Abhinav Gupta Interview
Q. You call yourself the 'family biz & old money insider.' What inspired you to build that identity online, and how do you balance honesty with discretion when sharing about such a private world?
I’ve been interested in making content for a long time. Over the years I’ve tried comedy skits, design content, even AI content. I simply enjoy making videos and creating things. When I joined the family business, life got hectic and I stopped posting. But that urge to create never really went away.
One night, while scrolling reels, it struck me that I can’t stand out in design or AI right now as those spaces are saturated with the same formats. Startups are saturated too. But 'family business' and 'old money' felt like an untouched category, and my own context fit perfectly. I had just joined my family business and was curious to learn how other family businesses started and evolved.
So in a moment of courage, I created the Instagram account abhinavsayshi and promised myself I’d post one video the next morning no matter how imperfect. That’s how this identity was born — out of my own circumstances, curiosity, and a push from my parents and friends who kept telling me to start making videos again.
As for honesty versus discretion, I try to avoid false numbers or false narratives. I use the internet and AI research tools to verify data and anecdotes as much as possible. Sometimes information is hard to find, but my goal is to keep my content real and accurate while respecting the privacy of the world I’m talking about.
Q. From leading design at Avalon to now being deeply involved in your family business, how has your approach to leadership and decision-making evolved across these very different worlds?
Both contexts are completely different and so are the types of people who work in them. Avalon was a startup: velocity, momentum, shipping things fast, taking risks. It was war-time mode. The family business was the opposite when I joined, an established corporate with settled systems and processes. Peace-time mode.
Because I spent my early years in startups, my DNA leans towards moving fast, working with small teams, incentivising people, bringing in ambitious talent and giving them the keys to fly the plane. I operate with a lot of experimentation, always trying to increase 'learning per unit time' with each experiment.
I believe colleges and our family business need to evolve to survive, so I’ve been pushing to try new things and launch new ideas into the market. For me, evolution is a core biological principle. Change will happen no matter what so we have to keep adapting, keep evolving, and keep getting better if we want to thrive.
But there’s a lot of learning on my side too. The scale at Budha College is much bigger now. Here I’m managing over 100 people and dealing with a lot more operational leadership. Still learning every day. My mantra is: the more you walk, the more you’ll learn.
In both gigs, I like to be hands-on where it’s necessary or where I can add unique value, and hands-off where someone else can do it better. In the family business, I actively promote ownership, encourage experimentation, give freedom, push for outcomes, and try to inject velocity into a traditionally slower system. Early experiences shape your DNA a lot and I’m bringing that startup DNA into a legacy environment.
Q. Your posts often cut through the myths around wealth and legacy. What’s one misconception about 'old money' that you think social media gets completely wrong?
I think there’s a huge misconception that having an 'old money' life is super easy that you automatically have capital, networks, and systems handed to you. In reality, it’s just a different game with its own problems.
For a startup, the challenge might be finding your first set of users. For a family business, it’s maintaining decades-old relationships, retaining talent, and keeping the business relevant in a changing market. It’s not 'no work', it’s just 'different work.'
The grass always looks greener on the other side. Honestly, you just have to choose the game you want to play and accept the challenges that come with it.
Q. At 100xEngineers, you were at the intersection of tech and talent-building. How do you see that experience influencing the way you’re now shaping the future of your family’s legacy?
Since the nature of both businesses is similar, education and skilling, my time at 100xEngineers taught me a lot about how new-age companies build communities, position brands, and experiment with fresh go-to-market strategies like content. They’re obsessed with outcomes and constant feedback loops from their learners.
If you talk to any student from 100xEngineers, they’ll tell you great stories about their experience because the model is so outcome-driven. That experience hardwired into me the importance of narrative, speed, and user-centric design even in education. It showed me you don’t have to run an institution like a slow- moving ship; you can run it like a product — iterate, experiment, measure outcomes, and scale what works.
I’m now applying all of that to my own context at Budha College: how to run a college differently, focusing on outcomes instead of just processes, creating powerful narratives and positioning, building communities around programs, and playing in markets with low competition. The goal is to make a 17-year-old college feel as fresh and innovative as a startup, without losing the trust and legacy it’s built.
Q. What is the single most meaningful problem you’ve seen being ignored by both creators and traditional business one that you’d like to solve personally (or help someone solve) in the next few years, and why does it resonate with you?
Honestly, it’s right there in the question. Traditional businesses desperately need creators or at least need to think like creators. They should be making content, getting in front of people, and telling their story. It unlocks so many opportunities they don’t even know exist —serendipity, trust, credibility.
And content doesn’t just mean videos; it can be text, images, podcasts, newsletters, anything. I see some really niche traditional businesses making great educational content and suddenly getting people to care about them.
On the flip side, creators also need to think like businesses. They already have distribution muscles. Why not use that to build products, services, and companies? Some great examples are emerging in the ecosystem, but it’s still rare.
This resonates with me because I’m living at that intersection, running a traditional institution but also building an audience. I’ve seen firsthand how powerful it is when the two worlds cross-pollinate. Even if content doesn’t immediately bring customers, it builds long- term trust and credibility, and that’s invaluable.
Q. Family businesses often walk the fine line between tradition and reinvention. What’s one challenge you faced in bringing a fresh perspective, and how did you navigate it without disrupting legacy values?
Honestly, I’ve been very lucky on this front. My family has always kept me as a front runner and actively pushes my ideas. Getting buy-in for new initiatives hasn’t been difficult because there’s already a culture of healthy discussion about experiments, expansions, and even things that aren’t working well.
For example, at Budha College I floated the idea of focusing heavily on content on Instagram and Youtube, something most traditional colleges don’t even think about. My family backed me fully, and today we have a solid in-house team creating content.
Even our students participate and make content about their experiences. That single idea has completely changed how we tell our story and connect with people. They guide me when my judgement might be off, but they also give me the space to 'swim' and figure things out on my own.
That mix of mentorship and freedom makes it much easier to bring fresh perspectives without clashing with legacy values. So far, I’ve rarely had to face serious resistance, and I’m very grateful for that.
Q. You’ve built an audience that’s curious about power, wealth, and influence. How do you decide what stories or insights to share publicly versus what to keep private?
I actually have a pretty simple, almost weird way of doing it. I keep my eyes open all the time — looking at products, businesses, brands, places, random conversations — and jotting ideas into my notes. When I sit down to script, I skim through those stories and pick the ones that evoke a strong feeling in me.
If a story feels crazy, makes me curious, or gives me that 'wow' energy, that’s the one I turn into a video. Most of my content comes from personal curiosity and everyday observation. For example, my Boroline video happened because I saw a friend buying multiple tubes at a store. Hidesign came from another friend who wanted to buy from them. Morbi came from overhearing my tile supplier during my office renovation. It’s all about keeping my eyes open and listening.
That process naturally filters what I share. I only tell stories I feel comfortable with and that evoke emotion. Everything else stays private in my notes.
Q. If you could host a private dinner with three people, living or dead, who truly understand the nuances of power, legacy, and influence, who would make your guest list and why?
Honestly, I can’t pick just three. There are so many people whose journeys I admire for different reasons. If I could have a long dinner table, I’d love to sit with:
● Sam Altman for how he’s pushing the boundaries of AI and thinking globally about the future.
● Elon Musk for building multiple companies tackling hard, high-risk problems simultaneously.
● Deepinder Goyal for creating a new category with Zomato and scaling it beautifully.
● Gautam Adani for how he’s become a superpower in recent years by expanding aggressively into strategic sectors.
● Mukesh Ambani for taking newer bets apart from traditional businesses and building a modern conglomerate.
● Mark Zuckerberg for reinventing himself and Meta multiple times while staying relevant.
● Wang Chuanfu (BYD) for reverse-engineering, building at scale, and turning a niche idea into a global leader.
● Steve Jobs for his unmatched storytelling, creating desire, and building 'status' products that defined culture.
● Virat Kohli for how he inspires me to push harder and keep working with relentless focus and discipline.
Each of them understands power, legacy, and influence in a completely different way, from tech to infrastructure to consumer brands to sports. I’d want to ask them about their decision frameworks, how they think about risk, and how they balance vision with execution.
Bio:
Abhinav Gupta is a creator and entrepreneur building the next generation of education from his base in Karnal, Haryana. He leads Budha College — a 17-year-old higher education institution he’s transforming into a modern, skill-based college focused on practical learning, creativity, and real-world outcomes.
Before joining Budha College, Abhinav was a founding member at 100xEngineers, one of India’s leading AI education initiatives, and led design for Avalon Scenes, which was later acquired by Unacademy.
On the internet, Abhinav is known as @abhinavsayshi, where he shares honest, behind-the-scenes insights on family businesses, old money, and legacy — building a community of over 90,000 followers. His content blends curiosity, storytelling, and research to make complex ideas about wealth, identity, and ambition simple and relatable.
Interviewed by - Divya Darshni
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