My Annual Year In Review: 2022

A letter in reflection, with the aim of setting direction

1. If you are reading this

You are probably a friend, family member, colleague, mentor or someone who knows me in some capacity. If we don’t know each other, thanks for stumbling by.

I am Karan Kishorpeuria — A 24 year old Entrepreneur, Angel Investor, Public Speaker and passionate Changemaker. You can learn more about me on my LinkedIn or personal website (still a work in progress).

Irrespective, I am grateful for you taking out time from your life to read beyond this!

2. Why am I writing this:

This is an annual review similar to an annual report that companies write. However, instead of being addressed to company shareholders, this is addressed to my personal stakeholders.

If you have given me your time or energy in the past (actively or passively), I consider you the reader: MY STAKEHOLDER!

This letter has 3 aims:

1. To reflect on the year gone by.
2. To set direction for the year ahead.
3. To document my journey to inspire a Future Karan or anyone else who might need this.

3. Note on last year

2022 was an interesting year for me. There were some incredible ups, a few downs, lots of interesting people met, lots of growth and lots of failure.

At the beginning of 2022, I set out my goals publicly, you can read them all here. And, I FAILED MISERABLY at seeing many of them through.

In reflection here are the top 3 reasons why:

1. Goals set direction, but habits determine progress.

Last year I mixed up between my goals and habits. I set many goals but did not back it up by conscious habits. This year I plan to back every goal by a habit or a time block as required.

2. One of the biggest reasons we do too little, is we try to do too much (at the same time).

Last year I set yearly goals but did not break it down. This year, I will divide goals by month and document progress publicly. This will allow clarity and accountability. However, I will not stop dreaming audaciously.

3. I lost control over my travel, health and sleep.

I travelled close to 150 days, was not consistent with my sleep and workouts. How I will combat this, this year:

• Travel with more structure: Few trips but longer in nature allowing for deep work days.
• Protect my sleep: Say no to super late work nights/dinners/social commitments and leave early whenever required without feeling guilty. I workout at 6 AM, would like to sleep by 10:30 PM latest.
• Make health a priority: I have always been a very fit person. However, last year I let work get the better of me and sacrificed my health a little. This year, I am going make health a #1 priority yet again and I will get back to this top shape (Yes, that is me).

4. Highlights from 2022

When I looked back into my archives so many good things happened last year, below are few highlights from the year that went by (Not including many work highlights, as this is a personal review):

1. Public speaking

• I gave my 1st Ted Talk at TEDxYouth@RusselStreet where the theme of the event was FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out. Even after giving 75+ talks, I was a little nervous before this one and want to thank my mother Shruti Kishorepuria for seeing me practice multiple times and giving feedback. Link to talk.

My 1st TED talk titled ‘Stumbling Forward’ a heartfelt personal account of my own successes and failures.

• I gave my 2nd Ted Talk at TEDxYouth@SunbeamVaruna while I was traveling for my friends buddy moon in Thailand. The theme of the event was Spreading Happiness and I spoke on the topic ‘Finding and spreading happiness through service.’

Though both events had phenomenal speakers, I was particularly excited to be speaking next to Arjun Vaidya someone I know and deeply admire during my 2nd TED talk.

• I was invited to my father (Anil Kishorepuria’s) alma matter (St Xavier’s College) twice , once as a guest judge and then as a speaker where I spoke for over 2 hours to to over 150 students. I did push ups (and even sang) during this session, details of the story in the link below. Hope I made my father proud, this event was special.

Karan Kishorepuria on LinkedIn: #startups #fundraising #publicspeaking | 24 comments

• I was invited to my father’s service forum at Rotary Club Chowrenghee to give a talk on personal branding and LinkedIn. There is always so much to learn while speaking to such experienced folks.

To keep the audience engaged, I took 3 awesome books from my personal library as giveaways for most active audience members.

• I was the youngest speaker at SVP India’s 10 Year Anniversary event held in Mumbai where I had the privilege to speak beside some amazing friends and change-makers.

A look at our SVP India family that attended the 10 year anniversary. If you are passionate about service and philanthropy, you must check out SVP India.

2. Angel Investing

I formally started my angel investing journey (after starting and leading an impact fund in NUImpact and venture incubator in IDEA) and had the privilege to back 6 incredible companies and entrepreneurs in a personal capacity. This includes:

• Rareplanet (Airport Retail): Redefining airport retail in India while helping increase income of local artisans. This company was also featured on Shark Tank India in their 1st season and I invested alongside Namita Thappar.
• Almo (D2C): Making the best quality inner-wear while being affordable and sustainable. This company was co-founded by one of my closest and most amazing friend, Muskaan Jain.
• Boldcare (D2C, Health): Building India’s most trusted health platform specifically focusing on sexual wellness for men.
• Accacia (Climate tech): Helping decarbonize real estate by helping every real estate owner, operator and occupier to accurately monitor and track their progress to net zero. This round was led by Accel Partners.
• ZFW Dark Stores (Logistics): Solving for last mile and same day delivery for D2C brands. I invested alongside some other brilliant angel investors.
• Anveshan (Healthtech): Providing farm to table staples with complete visibility of supply chain process with the scan of a QR code. This round was led by DSG Consumer Partners.

3. Communities

I am grateful to have joined multiple communities this year including:

1. SVP India — I joined SVP India as one of the youngest partners in all of India. SVP is pan India wide engaged philanthropic organization where you donate with your time, money and energy. Currently I serve as:

• Lead Partner, Future Hope India
• Lead Partner, VAANI Deaf Children Foundation
• NGO Working Group Committee
• Fast Pitch Management Committee

At SVP I have found some great friends, mentors and a family that have similar value systems as I do. I also had close to 10 of my friends join me as Partners or mentors. A few of my highlights with SVP this year has been:

Celebrating my birthday with the kids at Future Hope Kolkata. I organized a quiz (which the girls team won) and had the best day ever as seen by the most beautiful smiles on their faces.

Organizing a fundraiser with Future Hope India where we raised over 1.2 CR in a single evening thanks to the generous contribution of a lot of friends, family members and partners. This event would not have been possible without the incredible effort by a lot of people mentioned on this LinkedIn post.

Attended the 4 year anniversary for the Kolkata Chapter and the 10 year anniversary for SVP India. In picture are some of the brilliant panelists I spoke alongside. You can learn more on this LinkedIn post.

All the incredible NGO visits and partner meetings where I always left with a wider smile on my face and more inspiration than I came in with. In picture is inaugurating the new VAANI center alongside some other incredible LPs in Devika and Divya.

Running for the children in the Sunderbans. On the 18th of December 40+ members from our Regaal Resources family and 10+ friends ran in support of Swapnopuran Welfare Society — a brilliant NGO doing great work in the Sunderbans.

2. FICCI Young Leaders Forum — I joined this organization set up to work on India’s growth with cross sectoral views, knowledge & background of youth leaders. Shoutout to my friend Viraaj Bansal for introducing me to this.

3. Young Global Leaders — A select group of 129 alumni from 49 countries that aims to provide ‘Inspiration Through Leadership’ at my alma matter Northeastern University.

4. Entrepreneurial mindset

I always tell young folks who tell me that they want to become an entrepreneur, that before you become an entrepreneur develop an entrepreneurial mindset.

Although I am a full time entrepreneur, below are a few small entrepreneurial undertakings that are more to do with an entrepreneurial mindset:

• Launched our 1st co-working space under the brand name Regaal Business Hub.

A picture of the space before we opened doors. Proud to say that today we are running at 95% capacity and have plans to open a 2nd space soon. Learn more here.

• Launched a community called Inspiring Friends along with a very close friend who I admire, Samarth Mehta. It is a group of young entrepreneurial minded friends from Calcutta who share similar values and inspire to do more.

Picture of our 1st meetup with some fantastic folks who are kind, ambitious, hard working and entrepreneurial all from Kolkata. We met at Potboilers Coffeehouse.

• I launched version 2 of my personal website (this is still a work in progress, but getting better).

I want to give a huge shoutout to Shubham Sharma and Harshita Singhal. Two young and incredible entrepreneurs running their own marketing agency called Vervedge who helped me design this.

• Launched an alumni community for all students from Kolkata who went to Northeastern University, my alma matter.

5. Other

1. Celebrated my parents 25th anniversary (Feb 2022)
2. Moved to a new office space (May 2022)
3. Had one of my closest and best friend visit me all the way from Kanpur (June 2022)
4. Saw my childhood friend getting married to the love of his life (July 2022)
5. Celebrated my father’s 50 birthday (August 2022)
6. My younger sibling left for college to America (September 2022)
7. Traveled to 2 countries, 8 states 14 cities this year mostly for work.
8. Practiced Yoga with the most amazing teacher in Apurva Tilwani and unlocked Kakasana (crow pose) hold for 10 seconds.
9. Learnt skin the cat from my a friend and coach Aman Poddar who I trained with.
10. Trained with coach, mentor and friend Karan Bagri towards unlocking a muscle up, came very close, but I need to put more consistent effort to unlock this. Grateful for all of his teachings.
11. I created 230 unique pieces of content on my LinkedIn, 111 posts on Instagram (some of this was repurposed from LinkedIn) and uploaded 2 vlogs on my Youtube channel gaining 3500 followers and millions of impressions across all platforms.

4. Goals and habits for 2023

I have divided my goals in 6 categories and tried to put a habit or time commitment against each. I will break them down into monthly goals and will share an update every month.

1. Health

• Unlock a muscle up (Habit: Workout 2/week)
• Start playing squash again, competitively (Habit: Play 3/week)
• Get BW to 64 KGs. I weighted 68.1 KG on 1st January (Habit: Walk 10K steps daily, Drink 3L of water, Cheat meal 2/week)
• To be mentally happy & healthy (Habit: Daily meditation practice, sleep for 8 hours at night, practice gratitude)

2. Personal growth

• To read 36 books this year (Habit: Read 30 minutes everyday)
• Start singing again (Habit: Take classes 1/week)
• Learn how to play the guitar (Habit: Take classes 1/week)

3. Wealth (Work)

• Complete an exciting project at work (Note: this is not public yet, but work is in progress on something huge)
• Complete Regaal Business Hub 2 (Deadline: Before June, 2023)
• Get better at Excel (Need: 50 hours)

4. Passion Projects

• Finish my nutrition certification (Need: 100 hours to complete this)
• Invest in 4 incredible startups (Habit: 1/quarter)
• Start a scholarship under my grandmother’s name (Need: 20 hours to make this live)
• Document all family photographs properly (Need: 100 hours to complete this)

5. Travel (Habit: Travel 1/quarter)

• Take a trip with family
• Take a dive trip: become PADI certified
• Take a surf trip and learn how to surf
• Go visit a national park in India that I haven’t been to

6. Community

• Grow LinkedIn to 15K followers (Habit: Write 5/week)
• Grow IG to 5K followers (Habit: 1 reel/week)
• Be accountable for resolutions (Habit: Resolution update 1/month)
• Document travels on Youtube (Habit: 1 video/2 months)

5. Habits for January

1. Walk 10K steps everyday
2. Drink 3L of water everyday
3. Cheat meal 2/week
4. 10 minute meditation practice
5. 8 hours of sleep
6. Read for 30 minutes
7. Singing class 1/week starting 9th January
8. Workout 2/week on muscle up
9. Start playing squash 3 times/week from 5th January
10. Write 5 times/week on LinkedIn
11. Make 1 reel/week

I will be tracking all these habits on a daily tracker.

6. Goals for January

1. 50 hours on nutrition certification (Complete half of it)
2. Finish version 3 of personal website
3. Finish Jaipur Vlog and upload on Youtube
4. Finish Teams Migration for RRL

7. Concluding note

When I started writing this letter, I had little idea what this will look like. I made a rough outline structure that included some memories of this year. But only when I started writing in detail did I realize, so many incredible things happened in the last 365 days.

I just had to take a few hours and reflect with intent.

I am 24 years old as I write this and have dreams bigger than one could imagine.

But what I am most grateful for this year is that:

I have a set of family, friends, colleagues and mentors who genuinely care for me (and I for them) and want to see me grow and excel.

So much gratitude as I close last year (albeit a little late). If you have stuck with me till now, thank you:

We are only getting started — Picture toh abhi baki hain mere dost!

I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

In gratitude,

Karan Kishorepuria.