The Mahabharata Warning Every Indian Entrepreneur Must Heed
You’re in your corner office, surrounded by faces you’ve known since the garage days. They finish your sentences, share your vision, and would follow you into battle. But here’s the uncomfortable truth, loyalty without competence is just an expensive way to lose a war.
The Ancient Mirror You Must Have in Your Modern Office
Every Indian founder faces the Dhritarashtra moment. Like the blind king of Hastinapur, we often mistake our greatest weakness for our greatest strength, choosing comfort over capability, familiarity over expertise.
Dhritarashtra had Bhishma, Vidura, and Drona, a dream team of strategy, administration, and execution. Yet he consistently chose his incompetent but loyal son Duryodhana over merit-based counsel. The result? The complete annihilation of his empire. Is this your Deja vu ?
That early employee who’s now your CTO because they “understand the culture”, despite their code looking like spaghetti. The Sales & marketing head who’s your college roommate, watching conversion rates plummet while nodding enthusiastically at your every idea. A CEO whose expertise is family management and a CHRO who confuses personnel management for Human Capital Development – does this sound familiar ?
Should these circumstances resonate with your experience, heed them as unmistakable red flags. Unlike Dhritrashtra, whose wilful blindness precipitated destruction, you must courageously remove the blindfold, abdicate your throne of denial & self-deception, and implement the three fundamental principles delineated below.
The Three Pillars of Organizational Success
1.The Heart (Loyalty): Your Lakshman—unwavering, cultural backbone, stabilizing force.
2.The Hands (Execution): Your Hanuman—efficient, problem-solving, delivery-focused.
3.The Mind (Innovation): Your Krishna—strategic, visionary, occasionally uncomfortable truth-teller.
The fatal error? Promoting The Heart to do The Mind’s job. It’s like asking your most loyal soldier to be your war strategist, noble intent, catastrophic outcome.
Breaking the Loyalty Trap
Acknowledge Your Blind Spots: Are you promoting based on comfort or competence? That queasy feeling when considering an “outsider” for a senior role? That’s your Dhritarashtra moment.
Honor Loyalty Appropriately: Give your early believers equity, cultural roles, recognition, not positions they can’t handle. A loyal team member deserves respect, not responsibility beyond their capability.
Embrace Your Viduras: The employee who challenges your decisions isn’t disloyal, they’re indispensable. If your entire leadership team always agrees with you, you don’t have advisors; you have expensive yes-men.
Let Talent Thrive: That brilliant, occasionally difficult new hire who questions everything? They might be your Krishna, the strategic mind who saves your empire from its own blind spots.
From Hastinapur to Indraprastha
The Mahabharata offers two models: Hastinapur’s destruction through misplaced loyalty, or Indraprastha’s prosperity through merit-based leadership.
Your startup will become one or the other. The choice isn’t between loyalty and talent, it’s about placing each where they belong. Build a meritocratic rajya where loyalty is honoured but never replaces competence.
Don’t let your Parivar culture become your Kurukshetra. Your company’s epic is still being written.
About The Author
Good one Ashishji.
Every organisation (not just startups) need to understand these principles and act on them.
I do quite a bit of mentoring of startups glivally, especially in the healthcare domain, and will highlight key principles like these. Mentorship and advisory roles are largely about asking tough questions, generating insight and facilitating appropriate action.
Have a nice day.
🙏
Thank you for your appreciation Sir !