Winning Stroke: Interview with Akshay Chaturvedi, Founder & CEO, Leverage Edu
If not in the current profession, you would be?
Still engaged with building something useful and needle-moving for the young. I am time stuck in the “college days mode” for life now, and wouldn’t have it another way!
One tune you always hum.
Changes by the mood. Anything from the “will win it all” Indie raps - to old Bollywood - or classics like Vienna & Imagine after a bunch of hard days together. Music has a profound impact, always.
One book to read when you want to motivate yourself.
Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight.
One dialogue of a movie that motivates you or you like the most.
“Aur dhande se bada koi dharam nahin hota..”
The place you never been to and always want to go.
Tokyo; fell in love with Japan while doing my school summer project in grade 5
An animal that signifies you & why?
Wolf, for it, represents being a pathfinder, & always taking care of your pack come what may, always!
A Movie Character you most resemble or resonate with.
Aspire to. Guru. Raees. Size of aspiration & taking care of family and friends mean everything to me.
If your life was to be turned into a movie who would you like to play your part?
Ah, that’s very wishful thinking. An actor from Delhi for sure, because from what I hear that’s a very significant part of who I am today & how I go about life :)
Luck or Hard Work, what do you think weighs more in defining a successful person?
Hard Work & doing good to the world. Rest, the clock takes care of itself.
One best decision you ever made.
Not letting my then-girlfriend, now wife, give up on me. And being with me. The single best decision that has shaped almost everything I have done since high school.
A strategy that you always use to take your decisions in Personal or Professional life.
What will benefit the largest set of people? Life is too short to not lead while making as much impact as you possible can, in everything you touch.
Whose advice do you seek when in a dilemma?
I am very fortunate to have Mentors who’ve always been there by me, especially in thick times. Also, the wife.
What has been your biggest achievement?
Taking my parents to visit London for two weeks in the summer. Nothing else comes close. Childhood middle-class dream.
One thing that you want to change in yourself.
Build more patience, perhaps. And the ability to switch off maybe. I believe those make you a better leader, but I am diametrically opposed to both today.
A line said by your close one that you never forget?
Teddy Roosevelt definitely wasn’t close to me, but if there is one quote I live by, it’s what he said:
“It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the diet of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
