I have given 100s of talks over the last 15 years on the topics of building great teams, running startups and best practices in education. Some places where I have given my talks: TEDx, Indian School of business, Teach For India, Economic times, Teach For All, National Stock Exchange, Acumen, Ashoka, Echoing Green & Central Square Foundation.
My talks are on 3 main topics
- Building great teams: Lessons from the greatest teams every built across fields, how to build a high performance culture, the biggest mistakes startup leaders make in their early days when building a team
- Running Startups: what makes for a successful startup leader, who should do startups & who shouldn’t, the most important things to figure out in the early days of a startup and in what order
- Best practices in Education: Learning from the best evidence in education on what works and what doesn’t, the most common myths in education, the secrets of the best education systems in the world, what makes a great teacher and school
If you want to invite me for a talk at your organization:
Featured talks
- Graduation ceremony speech for the first batch - Teach for India (2011) This is one of the hardest speeches I have ever given. I first narrated stories of 3 fellows from my batch. Then I named all 87 fellows plus an adjective for them, all from memory. Don’t think I can repeat this feat now. I was young then.
- My journey as a social entrepreneur at the Good Crusaders event - Economic Times & Times Now (2016)
- How can we transform India’s education system - Indian School of Business (2018)
- Why I teach: Stories & reflections from my time as a teacher - Teach For All (2011)
- Pitch for 321 Education - Echoing Green, New York (2013)
- Journey of starting 321 Education - KIPP schools, Texas (2011)
- 3 big decision making mistakes we all make & how to avoid them - Four Talks (2015)
- Keynote on wicked problems & how we can tackle them - Teach For Malaysia (2013)
More talks
- 7 things high-performers do in the early stages of their careers - STOA (2022) → A twitter thread capturing what I shared
- A session on pitching for aspiring politicians - Indian School of Democracy (2022) → A twitter thread capturing my talk
- 3 stories & 3 lessons from a decade of running my own firm - Goa Startup Social (2021)
- How in 2 months, we built an online program that scaled to 2000 schools & 300,000 students - InspirEd (2020)
- 5 stories & lessons from my journey - Pune University (2020)
- Why we need to invest in teachers to secure our nation’s future - National Stock Exchange (2018) (Picture of me at the NSE bell ringing ceremony)
- What does ‘scaling well’ mean & how can your startup do it ? - InnovatEd (2018)
- Lessons from the best teams ever built - Teach For India (2017)
- The secrets of building a dream organizational culture - Ashoka (2016)
- How schools & organizations can implement Carol Dweck’s work on mindsets - Change the script (2016)
- How to avoid burnout in the social sector - Think Social Talks (2015)
- Why you should not do a startup & if you have to why & how to do it - Teach For India (2015)
- Global innovations in Education - Edmond de Rothschild Foundations, Paris France (2014)
- Lessons from my journey on How social entrepreneurs can succeed - Acumen (2014)
- What makes a leader, common mistakes & key attributes - Akanksha Foundation (2014)
- Innovations in education & community empowerment - TedX (2010)
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Testimonials
Gunjali Singh CEO, SVP Mumbai
Gaurav is a teacher through and through. His ability to simplify complex concepts and make them relevant to a specific context is phenomenal. When I worked with him I experienced first hand what it was like to be led with a no one left behind attitude. He drew on his deep and varied knowledge to ensure each individual was walking with him and could see his vision clearly. Every interaction with him was inspiring and stretched my thinking. I’m so fortunate to have had him as a mentor.
Mona Servai Renowned educator & Independent education consultant, IBO
Gaurav is a compelling leader who is able to craft a vision as well as consider minute details needed for execution. His participative leadership style delegates ownership and empowers people in the organization to pursue audacious goals. He has built and sustained some of the best teams I have ever seen. He is an inspiring communicator & an excellent trainer. People love learning from him as he warm, charming, respectful & engaging.
JP Hamilton Success Director, World Wide Generation
For me Gaurav embodies thoughtful, inspiring leadership. He goes to great lengths to understand the secrets of amazing organisations & what he did at 321 Foundation is proof of this. I am amazed by his ability to learn across disciplines, apply those learnings & then teach others to implement them. I value his guidance and I know he has been a wise and engaged companion to many a leader.
Venil Ali Senior Director - Programs & Scale, Antarang Foundation
Gaurav is a treasure trove of insights and wisdom. He has an exceptional skill of pouring through tons of material and then presenting it in the simplest, most intuitive manner. He crystalizes complex ideas from theory, his own experience, other people's experience to share tips and insights that are very valuable. I've had innumerable conversations with him discussing leadership, culture, management and much more. Every conversation has left me feeling like I've learnt something new that has stayed with me, I felt truly heard and understood and I've had a lot of fun. Gaurav has built such strong management and leadership practices at his organisation 321 Education Foundation, that led to some of the strongest culture and performance that I've seen across different comparable organisations. It is a pleasure to learn from him!
Arnab Datta Senior Counsel, Employ America
I have never grown more under a manager than I grew when Gaurav was my manager. He is passionate about helping people achieve their potential & I learnt a ton from just watching him lead our team. He is also a gifted teacher who is able to balance explicit teaching with letting you discover the lessons on your own. When I became a manager I just applied everything I learnt from him & that massively accelerated my growth as a manager. Even now when I run into leadership challenges, I ask myself “What would Gaurav do ?” I would highly recommend any opportunity to learn from him
Priyadharshani Venkat Berkeley and IESE
Gaurav is the best manager & leader I’ve worked with. He was able to scale the impact of our organization by 10X in 1 year without sacrificing quality & while maintaining the the unique high performance & caring culture we were known for. He’s a phenomenal teacher who has the ability to take best practices from research, his personal experiences and contextualize it in an engaging way to exactly what you need to progress on your journey as a leader. The principles, strategies and tactics that he has taught me has helped me be a high performing Team Lead in a dynamic, international work environment. By signing up for his course you’re getting the best in class strategies, applicable insights and coaching comparable to the best MBA schools in the world.
Seema Kamble Community and Social Responsibility Coordinator, American School of Bombay
I have known Gaurav for more than 10 years and worked with him for 5+ years. I learnt many things from him but one that has been the most valuable for me is the constant emphasis on the idea of journey: process over outcome, and excellence over perfection. He helped me internalise the idea of consistent versioning. This has helped me continuously become a better version of myself & has helped me to keep improving in everything I do.
Sapna Shahani Founder, Blurb Goa
Gaurav was a featured speaker in one of our Startup Social events. I was struck by his deep knowledge of leadership and management.
He was by far one of the best speakers we have ever had at our event.
Nandita Jhaveri Education Consultant, Resonances
I have known Gaurav for over a decade. I was always amazed at the incredible team and culture he had built. His team was always very focussed on their mission, had clear plans to reach their goals, were very open to feedback, were constantly improving & kept challenging themselves further. This led them to achieve excellent results in their work and I think a lot of it comes back to Gaurav’s leadership. He is a democratic leader who deeply cares for & supports his team. As a result I have seen his team members grow as leaders themselves & go on to achieve great things. He is a very inspiring trainer who pushes everyone to learn to their highest potential while keeping the atmosphere positive, fun & respectful.
Alekyaa Mathangi Customer Success Lead, Teachmint Technologies
From our first interaction Gaurav blew me away with his vast knowledge of, what seemed like, everything under the sun. In these interactions, I would pick up a lot of stuff explicitly & implicitly. He is a passionate & skilled leader & he taught me the principles & techniques in a wide range of topics: building strategy, planning projects, analysing data, inspiring behavior change. To this day, I try to emulate Gaurav's behaviour and thought process while I'm at work. Gaurav is a leader who not only knows the way but can show it to others. I've been lucky to have learnt with him and from him.