I taught JEE physics for years. That paper breaks strong kids in three hours.
This exam is five hours of theory and five hours of lab work, and these five did close to perfect scores on it.
Let me tell you what actually happened.
The International Physics Olympiad is the world championship of school physics. It was the 56th edition. Held in Bucaramanga, Colombia, from July 5 to 12.
381 students. More than 85 countries. Every one of them the best physics student their country could find.
India sent five kids.
All five came back with gold.
Their names are Kanishk Jain from Pune. Riddhesh Anant Bendale from Indore. Rishit Garg from Dwarka in Delhi. Shresth Suraiya from Mumbai. Svarit Joshi from Ahmedabad.
We know a hundred cricketers by their nickname and not one of these boys. :)
That clean sweep put India at joint World Number One. Tied with China, Russia, Kazakhstan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Those are countries that pour serious money and national pride into science education. We are standing level with them.
Now here is what the exam actually was.
Two papers. Each five hours long.
The theory paper had three problems. One on the thermodynamics of paramagnetic cooling. One on the photoionisation of ozone. One on the dynamics of electron positron pairs.
The experimental paper was another five hours in a lab, working through heat transfer and thermodynamic processes in fluids.
That means you get given equipment you have never seen, and you have to design your own experiment, take your own readings, handle the errors, and reach a real answer.
Not multiple choice. No shortcuts. No pattern recognition. You either understand physics or you sit there for five hours.
HBCSE says the Indian students were near perfect on theory and excellent on the practical too.
Now, this was India's 27th appearance at the IPhO.
Across all those years, about 44 percent of Indian students have won gold, 41 percent silver, 10 percent bronze.
In the last ten years, every single Indian student has come home with a medal. 62 percent gold, 38 percent silver.
Not one kid has gone and come back empty handed in a decade.
Five golds in one year has happened only twice. This year, and in 2018.
So who built this.
The programme is run by HBCSE, the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. It sits under TIFR, which sits under the Department of Atomic Energy.
They run the whole funnel. A national exam, then a national olympiad, then a brutal selection and training camp, and out of everyone in the country, five kids get on a plane.
The team was led by Professor Anwesh Mazumdar of HBCSE-TIFR and Dr Leena Joshi from St Xavier's College, Mumbai.
The scientific observers were Professor Ananda Dasgupta from IISER Kolkata and Nisha Kelkar from Gogate-Joglekar College in Ratnagiri.
Yes. Ratnagiri. A college in a small coastal town in Maharashtra.
This is public education doing something the private coaching industry could never do on its own.
The coaching industry is very good at one thing. Teaching you to solve a known problem fast.
That is what JEE and NEET reward, and I say that with love because I was part of that world.
But an olympiad paper does not have a known type. There is no shortcut chapter. There is no formula sheet that saves you. You have to sit with a problem you have never seen and think.
That is a completely different muscle. And a government funded centre has been quietly building it in Indian teenagers for 27 years.
So yes, be proud. Loudly.
HBCSE also shared that around 64 percent of India's olympiad medallists go on to do a PhD.
But only about 32 percent of medallists end up settling in India.
I do not say that to spoil the moment. These kids owe the country nothing. They earned every option they have.
But it should tell us something. We are excellent at finding this talent. We are excellent at training it. We are still not great at giving it somewhere worth staying.
Congratulations Kanishk, Riddhesh, Rishit, Shresth and Svarit. This is one of the best things an Indian did this year and most of the country will never hear about it.
It’s been a minute.
2015–2018
- Exited FreeCharge. Spent time learning and investing.
- Pondered about: Why can't trust be rewarded? Started with $1M of personal capital.
- Launched CRED to reward people for paying credit card bills on time.
2019–2025
- Built a system run by a team that values ownership, judgment, and craft.
- Grew from 0 to 17M members by aligning incentives with behaviour.
- Built several products during COVID lockdowns.
- Raised $900M+ from global investors. Did 4 ESOP buybacks.
- Made Indiranagar and IPL ads slightly more interesting.
- Received a full stack of regulatory licences.
- Lost 35 kilos.
- Scaled from 0 to ~$325M ( ~₹3,200 crore) in annual revenue across payments, lending, insurance, commerce, wealth, and credit cards.
2026
- First profitable quarter (yet occasionally asked what our business model is)
- Raised another $900M from Meta in primary and secondary capital.
- Announcing our 5th ESOP buyback.
Today
CRED is ready for its next phase. I am stepping back and @miten steps in as interim CEO, partnered with an incredibly talented team. He has been heading strategy and finance and suffering me since 2020. I’m stepping away from the operating role and will continue as a shareholder. My commitment doesn’t change. Just the role.
Extremely grateful to our members, partners, regulators, and investors who made this possible. And to our board, Shailendra, Micky, Saurabh for their extraordinary conviction.
Team CRED, I’ll still expect you to be a 10x version of yourselves.
As for me, I’ll be joining Meta to lead WhatsApp globally.
Meta comes in as a minority investor in CRED. No access to member data.
While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey. Will, thank you for scaling something the world relies on quietly, and for making this transition smooth.
Onwards.
- *Shrinks teams*: 3-4 people can run end-to-end projects
- *Changes roles*: Engineers manage AI with plain English, not line-by-line code
Result: Talent shifts to a "barbell" model. Domain experts + orchestrators replace traditional coders.
*👆🏻Short Synopsis:*
AI agents are collapsing the software development lifecycle from sequential steps into one fluid process. What took weeks now takes days.
*Key changes:*
- *Merges jobs*: Planning, coding, testing happen at once