Has Samsung Electronics been fired?
Recalling 2.5 million handsets is the best decision a leader can make argues an outlier. Consensus and evidence says it is the worst
Charles Assisi
Co-founder and Director
Founding Fuel
Charles Assisi is an award-winning journalist with two decades of experience to back him. He is co-founder and director at Founding Fuel, and co-author of the book The Aadhaar Effect. He is a columnist for Hindustan Times, one of India's most influential English newspaper. He is vocal in his views on journalism and what shape it ought to take in India. He speaks on the theme at various forums and is often invited by various organizations to teach their teams how to write.
In his last assignment, he wore two hats: That of Managing Editor at Forbes India and Editor at ForbesLife India. As part of the leadership team, his mandate was to create a distinctive business title in a market many thought was saturated. When Forbes India was finally launched after much brainstorming and thinking through, it broke through the ranks and got to be recognized as the most influential business magazine in the country. He did much the same thing with ForbesLife India where he broke from convention and launched the title to critical acclaim.
Before that, he was National Technology Editor and National Business Editor at the Times of India, during the great newspaper wars of 2005. He was part of the team that ensured Times of India maintained top dog status in Mumbai on the face of assaults by DNA and Hindustan Times.
His first big gig came in his late twenties when German media house Vogel Burda marked its India debut with CHIP a wildly popular technology magazine. He was appointed Editor and given a free run to create what he wanted. During this stint, he worked and interacted with all of Vogel Burda's various newsrooms across Europe and Asia.
Charles holds a Masters in Economics from Mumbai Universtity and an MBA in Finance. Along the way he earned the Madhu Valluri Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Polestar Award for Excellence in Business Journalism.
In his spare time, he reads voraciously across the board, but is biased towards psychology and the social sciences. He dabbles in various things that catch his fancy at various points. But as fancies go, many evaporate as often as they fall on him.
My contributions
106 articles written
Life lessons from Kris Gopalakrishnan
The co-founder of Infosys Technologies and founder of Axilor Ventures opens up in an intensely personal conversation on the various stages of life
How to be insanely more productive
People like me think ourselves meticulously organised. But sometimes the best laid plans go to waste. How does it happen?
In conversation with Vinay Sitapati
The author of ‘Half Lion’ highlights some little known facets of former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao’s life, and leadership lessons from how a man without much of a mandate brought in profound transformations
The Narasimha Rao they don't want you to know of
When the political mastermind of Indian economic reforms died, the apocryphal hand of the party he was part of, deserted him. Only a few were there. Those who knew what he really accomplished, like Dr. Manmohan Singh
Lessons from the road
Entrepreneurs oftentimes stand at the crossroads. What road do you choose then? The one that leads to valuations? Or that to a life well lived?
Something’s cooking in Apple’s India business
Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent learning mission to India may open up new possibilities for the world’s most valuable company. But here’s the nub: it may not quite follow the script drawn up by the Indian government
A day in the life of India
For all the hyperbole that exists around the idea of India, step into the real India, and all notions implode. Ours is a nation of young people with no idea of what to do with them
Why Abdul Kalam continues to matter
It was not without reason that he was called the ‘people's president'. He had a moral compass that pointed True North
The Spotlight on Incest
Why it often takes an outsider to bring change and why everybody in leadership positions ought to put the movie ‘Spotlight’ on their list of mandatory viewing