Rashmi Kulkarni

Your upgrade is their loss until you prove otherwise. Last week, Rahul wrote about a simple truth: you’re not inheriting a business, you’re inheriting an equilibrium. This week, I want to talk about the most common reason that equilibrium fights back even when your idea is genuinely sensible. Here it is, in plain language: People don’t oppose improvement. They oppose loss disguised as improvement. When you step into a legacy MSME, most things are still manual, informal, relationship-driven....

Over the last three weeks, we’ve tried to take the noise out of the AI conversation. Week 1: AI isn’t a cure. It’s a diagnostic. Week 2: AI breaks first where work is unclear. Week 3: AI only creates leverage when the right conditions exist. Now comes the real question: How do you design for AI without turning your business into a lab? Here’s a simpler way to think about it. Stop thinking of AI as a tool. Think of it as a new hire. When you hire a smart person, you don’t throw them into the...

Teams don’t resist AI out of fear. They resist confusion. Last week’s column made one thing clear: AI is not a cure. It’s a diagnostic. On paper, most leaders nodded along.  Of course systems matter. Of course tools amplify gaps. But this week, let’s leave ideas aside and step into the shopfloor, the back office, the ops WhatsApp groups, the Excel sheets that are “almost correct”, and the people who are quietly trying to make AI work inside real businesses. Because when AI enters day-to-day...