It started with a meniscus tear. A year ago, my goal was modest: get back to my morning walks. Rehab turned into training. Training turned into a question I had not expected to ask at 62 — could I finish a triathlon?

Nine months later, I did. Along the way, I learned to swim, got on a bicycle, and accepted that running 5 kms was no longer as easy as it once was. Progress rarely comes from one big breakthrough. It comes from showing up every day — especially on the days you don’t want to.

Building a company is much the same. You begin with ambition, but what carries you forward is the work that follows — the repetition, the setbacks, the small improvements, and the discipline to return the next day and do it again.

The hardest part isn’t starting. It’s showing up again tomorrow.

To every founder in the long, quiet middle of building: keep showing up.

Read the full story here.

- Vani Kola

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QUICK HITS

Samosa Party is turning a one-day gesture into a year-long commitment, taking the spirit of World Samosa Day beyond a single celebration to bring the joy of a shared plate to children and communities who may not otherwise have access to it. Support the initiative here.

LXME founder Priti Rathi Gupta speaks on why “the financial system is designed to keep women poor” — a gap that is structural rather than behavioural, and will not close by telling women to save more. Watch the conversation here.

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WHAT WE’RE THINKING READING & WATCHING

THINKING

In September 2027, Justice B.V. Nagarathna will become India’s first woman Chief Justice — 77 years after the Supreme Court was founded. Her tenure will last 36 days. It is tempting to read that as a footnote, and harder to sit with what preceded it: a practice begun in 1987, the Karnataka High Court bench in 2008, and four decades of judgments delivered long before anyone was watching for a first. Firsts are rarely the start of a story. They are what showing up looks like forty years in.

Read more

READING

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running — Haruki Murakami. He has run a marathon almost every year since 1982, and this is his account not of why he started but of why he keeps returning. It is mostly about the days in between: the boring ones, the painful ones, the ones nobody sees. He runs them anyway. Essential reading for anyone in the long, quiet middle of building something.

WATCHING

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw was turned away by every brewery in the 1970s because she was a woman, and started her own venture in 1978 with her training in fermentation and very little capital. Biocon was not built in that moment, but in the decades that followed — enzymes, insulin, biosimilars, one problem at a time. She is candid about the persistence it took, the people who eventually backed her, and the ambition she believes India’s entrepreneurs still need. A must-watch on what five decades of showing up can build.

Watch Kalaari Changemakers

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ONE ASK

The Kalaari Fellowship is a 2-year, full-time, immersive apprenticeship-style program and a unique opportunity to break into the venture ecosystem. It is for self-driven individuals who have strong insights into frontier technologies and embrace a problem-solving mindset. If you know someone who would benefit from this programme, please share it with them. Applications close on 27 September 2026.

For programme details and the application form, click here.

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