Sunint Khurana

Through this tour, I did four flights on @airindia on the Mumbai-London-Mumbai sector. The quality of on-board service is a given with Indian crews but they were exceptional and I was very happy with the overall flying experience. I can see the change that they have been talking about and I am a firm believer that the national airline represents the country, that we must support it and occasionally, be patient with it. #AirIndia. (Disclaimer: this is not a promotion and I am doing this because I felt like it)

While enough has been said about BluSmart .. < have had a few candidates who I lost to them in the last few years reach out past 48 hrs, all bright solid folks, & that ignited some thoughts that I def want to write > I did not know the Jaggi brothers, infact didn’t even know they were the Promoters per se till earlier this year when it started to dominate news cycles .. but I had run into Punit Goyal at a few startup conferences, he was always hustling; we never met face to face but folks would always say nice things about him; saw multiple digs at the many financing rounds raised by the Co, for sure Gensol batted for them but I’d imagine a lot of that spread-across funding was brought in by Punit. Hard won. I was once in Singapore, a fund had flown in 8-10 of us to meet investors there, and I remember he was choked, everyone wanted to meet him, and he was as keen to cover every bit of his time .. he was a true “founder”, and I don’t know how much of the blame can be passed onto him (how much he knew re Gensol diversion) I had also briefly known Tushar Garg, the CBO / founding member. Year senior to me from ISB. Everyone knows he was a stud. Remember being in awe while a student since he’d landed the coveted “Launcher” role at Uber, which was my dream job on campus. Then again couple years later, when I was running biz ops & partnerships at Babajob, and we won the Uber contract, saw him kicking ass there. These are the two I’d seen from a distance. I’d bet there were dozens more. Some that we spoke with while building our own leadership over last few years. All rockstars. Which is how the company got built. If I was on the board of BluSmart (ofc I am not) .. I would have had a 3rd party forensic diligence look up the top 10 people, and if they were indeed honest (my gut says they 200% were), then give the damn Co a chance & let it come back! Heck, if I was Uber India, Prabhjeet Sir / @dkhos, I’d do the same, take sizeable ownership, give a honest transparent stock option to management, and let BluSmart the brand (by Uber?) be alive and thrive Sadly the ecosystem is quick to write shit off Which btw also distincts us from America (diff scenario but look at what’s happening w @Hertz via @BillAckman) Can only hope we mature up One thousand percent punish bad actors super harsh, but find ways to not taint everyone in the same Co also with the same brush? Anyway, Will this hurt all of us? Of course it will. It’s been a few years now, but even last month when I met an American investor, at the end of 45 mins he asked me “but what if more of you guys are like Biju” .. said what I had to but there’s hardly a comeback from that .. And all this, while entrepreneurship is anyway vilified in our country, moreso when you scale & get to some spotlight, doesn’t really help Hope (and pray) that we give honest actors the chance they deserve, that a few gritty investor-folks start growth-stage funds that seize moments like these & partner with management to not let the good work go to gutter and continue building a generational company that we headlight learnings but not make these episodes an opportunity to crush the revolution, the dreams, the raw ambition, of a majority middle class honest-to-soul youngsters trying hard against everything thrown at them to build lasting companies