Nansi Mishra 1:13
Hi, Bhaktha, welcome to the Neon Show.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:15
Thanks, thanks Nansi.

Nansi Mishra 1:17
I am really excited for this conversation. I feel I am going to learn a lot about deep tech. This is the first podcast I am doing in deep tech.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:23
Oh, is it? Okay, great.

Nansi Mishra 1:25
So, Bhaktha, let us start the conversation with China. China produces nearly 60% of the rare earth, world’s rare earth and you know processes almost 90% of the world’s rare earth, right?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:40
Yes.

Nansi Mishra 1:40
So, they clearly have a monopoly in rare earth. But in April 2025, they restricted export of their rare earth. So, what impact did it create on the world? What happened in April 2025?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:56
So, just to take a step back, you are absolutely right. China has a stranglehold on the supply chain of rare earth, rare earth based products to be specific like magnets and bunch of other things. They did an embargo on the export of rare earth based magnets and a few other components in April of 2025.

So, that led to shutting down several companies all around the world. In our case, what is of interest to us at Chara is the rare earth based magnets, neodymium ferrous boron magnets, they need four rare earths to make them magnetic. China just stopped the export of that.

This led to the closure of companies in the US, in Europe and some of them really get to near to closure. And I think at least one large automotive company in India shipped far less products are two wheelers and three wheelers that particular quarter. So, it was a massive disruption.

And the unfortunate thing or the reality is that today the only way to build an efficient motor is using the rare earth based magnets. It is called PMSM motor. There is no other technology that is deployed and that is why it is super critical and that led to lot of heartburn all over the world.

Nansi Mishra 3:21
And what kind of these, what kind of companies shut down?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 3:26
Primarily automotive companies, because they all are EV automotive, to be precise. That is primary. But even the regular cars, I mean the internal combustion, the petrol, diesel cars, they have lot of motors which use the NDAPP magnets.

So, they were also in trouble. The last one I know of is the speakers and earphones manufacturers, though you might not know speakers and earphones have magnets in them.

Nansi Mishra 3:53
Yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 3:54
So, they are also NDAPP magnets. So, all of them were in trouble. The Apple iPhone production which happens somewhere here, they were in trouble. So, all of them were in trouble. So, China has a big control over the supply chains. This is somewhat similar to the oil embargo that happened in, I think in the 70s.

Nansi Mishra 4:19s
Can you talk about that? Like what happened?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 4:21
So, the, just like rare earth, the Gulf has the bulk of the petroleum. It’s become less now, but in the 70s and 80s, they were the only producers, because they got cheap oil, good quality oil, and because of some political problems, again, Gulf announced the shutdown of their supply, and everybody in the world felt it. And there are pictures of miles long queue in the US in front of petrol bunks.

Same thing. For a long time, thousands of years, civilizations have depended on some material. I think it was steel, copper, bronze.

I think in the recent memory, it became coal, the industrialization phase. Then it became oil, and I strongly believe that the next civilization will be built on rare earths. Whoever controls the rare earths will have an upper hand.

Not that all the others will die, but they will have control, and that’s why this is so critical.

Nansi Mishra 5:27
Apart from China, which one is the next country that is, like China produces 60% of rare earths?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 5:36
Correct.

Nansi Mishra 5:36
What’s the other country?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 5:37
So if you look at the ore, right, so it’s a little bit more complex. So there are 17 elements, which are called rare earths. They occur in the bottom of the periodic table, and a lot of us skip the chemistry class or slip through it. This is karma catching up.

Nansi Mishra 5:53
We’ll try to understand.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 5:54
This is karma catching up. It is critical for many, many applications. Out of that, half are called light rare earths, the other half are called heavy rare earths, just depending on the atomic weight.

Now, China has close to 50% of the known ore in this world. Then I think it is Brazil. Incidentally, India is the third largest, but it’s a much smaller number. I don’t think that number matters. What matters is also that we need to have ores, which both supply heavy rare earths and light rare earths, and China, for some sheer geographical luck, has both. The other thing is that these rare earths are called so, not because they are expensive or they are rare, gold and silver platinum are rare.

These rare earths are there everywhere. It is rare because the concentration of the ore, of the minerals in the ore is very small. So, just to set an example, if you take one ton of iron ore, you actually get 500 kilograms of iron.

If you take one ton of gold ore, you get about six plus or minus one gram of gold. If you take one ton of rare earth, you get one gram of rare earth mineral. That is why they are called rare.

It’s extremely difficult to extract.

Nansi Mishra 7:21
The extraction process is…

Bhaktha Keshavachar 7:23
Yeah. So, first is the mining. Right?

First is the availability. Then is the mining. Mining is easier.

You just dig it out. Right? The second part is the extraction.

You have to extract the rare earth minerals out of the ore, and that is extremely hazardous. Every ton of rare earth minerals extraction generates 2000 tons of radioactive waste. It is radioactive because, again for chemical reasons, the uranium and thorium occur with rare earths.

So, the waste that is when you extract neodymium and dysprosium has uranium and thorium. So, there are cancer villages in China on the west coast. All the prosperity is on the east coast in China.

All the dirty things happen in the middle.

Nansi Mishra 8:09
Something we don’t talk about.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 8:11
We don’t talk about. Yeah, we don’t talk about. And then there is the…that is the second part. The third part is actually making the magnets, in our case, and whatever is the other application. That also is closely guarded by China.

The processes and the machinery for extraction and making the final application, magnets in our case, both China introduced an embargo about three years ago on the export of that machinery, long before they actually did the embargo on the rare earth magnets. And they’ve also stopped the people from going outside. People who have knowledge in China, they are not allowed to go outside China.

So, China knows. The game. Oh, the game.

So, it is sometime in the early 90s, 91 or 92, there was, I hope I got the name right, Deng Xiaoping was the premier of China. I think they’re called the premier, right? The chief.

He stood in Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square is that capital, right? Like our Rashtrapati Bhawan or something. He had never been to Beijing, been to other parts of China. So, he stood in Tiananmen Square and said, Gulf has oil, China has rare earths. And this was 35 years ago.

So, it’s a long process they have invested, and that is why now they are what we call as weaponizing it. And we all have to be careful. Actually, for me personally, after we sold EasyTap, I was trying to figure out what to do next.

So, the thing that triggered me was the Deng Xiaoping’s address in Tiananmen Square. The other thing was there is this island called Senkaku Island between China and Japan. So, I didn’t know China and Japan were enemies politically, right?

So, the huge enemies, some fishing trawler from Chinese fishing trawler crossed some imaginary international border. The Japanese guys arrested them, and China stopped the export of rare earths to Japan. Japan took about 72 hours to release them.

That’s all. That’s why they have that control. Japan was the first country that was affected by this ban.

And I believe that they are in a far better position now, because they have diversified, they figured out what to do. They are in a slightly better position than all the other countries now. Other countries…

Nansi Mishra 10:29
Why?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 10:30
Because they got hit in 2010.

Nansi Mishra 10:33
Okay.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 10:33
They have 15 years to prepare.

Nansi Mishra 10:36
Yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 10:36
Yeah. They have 15 years to prepare. Now, this was a known problem when we started in late 2019 November.

This was a known problem. It’s just that people are not paying attention.

Nansi Mishra 10:48
And now we can talk about Chara and how everything is connected, whatever we discussed just now, right?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 10:54
So, we started Chara in late 2019. In late 2019, the larger opportunity was what we call as the energy transition. We are moving from hydrocarbons to electrons, mainly to combat the climate change, sustainability.

Climate change is the biggest threat to mankind, not anything else. So there are a bunch of opportunities that are being solved. Electricity is the only known source of clean energy today, easy to produce, easy to transmit, easy to store batteries and all that.

But the big advantage of electricity is that at the point of consumption, it’s completely pollution free. When you turn on the electric stove, when you turn on your motor, there’s no pollution. That’s the beauty of it.

Now, the… So, that’s a huge opportunity. That’s why we are electrifying huge opportunities.

We looked at various parts of this chain, value chain, and then we looked at the motors. There are three problems for India specifically. One is that we were not building motors and controllers in a good way.

Even today, a lot of things are imported, whether rare earth magnets or not. We said we need to do something from India to build a Bharat motor. Second thing was the railroads.

So we, that time, six years ago, we said that rare earth is a problem. It was difficult to convince people. Half the people said, we don’t understand what you’re talking.

At least that problem is not there since 10 months. We don’t have to explain why we do what we do. And the third one is sustainability.

We need to build a sustainable motor. Apart from all other problems, rare earths are not sustainable. They’re extremely dirty.

And these were the three reasons why we started this. And nobody had deployed it. Everything is based on magnets, motors.

There were other technologies that were being looked into. There’s a class of motors called reluctance motors, which was known technology, but nothing had been deployed for various reasons. They’re highly nonlinear, difficult to control, power density problems, torque ripple, they were noisy.

So what we have done is that for the first three to four years, we did fundamental R&D in motor technology, hardware architectures, and critically the software algorithms that control the motor. Apart from all these things, India as a society, as a country, we have not invested in core technologies. We’re a net importer, right?

To put it very even conservatively. And this was my last kind of gig. And I said, we should do something that has not been done anywhere in the world.

Deploy it in India and then take it to the world. The last thing I want to add is that, given my age, now we see that India is a big enough market. We can introduce a new technology, a new product, deploy it in India, and then take it to the world.

I think all these things were coming together. And that’s how we started CHARA. By the way, CHARA stands for motion in Sanskrit.

Nansi Mishra 14:04
Okay, Chara means motion.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 14:05
Motion, like Charkha.

Nansi Mishra 14:06
Okay.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 14:07
We are building in motors came from the word motion. And we are building a new kind of motor. We wanted to give a new name, an Indian name.

Nansi Mishra 14:16
Like you said that for 200 years, engineers would know about reluctant motors, right? They would, but they are cost efficient. They are rare earthly, but they would vibrate a lot.

They would make a lot of noise. And there was one more thing.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 14:35
They are highly difficult to control, nonlinear.

Nansi Mishra 14:38
Yeah, you can’t, they can’t produce consistent force.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 14:43
Exactly, because they are nonlinear.

Nansi Mishra 14:45
But how did you figure it out?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 14:47
So that’s what, so the software, so control systems.

Nansi Mishra 14:52
So it’s not just hardware, it’s software also, right?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 14:54
Actually, if you Google or search on the internet for reluctance motors, they’re usually called software control motors. So if you look at control systems theory, right, there are linear systems and nonlinear systems. Linear systems are equal inputs, equal increases in input will give you corresponding equal increases in output.

Nonlinear systems are not so. You do something in the input, it will do something in the output. Noise, whatever, different torque and all that.

So this is classic control system problem. The one way to solve it is use precise software control algorithms, which operate at a very high speed and control the motor at a very fine level. And this has been done for many, many applications.

Because we have now processing power rather cheap and runs at high speed, we are able to control. And that’s one more thing that came together.

Nansi Mishra 15:49
And you have said it in some of the interviews that the hardware technology, it can be reverse engineered, right? It’s the software that you have to, the software you can’t, you know, operate this hardware part, right?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 16:05
Absolutely.

Nansi Mishra 16:05
So how are you protecting that?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 16:07
So we have started supplying motors now. We ship about a few hundred motors to mostly customers in India and a couple of customers outside India too, because rare earth is a worldwide problem. So when we supply, we supply the motor and the controller.

Motor can be reverse engineered. I know we have patents, but it’s difficult to protect. Hardware also can be reverse engineered, but the software which is there, we will lock it down with known technologies.

So nobody can, they can only execute, but not see. Incidentally, this I learned from EasyTap. Because EasyTap is a FinTech company.

There are a lot of certifications.

Nansi Mishra 16:43
Hardware, software.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 16:44
Yeah, same thing. All those things were just applied to this.

Nansi Mishra 16:51
What did you exactly learn from EasyTap?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 16:53
EasyTap, what we learned is that we build that device, the mPoS device. So one of the things in this, and it has to be certified by very stringent standards. It’s called PCI-PTS.

Incidentally, nobody else in India has ever set, passed that standard. EasyTap was the first one and the last one. Nobody else knows because we don’t build hardware, right?

So there, one of the requirement is that an outside person should not be able to see the software running in the payment terminal. Because if they’re able to see, they can change it. The simple change is I put 100 rupees and they can make it 1000 rupees and send it.

So they had very stringent requirements on what we call as, you cannot even look. So it’s called peek. You can’t peek and you can’t poke also.

That means I can’t go and change it. So you can neither peek nor poke. It’ll just execute.

And same, we have the same problem. I want my motor to run, but you should not be able to peek, know what is happening or poke. That’s all.

It’s very simple. Same problem.

Nansi Mishra 17:58
You started Chara in 2019. So building in deep tech wasn’t cool. The deep tech sector was not hot.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 18:07
Yes.

Nansi Mishra 18:08
Investors were not cutting checks for deep tech startups. How did you get the conviction? How did you convince others to build in this category?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 18:22
Yeah. So always before starting a business, the old classical thing, identify the problem and it should be a real problem. We identified the problem, the rare earth problem and the designed and manufactured in India motor sustainability.

I think those are very clear. But building and convincing the investors was an extremely hard task because half the people we spoke to, typically investors and customers did not care because these people had still not realized the importance of the problem. We always used to say, and we still say, it’s not that China is good or bad.

They will do whatever is good for them. We would also do the same thing, right? So it was difficult to convince and deep tech was not exactly the darling of the investors that time.

It has changed now, by the way. Completely changed. Which is an amazing thing for this country.

Nansi Mishra 19:19
Yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 19:19
Now when I go to events, I see people working on hydrogen storage and protein batteries, all weird.

Nansi Mishra 19:27
Government deregulating ISRO, the biggest move you could think of.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 19:34
This government is doing all the right things as far as these things are concerned. So there is no other way to do this, Nansi. We just had to do it hard selling.

We spoke to a lot of investors. The first break we got was the Indian Institute of Science, the premier institute of this country. They gave us..

Nansi Mishra 19:56
The 25 lakh…

Bhaktha Keshavachar 19:57
Yeah. They gave a small grant. At least it was recognition.

The money was big then. It’s not so big now. But we got the recognition saying that this is a problem that needs to be solved.

One of the few people who understood. Then IIM Ahmedabad Ventures, they invest in kind of crazy startups like this. They also came in.

Nansi Mishra 20:18
Which year they came in?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 20:20
That’s what I’m trying to… 21. 21.

They actually came in in 2019 and I still remember… Sorry, 2020 and… I still remember after Diwali.

Then they come with a… That time it was, if I remember right, it was like a 100K, 60 lakhs check. But we told them gently that if I want to do something substantial in this one, I need a million dollars.

Because you have to prove, right? Build. It’s not easy.

It’s not a piece of software which I can sit alone and do it. And so we held them at bay. Then we convinced Kalaari.

There was a partner called Ravinder Singh. He invested in a lot of the deep tech companies at Kalaari. He invested in us.

He understood what we were doing. He’s also an engineer. He teaches at Harvard and all that.

Incidentally, we asked him three years later. So I know it’s very difficult to convince investors. But we also have fun.

After three years later, we always… Typically, at least I like to ask the question. So if you’re an investor, I know it takes forever to convince you.

We reluctantly put their money. It’s all fine. No problem.

Three years later, I’ll ask you the question. So tell me, why did you invest?

Nansi Mishra 21:36
Why did you invest?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 21:37
Why did you invest, right?

Nansi Mishra 21:39
We ask our founders, why did you take money? Because we have invested in 60 companies. 30 of them are started by second-time founders.

So our LPs ask us, okay, why are second-time founders like who have sold their first, second companies to public companies in the US, are taking money from a smaller fund like Neon? So we have to go back to our second-time founders. Just give us a clear, honest answer.

Why did you take money?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 22:05
Yeah. We asked Ravinder Singh in a public forum. Actually, why did you invest in us, Ravi?

There was like complete silence. He thought for, I should have recorded it, 15 seconds approximately.

Nansi Mishra 22:18
Best answers come after that, sir.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 22:19
He said only one word, geopolitics.

Nansi Mishra 22:22
Geopolitics.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 22:23
And that is when we realized that that’s our game. Geopolitics is our game.

Nansi Mishra 22:28
You also mentioned, somewhere you also started with this inside. And then, you know, you thought that you want to do something for the country also, right?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 22:38
Yeah.

Nansi Mishra 22:39
Both the things combined.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 22:40
Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, doing for the country is one thing. As I said, we need to do new things that has not been done anywhere in the world.

That was a, I wanted that feather in the cap. So, that was one more reason why we wanted to start Chara. But now, of course, there are a lot of other companies working on really cool stuff, especially in the sustainability space, which I think is a huge opportunity for the next two, three decades.

Nansi Mishra 23:06
Do you think India is doing enough relevant work in climate? Or we are still in very, very early?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 23:15
So, there is plenty of good work going on. I don’t think we’ve seen the results of it yet. Yeah.

But I think we’ll see it in the next. And the reality is that whatever we do has a long gestation period.

Nansi Mishra 23:32
Yeah. Unlike software businesses.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 23:34
Yeah. Seven years, 10 years. So, you will see a bunch of those things in the next several years.

When we go online with a lot of motors, then a bunch of other companies, they’re working on other kinds of batteries, hydrogen storage. I think we’ll see quite a bit. But coming back to your question, are we doing enough?

No, it’s never enough. Because I think sustainability is a big problem. I also think, I have no proof, Earth is also a non-linear system.

It is taking a lot of beating from us. When the climate goes bad, it won’t gradually go bad. I think there will be a disaster.

I think, but nobody knows. Climate is a complex system, right? But I have that suspicion that every time we are slowly destroying the climate, right?

So, it’s almost like the frog in the boiling pan. The temperature slowly starts going up and the frog still lives.

Nansi Mishra 24:35
One of the things can be extracting hard water from the ground in Bangalore, for example.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 24:43
Yeah.

Nansi Mishra 24:43
Like those type of things.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 24:44
Those type of things, we are slowly destroying. But I think the destruction will come in a very big fashion sometime soon. I hope not.

Nansi Mishra 24:53
What are the other things that we are doing wrong as a society ecosystem?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 24:59
So, the fundamental problem with us now is, with all humans, is that we are spending way too much energy to live. That is the problem. That energy has to come from somewhere.

Whether it’s the houses, the air conditioning, jump into a car and go from point A to point B. It’s just energy. Energy has to come from somewhere.

Today, it is coming principally from burning hydrocarbons. That is what is creating all the problems. So, there are two ways to solve this problem.

First one, it’s not possible. We all become very nice and start living like sages. That will automatically solve the problem.

Unfortunately, that’s not a possibility for me. I’m used to this energy richness. The technology solution is to find a cleaner source of energy.

Electricity is the only one now. That is why it’s a huge opportunity. Generation, transmission, selling, consumption like motors.

It’s a huge opportunity. That is where the opportunity is.

Nansi Mishra 26:05
Do we have startups solving that in India?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 26:09
So, in terms of batteries, there is some research going on, but not enough, I strongly believe. So, there are, I think, three or four technologies that every country should possess now. One is nuclear.

The other is semiconductors, which India is now starting. Hopefully, we’ll make a good job out of it. The third one is batteries, which India still does not have any production capacity.

I know they’re all coming up, but as of now, every cell that is used in India is imported from outside. And the last one is railroads. And now, I think the AI LLMs have been added.

I mean, that’s why the LLMs are critical.

Nansi Mishra 26:58
Yeah, yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 26:58
Yeah, it takes a lot of money.

Nansi Mishra 27:00
From last to last year, deep tech was the hottest. Now, AI is the hottest.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 27:05
But all these things will be there. Semiconductors will not go away. Batteries will not go away.

Rare earths will not go away. AI will not go away. Nuclear will not go away.

I think these five technologies are critical. We have one, I think, which is nuclear. All the others, we are way behind.

Yeah.

Nansi Mishra 27:24
And let’s go back to our journey in Chara. In 2019, you started with Maha and Ravi.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 27:31
Yes.

Nansi Mishra 27:32

And let’s just talk about the first year. What all did you do? Because six years in total were spent in research before the product came live.

So, how was the first year? Imagine you, Ravi and Maha are in the room.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 27:46
Yeah.

Nansi Mishra 27:47
Trying to figure out or revive the 200-year-old technology.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 27:50
Yeah, yeah. So, we knew the principles correctly. I just so that you know, I don’t know anything about motors. For me, motor was this round thing with a shaft which turns when you apply current or something. So, first thing is to find a person who understands motors just like in all its detail. Not only understand, he’s ready to build.

So, there are people who understand, there are people who build, but we need both to start up. So, I phoned Ravi. Ravi went to the same college as me, a little earlier than me.

I phoned him through the alumni network. I told him that, look, this magnet is a problem and he said, don’t even have to tell me. His problem was that he knew exactly how the motor works, but he did not have the hardware or the software experience.

So, I write software, Maha was the hardware guy. So, we all got together. We literally started building the motors by hand. We went to the machine shops, build motors. We assembled the hardware. I initially wrote all the software. I still love to do that, but I don’t do that anymore. Two reasons, I don’t have time and there are smarter, better, younger people doing that. And so, for the first two years, we were building motors and running them.

And unfortunately, it was COVID. So, we started when COVID was also starting. So, we were also stuck for a few months, I think in wave one.

There were three distinct waves, right?

Nansi Mishra 29:18
Yes.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 29:19
Wave one was bad because we didn’t know.

Nansi Mishra 29:20
Superbad, yes.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 29:21
So, between wave one, wave two, we actually built some motors, started testing it. Then the wave two happened. Then everything got shut down.

Wave two, I think was the worst wave. Then I think towards the end of 20, yes. Then I think slowly things started picking up.

And somebody introduced us to IMA and we got this one. But we also signed up our first customer in 21.

Nansi Mishra 29:45
21?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 29:46
Yeah, all over Zoom calls because nobody was traveling.

Nansi Mishra 29:52
Which was this first customer?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 29:54
So, there is a company called PICL, which manufactures air conditioning equipment. They wanted to build a motor and so we built one for them. And initially, our business plan was to design, build motors, but not manufacture.

So, I sell it to you, you manufacture and we get the license fee.

Nansi Mishra 30:16
Okay.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 30:17
Yeah, we are asset light and all of that. So, I come from a semiconductor background. I used to work for this large semiconductor company called Intel.

And I had the opportunity to spend a couple of months in another large semiconductor company called ARM based out of UK. ARM’s business is amazing. They never build anything.

They just do the models.

Nansi Mishra 30:38
They are leaders in mobile, right?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 30:40
Exactly. They’re amazing. There’s a $40 billion company last time we checked. All the revenues and licensing fees.

So, we wanted to be the arm of motors. We built and, but then as time progressed, we started building other motors. When we tried to sell them, we used to tell the same story, made in India, designed and made in India, rare earth, free, sustainable motor.

And they said, this is all good. Give me the motor. And then we said, oh my God, we have to start manufacturing it. And I had never done manufacturing. I was born and brought up in the city, I had never visited India and this is a fact. Because I thought India was there are some blitz and some whatever casting machines you know who cares.

Nansi Mishra 31:23
Yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 31:23
But now again karma is catching up. So we now run a factory in India. So and again for good tailwinds right manufacturing is getting lot of support in India.

Investors are investing. So, that also we went to the investors and told them look we need to change our business model from licensing to manufacture and they said yes and now.

Nansi Mishra 31:49
This was before Kalaari and Exfinity.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 31:53
No, this was after Exfinity.

Nansi Mishra 31:55
After Exfinity.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 31:55
After the second round. So that time we were building and started selling, we tried to do that licensing thing. We worked with three large companies, did not pan out to put it bluntly and that is when we said no we have to enter the business.

So we became a classic product company. We build the products and sell it to our customers and the manufacturing is getting some support both from the government and the investors now.

Nansi Mishra 32:23
What kind of response you were getting from earlier doctors like any embarrassing moment you want to share?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 32:30
Yeah. So, we were telling the same story and this one. So, the initial customers yeah we had bunch of issues.

The motors not starting, motors burning out, manufacturability issues were there. One of the difficult thing with reluctance motors is there is some difficulty in manufacturing. So, there is something called an air gap between the rotor and the stator.

The air gap is of tighter tolerance and reluctance motors, but not possible. So, we have to figure all those things out. I mean with one of our deployments the air gap became so small.

It is working quite well. The smaller the air gap it works really well, but the problem is when the air gap becomes very small when the rotor turns at a higher speed there are centrifugal forces which expand the rotor momentarily. It actually went and hit the stator and it is very dangerous and it is like so we had all those issues.

So, we have to figure out all those problems. I think once we figured it out then what we did was I think we took a step back and we did lot of testing by ourselves on two wheelers, three wheelers and our own test rig. We ran for hours and hours at various temperatures and we generated lot of data and fixed all the problems.

And now the customers like us because we do everything from first principles. So, the level of support we can give is unmatched and that is actually the main reason customers are coming to us.

Nansi Mishra 33:57
And Greaves Cotton is one of your top customers right.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 34:01
Yeah, they are also a partner now yeah.

Nansi Mishra 34:02
And they are one of the largest also right.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 34:04
Yes.

Nansi Mishra 34:05
How many meetings did it take for them to finally implement?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 34:10
Implement I tell you we signed the agreement in the end of March of last year.

Nansi Mishra 34:18
Last year.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 34:18
Right. Incidentally just a week before this whole thing broke out this embargo of this one.

Nansi Mishra 34:25
Yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 34:26
So, took about nine months a long time because it is a partnership agreement they were also figuring out. We should also remember that when they signed this rare earth was still not a known problem. So, that is why they were like oh is this a real problem you know how big of a problem it is.

They were not convinced we were convinced but they were not that is why they took a long time. And in some way they were they turned out to be lucky because we signed and three days later this thing happened. And everybody said oh you knew about this and like we are really no we did not know about this.

But what we knew was that rare earth is a problem and China is going to create someday problem just like the Gulf countries created the 1972 oil embargo. Anybody who has power will exercise it.

Nansi Mishra 35:16
And what kind of response you got like China restricted the export and then suddenly you are sitting in the most important room of the of India right.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 35:24
No not that way it the first thing that it the first thing that really helped us is made my job easier. I did not have to tell people what is a rare earth. I have no offense to you if I had spoken to this about six years ago you would have wondered like what are you talking about yeah.

So, that is that is the biggest push we got and customers investors future employees same thing right. So, that is like our three critical segments that is the number one customer started signing up. So, before they were telling you know your motor does not run at high speeds it is slightly heavier all those things now we are like no.

So, Ravi has is an interesting he always ends with his long arguments with a with a Kannada saying we are both Kannadigas and he always said that the type of food you eat is always dependent on the hunger yeah right. So, if you are if you are a hungry man even a bad food will work. So, suddenly the world was hungry for rare earth free motors in April and that is when they spoke they started speaking to us.

The third thing was the government also woke up yeah for the first time in my life I had never met a minister any time in my whole life yeah I am a techie I am in Bangalore and all that. So, I got a call on a Saturday afternoon and he said I am the personal secretary to Mr. Goyal and you know there is a meeting tomorrow and my Hindi is not that good and I made two mistakes my Hindi is not good I by the way I can perfectly understand and study it in the I can speak. The second thing was no offense to the personal secretary is a very close supporter of us I thought personal secretary is some you know some person it so, again he called on Saturday night at 8 o’clock and he said tomorrow you come and I told him I have broken in the Kal sunday hai 5.30 and he said what is your problem I said no problem I will fly. So, we flew that is when I realized a personal secretary to a cabinet minister is a very very senior IAS office yeah I went and told him sorry he said no problem he still supports us and similarly we met a lot of people in the government all the way to the principal scientific advisor, the DST chief, the MHI minister MHI is a nodal this one we really hope to get some support for us in to support our technologies which are rare earth free. Now the government has invested approximately a billion dollars into rare earth extraction and manufacturing we now we are telling the government that look we are also solving the same problem we are not using rare earth there is always a technology solution to all problems or is a technology solution and hopefully we will get that support also and that was a big change and we now because of that ANRF scheme right Anusandhan National Research Fund they are now supporting projects like us it is getting operationalized this quarter we hope to get some grants or support from the government they have indicated but I have never dealt with the government in a detailed fashion.

Nansi Mishra 38:37
In 2025 all the deep tech sector combined raised some 1.06 billion dollars in private equity and this was this was double of the amount they raised in 2024 right and including Chara lot of new tech startups raised pre seed seed or series A rounds but we still do not have investors who can come in series B series B series C right.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 39:10
You are absolutely right. So, we will see the good part we are not always an optimist otherwise you cannot be a startup founder. So, there is support for pre seed seed pre series A and series A whichever way you define it initial stages let us see up to 10 million dollars rounds beyond that it is harder in India we have to look outside hopefully that will change that will change because of two reasons I think some of the funds are now looking at growth stage companies you started speaking to them then there is always a foreign funds then there is always a government support but you are you are absolutely right series B and above is a little harder from an Indian investor.

Nansi Mishra 39:54
Do we have funds that are coming in B and C rounds?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 39:58
There are a few funds they come at series B but they are typical they are the classic growth funds.

Nansi Mishra 40:05
Yeah. They were they are not focused funds deep tech.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 40:09
That is a problem that is a problem. So, now the onus is on people like us like Chara saying that look this is a business now.

It is deep tech that is all cool stuff and hard stuff and all that now the onus is on us to show that this is a business and we are here to grow and we have to convince those funds.

Nansi Mishra 40:29
Essentially building the conviction in growth stage investors who are not focused on deep tech but have the money. Yes. To invest in.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 40:37
Absolutely the bunch of funds who have invested in FMCG you know a fashion.

Nansi Mishra 40:43
Yeah consumer.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 40:44
All those things right now we have to convince them that this actually there is a viable business and all the deep tech companies typically without exception or worldwide businesses because the problems are.

Nansi Mishra 40:57
Everywhere.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 40:57
Yeah.

Nansi Mishra 40:58
Like like how Europe is taking so much interest in Chara.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 41:01
Yeah yeah yeah yeah they were involved with first yeah because there are worldwide problems. Climate is a worldwide problem, rare earth is a worldwide problem, hydrogen storage is a worldwide problem. I think that is the bright side. But I think I just you know the risk of reputation I think the one advantage we have is India is a large enough economy now which is not the case when I graduated out of college. We were a poor country. Yeah. If we did something like that that time we have to look for outside. Now that is not the case. Dude I will sell in India and then I will go I will figure out everything right.

Then we can go.

Nansi Mishra 41:32
You can start in India, you can sell in India, you can raise early stage fund raise in India and then go out.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 41:41
That is I was always questioning why Silicon Valley is so prominent successful and all of that bunch of reasons. But one of the reasons is that they have the customer base to try a new thing and that is happening in India now.

Nansi Mishra 41:56
Like how US is the largest consumer of software.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 41:59
Correct.

Nansi Mishra 42:00
And they are by default the largest producer also right.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 42:04
Producer also and they are related. Because they are a consumer, startups can go sell them. Similarly, for products like ours there are consumers in India and that actually is a big deal.

So, now we have to convince the growth stage investors to go and to invest in companies like us. That is happening slowly. But I am pretty sure if things continue to go the way India’s GDP is growing I think that is a given.

Yeah.

Nansi Mishra 42:36
Chara has raised series A. What are the other deep tech companies that have raised beyond series A and what are the funds that have invested if you can share the numbers.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 42:46
I know of one which is a fellow investee from Kalaari Digantara. They raised a massive series B, 50 million dollars. That came from outside with good participation from inside also.

That came from outside. I think it is a Japanese investor. I do not know the details.

That was one, the rocket company.

Nansi Mishra 43:08
SkyRoot.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 43:09
SkyRoot. They also have foreign investors as far as I know series B. That is also Arkam had invested earlier.

Nansi Mishra 43:16
Yes, yes. Arkam had invested.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 43:17
Rahul had invested earlier. They also had foreign investors.

Nansi Mishra 43:20
SkyRoot is also, AgniKul SkyRoot, all these companies are receiving massive support from government, not just money, the recognition and all the other resources.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 43:30
Yeah, yeah. Actually, that is a very welcome change.

Nansi Mishra 43:34
And if India gets deep tech right like across verticals, how would the country look like in 20 years?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 43:43
So, we have to move up the value chain. So, we cannot be in the services. We cannot be in manufacturing all the time.

And the only way to move up the value chain is to invest in technologies, whatever are the next generation technologies. So, if you do that right, then there is a good chance that will be a much larger economy than what is being projected. I think we’ll continue to be the third largest economy because there’s a big difference between the second and third.

We’ll hit third, I think, by the end of the decade if nothing goes wrong.

Nansi Mishra 44:21
Yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 44:22
That is, that is number one. And number two is that the, I know there is the Viksit Bharat and Atma Nirbhar Bharat and all that, the big slogans, but we need to control our technology. Otherwise, we’ll always be at the mercy of the foreign sources.

I think that one is far more important as we go. As Nandan was telling once, please remember all the things we use like Gmail and social media, they are controlled by American companies. They’re not even controlled by the American government.

They are American companies. You know, they can shut it off anytime they want.

Nansi Mishra 45:07
Yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 45:08
I think we have to get away from that. So, all these things have to happen. Like China has built their own versions of everything, right?

Nansi Mishra 45:14
Yes.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 45:14
Yeah, their WhatsApp, their ride hailing, everything. Whenever I go to China, I have to install all the apps. Gmail does not.

First time when I went to China when Gmail and Google did not work, I thought this was some other planet. Yeah. But it did not hit me.

Once I came back, then it hit me because they don’t have to depend on the US. We are the data centers. I think that is why it is very, very critical that we do all this.

And I think if we get all these things right in the next 20 years, I think we will actually be a quote unquote superpower because we can exert our influence. Yeah. I am about to say a bad thing because twice in my life, I have been told that India will become a superpower and we did not. Once in the 80s during Indira Gandhi’s time.

Nansi Mishra 46:09
Yeah. But we have come a long way.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 46:12
We have come a long way.

Nansi Mishra 46:13
Somehow you have to believe in that thought.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 46:15
Oh yeah. We have come a long way. And our country is complex, diversity, you know, it is not a monolithic society and all that. And democracy is democracy. So no, we have come a long way.

Nansi Mishra 46:27
So if we have any deep tech founder or any founder in the audience sitting on the deep tech idea, anything that you would want to say, like how to get everything right or how to even start or do it or not?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 46:44
Okay. I had not thought about that. So I think one is the conviction we need to have because it is a long drawn process.

Nansi Mishra 46:55
Yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 46:57
I think the conviction is in terms of the problem definition, in terms of the market opportunity and in terms of that I can actually do this. I think those are the three things that are needed for a deep tech startup. I did not even mention market size or product market fit and all that.

I think those three are the ones which in my experience sustained us for the first at least two years, right? That conviction that we need to do this, conviction that there is a problem, conviction that I will build this. We were very sure of building it. Not that we are boasting that we are good engineers.

Nansi Mishra 47:41
So that is why your conviction was so high that you could get someone like Ravi joining the team who is the best brain in motors, right?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 47:50
Yeah. Yeah. Best brain.

Yeah. So the other thing, I mean, again, it is a particular example because I am a second time founder. I think I learned a few things in EasyTap journey and how to put this correctly, I am not doing this for the money.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that freedom is there. You know, I got some money in my old age and there are a lot of people who say that what difference has it made to you, to me personally and all that. I think one of the, and this is a known thing, it just hit me only in the last two years. One of the thing money gives you is that it gives you freedom, freedom to do things like this.

I think why I’m saying, sorry, long story. Why I’m saying this is that people who have made money should try these things. That’s what I’m trying to say. Especially, I would like to say the second generation, third generation of the big industrial houses, I think they should do this.

Nansi Mishra 49:00
So a lot of second time founders who have made successful aggregates or, you know, big family offices should be trying hard problems.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 49:09
Because they have the freedom, they have the financial freedom. Other things will fall in because we need, because if you’re always thinking about money, you know, how do I buy my rice and dal next month? It will be a self-defeatist situation. And I think that’s what, that attitude needs to change. I’m seeing that slowly in some of the family offices, but not all of them.

Nansi Mishra 49:34
What are they doing? They’re investing more in deep tech startups?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 49:37
So one of my best example is there’s a company called Sagar Semiconductor. We are trying to use their semiconductors. He’s a son of his, his Appa, who was the proprietor of Sagar Cements. Sagar Cements is a large cement factory in Andhra Pradesh. And so they made presumably bunch of money, lots of money, right? It doesn’t matter the quantum, right?

They have enough money, right? Now his son is doing semiconductors, Sagar Semiconductors. And he came to us, he’s classic US educator. He came to us and he said, no, Bhaktha, I’m doing this. Please use my MOSFET is that thing we use in our controller, the most expensive part, most money consuming part. And we are, we are trying them out.

And if it becomes a success, you know, we will use their MOSFETs. Now I don’t know whether Sagar Semiconductor will be a success or not. I’m pretty sure they will be, but that is the kind of behavior.

Nansi Mishra 50:32
So I’m saying, not just investing in deep tech, starting in deep tech.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 50:36
Starting in deep tech because he had the freedom, he has education. And I think, I almost think they have a responsibility to do that. But who am I to say that? Right. Yeah. And they can also make money if they’re successful. Can make only so much money.

Nansi Mishra 50:51
But they do say that for second time founders, that first time founders solve because they want to, they want to make it really big. But second time journey, because they know the pain, they know that it will be same if it is not fundraising something else. But the pain will be there.

The stress will always be there. So the second time they do it for purpose.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 51:12
Correct. Then purpose.

Nansi Mishra 51:14
But not family of it.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 51:15
Correct. So I think that should come from the family offices also, I believe. And I’ve seen some examples of it.

This is the example I know because they’re trying to come and sell our MOSFETs and I wholeheartedly support him. And I really wish that those MOSFETs come out of that factory in Andhra Pradesh.

Nansi Mishra 51:34
Let’s go back to our journey, conversation about Chara. Like what’s the state now? How much motors we are making? What are our customers?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 51:47
Thanks for asking that. We are at the classic inflection point. We have developed the technology.

We have the product market fit. We have the customer traction. Our only problem is to sell, manufacture and deploy both in India and outside India. This year is our real revenue start. Last year we made a little bit of revenue. We sold a few hundred motors, generated about a crore of rupees. This financial year, which is ending next month, in a month, we will be shipping about a few thousand motors. This month we’ll be doing about 350 motors. Next month we’ll be doing 500 motors and we continue to increase. So, we are at that stage where the technology we developed has become a reality and we’re shipping against revenue. Of course, aided by the geopolitical tailwinds. Yeah, that’s where we are.

Nansi Mishra 52:43
Quite an exciting time.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 52:44
Oh, this is the most exciting time. This is the hardest time for me because in my heart I like to think I’m still an engineer. So, now we have to deal with money, we have to deal with operations, we have to deal with support. We are growing the team. We have hired a CFO, we hired a COO.

Nansi Mishra 53:02
You have to solve for scale now.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 53:04
You have to solve for scale. So, the entropy levels are so high in the company. It is the most exciting time.

But I also think that next year will be a decisive year for us. If we don’t grow very big, we will stall. Yeah, we won’t die, but we will stall.

Nansi Mishra 53:23
Why do you think so?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 53:25
So, it has been six years and employees, investors start getting antsy and for good reasons. Even I get antsy, dude, when do I see this end for this? End not in like an exit, but end like, dude, I want to see the motors deployed. And that is why we need to deploy this 10,000 motors or 12,000 motors next year. There is a very good chance. It is just execution now.

If we don’t do that, then people will slowly start losing confidence. See, I always think of only three people, investors, customers and employees. And the order keeps changing depending on the time of the year. Sometimes the investors are important, sometimes the employees are important, all the time customers are important. So, it is critically the customers and the employees right now, because employees also have worked hard, long. For them, the biggest satisfaction is to deploy these motors and go to the next level.

Customers are also watching us, the new technology and they also want to see the large deployment. And then it will be like a classic flywheel, right? We put it in motion and that is why it is important.

Nansi Mishra 54:35
So, Bhaktha, India’s startup success was built on software because the tech talent was available, funding was available and it was exact opposite for deep tech. It was hard to even explain to investors. Let’s just talk about that. How do you now see the next five years for, let’s just say for Chara? Investing will be, fundraising will be a bit easier or hiring will be a bit easier.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 55:11
Correct. So, now we are at a stage at Chara where we are not considered deep tech. We are doing a deep tech work, but now it is a business, we have to show revenue. And all our efforts are towards that. We will continue to invest in technology, we will continue to invest in new products, but our challenge is to grow. So, where we, so our next five-year journey is only about execution, selling, operations, managing the money and all that.

And if we do this, the growth, what we have projected, I think there’s a huge amount of support. Investors have come and spoken to us. We keep talking to them on a continuous basis now. People come and talk to us for various reasons. One of them is, of course, there is a story. And now they are also realized that we are a growth stage company.

And if we show the growth, I think there’s a huge opportunity. I don’t think we are, we’ll ever be starved for funds if we execute well. That signaling has come very, very clearly.

Nansi Mishra 56:22
That’s why you said the next one year is very, very important. Very critical. Because if you execute well in the next one year, it’ll solve all the problems.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 56:30
It’ll solve all the problems.

Nansi Mishra 56:31
Customer problem. There will be excitement among customers.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 56:33
Yes, employees.

Nansi Mishra 56:35
Employees will be encouraged, motivated, because what they are doing, they can clearly see the impact of their work.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 56:41
Absolutely. Yeah. And then, of course, the investment, the investors also will see the growth and invest. Even irrespective of the rare earth situation. We don’t know China might become good and all that. So irrespective of that, we will.

Nansi Mishra 56:57
From sustainability.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 56:59
Sustainability, yeah. Control over technology. Someday, we always know that we are under the control of a foreign entity, which is not good, especially as we grow bigger. We can’t afford to do that. And that’s why the government is investing. At least the signaling is there from the government. I think it’s not enough, but at least it’s there.

Nansi Mishra 57:22
And then let’s talk about Intel. You have worked with Intel. At one point in time, Intel was a clear leader in chips. Now, NVIDIA is a leader in AI. ARM is leader in mobile. Similarly, TSMC is leader in manufacturing. Intel lost on all three grounds. Why do you think it couldn’t?

Bhaktha Keshavachar 57:45
I have to laugh first. We’ve discussed this so much. I left Intel, forget, 20 years ago. I worked in US for about 11 years and one year in Intel India. Feel extremely sorry to see this state of Intel now. When we used to go to conferences at ISSEC, the International Semiconductor Conference, Intel was always the first paper to be presented.

And the hall used to be full because Intel used to tell, this is the way semiconductors are built in the 90s. And now it’s not. TSMC has taken, you’re absolutely right about TSMC has taken over in manufacturing. NVIDIA and ARM has taken over in the product as well. I’m not sure why it happened. A bunch of reasons. One is that I think success breeds laziness. Intel was minting money in the 90s. So, I think that led to some behavioral changes at the company level. So, I was in the mobile division. Intel was planning to build mobility chips. Intel made a large acquisition of $2 billion then in the late 90s.

Acquired a company called DSPC from Israel. We all went to Israel, did due diligence and I was in that group. And Intel never put the mindshare into the mobile chips. Now, a lot of things I can’t disclose obviously, but publicly I can, whatever is publicly known, Apple came to Intel to build the iPhone chip and Intel said no. Yeah. And it’s like, I don’t know, a trillion dollar mistake or a hundred billion dollar mistake.

And the reason was very clear for Intel. The ASP, average selling price of the processors we were selling at that time was about $225, $225 then. So, it must be like a thousand dollars now, right? In equivalent money. I’m the ASP of the processors that go into the mobile phone that time was about $12, $15. So, Intel looked at $200, $12 like, no this one. That vision was not there that the thing is going to change. Similarly, in graphics, in GPUs, what we call as GPUs. GPUs are being used to in the AI chips, right?

Nansi Mishra 1:00:17
Yeah.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:00:17
Again, this is public knowledge. Intel ran a very large, very famous program called Araby and again lost interest because they could not see the commercialization of that. But this little company NVIDIA was doing graphics chips, supplying graphics chips, but they figured out that it can be, it’s also a little bit of luck for them that the AI needed the GPUs for training and inference.

So, but Intel never had a product. So, I think it is clearly, clearly lack of coherent strategy looking beyond. Intel had enough money.

I mean, GMs used to say, dude, we don’t know what to do with their money.

Nansi Mishra 1:01:08
So, we are towards the end of the conversation. So my last question to you is that, what do you know about yourself that made you keep choosing difficult? Like, it is a difficult space we know, right?

It took you six years just to reach the product market fit or product. You knew that market is there, but reach that level of product, right? And lot of years in R&D, you know, building conviction in investors. So, this is definitely the hard or difficult choice to make. So, what did you discover about yourself? Like, you are made to choose.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:01:54
So, more than discovery, even I have started to learn. The discovery part is that I didn’t tell, my family tells, my wife tells that, and I’ve slowly started realizing that, I think if I lock on to a target, I’ll never let it go. Yeah.

Whatever small it is, I’ll make it happen. So, because just like, so no offense, most wives, they keep telling, do this, do that, you know, and I never do it. And I’ll tell her it’s too hard, I have to call that guy and all.

My wife always says, no, if you want to do it, you’ll do it in half hour. I think that was one discovery about myself that I said, you know what, I think I have that, whatever the grit or the focus. The other thing is to, I had to learn a lot of things.

The main thing is the art of storytelling narratives, right? The difference between a leader and not a leader is the art of storytelling. Jesus apparently was the greatest storyteller. I don’t have proof for that. Lord Krishna was a big storyteller. Yeah, the storytelling is a part. And I have honed it very, very, but doing it many, many times by this one and identifying the problem. I think that is, that is core. And long ago, one of our profs from UBC had told that, well, there are phases in life for an engineer. You know, you’re, you’re born, of course, not born an engineer, you’re a student. Then you, you ideally become an apprentice, you know, internship and all that. Then you be, be an, you’ll be an employee for about two to three decades. Then he said all of, he said this in the convocation, he said, all of you should try to become an employer, not retire as an employee. That was one more thing that stuck in my mind. Maybe I should also become an employer, generate jobs.

I think that also gave me a push. I think, not very clear. Yeah.

Sometimes.

Nansi Mishra 1:03:57
Yeah. This makes a lot of sense.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:03:59
Yeah. I think that’s a good, this one he gave.

Nansi Mishra 1:04:01
Because the kind of opportunity you get to do that apprenticeship makes a lot of difference.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:04:07
Yeah.

Nansi Mishra 1:04:07
Like it creates a huge impact or gives you that kind of clear understanding what you want to do next.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:04:13
Yes. I’ve been told, I don’t know, that Germany does this systematically. So, you never get a job after you graduate.

You do that apprenticeship, which is typically like internship, low pay, you learn. I think you should do that.

Nansi Mishra 1:04:29
Like you’re not there for money, you are there for learning. Just for understanding.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:04:32
Right. And you get paid some money. I think that one, if we do it systematically, I think we’ll be far better builders, all of us. Right. In whatever you do, whether it is doing a show like this or building the next gen motors, same thing. Right. Yeah.

Nansi Mishra 1:04:49
Because you don’t get that kind of training, but you need the training to do something or anything. Right. So, you somehow, like for us, this podcast, it’s a great learning mechanism.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:05:01
Absolutely.

Nansi Mishra 1:05:01
Because you don’t get time to sit and learn.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:05:03
Yep.

Nansi Mishra 1:05:03
Right. So, you need that, like for this interview, I dedicated some four, five hours to, you know, just to read about Chara, read about Bhaktha, Ravi.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:05:13
I was really surprised on all the data you said. I thought, oh my God, you’ve actually done research.

Nansi Mishra 1:05:17
When I was researching, reading, I was thinking that if I don’t do podcasts, there would never be a time when I’m, sitting and reading about a startup which has no relationship with Neon.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:05:30
Yeah. Yeah. That is, actually, that is one point I want to tell. I know somebody told me, and maybe it’s a well-known technique. The technique is that always meet a person, one every week, by the way, it’s slightly tough though, one every week, who is not doing what you do. So, like an artist, like an auto driver, like a pilot, and typically from all strata of the society, you actually learn a lot. So, I met this national level Bharatanatyam dancer.

Nansi Mishra 1:06:07
Dancer.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:06:08
I mean, I went to his performance. He’s like out of the world, right? He renders a song and we can actually see that song being rendered, right? But then, one day I went to his home and he was practicing in his normal clothes, like just a pyjama and a kurta and no accompaniment, no stage, nothing. And I actually thought that dance was better than this dance on the stage. And I asked him, his name is Satyanarayan. I said, Satya, I like this dance better than your dance on the stage. He said, no. He said, every time I dance, I think this is my last dance.

Nansi Mishra 1:06:51
Okay.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:06:52
Yeah. So, what I learnt is that every time I present, right, like this or anywhere, I always think we should put our 100% effort, does not matter, does not matter about the outcome. He was dancing to nobody. I think that’s, I think things like this we learn from non-professional, non, our profession, right? Whatever is your profession. Yeah. So, things like that. I think I tried to make it, but it’s hard. Time is hard.

Nansi Mishra 1:07:20
Thank you so much.

Bhaktha Keshavachar 1:07:21
Thanks, Nansi. Nice talking to you.