The ”Great Boon”: Startup CEOs Share How Access to Indian Railways’ Library Contributed to Their Success

CEO shared a picture of the library of Indian Railways

Ruchit G Garg, Chief Executive of Harvesting Farmer Network, shared on Twitter how access to the library of the Indian Railways contributed to his success story. Mr Garg, whose mother worked as a clerk in the railway library, said he was able to read books and magazines that were “out of our reach”.

Sharing a picture of the library, he wrote, “When I lost my father 35 years ago, my mother started working as a clerk in the library of the Indian Railways, which was meant for officers/employees. We had very few means, could not afford much including books… I used to sneak off to read all the possible things that interested me…”

Check out the tweet here:

In another tweet, he wrote, ‘Library access proved a boon for us as many books/magazines were out of our reach. HBR (Harvard Business Review) @HarvardBiz​ was one of them and reading case studies was a fun pastime for me.

Mr. Garg then went on to describe his ‘full circle moment’, how he used to read Harvard Business Review in the library and years later, he was invited to appear on a panel at the prestigious university.

Check out the tweet here:

The tweet has gone viral, with many appreciating the power of books and the role they play in changing a person’s life. Others also congratulated Mr. Garg for his success and wished him a bright future.

One user wrote, “I read somewhere: “Good books are our real friends.” Another commented, “I grew up reading everything I could because of libraries – my Father taught library science at a night school to every other librarian in town, so he tolerated me, I didn’t go to Harvard, but loved books and reading—understand the joy well.”

A third added, ”Twitter. Please show me such stories!

Mr Garg spent at least 11 years working for tech giant Microsoft in the US. He then returned to India and started building a seed-to-market start-up called Harvesting Farming Network (HFN).

Notably, his startup that had been banking with Silicon Valley Bank for nearly a decade also felt the impact of the collapse. After the defeat, Mr. Garg Requested to wire some of my funds.

“We have been banking with SVB for more than 10 years. We have deposits that are stuck with them now. Thankfully for us the situation is a bit better as most of our operations are in India. Only sheer planning and luck We already have a lot of money in the form of FDI (foreign direct investment) in Indian entities. But still a huge chunk of our money is sitting in SVBs,” Mr Garg told NDTV.

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