About
For 25+ years, I've built companies, operated businesses, researched entrepreneurs and changemakers, and created communities.
I started as an entrepreneur.
Before corporate titles, acquisitions or operating roles, I was trying to build businesses and figure things out in the real world.
That experience shaped how I still approach problems today: understand what people need, find what is missing, make decisions with incomplete information and keep moving.
Building came first.
Corporate America taught me how to build at scale.
Over 25+ years, I worked across companies, industries and markets, with operating experience spanning 10 countries.
Along the way, I helped build and operate businesses with $400M+ in revenue responsibility, worked on 14 acquisitions representing $1B+ in M&A, and learned what happens when strategy meets execution.
Growth is rarely one brilliant idea.
It is usually hundreds of decisions about people, product, capital, customers, operations and timing made consistently well.
Eventually, I went back to school.
I wanted to understand something I had experienced but never formally studied: why some entrepreneurs build durable businesses while others with similar talent and opportunity do not.
My doctoral research focused on South Asian immigrant entrepreneurship.
Going from operator to researcher changed how I thought about entrepreneurship. Experience gives you pattern recognition. Research forces you to question the patterns you think you understand.
I wanted both.
Then I started asking people directly.
Through The INDUStry Show and other conversations, I have interviewed 500+ entrepreneurs, executives, investors, creators and leaders.
The original idea was simple: ask accomplished people how they actually built what they built.
Over time, the conversations became another form of research.
The most interesting answers rarely come from the first question. They come from listening closely enough to know what to ask next.
Watch The INDUStry Show
Eventually, those experiences started converging.
I co-founded the American South Asian Network, ASAN, to help build stronger connections, opportunities and institutions for younger South Asians across the United States.
The goal is larger than networking.
Stronger relationships create access. Access creates opportunity. Opportunity produces leaders, founders, capital and institutions. Over time, institutions create influence.
ASAN brings together much of what I learned from entrepreneurship, operating, research and hundreds of conversations.
Connect about ASANWhat Hasn't Changed
I like taking something with unrealized potential, understanding why it is not working yet, finding the people and resources it needs, and making it move.
I build.