₹10,000 to ₹115 Cr: A world class Product Company & A Founder Story that actually teaches!

She didn’t call it seed funding but his wife was his first venture capitalist who lent him 10,000 Rs. not knowing at the time it’ll turn into a ₹115 crore company just 15 years into its founding.

When he first met Dr. F.C. Kohli, the first CEO of TCS, what stayed with him was a sharp grievance that was echoed “Why are we building products and making others rich?” So he built a world class product company; one that scaled fast, served 5,500+ clients across 40 countries, and eventually powered operations for 250+ airlines.

The twist is that the foundation wasn’t laid in a fancy boardroom. It was laid in the unglamorous mechanics of systems.

At Pune University, the then Vice Chancellor told him, “Give me 2 years of your life.” He did. What he got back was ‘wings to fly’. He was given 2 associates; people who hadn’t written code before but were relentless, working around the clock without complaint. The system they built ran for 30 years. Someone later thanked him, saying ‘This is the first Diwali we’ll spend with our family, earlier we were always here to work on examination results’. That’s a rare kind of compliment: the kind that tells you, your work gave people their lives back.

Then he was asked to design and teach a BSc Computer Science program. He didn’t know then, that course would become the quiet catalyst that reshapes an industry, creating a talent pipeline for India’s IT industry.

When he started his own consultancy, which he was always clear he wanted to, he had a thought that sounded simple but showed great accountability; ‘This is my own dog food. I must eat it first.’

So he hired the first 3 students from the BSc Computer Science programme he had developed. Those people went on to become MDs and CEOs of global companies eventually.

And that’s where his advice to founders becomes oddly comforting, because it’s not sugar-coated.

He said - dream wildly but accept that entrepreneurship is lonely. Specific communities often aim low because ‘safe’ feels respectable and getting into business means ‘काय अवदसा आलीये’ :D

He shared in front of a hall full of founders and start up enthusiasts at the Ritz-Carlton :
Don’t do it all alone, get a co-founder early; someone smarter than you, even if your ego hates the idea.

Expect naysayers. In his early days, only three people truly believed in him - Dr Kohli, his father, and his wife.

He also learned the hard way that frugality has its own reward. The year they started spending lavishly, they hit their first loss. They course-corrected fast, because discipline, not glamour, keeps companies alive.

He kept returning to one recurring obsession: Focus!

You can’t chase multiple industries and still build depth. Especially when you go global, because global isn’t just 'bigger', it’s different.

And then there’s leadership, the real job, as he described it. Organisations form silos of people naturally, who perform well in isolation. The leader’s hardest task is to align them, again and again and again. He gave the super magnets analogy: aligned magnets create a force far greater than their individual strengths.

On AI, he shared: it’s difficult, it needs a missionary, a propeller, and it takes time.

He is Mr. Narendra Kale, the founder of Kale Consultants & Kale Logistics, a prominent serial entrepreneur and technocrat.

In the end, the super successful Kale Consultants and Kale Logistics story is a case study in doing a few things exceptionally well, and repeatedly asking one uncomfortable question:

Are we building for the masses or for the classes?

Both are valid, but confusing the two kills clarity.

And the final takeaway he insisted on - Define why you exist. Purpose and values should never change. Technologies will.

Key takeaways from the session were

* Build systems that outlive you, that’s real scale.

* Frugality is not about appearances; it's about resilience and survival.

* Hire youth early, give them real work, and watch it compound. 

* Silos are natural; true leadership is aligning them.

* Focus wins. Global expansion punishes distraction.

* Purpose and values stay constant; everything else can evolve.

Ultimately what resonated with me was Kabir's दोहा which is so relevant to anything and everything that you're trying to build; be it a company, legacy, reputation, visibility or life...

धीरे-धीरे रे मना, धीरे सब कुछ होय,

माली सींचे सौ घड़ा, ॠतु आए फल होय॥