00: We can always do better at any given point in time, but we were doing quite well.
• 1:32:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's when I decided to uh leave.
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just just boredom, nothing else, honestly.
• 1:32:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was still interested in cricket, I still like cricket, uh, but uh you know, just decided uh enough.
• 1:33:01
  SPEAKER_00: So let's do something new.
• 1:33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that is when uh uh you know my colleague Satya died.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Satyanara.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was also in IIT, not in my batch, not in my uh so he was he did physics in IIT, then uh he did his master's in uh Cornell in physics again.
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah uh so I knew him from uh Connell days.
• 1:33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so he then joined me uh in clicking for.
• 1:33:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we were looking at uh doing something interesting and uh decided to do something first to do with education.
• 1:33:35
  SPEAKER_00: We explored that and we couldn't figure out what to do in education.
• 1:33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh all the ed tech ideas are all too too new now.
• 1:33:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we talked about you know, we were looking at basic uh provision of education, we found the whole process uh very cumbersome, you know, getting permission, paying bribe, uh, starting a school.
• 1:33:56
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't really, uh we were not really looking at school as a model.
• 1:34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh then we looked at publishing as a proxy to education.
• 1:34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And my uh deep desire in reading books, and uh Satya was also a book reader, yeah.
• 1:34:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we considered that uh reading, you know, uh we we want to read, we get a lot of books in English, so we can we can make do with that.
• 1:34:19
  SPEAKER_00: But what do we do uh for uh uh for Tamil or for any Indian language?
• 1:34:27
  SPEAKER_00: So our first business plan was to publish books in 10 Indian languages, including uh Urdu and D.
• 1:34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we had good name, so we could raise uh, for example, uh very quickly we raised money from uh Rajesh Jain of India World.
• 1:34:47
  SPEAKER_00: He gave us some money.
• 1:34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we raised money from you know from friends and family from my uh brother-in-law, we put some of our own money in and we started uh publishing company.
• 1:35:00
  SPEAKER_00: All our uh business plans were wrong.
• 1:35:02
  SPEAKER_00: We failed everything that we projected.
• 1:35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Getting from one language to another language was too difficult.
• 1:35:09
  SPEAKER_00: We entered you know Malayalam, we did English publishing, we flopped completely, but it was very difficult.
• 1:35:15
  SPEAKER_00: So finally, we uh decided that you know this is you know this is not going to grow like your internet business.
• 1:35:21
  SPEAKER_00: The yeah, pure uh uh you know brick and mortar business is too complex.
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_00: But having come this far, we'll just continue this.
• 1:35:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we continued that uh so it's now it's it's equally like cricket, it is a passion for me.
• 1:35:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I can see that.
• 1:35:36
  SPEAKER_04: So I I see that uh you know I was going through this this NHM editor, okay?
• 1:35:42
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right, which is really a uh platform that you're built for you know converting because what you have mentioned somewhere in one of the interviews that only 30 to 50 million Indians know English.
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_04: The balance it requires a very different model.
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_04: And uh uh, you know, and I I I found the NHM editor, I in fact downloaded NHM editor.
• 1:36:02
  SPEAKER_00: NHM writer.
• 1:36:02
  SPEAKER_00: NHM writer.
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I sorry NHM writer.
• 1:36:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_04: NHM writer, and I found it interesting saying how do you really take uh internet to the uh you know to the uh uh Indian languages?
• 1:36:14
  SPEAKER_04: I found that to be a uh interesting concept and uh so we we we we did uh we did quite a few uh tools.
• 1:36:21
  SPEAKER_00: We in fact uh prior to Kindle coming here, we built uh reader software for uh you know we called it NHM Reader, uh tried to uh you know put all our books through that, didn't really work.
• 1:36:36
  SPEAKER_00: We couldn't we were you know the problem of uh being a pioneer and not really having lots of money, and and in an area where uh the market is really small.
• 1:36:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if we had done a lot of these things in the US with English, we could have done uh very differently.
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_00: We did we we anticipated many of this.
• 1:36:55
  SPEAKER_00: We built a complete book reader software, which later on, for example, forget about the sophistication levels, etc.
• 1:37:03
  SPEAKER_00: But many things which were later built by others.
• 1:37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Kindle had its own model, uh, but we had a Kindle-like reader, uh not a hardware, but a software uh which could we could uh with with uh digital rights management built into it, uh where we could uh download books, pay for it, uh subscription schemes.
• 1:37:23
  SPEAKER_00: We built a lot of it with just a couple of uh programmers, just two programmers.
• 1:37:29
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh again, uh too early, uh wrong market, uh none of that worked.
• 1:37:38
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, fantastic.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think Badri, one of the things that uh you know listeners have to learn is you got to disrupt yourself.
• 1:37:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you could have lived in the success of Crick Info all your life.
• 1:37:50
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:37:50
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:37:51
  SPEAKER_04: But if you really want to kind of uh crack open markets, uh you have to disrupt yourself once every few years, right?
• 1:37:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and uh you can you will go wrong.
• 1:38:02
  SPEAKER_04: It's not that you know everything will be successful, but the fact that you're learning with every uh you know every disruption that you're going through, I think uh that's important.
• 1:38:11
  SPEAKER_04: And to me, that's an anecdote that I would like to carry, which is you know, you've got to disrupt yourself.
• 1:38:16
  SPEAKER_04: And I think whether it is an NHM writer, whether it's an NHM reader that you have done, I think the path to actually making internet accessible to Indians in their own language itself is a big market, and I think you are onto something very, very big, like how you know Crick Info was.
• 1:38:33
  SPEAKER_04: So I, you know, I I think that's uh definitely something that I think you would kind of uh, you know, uh I'm sure you will succeed there.
• 1:38:42
  SPEAKER_04: I wanted to ask you one very interesting uh New Year resolution in 2008.
• 1:38:46
  SPEAKER_04: I was reading.
• 1:38:47
  SPEAKER_04: You said uh, you know, uh very interesting resolutions.
• 1:38:52
  SPEAKER_04: People take uh you know resolutions around fitness, health, and things like that.
• 1:38:56
  SPEAKER_04: You said here are my out of many resolutions, I picked up three, speaking to students, use the petrol.
• 1:39:03
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:39:04
  SPEAKER_04: So uh, and uh your constant theme that I'm seeing is uh, you know, uh uh you you spoke about how education in the next 10 years has to change, the kind of transformation that we need.
• 1:39:15
  SPEAKER_04: What would be your thoughts on uh you know how you are seeing education and what should we do to actually do what uh US has done uh in terms of making our, you know, we are largely what I call as traders of services.
• 1:39:30
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:39:31
  SPEAKER_04: We are not uh you know fundamentally building something, right?
• 1:39:35
  SPEAKER_04: And unless you are able to do that, you have no hope in hell to become a you know a five trillion economy or a 10 trillion economy.
• 1:39:43
  SPEAKER_04: So therefore, uh I think there are two or three things that I see as uh people like you can uh you know uh add value.
• 1:39:50
  SPEAKER_04: One is changing the uh component of our transformation of education, and the second one is uh you know building a technical know-how and building patents.
• 1:40:00
  SPEAKER_04: These are two areas that I see as uh opportunities.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_04: For example, your NHM writer is actually something which is uh you know, pay uh which is actually very, very unique because that's very, very Indian.
• 1:40:11
  SPEAKER_04: It's like the NPCI, which is the you know uh uh Bharat Pay, uh that happened.
• 1:40:18
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so you I think there are a lot of innovations possible.
• 1:40:20
  SPEAKER_04: So the questions that I have for you is how do you think the transformation should happen for business thinking?
• 1:40:27
  SPEAKER_04: How should transformation happen at the school level?
• 1:40:30
  SPEAKER_04: And what are the two or three things that we should be doing?
• 1:40:33
  SPEAKER_04: And how do you transform people's careers?
• 1:40:36
  SPEAKER_04: Because we are also stuck in this uh you know trading mindset of saying, okay, now let me go get uh you know a job.
• 1:40:42
  SPEAKER_04: And somewhere I think uh if you uh you know if you really get satisfied with that job, you pretty much want to continue it for years, right?
• 1:40:51
  SPEAKER_04: So therefore, uh I'm breaking it breaking this down into three parts.
• 1:40:55
  SPEAKER_04: One is education, two is technical know-how, and three is skilling.
• 1:41:00
  SPEAKER_04: I think these are three things that I'm breaking.
• 1:41:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'll start with education.
• 1:41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um, there are um two major things that uh you know I would uh suggest or introduce in education if possible.
• 1:41:15
  SPEAKER_00: One is uh considerable emphasis on uh concepts and going to the roots and letting uh letting the classroom not really structured like what it is right now.
• 1:41:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know it is difficult to do, I don't know how uh we can accomplish this, but uh you know, start off with something uh you know that we see in um our day-to-day life and then drill down so the the the job of uh the students and the teacher will be to go and discover more about it.
• 1:41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's say that you know it is uh uh let's say you want to learn about business, okay?
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_00: Whether we should be having only these traditional subjects that we are teaching today, uh itself is a big question.
• 1:42:04
  SPEAKER_00: But supposing, say I want to know about um uh people who are doing this uh, you know, uh people selling vegetables uh in the roadside uh pushcart model.
• 1:42:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if I were the teacher, no, I would take my students along, maybe fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth students, and would like to understand from this person, you know, where uh is he or she is buying the vegetables from?
• 1:42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what is their market route, where are they selling, uh, what is the margin that they are uh uh uh you know placing on each of these vegetables?
• 1:42:40
  SPEAKER_00: What will they do with the wastage?
• 1:42:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, are they making enough money?
• 1:42:44
  SPEAKER_00: If they want to make uh double the amount of money that I mean, their margins, uh their gross margins, what do they have to do?
• 1:42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is it even possible?
• 1:42:53
  SPEAKER_00: So by by asking these questions, the students will learn a lot about uh economics, commerce, and also mathematics, right?
• 1:43:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just giving this as a silly example, but let's just get into something very similar, right?
• 1:43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh something about uh material that you see around yourself.
• 1:43:13
  SPEAKER_00: We never get around to actually learning what wood is as a material, what plastic is as a material.
• 1:43:21
  SPEAKER_00: What is the difference between wood and plastic?
• 1:43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one is synthetic, the other is natural, but how are they put together, assembled?
• 1:43:30
  SPEAKER_00: A tree assembles and creates wood.
• 1:43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we mold, uh you know, we have synthetically created plastic and we mold it and then we create uh in whatever shape.
• 1:43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or how you know how are they uh how is it different from metal?
• 1:43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Will we graduate from our even our college?
• 1:43:48
  SPEAKER_00: We have no idea.
• 1:43:49
  SPEAKER_00: So then suddenly one day we are in uh either we are an entrepreneur ourselves or we are working for somebody, and you have to deal with uh let's say in the manufacturing business, we have to deal with wood or plastic or uh metal or glass, and we have no clue.
• 1:44:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know how if I have to cut and make one into uh you know a chair, can we use the same material, uh, the same tools and same machines to uh create a chair out of the other material?
• 1:44:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely not.
• 1:44:21
  SPEAKER_00: But we because we have no idea about what is uh what makes these materials, we have no understanding of the uh processes.
• 1:44:31
  SPEAKER_00: So effectively, when we graduate from school, we have we we are uh you know we are we are clueless, we are powerless, we are we are unable to do any productive work other than run errands, you know, go uh fetch this or go give it and then come back, for which I will not pay anything more than 50 rupees.
• 1:44:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you are unemployable.
• 1:44:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about everybody.
• 1:44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas what we should really be equipping them with is something that they can build on their own.
• 1:45:05
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a computer program, it could be a chair.
• 1:45:09
  SPEAKER_00: We just don't do that.
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing is to really have a thorough understanding of material around us, how they are put together, how they are built, how the science of it, the engineering of it, which everybody can study.
• 1:45:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, only if it is a subject, uh it's complex, the commerce of it, yeah, and uh what is productive.
• 1:45:33
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you know why is somebody paying you money for an employee?
• 1:45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because you are contributing to the productivity of that particular entity today.
• 1:45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody who is uh a SWIGGE's delivery person will know the value that they are adding to that entire ecosystem.
• 1:45:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you remove them, that business is not there, the business model is not there.
• 1:45:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, likewise, the app developer who developed that app and all of that put together creates value.
• 1:46:05
  SPEAKER_00: And only if you are going to contribute in either by cooking the food or by delivering the food or by writing the app or by interpreting the app, you are not adding value.
• 1:46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now you ask our graduates coming out of any college, saying, you know, what can you do productively?
• 1:46:20
  SPEAKER_00: They will say nothing because they have nothing productive that has been given to them.
• 1:46:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that we've got to change.
• 1:46:32
  SPEAKER_04: Fantastic.
• 1:46:32
  SPEAKER_04: Great points.
• 1:46:33
  SPEAKER_00: How are how are we going to change?
• 1:46:35
  SPEAKER_00: We we have, you know, uh, you will you will have some ideas, I have some ideas.
• 1:46:39
  SPEAKER_00: I will really want them to get their hands dirty, even if they are never going to do a manufacturing job.
• 1:46:46
  SPEAKER_00: I want them to know that.
• 1:46:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want them to make things right in their school.
• 1:46:55
  SPEAKER_00: We are not giving we are our time towards learning stuff theoretically uh with no connection to making something uh comprehensively that is physical and real, is a big problem.
• 1:47:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh you know, you can teach great science with uh you know as part of a carpentry class.
• 1:47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Look at different types of wood.
• 1:47:23
  SPEAKER_00: You will learn about biology substantially.
• 1:47:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is up to the teacher to teach all of that.
• 1:47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, you you learn physics by you know how how uh how do I cut it?
• 1:47:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I have to give it a certain angle in cutting it.
• 1:47:36
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 1:47:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you can teach some engineering, you can teach some physics, you can teach some chemistry if if if people are worried.
• 1:47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh oh no, no, you are robbing uh all those uh things away.
• 1:47:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when will it happen?
• 1:47:50
  SPEAKER_00: When only when the teachers are good enough and the syllabus making uh comes to them decentralized.
• 1:48:00
  SPEAKER_00: We are so centralized now.
• 1:48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's okay to be centralized in terms of learning outcomes.
• 1:48:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want the students to know these these things, but not this must be the lesson, this is how you need to teach.
• 1:48:17
  SPEAKER_00: By this day, you should have completed after so many classes and you should have had your first uh test.
• 1:48:23
  SPEAKER_00: That is the level of uh centralized control that we are having, which is meaningless.
• 1:48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, correct.
• 1:48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I am if I am in Uttar Pradesh, I will be teaching something different from Tamil Nadu.
• 1:48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I'm growing different food here, different food there, uh the weather pattern is different, uh, the uh the uh the the trees are different, slightly different.
• 1:48:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying everything is different, but I get the point.
• 1:48:49
  SPEAKER_04: I think I think the practicality of you know being productive and what is the learning outcome rather than just learning.
• 1:48:56
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's an important point that you're making, right?
• 1:48:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, correct.
• 1:49:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:49:01
  SPEAKER_00: Next, uh um, you know, uh every student now, in my opinion, should be allowed to do, uh, should be forced to do.
• 1:49:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could use uh the appropriate language, yeah, apprenticeship between their high school and college one year.
• 1:49:24
  SPEAKER_00: After 12th, go on, you know, then there must be therefore a national system.
• 1:49:28
  SPEAKER_00: They have to be taken in as an apprentice in either government or private.
• 1:49:32
  SPEAKER_00: The uh the private uh entities should be encouraged to and cajoled, or also a little uh forced into taking these people, which is where they are going to learn solid stuff followed by which they will go back to college.
• 1:49:49
  SPEAKER_00: See, uh, in places like Israel, this is happening by way of uh forced conscription.
• 1:49:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be in military or near a military service, right?
• 1:49:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where they learn a lot.
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_00: Of things here, we cannot put me we don't need to put everybody into military.
• 1:50:04
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 1:50:05
  SPEAKER_00: Put them into working in a real entity.
• 1:50:09
  SPEAKER_00: It could be any any company, it doesn't matter, any any business, right?
• 1:50:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they get paid, they get some nominal apprenticeship amount paid.
• 1:50:19
  SPEAKER_00: However, bright that student is.
• 1:50:34
  SPEAKER_00: Lovely.
• 1:50:35
  SPEAKER_00: Enormously, that when they enter college, their ability to learn and what to learn will be drastically different.
• 1:50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And how to learn, everything changes.
• 1:50:47
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:50:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have done things, right?
• 1:50:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then followed by that.
• 1:50:52
  SPEAKER_00: See, and I'm not giving this as uh uh you know random uh uh you know uh advice.
• 1:50:58
  SPEAKER_00: My daughter in her final year, she did her um uh she just graduated uh uh BSC uh psychology.
• 1:51:06
  SPEAKER_00: In her uh final semester, uh, there was an opportunity from uh IT company.
• 1:51:12
  SPEAKER_00: They were looking for uh people with psychology background for their um uh you know those with cognitive psychology background for their uh UX design, user experience design.
• 1:51:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:51:27
  SPEAKER_00: In her class of 3545 girls, she was the only one who attended that interview.
• 1:51:35
  SPEAKER_00: I because I forced her.
• 1:51:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go for this.
• 1:51:39
  SPEAKER_00: She was she got it.
• 1:51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no other student from her class, from a very you know premier institution in Chennai.
• 1:51:47
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody went.
• 1:51:49
  SPEAKER_00: She went there, she did well.
• 1:51:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she was taken in, and uh they started uh uh you know uh so morning she'll go to the college.
• 1:51:57
  SPEAKER_00: Afternoon, you know, it's these are all like you know, only four hours college, right?
• 1:52:00
  SPEAKER_00: These days, afternoon she went there for uh apprenticeship.
• 1:52:05
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, within a couple of months, uh we were hit with uh COVID.
• 1:52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then everything happened uh uh over the net.
• 1:52:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that one year of from January to December in between, she wrote her exams, uh, you know, graduated, but this uh apprenticeship continued.
• 1:52:22
  SPEAKER_00: They paid that company paid her uh stipend.
• 1:52:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, by the end of that year, uh just January.
• 1:52:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we are now in February, right?
• 1:52:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they offered her a full-time job at a very good salary, but uh you know she wants to do more uh in uh you know she wants to study more uh in uh psychology, yeah.
• 1:52:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I have uh recommended uh that you know she continue for about a couple of years because this the amount of learning that you will do here will take strongly.
• 1:52:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, then you go and uh do your uh uh you know high studies if you want, right?
• 1:53:02
  SPEAKER_00: By not letting our children uh get into workforce, they are doing a great disservice to them.
• 1:53:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, today I would say that at least one year of apprenticeship between high secondary school and college, and two years of apprenticeship are you know one year plus one year, you know, one year is good enough, and then you give them a full-time job where you learn any job, you don't have to continue in the job, absolutely, but learning a job and being productive, the exhilarating feeling you get that you have contributed to the revenue of an entity, they cannot be replaced by anything else.
• 1:53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:53:48
  SPEAKER_00: This I think is it's it has to be a national activity, and and it and uh and it has a serious implication on you know when you come to work also, because your ability to handle ambiguity, your ability to handle the kind of uh uh how um uh schools and colleges um uh sort of build a cocoon around you, uh safety around you, because everything is uh very well specified, very clear, and the ambiguity that you are talking about.
• 1:54:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh whereas the real real life uh situations are always ambiguous.
• 1:54:26
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 1:54:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to you have to make value judgments, you have to decide, you have to make decisions, and that they will learn.
• 1:54:33
  SPEAKER_00: No school, no college will ever teach you this.
• 1:54:37
  SPEAKER_00: These are things that I never had, yeah, these are things that would have made me a much, much, much better person.
• 1:54:44
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 1:54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Which I think our uh, you know, so your educational system changes to let students build a worldview of their own by asking, learning, questioning, reading, uh, experimenting.
• 1:54:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I you know it's easy to say, but it is very difficult to build a system.
• 1:55:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't uh know whether uh you know I can go and do that myself right now, but I think that is necessary, and a series of apprenticeship models where you actually learn um real productive stuff, yeah.
• 1:55:17
  SPEAKER_00: We'll will change the country.
• 1:55:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we it will dramatically change India into a very confident nation.
• 1:55:24
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 1:55:26
  SPEAKER_04: So uh so Badri, uh, it's been you know amazing chatting with you.
• 1:55:32
  SPEAKER_04: I think uh I think the kind of uh the last few words you said, which is changing the country with the kind of transformation and the practicality that we spoke about, which will also goes into to me the takeout of this uh you know uh conversation.
• 1:55:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh how do you build uh vivid thinking in our children, in our uh you know, working uh you know uh environment?
• 1:55:58
  SPEAKER_04: I think to me, that's one key takeout that I noted down.
• 1:56:02
  SPEAKER_04: The second key takeout is go back to the roots, okay?
• 1:56:06
  SPEAKER_04: Just go and understand the fundamentals before you know doing a few things.
• 1:56:10
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's something that uh I've taken out.
• 1:56:13
  SPEAKER_04: And uh the third thing is really saying, you know, how do you make education relevant by actually showing and doing and putting them into the practical world while you teach them the concepts?
• 1:56:25
  SPEAKER_04: Because that goes back to the roots that you have been talking about.
• 1:56:28
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I think uh you know your journey uh is absolutely inspiring.
• 1:56:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you are a pioneer.
• 1:56:35
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, uh, I think uh uh you know Jim Collins talks about level five leadership.
• 1:56:41
  SPEAKER_04: You were a pioneer in the startup world even before the pre-internet era.
• 1:56:46
  SPEAKER_04: You went and built a company out of passion, uh, probably uh the world's uh you know most uh respected uh you know cricket uh you know website ever.
• 1:56:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you know, I'm proud to have an association with you for such a long time, and it was fantastic talking to you and sharing your thoughts on your you know the early days, what you learnt at every stage of your life, the turning points of your life.
• 1:57:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm sure the listeners will pick up more than many points on how they could kind of apply it back in their own lives.
• 1:57:21
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks, Badri.
• 1:57:22
  SPEAKER_04: It was really uh, you know, I'm extremely uh you know energized talking to you.
• 1:57:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:57:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was uh great uh uh talking about reminiscing about uh many of these uh uh you know uh past uh uh events in my life, and uh uh I really enjoyed the last two hours.
• 1:57:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh I'm just looking at the time now that it has taken.