🏋How I Built My Mental Strength on a Physical Foundation
When my doctor told me I had Type 2 diabetes, it was the wake-up call I had been ignoring. I had two choices: take a pill and carry on with the same life, or rebuild my body. I chose to rebuild. I started walking. Then I started running. And then I did something I never imagined I would do — I trained for a half marathon.
The discipline of those training months changed me more than any business book ever did. When you push through kilometre after kilometre while your body is begging you to stop, you find out what your mind can actually do. That same mental toughness is what I leaned on every time my business was in a corner.
🏃The Day I Ran the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon
I ran the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon on 29 November 2015, wearing bib number 5188 in the Su-Kam jersey. I finished in 1 hour 59 minutes 31 seconds — just under the two-hour mark I had set for myself.
I am not posting that time to brag. I am posting it because for a man who was diagnosed with diabetes and told to “manage it with medication”, finishing 21.1 km under two hours felt like proof — proof to myself — that the body still listens when you treat it well.
I keep these photographs around for the same reason I keep my blood report — both remind me what I am working with and what I am working towards.
💪How I Manage Stress as an Entrepreneur
The kind of stress an entrepreneur carries is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t run a business — the weight of employees’ salaries, customers’ trust, investors’ patience, and the company’s survival all sitting on you at the same time. Here is what I personally do, every week, to keep that load from breaking me:
💊What My Diabetes Taught Me
Diabetes taught me something I should have learned earlier in business: there is no magic fix. It is the boring, repeated, tiny right choices — what I eat at lunch, whether I went for my walk, whether I slept well — that decide my numbers. The same arithmetic runs a company. One brilliant quarter does not save a badly run year. One disciplined day does not lower an HbA1c. Three hundred do.
✊Why I Refuse to Take Medicine for My Diabetes
I want to put this on record in my own words: I am not going to manage this lifestyle disease with medicine. I am going to manage it the way it was caused — through how I live, what I eat, and how I move.
For me that means a strict diet plan and consistent exercise. Every single day. No shortcuts. No pill as a workaround. The body that responded to bad inputs with disease will respond to better inputs with better health — and if it takes longer than a tablet would, that is fine. I am not in a hurry to outsource my own discipline.
Now the honest part: my HbA1c has not moved much yet. The report below shows where I actually stand. I am sharing it openly because resilience isn’t about pretending the numbers are better than they are — it is about staying on the path while the dial moves slowly.
What this means for me, in plain language:
- I am still in the pre-diabetic band on HbA1c. Not where I want to be, but not where medicine becomes inevitable either.
- My fasting sugar is borderline. A few mg/dL above the line is not a verdict — it is a signal to tighten my diet, not to swallow a pill.
- I am keeping the plan. Stricter diet. Same running discipline. Re-test, re-measure, adjust.
- I am not taking tablets. If it ever becomes medically necessary, I will reconsider with my doctor — but I am not handing over to medication the work my own habits should be doing.
If you are reading this and managing the same lifestyle disease — please make your own decision with your own physician. What I am sharing here is my personal resolve, not medical advice for anyone else.
✨What Kept Me Going: A Purpose Bigger Than Profit
In my hardest years, what kept me alive in this work was not the money. It was knowing that Su-Kam’s products were powering hospitals, keeping children’s studies going during outages, and supporting families who depended on those livelihoods. When I connected what I did every day to that larger picture, resilience stopped feeling like effort. It became natural.
👋What I Want to Say to Every Entrepreneur Who Is Struggling
If you are in the middle of a difficult chapter right now — in your business, in your health, in your family — please hear this from someone who has been there: it is not permanent. Take care of your body first; everything else gets easier when you do. Lean on your family, your friends, professionals if you need them. And do not lose sight of why you started. Every entrepreneur I respect has failed somewhere. What defined them was not the fall — it was the next morning.