EO Series #9 - From Selling His Agency, To Making Real Impact (The Real Sisyphus of Business, From Pixels to Photons, Business by Osmosis, Bulldozing into New Opportunities) - Ruchir Punjabi

My First Business

“Some people like big numbers. They want to make big money. They want to change the world in a certain way. What I realized is that those goalposts will always keep moving” - Ruchir Punjabi

Ruchir reminded me of the story of Sisyphus. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus is condemned to an eternal punishment, where he is forced to push a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down, repeating the task for eternity. 😮

We related the story to our business endeavors and the cyclical nature of life's struggles, reminding us to find meaning and purpose in the journey itself, even when facing seemingly endless challenges. 🤗

Ruchir now finds his meaning and purpose not in reaching the top of the hill or achieving a grand goal, but in the very act of pushing the boulder itself. 💪

Ruchir Punjabi is the Co-Founder and CEO at Distributed Energy, which is an emerging market solar platform, that helps investors invest in solar as an asset class, and helps businesses of all kinds save money by transitioning to solar.

Before Distributed Energy, Ruchir had founded Langoor – one of APAC’s largest independent digital agencies that was later sold to Havas Group in 2019. Langoor started in his living room in Sydney, Australia before growing to a 200+ people behemoth. They had offices in Dubai, Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangalore and Mumbai prior to the sale. Ruchir sold his balance stake in Langoor to a Private Equity group in 2022.

Ruchir is a Computer Science graduate from Sydney University and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a Fellow of the Asia Venture Philanthropy Network and he is a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and has served on EO’s MEPA Regional Council. He serves as Director on a number of social impact organisations and business Boards, including investing in some of them.

You can tell he is busy man. 💼

Alongside building businesses out of thin air, Ruchir is passionate about social change, he has started a number of social impact organisations. After the International student crisis in Australia in 2010, Ruchir created the Australia India Youth Dialogue, a Track II diplomatic dialogue between the young leaders of Australia and India. Ruchir is the Founding Chair of the School of Policy and Governance (SPG). SPG is a graduate school focused on executive education for the global south, from the global south.

It would’ve been next to impossible to cover his entire journey, but I did manage to get him to shower me with his wisdom on a wide range of topics.

In this episode of the EO Series of the My First Business Podcast, Ruchir and I talked about:

00:00 ▶️ Introduction

09:56 🧠 How he learnt the art of business by osmosis

21:06 🤝 How to choose the right partners for your business (and why he doesn’t go into business with family)

33:59 🫀 Maturing when it comes to taking criticism, and the work he has done to raise his self awareness

47:49 🍃 How he transitioned from having strong expectations, to becoming comfortable with going with the flow

55:38 👀 How to spot new opportunities in the market, and how he ‘bulldozes’ his way into new opportunity

59:22 💼 Doing meaningful work that makes a difference, and how that’s become a focus on his entrepreneurial pursuits

01:07:00 🤫 The secrets of building APAC’s largest digital agency, and why he decided to get out

and much much more…

Ruchir is the kind of guy I want beside me on an 18-hour flight. He is an absolute dreamer, and go-getter and go-giver too. His humility in our conversation really touched my heart, and I think it’ll do the same for you - please enjoy my wide-ranging chat with Ruchir Punjabi, on the EO Series of the My First Business Podcast.