What did I work on?
As decided last year, this year I primarily worked on developing real-world physical businesses around my home state in India. Jharkhand is India’s 2nd worst state in terms of GDP/capita and ranks extremely poor in almost all key metrics.
Given I had never done anything in a direct professional capacity there, I decided to apply the proverbial phrase of seeing opportunities into challenges and attempt things that might fit its current state with a potential revenue target of ₹1Cr (~$100K).
› Coal Trading
Jharkhand is home to 40% of the mineral resources of India and a primary branch of the government-owned coal mining company, CCL, is HQ’d in my home city Ranchi. My father retired after working at the same company for 40 years and I already knew the basic operations there made it seem like a viable opportunity candidate.
In essence, CCL mines, refines & produces coal at different quality levels across the region, followed by selling it to registered interested entities via monthly auctions.
As is typical of government-operated bodies, registering and maintaining such entities requires navigating regulatory & compliance quagmire, costs time & money, and becomes prohibitive for smaller players from doing it on their own.
This combined with the historical evolution path has created 2nd order market where formally registered parties buy with risk capital on their books and auction off to other informal parties leveraging their personal buyer network across regions.
EV for trades in good months (demand outstrips supply) spike profit margins upwards of +5%, while bad months (rainy season, poor coal yield) can have similar negatives.
Partnering with a familial friend we sort out all the paperwork, accounts, and capital. We drove across coal mine regions and established on-the-ground coordinators for authorizations, delivery, sale, and payment. I collected historical coal prices and used some of my prior HFT know-how to build a basic time-series price model to account for risk, and participated in a couple of auction cycles to get the buy orders.
Unfortunately, soon after reality started to kick in on why this was too good to be true.
Despite being the world’s 3rd largest coal producer, CCL has broken operations. It can’t mine its projected quantities on time, cannot schedule deliveries with any reliability, frequently fails to fulfill purchase orders through conducted auctions, and blocks capital refunds for months in each cycle.
On top of that, the informal sale process is entirely dependent on personal network trust as there is no formal mechanism to enforce such transactions or collect credit in case of runaway buyers, and requires enforcer muscles on the ground. Seeing the cycles blocking capital for 6+ months, the operational mess by CCL, and the unethical requirements to operate such a business, I dropped my involvement after that.
› Homemade food brand
My parents have always been food aficionados & love experimenting with homemade recipes that taste great and home visitors can’t stop praising them after trying.
Given they are retired now, can use a new engagement, and can leverage their skills, I encouraged them to build their proprietary item recipes as a small business, assuring them I’ll take care of operational needs. Initial products over the next months became:
Pickles (Dad’s recipes using seasonal vegetables)
Bari (Mom’s recipes)
I helped build a facade around the homemade food brand, Vastav Foods. Business registration (GST), Food license (FSSAI), packaging, sealing, labels and shipping.
I got parents to broadcast their products to people they know on social media and they talked to local shops across the city and got some placement deals for products.
This is going well for micro-scale, but local shops are extremely price-sensitive to experiment with increasing margins and would rather not sell on negotiation.
I tried to list the brand on e-commerce sites (Amazon, Flipkart), but their seller onboarding teams have been a nightmare - excessive processes for an upstart, no streamlined communication process to complete the listing requirements and each time a new rep calls out of blue with no context or solution leaving the process stuck.
› Other ventures
Besides these ventures that made varying degrees of real-world progress, I also developed concepts of plans for a few other ideas to the full theoretical extent:
Real-estate development
Met builders and financiers to create a commercial real estate development plan that’s been sitting for 4 generations in the family. Stuck in government paperwork.
Also, discovered and reclaimed forgotten land after 50 years.Automated brick manufacturing factory
Developed a plan for a state-of-the-art automated brick manufacturing facility with Chinese equipment readiness; visited old-style factories for potential buyout.
Dropped because of lack of skilled labor, and no response from responsible gov bodies to clear out land, water, electricity & environment licenses.Automated car wash
Plan to introduce a first-of-its-kind automated car wash, talked to petrol pumps for potential leasing next door. Dropped because no reliably available water, electricity connections needed full backups, doubling costs, broke unit economics.Poultry farm
Readied plan for poultry economics, studied chicken breeds, feed & cleaning equipment setup, and shed development. Dropped because of labor reliability.
So, all the efforts to set up SMBs in my home state failed to varying degrees this year. I learned my lesson that 2nd worst state of an extremely poor country is not an accident. Still, because of centuries of structural rot, it’s almost impossible to maintain quality or personal ethics to conduct a fair business that generates win-win scenarios for everyone involved. I dug head-first and learned my lessons this year.
Going forward, AGI is coming and I’m working out how to be useful in that world.
Where did I live?
Another fork in the road last year for me was to decide after Europe, which way I wanted to move: East (India) or West (USA). So, I attempted an extended residency in India this year to see if the livability trade-offs are survivable in any major city.
I spent a couple of months in Europe and spent the other ~10 months in India, with a primary base in Ranchi, and visiting different major cities every few weeks to check out. During the process, I sold my Amsterdam apartment to clear out physically and discovered a bunch of new developments around my hometown as well.
I wrote about my re-learnings about life in India and there is not a single factor that’s acceptable if you have to compare it with a viable developed world choice and there is no plan or willpower at any level - people or government - in the entire nation.
Any effort to get involved in improving things by feedback falls flat, without accountability in the law & order system in the absence of fundamental needs of life.
Going forward, the only way seems to be a move to the USA, but that is complicated, and global sentiment toward further immigration is turning extremely sour ahead.
Health
Very grateful to continue having no major or chronic health issues besides rare seasonal flu and self-inflicted discomfort due to poor form of exercise at times.
A worry this year was my scalp hair visibly started thinning. I briefly looked up the causes and cures but didn’t start anything as they all seem to have mixed reviews.
If distant memory serves me right I might have a hard time pulling off the bald look.
Unfortunately, being in India meant no easy access to my favorite sports activities or studios. Coupled with 7 months of brutal summer banning stepping outdoors halted my routine of high-intensity activities and drained motivation on this front.
Despite relapse & recovery, muscle mass, and cardio fitness degraded to a large extent.
Relationships
› Family
This year I spent an extended period with my parents after many years. They are starting to enter the aging stage of life and appreciate having kids around a lot more now, as did I. Visited sisters and extended families for ceremonies and celebrations.
Even though I have fundamentally diverged in values compared to my family which has always been in India, being around them feels more meaningful with each passing year. And still, after a while, those differences become painfully apparent to sustain.
› Friends
I also spent time with a few remaining hometown friends back from high school, extremely easy to get back in the groove but hard to find common ground on topics to converse. People do rationalize their environment over time. Adapt or Die.
› Romantic
Another goal of this year was to try to date women in India, given I hadn’t had the chance of that in the past several years in Amsterdam. In each major city I visited, I tried to set up a few matches via Hinge or Bumble and go on a couple of dates.
Dating still feels like a foreign concept in India, Apps are extremely skewed in their gender ratios, and 9/10 women don’t pass the basic attraction filter. If you do set up a date, the laborious commute through polluted cities barely leaves a mood for flirting.
I even made a profile on Jeevansathi.com, an Indian matrimony site to explore more traditional candidates. Most often their parents pop up, which feels extremely awkward if you aren’t used to it - what is there even to talk about with parents? Otherwise, women most likely will have no personality, or the call will end up with transactional interview questions, with no scope of building a romantic connection. After thorough browsing and 250+ direct profile interactions, I closed the account.
Media
› Books
This year I entirely read books in audible format, often intermixing with author talks, podcasts, essays, and LLMs to synthesize and move on without fixating on end-to-end completion if verbose or uninteresting.
I primarily found myself diving into things that have remained true forever in the arc of history, especially trying to grasp factors that create an environment enabling fundamentally original breakthroughs in science, technology, nations & civilizations.
With AGI looming on the foreseeable horizon, it seems the most important question for humans to figure out where to live and find meaning in life.
› Movies & Shows
This year I watched content across 14 shows (comedy, documentary talk shows) and 56 movies (action, adventure, science fiction) totaling up to 180 hours, often rewatching past favorites and franchises instead of discovering new stuff.
Favorite movie: Dune 2
Favorite show: Real Time with Bill Maher
› Music
Listening to Gregorian chants was probably my best ascendant experience this year.
› Videos
I continued using YouTube as the media discovery engine and watched talk shows, podcasts, interviews, lectures, comedy, etc across 6199 clips from 2096 channels.
Top 10 channels:
Real Time with Bill Maher
Content Machine
All-In Podcast
The Lallantop
The Daily Show
Lex Fridman
Chris Williamson
PowerfulJRE
BeerBiceps
Hoover Institution› Egress
With the context that putting your original content visibly on the internet might be the only way to influence AGI shoggoth in the future (akin to voting in a democracy), I took up periods of consistent efforts in creating with that in mind.
I actively started long-form analysis publishing on Substack, short-form opinions on X, visual perspectives on Instagram, and videos of activities on YouTube.
It’s clear that making original contributions beyond internet slop is a high bar and I’m too selfish to create for potential audiences versus doing things that just intrigue me.
2024 was an isolating year, full of failures and melancholy for me.
2025 seems to be setting the world up for a wild year ahead, look forward to that ride!
HELLO BHAI...!!!
You are one of the few people I look up to and who keeps pushing forward despite all the setbacks. What a wild ride it has been for you and I hope 2025 will bear the fruits for your efforts