Nilay Sule

 Sometimes the best business lessons don’t come from boardrooms or business books. They come from unexpected corners of everyday life. For me, it came from a humble chai stall outside a crowded Mumbai local station . No neon lights. No marketing budget. Just a steaming kettle, a shaky cardboard menu , and the rush of commuters moving like a river of deadlines. And in the middle of all that chaos stood Raghav , the chai-wala . He didn’t just pour tea. He poured belonging. The Power of Being Seen What made his stall special wasn’t the chai. It was him. He remembered faces. He remembered stories. He noticed when someone seemed tired, stressed, or excited. “Cutting, less sugar? Big client call today, Priya ji ?” “Extra adrak for your sore throat, bhaiya. And don’t worry, your son will do fine in his exams.” There are luxury cafes that can’t create the warmth this man built with a kettle and care. People came for chai. They stayed because they felt seen. Viral Fame a...

I used to believe hypergrowth would feel like applause. Like standing on a big stage, lights warm on your face, victory confetti falling from the sky. Instead, it felt like stepping onto the support floor and hearing phones ring faster than anyone could breathe. Agents racing. Work piling up. Customers waiting in digital hallways, tapping feet you could almost hear. We weren’t creating delight. We were surviving demand. The Instinct Most Leaders Fall For My first reaction? Hire faster. Train harder. Write more SOPs . Throw bodies and binders at the fire. And it worked… for about a week. Then reality walked in, put its muddy boots on the carpet, and handed me the lesson: Customer experience doesn't scale through heroics. It scales through systems that never force people to be heroes. The Shift That Changed Everything So we rebuilt, brick by brick. We stopped “onboarding agents” and started growing customer advocates . We swapped lagging dashboards for real-tim...