My story
A village, a long road,
and other people’s ideas
The short version: I was born in a village of about 250 people (evidence: Stated by Dhruv, evidence being collected), and I now lead an intellectual property practice that works with students, founders and institutions across India.
The longer version is what this page is for. I am writing it in chapters rather than in one go, because the interesting parts are the specific ones — a particular room, a particular year, a particular thing that did not work — and those take longer to get right than a paragraph of adjectives would.
Three rules run through all of it. Work my team did is described as work my team did. Numbers carry whose they are and when they were counted. And anything I have said but not yet shown a record for is marked as my account rather than as fact.
- Based in
- India · frequently on the road
- Works on
- IP education, innovation ecosystems, speaking
- Written in
- Six chapters
The chapters
Six chapters, in order
Here is the shape of it. Each chapter goes up as it is written.
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Chapter one
A village of about 250
The beginning of the story, and the part that most needs to be told precisely rather than sentimentally.
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Chapter two
School, and then further
Education, in order, with institutions and years.
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Chapter three
The turn towards ideas
When and why intellectual property became the work.
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Chapter four
Building MYCrave
The company, the team, and the difference between what a team achieves and what one person does.
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Chapter five
The road years
Kilometres as method: fieldwork, campuses, and the country seen at ground level.
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Chapter six
Mission I.N.V.E.N.T.
The forward-looking work, stated as a target with progress reported separately.
The sentence everything hangs on
“From a village of 250 to a mission for 5,00,000”
People like that line, and I understand why. But it puts two very different kinds of claim next to each other, so it is worth separating them.
The first number is my own account of where I am from. The second is a target for 2028 — something we are aiming at, not something already done.
Read quickly, it sounds like a finished journey. It is not one. It names a starting point and a destination and leaves out the part in between — which is the actual story, and the part I would rather spend the words on.
For journalists and event organisers
Short, medium and long biographies, approved photographs, name pronunciation and a one-page fact sheet are on the speaking and media page. Please use those rather than paraphrasing this one — they are the versions that have been checked.
Anything here that turns out to be wrong will be corrected and the change noted, under the corrections policy.