Episode 94: We Should Pray for Crisis w/ Avnish Anand
About Avnish Anand:
Avnish's first job after his Indian Ivey League MBA was selling washing machines in a region with almost no water. He joined CaratLane as employee number one almost by accident. Avnish never had the credentials for the job. He wasn't a marketer, product manager, or founder. Avnish later became CaratLane’s co-founder & CEO. In 2023, Titan paid about ₹4,600 crore for CaratLane. That valued the whole company at roughly ₹17,000 crore (about $2 billion), making it a “billion-dollar brand,”.
His story matters because he learned to turn those missing credentials into a method. He trusted common sense over best practice and borrowed ideas from sports, statistics, and other industries. Where most managers settle for paying people on results, he paid them to do the right things, and when he needed to, he changed the rules of his industry instead of only working within them. Under it all is one way of thinking: identify which variables you can actually control, measure them, and design for repeatability rather than luck. He is also frank about how much luck shaped his path, and how often CaratLane's good decisions only made sense afterward.
Listen on:
Key Lessons:
Incentivise the Inputs, Not Just the Outcomes
Lesson:
If every KPI you set is a result that shows up later, you may be avoiding the harder job of understanding how your team's work produces those results. Reward the behaviours you can show lead to results, and you get growth you can predict and repeat instead of growth that depends on luck.
Quote-worthy insight:
"The hard part is to really understand what inputs will have a high correlation and causality with the outcome."
Paying only for outcomes is how managers outsource the risk of not understanding their own business.
A Crisis Is the Cheapest Time to Make an Expensive Decision
Lesson:
Resistance to change is usually about people's mindsets, not about the logic of the decision. Keep a list of hard decisions you can't currently get agreement on, and make them when a shock lowers resistance, provided you have enough runway to survive it.
Quote-worthy insight:
"There is so much flexibility with all the stakeholders when you have a crisis like that."
A crisis doesn't create new ideas. It removes the veto on the ones you already had.
Price the Upside Before You Reject the Cost
Lesson:
Organisations reject good ideas because costs are easy to measure and gains are not. Before saying no, check how often the costly scenario actually happens and estimate what you would gain. The real cost is often a rounding error.
Quote-worthy insight:
"The cost is something everybody understands very well. But, do you quantify the upside..."
Costs win arguments because they're easy to count, not because they're bigger.
When You Copy a Model, Check That the Demand Comes With It
Lesson:
The way a business delivers its product often works in a new market. The customer base often doesn't. When you adapt a proven idea, test demand separately and early.
Quote-worthy insight:
"While the business model in terms of the digital thing and everything makes sense, I don't think there are enough customers who will buy this."
You can copy a company's model. You can't copy its customers.
Grow a Category by Changing Why People Buy
Lesson:
Big growth often comes from creating a new reason to buy rather than making a better product for the old one. Ask what occasions your category currently rules out, and whether that limit is really just about price.
Quote-worthy insight:
"It was not really a category which you wore every day and for adornment."
Creating a category usually means creating new occasions to buy.
When the Economics Break, Change the Rules
Lesson:
Most operators treat regulations and industry standards as fixed. Sometimes the biggest move available is to change what's allowed. Earlier wins (CaratLane had already made 14-carat popular) give you the credibility to push.
Quote-worthy insight:
"We made a petition to allow hallmarking in nine carat."
Sometimes the best operating decision is a lobbying decision.
Use Common Sense Over Best Practice
Lesson:
Best practice is a useful minimum and a harmful ceiling. Teams that keep solving problems from scratch build a habit that teams copying templates never develop.
Quote-worthy insight:
"Today common sense is called first principles or fundamental or second level thinking."
Best practice is the average of other people's assumptions.
Being a Generalist Is a Skill You Build
Lesson:
Having no specialism doesn't make you a generalist. A real generalist can take over an unfamiliar function and learn enough, quickly enough, to make good decisions.
Quote-worthy insight:
"Being a generalist doesn't mean that, because I'm not a specialist at anything, I will become a generalist."
A generalist isn't someone who knows a little about everything. It's someone who can learn anything fast enough to decide well.
Know Your Role, and Find People Who Cover the Rest
Lesson:
Be honest about what you are not. Many bold moves only become possible because the right partner covers your blind spots.
Quote-worthy insight:
"If there's no Gopal, then I don't know whether Mithun would have had the courage to start something like this."
Most founders don't find courage. They borrow it from the partner beside them.
Choose the Environment That Rewards How You Work
Lesson:
Treat each job as an experiment that shows you where your strengths are valued. Capable people often blame themselves when they're simply in the wrong system.
Quote-worthy insight:
"How will I ever do anything if you keep putting condition of experience?"
Talent doesn't fail in the wrong organisation. It just becomes invisible.
Your Biggest Turning Points May Be Ones You Nearly Turned Down
Lesson:
When the downside is small, like one meeting or one more week, lean towards yes. As a manager, learn to tell the difference between someone who is struggling and someone who is in the wrong job.
Quote-worthy insight:
"Somebody didn't let me give up at that point in time."
Careers often turn on small yeses that almost didn't happen.
Front-Line Experience Helps Head Office and the Field Understand Each Other
Lesson:
If you design how other people work, spend time doing their job first. When hiring, give weight to people who have succeeded in hard front-line conditions.
Quote-worthy insight:
"Most organizations struggle because they don't understand each other's worldview."
Strategy fails in translation more often than in design.
Recognise Mindset, Not Tenure
Lesson:
Leaders should use titles and recognition to reward the behaviour they want more of. Professionals who want to move up should show the behaviour of the role before asking for the title.
Quote-worthy insight:
"You have displayed enough evidence of having that kind of mindset and mentality, so therefore you deserve this."
The strongest culture signal is promoting people for how they think.
Strategy Gets You Started; Avoiding Small Errors Gets You the Win
Lesson:
Competitors copy your differentiation, so it wears off. Disciplined execution builds up over time and is hard to copy. Most leaders over-invest in strategy and under-invest in the small details that decide results.
Quote-worthy insight:
"Even before the match has started, they are 30 runs up on us."
Strategy gets you on the field. Avoiding small errors is what wins the game.
You Don't Need Your Job to Give You Purpose
Ikigai says the ideal career combines four things: what you're good at, what you enjoy, what pays, and what has purpose. Avnish argues that most people never get all four. Dropping purpose, and finding it outside work, makes a fulfilling career more achievable.
Lesson:
Every extra requirement you place on a job shrinks the set of options. Rank what you need and drop the one you can get elsewhere. Be honest with yourself, though: for some people, lack of purpose is exactly what makes work stop being enjoyable.
Quote-worthy insight:
"One less filter just increases your chances of getting there."
The more you demand from one job, the less likely you are to find it.
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