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By:

Divyaa Advaani 

2 November 2024 at 8:58:38 am

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not....

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not. It begins at the first point of contact, and in any business of real size, that point is almost never the founder. It is the assistant who manages your calendar. The sales executive who sends the first proposal. The person who handles your WhatsApp, the receptionist, the coordinator who confirms the meeting. These people speak for you every day, in your name, using your reputation, and most of them have never been told what that reputation is supposed to feel like. Many are loyal, hardworking and capable. That is not the issue. The issue is that nobody ever showed them what a first impression of this founder should feel like. Here is what a prospective client experiences. They do not separate you from your team. They cannot. To them, the speed of a reply is how seriously you take them. The tone of the first email is the tone of your leadership. A proposal with a spelling error, a late response, a careless "will check and let you know" becomes evidence about the person at the top. If this is how the organisation presents itself while trying to win my business, they reason, this is how it will treat me once I have signed. And they never tell you. They simply go quiet. The deal that stalls after a promising first call. The partner who becomes "busy". The client who chooses a competitor and offers a reason that has nothing to do with the real one. Across a year, that is every enquiry that stalled, every proposal left unanswered, every introduction that never became a meeting. This is a personal brand problem, not a staffing one. A founder can spend years refining how they present in a room and still lose the room before they enter it, because the impression was formed by someone else, in a conversation the founder was never part of and never heard about. The founders who avoid this are not the ones with the most polished staff. They are the ones who have made their brand legible to the people around them. Their team knows how the founder speaks, what the business stands for, what warmth looks like in a reply, how a delay should be explained and how a client should feel in the first thirty seconds. The team is not following a script. They are carrying a standard, because someone took the time to define it. When did you last experience your own business the way a stranger does? Not a test call arranged with your team's knowledge. A real one. Send a first enquiry from a number nobody recognises. Notice how long it takes to be answered, what the tone is, and whether you would want to do business with whoever replied. Then ask yourself honestly whether that person sounds like you, and whether you would be proud to be represented that way. If the answer is uncomfortable, it is worth acting on now. Every week of that experience is a week someone forms a verdict about you without your knowledge. Your personal brand is not only what you say. It is everything said on your behalf. If you have a suspicion about how your business is being experienced before you ever walk in, that suspicion deserves a direct, focused brand consultation, not a casual chat. Book yours here: https://www.calendly.com/divyaaadvaani/founder-brand-audit — Divyaa Advaani, Personal Branding Strategist (The author is a personal branding expert. She has clients from 14+ countries. Views personal.)

Engineered Unrest

Correspondent
Apr 17
2 min read

The latest bout of violence in Noida no mere story of labour unrest spiralling out of control but bears the more troubling imprint of Pakistani orchestration. The rapid mobilisation, coordinated messaging and the tell-tale fingerprints of networks is symptomatic of a deeper malaise which is Pakistan’s persistent reliance on covert destabilisation as an instrument of statecraft.


Protesters were mobilised overnight through WhatsApp groups, recruited via QR codes and fed a steady stream of incendiary content. As the demonstrations escalated, parallel coordination appeared on Instagram.


Indian agencies are right to probe the possibility of external instigation, particularly in light of recent arrests in Meerut and Noida that point to handlers across the border. The timing is also suggestive. With the anniversary of the April 22 Pahalgam attack fast approaching, one has to be vigilant about Pakistan-sponsored terrorism within India. The unravelling of a terror module linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba in February underscores the point. Operating across Delhi, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the network was not engaged in spectacular violence but in something subtler and arguably more insidious. Pasting anti-national posters, conducting reconnaissance and building sleeper capabilities, it sought to erode confidence and foment discord. Directed by handlers based in Bangladesh but tied to Pakistan’s security ecosystem, the module exemplifies the diffusion of proxy warfare into new geographies and methods.


For decades, Pakistan’s security establishment has relied on non-state actors to offset India’s conventional superiority. What has changed is the toolkit. Where once infiltration across borders and high-profile attacks dominated, there is now a discernible shift towards hybrid tactics in form of digital mobilisation, psychological operations and the seeding of unrest within civilian spaces. The objective is to keep India internally preoccupied and externally constrained.


The use of Bangladesh as an operational rear base is particularly telling. It allows plausible deniability while expanding the theatre of activity. Figures such as Shabbir Ahmed Lone, with a history of militancy and renewed links to Lashkar leadership, illustrate how old networks are repurposed for contemporary needs. The distinction between state and proxy in Pakistan’s security doctrine has always been deliberately blurred. That some of these networks now operate through third countries or digital platforms does not absolve their original patrons of responsibility. The consequences are corrosive. Episodes like the Noida unrest disrupt economic activity, strain communal relations and test the capacity of local authorities. For India, which is aspiring to sustained economic growth and social cohesion, such disruptions are not trivial irritants but structural threats. What is required is a response that is both firm and sophisticated. Policing must adapt to the realities of digital mobilisation, with greater emphasis on real-time intelligence and platform accountability. Pakistan’s addiction to proxy warfare has already rebounded internally, fuelling extremism within its own borders. To persist with such tactics in an era of heightened surveillance and interdependence is not merely reckless; it is self-defeating. Yet the pattern endures.

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