·Leadership & Organisation
They Don't Make Them Like Tino Anymore
McKinsey’s first Indian hire. Mentor to generations. Architect of an enduring legacy
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director at Founding Fuel
Indrajit Gupta is a business journalist and editor with over two decades of experience. He was the Founding Editor of the Indian edition of Forbes magazine. Within four years of its launch, Forbes India became the most influential magazine in its space.
He is the co-founder and director at Founding Fuel.
He has served in leadership positions at many of the leading media brands in the country. Before taking up the assignment to start up the India edition of Forbes magazine, Gupta was the Resident Editor of The Economic Times in Mumbai and before that, the National Business Editor of The Times of India.
Over the years, Gupta has built a reputation for grooming talent and creating highly energised and purposeful newsrooms. He has interviewed several leading global thought-leaders and business leaders including CK Prahalad, Ram Charan, Wayne Brockbank, Sumantra Ghoshal, Carlos Ghosn and Nitin Nohria, and also led cutting-edge joint research-based projects with McKinsey & Co, The Great Place to Work Institute, Boston Consulting Group, KMPG and Coopers & Lybrand.
He won the Polestar journalism award in 2010 and was awarded the Chevening fellowship by the British Foreign office in 1999. Gupta is an alumnus of the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai and a B.Com (Hons) graduate from St Xavier's College, Calcutta.
Gupta teaches a course on Business Problem Solving at his alma mater. He writes a column named Strategic Intent in Business Standard's edit page. He lives in Mumbai with his wife and two young daughters.
My Work
·Technology & the Future
Not the Pilot’s Fault: Inside the First 61 Seconds of AI171
A small turbine and a flicker of light tell a different story.
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Technology & the Future
AI171: Human Error, Design Flaw, or Something Else?
The mystery lives on. But now we have facts
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Economy, Policy & Society
Part 2: How Experts Are Reconstructing the AI 171 Tragedy
Why the media frenzy around the air crash is starting to look like six blind men and the elephant. The second in a three part series
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AS
Indrajit Gupta & Anmol Shrivastava
·Economy, Policy & Society
AI 171: The Investigation That Could Redefine Aviation Safety: Part 1
A modern Boeing Dreamliner fell from the sky seconds after takeoff—now, the race is on to uncover whether this was a tragic outlier or a signal that something deeper is broken. The first in a three part series
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AS
Indrajit Gupta & Anmol Shrivastava
·Leadership & Organisation
How L&T completely muffed up a valuable teachable moment
Around the world, CEOs, even the smartest of the lot, are known to occasionally suffer from a foot-in-the-mouth disease. Yet there are playbooks in place on how to deal with such crises–something that L&T has chosen to ignore.
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
Hybrids in an EV era
Propelled by the Toyota and Suzuki partnership, the resurgence of hybrids is a signal that the electric mobility revolution in India may take a lot longer than was assumed
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Behind Crotonville’s demise
It is tempting to dismiss corporate universities as a relic of a bygone era. The reality may well be a bit more nuanced
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·FF Life
FF Life: Ramzaan in the Bohri Mohalla
The Mohalla is a magnet for foodies during the holy month. Now as an ambitious redevelopment project slowly changes the landscape, the traditional food businesses are morphing too
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Tales of transitions
Many competent leaders from different domains aspire to join public life. But the transition is never an easy one
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
Paytm: Emperor’s new clothes
At the heart of the fintech major’s precarious slide lies the abject failure of its Super App strategy. But that’s just one part of the story.
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Indian cricket’s moment of truth
BCCI faces a set of crucial decisions ahead that could set the pace for the future
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Why building corporate democracies still matter
In this age of AI, creating an employee-first culture may seem counter-intuitive. But not if you believe in the primacy of building human relationships at the workplace
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
Behind ITC’s hotels demerger
Chairman and MD Sanjiv Puri is trying to kill three birds with one stone
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
Noel Tata’s brahmastra
His value lifestyle brand Zudio has caught the attention of the entire retail industry. It also signals a coming of age of retail in small town India
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Economy, Policy & Society
Modern Times redux
Is the government’s Make in India programme creating a system where a large section of workers in manufacturing could find themselves trapped in low wage jobs with no future?
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Work, Careers & Personal Mastery
How (not) to build your personal brand
FF Life: The power of social media has lulled leaders into believing that a carefully curated digital identity is the sure-fire passport to success. They are entirely off-the-mark
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Building leaders for and in India
What do we need more of: leaders who dominate global institutions or local leaders with a make-in-India mindset?
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·FF Life
7 Big Trends in Air Travel: What to Expect in 2023
FF Life: Major shifts are on the anvil this year around the world and in India to fix the endemic issues—and significantly improve the passenger experience. But here’s the nub: air travel may actually get worse, before it gets a lot better
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
Adani’s NDTV takeover: The end game
The three-month-long takeover saga is reaching its climax. What happens next? (Updated on December 6, and December 24, 2022)
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
What’s holding up Gautam Adani’s takeover of NDTV?
More than two-and-a-half months have passed since Adani announced its intent. And yet there is no sign of a quick closure, as it was widely anticipated
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Work, Careers & Personal Mastery
Capping the moonlighting volcano
There’s simmering tension over moonlighting, hybrid work and a breakdown of old workplace norms. Will this erupt into a full-fledged crisis? Or will better sense eventually prevail?
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
A battle of unequals
As the Adani group pushes through the doors at NDTV, owners Prannoy and Radhika Roy find themselves with their backs to the wall. What are their options?
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
Gautam Adani’s midnight raid at NDTV—a developing story
The aggressive billionaire’s dramatic attempt to take over one of the country’s best known media firms has set the cat among the pigeons. Will Prannoy and Radhika Roy stand their ground? Here are the possible scenarios. (This is a developing story and we are updating it as things unfold. The latest update was on 31 August, 2022)
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
The hare and the tortoise
The R K Swamy Hansa group remains the last man standing, even as almost all the large homegrown advertising-led groups have thrown in the towel. How did the Swamy brothers, Srinivasan and Shekar, pull it off?
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Economy, Policy & Society
Agnipath and a second career for veterans
The raging controversy around the Agnipath scheme has placed the spotlight on an issue that has been pushed under the carpet for too long.
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Economy, Policy & Society
Bollywood’s wakeup call
Why the Hindi film industry is struggling to emerge out of its pandemic-induced coma
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Economy, Policy & Society
Plugging the infra gaps
The Gati Shakti Mission has been billed as a major transformational project. But is it merely a delayed attempt at better housekeeping?
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Rushing back to office
There are signs of growing impatience among CEOs to abandon the hybrid work experiment and return to office permanently. What’s driving this sentiment? And could it scupper change?
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
The legend of PG
Pradeep Guha was a marketer extraordinaire. I had the privilege of working with him during my formative years in the media industry in Bombay. Some personal glimpses
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Stories from inside India’s corporate war rooms
Even as they grapple with the operational aspects of the crisis, many business leaders are bringing a beginner’s mind and experimenting. They are discovering slivers of opportunity and preparing for a post COVID-19 world
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
Riders on the storm
Two of India’s iconic companies—Tata Steel and ITC—find themselves at the cusp of a huge upheaval. And it once again raises serious questions about the role of the board in supervising executive management
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Entrepreneurship, Startups & Innovation
How entrepreneurs learn
Large established firms have a tough task in embedding entrepreneurial thinking inside the firm. Because it means rewiring the way leaders think about the future
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Behind Rajat Gupta’s dogged attempt to save his reputation
The former McKinsey chief’s tell-all book is an attempt to offer his side of a story that sent shockwaves around the world. But the book is unlikely to sway his detractors. In an interview, Gupta shares some of the lessons he learnt from the crisis—and a lot more
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
How will the Mindtree-L&T takeover battle pan out? Nine questions answered
The Mindtree founders want to retain their firm’s unique culture. And have chosen to strongly rebuff L&T’s takeover attempt. But as things stand, the odds seem stacked against the founders as they try to block the $18 billion megacorp from taking control. A prognosis of what could happen next
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Stepping into Rana’s den
On March 1, Ravneet Singh Gill will assume charge at YES Bank. Will the entry of the quintessential MNC banker from Deutsche Bank be able to calm the troubled waters swirling around YES Bank?
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
Why the worst may not be over for Chanda Kochhar
The inside story of how Chanda Kochhar let hubris and greed implode her trail-blazing career at ICICI Bank
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Economy, Policy & Society
Why UDAN is flying into headwinds
The Modi government’s ambitious scheme was a serious attempt to make air travel accessible to every Indian. But two years later, it is apparent that the challenges may have been somewhat underestimated.
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
The new ‘mad men’ in town
The global merger of JWT and Wunderman is a signal of how a new combination of techies and fuzzies might dominate the world of innovation and marketing
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Entrepreneurship, Startups & Innovation
Flippin’ over backwards
Less than six months after their momentous deal with Walmart, both co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal are out of Flipkart. It is a sad commentary on the hubris and the immaturity that’s gripped India’s high-flying tech entrepreneurs
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
#metoo: Searching for a silver lining
Three years after her sexual harassment allegations against then Indian Hotels CEO Rakesh Sarna, Anjuli Pandit has made her horror story public, signalling a complete breakdown of internal processes to prevent sexual harassment. Yet, Pandit shows the new Tata management a way to make amends
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
The long road to a safe workplace
The #metoo movement has provided a wake-up call for leaders across India Inc to significantly up the ante in building safe and gender-balanced workplaces
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
The return to humanness and collaborative innovation
In this never ending race for greater productivity and measurement, the practice of management appears to have lost touch with real human values. It is time to correct that
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
Air India divestment: Why potential suitors will line up for the Maharaja
There are at least six compelling reasons for rivals to consider making a bid for India’s flag carrier
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Leadership & Organisation
How to sustain winning streaks
The Indian cricket team’s brilliant run at South Africa holds lessons for how to build the foundation for lasting success
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
The hotel industry’s big battle with Airbnb
Airbnb may have changed the game with its online home stay listing model. But the hotel industry isn’t waiting in the sidelines. It is fighting back
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Work, Careers & Personal Mastery
The b-school campus placement BS—and how to clean it up
This is the time of year when thousands of young MBAs go through their rites of passage. Yet for a while now, campus placement in India’s busi-ness schools have hopelessly derailed. And it’ll take considerable effort and a bunch of new ideas to get them back on track
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Entrepreneurship, Startups & Innovation
How to solve the affordable housing conundrum
Smart entrepreneurs are best placed to solve the affordable housing crisis. But they need the government’s support
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Entrepreneurship, Startups & Innovation
How to innovate for India
Entrepreneurial leaders like Medtronic Labs’ Omar Ishrak and Khan Academy’s Salman Khan are showing how low-cost, disruptive, local solutions can open up new opportunities in emerging markets
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Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel
·Business & Strategy
Bridging the gap between academia and practice
Academic research in management needs to be more useful and relevant. But any intent to influence practice won’t happen, unless researchers learn to step out of their comfort zone and engage with the real world
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director, Founding Fuel