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Best Place To BuildRaw and Real: Tarun Mehta on his IIT Madras days, NOT doing MBA & founding Ather Energy | BP2B S2E18
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Tarun Mehta’s IIT journey, Ather’s pivots, and builder mindset lessons
- Tarun describes a non-stereotypical IIT pathway—heavy on games, comics, and minimalism—yet driven by curiosity and building when boredom created mental space.
- A one-week Stanford exposure rewired his understanding of entrepreneurship from resume-building to creating value without institutional permission or “structure.”
- Ather began as a deep, long-term obsession (first Stirling engines, then energy), later crystallizing into EVs through hands-on battery work, customer interviews, and weekend prototyping at IITM labs.
- The company’s most important early strategic pivot was dropping consumer battery swapping after real engineering/use-case validation, while keeping the core “build a great electric scooter” thesis intact.
- Ather’s durability came from conviction-led decision-making, vertical building (hardware, software, tooling, standards), community-driven feedback loops, and a rescue investment led by Sachin Bansal during a near-failed fundraise.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasBoredom and constraint can be powerful idea generators.
Tarun argues the most compelling ideas emerge either from desperation or from having enough unstructured time to get genuinely bored—then choosing one thing to pursue deeply.
A short, high-signal exposure can permanently reset your ambition ceiling.
Stanford worked as a “vacuum-filler,” showing him students can start companies and create value without needing a big organization, title, or permission.
Conviction comes from depth, not hype.
Ather’s decisions felt “obvious” internally because the founders spent disproportionate time reading, analyzing Tesla’s architectural choices, and stress-testing economics and feasibility before committing.
Talk to users before you’re ‘ready’—even before you have a product.
They found EV customers via online reviews/comments, emailed them, met them for hours, and paired that with real usage (buying a cheap EV scooter) to ground product direction.
Limit your downside to make bold moves easier.
Tarun quit because he felt he had no “golden handcuffs”; the real risk was only losing a small amount of savings, which reduced decision paralysis.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesYou don’t need a company behind you to create value.
— Tarun Mehta
Genuinely good ideas… come when you are either desperate… or you are completely bored.
— Tarun Mehta
I had no golden handcuffs… my downside is so limited.
— Tarun Mehta
If it does not exist, just build it. Done.
— Tarun Mehta
All the thoughts that you think you have… they’re actually Paul Graham’s essays.
— Tarun Mehta
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
