Journeying With Curiosity: The Life and Lessons of Hari TN

These are the kinds of questions that Hari TN wrestles with on evening walks, or late at night, when shafts of moonlight seep through curtains: Why does the velocity of light stay constant in different frames of reference? Or how on earth can we account for “mass” – the sheer heaviness of stuff – when atoms are constituted by 99.9999 % empty space? His eyes radiate a childlike elation when he elaborates on the insubstantiality of everything: “We thought protons and neutrons carry mass. Then you realize protons are made up of quarks. There are three quarks in a proton, two up, one down, and a neutron has three quarks, and quarks are held by gluons. Gluons are basically energy. So 99% of a proton is not mass, but energy. What does that mean?”

But he doesn’t just have that hunter-gatherer type of curiosity – as in asking a question, and then rifling through Google or large libraries or inside one’s accumulated intuitions. He also has a weaver-of-tales and a connector-of-dots type of curiosity. He’s not just fascinated by a vacuum-filled cosmos, but also by people, human beings of all stripes. He’s carried his quests into Human Resources roles at TaxiforSure and later at BigBasket, where he not only spawned hiring tactics and employee-engagement practices, but also gleaned business, systemic and sociological insights. Many of which have been laid out in his eight books, that range from startup lessons (Saying No to Jugaad, From Pony to Unicorn, Cut the Crap & Jargon) to nation-lifting insights (Cutting the Gordian Knot).

While some of these works have been co-authored with industry stalwarts like Sanjeev Agarwal, M.S. Subramanian, Shradha Sharma, Hari Menon and Bala Srinivasa, I ask Hari how he manages to be so prolific, while also navigating leadership roles in various enterprises. He admits, with a self-deprecatory shrug, that he has a razor-sharp mind that can knife through clutter, enabling personal time for writing and reflection even in the midst of hairy business crises. Keen on fostering his team’s capabilities, he delegates and gently prods, achieving that Golden Mean between hands-on and hands-off guidance. This is key: he always hires and retains rapid learners.

Such enviable all-roundedness – founding and leading companies, scaling startups, advising boards, writing books and newspaper columns – has been hard won, forged despite a harsh childhood. Sunabeda, a small town in Orissa known for its cool climes and MiG Fighter Planes, where his father worked at HAL and his mother tended to the home, could have been idyllic. Recast by the cosmopolitan crowd that flocked to such places in that era, Sunabeda had everything little Hari might have needed: a decent English-medium school, cultural activities, access to books.

Except that home, as Hari puts it, wasn’t a joyful setting. His parents – perhaps like others in a generation that tied knots in quick-fix arrangements – had an unhappy marriage. Moreover, his mother suffered from a mental health condition from an early age. In a moving LinkedIn post, Hari speaks about how his mother died on the auspicious day of Makara Sankranti in 2016. “In the last two decades of her life she barely stepped out of her home in the small town of Gauribidanur.” His father, detached and estranged from Hari for two years, hadn’t been an emotional stand-in either.

So Hari retreated into books: into the polluted, hardscrabble workhouses of Charles Dickens or the gothic obsessions of Oscar Wilde. Or especially into the quirky makeup of scientists. To date, he stays fascinated by scientists, plumbing their private motivations as much as their public works. He even invited Dr. Rohini Godbole, the Indian particle physicist who was part of the team that tracked down the Higgs Boson in 2012, to address BigBasket employees.

His childhood curiosity, however, wasn’t confined to words and people. He also toyed with numbers and cunning Calculus problems, cracking the IIT entrance exam to land at IIT-Madras, where he chose to study mechanical engineering. Those four years were exhilarating. Studying the intricate movements of objects, ranging from subatomic particles to large machines to the human body, Hari soaked it all up in a setting that also encouraged wilder, offbeat thoughts.

On graduating from IIT-Madras, he headed to IIM-Calcutta, then started out on the shopfloor at Tata Steel, rotating through diverse roles inside the storied Tata company. In his last stint in the Human Resources function, he became entranced by human capital management because he could see how critical it was for the large company to change its people practices. To contend with growing competition post-liberalization, folks could no longer “grow” into seniority by sheer dint of experience. Eventually, frustrated by the lack of agility in the large organization, Hari moved to high-growth startups, like Daksh, then TaxiforSure and BigBasket. Where he continued to handle the thorniest resource: people.

At Steer World, where he’s currently the Executive Chairman, he learns, with the note-taking zeal of a 10^th Grade student, about its various deep tech businesses such as pharmaceuticals, drug development and polymers. This experience is one of the most inspiring in Hari’s career. He says previous ventures led to incremental improvements or offered lifestyle conveniences but this venture is transformational. He derives immense satisfaction in contributing to deep technology birthed in India that can impact lives on scale. The purpose fires him so much, he uncomplainingly commutes 35 km each week day, from Bellandur to Peenya. And looks forward to Monday mornings with wide-eyed anticipation.

To destress and keep fit, he walks every evening, for at least 8 kilometers. He also attends Hindustani concerts with his wife, whom he describes as an “angel” that entered his life. Given his own tough childhood, Hari and his wife ensured that their daughter received unconditional love.

After his mother had died, he visited her home, where she had been living pretty much in isolation and with few memories of the past. When he opened a rusted Godrej almirah, he realized that she had preserved his old clothes from school and college, washed and folded with parental tenderness. Her mind might have been fading, but the only strand of the world that mattered to her was the child that she could not adequately connect with. Later, he heard that his father too used to make enquiries about him, though they had not been on talking terms. At the end, Hari’s conscious that his own legacy – his throbbing aliveness across so many realms – demonstrates the enduring power of empathy and of the human spirit.

Insights Gleaned From Hari’s Journey

Hari TN has worn and still wears many hats: as an advisor to boards, an angel investor, VC, founder, mentor, senior leader, bestselling author, newspaper columnist, husband and father. I’ve tried to distill takeaways from a thinker who is deft at exactly that: at distilling takeaways. Nonetheless, here goes:

Strip Down Human Resources to Its Essence: Honesty, Listening and Respect

With the hindsight of successful stints in rapidly morphing environs, he says that Human Resources can be pared its to basics: “You just need to have humanistic values and be honest, truthful.” He also observes, as a leader, you do not need to accede to all demands. But you ought to proffer a candid reason about why you can’t say yes. The key, however, is “intently listening to people, respecting them deeply, and being essentially a democrat at heart, where you value everyone equally.” Besides scientists, Hari adds that he’s equally drawn to underdogs who surmount impossible hurdles, or “by average people who do extraordinary things.”

Build Positive Cultures: Top Brass Actions Matter, Teamwork trumps Heroic Triumphs

He’s also attuned to how company cultures are stitched into being. It’s not about platitudes enshrined in Vision/Mission statements, but rather about the behaviors of the top ten senior leaders that seep into organizations. As an example, he cites the movie Chak De! India, where India wins the second hockey game with England. In that game, Preeti Sabarwal dribbles dexterously, while Komal Chautala urges her to pass the ball. Preeti hogs the ball and scores the winning goal. While the assistant coach is ecstatic, the head coach (played by Shah Rukh Khan) lauds all the other team members but Preeti. Khan’s withheld praise transmits a critical message: teamwork counts for more than sheer victory. Hari believes such camaraderie is invaluable in organizations, more so than fleeting successes wrested by self-centered players.

Stay Attuned To Personal Strengths

Hari, at this stage, is keenly aware of his strengths:

• Extraordinary Curiosity: He remains insatiably curious, interested in a wide range of topics from humanities to history, from deep tech to fundamental science, from management to business building.
• Learning Across Domains: Domain switching has always marked his career. From hardcore steel production (Tata Steel) to BPO (at Daksh), from product development and services (Virtusa) to knowledge processing and investment research (Amba Research), from consumer internet (TaxiForSure) to e-commerce (BigBasket), and finally to deep tech and materials transformation (Steer World). “Between these six stints, I have gleaned a comprehensive set of lessons that I could describe as an almost complete playbook for scaling companies.”
• Spotting Patterns and Connecting Dots: He also has an uncanny ability to spot patterns before others can. He describes how he analyzes transactions and sifts through data to identify underlying issues and broader implications. At BigBasket, for instance, there were times when he had predicted certain outcomes, two or three years before they played out.
• Singular Communication Skills: All that childhood chomping through Dickens and Wilde has engendered exceptional communication skills, verbal and written. He can break down complex topics in a manner that appeals to experts and laypersons – a verbal nimbleness that shows up in the high Amazon rankings and wide readership of his various books.  

Remain Receptive to Unforeseen Breaks

Many opportunities have come his way by serendipitous means. But such serendipity has been fostered by his articles, books and social media posts. For his latest stint, Dr Babu Padmanabhan, a world-class technologist and materials science expert, reached out to him. Dr. Babu and his brother Satish realized their strong technical acumen needed to be paired with business expertise. To bridge this gap, they asked Hari to join their team. The trio plan to scale a groundbreaking material science enterprise, leveraging their foundational research to revolutionize various industries like pharmaceuticals.

Embrace Writing to Sharpen Insights

Hari believes that school years are critical in shaping one’s proficiency with words. He was not only a favorite of his Physics teacher, but also of his English teacher. He was always raising his hand to participate in debates, elocution contests, to write essays, to narrate To Kill a Mockingbird in class. When he was at Tata Steel, he was flummoxed when the company outsourced their thinking to consultants like McKinsey or Booze Hamilton. He started pondering the first principles of management, gathering his thoughts into a book. “It was very mediocre, but it was my first go at writing.” Nonetheless, it was published as “back to basics in management.”

That was around 2002/2003. Then he stopped writing – apart from eloquent emails or presentations – for another 15 years. He wrote his second book in 2017, Cut the Crap & Jargon, co-authored with Shradha Sharma and published by Penguin India. Thereafter, there was no stopping him. He wrote a book a year. He realized, over the years, working with a range of startups, he had gained many insights and anecdotes. Writing brought back a gush of memories. Moreover, writing compelled him to observe the world more closely. “The more I wrote, I became a better person with deeper insights.”

Increase Women’s Participation in the Workforce, Build Skill-Based Universities

In terms of the nation’s human capital challenges, Hari believes that governments can’t solve most job-related problems. Private players ought to step up. More significantly, we need to actively usher more women into workplaces. After all, we’re frittering our demographic dividend if half the workforce is underutilized. And we need to make it easier for small and medium businesses – who hire millions of people – but who are not adequately supported by laws. We have to facilitate entrepreneurship with quick approvals, fewer harassing inspections, easy power connections, infrastructural access and so on.

When it comes to education, he suggests we need skill-based universities, as much as academic ones. For instance, places where one can graduate as a carpenter or plumber or welder, but with pride in one’s expertise and commensurate social and material rewards. As a nation, we don’t accord dignity to physical labor, and we need broader attitudinal changes to drive this.

Seek Role Models Everywhere

In terms of his role models, he looks for folks in both intimate and local circles, people he can relate to rather than faraway icons like Steve Jobs. One of his role models is his daughter, who currently lives in Australia, and whom he sees evolving into a strong, compassionate leader in the near future. Or Nandan Nilekani, who constantly remakes himself every few years. Or Dr. Babu Padmanabhan, who’s deep intent to change lives and do good is infectious. Or VS Sudhakar, a co-founder at BigBasket, who even at 65, strives quietly to solve problems, build the company and keep things going. “He’s a true karma yogi,” says Hari, highlighting Sudhakar’s deliberately low-key media presence.

Learn Ceaselessly

For people both below and above 45, he stresses the need for continuous learning in order to stay relevant. He observes that learning does not come naturally to humans. It takes will power and effort. “You have to stay curious, ask questions, meet interesting people, read continuously and delve into world happenings at a deep level. You can’t just parrot pet phrases and jargon.”

References

Shradha Sharma and T.N. Hari, Cut the Crap & Jargon: Lessons from the Start-up Trenches, Penguin India, 2017

T.N. Hari and M.S. Subramanian, Saying No To Jugaad: The Making of bigbasket, Bloomsbury India, 2019

Sanjeev Aggarwal and T.N. Hari, From Pony to Unicorn: Scaling a Start-up Sustainably, Penguin India

T.N. Hari and Bala Srinivasa, Winning Middle India: The Story of India’s New-Age Entrepreneurs, Penguin India