@FI_InvestIndia@krishnabgowda Road laying in my locality in Bengaluru was held up for more than 6 months because the posters of Mr.KBG were not put up and he was not free to give his blessings for starting the road works. Most of the road contracts are given to party supporters.
Bengaluru has Infrastructure problems and nobody in their sane mind can deny that.
That said, Bengaluru is still the greatest(may be joint great with Mumbai) Tier 1 City in India.
You go to any part of the world, bump into an IT person of Indian origin, he/she would have worked in Bengaluru atleast for a brief period and apart from the Traffic issues, they speak very nice about Bengaluru. Its people, its food, its climate and everything else.
If we fix Bengaluru, we will be among some of the very few great Tier 1 Cities in the world
Greater Bengaluru Authority - Make Bengaluru Great Again..
Zoho views itself as "self-funding R&D labs". That is why we stay private. This model won't suit VCs or public investors.
Outside of Zoho, we invest in founders (almost all engineers or scientists) with that same world view.
Signal Chip and Netrasemi
vTitan and Voxelgrids
Ultraviolette and Boson Motors
GenRobotics
Zentron Labs and Pilabz
... and a few more not yet announced.
All with this world view. None of them obsess about "exit". The last two even have "labs" in their name!
The American approach of stock market capitalism is not the only path. We believe that model does not suit Bharat well, definitely not for building deep tech. We need a lot more "self-funding R&D labs". We will remain this way.
PLANET BENGALURU
EP 1 - “Workers of the Wild”
Finding a cafe to work from this weekend is harder than the work itself🥲
Google seems absolutely cluttered to me and throws up every random cafe out there. So I end up reading 40 paid reviews about the cheesecake and still have no idea whether the place has wifi and plug points :)
So I let David Attenborough narrate our suffering. 🎙️ and also built something to fix it …
Indian worker Vipin Kumar has been awarded honorary citizenship by the city of Craiova, Romania, after he jumped into an icy lake and saved the life of a 5-year-old girl. 🇮🇳🇷🇴
For nearly 30 minutes, he held the child above freezing water until rescuers arrived.
This is the side of Indians the world rarely sees in headlines: courage, sacrifice, compassion and humanity.
Yet stories like this seldom receive the attention that anti-India narratives do. No coverage from Western media outlets.
As India's envoy noted, Vipin's actions embodied the spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam "The World is One Family." ❤️
China :
Chairman, the Indian Army k*l1ed 40 of our soldiers at Galwan.
Xi : Delay all exports to India, mainly the Tunnel Boring Machines which India imports from us. We'll see how they complete their Bullet train, Metro and National Highways projects.
Minister Ashwini Vaishnav, Piyush Goyal, Nitin Gadkari at a meeting with PM Modi :
Lets import the Tunnel Boring Machines from Germany, sir. A company Herrenknecht in Germany is willing to supply us.
PM Modi : Baat Karo Unse.
Herrenknecht delays shipment as its own TBMs are manufactured in China.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal confronts German Vice Chancellor Robert over China blocking the sale of German made Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) to India on Metro train.
Video goes viral......
PM Modi : Ask them to manufacture TBMs in India. India will assemble. Send our engineers to collaborate with Herrenknecht in Germany Japan and Austria.
India starts assembling TBMs like "Arjuna", "Nayak" in India with German core tech, Herrenknecht, Japan and Austria.
After one year Bharat Earth Movers Limited of India manufactures its first indigenous Tunnel Boring Machines in India.
China Shocks.
India Rocks.
A smile breaks on the face of the man working diligently in his office, as the news reaches him, and he starts planning ahead.......
A year ago, a Hindu woman studying at a college in Bhopal filed a police case against a college senior named Farhan that he befriended her under a false identity, and then drugged, raped, blackmailed and forcibly tried to convert her to Islam
Soon after, several women from the same college came forward with similar complaints against different men
Police found that the accused were part of the same gang and had the backing of a criminal named Shariq who is notorious in Bhopal by nickname ‘Machli’
Police found that the accused targeted Hindu girls in a coordinated manner - trapping one girl, then introducing her friend to another gang member, and so on
They also facilitated opportunities for intimacy and then secretly recorded videos
Two of the victims were sisters who had lost their parents long ago and were being raised in poverty by relatives. The scandal left them so shattered that one of them tried to kill herself and still bears a deep scar on her wrist
The revelations were reported as ‘Bhopal sex scandal’
Such was the outrage over the shocking revelations that MP govt got Shariq’s house bulldozed, top police chief of MP got involved, women’s commission got involved, and several accused were arrested. They continue to be in jail
The most important intervention came from NHRC member @KanoongoPriyank
He closely monitored progress of the case, ensuring it was not diluted. Such was his impact that a close aide of Shariq once reached his office in Delhi and asked him to withdraw from the matter. Priyank Ji threw him out of his office. The incident was widely covered by the media
Now comes his most significant intervention
He conceptualised a program to educate college girls across Bhopal about this racket as well as legal and social support available to any girl who is trapped but either is not recognising it yet or is too scared to break free
This program, named Sankalp, was taken up by @sewanyaya, run by @SanjeevSanskrit and me, and implemented through our partner @NetworkforJus
We selected a group of women college students from Bhopal, trained them and deployed them to conduct large-scale awareness sessions across campuses
In the past eight months, this group has educated over 8,000 girls across 100 colleges in Bhopal
During the program, several who attended these sessions later reached out to the team privately and managed to get out of such situations, while three went on to file actual police cases.
Yesterday, Priyank Ji and I were in Bhopal to mark the highly successful completion of the first year of this programme, along with MP Child Commission Chairperson Nivedita Sharma and the senior leadership of the LNCT Group of Colleges
I also met the remarkable trainers, mentored by the superb @nidhikartikey and @SalujaSanat
And I also met three victims of the scandal
Their stories are disturbing and I will share them another time
But I saw they have found their strongest support system and closest friends in the Sankalp team
To understand the depth and breadth of what Prime Minister Modi has achieved, we must remember what he inherited.
The Congress Party had a disastrous flirtation with Soviet style socialism (and the word "socialist" is still there in our Constitution, thanks to Indira Gandhi). With the Soviet collapse, India faced bankruptcy and the Congress switched to the Washington consensus, Davos-style globalism. To be fair to them, it looked reasonable in 1991, and people like me supported it, but far deeper thinkers like Gurumurthy saw that Davos globalism also as a dead-end. It met its end in the Global Financial Crisis 2008-9.
Modi's Swadeshi philosophy has achieved the balance of building up our capability while also earning the respect of the world. Like all great transformations, it takes time.
My prayers for his good health because so much work lies ahead 🙏
Congrats to our PM @narendramodi for 12 years of good governance. As our PM he is undoubtedly the most successful PM since independence. The biggest challenge for India has been the poverty and deprivation of our people. He has made sure that almost all Indians have the Bare necessities of Life! He has wiped the tears from the eyes of the poorest of the poor! He has built great infra, doubled our GDP to 4tr $ and made India a widely respected Global power. Got us back Kashmir, destroyed the Naxals,isolated the extreme left. He has always kept our National interest first, avoided the moral posturing of Nehru and given good governance with no corruption in Delhi. Thank you very much PM @narendramodi All are grateful to you and pray for your good health and continued great leadership. The person who put India First!
@svembu I remember a software package called as PeopleSoft. It was the biggest con job of selling bits and pieces of acquired software code as the best solution for HRM. Sales force carries similar DNA. Buyers beware.
The DS identified this man as a major threat to their easy manipulation of India very early on. They desperately tried to stop him from ever leading the country.
The moment he became CM, they ignited issues, branded him with every possible label, attempted to sanction him, and even revoked his visas.
They unleashed tens of thousands of pages of propaganda reports against him, both inside India and abroad. They weaponised the opposition and the courts to flood him with cases from every direction.
Yet he overcame it all. To become the PM of the world’s largest democracy. Despite all the hit jobs, sabotage, and propaganda, he remains the most popular leader on the planet.
He has turned every adversity into an advantage. "Being Anti-fragile" is his mantra. And he has made India anti-fragile too. We have seen the nation emerge stronger from every crisis thrown at it.
I believe he will also resolve the infowar crisis. The main force behind it will be weakened and broken by him. It will be a fitting feather in his cap before he retires as not only India’s longest serving PM, but its most impactful one.
History will remember him as the one who transformed India not just in infrastructure and development, but forged a confident, self-reliant nation that stands proud on the global stage.
PM Narendra Modi did not inherit a launchpad. He inherited the burden of delayed decisions, weak infrastructure, policy paralysis, broken confidence and a country that had forgotten how to think big.
Since Independence, under multiple Congress governments, India crawled to a $2 trillion economy.
PM Modi’s 12 years: India has crossed $4 trillion. In 12 years, India has moved from hesitation to acceleration. From UPI to ports, from digital infrastructure to defence production, a new India has been unleashed.
And that is a political chargesheet against Congress.
For decades, Congress sold India poverty management as governance, entitlement as economics, and slow growth as destiny. Then they have the audacity to compare India with China, after wasting decades when China was building factories, ports, highways, scale and national ambition.
The China comparison is useless unless Congress first answers one question:
What exactly were you doing for 67 years?
Congress mocked ambition because it never had any.
@narendramodi converted ambition into national policy.
That is the difference.
The world sees Praggnanandhaa as a chess prodigy. They see the trophies, the headlines, the victories over Magnus Carlsen,& the enigmatic smile across the board. They didn't see the journey of this Chennai star.
I saw a middle class Tamil family deciding that a child's dream was worth every sacrifice they could make. They don't see a father working tirelessly so that tournament fees could somehow be afforded. They don't see a mother travelling endlessly with her son, carrying home cooked food across continents because every rupee mattered. Yes, even food. They don't see the thousands of lonely hours spent staring at 64 squares while other kids watched Cable TV.
What makes his story remarkable is that he wasn't even the family's 1st chess prodigy. His sister, Vaishali, was already making waves. Many younger siblings would have lived in that shadow. Instead, he quietly built a light of his own.
By 12, he had become one of the youngest Grandmasters in history. But talent alone never explains greatness. Chess at the highest level, is never merely a test of intelligence. It is a test of resilience. Nezhmetdinov, Parimarjan Negi, Sultan Khan... They were all supremely talented. Yet never made it big.
Praggs had the doggedness, when the path was strewn with thorns & pebbles, the peak was not visible. A test of whether you can keep thinking when exhausted, keep believing after defeat,& keep improving when the world isn't watching.
Then came Magnus Carlsen. For most young players, facing Magnus is like standing at the foot of Everest. Praggnanandhaa climbed anyway. He beat him. Then beat him again. And again. What initially looked like an upset slowly became the arrival of a new force.
But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about him is his temperament. In an age that rewards noise, he remains quiet. Unassuming. In a world obsessed with self promotion, he lets his moves speak. He wins without arrogance. He loses without excuses. There is a rare dignity about Praggs.
Sometimes I think about the absurdity of it all. In a universe containing billions of stars and countless worlds, on one small planet, in one corner of Chennai, a boy sat before a chessboard,& dreamt the impossible. Not because success was guaranteed. It never is. Not because the odds were favourable. It never was. But because he loved the game, his family believed in him.
That, more than any rating or title, is what makes Praggnanandhaa special. His story is a reminder that greatness rarely arrives with fanfare. It is built quietly, one sacrifice, one setback, one ordinary day at a time, until suddenly the world looks up and calls it extraordinary. Jai Hind!
The question to ask is-Why is a non Kannadiga, a total outsider to Karnataka being promoted as a Raj sabha member from Karnataka? One who has no loyalty to Karnataka, no relationship at all, no connection? Is there nobody from Karnataka fit to represent Karnataka? It is time Kannadigas spoke up against all political parties riding rough shod over us and promoting non Kannadigas to represent us at our cost. This show total non respect to Kannadigas. All political parties should be asked to stop this very bad practice which shows total disrespect to voters in a state. Karnataka does not belong to any political party! We are not subjects but citizens @DKShivakumar@INCIndia@BJP4India@blsanthosh
Basically, in just 12 years, India has done or exceeded what was achieved in the last 60 years. India will be able to reap the benefits of all this work only in the coming decades. And only if there's political stability. That's why the adversaries are earnestly attacking now.
Two days, two different protests:
• Punjab government brutally beat students protesting for jobs in Patiala
• Central Government allowed the protest. No lathi-charge and Delhi Police helped them in the best possible way.
Yet, the Centre is called undemocratic and dictatorial, while the AAP government in Punjab is hailed as the most democratic government.
RT because media won’t tell you this.
France24’s focus on the Cockroach Janta Party is extremely interesting. I believe their journalists were present at Jantar Mantar today too.
I have a little hitherto untold story about their anti-India and anti-Modi propaganda is. The story is from 2023 and a UNESCO event.
In 2023, a UNESCO event was meant to be held in Paris. Its focus was the safety of women journalists. I was invited as a speaker.
A preliminary discussion was held (this is after my tickets were booked) with a France24 journalist for “onboarding” - this was at the organisers behest.
During the discussion, this France24 journalist from Turkey asked me how I had been persecuted. I spoke extensively about my West Bengal experience.
She asked me if I held Modi responsible. I told her that I was persecuted by Mamata Banerjee, an opposition leader. I told her about the rampant violence in India by Islamists and how, while a Samuel Patty becomes international news, a Kanhaiya Lal doesn’t.
We spoke about the UNESCO report “chilling” and I told her how it’s not representative of India or women journalists. Not only does it not mention India, but it focuses on a handful of women journalists, not the unnamed, unseen hundreds.
Throughout the conversation, she repeatedly wanted me to blame Modi. I didn’t. Throughout the conversation she asked me about how violence had increased after Modi came to power. I asked her how Modi could be held responsible for violence by those radical elements who opposed him and wanted to break India up.
I was told by @rahulroushan that I erred. I shouldn’t have been so forthcoming at the outset, but at the event itself.
He was right. The event was supposedly cancelled.
I was informed informally by some ppl in the know that the France24 journalist and Muslim organisations had rallied to get me uninvited. Since that wasn’t possible without it turning into a PR nightmare, they cancelled the event.
It’s truly easy to become an international face. Just abuse modi. That’s precisely what this is about. And this experience is how I know just how spineless people like Saurav Das are. They sold their country for 15 seconds of fame and money.