gratitude on S Anand

People skills with AI

Sun, 17 May 2026 22:45:57 +0800

I advise people that people skills are important in the AI era.

Now, I’m using AI to help me with people skills.

This morning, I wrote a script to export my WhatsApp conversations this year. That makes it easy to feed it into AI models.

Then I used my Local MCP connector and asked Claude:

Who are people in my life that most deserve an unreasonable gesture of thanks and what would that be?

It went through my WhatsApp messages – including threads I had not read. Including a group discussing four 90-minute hands-on AI workshops I’m running for IIM alumni in Singapore on Saturday afternoons:

23 May: Context engineering
20 Jun: AI tools & workflows
25 Jul: Agentic analysis
22 Aug: AI strategy

Nayana Jain prepared a series of LinkedIn / WhatsApp posts to promote this workshop series and also created a poster for the workshops - and the best part of it was they were AI-generated. AI didn’t do a great job at the logo, so she asked for and got the IIMPACT logo (which isn’t public) and fed it to the model to re-generate it.

All of this is something I wasn’t even aware of until Claude pointed it out.

I sent a note thanking her.

And, evidently, AI is teaching me how to be human.

Giving Back Money

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 03:08:58 +0000

At the end of my 2021 graduation interview, All India Radio asked:

Interviewer: What would, if you are asked to give back something to the country, what would be that?

Anand: I really don’t know. At this stage, I don’t know what I’m capable of and what I can contribute, but whatever it will be, I suspect the bulk of it will come later towards my career.

25 years later, I think I’ve given back three things.

Knowledge
Peace (so I’m told)
Code

Money is not one of them.

I’m stingy and unemotional. At 14, a beggar clutched me for five minutes asking for money. I didn’t move. I haven’t changed.

But after the Gramener acquisition, I have more money.

Last month, I gave money for the first time. I want to make it a habit.

Rs 5 lakhs to Sanskrit College. My mother would have wanted it.
Rs 1 lakh to Vipassana. I liked their approach.
Rs 1 lakh annually to Isaac Schlueter and Sindre Sorhus for the code they’ve written.

These gifts (accidentally) matched my theme: knowledge, peace, and code!

I see two kinds of contribution:

Funding - you encourage something.
Thanking - you repay a debt.

Mine were all thanks, not funding. I hope to learn the other kind too.

Father of the bride

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 14:55:01 +0000

In 2012, I started Gramener with half a dozen friends.

This week, we were acquired by Straive, a part of Barings Private Equity Asia.

How do you feel?

I feel like the father of the bride. Gramener was registered on 26 Feb. A day before my daughter’s birthday. I’ve spent more time with Gramener than my daughter. That makes Gramener my elder child. Who’s moving into a new household. Along with me. (I feel like சகலகலா சம்மந்தி.)

I feel grateful. I’m not good at business. But when my cousin remarked, “Anand, you’re now giving a livelihood to over 250 people!” I was stunned. My co-founders, colleagues and clients built a thriving business and put me (of all people) as CEO in the middle of it. How do I even go about saying “Thanks”?

It feels like joining college. New people. Larger group. New ways of working and learning. Lots of topics to explore. Exciting and scary.

What was it like?

Fundraising was rocky.
We started in 2019. COVID struck. We paused.
We resumed in 2021. Russia invaded Ukraine. We paused.
We resumed in 2023. The Israel - Hamas war started. Luckily, the deal was nearly done.
I’m grateful Naveen ran the entire process like clockwork, taking all the stress. I’m the happy free-rider, as usual.

Starting up was not that rocky.
We’re many. With half a dozen co-founders, there are enough shoulders to cry on. That counts.
We’re steady. We didn’t know how to blitz-scale, but we knew not to blitz-fail. Survival counts for a lot.
We’re lucky. This is basically the “I have no idea why we succeeded” category. Serendipity counts for a lot, too.
Ganes, Mayank, Naveen, Ram, Ravi, Vengatesh – yeah, it was fun. Not every day. But most of the time. It was fun.

What will you do?

I’m part of Straive’s data, analytics & AI business.

Straive extracts and analyzes all kinds of data. Financial. Legal. Research. Education. Pharmaceutical. There’s a fair bit of converting unstructured data to structured. Exactly the kind of thing I love doing.

So, I’ll be doing what I’ve been doing the last decade – extracting insights from even more data and telling better stories from those.

I joined Gramener as “Chief Data Scientist”. Now I’m debating “Data Storyteller”, “Data Detective”, “Data Psychologist”, and a few other evil titles.

Wish me luck!

Comments

Bhanu 1 Nov 2023 8:44 pm: Congrats on the acquisition, Anand! We will look for your contributions under the moniker “Nefarious Root Node”.
Matt 4 Nov 2023 6:00 pm: Anand, all the best for your future endevaours. I am sure you would contribute well in Straive. So would Gramener still exist with its brand or from today it is Straive?
My Year in 2023 - S Anand 31 Dec 2023 8:38 pm (pingback): […] Straive acquiring Gramener. […]

How to be happy

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Advice from Tal Ben-Shahar, who teaches a Harvard class “Positive Psychology”, or how to get happy.

1. Give yourself permission to be human. When we accept emotions – such as fear, sadness, or anxiety – as natural, we are more likely to overcome them. Rejecting our emotions, positive or negative, leads to frustration and unhappiness.

2. Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters, moments throughout the week that provide you with both pleasure and meaning.

3. Keep in mind that happiness is mostly dependent on our state of mind, not on our status or the state of our bank account. Barring extreme circumstances, our level of well being is determined by what we choose to focus on (the full or the empty part of the glass) and by our interpretation of external events. For example, do we view failure as catastrophic, or do we see it as a learning opportunity?

4. Simplify! We are, generally, too busy, trying to squeeze in more and more activities into less and less time. Quantity influences quality, and we compromise on our happiness by trying to do too much.

5. Remember the mind-body connection. What we do – or don’t do – with our bodies influences our mind. Regular exercise, adequate sleep, and healthy eating habits lead to both physical and mental health.

6. Express gratitude, whenever possible. We too often take our lives for granted. Learn to appreciate and savor the wonderful things in life, from people to food, from nature to a smile.