Compete With Yourself
Last week I was named Sustainability Entrepreneur at the Devagiri Business Conclave at St Joseph’s College, Kozhikode. The Lifetime Achievement award that evening went to Joy Alukkas, and sharing a stage with him was not something the younger version of me would have imagined. But the line I carried home came from the chief guest, Justice Devan Ramachandran of the Kerala High Court. He told the room that you can only succeed in life if you work with passion, and that the only person worth competing with is yourself.
That felt less like advice than a description of the last decade. When we launched Aditya in 2017, India’s first solar-electric ferry, there was no one to compete with and no benchmark to beat. There was only a question that would not leave me alone: why are we burning diesel on a stretch of water that sits between the sun above and the sea below? So we set out to prove a different way was possible, and the only standard we had was the one we set the morning before.
That is what competing with yourself means when you are doing something new. You wake up each day having to be slightly better than the version of you that went to sleep. The boat has to be quieter, the cost lower, the crossing smoother.
What began as one ferry has grown into more than 85 boats across 12 states, with exports reaching Canada, the Maldives, Israel and the Seychelles. But the number I am proudest of is harder to put on a slide. It is the quiet. Every one of those boats is a stretch of water that is cleaner and calmer than before.
So I am grateful to St Joseph’s, Devagiri, for the recognition, and to Justice Ramachandran for a reminder I did not know I needed. Passion is the only fuel that never runs out, and the competition that matters most is with the person you were yesterday.
Oceans was my choice. Go find yours.
Sandith Thandasherry 