Rajiv K Poddar

Rajiv K Poddar grew up in a modest household where every rupee was accounted for and every opportunity had to be made rather than found. School was a walk away, ambition was a good deal further, and the two had to be reconciled early.

That beginning gave him the working principle he still repeats today: nobody starts as a hero. You start at zero, you learn faster than your circumstances change, and you keep going long after the first excitement has worn off.

His first venture began with borrowed capital, a single product line and a customer list he wrote by hand. Four decades later the group spans electronics and technology, renewable energy, manufacturing and distribution, global partnerships, innovation and research, and sustainable development.

The method has not changed much: understand the customer better than the competition does, keep the promise you made at the quotation stage, and reinvest patiently. Technology, innovation and integrity are the three words the group still runs on.

• Six operating verticals, one shared standard of integrity
• Partnerships built across Asia, Europe and the Middle East
• Reinvestment into research, people and clean energy

Music arrived long before the businesses did and never left. More than 100 songs later, recording remains the part of the week he protects most carefully — an hour in the studio resets everything a boardroom takes out of you.

The catalogue moves between Hindi, Bengali and English, between devotional and light melody, and it is deliberately unhurried. Songs are released when they are ready, not when a schedule says so.

Thirty-plus countries in, the lesson has become simple: people everywhere want the same four things, and they explain them in different words. Travel is how he collects those words, and the travel diaries are where they are written down.

The podcast grew out of the same habit of asking questions. Each episode is a long conversation on business, leadership, health, mindset or travel — recorded with people worth listening to and edited as little as possible.

Ask him what connects a factory, a recording studio, a microphone and a boarding pass, and the answer is curiosity. Every one of them is a way of asking what else is true, and every one of them punishes people who stop learning.

The rest is consistency. Success, in his telling, is not a single decision but a thousand small ones taken in the same direction — with the courage to keep taking them when nobody is watching.