Beyond Business: Staying Close to your Roots

I was at another conference this January, back-to-back conversations, podcast recordings, meeting people from across the industry. Each conversation was great and I am very thankful for them. We talked about technology, growth, AI, and strategy- all the things that matter in business. But in between all this, I kept thinking about something else- and that’s what this week’s Wednesday hustle is all about.

What are we really building?

Not just companies, not just revenue, something deeper than that. Because if everything we do only shows up on a spreadsheet, then we are missing something important. 

Writing Intentionally 

Over the last few years, I have been doing something that has nothing to do with business. Every Sunday, I sit down and write a letter in Tamil, my mother tongue-the language I grew up with, and I write it by hand, not because it is fancy or because it is content, but simply because that is the only way I can write in Tamil regularly today. At some point in life, I lost touch with it: school ended, I moved to the US, priorities changed, and that part of me was slowly fading without me noticing, until one day, I noticed its absence. 

So I started writing again.

These letters are not for scale or for reach. A few hundred people might read them, but that is not the point, the point is to stay connected to my roots. 

Your mother tongue is not just a language; it carries your history, your thinking, your culture, and when you lose it, you don’t just lose vocabulary, you also lose a part of yourself. 

We talk a lot about being authentic in business, but authenticity does not just come from branding; it comes from being rooted, and that idea has shaped a lot of what we do at DCKAP. 

An Unlikely Sponsorship

A few years ago, we sponsored the Chennai Book Fair. We are a technology company. We do not sell books, and there was no clear business outcome. If you looked at it on a spreadsheet, it would not make sense, but it made complete sense to us. We believe reading changes people, and people build companies. We created a simple initiative: take a book, leave a book, no transactions, just sharing. 

Readers are Leaders.

People showed up, engaged and asked how they could be a part of it. That is when you realize something- not everything valuable can be measured immediately, the same thinking leads to something even bigger.

Investing In Future Talent

At DCKAP Palli, we bring in students who are capable but cannot afford college. We train them, support them financially while they learn, and give them a path into software careers. After 18 months, they are employable, independent, and even supporting their families.

This is not charity nor a CSR checkbox, this is belief.

Because when you give someone a real opportunity, they do not just grow, they show up differently and work with intent. 

Some of the best people we have today came through paths like this. At the same time, the way we built DCKAP has always been simple, we started small. two people, two desks. We did not grow through aggressive sales, we grew through relationships.

When you do good work and genuinely care about your customers, they tell others. Those people come in with trust already built; that is how businesses compound.

Not through tactics, through trust.

And that is why all these things connect.

Writing letters in Tamil, promoting reading, running DCKAP Palli and Investing in relationships. Individually, they may look unrelated, but they are all part of the same idea- build something that matters.

Because at the end of the day, business is not just about closing deals, it is about building a community, shaping culture and leaving things better than you found them.

If you are building something today, take a moment and ask yourself. What are you really building?

For me, the answer is still evolving, we make mistakes. We learn and we keep improving. Because in the long run, those are the things that define your business and more importantly, define you. 

Thank you for reading.

Karthik Chidambaram