Prabhdeep Singh 🚑

Founder/CEO at @theredhealth, @INSEAD, @Forbes 30 under 30 | Solving emergency care in India | Investor and Mentor to startups

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

🚨 Planning to buy health insurance in Tier II India?

Here’s a critical piece of advice no one talks about:
Choose a plan with air ambulance coverage. 🛩️

Let me explain why this could save your life one day.👇

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

@GHMCOnline @adityapuranam8 The entire stretch was dug up with no warning 7 days before monsoons were supposed to begin. Are you folks unable to look up your own work contracts?

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

I’m in France and no one is wearing any perfume here. How does this work - you are supposed to smell the nicest for all the EDT/EDP you market to the world!

You all smell like 🧀.

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

@ai_nishanth @cyberabadpolice @CYBTRAFFIC @CMC_Offcl @revanth_anumula @KTRBRS This part is simply crazy urban planning. It’s so easy to resolve with traffic lights

[Vikram Pai @vikpai]

Running a business is just realizing how dumb you were 6 months ago every 6 months

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

Can genuinely be a tourist destination for coffee in India

[Ravi @10xravi]

Hyderabad is the most underrated coffee city in the world and nobody's paying attention. The cafes here beat any global city on aesthetics at scale: large spaces, real design, detail bordering on obsession. True black coffee, Roast, Naad Coffee, and I'm barely scratching the surface.

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

@Karan16J When was the last time we actually saw a road being laid in Hyd?

Used to happen all the time during @KTRBRS leadership - now it’s unannounced digging and random patches that don’t hold for a season.

[Tokyo Deep Value @TokyoDeepValue]

I flew to Osaka with a 14-page activist letter, a translated copy of my proposed slate of independent directors, a slide deck on capital allocation reform, and what I believed, at the time, was a clear and reasonable demand: that the company, which was sitting on cash equal to 180% of its market cap, return a portion of it to shareholders through a special dividend. I had been working on this campaign for nine months. I had hired a Tokyo-based proxy advisor. I had built a 6% position through patient accumulation. I had, by every framework I understood, done the work.

The chairman, who was 81 years old, received me in a tatami room above the company's headquarters, which sat over a soba restaurant that had been in the same family for four generations. He was wearing a navy suit. He bowed at an angle I could not, with my Western training, accurately reciprocate. He gestured for me to sit on a cushion. I sat. A woman of approximately his own age entered, silently, and placed a small ceramic cup in front of me. The cup contained tea. The tea was lukewarm. I did not yet know that the lukewarm tea was the entire negotiation.

I began with the deck. I had prepared it carefully. I had translated the headers into Japanese. I walked him through the capital structure, the unproductive cash, the historical return on equity, the peer comparison, the proposed dividend. He listened. He did not interrupt. When I had finished, he said, in soft but clear English that I had not been told he spoke, "Thank you for traveling so far." Then he stood up, slowly, and gestured for me to follow him.

We walked down a set of wooden stairs that creaked in a way I cannot adequately describe, through a hallway lined with black-and-white photographs of men I did not recognize, and into a small workshop attached to the back of the building. In the center of the workshop was a lathe. It was old. It was, the chairman explained, the original lathe his grandfather had purchased in 1923 to manufacture the first product the company had ever sold, which was a specific kind of brass valve fitting used in steam locomotives. The locomotive industry had been gone for 60 years. The lathe was still running.

"My grandfather operated this machine," he said. "My father operated this machine. I operated this machine, as a child, before school. The factory you visited yesterday produces components that descend, in an unbroken line of design, from the work that began on this lathe. The cash you wish me to distribute is the result of one hundred and one years of refusing to do anything that would shorten the life of this company. I cannot distribute it. I am not, in the deepest sense, the owner of it. I am the custodian of it. The owner is not yet born."

I did not have a response. I had prepared for many possible responses from him. I had not prepared for this one. We returned to the tatami room. The tea was refreshed. It was, again, lukewarm. The chairman asked me about my family. I told him about my wife, my two children, my parents in suburban Connecticut. He listened with what appeared to be genuine interest. He asked the ages of my children. He nodded gravely when I told him. He asked whether I had ever shown my children the work I do. I had not. He asked whether I would, when I returned. I said I would consider it.

Four hours passed. I was served, at various points, three more cups of tea, a small dish of pickled vegetables I did not recognize, and a single piece of mochi that the chairman's assistant placed in front of me with both hands. Nobody mentioned the activist letter again. Nobody mentioned the dividend, the directors, the deck, the proposal, or the 6% position. We talked about the cherry blossom season, which was apparently late this year. We talked about American baseball, which the chairman had followed since 1962. We talked about a poet I had never heard of, whose work he recited a single line of in Japanese and then translated for me, slowly, into English, and which I have, in the three years since, been entirely unable to locate again.

At the end of the meeting, he stood. He bowed. He thanked me, again, for traveling so far. He said he hoped I would visit again, perhaps with my family, perhaps in the spring, when the city was at its best. He did not, at any point, acknowledge the proposal. He did not decline it. He did not engage with it. He simply, through a series of small and almost invisible movements that I am still trying to understand three years later, allowed the proposal to dissolve into the air of the room, until by the time I left the building, it had ceased to exist as a thing that had been said.

I flew home the next morning. I withdrew the campaign two weeks later, in a quiet letter to the proxy advisor that cited "ongoing discussions" and was technically not a withdrawal at all but was understood, by every party who received it, to be one. The position I sold over the following six months at a small loss. The chairman is still alive. The lathe is still running. The cash is still on the balance sheet.

I cannot, even now, explain what happened in that room. I went in as an activist, with a deck, a translator, and a six percent position, and I came out as a guest who had been thanked, very politely, for visiting a man's home, and who, somewhere in the four hours between the first cup of tea and the last, had been quietly, gently, irreversibly, and without a single raised voice or harsh word, defeated.

I think about him often. I do not think he thinks about me at all. This is, in some sense I am still working out, the entire lesson.

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

@Dev_Fadnavis Very valid point.

[Devendra Fadnavis @Dev_Fadnavis]

PM says global slowdown responsible for mess in Indian economy, then why US dollar is getting strong and Rupee taking dip?

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

Went through this recently. It is brutal.

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

Asked someone from the industry whether foreign investors are still interested in allocating to India. The TLDR:

Interest has pretty much died out. India is seen as geopolitically exposed, especially to an oil shock. There are no real AI plays. Valuations are rich. And the rupee situation doesn't help.

On top of that, investors who were sitting on gains have taken money off the table and are now looking at markets like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Europe etc instead.

He also pointed out that our LTCG/STCG structure and the increase in STT have made India less attractive compared to other markets that are seeing inflows.

If we need to attract FPIs back, and we do, fixing this feels like pretty low-hanging fruit.

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

Everytime I travel abroad, I wonder why Indian municipalities don’t do a better job at branding themselves. Replies to this post gives a clue.

[Shardul @pracosm]

I was part of the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) logo competition.

We went through 2 rounds, built a full identity system, and (last we heard) made top 5.

They just announced the final logos.

This is what we submitted vs what got selected 👇

[ChotaNews App @ChotaNewsApp]

శంషాబాద్ ఎయిర్ పోర్ట్ నుంచి సికింద్రాబాద్ కిమ్స్ హాస్పిటల్‌కి గ్రీన్ ఛానల్

బెంగళూరు నుంచి సికింద్రాబాద్‌ కిమ్స్ ఆస్పత్రికి అత్యవసరంగా ఊపిరితిత్తులను తరలించేందుకు పోలీసులు గ్రీన్ ఛానెల్‌ ఏర్పాటు చేశారు. వైద్య బృందం వీటిని విమానంలో శంషాబాద్ ఎయిర్‌పోర్టుకు తీసుకువచ్చి.. అక్కడి నుంచి మధ్యాహ్నం ప్రత్యేక అంబులెన్స్‌లో ఆస్పత్రికి చేర్చనున్నారు. ఈ తరలింపు సాఫీగా సాగేందుకు ట్రాఫిక్ పోలీసులు ప్రత్యేక చర్యలు తీసుకున్నారు. ఈ ఆపరేషన్‌కు ప్రజలు సహకరించాలని అధికారులు విజ్ఞప్తి చేశారు.

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

@akhileshutup We should celebrate success of an Indian startup.

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

@Kuma50531Kumar I live here. This chokepoint is completely because of mismanagement by traffic police and missing administration. Random lane closures, u-turns and perpetual digging

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

Now if @CommissionrGHMC wakes up and does the same, Hyd will stop going the Bangalore way and become world class.

[Commissioner, Cyberabad Municipal Corporation @MC_Cyberabad]

Praja Palana – Pragati Pranalika | Swachh Sunday

As part of the 99 Days Action Plan, a Swachh Sunday lake cleaning drive was conducted with active community participation.

The Commissioner, Cyberabad Municipal Corporation, joined volunteers and the Deputy Commissioner in cleaning activities at Wipro Lake and Kudi Kunta Lake.

Volunteers and citizens came forward in large numbers, showing how public participation plays a key role in keeping our surroundings clean.
Lakes are important for the city’s environment and water balance, and their upkeep is a shared responsibility.

Small efforts together can make a big difference in maintaining clean and healthy public spaces.

@jayesh_ranjan @TelanganaCS @TelanganaCMO @IPRTelangana @MC_Cyberabad @GHMCOnline @GummallaSrijana @CMC_Offcl

#Cyberabad #PrajaPalana #SwachhSunday #CleanCyberabad #TeamCyberabad

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

@MC_Cyberabad Great to see this - request you to keep posting these.

[Kaustubh Surke (Mostly Inactive) @DexterousRd]

One thing about Hyderabad , our homegrown brands usually give national chains a real run for their money.

Take supermarkets. Most big Indian chains never really cracked the city because Ratnadeep was already so strong. Godrej shut, Aditya Birla's More didn't ramp that much. Tata supermarkets are not that big. Even More actually came from Trinethra, which many people in core Hyderabad will remember, especially around Dilsukhnagar and Santosh Nagar. That green Trinethra logo used to be everywhere.

Same with food brands. Karachi Bakery and Cream Stone started here and became huge. Paradise biryani , Concu etc. too

Now you see the same thing happening with coffee too , places like True Black, Roast CCX, etc. Star bucks is no match to ours. Will be exciting to see how Sabko, Blue tokai will do well here

Hyderabad has this pattern where local brands hold their own, and often win.

[Rajesh Sawhney 🇮🇳 @rajeshsawhney]

Unfortunately world will remember shitty “Galgotia” instead of our genuine national pride “Sarvam”.

But this is India for you!!

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

Who’s building this in/for India?

[Austen Allred @Austen]

By the way if you have kids in Texas they can enroll in the remote version of what is described in this post (GT School Anywhere) for free with the new TEFA vouchers.

Academic outcomes that crush any private school. For free.

Luckiest kids in the world.

https://t.co/RQ7lknyJOt

[Prabhdeep Singh 🚑 @singhofstanplus]

If executed well, this will be a great opportunity for Indian to leapfrog on urban living. Again, it’s all about execution and that is a massive weakness of the current setup.

[Ashwini Vaishnaw @AshwiniVaishnaw]

Cabinet approves Urban Challenge Fund - ₹1 lakh Cr Central Assistance
🏙️ Translating to projects worth ₹4 lakh Cr

➡️ Major reform: shifting to market finance & inclusion of private sector
➡️ Coverage: All cities with 10L+ population, all capitals, major industrial hubs, Tier-II & Tier-III cities, Northeast & hilly states
➡️ Credit Repayment Guarantee Scheme: ₹5,000 Cr for Tier-II/III cities, Northeast & hilly states
➡️ Three verticals: Creative redevelopment of cities | Cities as growth hubs | Water & sanitation