Chapter 03 · London
I didn’t go for the degree. I went for the exposure.
London taught me how brands are built with nuance — and, more usefully, how little I actually knew.
When work was fun but college wasn’t, I started looking outward. I wanted the exposure of a global city — how agencies there worked, how brands were built with a subtlety I hadn’t seen at home — and I wanted to bring it back to India ahead of time. Convincing my parents took a PowerPoint (my mother instantly; my father after a few rounds). They played the biggest gamble on me, and I’m forever grateful they did.
The classroom mattered less than the city. Every Tube ride felt like a lesson; every poster made me stop and read the strategy behind it. Hindu Today gave me my first look inside how media and publishing actually operate — how attention is earned and distributed — which, years later, is exactly the muscle I’d use turning a metro station and a news studio into brand environments.
London’s real lesson wasn’t a technique. It was humility — that however much you think you know, you’re always a student.London
I soaked in everything: lectures, campaigns, cultural codes, the way storytelling could quietly move perception. And I left with a plan I was sure of — come home, start my own agency, this time more structured and professional, with a London sensibility. I was wrong about the timing, and being wrong about it turned out to be the most valuable decision of my career.
How he thinks
- He chose exposure over credentials on purpose — the degree was the ticket, the city was the point.
- His confidence has an unusual companion: a genuine student’s humility. London installed the ‘always a student’ setting that keeps the assumption-questioning from curdling into arrogance.
- The media-and-publishing instinct that later defined his Motilal media work traces back here, not to finance.