A Founder’s reflection on the quiet power of a true Guru
Vision & Velocity (Founder’s Notebook)
By S Shashank (CEO & Research Lead)
Published July 17, 2026
There are moments in every life that quietly change its direction.
The strange thing is, they rarely feel important when they happen.
There is no applause.
No celebration.
Just an ordinary conversation on an ordinary day that, years later, you realise became the beginning of an entirely different life.
For me, that moment arrived disguised as a mathematics class.
Growing up, I wasn’t looking for a teacher.
I was looking for direction.
Like many young people, there came a time when I questioned myself more than anyone else ever could.
Not because I lacked ambition.
But because I lacked belief.
The future felt uncertain.
Purpose felt distant.
Hope had begun to fade.
And then I met a former IAF officer who happened to teach mathematics.
He carried himself with the quiet discipline you’d expect of a man who had spent a lifetime in uniform.
But what stayed with me wasn’t his discipline.
It was his faith in people.
Where most saw performance, he seemed to look for potential.
Where others judged the student in front of them, he somehow spoke to the person they could become.
Officially, he was my mathematics teacher.
In every sense that mattered, he became my Guru.
He taught equations.
I don’t remember most of them.
What I remember is that he believed in me before I believed in myself.
He listened.
He questioned.
He challenged the way I thought.
He never tried to tell me what my future should be.
He simply refused to let me believe I didn’t have one.
Looking back today, I realise how rare that is.
Most people see us as we are.
A very rare few see us as we could become.
He was one of them.
He saw me.
He really saw me.
There is an extraordinary power in being seen.
Especially when you’ve almost stopped seeing yourself.
Sometimes another person’s belief becomes the bridge that carries us until we are able to believe on our own.
That was the gift he gave me.
He didn’t simply teach me mathematics.
He taught me how to think.
How to question.
How to remain curious.
Most importantly…
He made me believe that my life could become something meaningful.
Looking back, that may have been his greatest lesson.
People often ask where confidence comes from.
I don’t think confidence appears overnight.
I think it is borrowed.
Borrowed from parents.
Borrowed from friends.
Borrowed from mentors.
Borrowed from that one teacher who looked at an uncertain student and spoke with certainty instead.
Long before I believed I could build something meaningful…
He did.
Long before I called myself a founder…
He had already convinced me to become a thinker.
Today, when people describe me as a founder, an innovator or someone who thinks differently, I sometimes wonder how much of that journey actually began in those conversations after a mathematics class.
Perhaps far more than I ever realised.
As life unfolded, I often found myself thinking about him.
Not because I needed guidance anymore.
But because I wanted to give something back.
I wanted him to see the person his student had become.
More than anything, I wanted to tell him something simple.
“Sir… you were right.”
After years of trying to reconnect, I finally managed to trace a contact.
Only to learn that he had passed away in August 2025.
For days, I couldn’t understand why that news stayed with me.
Then it became clear.
I wasn’t grieving only because he was gone.
I was grieving because I had arrived too late to tell him that the faith he had placed in a confused young student had become a life.
A way of thinking.
A purpose.
Everything I had hoped it would become.
We celebrate milestones.
The first job.
The promotion.
The company.
The recognition.
What we rarely celebrate are the people who quietly made those milestones possible.
The ones who planted confidence before there was achievement.
The ones who offered direction before there was certainty.
The ones who saw possibility before there was proof.
Perhaps that is why their influence is so easy to overlook while they are here.
It becomes visible only when we look back.
Every one of us carries someone like that.
Sometimes it is a parent.
Sometimes a friend.
Sometimes a colleague.
Sometimes a stranger whose words stayed far longer than they ever intended.
And sometimes…
It is simply a teacher who chose to believe in a student at exactly the right moment.
I often wonder how many people quietly changed the direction of our lives…
without ever knowing they did.
Perhaps that is the truest measure of a Guru.
Not the knowledge they leave behind.
But the lives they quietly reshape.
My Guru never got to see the founder I became.
But he helped shape the person who eventually became one.
And perhaps that was his greatest lesson.
Not mathematics.
Not problem-solving.
Simply this:
Never underestimate what can happen when you choose to believe in another human being.
One Last Thought
We spend much of our lives trying to prove ourselves.
Sometimes we forget to thank the people who first made us believe there was something worth proving.
If you’re fortunate enough to still have someone like that in your life…
Don’t wait for “someday.”
