Research & Blog

Earlier this month, I had the chance to meet a Paralympian, professional rower, Gold Medallist in London 2012, and mental health advocate, David Smith. Mental health is simply part of the human experience and thats why it becomes imperative to elevate this conversation and most importantly to reduce any stigma. With the month of May dedicated to mental health, the objective of our conversation was to spread awareness about the topic and reiterate the importance of building an

Article published by Harvard Business Review Hiring and growing diverse talent is much more than a box to check. Intentionally creating a sense of belonging at workplaces increases retention and thereby reduces cost from workforce turnover. Thus proving that DE&I agendas to have tangible business impacts. Read the full article below.

Ever been on a date when you can’t wait for your friend’s fake emergency call? I have been on a few of those; and admittedly I did have an instance when it was my date who got the emergency call before I did. Lets talk about this encounter I had years back. I had matched with someone through an online platform and after some initial messages, we agreed to meet at a popular wine bar in a lively neighbourhood of Amsterdam on a Friday evening. He too was from India, Bombay; move

Small moments of reflections and gratitude It was Saturday evening, my fav time of the week, and I was headed to a friend’s farewell party at a local brewery. She was leaving Amsterdam for good and had sent an open invitation to her friends to stop by per their convenience. I arrived halfway into the evening with the party already in full swing; the weather holding up, people mingling, beer fuelling the banter, in short, great vibes all around. I got a pint and circled around

An experience to remember I took a quick scan of the people around me as I boarded my flight to Berlin. I had a small carry-on suitcase that needed to be stored away; there was no way I was single-handedly swinging that thing over my head into the overhead locker in swift moves like a jungle cat. The crowd around me looked neutral, as they should; I ended up requesting the person behind me in queue to help in storing my suitcase away. His initial iciness melted away as he not

A tall glass stuffed with straws caught my eye as I was waiting at the bar counter for my G&Ts. There were all kinds of straws in it – colourful, twisted, straight, steel, paper – all bendy though. Bendy straws… ever stopped to think about something so inconsequential? About a century back, when the only kind of straws that existed were straight, a man named Joseph Friedman invented bendy straws . He noticed his daughter was having trouble drinking out of straight straws as

“I have a dream,” he said—and created history. I have one too. Mine is about shaping the future. I dream of a world where acceptance is unconditional, judgment is obsolete, and empathy isn’t a virtue—it’s second nature. It sounds idealistic, maybe even delusional. I found myself on a quest towards getting closer to this ‘dream state’, which resulted in the inception of 9Fables with the core mission to expand and reimagine perspective . Perspective comes with first hand experi

It was a classic cold and windy afternoon in Amsterdam. I was sitting in my home office, feeling quite speechless as I recall. I had just gotten off a zoom call with my boss at the time- in the last few minutes of our meeting, he casually dropped in a bombshell of a suggestion - hey why don’t you start a community or group here in office for people to talk about disabilities? You can talk about what you go through… Um, WHAT. All sorts of thoughts raced through my mind. Is h

To be a ‘sporty’ kid in India in the ’90s meant that you could be part of the ‘sports quota’ and access certain privileges when it came to college admissions. I was not a ‘sporty’ kid, and in fact was proud member of the ‘good grades’ group, thank you very much. Academic excellence took full precedence in defining a child’s success, which naturally then became the primary focus for parents, sports was secondary. Things are however changing, but we’ll talk about that another t

It was Feb 2021. My company had just gone through some change, and much like a new term at school with new classmates, we were starting afresh after being shuffled into new teams. My boss at that time, whom we’ll call J, was a senior leader at the company. He was observant, direct in his communications, and a visionary; someone whose approval I sought. J organized an outing for the team to get to know each other better, and the plan for the day was to golf! The greens were b