Rajan Singh

Founder

HabitStrong

We conduct online bootcamps to build life-changing habits that help inculcate discipline, focus, mindfulness, and a no-compromise mindset.

Currently, our programs cover digital deaddiction, building a mindful morning routine, deep work, flow, and focused learning. 

There is a lot of theory out there in videos and books, but often, it makes no impact. We make actual behavior change happen through a scientific, no-nonsense approach, mostly based on my personal life experiences.

You could think of us as a gym for habit-building.

ConceptOwl

We offer science and math learning programs for small-town students. 

We later transitioned to HabitStrong, to offer habit-building programs.

CourseBrew

An innovative online learning platform providing interactive video based learning.

Founder and CEO

New Silk Route Private Equity

Investment professional at New Silk Route, a USD 1.4 billion private equity fund focused on growth stage companies in Asia. 

Focused on healthcare and infrastructure, and was a key member of the team dedicated to building a large medical device company focused on emerging markets. 

Working as an investment professional, realized that lemmings are unfairly accused of behaving like investors.

Vice President

McKinsey & Company

Advised insurance, pharma, biotech, and banking companies. Areas of work include screening of  acquisition targets, launch of new businesses, cost rationalization, private equity due diligence, valuation, and corporate finance.

Ended up as a slave to PowerPoint, without hope of liberation in this lifetime

Consultant

Indian Police Service (IPS)

Commissioner of Police, Trivandrum City, and other senior positions in Kerala Police. Led 3,500 strong police force in Trivandrum (Kerala's Capital).  Extensive experience in managing and motivating large workforce, handling civil disturbances and conflicts, traffic management, crime control, and police modernization.

Inevitably I started taking life too seriously (what with all the parades, pompous ceremony, and frantic phone calls). So decided to bring some sanity back into life and go do an MBA

Police Commissioner

In summary, I am tempted to say something profound such as: "Visionary leader with XX years experience of saving humanity". But I will spare you the agony... 

The truth is that after many detours and experiments in life, I find myself an entrepreneur! 

Email: rajan.singh@habitstrong.in

When I applied for my MBA, my monthly government salary was comparable to one day's cost of my MBA.  

But thankfully, that year, Wharton constituted a $40,000 Emerging Economy Fellowship. So, on an online discussion forum, I asked one of the admissions officers and she said she would let me know when the application opens. 

But one day, I saw a message suggesting that the Fellowship deadline was already over! Horrified, I messaged the admissions officer and she confirmed it. 

But because she had forgotten to message me about it, as a special case, she allowed me 24 hours to apply. Very few institutions in the world would extend a deadline just because someone casually promised something on a public discussion forum -- but that was Wharton! 

So I hurriedly wrote a one page application, and faxed it from Trivandrum late at night. And that got me $40,000 -- the highest ROI I have ever had for writing one page. 😊 To be fair, I had to give up $20k I already had from another scholarship, but it was still a fantastic outcome. 

Sometimes, you have to take your chance, no matter how slim it is. In fact, everything worthwhile that has happened to me has been low probability. 

But if you take your chances and keep putting in your best shot, over time, it all adds up. That is how you build your career -- by taking a lot of chances, one at a time. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

Sensing an opportunity in EdTech space, I and a good friend of mine (Shyju Maneendran) have decided to set up an EdTech venture. 

We already have lined up $10 million VC funding. Some VCs we initially spoke to complained about the funding winter. But when we told them how hot it is in Kerala (where I live), they forgot all about the winter and wrote the cheque. 

As soon as our bank account is opened, we will encash the cheque. 

We are hiring for 5 positions: COO, CAO, CBO, CSO, CGO. If you went to an IIT, IIM, or both, or neither, you can apply. Salary will be no bar for the right candidate but it will be disbursed as and when we feel like it -- in case you didn't know, that is how EdTech works. 

The biggest challenge for any business is getting customers, but for us -- no problems. We have tied up with 78% of all the bank call centres. So now onwards, all the annoying calls you get with consumer loan offers, will also offer our products. 

I humbly request you to please unblock all the call centre numbers you have been blocking for the last few years. Please... 🙏 

We have decided to become a unicorn in 2025. Initially, we thought we should become a unicorn this year itself but our mentors told us to be humble. So we are being humble. 

There was only one problem: We did not know what product to offer. But it had to have AI somewhere in it. But since everybody has already learnt AI/ML, we decided to primarily target kids -- before they are born. Our only concern is the falling birth rate. So other human beings are also allowed to buy our products. 

That's it for now. Meanwhile, our call centres will keep calling you. Please keep your phones fully charged -- and don't put them on silent please. 

Because if you miss our calls, our academic counsellors are coming straight to your house to sell you the product. So decide whether you will buy it the easy way, or the hard way -- up to you.

Take care. Stay tuned. An AI revolution is coming -- right after we encash the VC cheque.

A few days ago, I landed in New York City at the JFK airport, dreading the 45 minutes wait at the immigration. Instead, it became a 2-hour comedy. 😂 

Firstly, only 6-8 out of the 50 immigration counters were staffed, of which only two catered to non-US citizens. Soon the officers manning those two immigration counters also left. 

Then the folks managing the queue directed us to some other counters, but as 8:30 pm approached, one by one, all the immigration officers left -- there was LITERALLY no one to stamp our passports! 

We were all cluelessly waiting, hoping for some blessing from the Almighty.  

So we asked the folks directing the queues. And everybody just said one thing, "I am doing my best." 

The immigration officers also left because their shift ended -- they were also "doing their best." 

I am sure their managers were also "doing their best" and were beset by budget cuts and the inflexibility of staff unions. Everybody was "doing their best," yet nothing was working, in the world's most developed economy. 😊 

This is why bureaucracies and large companies fail. Because nobody owns the problem -- everybody is just doing their job like a cog in the wheel. 

If we want our companies and teams to succeed, everyone should be solving problems, not just doing their jobs. And when that problem doesn't get solved, they have to make some noise, give feedback, and create a ruckus.

And that won't happen unless we give people a safe space, listen to everyone, and tolerate dissent.

Either that, or we soon become yet another bureaucracy. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

When I launched my first startup, we urgently needed some cash to keep the company alive. So I roped in a world-renowned expert to conduct a pretty expensive workshop. 

We just needed 100 signups and for the next 12 months, we would not have to worry about money. And with such a stellar speaker, it was practically free money. 

But when we started marketing, surprisingly, despite all our effort, we got only two signups. No matter what we tried, nothing was working. 

Then we figured out the problem -- our message was not reaching the right audience -- the industry titans and CXOs. So the solution was simple: Advertise in a newspaper that is read by these biggies.  

So we spent a few thousand dollars to run an ad in Wall Street Journal (Hong Kong edition) and waited for the remaining 98 slots to fill up. 

Do you know how many signups we got from the ad? Zero. To be fair, we got one email enquiry but it did not convert. 

After losing thousands of dollars and cutting a sorry figure, we called it off.

We all think we are smart and know the right answers. 

But there is only one way to know for sure -- try it out in the real world. There is a 5% chance you will succeed. There is a 95% chance that you will be humbled. But there is a 100% guarantee that you will be wiser. 

The world's best MBA is not offered by IIMA, Harvard, or Wharton -- it is offered by the "School of Hard Knocks." 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

The employee who responds to every Slack message in 200 milliseconds is not your most productive one. 

Instead, your star employee is the one who often goes off the grid for a few hours to focus on a high priority task. But this employee will not come to exist until we create the safe space for focus, eliminate the face-time culture, and measure outcomes (not time spent at the desk). 

Staying active, and more importantly, appearing active, is very comforting. Alas, it is just a placebo. 

Enough of placebos -- how long will we keep doing this nonsense? 

Let us stop pretending, and start working. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

Before my MBA, I used to think that business "problem solving" was about analytical thinking. But during my consulting days, and then as an entrepreneur, here is what I figured out:

1. Human emotions and ego create a vast number of "business problems". This would include all the politics, turf wars, and situations where companies know what to do (or can figure out), but are unable to -- because humans won't cooperate. 

2. A smaller % of problems pertain to systems thinking, processes, and how the world is structured. 

3. The third, and possibly the smallest bucket, is the problems requiring hardcore analytical thinking (e.g., data, spreadsheets). 

This list is by no means MECE, but will cover a good number of problems. 

That is why, in business, you will always need people skills, no matter how much AI advances. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

Last month, I was in Fort Kochi, the foodie heaven of Kerala. As I was walking past the police station, a seemingly drunk (or possibly, mentally ill) guy was loudly abusing the policemen. 

Normally, cops are pretty quick to take offence. But instead, they were all looking perplexed, not knowing what to do. There wasn't a trace of anger. 

Why? Because they did not take it personally -- after all, it was just a drunk! 

A lot of things in life -- be it a snarky remark from colleague, a nasty comment on social media, or some minor adversity -- are equivalent of a drunk guy shouting at us. 

We can take it personally and fume over it. Or we can just say, "Oh, that's just a drunk!" and move on. 

The solution to 90% of our problems comes down to just this: Letting go. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

Long ago, a guy once complained to me, "I sit and watch TV the whole day, and waste all my time. How do I stop myself from doing it?" 

The honest answer would have been, "Nobody is coming to switch off your TV. Why don't you do it yourself?"

We live in an age where for anything and everything, we seek copious advice and mentorship. And we implicitly assume that once we get clever enough advice, it will solve our problem. 

It won't. 

Even if you find the cleverest hacks from psychology -- all they do is can translate a high-level intent into small atomic actions. 

But at the end of the day, you and I will have to take that atomic action -- no mentor will come and do it for you. 

So don't become so addicted to advice and 'mentorship' that you forget the most fundamental truth -- like in a football match, people can cheer from outside and shout occasional advice at you, but they can't kick the ball. 

Only you can kick the ball. So do it. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

Yesterday, a young, highly qualified finance professional reached out and shared her problem -- she is job hunting and many companies, including some prestigious ones, are just ghosting candidates after a few rounds of interview. 

Her gripe was not about rejection, but about not EVEN getting an explicit rejection. In some cases, people spend a month doing interviews and then -- total silence from the other end. 

She asked me how we can end this. I don't have any solution but the least I can do is spread the word. 

Since LinkedIn has all the HR leaders, I request them that let us sensitise our teams. I can imagine that it is hard to give the rejection news but let us be cognisant that ghosting is probably 10x worse. 

Train your teams to break bad news courteously. And make it part of your internal hiring metric -- check whether 100% of the rejected candidates have been intimated. 

We all make mistakes but we have the power to correct it. At HabitStrong, we are not hiring currently but I will ensure that such slip-ups don't happen even inadvertently, even if it has happened in the past. 

This is one change that neither requires budget nor some complex technology -- let us do it.

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

During my consulting stint in New York, I had two Jewish colleagues who observed Sabbath and would leave office sharp at 5 pm on Friday. And for the next 24 hours they were unreachable. 

And this was in a firm where late nights, long hours, and fast email response was the norm. So did it disrupt our work or their careers? Not at all. 

And it is not that they did some extra work to compensate for it, other than making some noise about responding to emails after the Sabbath. 

Even when I had to leave early for a doctor's visit, it never disrupted my work -- I just moved things around and prioritised differently. 

Here is something we don't realise: We often work long hours simply because we can. 

When some contingency forces us to stop work early, we cut out the low value work, stop surfing 'interesting blogs',  and are less distracted by our phones. 

The work somehow always gets done. 😊 

Here are some universal truths: You will ALWAYS have more to do. You will never have enough time. And the answer is not to work till 1 am, but to draw boundaries, prioritise, and focus. 

Your work will end when you decide that it ends (within reasonable limits). You get what you optimise for. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

A well-known startup founder, who till recently was preaching profitability and financial prudence, is now splurging money on celebrity endorsements. Is his behavior irrational? 

Absolutely not. 

Here is my guess -- people are anticipating the end of funding winter. And when that happens, the craziness of 2021-22 will return. VCs will again start throwing money at companies showing 'growth' at any cost.

But won't VCs learn any lessons? Are they stupid? No, they are not. They are also playing a game. If you are an early stage VC, you see companies around you raise funding round after funding round. Do you want to be left out? Of course not. 

And once you invest, the ONLY thing you care about is more and more funding at increasingly crazier valuations, so you can mark up your investments. 

But when the only thing driving valuations is growth, why worry about profitability? Often, the only way to achieve hyper-growth is to make a pile of your money and burn it. And it doesn't really matter as long you can raise more money (until the next funding winter). 

90% of the time, startup-VC funding becomes a game of passing the parcel -- and inside the parcel, there is a bomb. And when the music stops (i.e., the funding winter hits), the bomb explodes. 

There is only one sin in this business -- to be caught with the parcel when the music stops. 😊 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

In a VC finance course at Wharton, our professor said, "On a risk-adjusted basis, becoming an entrepreneur does not make financial sense -- you are much better off as an investor." 

Many of us revolted -- how could she say that? Aren't entrepreneurs the richest people around? Why else would so many intelligent people become entrepreneurs? 

Then our professor explained that for many entrepreneurs, the freedom, flexibility and not having a boss compensates for the lower financial return. 

Today as an entrepreneur, I have to grudgingly agree with my professor. If you want to maximise your financial well-being, becoming an entrepreneur is not the greatest option, and here is why. 

Let us assume 5% chance of success in entrepreneurship. 

So in 5% cases, you make a LOT of money (say $100 million). But the utility of your 100 million is just a little bit higher than a batchmate who joined the corporate world and made $2 million. 

But in 95% cases, you go bust and lose a lot. That has a horribly negative utility. Yet, your corporate classmate will never be in that boat.

So as an entrepreneur, in 5% cases you are somewhat better off than your high-earning classmate, and in 95% cases, your classmate is infinitely better off than you (since you are broke and struggling). 

This math may seem abhorrent, but it is true -- I know this firsthand. 

Then why become an enterpreneur? I guess for creative freedom, for escaping corporate bureaucracy, and not having a boss. 😊 

Entrepreneurship makes little sense for a reasonable person. If you are unreasonable, then well -- what can I say? 😂  


PS: I am talking about high-risk entrepreneurship, not starting a services company or freelancing, which has lower risk and reward. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

Our life is the result of a constant war between two parts of our brain:

A. The conscious, thinking brain wants to pursue a meaningful life, achieve goals, and do the right things.

B. The instinctive (and largely sub-conscious) brain wants to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and take it easy. 

This war never ends. But one side usually dominates the other. 

Which one? It is up to us -- the one we train, feed, and nurture, is the one that dominates. 

In this war, if you pick a side and keep at it, your side will dominate. And the side that dominates will determine the kind of life you live. 

Pick the right side. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

A few days ago, Dr Aniruddha Malpani called me and talked about fight he is waging in the defamation case that WhiteHat Junior has filed against him. 

A bit surprised, I asked him, "Did you not already win that case?" 

He said that WhiteHat Junior lost the case against Pradeep Punia but the case against Dr Malpani is still on. 

While the courts can decide the merits of the case, WhiteHat has admitted in its own legal affidavit that it created a fictitious person called 'Wolf Gupta' and the ads claimed that this kid got a job with Google -- in fact, multiple ads made conflicting claims. 

These ads made a clear misrepresentation causing people to buy their product. If you are not sure whether this qualifies as cheating, please read section 415 of the Indian Penal Code (and the famous section 420 IPC). 

The funny thing is that an admitted act of false representation has no consequence while a defamation case still goes on. 

Finally, in half jest, I asked Dr Malpani, "Are they still able to pay the lawyers?" 

He said that contrary to what we may assume, they have very good lawyers, and therefore, must be paying them quite well. 

Then why did we think that they are short of cash? The world is funny, no?

After my morning run with my new running buddy Krishna Prasad, I am getting him blacklisted -- he runs too fast (violated the local speed limit). 

PS: In the backdrop is my beautiful city, dug up all over for oil exploration. 😝

When Basecamp prototype was being built, David Heinemeier Hansson, who was writing the code, was available ONLY 10 hours a week (as shared by Ryan Singer in his book "Shape up"). 

So they had no choice but to use David's coding time very thoughtfully. And that DNA is what made Basecamp into an iconic company that not only builds great software, but also wages war against the sweatshop mindset. 

But imagine if David had been available 70 hours a week (or God forbid, 100 hours a week)! 

The conclusion is NOT that people should work 10 hours a week but that when we are thoughtful, we can do a lot even in 10 hours. 

The reason some people love 70 or 90 hour weeks is the mindset that if you flog your people long and hard enough, won't something come out of it? Long hours take away the burden of clarifying your priorities or creating a high-productivity atmosphere. 

Flogging and slogging your people is the lazy option. 

And here is the funniest thing -- this intellectual laziness is justified by glorifying "hard work." 😊 


PS: By the way, I can bet that 95% of people working 12-16 hours a day do real value-creating work for less than 8 hours. 

***
I run HabitStrong (www.habitstrong.com), which offers programs for inculcating focus, productivity, and well-being.

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