At BRISKPE, we have learnt that building something meaningful takes stamina. Not every opportunity deserves a chase and not every trend deserves a reaction. Sometimes the smartest thing a founder can do is hold pace.
Most days, I begin before the world does. At five in the morning, Mumbai feels unusually honest. The roads are quiet. The air is heavy. The city has not yet put on its armour. It is just me, the sound of my shoes hitting the road, and my own thoughts keeping pace.
Over the years, people have often asked me how I have managed to move from decades in corporate leadership into the intensity of building a startup, while still making time to run marathons. For me, the answer has always been simple: these are not separate parts of my life. They constantly inform each other.
Running has taught me as much about leadership as any boardroom, business school, or strategy session ever has. Especially, in times like these, when markets are unpredictable, technology is moving fast, and the ground under your feet can shift without warning, I find myself leaning less on theory and more on what the road has taught me. These are not some lofty ideas but lessons that have stayed with me because they were earned the hard way.
Pace Over Panic
Every first-time marathon runner makes the same mistake. The race begins, adrenaline takes over, and they go out too fast. At the moment, it feels fantastic. But marathons are unforgiving and they punish poor pacing.
Business can be similar. We live in a world that celebrates speed, movements, and rapid scaling. But speed without judgment is just exhaustion in disguise. When you are building a company, especially in a space as sensitive and complex as cross-border payments, the goal is not simply to move quickly. There is a difference between urgency and haste. One sharpens you while the other drains you.
At BRISKPE, we have learnt that building something meaningful takes stamina. Not every opportunity deserves a chase and not every trend deserves a reaction. Sometimes the smartest thing a founder can do is hold pace.
The Quiet Work
No one applauds the training run on a wet weekday morning. No one sees the missed dinners, the disciplined recovery, the quiet repetition. But that unseen work is what gets you to the finish line. Leadership works the same way.
The visible moments in a company’s life are easy to celebrate, especially the launches, milestones, approvals, and headlines. But those moments are only possible because of hundreds of quieter decisions that nobody sees. It can be a difficult customer issue resolved properly, or a process improved before it becomes a problem. This is the work that actually builds companies.
As CEOs, we are often associated with the visible face of the organisation. But the truth is, what defines a company is what it does when nobody is watching. It’s about the culture, the credibility, and the trust that is built along the way.
Use the Strain
There comes a point in every marathon when your body begins negotiating with you. Your legs feel heavier, your breathing changes, your mind starts making a very convincing case for why slowing down or stopping would be perfectly reasonable.
What running teaches you is that discomfort is not always danger. Sometimes it simply means you have reached the part where the real work begins. The same is true in leadership.
There are moments in every company’s journey when things stop feeling easy. Strategies that once worked begin to lose sharpness. The role you thought you were playing changes. These are uncomfortable moments, but they are often the moments that matter most.
I have come to believe that growth rarely arrives wrapped in comfort. If you are building something worthwhile, there will be phases that stretch you mentally, emotionally, and operationally. The question is not whether discomfort will show up. It definitely will, but the question is whether you can stay steady enough to learn from it.
Consistency Wins
We often speak about breakthroughs as if those are lightning strikes. We focus on one big idea, one big move, or one defining moment. But both running and business have taught me that most meaningful outcomes are far less dramatic than that.
There is no one run that makes you a marathoner. It is the accumulation of ordinary days. The days you showed up when you were tired. The days you showed up when progress felt invisible.
A strong business is not built on one brilliant quarter or one big announcement. It is built through consistent execution and by solving the same problem better, again and again.
Consistency is not glamorous, but it is underrated. And over time, it becomes very hard to compete against.
Know When to Wait
One of the hardest things to learn in both running and leadership is that doing more is not always doing better. In a marathon, if you push too hard too early, you pay for it later. If you ignore your rhythm, the race eventually exposes you.
In business, founders face a different version of the same test. There will always be more ideas, more markets, more partnerships, more features, more directions you could take. But clarity is not built by chasing everything. It is built by knowing what matters most and protecting it.
As a CEO, I have learnt that restraint is actually discipline. There are seasons to expand aggressively and there are seasons to sharpen the core. There are moments to bet boldly. And moments to say no, even when something looks attractive on paper. That ‘no’ is often what protects the long-term ‘yes’.
Hold Your Nerve
At some stage in a marathon, the body is no longer the only challenge. The mind becomes the real battleground. You begin to question your pace, your preparation, your reason for being there at all. Founders know that feeling too. In uncertain times, you do not always get the luxury of a clear map. You move forward with incomplete information. You make decisions without guarantees. You carry the weight of your people, your customers, your investors, and your own expectations, all at once.
That is why clarity matters so much. For me, running creates that clarity as it strips away the noise. And in that space, things tend to become simpler and clearer. I return from my runs reminded that leadership is about staying composed enough to take the next step well, even when you cannot control every variable.
Stay in the Race
The early days of any company are full of energy. There is momentum, optimism, and adrenaline. But building an organisation that can endure and keep evolving is a much deeper test. Markets will change; technologies and regulations will change. The real question is whether the organisation you are building can absorb pressure, learn from it, and come back stronger. That, to me, is the long game.
The Long Game
After years in leadership and many miles on the road, I have learnt that progress is usually quieter than we think. It does not always feel exciting or obvious at the moment. More often, it feels like discipline. Like showing up and doing the work, day after day, even when the road ahead is unclear. In running, as in building a company, you do not need to see the whole route to begin. You just need to trust your preparation, be honest about your pace, and keep moving. That is what carries you forward and that is what lasts.
The writer is co-founder & CEO, BRISKPE. Views expressed are personal.