Twenty years ago, before Kalaari Capital existed, a conversation with Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala helped shape the decision to return to India and build here. When we launched Changemakers — a podcast series marking 20 years of Kalaari — there was no question about who the first guest should be. In this episode, Professor Ashok traces his life's conviction back to a single instruction from his grandfather, a cloth merchant from Bihar, who told him: "If there is a problem in society, you cannot say 'But what can I do?' If you cannot solve it, who else can?" That instruction became his operating system. It is what drove him to build the IIT Madras Research Park when everyone said there was no land, no capital, and no precedent for academia and industry working together at that scale — a campus that today counts 350+ startups among its alumni, including Uniphore, Ather Energy, AgniKul Cosmos, and Modulus Housing. It is what drove him to pioneer India's telecom revolution, bringing down the cost of telephony from ₹40,000 to ₹10,000, and to conceive of mobile payments at a time when the idea of paying a vegetable vendor from a phone was considered impossible. And it is what drives him as a mentor. On how he pushes the founders he works with, he says: "Every entrepreneur I work with is like my own kid. You love them. And from that love, you have to be hard at times." When asked if he sees himself as a changemaker, he said he does not — calling himself instead a spokesperson for the hundreds and thousands who worked alongside him. That, to us, is exactly what makes him one.
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