About Monkabode

About Me

My career has been anything but linear. Starting as an electronics engineer in India, I spent over two decades in the Indian Civil Service, where I witnessed firsthand the complexities of international technology transfer—from French Alstom locomotives to American heavy haulers on Indian Railways. This sparked a lifelong curiosity about how business crosses borders.

I pursued an MBA at Cranfield University in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, learning to find opportunity in chaos. There, I competed in the European Business Plan Competition and secured runners‑up with a novel idea: applying Islamic finance to shipping when conventional credit vanished. That experience taught me that innovation often means recombining existing ideas in new contexts.

After Cranfield, I worked with Costain, a UK infrastructure firm, developing a market‑entry strategy for India. I identified Tata Realty as the ideal partner and held promising talks—only to see the plan shelved by a group CEO uneasy about governance risks. The lesson? Perception can be as powerful as reality in global business.

That setback didn’t stop me. Years later, a former manager recruited me to lead Aquam Corp’s India expansion. After five years of patience and persistence, we finally launched—only to have COVID‑19 upend everything. Yet even that crisis became a pivot: I co‑founded Sapio Analytics, an AI startup that now explores opportunities from Dubai to Guyana, and has drawn interest from Albania and Myanmar.

Today, I draw on my eclectic background—engineering, civil service, finance, and political economy—to help businesses navigate the uneven terrain of global markets. I believe the timeless lessons of the Silk Road still apply: relationships, adaptation, and trust are the ultimate currencies.