Harsh Mariwala says ‘grades aren’t everything’; shares letter from a principal, and his own secret

“There are two people I enjoy following: one is my good friend Anand Mahindra and the other is from Salesforce — Vala Afshar. He gives you very interesting insights not only about human life but about technology and future trends.”

“There are a few I follow who I think are funny or who say funny things, like Elon Musk. In terms of inspirational, I’d have to say Naval Ravikant. He manages to write even the hard stuff in a simple way that you can easily understand.”

“It’s not a person but an entity called QIL. It’s based on a BBC quiz show I used to watch called QI [run by Stephen Fry] and they tweet some really interesting stuff each day. If you look at my timeline, you’ll see I retweet a few of their tweets. Recently, they had tweeted a quote from Stephen Hawking, which said that even those who believe in destiny, look before they cross the road. I thought that was a very quantum observation, so I retweeted it.”

“Naval Ravikant is a very wellknown thought leader in the Bay Area. He’s someone I follow for pearls of wisdom every now and then.”

“I don’t really check anyone’s account. I just see what comes on my feed. I check it almost every day, but don’t specifically look for somebody. However, two people that I always look to for a it of humour, news and information are Harsh Goenka and Anand Mahindra.”

“I follow a couple of people regularly for different perspectives — Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a country perspective; for Indian corporates, I follow Anand Mahindra and for global, Sundar Pichai. Occasionally, I also follow Virat Kohli and a few others.”