Nobody in your company can tell your story without you in the room.
Founder storytelling, coaching, mentoring and company story. Four ways in, one writer, one client at a time.
The short answer
This is the work around the writing. I coach founders on the story they say out loud, sit on call as the operator in between, and build the company story that everyone else has to be able to repeat. If what you want is the book itself, that is founder story ghostwriting. Every engagement here starts with one conversation and is scoped after it.
A positioning sprint costs $30,000 and ends in a six-slide deck. A three-day pitch workshop costs $50,000. A four-week messaging engagement costs $25,000 and produces soundbites. I read twenty of these pages before I built this section. The thing you hold at the end is almost always a deck.
A deck does not survive you leaving the room. Somebody has to stand up and present it, and that somebody is you, and you are the constraint. Meanwhile the founder-brand shops sell the opposite problem: reach without a story underneath it. One of them promises your vanity metrics will drop and your revenue will climb. They are selling attention. The consultancies are selling slides. Between those two things sits the actual asset, which is a story you own, that other people can carry, in words that hold up when somebody pushes back.
Four ways in
Founder storytelling
Your own story, built as an arc and not a timeline. The one you use on a stage, in a first meeting, and at the top of a raise. Finding it, then making it say-able.
Founder coaching
A programme with an agenda and an end date. We work on how you say it, week by week, until you stop needing the notes.
Founder mentoring
No agenda. An operator on call. You bring the problem the week it lands, and it is not always a story problem.
Company story building
The story the company tells when you are not there. Written down, on the record, for a raise, a rebrand, an anniversary or a handover.
Which one do you want
| If this is you | Start here |
|---|---|
| I keep telling it differently every time and none of the versions land | Founder storytelling |
| I have the story. I am bad at saying it, on stage and in the room | Founder coaching |
| I do not want a programme. I want someone who has done this to pick up | Founder mentoring |
| My team all describe the company differently and I cannot fix it by repeating myself | Company story building |
| We are turning fifty, or the founder is stepping back, and it should be on the record | Company story building |
| I want the whole thing written as a book, in my voice | Founder story ghostwriting |
| It is the family and the firm across three generations, and it is private | Business family history book |
Why me and not a coach
I have asked hundreds of Indian founders the same question for five years. On Founder Thesis, the podcast I co-host with Akshay Datt, the question is always some version of what actually happened. Here is what I learned doing it: almost nobody tells it well in the first hour. The real story arrives in the third, after the prepared version runs out. That is not a coaching insight I read. It is a thing I watched happen a few hundred times.
I have also built. Three startups. Twenty years running C4E in Mumbai for Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell and Maruti Suzuki. A fractional CMO practice in Dubai. I have made payroll on faith and I have shut things down. When you tell me about the month it nearly went, I am not taking notes on a case study.
And I write. A published novel. A weekly post since 2004. A bestselling authorised biography of one of the men who built Indian IT from a footnote into a $250 billion industry, plus three more bestsellers under NDA. The coaches cannot write it. The writers have not built. That gap is the whole business.
Here is my own gap, since I am asking you to trust me with yours. I promised a second novel in 2014. It is not written. Twelve years. I know exactly how a story sits in a drawer, because one of mine is still in it.
How it starts
One conversation
Ninety minutes, on a call, under NDA. I am looking for the part you do not usually say. This is a diagnosis and not a pitch, and it costs nothing.
I tell you what I think you have
Sometimes it is a coaching problem. Sometimes it is a company problem wearing a founder costume. Twice it has been neither and I said so. You get that verdict whether or not you hire me.
A scope, then a price
Written, with what you get and when. Nothing on this page is priced before that conversation, because the four things on it are not the same size of work.
Who this is not for
Founders who want reach this quarter. Buy that from a content shop, they are good at it and they are cheaper than me. Founders who want the rough edges sanded off: the doubt and the near-miss and the decision you still argue about are the parts that make anybody believe the rest, and a story with all of them removed is the press release you already have. And founders who want to be told the story is fine. Sometimes it is not fine, and I will say so on the first call.
Questions founders ask
Is this a coaching business or a writing business?
Both, and the order matters. The coaching is how the material gets out of your head. The writing is what you keep afterwards. Most people in this market sell one or the other, which is why so many founders end up with a deck nobody reads or a book that sounds like a stranger.
How is founder coaching different from founder mentoring here?
Coaching has an agenda and an end date. We work on a defined thing, week by week, and then it finishes. Mentoring has neither. You bring whatever landed that week, and about half of it is not a story problem at all. Different work, different rhythm, and you can want one without the other.
What does it cost?
Nothing here is priced on the page, because a six-week coaching programme and a company history are not the same size of work. What is published is the writing side: the biography and founder book engagement sits at ₹25 lakh, with publishing costed apart from it. Coaching, mentoring and company story are scoped after the first conversation.
Do I have to end up with a book?
No. Plenty of this work ends in a written narrative document, a talk, or a founder who can finally do it without notes. The book is one possible output and it is the largest one. If you want it, it is here.
Will you make viral videos or run my LinkedIn?
No. There are good people who do that and I am not one of them. I work on what you say, and on getting it written down so it lasts longer than a post. If your problem is distribution, hire a content shop and come to me after.
Is any of it confidential?
An NDA is signed before the first conversation. The cap table, the conflicts, the numbers and the things said in confidence stay in confidence. You decide, line by line, what becomes public.
I am not in India. Does this work across time zones?
Yes. I work with founders in the US, the UK, the UAE, Singapore, Canada and Australia. Sessions run by video on your clock, and the material moves by voice memo in between so nothing waits on a calendar.
How much of my time does it take?
Coaching is an hour a week plus the thinking in between. Mentoring is a call when you need one. A company story runs on interviews, mine and your team’s, scheduled around you. The writing is my time and not yours.
You have told it a hundred times. It has never been written down.
One conversation, ninety minutes, under NDA. I tell you what I think you have, whether or not you hire me. I reply within 48 hours.