A village boy from near Baramati just taught me more about business than most MBAs I know.
Last week my AC stopped cooling. Compressor leak. Three technicians had a look. Three of them said the same thing — "Saheb, replace karava lagel. Naveen ghya." Replace it. Buy a new one.
Then Praveen walked in.
Late thirties. Soft-spoken. Hands that have clearly worked. He looked at the unit for twenty minutes without saying much, opened his pouch, and got to work. Two hours later, the compressor was holding pressure. The same one everyone else had written off.
I have a habit. When someone interesting walks into my life, I stop and listen. Over chai, Praveen's story came out — not because he was selling it, but because I asked.
The story nobody puts on LinkedIn
Praveen lost his father when he was a child. A small village near Baramati. His uncle scraped together enough to push him through 12th standard — and that was it. No coaching classes. No "career counsellor." No "what's your passion?" conversations.
He did ITI. Then an apprenticeship at Coca-Cola. He learned AC repair the way our grandfathers learned things — by watching, by failing, by doing it again until his hands knew the answer before his head did.
He started small. AC repair, house to house. Saved every rupee. Then he became a service partner for Blue Star and Daikin. Then industrial work started coming in.
Twenty years later:
His own electrical repair shop, run by his wife
Land back home in his village
A flat in Pune
Annual turnover: ₹1.8 crore
Annual savings that match what most engineers I know dream of as CTC
No degree on the wall. No LinkedIn profile boasting "ex-Coca-Cola." No "thought leadership." Just twenty years of solving problems people said couldn't be solved.
The pain he carries
I asked him what worries him today. Expecting tax, GST, competition, scaling.
His answer floored me.
"Sir, kaam khoop ahe. Manse milat nahit."
Then he said something I want every parent, every student, every "career coach" in India to read:
"Aaj kal lokanna haat kale karayche nahit. Degree pahije, pagar pahije, AC office pahije. Pan skill nahi. Qualification ahe, kaam yet nahi."
He has work. He has money. He has demand from clients across Pune and beyond. What he doesn't have — is a single young person willing to learn what he knows.
The uncomfortable truth we have to talk about
We've sold an entire generation a lie.
We told them: get the degree, get the placement, get the job. We didn't tell them that a degree without a skill is a piece of paper. We didn't tell them that the boy who learned to fix a compressor will out-earn the boy who memorized definitions of compression.
Look around honestly:
Engineers who can't write production code
MBAs who can't sell anything
Graduates who panic when the WiFi is down
Resumes thicker than capability
And meanwhile, a Praveen from a village near Baramati is running a 1.8 Cr business and can't find people to hire.
This isn't an unemployment problem. This is an unemployability problem.
What I learned from Praveen
A few things I'm taking with me. Sharing them as they came:
1. Skills compound. Qualifications expire. A diploma from 2005 means very little in 2026. A pair of hands that know what a healthy compressor sounds like — that's gold for life.
2. Dirty hands build clean balance sheets. Every wealthy tradesperson I've met in India started by doing work that "educated" people refused to do.
3. Humility is a multiplier. Praveen didn't tell me about his turnover. I had to ask, twice. The loudest people on LinkedIn are rarely the ones doing the most.
4. India needs both. We need engineers AND electricians. Doctors AND nurses. Founders AND fitters. The disrespect we've built into "blue collar" work is costing us — economically and socially.
5. If you have a child confused about career — introduce them to a Praveen. Not for the sob story. For the masterclass.
A small request to my network
If you're a parent: stop measuring your child only by marks. Ask what they can do.
If you're a student: pick up one real skill this year. Cooking, coding, repairing, writing, selling — anything where the output is real and the feedback is honest.
If you're a hiring manager: re-read your job description. Are you hiring a degree, or a doer?
And if you know a young person near Pune who is willing to learn AC and electrical repair from a master craftsman who built a crore-plus business with his own hands — DM me. I'll connect you to Praveen.
He's looking. The work is real. The income is real. The dignity is real.
The only thing missing is hands willing to get dirty.
Praveen — thank you for fixing my AC, and for fixing something larger in my thinking. Bharat needs more of you. Let's make sure the next generation knows it.
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First published on LinkedIn.