Author of Quiet Companies (2024). Former editor at Mint. Currently writing my second book on family-run businesses in transition.
I spent fifteen years in business journalism before I realised I'd been writing about the wrong companies.
The newsroom rewards you for chasing the loudest story — the IPO, the acquisition, the founder feud. But in three decades of reporting on Indian business, the firms I came back to weren't the loud ones. They were small, stubborn, deliberately uncrowded — companies whose founders treated growth as a side effect of doing the work well, not the point of it.
In 2022 I left Mint to write Quiet Companies, a book about thirty Indian businesses that have stayed under fifty employees on purpose, and what they've learned about culture that the rest of us are still trying to figure out.
I'm now working on a second book about family-run firms passing to a second generation — what survives the handover, and what doesn't.
I write a Sunday letter most weeks. I speak at about twelve events a year, mostly to founders. And I keep an open inbox.
A field-reported book on Indian businesses that have chosen to stay small. Built around three years of conversations with thirty founders — a loom-maker in Coimbatore, a software firm in Pune, a sugar mill in Belgaum — and what they each learned about culture by refusing to scale.
HarperCollins India · Available at most independent bookstores
Why second-generation succession in Indian family firms almost never goes the way the family expects. Reported across nine cities, with deep access to four families navigating it in real time.
The Caravan
A weekly letter to about 9,000 founders and operators on what I'm reading, who I'm talking to, and what I'm trying to figure out. Mostly short, occasionally long, always Sunday morning.
Substack · Free
I do about a dozen talks a year — mostly to founders, occasionally to investors, almost never to corporate audiences. Available for small-format conversations, founder retreats, or onstage in front of about 200 people.
Best for: speaking invitations, interviews, or if a piece I've written has stuck with you and you'd like to argue about it. Slow inbox — usually 3-5 days.