The speaker, Ashwani Khurana, shares his personal journey and life lessons, emphasizing resilience, acceptance, and inspired action. He was born to migrants from Pakistan and grew up in a resettlement colony. His father, a lottery shop owner, was a beacon of resilience for him. Despite facing challenges in school and being bullied for his father's profession, Ashwani decided to follow in his father's footsteps at a young age.
At 14, he started selling lottery tickets with his father, and by 16, he was India's highest income tax-paying individual. Despite the success, he felt a deeper calling to contribute to the environment. He set up North India's first factory to treat city garbage and turn it into biocompost, a venture that ultimately failed due to rapid changes in consumption patterns.
Ashwani took this failure as a learning experience and decided to plant a hundred thousand trees over the next decade. He started buying lands in suburbs and rural areas, protecting his land from urbanization. He also reduced the size of lottery tickets by 30%, saving 30% less paper and contributing to environmental sustainability.
Ashwani emphasizes that his journey is driven by his karma, which he sees as a religion. He believes that if your karma is right, it will come looking for you. He encourages his audience to remember that there is no such thing as a loss, only a cost of learning. He ends his talk by expressing his desire to be buried in a smokeless way, returning to the soil, and urges everyone to make a positive impact on the environment, just as he has done.
1. The speaker, Ashwani Khurana, has been labeled as a raffle man, Dreamer, Dream Merchant, Lottery King, India's highest income taxpayer, environmentalist, and Guru.
2. He was born to migrants from Pakistan and his father was an embodiment of resilience.
3. He was born into a fancy school disproportionate to his father's income.
4. He endured an abusive childhood due to his father's lottery business and a particular teacher's dislike for him.
5. At age 14, he started to go to his father's shop with him, selling lotteries.
6. He didn't finish education because there was great haste to start selling lotteries.
7. He was selling so many lottery tickets that he became India's highest income tax paying individual.
8. He had a deeper calling to bring dignity and respect to his father's lottery business.
9. He set up north India's first factory that would treat city garbage and turn it into biocompost.
10. He decided to plant a hundred thousand trees in the next 10 years.
11. He started to plant trees to meet the target and realized he was falling short, so he started buying lands in the suburbs and rural areas around the NCR.
12. He realized that tree planting is not the only thing to protect trees.
13. He reduced the size of his lottery tickets by 10% and then another 20% as a leader in the industry.
14. He started social advertising on the back of the lottery tickets, grow more trees, and talk about National integration.
15. He moved from selling lottery tickets to planting trees and saving trees from extra lopping.
16. He started to do social advertising on the back of the lottery tickets, grow more trees, and talk about National integration.
17. He decided to be buried from soil to soil smokelessly.