Recently, I came across a story shared by Sidhantt Suri that struck a chord with me.
As a child playing Mahabharat with friends, Sidhantt always wanted to be Bheem, the strongest of the Pandavas. But there was a catch: to show Bheem’s might, one had to fight with only three fingers instead of a closed fist, making it ironically harder to win even mock fights. It felt like playing with a handicap in the very role that was supposed to symbolize strength.
This simple childhood anecdote holds a profound truth about what it truly means to build, lead, and create value in India.
Strength, With Constraints
We often celebrate the stories of strength — founders building category-defining companies, teams achieving impossible goals, industries transforming themselves. But behind these stories lies the reality:
We are often required to fight with three fingers.
Limited resources, unpredictable infrastructure, regulatory complexity, market volatility, and the constant need to do more with less — these constraints are the three fingers we operate with daily, even as we carry the expectations of building like Bheem.
Why Constraints Are a Superpower
It’s easy to envy the seemingly frictionless environments in other parts of the world where founders have deeper capital markets, smoother logistics, and mature ecosystems.
But there is something uniquely Indian about building with constraints:
Bheem Never Complained
Sidhantt’s story reminds us that despite the handicap, the spirit of Bheem never changed. He remained the embodiment of courage and resilience, never complaining about the constraint, only focused on what needed to be done.
As builders, we can either lament the constraints or embrace them as defining features of our journey. Our challenges become our edge because they teach us to navigate complexity with creativity and grit.
How This Applies to Our Work
Whether it’s building transparent food supply chains at Urban Harvest, designing systems that work in extreme weather, or training teams to handle operations across fragmented geographies, we are constantly operating with “three fingers” while aiming for The Real Strength of Bheem
The next time you feel the frustration of doing more with less, remember: the world doesn’t see the three fingers. It only sees whether you won the fight.
True strength is not the absence of constraints. True strength is learning to win with them.
What are the “three fingers” in your journey, and how have they shaped the way you build?Bheem-like outcomes.
And that’s okay.
In fact, it is what makes building in India uniquely fulfilling. It ensures we design systems rooted in local realities, not borrowed playbooks, making our solutions robust, cost-effective, and scalable for millions.
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