Teachers’ Day brought a striking note from Vedanta Group’s Anil Agarwal: the more people call him “Sir,” the more deliberately he chooses to be a student. In a post shared to mark the occasion, Agarwal described a daily ritual of “homework” that lands on his desk at 6 p.m., sometimes a video from a Gen Z creator, other days a briefing on AI tools Vedanta is adopting.
A leader choosing the learner’s seat
Agarwal’s message is simple and personal. He credits young colleagues and digital creators for sharpening his edge as a leader. What business schools might label “reverse mentoring,” he frames as something more practical: building a future-ready company by letting the next generation teach, on their terms and platforms.
One scene, he says, captured the power of this approach. A young intern demonstrated an AI image-generation tool that animated an old black-and-white photograph of his Maaji into a moving, lifelike video. For an instant, he felt as if she had come alive again. It’s a glimpse of how fast-moving technology can be both technical and deeply human.
Who Anil Agarwal’s “after-hours professors” are
Agarwal lists his current teachers plainly:
- 23-year-old marketers
- New-age analysts who read dashboards on their phones
- And even strangers on the internet whose YouTube videos spark new ideas
The point isn’t novelty; it’s discipline. By treating their inputs as nightly homework, he signals that continuous learning is a habit, not a slogan.
The message lands at a time when AI, creator-led content, and real-time analytics are changing how decisions get made. Agarwal’s note doesn’t pitch a program or a policy. Instead, it offers a posture: humility backed by routine. In his words, “The day you stop learning, is the day you stop leading.”
On Teachers’ Day, Agarwal didn’t look backward to classrooms; he looked outward, to interns, dashboards, and YouTube. It’s a leader’s public acknowledgment that staying relevant now means letting the youngest voices set part of the curriculum, every evening at six.
Also Read: Anil Agarwal to young founders: “Every decision is a bet”
