From the shy kid in the back row to the world stage.

I grew up in India as a small, skinny kid who got picked on more than he spoke up. The stage was the last place anyone expected to find me.

One person saw it differently. My older brother pushed me into my first debate when I was nine or ten. I did not want to go. He made me. He saw a winner in me long before I saw one myself, and that belief is still the reason I do what I do.

Somewhere along the way I fell in love with performing. Like every Indian kid with a TV, I dreamed of Bollywood. Then life happened, as it does. I studied, I got sensible, and I built a career in finance. The dream went into a drawer.

In 2011 I moved to Amsterdam. I knew almost nobody, so I joined a Toastmasters club just to meet people. What I found there was a safe room to try things: speeches, humour, leadership, failing in front of friendly faces. In 2014 I entered my first speech contest and knew straight away that this was my thing.

For years I kept two lives going. Finance by day, stage by night. And slowly I noticed something. The skills I was learning on stage were making me better in the boardroom. A quarterly update could have a story. A budget meeting could have a laugh. I did not need a movie set to perform. I just needed a clicker and a projector.

That idea became a speech called “Just Nod”. In August 2025, in Philadelphia, that speech won the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking, chosen from around 30,000 speakers in more than 100 countries. Fourteen years after I walked into that first club to make friends.

Today I speak and teach full time through my company, Method in Madness. I have given talks in more than 20 countries and worked with teams at Netflix, Booking.com, Deloitte, Uber, Universal Studios and ASML. I have spoken at two TEDx events, written a book called What’s Your Plan B?, and host a podcast of the same name as the company.

But none of that is really the point. The point is the nine-year-old who did not want to go on stage. He is why I teach. Because I know how it feels to be terrified of speaking, and I know exactly what is on the other side of that fear.