From BITS to washing vessels to a Michelin kitchen.

BITS Pilani, not IIT. A studious boy with a mind built for systems — mathematics in one hand, physics in the other. Exceptional, in the quiet way that doesn't announce itself.

If the story stopped here, it would still be a good story. It doesn't stop here.

Years at Infosys. Travel that wrapped the planet twice. Deals large enough that, decades later, he tells the stories like science fiction — as though even he can't quite believe he was in the room.

An early shareholder, by the time it was time to leave.

A friend ran a kitchen. Venky walked in. The chefs assumed he was a plant — boss's man, here to spy, here to coast. So for days, no one spoke to him.

He washed vessels. He waited. Eventually someone passed him a knife and a pile of onions. He cut. He listened. He stayed.

Between the vessels and the dough, he flew to Italy. A Michelin-starred chef in Milan, a borrowed apron, an apprenticeship that stretched on. He came home sharpened — and ready to build something of his own.

His own brand. A pizza company that grew until it employed two hundred. Savings, sleepless years, the slow climb of doing the unfashionable work — all of it baked into the dough.

Then 2020 happened.

Savings, gone. Staff, scattered. For months he delivered the last pizzas himself. When customers tipped the delivery man at the door, he pocketed it without telling them whose company it was.

One day he saw a man on the street forcing his own children to beg. Something cracked open. We have hands. We have legs. We have minds. If we cannot recover from this, no one can.

When I was scaling Travolopia India through COVID, Venky was the first person I hired. The first conversation lasted an hour in an empty pantry. It felt like meeting an old friend.

Today he runs operations, walks the stairs, lectures us about gut fibre, and reminds us — through how he lives — that the body and the mind are the same project.