Special Holiday Episode: Fireside Chat with Sunny Gurpreet Singh

Enjoy this exclusive Fireside Chat with Sunny Gurpreet Singh, Founder of Roundglass, moderated by Akhtar Badshah.

Sunny Gurpreet Singh is an entrepreneur and philanthropist based in Seattle, US. He is the founder of Roundglass, a global Wholistic Wellbeing organization established in 2014. Through his experience in the US healthcare system, Sunny realized the importance of a proactive wellness approach. Roundglass offers the Roundglass Living app, which provides technology-driven solutions, expert-led content, and access to renowned wellbeing coaches and mental health experts. It serves as a tool to assist people in making positive, long-term changes and enhancing their lives.

#EntrepreneurialJourney #StartupLife #InnovateAndElevate #BusinessMinds #FounderHustle #DreamersAndDoers #SuccessStories #EntrepreneurialSpirit #GlobalEntrepreneurs #LeadershipLegacy #StriveForSuccess #BoldEntrepreneurs #VisionaryLeadership #InnovationNation #LeadershipExcellence #FutureLeaders #EntrepreneurialMindset #entrepreneurs #founders

Brought to you by TiE Seattle
Hosts: Shirish Nadkarni and Gowri Shankar
Producers: Minee Verma and Eesha Jain
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@fromstartuptoexitpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello everybody. Welcome to episode 5 of our podcast from Startup to Exit. My name is Gauri Shankar. I co-host the show with my friend Shinesh Natkarni. Shinesh and I started the podcast in 2023. The support we have received from all of you has been incredible. Thank you very much. The podcast is a production of Tao Swallow. Thank you very much to Dong Tao Team. This is the most particular episode. We recorded live at the moment in December 2023. Sunny story and journey is common. Enjoy working out and comment out to coming to the good evening everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Madhuru set us on a path, Kashura has just taken us off as a rocket ship. And I I don't know from the number of times he called me for all sorts of things. I'm not an entrepreneur. Anyways, um all I was saying is that you know I I it's a great pleasure to serve on this board with some amazing people and a community that is truly just awesome. I'm just thrilled that we have such brilliant people in our mix and have had the good fortune to know and come to know Sunny Singh and his work. And he's been gracious with his time and come to my class and talk to my students. So I thought that it would just be a perfect way for us to end this year to hear from somebody who's had a very fascinating journey. So I'd love to invite uh Sunny Rupi Singh here. I'm not gonna do a bio intro because I'm gonna have a conversation and he's gonna share his journey with us. So please join me in welcoming uh Sunny Rupi Singh. First of all, thank you again for joining us and giving us your time. But I want to start off by you have a very fascinating story. Most of us have interesting stories, and there are some that actually you somehow landed up in Montana in a t-shirt in the middle of the winter. And tell us why why did you do that? There's a story behind it, which I'd love to do.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Um firstly, uh, I think um Altar and Ty, you're very lucky to have me today because after today I couldn't start charging for my speaking engagements. So uh don't please forget that. Um yeah, so it's it's been a fascinating journey. Um I came to the US in 87. I spent half my life in the US, half in India. Um, and the reason I ended up in the US was because some of you might know was uh on the uh nudging of uh an astrologer. I had no intent of I had graduated from IIT. I think I had by that time I was about to. And I never applied abroad, like a lot of people in my college do. And uh one day, as luck would have it, I ended up with an astrologer uh on the behest of my friend. Uh and he said, Sonny, I'm gonna take you to my astrology, we're gonna find out if you're gonna be a pop or a king. And you know, being a 22, 23-year-old lad, he said, Yeah, sure, whatever you want. And I spent the night at his place, and we got up in the morning, we were having breakfast with his family, and then he said, he remembered it, I had forgotten it. And so the astrologer, Jawam Bajit said, Sonny, um, so he read my horoscope and everything, and then after half an hour he looks up at me, and then he looks, he looked at my friend, then looks at me, and looks at my friend, and says, He's gonna leave you way behind. And that was my end of my friendship with uh with him, and he came from a very rich family. Um so I started applying, and and uh I was late applying, so I applied to a bunch of universities, Montana State gave me a full ride. And as you might not believe it, that I knew that Montana was somewhere in the north. I didn't look up the map, I didn't look at the weather, I landed up in Montana in March in my t-shirt. And uh at that time I was wearing a turban, so you can well I was a Joshila Sadhar. Um but I think the the takeaway is this that here I was planning to spend my life in India, but a curveball came and I landed up in the US. I landed on 10, and every day was a new day because I didn't plan anything. I was not, I have to do this, I have to get here. Um and that has been a story of my life. I've it's it's never been motivated with where I want to be. It's all been motivated with what I want to do. And so when the US thing came about, I ended up in the US, even my air ticket was a loan from a bank, from a loan officer whose sister whose daughter was my sister's best friend. They said he's good for the loan, give him the loan for the air ticket. And so here is a kid who could not afford uh an air ticket. I had maybe a dollar or so equivalent in my pocket, uh, came um uh came to the US. Uh I like to tell a small story I think you'll find very interesting. Um I landed up at uh uh JFK and my flight to um Bozeman Montana was from LaGuardia. And so I, you know, here I am, I'm just kind of I'm just soaking it all in because everything is new, right? And and I'm not a guy, I was not a very, very well-traveled guy. And so I went to pick up my luggage, and there was this Indian fella standing next to me, and and I started chatting with him, saying, Which hotel should I stay in? It's almost like eight, nine in the evening or seven, eight in the evening. And he said, You know what? Why don't you just sleep in my office? I said, Wow, what a guy. It's like my consumer's office, I can save my hotel money. And by the time the luggage came, he had disappeared. So that was that. I said, okay, and I slept at the airport. And I woke up in the morning and I went to the McDonald's in the airport, and I was hungry. I was hungry, and I ordered a whole bunch of stuff, and I apparently over-ordered my breakfast. And I was maybe 30, 40, 50 cents short. And I said, you know, I don't have enough money in my pocket, and you know, so why don't you take something off the menu of my of my order? And he says, Don't worry, welcome to America. So it's an interesting twist of faith that a fellow Indian sitting over there talking to me, saying, I'll help you, did not. But this white American who had nothing to do with me said, 50 cents is nothing, enjoy the food. Um, and so I said, you know, I'll be okay in this country. And that was my entry into the US, that was my entry into Montana.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

You are in Montana in a t-shirt. And you had an interesting journey. You spent time, you had to study. Talk a little bit about that, and then you kind of landed up in Seattle.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Uh Montana was interesting. Uh, you know, having come from a competitive college and then uh going to Montana State, which was not competitive, um, you know, grades were easy to come by. And so so grades were not a problem. And so I said, okay, let's enjoy Montana. And it's a beautiful place. Um, it's an absolute, it's God's country. And uh so to keep myself occupied and not get bored, I took a question classes, uh, two of them. I took uh fashion classes because all the women were there. No, but I but let me be let me clarify that a little bit. I always wanted to be a fashion designer. You don't believe me. Actually, when I was in the final year of my college, the two things I picked up. I started playing golf, and I picked up golf in my final year in college in Delhi. And I used to attend a couple of classes in the morning, go to Delhi Golf Club by 12 o'clock, have a sandwich, play around of 18, summer or winter didn't matter, um, have a little bit of a bite with a beer, and then I used to go home. And that was my ritual pretty much every day. And in one year I became a 14 handicapper. No, actually, in six to seven months I became a 14 handicapper. Nothing to brag about, but don't play golf with me now. You're gonna regret it because you're gonna be laughing all the way and have stomach aches. Um and the second thing was I wouldn't think so. I was thinking of becoming either a golf professional or a fashion designer. So I even applied to FIT in Parsons Schools of Design, and I said, you know, here are my designs. I think I've got talent and creativity, and if you give me a full scholarship, I'll come. FIT said you should stay back in India. And Parsons gave me 60% scholarship, but that's not enough. They gave me 100% scholarship and throw in the air ticket. That didn't happen either. So anyway, I took two fashion classes, two question classes, a couple of ski classes, uh, I took dance classes, you know, and uh, so I took all kinds of fun classes over there because everything was paid for. Um, but what I realized was for the first time I was by myself, and I understood the potential and the giving nature of people. I was probably the only guy in Montana with a turban. At that time I used to wear a turban. But people were just damn nice to me. You know, I made friends easy, I was I was outgoing. You know, there was a guy who I used to tutor, and and he knew that I was making money to send money home. In my scholarship, I was sending money home because my father, by the time he retired, had nothing in his bank. There was no life savings for him. Uh, he was living in homes that were offered by my relatives to stay free in. He had a scooter that was 15 years old. Um, and so there was no money in the family, it was spent in the education, etc. And so in my scholarship from semester one, I was sending money home. And he would give me all kinds of odd jobs. He'll find the second sonny, come and help me over here. Even if he didn't need the help, he gave me the help. I had friends who just, you know, uh, you know, very nice, very accommodating, helping in any wish they can. And so I realized that, you know, me being alone, a lot of people didn't have to do a lot of things for me, but they did. And there was, yes, being in Montana, there was discrimination too. You know, at one time, I'll tell you a story. I was uh a lab assistant, and some my computer or two had disappeared. And and the fingers were pointing at me saying the Sunny has stolen those computers. And guess who came and told me that? There was a white American woman who was part of my master's program, came and said, Sonny, they're talking like that about you, and I'm pissed. And I've I gave them peace of my mind. And of course, they couldn't find anything because nothing was done, etc. But I encountered that too, and there was discrimination, there was probably who's this guy, but that never kind of stuck to me. What stuck to me was the good people, my my focus of just working hard every day, sending money home, and just doing the right thing every day. I could have taken, I could have taken the victim syndrome and saying, oh my god, look, you know, the discrimination, you know, I look different and they look differently at me, and this guy's bad. I could have done all of that. But none of that stuck to me. It just made me work harder. It just made me fight harder. There was no job on campus I did not do. Everything from night clerk to setting up the stadium at the rodeo, cleaning up after basketball games, tutoring the basketball players, show snuffling three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning in the in the in the in the hard winters of Montana, you know, uh uh uh doing banquets, dishwashing, every job I did. And so what I focused on was what I needed to do, not what others thought I needed to do or what others thought of me, right? And that was a give that was the takeaway that I look back, in the many in the in the moment you don't think about those things. But when you reflect back, that's what came back to me as saying, oh, I behave that way. And the bad things never stuck to me, um, and the goodness I carried all along.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

So how did you land up in Seattle?

SPEAKER_02 13:08

So Seattle was um, so one uh and I think in my final summer over there, I did a couple of master's over three years, and I think the last summer I had gone to Alaska to work in a fishery. You know, I took every job. And so for two months I went to Alaska to Kodiak Island, worked in a fishery, uh, and then I had gone through Seattle either way. And I worked on a halibut boat too, but that's a that's another story. But it's quite an experience. I wouldn't wish that job on anybody. Um, you know, the only thing worse than that would be uh, you know, putting a roof up on your house. Those are the two are the worst jobs you can do. Uh backbreaking. We were to work about 18, 19 hours a day, day after day. We were sleeping and you know, cleaning your fish up. So I know how will you clean the fish up? So be careful what you eat. Um the um and then I liked Seattle. Somehow Seattle called me. I said, when I and if and I was gonna move up because I came from a bigger city, I had to move out of Montana sooner or later. I said, Seattle is gonna be my number one choice. So something in Seattle just called me. I liked Seattle. And uh and so I applied. Applied to a couple of jobs, maybe three, I think. And I had gone to India for the first time, I had got my green card, came back, there was a call on my voice uh voicemail, uh, and I went to my manager and said, Look, you know, I've been looking to leave, and this this call has come in, and I need a couple of days off to go interview. And uh I don't know for what reason, or maybe you'll know later when I share some more secrets about myself. He said, Sure, you're so nice, you're asking me to go. And and so I went in there, the guy offered me a job uh at the end of the interview saying, Sonny moved to Seattle, went back, told my manager, look, I'm gonna move to Seattle, how much time do you need? And I gave him all the time he needed, and I moved with my dog in tow on a U-Haul uh from Bozeman, Montana to Seattle.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

You just keep getting fired. So so talk about that. This is the dog.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Um yes, I've done three jobs in my life. Um before I started my first company, uh, one in Montana and then two in Seattle. And in the first job after the first year, my manager said, Look, you know, and you know one thing about me was I'm a very stubborn guy, stubborn in a way that if I believe in something, I will do it. If I believe in something, I'm gonna say it. And uh, and so long my conviction is strong, well, I'll hear everybody, I'll listen to everybody, but so long I make up, once I make up my mind, which I always do, then I do what I think is right. I and then I don't waver from that. And so I did butt heads here and there a little bit. Um and and so after one year my manager said, Look, Sonny, I'll give you a great recommendation, just leave, just go. Because the CIO has asked the CIO has asked me to do so. And I said, No, John, look, I'm gonna work really hard. You know, I'm a good guy, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna prove to you that I'm a great hire. And so that was after year one, but somehow I spent three years and then I left. Then I'm in a second job in uh Seattle, which was at Expeditus International. Uh, and uh after one year, the same thing happened, a year, year and a half, give or take. And you know, back comes and saying, Look, you know, Sunny, um, you should go. You know, uh, you're not doing well over here. I said, I'm scratching my head. I said, What's going on? You know, I'm not a dumb guy, might not be the smartest guy in the room, but I'm not a dumb guy. And so I started thinking, I said, first job after a year I'm out, second job after a year I'm out. And I said, you know, what should I do? And that's when it dawned upon me that I got to do something of my own, running at my own pace, doing things that I weigh the way I want to do it, uh, being my own boss, driving myself the way I want to drive. And so I started becoming thinking of becoming an entrepreneur. And at that point, uh, I was leaving expeditors, and a friend of mine called it from Microsoft because I was an expert in EDI, electronic commerce, and supply chain. That was my background. And I was a good student of that industry, and I knew the industry well. Um, what I didn't know well was programming, and and both the jobs, the programming jobs, and and this is by the way, gonna tickle you. I have a master's in computer science. And I've never written a single line of code in either of my company. That's why I think the products worked. And so, you know, so that's another topic of discussion of what I think of the education system of the world. Uh, your kids will love my my dialogue, you might not, but the kids will love it. You could send your kids to me, I think they will thrive. Um so so he called me, I said, Look, Mario, um, I can come, but I'm gonna leave after a year because I'm gonna start something of my own. Uh so I said, first I said no to him, and then I was thinking, I said, Mario, I'm gonna start something. He said, just come and just work with me, and when you have to leave, you leave. I said, okay, I'll commit one year to you, and that's okay. I'm I'm in. And I think if I'd give him more than a year, he would have fired me too. Um, and so so I was a corporate misfit, and I said, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur. And that's how my journey changed from um from being a corporate person um to being an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

So you there are many of many entrepreneurs here. Like in many cases, I'm not sure people have gone through your journey of starting something and sticking with it for over 20 years with the massive ups and downs that you had. Share a little bit about what you decided to do and how that journey unfolded.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah, so it's um I tell people I should have been dead by now. Um the you know, we went through a lot. Remember that I was a student of the industry, I was never a high-find manager, I never managed teams, I was never an executive. When I signed my company, I didn't even know VCs existed or how to raise money. I signed my company on my credit cards. I maxed my credit cards, have a little bit of consulting money on the side, and that's how I started the company. And and you know, I still, when I look back, I'm in awe of how how I did it. Um, because by all indications, I should have failed. I should have failed through and through. But the journey was not easy. The AirFX journey, my first uh startup, which was in Health Tech. Um the I'll I'll give you a story that I think will be revealing of uh what I went through. And it's a story that I think is a good takeaway for anybody who's an entrepreneur. See, being an entrepreneur, the also looks very glamorous. Oh my god, you're an entrepreneur, you have a startup and you're your own boss and you're doing this, you raise this kind of money. And it's like saying, Oh my god, you travel all over the world. But ask the people who travel over the world is boring after a while. Sit in a plane and just you know, take a 10-hour flight, 15-hour flight, 20-hour flight. It looks actually, oh my god, you travel all these countries. Um and so it was twelve 1999. I was about we started the company in 96. It was three to four years into the company, and um uh things started going bad. Uh, our main customer who was bringing in 70% of our revenue, our revenue at that time was about two million and change. And uh the they lost their funding, we lost their customer. So here we are, 100 plus people, how about maybe 25, 30, 40 people here, the rest in Eastern Europe. Uh revenue was two million and change. And suddenly we lose that customer, the product that we have, the lead, the sales leader that we had, the pipeline was not there that he was saying was there. So the pipeline collapsed, imploded. And here we are at the worst case, the worst situation or the worst time of it was in 1999, 2000. We had about two million in tax debt, 2.1 in change. We are stopped paying our taxes. My controller said it's like a free loan. You can pay the taxes anytime. So that was not correct. But the blame is still mine. We uh stopped playing a landlord, we stopped playing all our vendors. At worst, we also stopped paying the payroll for two years, two months. So four payrolls were missed. And so imagine a guy who's never run a business, has never raised money in his life, is a student of the industry, don't have doesn't have much business experience. Time I come to my credit card, so I have no idea like what to do. And here I am, I'm an internal optimist. My glass is always full. There's my belief is there's nothing I cannot do. That's my belief. I'm always saying I can make anything happen. I had that conviction and strength in me. I'm lying in bed looking at the ceiling and saying, why should I get up today? The IRS is calling me, my own people are asking, Sonny, when are you gonna have a paycheck? The vendors are calling, the landlord is calling, etc. I mean, I used to meet the IRS guy officer every month. He became a friend. And I used to tell him my stories of what we are doing and where what are we winning, what are the revenues coming in, what our expenses are. He was a baseball nut, he was he loved baseball. He was his desire was to go and watch a baseball game in every stadium in the US. At that time, he had done all but four or five, I think. And uh, and and I and and and the interesting thing is that he understood that I was being honest, I was being truthful. And if I was in India, I would have been buried because I wouldn't have seen that kind of leniency and tolerance that this guy showed me because he believed in me. Right? And when we paid off everything, we did not pay any penalties or interest on the old taxes. He said, pay your principal, and that's good enough at the at your own pace. It took us almost four or five years to pay the debt off. He paid everything off. You know, that time I had to do some soul searching. You know, twice in my life I've done true soul searching. Maybe I've known the third time. Well, let's not talk about that. The first time when I started at Effects, I said, I was looking, I was, I was, I was operating on my condo in Issiqua. I went to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and saying, if I lose a share of my back and I'm working, if you know what'll happen if I lose a share of my back? He says, and I, you know, uh, I'll go to McDonald's, get a job, my friends come in, they ask for, you know, Sunny, you know, they order some burgers. Will I have any problem with that? I said, if I lose a share of my back, McDonald's will give me a job, and I have no problem serving burgers to my friend. No problems. I said, okay, start the company. This is the second time I went. I said, we have three options. We can either shut the company down. My friends' family are saying, Sonny, shut the company down, go to Microsoft, you'll get a job, this and that. And or I could declare bankruptcy. Um, and I entertained that in terms of, hey, what if I met a bankruptcy attorney? You know, uh, I was um joking with um my good friend Vijay. And uh Vijay was just so I went uh to see him, I said, Vijay, you know, what do I do? He gave his words of wisdom. I started bawling in front of him. I started crying. I didn't know how to handle it. I excused myself, went to the bathroom, composed myself, came back. And you know, Vijay gave me a lot of good advice. Uh the bankruptcy attorney, of course, didn't. Um, the only good thing is she didn't charge me uh for that half an hour, one hour. And I was bawling in front of her too. So here I didn't know how to control myself. The emotions were so strong because I didn't know what to do. And the third option was to somehow plug along, move forward, plow through the tough times. And I and I asked myself, you know, what kind of road model do I want to be to my family and my colleagues to be to their family and friends? I said, if you have one more day to live, we have hope to survive tomorrow, then let's punt the decision of what to do with the company the next day. And as it would have it, day after day, we kept surviving. We made beautiful decisions. We bought things so cheap. You know, we'd look at every company going defunct, we'd buy computer equipment from them. We we we came together as a team, we had downsized to about 25 people, 10-11 here, the rest of Eastern Europe. We became very tight. We had the best parties, we had the worst office, but the best parties. You know, people will be there till 9-10 at night. You know, after work, we'll bring table tennis, we'll drink a little. It it and all and all of them stuck to the company except one person. And they were there till a few years ago. And in by 2005, we paid all our debts off. We played the IRS, we paid our employees, gave them stock options, we played our vendors, everything was paid off, and then we never looked back. And you know, it's to be in a situation where you have no idea if you're gonna survive the next day. You know, in today's, you know, like I was 32 when I started my company, my first company. Today, you know, you hear about mental fatigue people have. I didn't even know what stress was. It was not stress that I felt, it was a meditative state for a good few years, saying, I'm in a zone, I gotta make things happen, and people are depending on me, and I will not fail. I could have failed. But I will, and if I had failed, I would in debt for a very, very long time. So somehow I had the inner strength, and what I discovered at that point, what was my North Star and my value system? Who am I? Everybody kind of I think the crux of I will the takeaway from from this should be you should ask yourself, who am I? What defines you? Right? And and I always was like that, except that moment of adversity, the worst that you can encounter, brought the best out in me and said my nostril was being resilient and being persevering. I was the last one to eat, the last one to get paid if there was any money left. I always carried my people with me. I never left anybody behind. I took care of everybody. And that's what defined me. The integrity was never compromised. I never lied to my guys. I told them exactly how things were, except I became overcommunicated, right? And so that the worst time showed me who I truly was. And in the process, that became my foundation and my base and my platform upon which I built my life. I always had it, except that man that brought it out. And so I think the takeaway all of you should ask is who am I? Do you know your purpose? Do you have a purpose? Do you know what makes you take? And in the worst of times, will you hold true to that value system and not start? If you've got that, and if you're a patient person, there's nothing in life that you cannot achieve.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

All you need to do as individuals. So talk a little bit about that in terms of your understanding of the healthcare system, the challenges that were there, and the ha-ha moment that you had within that space.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Yeah, that's uh that's interesting. Um So there there are there are many things I don't believe in, and two of them are the education system of this world. Uh, I don't believe in it. I believe that it's an industrialized system of learning. Uh there's goodness in schools and college, don't get me wrong. And there's goodness in learning also, don't get me wrong. But for the I think that'll be my last invitation. Uh, you know, I'll just make an excuse, I start charging, they couldn't afford me. Um the um the uh so I don't believe in that, and the genesis of round loss was because of my disappointment and disenchantment with the healthcare system. Of course, I knew the US healthcare system very well because my first starter was that was in that area, and I kind of knew the system very, very well. How it works, how the business of healthcare works, etc. And I know the system in India also and in some other parts of the world. Um, we spend an auto four trillion dollars on our healthcare. And I would like to understand from this crowd how many of you proactively go to your doctor or invite your doctor for lunch once in a while. You don't. You go there because of necessity. It's like going to a bank for a loan when you don't have money. You go to the bank when you have money, right? And the system is totally ridiculous. Uh you have payers and providers at odds with each other, each squeezing the other one out. Um, and you have a you have the consumer who has no clue what the healthcare costs are. They have no clue. There's so much money to be made in healthcare, I'm telling you, if you want to start a venture, start in healthcare, you can't go wrong. If you're a patient, you give it 15 years, you'll be successful in healthcare. That's how screwed up the system is, all over the world. And trust me, it's not getting that better. It's just getting more complicated. Uh, I don't think my healthcare today is any better than 15 years ago. Yes, we have the best doctors, best science, best instruments, best machines, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But it's not getting any better. As a matter of fact, getting more convoluted and complex. So I had that point when I was doing AFX, I said, been there, done that. I was not going to do another startup. I had no intention of doing another company. But I said, if I do anything in life, and this was predating round glass, it has to be revolutionary, it has to be global, and it has to directly impact human beings, humanity. If it doesn't address those three conditions, I will not do anything else. You know, I can I can devote myself to the service of humanity, no problems. And because of my disenchantment of the healthcare system, came the genesis of round glass. I said, we have to show people how to live. Live through a foundation of holistic well-being. That should be the fundamental foundation. Make them future-proof for life. How do you deal with the issues that life throws at you through the practice of holistic well-being? And that was the genesis of round glass. And from there, a lot of other things came about. And round glass is not um, it's not a typical company. And we can talk more about that.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Yeah, so I actually wanted to talk about that. So you formed round glass in a very interesting way. And there's a message for all of us in that. So talk about round glass, the company with the round glass foundation, and what you are now doing with the India Center.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

So a few things, uh, addition about me. Um having done EdFX, and so I have to tell you something that I have never gotten up a single day in my life thinking about money. When I had nothing, when I had some, when I had plenty. I never have. Never have, still don't. In the future, I won't. Money has never interested me. What has always interested me, what am I going to do with my life? What do I want to do that fulfills me? Right? And my mom taught me one lesson, this one lesson I learned from my mom, and uh, we were sitting in India watching Durdashan news, and there was some guy, some businessman got killed in Ashoka hotel. And my mom was sitting, my dad was sitting, I was sitting, I think my sister was there too. And my mom looked at me and said, I think this is the only thing I remember as a word of advice. Says, Sunny, no matter what happens to you in life, never become like that. Don't become a bad person. Live from integrity. That somehow I listened to her but never registered. And then realized that I've always made that a hallmark of my life is live from integrity and live honestly and be authentic. But when Round Glass, you know, the whole idea of Ronglass was not a commercial endeavor that, oh, it is, you know, you know, we never raised money in the first company. Um, I put a lot of money into it, made a lot of wrong decisions. While EFX can write a book about how to be an entrepreneur, a successful one, Ronglass can write a book about what not to do when you do a startup. We made so many mistakes. Uh, you'll somehow think, Sunny, I think you're you you you lost your mind, you should just go retire and just uh meditate somewhere. But but the idea of Ronglass was a concept of a different kind of company. And so one was, of course, we are we have an app to show people how to live through holistic well-being, use your practices of meditation and food and well-being music, yoga and movement and breath works and all these practices that exist in holistic well-being, how you can combine them, customize and personalize them for you, because each individual is different, in order to deal with life issues like stress, stress in the workplace, anxiety, uh, difficult relationships, uh, difficult emotions, healthy habits, such stuff like that. And in the process, create a very strong foundation for you, right? And I believe that if you live a life of holistic well-being and you live the earlier you get into it, um, it in fact can crash the healthcare system, you'll have to pivot because you will not need the kind of the amount of doctors and medicines and kind of things you need. Most of the lifestyle diseases in our life are caused because of our lifestyle. Because we live such, we reap such. Um, and so there was the commercial part of round glass. But the other part was how do we give back to society? The way I look at round glass is we're doing God's work, enabling holistic well-being and democratizing holistic well-being for the world on one side. And on the giving side, we have some really big initiatives. My take is that every company in the world, because companies are best at solving problems, foundations are not. Right? I don't believe in the foundations model. Companies, if they don't solve a problem well, they will not survive. So they are good problem solvers if they're surviving. So every company should take ownership of a social issue or a part of a social issue or more than one social issue and take ownership of it and saying we're going to solve it in the next 20 years. They can partner with other companies. If that was a mindset taken by every company, saying, instead of just writing a check, we'll own the problem. We can work with foundations, we can work with any number of people, but we'll own the problem. I can show in 20 years from now there won't be much problems to solve. If every company thought like that, instead of writing checks. So we said Ranglass is going to do that. So we took four big initiatives. Um, there's a fifth one in the works. That's the first three are in India. And I consider myself to have two homes, US and India. I lived half my life in either country. And India first is Ranglass sustained. India is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. So we are chronicling the biodiversity of India, the wildlife, habitat, uh, human impact stories, etc. And we're going to go to other areas, and in three to four short years, we are winning international awards. At Jackson Wild, we were the best Indian entry, with the only selected India entry, and we won the global award. And BBC and NetGeo are coming to us and saying, can you be our technical partners? So tell us what to shoot where and how in India. And so we want Indians to become proud of the biodiversity. 1.4 plus billion people saying our country is great in terms of biodiversity, and invoke that pride in them. If you think of wildlife today, you go to Africa, you don't go to India. And India has one of the best wildlife and habitats in the world. Except we don't focus on it, we don't promote it, we don't make it sexy enough, we don't evangelize it, right? And so the intent is to make it an educative, entertaining way for people, kids, tourists, Indians to go and understand as well as live it and experience it. The second thing we're doing is in sports. We have an ISL club called Punjab FC. Uh we won the I League. We got promoted in the ISL, which is a top league for football called soccer over here. Uh, we're doing very well in ISL. We are lost. Um don't laugh, don't bet against me. We've got in three years, we're going to win the ISL. Um, and but we have an academy. What more important is the Ronga Sports, which is an academy for football with field hockey and tennis as a salary sports. Our intent with football is to take India to the World Cup by 38, 2038. The decision I made in the Russia World Cup. And so to do that, what do we do? We have our grassroots programs which feeds the development centers. They're all in Punjab. Then the development centers, along with scouting all over India, freeze up elite academy, which is under 19, 17, 15, 13, 11. Last year we'd only had 18, 15, 13. Now we have this year we have made them five because that's how the categorization is working. All three of them were number one in India. Our youth academy was number one in India under 18, 15, and 13 in less than three years. That means we're doing something right. We have a great technical program, great technical staff, great performance team. It's fully residential, fully paid up. We have no chefs, our own nutritionists, our own well-being program, our own residential, our own school, the whole line yards. The kids come there and they think they've come to a seven-star resort. The kids who are orphans, the kids who are parents are daily wage workers. These are the kind of kids we are getting. Those are the kinds of kids we want because these are the kids who will be very hungry to achieve and rise to the top. That's a football program. Our hockey and tennis program imitates that program. We'll have the professionals, we'll have the elite youth, we'll have development centers, grassroots centers. The elite is Pan India, Development Grassroots Punjabi. We want to show India how to develop a complete sports infrastructure in a state. We'll have 25 development academies in football and hockey band of next year. So think about that. In tennis, the number one woman tennis player under 16 number one, under 40 number one, our former academy in two years. So that's the sports side of things. The third is foundation, where we are working in as a pilot state is Punjab. We're going to make all the 12,000 villages eco-sustainable. So we have immersive learning programs, sports programs. We're going to plant a billion trees in Punjab by 2035, which is 20 years. We're doing waste management, and now we started regenerative farming because with regenerative farming we can restore the soil, the water, and the air. There'll be no stubble burning with regional farming. There's no seeds required, there's no manure, artificial inorganic manure required, etc. So we're doing that. Those are three big initiatives in India. Then we said we have to be, the India diaspora has to be involved in the local issues. So we funded the Seattle University India Center. And the intent over there is to build a bridge between the state of Washington and India. So take the business leaders, academic leaders, government leaders, and connect them to the counterparts in India and vice versa. And that's gone off to a rocking start. I think you'll see a lot coming from there. Everything from the State Department is involved, the ambassadors are involved, they love it. We have an appetite to build to create one more, so we're going to be opening up one more India Center. I'm in conversations with that, with another state, another university. And the last one that we just started is because I live in the district of Bellevue, is to help the foundations in Bellevue. We're working with BAM, which is the art museum, and uh Lifespring, which feeds hungry kids in Bellevue. Can you believe it? There are kids who are who go hungry in the city of Bellevue. Four and a half thousand of them, and some of them are homeless. So we said we'll fix that, and we're working with the police. We're going to work with the three areas and have the India diaspora and friends get involved in local issue. So that's the extent of the game. Sorry it took a lot of time, but I think it's important that that if somebody can dream of a few things like this, each of one, each one of you can do so too. And my only request to all of you is, you know, I'll I'll take a few seconds, but if you own 90% of the pie, if you have a company and you own 90% of the market shape, so you feel pretty good, right? You will you will say, Yeah, 90% is pretty good, I'll take it. So if you take 90% of your time and you devote it to yourself, and you only take 10% and devote it to the happiness of somebody else, I think that's a fair ask. You can take 10% of your time, you eventually 10% of your money, to make somebody who is not as happy or privileged as you to make them happy and give them something so that they can be uplifted in life. And that's what I think all of you and all of us should be doing.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

That's a great way for us to end. Thank you very much, Sunny. Great advice. I think what is actually very fascinating is this whole notion of picking a few important issues and then going deep. And each one of us did uh both in this country and from where we come from in India, I think we can actually see an enormous amount of change and the world will become truly a much better place.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

So Akhtar and uh and Tai, thank you for inviting me and and and patiently listening to me. So I really appreciate that. And to all the entrepreneurs out there, if you if you ever want to have a goof to goof with me, I'm I'll be happy to to share my experience and and provide my opinions or my my feedback or have conversations with me. You can reach me at sunny at roundglass.com. I'll be happy to do so.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

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