He Isn't Studying Business. He's Building It Across 8 Countries. A conversation with Pal Sanghvi

 What if every semester ended with a business instead of an exam?

While most students collect credits, Pal Sanghvi collects businesses.

By the time most undergraduates complete their first internship, Pal had already co-founded Forge X, an AI-powered fitness platform; Bear Minimum, a wellness gummies venture; Orys, a premium eyewear brand; KhelKud, a sports initiative empowering underprivileged children; and Global Vision Conferences, a profitable Model UN circuit. Alongside building these ventures, he has worked across commercial strategy, sales, finance, sustainability, and operations through organisations such as Aflatoun International, Dubai Stockbrokers & Investment Services Group, Polynome, Econova Global, and Tripology Holidays, gaining hands-on experience across India, the UAE, and global teams.

But what makes Pal's journey stand out isn't the number of ventures on his résumé. It's the philosophy behind them. A student at Tetr College of Business, Pal treats every semester as a new market, every country as a new classroom, and every business as a real-world experiment. With an ambitious goal of building ventures across eight countries before graduation, he's choosing to learn entrepreneurship by creating companies, solving problems, and making decisions where the outcomes are real, not simulated.

This conversation isn't just about startups. It's about the mindset behind building them.

Q1. What's one belief about entrepreneurship that TETR completely changed for you?

Before joining TETR, the narrative always seemed to center on raw experience or having a purely street-smart mind. TETR completely flipped that script by revealing that network is the most underrated asset in the business industry. It changed the belief from "business is about individual brilliance and grit" to "business is fundamentally about access." Having a great idea or being sharp matters, but it’s the network that unlocks doors, accelerates distribution, and turns an isolated project into a scalable venture: and TETR proved to be the ultimate catalyst for that.

Q2. If Bear Minimum had failed completely, what lesson would still have made it worth building?

While Bear Minimum wasn't a runaway commercial success, it wasn't a failure either: it was the ultimate training ground for the hardest skill in business: team dynamics. It is easy to romanticize building a brand, but the brutal reality is that learning how to actually work in a team is a complex, distinct skill. Years from now, when building a massive business with hundreds of employees, Bear Minimum will be the anchor experience. The friction, the alignment, and the collaborative hurdles faced there are exactly what taught the foundational management lessons needed to lead people at scale.

Q3. You've built in India, UAE, and with global teams. What advantage does India consistently underestimate about itself?

The true advantage lies in the untapped intellect of Indians themselves. Indians are incredibly smart, resourceful, and capable of solving complex problems. However, the ecosystem consistently underestimates this potential because of a collective mindset bottleneck: the primary ambition has historically been to leverage that intelligence to secure high-paying jobs in top foreign companies rather than building them at home. The competitive edge isn't missing talent or capability; it’s the massive opportunity cost of exporting that brilliance instead of anchoring it locally to build the next global giants.

Q4. You work on both commercial ventures and social impact. Where do those two goals naturally conflict?

While commercial ventures and social impact seem fundamentally opposite, they don't have to collide if you build around a philosophy of fair, non-exploitative monetization. The perceived conflict vanishes when you reframe the goal: instead of maximizing profit at the expense of others, the focus shifts to creating genuine value that helps people, and then making a safe, fair amount of money through it. By keeping pricing transparent and avoiding predatory margins, you prove that driving social good and earning a stable financial return can coexist seamlessly.

Q5. If you could spend a month shadowing any founder, who would it be and what would you observe?

It would undoubtedly be Deepinder Goyal. His genius isn't in chasing abstract, hyper-complex concepts, but in his uncanny ability to look at the exact everyday problems we all face and completely monetize and solve them at scale. From food delivery (Zomato) and quick commerce (Blinkit) to going out (District) and even spiritual spaces (Temple), he maps daily human habits.

During that month, the core focus would be observing his problem-extraction framework: how he identifies a mundane daily friction point, strips away the noise, and builds an operationally intense ecosystem to solve it before anyone else realizes the opportunity was even there.

Q6. What's the hardest decision you've made where there wasn't a clearly "right" answer?

The hardest decision came right after the Dubai term. After building a sunglasses dropshipping business, the team made it to the investor pitches and secured one of the highest investments of the cohort, largely because the investors fell in love with the flawless team dynamics and how perfectly roles were divided.

Immediately after, the Dubai team asked to stay together to execute the venture. Deep down, the desire to continue was absolutely there. But having already committed to and built a completely new team for the upcoming India term, a definitive choice had to be made. Saying "no" to a proven, well-funded team with great chemistry, purely to honor a next-phase commitment, was a brutal balancing act between immediate validation and long-term structural focus.

Q7. What's a business trend everyone is chasing today that you believe is overrated?

The ubiquitous rush to build everything through AI. When AI first broke out, it was exclusive, elite, and high-leverage, which drove its massive boom. Today, the hype train has made it completely commoditized. Everyone is trying to build an AI wrapper or force it into their business model, creating an incredibly crowded, noisy market where true differentiation is rare. The reality is that the players with the first-mover advantage have already captured the core turf; chasing the AI trend now just for the sake of it ignores the massive execution headwinds and intense competition facing late entrants.

Q8. At 40, what would make you feel you built a meaningful career?

A meaningful career will mean achieving a life of absolute freedom, zero stress, and high-profile peer respect. Success at 40 looks like having generated more than enough wealth to own houses across Europe and Africa, effortlessly traveling from one country to another without the lingering shadow of financial fear or operational anxiety.

And on a personal note, true validation of that status will be relational: not just being a distant fan of icons like Virat Kohli, but moving in the same circles, earning respect as an equal, and knowing him as a genuine friend.

About Conversations by Brains in You

Conversations by Brains in You is a curated interview series featuring students, professionals, entrepreneurs, creators, researchers, and changemakers whose journeys offer meaningful lessons beyond conventional achievements.

Rather than focusing solely on titles or milestones, each conversation explores the decisions, experiences, challenges, and perspectives that shaped the individual behind the profile. The aim is to create a growing repository of practical insights that helps students and young professionals navigate their own careers with greater clarity, productivity, integrity, and purpose.

Every featured conversation is thoughtfully selected with the belief that authentic experiences can inspire informed decisions, lifelong learning, and better human development.