Asim Amin

Founder & CEO at Plumm | Empowering Minds & Building Thriving Workplaces | Passionate Mental Health Advocate

I’m the Founder & CEO of Plumm, the all-in-one HR platform with mental health at its core.

HR today is fragmented, companies juggle payroll, performance, compliance, and wellbeing across too many tools. Plumm brings it all into one platform, helping organisations cut costs, save time, and look after their people. Because no HR strategy is complete without mental health.

Plumm started as a mental health solution and has grown into a full-service HR platform, used by companies worldwide. Our mission is clear: make workplaces more productive, inclusive, and human.

I’m also the host of the Immigrants Building Companies Podcast, where I speak with immigrant entrepreneurs who’ve built companies against the odds, sharing lessons on resilience, growth, and leadership.

If you’d like to:
🚀 Book a demo with Plumm: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0mJb040 
🎙️ Discuss podcasts, speaking, or media features: taslynn@heyplumm.com

International Trade Program

Poor mental health costs UK employers up to £56 billion a year.

And yet, when employers invest even just £1 in preventative employee wellbeing, they see an average return of £5.30.

We’ve seen case after case, that happier employees make for a healthier business.

It’s why we developed Plumm: a seamless all-in-one, evidence-backed mental wellbeing solution for employers and their teams.

We support your team through our global and diverse pool over 200 accredited therapists and coaches, who can cater to their individual needs, preferences, and circumstances, regardless of where they are in their wellbeing journey.

Whether they can benefit from group learning, need professional help and personalised 1:1 therapy or coaching, or self-help resources, we've got it covered.

Ready to level up your team's wellbeing? 👉 https://www.plummhealth.com/request-demo

You’ll spend £4 a day on a latte without blinking.
But £27 a month for your health?
“Too expensive.”

That’s roughly what a WHOOP costs.
And no, not everyone needs a WHOOP.
It could just as easily be a gym membership. Plenty in the UK cost £20–£30 a month.

The number isn’t really the point.
It’s where the line gets drawn.

Some spending feels automatic.
Other spending gets questioned, even when it’s about your own health, energy, and how you want to feel day to day.

That says a lot about priorities.

Because health isn’t a one-off decision.
You don’t choose it once.
You choose it in small ways, over and over again.

Those choices compound.

And one day you realise how you’ve been feeling for a while now
more tired, less resilient, lower energy
or the opposite.

That’s why what you prioritise today matters more than it seems 👌🏼

PS: I still love coffee, but I’d rather have it home ;)

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Founder & CEO at Plumm | Speaker | Advisor

Let’s be honest.
 
Most of us f*cked up over the holidays.
 
Too much food.
Too much sugar.
Too much wine.
 
And now everyone’s pretending they “reset” on Jan 1.
BS.
Here’s what actually happens:
You enjoy yourself.
Then you feel guilty.
Then you convince yourself you’re already behind.
You’re not behind.
You’re human.
 
What’s messed up isn’t December.
It’s the idea that one month can “ruin” you.
Your body didn’t suddenly forget how to function.
Your discipline didn’t disappear.
Your year isn’t over because you ate more than planned.
 
The real problem?
People think progress has to be perfect.
It doesn’t.
Balance beats punishment.
Every time.
 
You don’t need extremes.
You don’t need to suffer.
You don’t need a diet built around how you look.
You need habits built around how you feel.
 
Energy > aesthetics.
Focus > abs.
Consistency > guilt.
 
So no, you didn’t fail January.
And no, you don’t need to “start again” next Monday.
You start today.
You eat better because it helps you think.
You move because it gives you energy.
You sleep because you perform better.
That’s it.
 
Just show up.
Again.
And again.
That’s how it actually works.
 
Happy 2026 everyone ✌🏼

Perfection is how average founders justify being slow.

I’ve done it.
Watched others do it.
Same outcome every time.

Early on, I hid behind “not ready yet”.
What I really meant was: “I don’t want the market to tell me I’m wrong.”
So I delayed.
Refined.
Overthought.
And nothing happened.

In the first 3–5 years, your product isn’t supposed to be good.
It’s supposed to move.
Because movement creates:
- feedback
- revenue
- momentum
Perfection creates meetings.

I’ve launched things that made me cringe.
They still taught me more in a week than months of planning ever did.
Most features I was obsessed with? Nobody cared.
The market told me that. Fast.

And the reality is, most founders fail because they wait until they feel confident.
Confidence doesn’t come before action.
It comes after exposure.

If you’re still polishing:
You’re not protecting quality.
You’re protecting ego.
Speed doesn’t mean sloppy.
It means honest.
And honesty compounds faster than perfection ever will.

DO NOT hire people who are good on paper.

The strongest hires I’ve seen recently weren’t the neatest on paper anyway.
A few gaps.
Not every box ticked.
Some rough edges.

But when things shifted, they didn’t stall.
That’s what stood out.
Work is changing faster than job descriptions can keep up.
By the end of this decade, around 39% of the skills people use today won’t be relevant anymore.
Most roles won’t disappear.
They’ll mutate.
Which makes “tool knowledge” a short-lived advantage.

In practice, I’ve learned to watch for different signals:
Who asks better questions once the brief gets fuzzy.
Who notices second-order problems, not just the task in front of them.
Who can disagree without becoming defensive.
Who recovers quickly after being wrong.

Those things don’t show up on a CV.
And they matter more when pressure is real.

Nearly 6 in 10 people will need reskilling in the coming years.
Yet the global workforce is still expected to grow.
So the edge isn’t experience alone.
It’s adaptability over time.

You can train systems.
Rewrite processes.
Roll out new tools.
What’s harder to build is judgement.
Curiosity under uncertainty.
The ability to stay useful when the rules change.

As automation takes care of the predictable, these qualities surface.
Not because they’re “soft skills”
But because they’re the difference between keeping up
and actually moving forward.

BREAKING 🚨 Europe just made its boldest move for founders in decades.

Yesterday at Davos, Ursula von der Leyen announced EU–INC.
A single, truly European company structure.
This matters. A lot.
For years, Europe hasn’t lacked talent, it’s lacked simplicity.
27 countries.
27 rulebooks.
Different equity rules.
Different compliance hoops.

So founders did the rational thing.
They incorporated elsewhere.
(Usually Delaware)

EU–INC changes the equation.
One corporate framework across the EU.
Incorporate online in 48 hours.
No mandatory notaries.
One legal entity, valid in all 27 countries.
Taxes and labour laws stay national.

The corporate layer goes European. That distinction is critical.
Because Europe’s biggest problem was never ambition. It was friction.

Scaling shouldn’t mean:
– Setting up new entities per country
– Reworking equity structures
– Burning seed capital on legal fees

If executed properly, EU–INC could unlock:
– Faster company creation
– Founder-friendly equity
– Easier cross-border scaling
– A real Single Market, not a theoretical one

Most importantly?
This is the first time Europe has clearly chosen builders over bureaucracy.
Execution will be everything.
Speed will matter.
Consistency will matter.
But the signal is loud and clear: Europe is finally building for founders 🇪🇺🚀

I didn’t wake up one day and decide to rethink health.
Life did it for me.

What surprised me wasn’t the moment itself.
It was what changed afterwards.

How quickly your definition of “healthy” shifts when it’s no longer abstract.
When it’s not about performance, or numbers, or discipline.
You start paying attention to different things.
How stress shows up in your body.
How sleep affects your mood, not just your energy.
How recovery isn’t optional if you want consistency.

Longevity stops being about adding years.
It becomes about protecting capacity.

The ability to think clearly under pressure.
To regulate stress instead of living in it.
To train, work, and live without constantly borrowing from tomorrow.

I’m reading Outlive at the moment.
What resonates most isn’t the science, it’s the reminder that decline accumulates through small decisions repeated daily.
Ignoring signals.
Normalising fatigue.
Treating rest as a reward instead of a requirement.

Perspective changes how you move through life.
You become less reactive.
More intentional.

Longevity, in that sense, isn’t about fear.
It’s about responsibility.
And once life forces that lesson,
you don’t approach health the same way again.

STOP focusing on your personal brand.

(I know, coming from someone who posts 5x week lol)
But hear me out.

A lot of people start building their personal brands, and then visibility comes:
the likes, the comments, the impressions, DMs
you somehow get momentum

but something doesn’t quite add up..
All those vanity numbers..all the likes, all the followers..
CAN’T fix a sh*t product
(or service)

The issue is that attention doesn’t give you breathing room. It does the opposite.
Once people are watching, they’re not just reacting to your ideas. They’re experiencing everything. The product. The service. The follow-up. The bits you were hoping to fix later.

If that experience is weak, people don’t argue about it. 
They just disappear.

I’ve seen people with impressive visibility struggle to keep customers.
I’ve also seen founders with no presence at all build businesses people stick with because the thing actually does what it says.

A personal brand doesn’t create trust. 
It spends it.

Does that mean you should not work on your personal brand? Absolutely not, you should.
But that shouldn’t be your priority.

Building an amazing product should be.
Building a fantastic service your customers can’t stop talking about should be.

Once you have that, then you can build your personal brand on top.
Just get your priorities straight.

And btw, sometimes the best move is to shut up, build properly, and let people talk later 👋🏻

If your best people are leaving..
it’s probably NOT about MONEY.

It’s about growth.
Companies that invest seriously in L&D see up to 50% higher retention.
Yet most still treat learning as a perk - or worse, a cost.

That’s not a people problem.
That’s a leadership one.

High performers don’t quit bad jobs, they quit stagnation.
When people stop learning, they don’t argue.
They don’t disengage loudly.
They don’t ask for more.
They just start planning their exit.

The data is blunt:
- 94% would stay longer with better development
- Growth opportunities now outrank pay for many senior performers
- Teams with weak learning cultures lose their best talent first

And yet we keep trying to fix retention with:
Bonuses.
Perks.
Offsites.

None of those solve stagnation.
Real L&D is whether someone leaves a year later with better judgment, broader scope, and more confidence than when they arrived.
If the answer is no, they’ll leave.
Eventually.

That’s why we don’t treat L&D as HR hygiene.
We treat it as leadership responsibility.
Because people don’t stay loyal to companies.
They stay loyal to growth.

“Go to HR.”

People hear it the same way they heard “go to the headteacher’s office” at school.
Somewhere you end up once things have already gone wrong.

That perception didn’t come out of nowhere.

HR usually gets involved after weeks of small things being left unsaid. 
Feedback is usually avoided. 
And, expectations are left vague. 
Managers hoping issues fix themselves. 
By the time HR shows up, there’s history, emotion, and momentum.

From the outside, HR looks like enforcement.
Inside, HR is dealing with accumulated silence.

Most problems don’t start as formal issues. 
They start as ordinary moments that weren’t handled early, when the cost was low.

When managers treat HR as the place difficult conversations go, people learn to associate HR with punishment instead of support.

If you want HR to feel human, managers have to do the human work first.

Clear expectations early. 
Feedback while there’s still room to adjust. Intervention before frustration hardens.

HR isn’t the headteacher’s office.
It just inherits what wasn’t handled sooner.

2026 HR trends you need to know:

1. HR will end up owning problems no one else wants
Because they sit between leadership intent and lived reality.

2. AI will finally expose how little most companies understand their own workforce
HR has been saying this quietly for years.

3. “Hiring shortages” will keep being blamed on the market
When the issue is internal talent stuck in the wrong places.

4. Job frameworks will keep getting rewritten
Work will keep changing faster.

5. Hybrid work will stay unresolved
Because many leaders still don’t know what good work looks like.

6. Burnout won’t be treated as a crisis
Until it hits delivery timelines.

7. As usual, HR will be looped in late,
then blamed early.

HR isn’t late. 
It’s just been convenient to ignore.

There’s one kind of decision
I never got used to making.

It wasn’t about direction or priorities.
It was about people, and knowing that whatever I chose would follow them home.

Later, it gets called a pivot. 
In the moment, it felt like sitting across from someone and realising you were about to change something you couldn’t take back.

I’ve been laid off before. 
I remember the shock, the quiet afterwards, the way it made everything outside of work feel suddenly uncertain.

I’ve also had to be the one delivering that news.
What stays with me isn’t what I said.
It’s what I saw.
The pause before someone replied.
The way they nodded, even when it hurt.
How often they asked about everyone else instead of themselves.

There wasn’t anger.
There was care.

People checking in on teammates.
Worrying about how the team would manage.
Trying to make sense of what came next.

That kind of response doesn’t come from policies or values written on a wall.
It comes from how people have been treated all along.

You don’t really understand leadership when things are moving fast and going well.
You understand it when something breaks and there is nowhere to hide.

We talk a lot about growth.
But responsibility shows up differently.
It sits with you long after the meeting ends.
Long after the decision is made.

Those moments are uncomfortable, and they should be.
Because once the decision is made, there’s nowhere else for it to land but on you.
You don’t get to soften it with language or hide behind process.
All you can do is stand in it, be clear, be honest, and make sure the people affected are treated with as much care as possible.
Not because it looks good.
Because you owe them that.

If things get hard → raise.
If growth slows → raise.
If you’re unsure → raise.

There’s a weird default in startups…
Everyone’s obsessed with raising.
But no one really stops to ask the boring question:

What exactly are we trying to buy with this money?

Not the pitch-deck version.
The one you’re honest about when it’s just you and the numbers.

Some of the best decisions I’ve made at Plumm didn’t happen after a round.
They happened when there was little (sometimes VERY little) money in the bank.
Because that’s when you’re forced to think differently.
You get creative.
You stop hiding behind “we’ll fix it after the raise”.
You really ask: what actually moves the needle?

Scarcity sharpens you.
It forces out-of-the-box thinking.
It makes you ruthless about priorities.
Sales matters more.
Focus matters more.
Every spend suddenly has to earn its place.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve been sold this fundraiser lifestyle.
The press.
The LinkedIn posts.
The idea that raising equals success.

But money isn’t success.
It’s just fuel.
And fuel on a bad engine doesn’t fix the engine.

There were moments where raising felt like the obvious next step.
And then we realised it wasn’t.
The better question became:
How do we push revenue?
How do we sell better?
What can we do without more capital?

Raising can make sense, I’m not anti-fundraising, but raising by default is a trap.
And sometimes, having less is exactly what makes you a better founder.
Because when there’s no safety net, your instincts show up properly.

You can’t make an A-player out of a B-player.

I know people hate hearing that.
I used to, too.

For a long time, I thought the right coaching, enough time, or “the right environment” would change people. It doesn’t. Not in the way founders hope it will.

I’ve tried. 
More than once. 
And every time, it cost the business.

Ash didn’t step up because he was promoted. 
He was promoted because he was already acting like it mattered to him personally.

No one had to chase him. 
No one had to spell things out twice. 
No one had to convince him to care.

He already did.
That’s the difference.
Some people feel ownership naturally. 
Others wait to be told what to do, how to do it, and when it’s “enough.”

You can train skills. 
You can’t train that internal bar.

At some point, I stopped trying to turn the wrong people into the right ones. And started backing the people who were already wired differently.

Everything got easier after that. 
Decisions. 
Trust. 
Progress.

Ash is a good example of this.
He is THAT person who takes responsibility even when no one is watching.
He cares.

If this makes you uncomfortable, good. 
It should.

PS: Choose carefully. 
And stop lying to yourself about potential.

The worst way to start a business:

	1.	Decide you want to be a founder before knowing what you want to build (because you like the “lifestyle”..)
	2.	Reverse-engineer a product that sounds good to investors, not customers
	3.	Build an MVP to justify a deck, not to solve a problem
	4.	Avoid talking to users because “we already know the market”
	5.	Call early confusion “vision”
	6.	Ship features no one asked for because they look impressive in demos
	7.	Measure success by meetings booked, not problems solved
	8.	Sell discounts as “traction”
	9.	Hire sales to compensate for unclear value
	10.	Blame sales when customers don’t convert
	11.	Add more features instead of fixing the core problem
	12.	Call lack of focus “moving fast”
	13.	Run internal meetings about growth instead of external conversations with users
	14.	Burn cash to protect the narrative
	15.	Pivot quietly, rebrand loudly 
	16.	Tell the team profitability comes after scale
	17.	Run out of time, not ideas
	18.	Buy PR articles to boost you ego

Remember: Build something people would miss if it disappeared.

Everyone wants the quick win.
The overnight success.
The shortcut.
The “one good idea”.
What they don’t want is the part before it.

It took me 10 businesses
and 27 years
to get here.

Because that’s how long it took to actually understand what works.
Most of those businesses didn’t fail, they just… faded.
Wrong timing.
Thin margins.
People problems.
Ideas that sounded good but didn’t survive reality.

Each one taught me something small and painfully specific.
How fragile cash really is.
How quickly momentum dies.
How often “almost ready” is just fear in disguise.

There was no big moment where it all clicked, just fewer mistakes over time.
The Plumm people see now isn’t the result of a breakthrough, it’s the result of repetition, and the sum of all the hard lessons learnt in those 27 years.

Everyone wants the result.
Very few want the years it takes to recognise one.
That gap is where most people disappear.

We all say we hate talking about money.
What we really hate is being exposed.

Because money has a way of cutting through the BS.

The biggest mistake I see some founders make is stepping away from numbers too early.

Because staying close to revenue forces uncomfortable conversations.

Sales conversations.
Pricing conversations.
Reality conversations.

Top line tells you if anyone actually wants what you’re building.
Bottom line tells you whether the way you’re building it is sustainable.

Ignore either, and you start lying to yourself.

I’ve seen founders obsess over growth while margins slowly collapse.

I’ve seen “strong pipelines” with no cash to show for it.

By the time they re-engage with the numbers, the options are already limited.

Spreadsheets aren’t finance work. They’re where the truth shows up first.

If you know your numbers, you feel in control.
If you don’t, you call it stress.

That’s the difference.

“Is there still a future in HR?”

That question keeps coming up because a lot of HR work is disappearing in plain sight.

AI is already handling the volume work.
Questions. Admin. Scheduling. Screening.
The things that kept teams busy and roles full.

That part isn’t coming back.

But much of that work was never the value.

For years, HR became the place unfinished thinking was sent.
Vague roles. Avoided conversations. Poor decisions dressed up as process.

AI exposes that.

Because once the admin goes, what’s left is judgement.
And judgement is harder work.

The future of HR belongs to people who can design work that still makes sense as organisations change.
Intervene early, before silence turns into resentment.
Support leaders when there is no policy to hide behind.
Read patterns humans feel long before data shows them.

AI can answer questions.
It can’t rebuild trust.
It can’t decide what “fair” looks like in a messy situation.
It can’t carry the weight of a hard call.

Teams using tools like Plumm are already shifting this way.
Less firefighting.
More thinking.

So yes, there is a future in HR.

But it belongs to those willing to step away from owning process
and into helping organisations make better decisions about work.

Cognitive decline starts earlier than what you think 
(and if you are 30+, you should be reading this..)

Yep, the decline starts in your early 30s..
way earlier than you expected, right?

And interesting enough, the other day I was reading how some studies put the difference between people who actively challenge their brains and those who don’t at 2–3 years of memory decline.
In some cases, closer to a decade…

So, I was like “Hold on a minute.. I need to do something about it..”

So I’ve been trying to go back to basics lately.
And yesterday, instead of doing anything particularly “CEO-productive”,
I did a puzzle.
No phone nearby.
No background noise.

What surprised me wasn’t that it was calming.
It was how unfamiliar it felt to concentrate like that.
Holding pieces in my head.
Remembering what didn’t fit.
Staying with the problem instead of jumping to something else.
That kind of effort used to be normal.
Now it’s rare.

The data on brain longevity is pretty consistent on one thing:
it’s not about consuming more information.
It’s about effortful thinking.
Puzzles, crosswords, problem-solving tasks - they show up again and again in studies on cognitive reserve.
They force the brain to slow down and work.

Kids do this instinctively.
Adults engineer it out of their lives.
Shortcuts.
Assistance.
Constant input.
The brain adapts.

I’m not claiming puzzles are a solution to anything.
But they’re a good reminder.
If brain health matters - not just now, but over time -
it’s worth paying attention to how often we actually ask our brains to do something hard.

Sometimes going back to basics isn’t regression.
It’s maintenance 👌🏼

PS: What was your weekend “brain activity”?

“Graduates should work for free.”

That’s not a hot take.
It’s exploiting the market while pretending it’s common sense.

What it really says is this:
We want output without accountability.
We want talent without doing the work of building it.

Entry-level roles were never meant to be efficient, they were meant to be formative.
You hired for raw potential.
You tolerated mistakes.
You invested time before expecting judgement.
That’s how people got good.

Now?
Many companies want graduates who arrive finished.
Tool-ready. Confident. Immediately useful.

And when they don’t?
The gap gets filled with unpaid labour.
“Trials.”
“Exposure.”
Open-ended internships with no real intent to hire.

The cost moves from the balance sheet to the individual.
Income disappears.
Waiting becomes the price of entry.
At that point, talent isn’t about ability, it’s about who can afford to be patient.

AI is making this worse.
The low-risk learning work is vanishing.
Junior roles are fewer.
The remaining ones demand judgement before judgement has time to exist.
Instead of redesigning how people grow, many companies opt out altogether.

Pay matters.
Not as a moral argument.
As a forcing function.
Pay creates obligation.
Clear expectations.
Feedback.
Actual management.

Without pay, there is no graduate role.
There is only unpaid labour with nicer language.

If you hire graduates, you’re making a choice.
Either you build capability, or you extract value and avoid responsibility.

We’ve always paid interns, because serious companies invest in the pipeline they depend on.

If you hire graduates, pay them.
That’s the line between developing people
and taking advantage of them.

He travelled the world building businesses. 
Then he came back to the UK.

James went to China at 18. 
1997. 
Six months to teach English.

He picked China because it felt hard. 
New system. 
New rules. 
Nothing familiar.
That choice shaped everything.

Working abroad showed him that business isn’t just about competence. 
It’s about knowing how things really work. 
What’s said. 
What isn’t.

In China, contracts were flexible. 
In the Philippines, age mattered more than ability. 
At 26, being young made selling harder.

He moved across Asia through a management programme. 
Different countries. Different businesses. 
Sometimes with a week’s notice.

Family brought him home.
He built a bike marketplace. 
It looked successful. 
Awards. Partners. Press.
But it didn’t work. 
Ethical supply couldn’t scale.

When his family needed him, he stepped in. 
He grew the recruitment business. 
88 people. Five countries. 
Sold in 2020.

He’s not an immigrant in the UK. 
But immigration shaped everything he built.

Today, he works with founders who are already carrying a lot. 
Helping them think more clearly. 
And make better decisions under pressure.

🎙️ Watch the full episode below. 
Link in the comment section.

Founder & VC Coach | Advisor | Speaker | Podcast Host

I’m Migi Chuang, a global traveler, multilingual entrepreneur, and founder of Togopool & Mobility Infotech.

Having lived across multiple countries, I’ve seen how innovation shapes industries. In 2021, I co-founded Togopool to tackle urban commuting challenges—reducing traffic and pollution through smart car and bike pooling.

With an MBA in International Business from the University of Melbourne, I specialize in scaling businesses, navigating competitive markets, and driving sustainable growth.

What I Do Best:

✔ Global Business Expansion – Identifying new market opportunities and scaling operations strategically.

✔ Growth & Strategy Execution – Turning insights into action to drive sustainable business success.

✔ Leadership & Operations – Building high-performance teams and optimizing processes for efficiency.

For me, success isn’t just about competition—it’s about innovation, adaptability, and execution. I believe in building businesses that are agile, future-ready, and impactful.

Let’s connect if you’re passionate about growth, strategy, and making a difference.

#BusinessGrowth #Leadership #StrategyExecution #Innovation #MarketExpansion

Migi Chuang

Boundaries do not protect your peace.

They protect your ability to execute.

For a long time, I thought boundaries were about self-care.
Something personal. Something optional.

They are not.

Boundaries are operating discipline.

When boundaries were unclear, execution suffered.

Decisions dragged.
Focus fractured.
Important work kept getting interrupted by urgent noise.

Not because people were careless.
Because the system allowed it.

Clear boundaries did not make me less accessible.
They made me more effective.

→ Time blocks protect thinking, not ego
→ Decision rights reduce back-and-forth, not collaboration
→ Saying no preserves execution, not relationships
→ Limits create focus, not distance

This is not about balance slogans.
It is about building systems that scale without burnout.

Strong leaders do not rely on motivation.
They rely on structure.

Boundaries tell the system how to work.
Without them, everything runs on willpower.

And willpower always runs out.

Where in your work are you depending on effort, when what you really need is a boundary?

Founder @ Mobility Infotech & Togopool | Business Growth Strategist | Entrepreneur

Being the calmest person in the room looks effortless from the outside.

Inside, it is work.

Leaders often absorb uncertainty so others can stay focused.

→ They hold unanswered questions.
→ They translate chaos into clarity.
→ They stay steady while decisions are still forming.

Teams feel the calm.
They rarely see the weight behind it.

Over time, this emotional labour adds up.

Not as burnout.
But as a constant low-level strain.

The kind that does not show up in metrics or performance reviews.

Staying composed is not the absence of pressure.
It is the management of it.

And while this steadiness is often praised, it is rarely supported.

Strong leadership is not about never feeling the chaos.
It is about carrying it long enough for the organisation to move forward.

But leaders need space too.
To process.
To be uncertain without consequence.

Calm is not free.
It is carried.

If you are the calmest person in the room,
Where do you put what you are holding?

As a foreign woman entrepreneur building a company in India,
I have had the privilege of observing Indian women up close.

Not from the outside.
But in everyday work, conversations, and decisions.

I see women who are highly educated.

Professionally capable. Deeply committed to their roles.

And at the same time, I see them carrying something else.

- Strong family expectations.
- Responsibility toward parents.
- Commitment as wives and mothers.
- A deep respect for tradition.

They do not treat these as separate lives.
They carry them together.

This balance is not easy.

Behind strong performance are invisible negotiations.
Behind resilience are trade-offs that rarely get acknowledged.
Behind ambition is a constant recalibration of duty and desire.

What stands out to me is not loud confidence.
It is quiet determination.

Showing up every day.
Doing the work.
Holding multiple roles without asking for special recognition.

As someone working across cultures, I do not just observe this strength.
I learn from it.

About discipline.
About endurance.
About leadership that does not need validation to exist.

To the women in India who carry both progress and tradition on their shoulders:

Your effort matters.
Your strength matters.
And your stories deserve to be seen, not simplified.

What have you learned by watching women lead in complex environments?

The hardest part of success is not reaching it.

It is living with it.

You hit the milestone.
The revenue number.
The title people respect.

From the outside, it looks like you have made it.

But inside, something feels unsettled.

The doubt does not disappear.
It just changes shape.

You start questioning whether the success is real.

Whether you earned it or just survived it.
Whether you are allowed to slow down now.

There is a strange gap between external validation and internal certainty.
And many people sit in it quietly, because admitting it feels ungrateful.

Success does not resolve identity.
It exposes the parts you postponed while chasing it.

The real work begins after the applause fades.
When you decide who you want to be without needing to prove anything.

If you have felt this after “making it,” you are not broken.

You are becoming more honest.

What shifted for you after success arrived?

90% of leadership advice assumes growth is calm.

Clear roles.
Time to reflect.
Systems that already exist.

High-growth offers none of that.

Decisions pile up before context does.
Teams expand faster than culture.
Processes lag behind ambition.

Advice like “delegate more” or “empower early” sounds right.
But without structure, it creates confusion.
Without clarity, it creates anxiety.

When leadership feels harder during growth, it is not a competence issue.
It is a systems gap.

High-growth leadership is less about inspiration.
More about stabilising movement while the organisation is still forming.

Sometimes the advice is not wrong.
It is just early.

If you are leading through rapid growth,
what part of leadership became unexpectedly difficult for you?

For a long time, India exported ingredients. 

Not brands.

Tea. 
Spices. 
Centuries of knowledge.

But the value, the storytelling, and the trust were built elsewhere.

What makes Bala Sarda’s journey with VAHDAM® India interesting is not just global scale. It is where he chose to intervene.

He did not start with marketing.
He started with the supply chain.

Instead of treating tea as a commodity, Vahdam treated freshness as the product.
Instead of accepting a fragmented system, it removed layers.
Instead of positioning India as a source, it positioned India as the brand.

That decision changed everything.

When you control quality, sourcing, and speed to consumer, you do not need to over-explain authenticity.

It is experienced.

What also stands out is the patience behind the build.

Years spent setting up systems, certifications, and infrastructure before chasing visibility.

And as trust grew, the brand expanded thoughtfully.

From tea into wellness.
From ingredients into outcomes.

Turmeric, adaptogens, herbs, not as trends, but as traditions translated responsibly for global consumers.

This is what “Made in India, for the world” looks like when done well.

Not exporting culture at scale.
But earning trust through discipline.

For founders building global brands from India, the lesson is simple but hard:

Brand is not a layer you add later.
It is embedded in how you source, build, and deliver.

When those foundations are strong, the story does not need to shout.

Which Indian brands do you think are building global trust the right way?

There is a quiet trade-off many women founders make.

Growth that looks impressive.

Or

Peace that feels sustainable.

Not every expansion is worth the cost it demands.
Not every milestone deserves your nervous system.

Choosing sustainability over aggressive growth is not a lack of ambition.
It is clarity.

It is building a business that supports your life, not replaces it.

Sometimes leadership is not about moving faster.
It is about moving in a way you can live with.

If you are choosing alignment over optics, you are not falling behind.
You are building something that can last.

What does sustainable growth look like for you right now?

There is a phase in every company where excitement starts to work against progress.

New ideas arrive faster than systems can absorb them.

Change feels productive.
Stability starts to feel slow.

This is where leadership discipline matters.

The hardest part is not coming up with something new.
It is choosing to stay with what already works.

Keeping the same priorities quarter after quarter.
Running the same reviews.
Holding the same standards, even when no one is watching.

This kind of leadership feels uneventful.

Nothing dramatic happens.
No big announcements.
No constant resets.

But underneath, something important is forming.

People stop guessing.
Decisions move faster.
Trust settles in.

Strong leaders understand that innovation without consistency creates noise.
And consistency without discipline does not last.

So they pace change.

→ They introduce new ideas carefully.
→ They protect the core relentlessly.
→ They resist the urge to keep proving themselves.

Being boring is not a lack of ambition.
It is a sign of confidence.

Leadership is not about always moving fast.
It is about knowing what must remain steady.

Where have you chosen consistency over novelty recently?

The real complexity in mobility shows up behind the scenes.

Taxi operations move minute to minute.
Shuttles depend on planned routes and fixed capacity.
Airport transfers rely on flight timings and buffer windows.

Carpooling is about matching people and building trust.
Rental businesses run on inventory, contracts, and availability.

From the outside, all of this looks like “mobility.”
Operationally, these are very different businesses.

When one platform is expected to support all of them, friction builds.

→ Drivers get confused.
→ Teams lean on manual fixes.
→ Support tickets become routine.

That is why many mobility companies are stepping away from generic systems.

Not to add more features.
But to use software designed for the model they actually run.

Clarity reduces friction.
And the right structure makes growth easier to manage.

Which mobility model do you see struggling most with one-size-fits-all tools?

Growth has a way of outgrowing the leader you were proud to be.

What got you here may not be what carries you forward.

Early on, leadership is personal.

→ You solve problems fast.
→ You stay close to every decision.
→ You feel useful because you are needed everywhere.

Then the team grows.

And slowly, that same closeness starts to cost the business.

People wait for your input.
Decisions move through you instead of the system.
Your presence becomes a bottleneck, not a strength.

This is where the conflict shows up.

The leader you enjoy being versus the leader the company now needs.

Stepping back feels unnatural.
Letting others decide feels risky.

Being less involved can feel like losing relevance.
But scaling asks for a different kind of leadership.

Less visibility.
More trust.
Fewer answers.
Better questions.

Outgrowing an old leadership identity is uncomfortable.
Even when it is necessary.

The shift is not about doing less.
It is about doing what only you can do now.

If growth feels harder than expected, it may not be the business.

It may be the version of leadership you are being asked to release.

What part of leadership have you had to unlearn as you scaled?

At some point, leadership asks you to disappoint people.

Early. 

That part is uncomfortable, especially if you value being liked or fair.

But when leaders delay hard conversations, they create confusion.
People fill in the gaps with assumptions.
Hope replaces clarity.

A “maybe” sounds like a “yes” when it is left hanging long enough.

Strong leaders do the opposite.

They say no before resentment builds.
They set limits before expectations harden.
They are clear while the relationship is still intact.

That is not harshness.
That is respect.

People deserve to know where they stand.
What they can plan for.
What they should not wait on.

Boundary-setting is not emotional distance.
It is giving others the information they need to make their own choices.

Disappointment handled early passes.
Disappointment handled late damages trust.

Leadership is not about protecting feelings in the moment.
It is about protecting clarity over time.

Where have you seen this play out in your own work?

There is a moment founders rarely notice in real time.

Things start slowing down.

Not dramatically.
Just enough to feel slightly heavier.

Meetings get longer.
Decisions get revisited.
People say, “Let’s check with you,” more often than before.

Nothing looks broken.
But momentum is gone.
This is usually when the founder has become the bottleneck.

Not by holding power.
By holding too much context.

You are across every detail.
You want to be helpful.
You want to keep standards high.

So you stay involved.

Over time, the team adapts.

They wait instead of deciding.
They escalate instead of owning.
They optimise for your availability, not outcomes.

Growth does not stop because people lack skill.
It stops because the system is organised around one person.

The fix is not disappearance.
It is redistribution.

Clear decision boundaries.
Shared context.
Permission to move without checking.

Leadership at scale is quieter.

Fewer answers.
Better questions.
More space for others to step forward.

If things feel slower than they should, it may not be the market or the team.

It may be where decisions are getting stuck.

Where do you still feel everything waiting on you?

Most micromanagement happens long before founders realise it.

It does not start with control.
It starts with involvement.

You step in to keep things moving.
You answer quickly because it is faster.
You stay close because the stakes feel high.

At first, it works.

Then the team grows.

And slowly, decisions begin to wait.
People look for your signal.
Execution routes through you, even when it does not need to.

From the outside, it still looks like leadership.
Inside the system, it creates drag.

This is rarely about trust or capability.

Most micromanagement shows up when structure lags behind scale.

When ownership is unclear.
When context is held by one person.
When the business cannot absorb small mistakes yet.

So personal oversight becomes the safety net.

Not because it scales.
Because it feels responsible.

The real shift is not about stepping back emotionally.
It is about stepping forward structurally.

Clear decision rights.
Shared context.
Systems that hold when the founder is not in the room.

Founders stop micromanaging when the business no longer depends on their constant presence to function.

Until then, micromanagement is less a leadership flaw
and more a signal that the organisation has outgrown its structure.

Where have you noticed things still waiting on you more than they should?

I recently read a story about women working across India’s electric vehicle ecosystem.

Not as a trend piece.
As lived reality.

Women who moved from informal, invisible work into formal roles with fixed hours, steady income, and technical responsibility.

→ Women assembling circuits.
→ Supervising battery lines.
→ Leading teams.
→ Shaping policy.

What struck me was not the “empowerment” framing.
It was how practical this shift is.

EV manufacturing is different from traditional auto work.
Less heavy machinery.

More electronics.
More precision.
More systems thinking.

That difference matters.

It creates space for women who were earlier excluded by safety concerns, rigid expectations, or outdated assumptions about who belongs on a factory floor.

Many of these women are not trying to prove a point.
They are building livelihoods.

Stable pay.
Defined hours.
Work that respects skill.

And when women are part of building the system, different questions get asked.

About safety.
About access.
About how technology fits into real lives, not ideal scenarios.

India’s EV transition is still early.

There are challenges ahead, infrastructure, safety, trust.

But the presence of more women in this ecosystem feels like one of its quiet strengths.

Not symbolic. Structural.

Who builds a system always shapes how it evolves.

And this shift is worth paying attention to.

More than half of founders report burnout impacting their ability to lead effectively, even when things seem stable.

That’s why the biggest risk for founders isn’t chaos.
It’s when everything appears to be going well.

In chaos, questions get asked loudly and often. 
Something is broken, obvious, needing attention.

But when metrics look steady, revenue isn’t falling, and the team seems aligned, invisible risks grow slowly:

→ Old problems get accepted as norms
→ Assumptions go unchallenged
→ Decisions stop being tested

In that quiet phase, you think you’re safe.

But stability without sharp clarity is the perfect environment for hidden inefficiencies, outdated strategies, and blind spots to take root.

Chaos forces prioritisation.
False stability gives you the illusion of progress while eroding focus.

Healthy leadership is about staying curious when things feel normal.

Clarity helps you notice what others overlook:

→ What really needs your attention
→ What decisions are overdue
→ What goals have quietly shifted

That’s how clarity protects founders, not from chaos, but from the complacency that follows calm.

What part of your business feels “fine” right now, but actually needs your scrutiny?

Ather Energy never played the obvious EV game.

While the market chased fast volume, wide distribution, and price wars,
Ather chose a slower, harder path.

→ Build the product first
→ Invest deeply in R&D
→ Treat software as core, not support
→ Delay expansion until the model was ready

For years, this meant fewer dealerships.
Lower sales than newer competitors.
And constant questions about scale.

But the strategy was intentional.

Ather focused on performance scooters when the market wanted affordability.
It built AtherStack when most players treated software as an add-on.
Nearly half the company works in R&D, a rare choice in manufacturing.

Then came Rizta.

Not a pivot.
An extension of the same thinking.

A product designed for families unlocked Tier II and III cities without breaking the system underneath.

Market share jumped.
Distribution finally made sense.
Quality stayed intact.

Even today, profitability is not the headline.
Structure is.

Manufacturing capacity is being built ahead of demand.

Fast-charging infrastructure is treated as an ecosystem problem, not a brand advantage.

Battery localisation is planned long before it becomes unavoidable.

Ather’s story is not about winning fastest.
It is about staying coherent while the market gets noisy.

Sometimes, defying the market is not a gamble.
It is a decision to grow in a way you can actually sustain.

What other EV companies do you think are quietly building this way?

When women are called “adaptable,”

It often means the system refused to adapt for them.

Context-switching is usually praised as a leadership strength.

For many women founders, it is not a choice.
It is an imposed skill.

I did not learn to context-switch to stand out.
I learned it because the environment demanded it early.

One moment, I am in a strategic discussion.

The next, solving an operational gap.

Then managing unspoken expectations, emotional labour, and credibility tests often at the same time.

Leadership, for many women, begins in fragmented attention, not protected focus.

Men are often allowed to build depth first.
Women are expected to build range first.

That difference shapes careers.

Context-switching becomes survival before it becomes strategy.
And survival skills come with hidden costs:

→ Cognitive fatigue
→ Less space for deep work
→ Constant mental load
→ Fewer moments of strategic stillness

Calling this a “superpower” without naming the pressure behind it misses the point.

The real question is not whether women can context-switch.
They already do.

The real question is why so few are given the conditions not to.

Leadership is not only about capability.
It is also about what the system quietly demands to prove it.

And imposed resilience should never be mistaken for privilege.

Where in your journey did adaptability come from necessity, not choice?

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