Selfdiscovery leads Purpose in Life

[Applause]

good evening thank you sandeep for the

pretty elaborate

as i was preparing to speak here i look

back at

my life it gave me an opportunity to

sort of relive my life over the last 20

years

and

i said sort of removed what has happened

in my life so just imagine a small

household

and you have a six-year-old

seven-year-old kid you

you made him in that household

as an adult what would be the question

you asked

the first question is usually the name

which class are you studying which

school do you go to

and essentially the fourth question is

what do you want to become in life

right maybe third also but definitely

not beyond the fourth question

so once

one of our relatives visited home and

asked me this question

as possible in ukj or first standard and

i told i want to become a truck driver

my parents were flabbergasted

truck driver tells you that you know you

control a big

machine

and my i had a small counselling session

after the relatives left

you can’t

tell anyone that you can be a truck

driver

and then my goal changed so i said okay

i’ll become a pilot because i can be the

driver of a bigger machine

and

i went to school and

one of the teachers in school asked this

uh are you ask this question what do you

want to become i said that you want to

become pilot

teacher said

you have eyesight i was wearing classes

from when i was 7 years old

can you become a pilot using glasses

and then the second

ambition i had was out of the window i

could no longer become a pilot they just

caused the doubt i never knew whether

they could become a pilot or not

and then

one day

i saw a movie and i was very excited i

said let me go to the rv

then

one of my friends said you will not

qualify the physical

criteria you are neither tall enough nor

well built

third goal was out of the way

then

the

ship

so i used to make it a point that i

watched that video so there was this

nice episode on open heart surgery

after that video effect i should become

a cardiothoracic surgeon

and

one of my relatives asked me this that

can your family afford to make you a

cardiothoracic surgeon

so there was a lot of excitement around

atomic physics and nuclear physics so i

decided i’d become a nuclear physicist

and i shared this one with my parents my

teachers

actually encouraged me

but

mothers have this concern that you have

to settle early in life

and there was this feedback that if you

are pursuing the research career

there aren’t enough jobs in india

and you will have to you will take a

long time to settle in

and finally i ended up studying

mechanical engineering

after four or five months being thrown

out of the window and while i was

studying mechanical engineering

i realized i wasn’t enjoying engineering

as much

then other interests started i started

writing poetry

i started playing football

then

i started teaching

[Music]

and after so many code changes

finally i went to teach science

in a tribal area

and

when many people thought i was mad

i

had always been accepted

and

i was a lot of questions were asked like

are you mad to go here

my family actually calculated

the financial loss

because i joined an ngo actually they

miscalculated it

i had them correct their calculation

but a lot of dreams

get made

and get shot down

by questions asked

so one of the things which i did

was

once i went to hd quoted

one it’s a small

i should say god forsaken places it’s a

forest belt in the foothills of the

western guards

once i started

spending time there i really enjoyed my

day

i started meeting new people

enjoyed

innocence of or

unadulterated love for people around

and then

in uh several opportunities came by so i

started out as a teacher in a small

remote school

and i used to go with this mobile

science lab to government schools

i didn’t know kannada but i had to teach

students in karnataka

so i learned language that way

and i learned science

in canada

and along the way

we faced several challenges which i

enjoyed

and it helped me

accomplish several things and sql became

a great platform for me

so over this last 12 years that i have

been in

svym at

https that i have been a part of

one of the greatest things that gave me

a lot of satisfaction is

you are able to instantly see

the impact that you have cost

if you are able to teach one kid well if

you are able to answer the kids question

the excitement which the kid shares with

you you are able to see it right in

front of you

that is something which gave me immense

satisfaction

that is something which i decided to

sort of pursue in life

all this way

i sort of stuck to three

guiding principles

one

was when i was doing my engineering i

used to do this small part-time jobs

and i had this hard revelation once that

thanks to our parents with the education

that we get and the access to the

resources we have

we never die of hunger

so let me do what i enjoy

and

i got a war where i decided

that i will give up

the

or i sacrificed

the nice cities which uh iatm should

have pursued but then i do something

which i would enjoy

so one of the key things which has

helped me throughout and i think every

entrepreneur we’re thinking about

is this the education that you get

should give you the confidence to tell

so what if i fail let me try one thing

once again

the second thing

was all along

i’ve been very very sort of happy

i have never really worried about

tomorrow

but so many opportunities came my way

that i was enjoying every moment

i had an opportunity to meet dr ap

i had an opportunity to meet uh

dr kiran kumar the israeli chairman

spent some time with them i had an

opportunity to meet customers

and all the big scientists that you

think of

it just happens

[Music]

so

i don’t think we should really worry

about what should i do tomorrow enjoy

today

and life somehow has this ability to

present you with the right opportunity

and the right thing

but when you do get the opportunity grab

it

and the third one i start by

is i never made a statement in fact i

corrected several people

but i made a sacrifice

i made a choice

to go to hd but

all of us make choices

if we own up our decisions

i think we will

believe that we can also accomplish what

we did

many times we separate ourselves from

the circumstances

failure would be the circumstance and

the success is us not necessary

and even in my life several experiments

have been disastrous

i can’t talk proudly about them here

but

we learn tough

lessons there

so these were three key things

quickly uh rewind one

is

you get a good education

you will never have hunger try whatever

you want to do what gives you happiness

second one

whatever

we do enjoy today and the opportunities

will come you can always grab

the third one

being made choices not sacrifices

while i was doing all this

like i mentioned i met several people

learned lots of things

and you know what i am still a truck

driver in the in the education sector of

sui

we run multiple projects we have 200

staff

it’s like controlling a huge machine

like the truck

when you have a kid who can’t be given

the necessary education or the access to

education when you’re trying to solve

that problem

i get that adrenaline rush of a

physicist who’s trying to solve a

problem

so all our goals

can still be achieved by doing what you

like

and

the old stereotypes of being a social

worker

a kid just asked me are you a social

worker

i said yes

if you think go back think about the 90s

if you have if you have to be a social

worker

you have to be made wearing hawaii

sleepers

wearing the juba maybe a string bag

have classes

poverty and you should be an activist

who should be shouting slogans

it is no longer the truth

the development sector today has changed

we talk about impact we talk about

efficiency we talk about analytics we

talk about strategy in

development center we talk about pilots

we talk about expansion we talk about

impact at scale

the development sector is as

professional

as any other business

and if you can

see happiness on a kid’s

face nothing like

why not pursue it

but

in the development center you have to be

for the long haul

of maharaja

he says the life is short

the vanities of life are transient

in the world and transit

they are known who live for others

the rest are more dead than our life

thank you

[Applause]