Nitin Bajaj

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj, and joining me today is Shivang Dave. Shivang, welcome on the show.

Shivang Dave

Thanks for having me, Nitin.

Nitin Bajaj

Pleasure to have you here. So let’s start with who is Shivang?

Shivang Dave

That’s a interesting question. So I guess the the simple answer is I’m just a kid from Sacramento, born to Indian parents and a good mix of Indian and and American culture. I guess at another level, you know, I’m a bioengineer, translational medicine researcher, and social impact entrepreneur. And at another level, I’m a 3 time, medical device entrepreneur who’s now CEO and cofounder of PlenOptika.

Nitin Bajaj

So many layers to peel off over there, Shivang. And knowing you, having known you for a while now, lots to hear, lots to learn from you. Now let’s start with, what is PlenOptika. Tell us about the impact, the scale of operations, and a little bit of the vision.

Shivang Dave

Yep. So PlenOptika makes, medical devices and digital health technologies that transform and improve access to vision exams and eyeglasses globally. Why do we do that? It’s because if you look at different numbers, like, from the World Health Organization, you will find that there are between 1,102,500,000,000 people worldwide who don’t have the glasses they need. Therefore, they don’t have the vision correction they need, which impacts education, economic productivity, quality of life. It’s now shown to affect, roadside safety and traffic accidents, mental health, falls for the elderly. In fact, it impacts directly 7 of the 17 UN sustainable development goals.

Nitin Bajaj

Wow.

Shivang Dave

And we, stumbled upon this problem, and we were research fellows in a program called the Madrid MIT Envision Consortium between the government of Madrid and MIT. Mhmm. And our task was to identify large scale unmet medical needs and to really understand the different barriers that make these needs persist from a technology landscape side to a clinical practice side, economics, regulatory. And once you’ve kind of mapped out that space for, you know, 6 to 10 months and you really work on it, then you can really figure out what your clinical impact statement is, and you can figure out what technology you need to build to get there. And so for us, we looked at this big global problem. We said, you know, it must be because the eyeglasses are so expensive.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

Usually, that’s what we think because in the US, they’re very expensive. Right. And then when you look in low and middle income countries, $5 prescription glasses are readily available.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

The problem is an access problem. People don’t have access to the eye care professional because there’s just not enough of them. The world needs something like a couple 100000 to a 1000000 more optometrists and ophthalmologists, and it also needs a 1000000 more access points where people can get access to glasses and try them on and test them. And we knew my 3 other cofounders, and we knew 4 4 guys in Cambridge, Massachusetts were not gonna be able to scale up a 1000000 new doctors. The governments of the world have been really trying. They’ve been trying new innovative ways of eye care delivery, of scaling up, these professionals, but we’re still short. And so we thought, hey. Let’s look at what technologies could make a doctor more efficient. And then eventually, what tech if we can make those technologies portable and usable outside of clinical settings, those doctors could become more efficient in these global health public health settings. Then we thought if we make these technologies really accurate and easy to use, then technicians and community health workers and nurses and school teachers can use this technology to triage the simpler patients. And the more complicated patients with more complicated eye diseases can be funneled up to the limited number of eye doctors and get the full full blown treatment. And so that kinda gives you a sense of how we started and and where we’re going. We’re really passionate about being biomedical engineers, and biomedical engineering is all about having health impact.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

And it was kind of a very when we when we stumbled on the problem, it was really interesting because sometimes or most times as a biomedical engineer, you can work on stuff that affects people in high income countries, really expensive technologies and surgical tools or cancer drugs and things like that. Things that take long time to develop and a lot of money to scale up, and then that limits where it’s deployed. And this was an opportunity where we saw in a couple year timeline, we could launch a product that could be used around the world and have impact. And this is not just a global health problem. There’s something like 3,000,000 Americans who live in eye care deserts and don’t have access to eye care. The numbers are even bigger in Europe. So, you know, I don’t want people to think this is just a low middle income problem. It’s actually a global problem. And so it was it was a very unique opportunity to work on something that had large impact, and that’s what excites us about it.

Nitin Bajaj

This is phenomenal work, and the numbers actually scare me if you’re saying, you know, almost 8% of the US population, largest GDP,

Shivang Dave

you know,

Nitin Bajaj

access to any and all kinds of technology, hub of innovation, and 8% of the population does not have access to basic eye care. That’s that’s astounding.

Shivang Dave

It it it’s crazy historically. You know? There’s some really interesting intricacies of our health care system.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

And one thing is if you notice dentistry or dental care and vision care, as far as insurance, they’re always outside of your main insurance. Right? You have medical insurance? Yes. And for some reason, I don’t understand. A long time ago, vision and dental care were looked at as wellness and then become out of pocket. And they tend to be more in the higher resource areas of cities, and so there are a lot of these deserts. And so, you know, it’s it’s surprising. This could be elderly folks who are in a nursing home or bedridden. This could be folks in prison, schools. This could be low income areas, you know, places that are serviced by federally qualified health centers that don’t have enough eye doctors. But this is gonna also be the busy tech professional in California or Southern California, right, like, who’s just too busy to go get the eye exam they’re supposed to get every year or 2 and keep putting it off and putting it off because it’s not convenient. So, yeah, it’s it’s it’s shocking, but it has all kinds of ramifications to and and one number I didn’t say, but, you know, the UN and a bunch of other, kind of the leading folks in global health and eye care have estimated that the economic impact to the global economy is $411,000,000,000 per year.

Nitin Bajaj

Wow.

Shivang Dave

And if you just spend $5 per these 1,000,000,000 people, you know, for $5,000,000,000, you’d solve a $400,000,000,000 problem, but it still doesn’t happen.

Nitin Bajaj

That’s a massive return on your investment. Right? So Yeah. Let’s talk about I mean, there’s there’s obviously a lot of challenges here. Yeah. But there’s a huge opportunity at the same time.

Shivang Dave

Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj

As a business, as as you’re looking through cutting across all of these challenges and, coming up with a solution, what’s the one big challenge you are facing as a business?

Shivang Dave

Yeah. So I think the biggest the 2 biggest challenges I’ll I’ll give you 2. Are you getting double your money’s worth? There you go. So, one is because optometry and optical retail are not in the traditional health care sphere. Mhmm. Health care traditional health care investors don’t really have a thesis on it. And we’re in an industry that’s kind of generally slow to adopt technology. And so even the big strategic players in this space are slow to make tech bets compared to other aspects of health care or if you look at the software tech industry, where if they see that you’re a startup and you have a solution that they want or that could be helpful, they wanna give you the resources to accelerate that and impact the the market as a whole. So that’s kind of 1. The second was, you know, it took a long time to get recognition. And I’m not talking about recognition in terms of praise, but, you know, when you’re in a medical field, you’re in a field that has a lot of academics, you you kinda have to earn your stripes before people started paying attention to your technologies and your results. And that took a long time. You know? We we were at MIT. We spun we were there for 3 years. We spun out. And it really took about 6 years, 6 and a half years doing 16 clinical studies and randomized controlled trials and publishing high impact papers and started to do global health work all over the world before the larger players really took note. You know, we talked to them. They weren’t that interested or in the early days or they they they need they sat back and wanted to see, could you scale it? Could you have impact? And, so it took a long time. And why does that matter? Because it does make your path a little slower and harder. You often, as an entrepreneur, think, hey. If I can, you know, collaborate with Nitin Bey, then I’m gonna shorten my time to market. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna scale bigger. And so that in one way, you could say it created a challenge, but it also created an opportunity. We had to focus on the fundamentals Yes. And we had to kinda do things the right way. And now when we represent our work, when people use our technology, there’s so much more rapport and confidence in us and and the technologies and solutions we build. And so we’ve been able to, in a weird way, build a because of this, instead of hype and, we’ve built a brand name that is actually quite robust, and people say, hey. You guys are leading tech innovators in this industry that has a lot of big players. But it came from just, you know, having to put your head down and and work hard. And I guess I I skipped one of your earlier questions, so I’ll come back to it. You know, what is our scale of impact and and growth? So we launched our technology, after 3 years at MIT and four and a half years as a company. We did it mostly with grants and almost very little, a little angel funding.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

And we had done about 6 clinical studies on 2,000 patients in India, Spain, and the US.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

Since launch in early 2019, so we’re talking about three and a half years now at this point. Now our technology has been used on somewhere between 4 and 5000000 people across 30 countries. We now have distribution in 50 countries. It’s used by large NGOs and governments and ministries of health. In fact, it’s being really heavily adopted in India and, now starting to be deployed in Africa with big NGOs and other parts of, Asia. But it’s also used by the for profit optical retail industry because it has about the technology we’ve built, which is called QuickSee. It’s a handheld wavefront abrometer, and it’s been validated to be the most accurate device of its kind on the market. And, you know, so we’re even used by the for profit side. We’re used by optometrists who just use it in their clinic, but we’re also used by optometrists and ophthalmologists who go to prisons and school screenings and things like that who wanna move outside of their clinic and provide access to care. It’s used by, hospital systems like Arvin Eye Hospital and the Veterans Affairs. And one cool thing that we didn’t expect when we started, it’s now used by the space program, on pre and post flight testing of space crew and space tourists. So I believe it’s last year. It’s been used on 2 different, flights, and that was kind of publicly announced. And, NASA, because of the long term mission to Mars and trying to understand how the body changes in space, are very interested in the changes that happen in the eye. And all the data to date was always on astronauts, which is a very homogeneous in a way population. They’re very unique. And now with space tourism, they have an opportunity to get on the general public, the very wealthy general public that can go up or to go up in space. And, you know, that’s a very cool thing. Another aspect of power technology is being used in in a bit of validation. And we’ve steadily been growing despite COVID because we bring value to these stakeholders around the world. And, yeah. And so, you know, we we’re starting to have the impact we want, and then I guess because of some of these large scale programs we’re folded into in India and around the world, it you know, we’re on track to the technology being used on around 60,000,000 people in the next 2, 3 years. And then, you know and that might sound impressive, but I’ll be humble. If the problem is 1 to 2,000,000,000 people, 5,000,000,000, you know, 5,000,000 is a drop in the bucket. So we still have a long ways to go.

Nitin Bajaj

Hey. But, you know, just knowing you and and the scale and and the pace at which you work, it’s a snowball effect. Right? So you’ve started rolling.

Shivang Dave

You Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj

Starting to make a dent. And these are amazing numbers. Right? To have that patience to to kinda stay diligently focused on the task at hand despite facing several no’s. So let me bring this back to the the challenge question. Right? I’m curious to hear. You’re in a in a very interesting space. You’re not a traditional start up. You’re not you you’re not a not for profit either. So Right. You’re led by the mission and the vision to help people. How’s that creating an impact, you know, good or bad when it comes to fundraising?

Shivang Dave

Yeah. So, so one thing I wanna do is step back and make sure to thank all the advisers, my cofounders, and team. Right? It’s I I don’t want this to be seen as, you know, I came up with the mission statement. In fact, when we’re spinning out of MIT, the founders are sitting around a table

Nitin Bajaj Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

Asking ourselves, do we even wanna spin out? We said yes. And then the second question by one of my cofounders who’s now a professor at Johns Hopkins, he said, what do we wanna be known for in 10 years?

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

Wanna be known for more impact and let’s say less money? We wanted to make money, but let’s say Dave it binary. Or do you wanna be more money, less impact? And, of course, me with my Indian mind that’s always thinking in the gray space is not black and white. I was like, we can do both. And he said, no. Let’s make it binary. Mhmm. And that really clarified the mission, and we all happen to say, yeah. We wanna be known. You know, we’re biomedical engineers. We go into industry and and make money. But it’s not often you get to work on a problem that has a potential to have impact in this many dimensions of life and around the globe, high and low resource settings. So we said we wanna be known for more impact, and, of course, we wanna have we’d be sustainable and profitable and and grow. And so how does that now that you have that context, how does that affect fundraising? So we’ve had situations where prominent VCs have said, you know, hey. I’ll give you a lot of money if you kind of try to go disrupt doctors.

Nitin Bajaj

Right.

Shivang Dave

I’ll write you a check right now because they think in this disruptive mindset. Mhmm. And, luckily, we’re all trained as health researchers, biomedical engineers, and we understand that’s not how you have health impact. Mhmm. Right? It’s this is not taxis. It’s not other things. And even those business models have not really become sustainable. You know? These, you know, disrupt everything kind of thing. And it’s really about building tools and improving the system, working with doctors, giving them tools, hospital systems, health care systems. And so this mission statement, this North Star, even though those were bootstrapping years, we’re surviving off of grants and we, you know, doing crazy things like skipping lunch every day or eating, you know, the snacks in the incubator center. It was very easy to just say, no. We you know, that’s not you’re you’re not changing our mission. You’re not and, know, that’s come across multiple times, and so that does close some doors.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

But in the end, you realize those viewpoints are not how to have success in this space. So bringing those kind of investors would have just been misaligned, and it it wouldn’t have necessarily helped us have this kind of long term impact. So, you know, it did make fundraising harder, in a way. We would not just take money from anyone. And, you know, that being said, not all VCs are bad. Right? And there are a lot of really great ones, and we’ve been fortunate to work with a few really sophisticated ones on the West Coast and in in Europe who are digital health and and, health disparity, mission, oriented, but profit focused as well. And they help us round that out, but in a way that works within the health care system. So that’s how it’s made it hard, but and that’s, let’s say, not fundraising, but team building. Right? Sometimes you come across that really all star and you’re just like, wow. But you realize they wanna do it because of just, let’s say, compensation or they’re thinking in that dimension only, and that has helped us find the strong team of advisers and just this great amazing team that are spread across the world, but mostly in Boston and in Madrid who are aligned with the mission. And that makes you know, they enjoy coming to work despite all the ups and downs. And, so having that strong mission statement might make your path a little longer or harder, but I think in, you know, a different way makes it more clear and easy, if that makes sense.

Nitin Bajaj

Clarity over certainty any day. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So let’s flip the switch and talk about the biggest or the most exciting opportunity you’re targeting right now.

Shivang Dave

So we’ve been working on new technologies for the last few years. You know, we’re we’ve built this great technology, QuickC, but we don’t wanna stop there. There’s other aspects, to improve it upon, and there’s ways to keep making it adopted more in in all these settings. And so one thing that’s unique about us is because we started off in these hard settings in the US and in global health settings, we had to make technology that worked and worked well in the hands of these nonexperts. And that gave us a a great our team real insight and deeper insight than others had on how to make technologies that can scale in more interesting ways. And so that’s what we’re working on, and that’s what I’m excited about because I think we’re gonna keep pushing the envelope, and we just published in Nature Scientific Reports a couple months ago, which is not usual for, like, a medical device company. But the stuff we’re bringing and we’re gonna be bringing to market is just really exciting, and it just improves the vision exam, improves access, reduces costs. It, you know, keeps the health care system, the eye doctors in involved. And so I think we’re gonna come up with a really beautiful example of how you can work with different stakeholders and be impactful and be, you know, successful as a business. And that and it’s not just limited to the US market or the European market. It’s gonna be worldwide. So that is what really excites me in the next phase of where we’re going.

Nitin Bajaj

In addition to that global impact, what I’m personally excited about is I remember you’d mentioned this to me that you guys are taking a lot of effort in making sure the user experience for the experts that are using it is simplified. So the training is quicker and easier. Yeah. So I I really love that holistic view and thinking through the details to not just make the tech, but make it useful for the people that are actually on it.

Shivang Dave

And, you know, that’s the that’s the thing. And it’s you know, we weren’t the first to come up with this idea. It’s very ingrained in, I think, the software tech space, but in the apps. Right? Usability, user experience. But in the medical device space, I think it’s it’s there, but a little less.

Nitin Bajaj

Yeah.

Shivang Dave

But usually in the global health space, it’s it’s even less, I think. And and, you know, it it comes from humility. Right? You spend all this time. You do these studies in all these countries. You, like, work with all these experts. You take 6 years and you launch, and then you realize it’s having impact, but there’s a but. You know? There’s a few buts. It’s great but this. It’s great but that. So, you know, if you’re humble, if you’re coachable, if you really are passionate about the impact, you’re not gonna ignore your customer base. You’re not gonna ignore that feedback from your partners And you say, hey. These are opportunities to improve.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm. Right?

Shivang Dave

Improve the algorithms, improve the software, improve the usability, improve the ergonomics, improve everything. So that’s that’s the really cool thing about PlenOptika. You know, a lot of med device companies are very sales

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

Team heavy and few engineers. Like, the ratio is and we’re inverted. You know? We’re 3 fourth scientists and engineers, and 1 fourth, you know, commercial team. And this commercial team, though, is experienced and they’re having all this impact. But, you know, we are continuously dedicated to r and d. And, you know, I’d like to thank, you know, the NIH, the US Endoscience Endowment Fund, the Trish program, which is, Translational Research Institute of Space Health, grants in Europe. You know, these mechanisms, like the SBIR mechanism with the NIH, have allowed us to, you know, continuously do r and d and push the envelope of of impact.

Nitin Bajaj

It’s amazing to bring the whole ecosystem together

Shivang Dave

Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj

Because you have that clarity and you have that vision and to be able to drive the results from that. Let’s as we as we look forward in terms of the opportunities, let’s look back a little bit. In your own journey, you’ve had some successes and some that probably weren’t qualified as successes and, you know, we’ll say the f word, the biggest failures. Yeah. So I’m interested to hear one of each. One success story brag a little bit, you know, not really like you, but Yeah. Go for the stars. And then once that, you know, became a a lesson that you drew upon and, you know, helped you change for the better.

Shivang Dave

Yeah. I’d I’ll I’ll start off again. I’ll give you twice your money’s worth. I’ll give you 2 kind of learnings that were hard learnings, but important. You know?

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

When you have really smart cofounders, really smart advisors, really smart experienced partners, you know, sometimes and and this is true of professional life and personal life. Sometimes, you know, you can be a great communicator, but it’s hard to have uncomfortable conversations. Right? And you bottle things up or you don’t fully express things, and and that causes lack of clarity. That causes tension. It causes resentment sometimes. So, you know, that is somewhere where me personally, and I think even my team and even advisors and everything. Right? It’s something you you always work on. And, you know, I think, a lot of times, right, in our Indian culture, we we avoid conflict in conversations. You know, that’s a deep part of our DNA.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

And it comes out of a deep place of respect actually for the other person, so which is a a beautiful thing. But if you don’t also express kind of what you see is wrong stuff, right, that that causes these inefficiencies. Right? So that was a lesson, you know, to it’s not if if you have these conversations from a place of respect, empathy, compassion, You know? You you put yourself in another person’s shoes as well, theory of mind. You can have these and be productive. Mhmm. And it’s not bad, and it’s not uncomfortable. You know? And and I’m not the 1st to say that. You know, people have written books on this and Mhmm. But it’s it’s definitely something I would I would share. And the second is as an entrepreneur and as a founder. Right? You can take things personally. Every setback, every, you know, competition you don’t win or every no from investor. And look like great athletes, you know, uses as fuel. Right? Mhmm. Michael Jordan. Right? Trey Mond Green, who I love. Right? He in the 1st couple years, he would always recite the 34 people who got picked before him. Right? Aaron Rodgers, who’s a a cow bear, but so many more. Right? And who who did that. And, you know but then you’re defining your progress by these kinda negative and is outside. So, you know, what I’ve kinda learned is you really gotta that it has to come from within, but it doesn’t need an external fuel source. It has to be your own light shining and shines bright. And so you need to learn to not get too high and not get too low.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

You know? Like and not take things personally. Right? It’s very easy to, because you’re putting everything you have into this start up. And someone’s saying very flippantly without looking at the deeper story, hey. This is never gonna work. Hey. You know? It’s it’s very easy to take it personal. And my advice to my my friends who are entrepreneurs, the the entrepreneurs I mentor Mhmm. And the translational help people I mentor is, you know, they just don’t have all the data. Right? They don’t see the world you do and have that framework and take the good out of it. Be coachable. But it doesn’t define you, but you define your own positive energy towards them. Just don’t get too high and too low. Don’t take it personal. So that’s 2 long winded answers or, you know, not the f word failure Yeah. Which are opportunities for growth. And I think for success, it’s that we’ve been able to stay true to our mission. And because we took this view of impact, we made sure we could come up with a cross subsidization model that worked in high resource settings and low resource settings around the world that, had lar have had large impact to date. I’m really proud of the team and advisers we’ve built because, you know, sometimes we even, like, talk to advisers and say, hey. You know, we don’t have a lot to compensate you with, but we want to. And so many of them say no. They say, I just wanna help you because I like what you guys do, and I like your DNA, and I like you know, I’m aligned with you guys. Like, you know, it’s it’s not about the compensation why I’m here. And that makes you realize you’re doing something that, you know, even others are passionate about. The team members who come and join us, they’re just awesome. So I’m proud of that. And then proud of you know, we don’t I think what happens a lot in the startup role is our company is gonna do blah.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

And it’s just us. Right? And I think in health care, it’s it’s really about a dynamic ecosystem of stakeholders. And I think if you really wanna be successful, can you bring them all to the table? Can you work with all of them in different capacities? Right? And that’s gonna make a longer term success and really hard to do. It’s a bit of luck. It’s a lot of hard work. It’s a lot of patience. And, you know, the scale we’re starting to achieve and we hope to keep continue to achieve is not just because we’re working hard. It’s because these other stakeholders are all involved, whether they’re distribution partners, clinical partners, big NGOs, governments, you know, researchers, commercial. You know? And I I’m I’m that, I appreciate. You know? It it it, it wasn’t easy, but it is crucial to success and to continue to impact.

Nitin Bajaj

And kudos to you. You know, you kind of said it, but I’ll point it again. In the startup world, that’s unheard of. Right? To bring people together, to listen, to understand, hear their point, and then say, yes. Let’s move together. So kudos to you and your team for being able to continuing to do that, especially in this highly regulated environment where things are not easy to move, people are not willing to listen and change. Right? Change is most often the most difficult thing to make happen.

Shivang Dave

You you know, the, I’ve I’ve we’ve said this and a couple of our advisers from big players in health care in the US have said this. You know, there’s this, motto of move fast and break stuff or whatever that drives. That doesn’t work in health care. You don’t get to break stuff. You don’t get that chance, and you should not write this. And so, yeah, it’s kind of we don’t follow that model. We follow a different model.

Nitin Bajaj

So talking about models, frameworks, and lessons brings us to my favorite part of the show, the one line life lessons.

Shivang Dave

Oh, yeah.

Nitin Bajaj

We’d love to hear a few from you.

Shivang Dave

Yeah. So let me start general, and I’ll work my way down. Mhmm. And I love this question. I was thinking about it over dinner and, had a lot of fun to think about how to take this, and I I hope this is useful for everyone. The first would be, you know, set your mission and your north star and your values. Right? The founders need to be aligned with that. You need to make sure you work with advisors and team members and investors who are aligned with that. And but you have to always challenge that too. Because you otherwise, you can just create a cult.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm. Right? And you

Shivang Dave

can be misguided and only surround yourselves with, yes, people. So that’s not what I mean, but you need to define your your your values and your mission. The the kind of second would be take a long term view of what success means for you as a founding group, as, you know, success for your stakeholders, your shareholders, for your organization, and build a strong foundation. Mhmm. You know, one of our very cool West Coast Bayard ECs, we had dinner. We were talking about this. And, you know, after the dinner, right when they invested, they sent me 2 books. It was based on some of the conversation, and one of the books was the score takes care of itself, which was coach Walsh of the 40 niners, you know, in the eighties when they won 4 Super Bowls. And it’s really about, you know, you prepare for practice and you execute practice. It’s a high level of execute excellence, and the game will take care of itself. Coach Popovich from the Spurs is kinda like that or coach k from, you know, the Blue Devils. And and I really encourage that. I guess these are not one liners. These are actually, like, small paragraphs. But the third would be seek no matter how talented and experienced you are Mhmm. Seek out great advisers, mentors, you know, board of directors, and, be coachable. Right? It kinda goes back to our Indian philosophy of gurus and whether you think it’s you know, you can think of it like in 3 dimensions. Like, the the guru, the adviser is either opening your perspective to something, you know, teaching you something, and, that changes your path and hopefully makes your path more efficient. The 4th would be it’s all about people. And what I mean that is, you know, your team and your your your partners. So pick good ones. Peep pick folks who are aligned. And, the 5th, I would say, you know, coming back to don’t get too high, don’t get too low, stay focused on the goal. I remember I was reading, Phil Jackson’s biography

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Shivang Dave

Way back, like, in mid nineties. I was in high school, and I think it was, like, after his first or second championship, there’s a picture of him They had just won the championship. His feet are on the table. I think he’s having a glass of wine or a cigar, and there’s 2 trophies. Right? And everyone’s like, oh, you know? And, you know, he enjoyed Nitin that. I think he said something if I if I remember correctly, for an hour a couple hours that evening, and then it was back to the process. Yep. It’s that’s the thing. It’s a process. It’s a long term journey, and you need to be focused and fulfilled and embrace the process, not obsessed just with the endpoint. You know? And because you just keep extending the journey and going and going. So and the only way you can do that and have that mental emotional reserve is don’t let the highs get too high and the lows get too lows.

Nitin Bajaj

So true and so very well said.

Shivang Dave

Do you want this Sorry. They weren’t one liners.

Nitin Bajaj

No. They they are. And, we’ll extract them. We’ll we’ll take it to just. And, you know, for our audience, we’ll have an entire we have an entire collection at onelinelifelessons.com, and Shivang will be on there pretty soon. And, also available anywhere you guys socialize digitally. And, Shivang, thank you once again for being with us here today while you’re on a worldwide whirlwind trip. So we really appreciate, you making the time to be with us. Congratulations for the journey so far, and kudos to you and your team for what you have achieved and really excited for what’s, to come in the near future.

Shivang Dave

Thank you very much, Nitin. It was lovely to be on, and I love the show. And, you know, congrats on how you built it up over the years as well.

You’re season 7 now. Right?

Nitin Bajaj

Yes. We are. Yeah. Glad to have the love and, all the appreciation that we get.

And, thanks again, Shivang. Really appreciate it.

Shivang Dave

And and one last you know, we gotta end on a joke. I’m very jealous of your hair.

Nitin Bajaj

Well, we’ll make a trade. How about that?

Shivang Dave

Alright. Thank you, everyone.

Nitin Bajaj

Thanks.