Time and again, our founder, Arjun Majumdar, shares small but powerful entrepreneurial learnings from running Indiahikes. Working at Indiahikes, we hear them regularly — during team meetings, over lunch, or on treks. Every single time, it leaves us with something meaningful to take back. But trekkers rarely hear his entrepreneurial lessons. 

Over the years, we’ve seen Indiahikes grow through steady, deliberate work. None of it happened overnight. It has taken countless trials, tough calls, consistent effort, and a very clear sense of purpose. So when Arjun talks about building an organisation, the reflections come from lived experience, not theory.

Which is why his recent talk at Pondicherry University carries weight — it was his fifth TEDx talk after earlier ones at IIM Sambalpur, IIM Udaipur, and IIM Bangalore.

What stood out in this session was something we’ve always seen internally — Arjun’s ability to pick up learnings from almost anything he encounters. And when those lessons come from trekking — something he has immersed himself in for decades — they hit home differently.

“On a trek, you learn very quickly that carrying less means trekking more efficiently.

On an exploration trek to the Gidara Bugyal, I made a classic mistake — I packed more than I needed. Despite my experience, knowing it was November and likely to be cold, I packed extra clothes.

As the expedition leader, I carried a tent for the team, food packets, and a small gas stove.

They all add to the weight of a backpack. Within the first day of the trek, I was feeling very heavy-footed. Every step felt heavier than it should.

By the third day of the trek, I was utterly exhausted and spent. I had never felt like this on a trek before. I was always the fast trekker.

After the trek was over, my inability to do the trek well dented my confidence. I was fifty years old at that time. I thought I was getting old and losing my energy. My co-founder kept telling me that it was because of the extra weight that I was carrying. But I refused to believe her. I thought I was genuinely losing my ability to trek well.

So much so, I stopped trekking for two and a half years. The truth of the matter is that I was
now scared to trek.

It took me more than two and a half years to gather the courage to do another trek. Then, more out of some work requirements, I went on the Sandakphu trek. This time, I carried my backpack light — just what was needed for the trek.

I did the trek rather well. My pace was better than most trekkers. As the trek progressed, I felt my confidence coming back. But I cursed myself, though. I had wasted two and a half years not trekking.

On the trek, it reinforced something that I have always believed: what you carry defines how far you go.

This is not just true of trekking. It is true of entrepreneurship.

As entrepreneurs, we are constantly surrounded by things we want to do. Do we open more central India treks? What about weekend treks? In an organisation, it is not difficult to find a lot of voices endorsing the thought. Usually, these are the voices of people who are close to you, people in senior positions, and voices you give a lot of importance to. So it is all the more difficult to ignore such voices.

But what we have learnt is that if you carry too much of a load in your backpack, you lose focus. So you need to carry only what matters. Let me explain.

Carry Only What Matters →The Power of Focus

In the early days of Indiahikes, when organised trekking like Indiahikes was still new in India, the possibilities felt endless.

The temptation was real. Well-wishers saw the signs of our early success. They wanted us to spread our wings. Some suggested we add more adventure sports; others thought we should make one part of our business into a travel agency and book tickets for trekkers.

There were lots of commissions to earn, considering we had two thousand trekkers with us.

And travelling to and fro. A few said we don’t mind paying extra but run luxury treks with services like a hotel.

When we were around five years old and were taking around 5,000 trekkers a year, the
voices became louder. Our trekkers themselves — our biggest supporters — were pushing us. “Why don’t you do mountain biking trips in the Himalayas?” they’d ask. “We already trust Indiahikes. If you run these programmes, we’ll sign up without hesitation.”

Others urged us to go higher. “You should get into mountaineering,” some said. “There’s no organisation in India with your expertise conducting such expeditions.” The encouragement was so strong that, in 2012–13, we actually ran a mountaineering expedition to Mt. Jogin 3 in Uttarakhand. It was a full group of 12 mountaineers. That’s how much the pressure from our community influenced us in those days.

Looking back, those moments were both exciting and dangerous. On one hand, the path seemed wide open. On the other hand, it was easy to lose sight of why Indiahikes had started in the first place — to make trekking more accessible.

But treks teach you to focus. On a trek, if your backpack is heavy, you leave out the unnecessary. You keep only what’s essential. We applied the same principle to building Indiahikes. We focused on one thing: making trekking accessible for ordinary people. Nothing else.

That focus allowed us to go deeper instead of wider. With this focus, to make trekking more accessible, we brought out some of the greatest treks in our country.

One of the greatest changes we brought about in making trekking more accessible was opening more seasons for trekking. Earlier, people trekked only in the summer and autumn. 

A total of one and a half months in summer and about a month in autumn.

We didn’t agree with this thought. Trekking had to be more accessible. Treks had to be there for 365 days a year. Even in the Himalayas. This would also help people have meaningful work in the trekking field all year round. It would form a stable career. 

We saw a dual purpose in this. 

So we started exploring treks that could be done in other seasons of the year. That’s how some of the greatest treks in our country became popular. Kashmir Great Lakes, Kedarkantha, Hampta Pass, Brahmatal and countless others.

Because we wanted to make treks more accessible, it helped us to bring in sustainability and safety practices in trekking that were not there earlier. All of these practices were introduced to make trekkers feel safe in the high altitudes of the Himalayas.

Time and again, the temptation to do something else or more keeps popping up at us. Our own team members keep pushing us. Why don’t we do expedition treks that go to 17 to 18 thousand feet and require expertise? Or why don’t we start our own trekking academy or a mountaineering institute? Why don’t we do glamping programmes?

As an entrepreneur, you are often surrounded by this noise. People want you to do more.

According to them, it increases business or drives growth. The truth is, you need to do less — but do it really well. There are two benefits to this. It drives growth, and it creates the brand.

This ultimately results in true growth. If today we are India’s largest trekking organisation with 35,000 trekkers trekking with us every year, it is not because we have done everything we wanted to do. Rather, it was because we stayed away from distractions and focused on making treks more accessible. It gave us growth, and it created the number one brand in India as well.

Like in trekking, in entrepreneurship, you carry what matters. You keep your backpack light, allowing you to focus.

Linked to this, there is another lesson I have learnt from trekking. It applies very well to entrepreneurship.

Walk Steadily, Not Fast → The Discipline of Sustainable Growth

Do you know, on a mountain trail, the fastest trekkers are not the ones who reach the summit. It’s the steady ones. The ones who keep a rhythm, conserve their breath, and don’t burn out in the first few hours.

It is incredible how this technique works in the mountains. I’ll share a story here:

In the very first group of Indiahikes, I was leading the team to Roopkund, a high-altitude lake at 15,500 feet in Uttarakhand.

Before the summit day, there is a crucial section between the meadows and the alpine zone. The trail in this section climbs from 11,000 feet to 14,500 feet. It is a long day, and at many spots the climb is a relentless switchback.

On this trek, there is a normal trail, and there is another that is shorter and quicker, but a shepherd’s trail. It avoids the curves around the mountains but just goes up and down on top of the hills.

I wanted to keep my trekkers in sight and motivate them, but most importantly, I also had an ego that wanted to surprise our trekkers by appearing at spots where they least expected to see me.

As expected, my trekkers were delighted and surprised to see me appearing out of nowhere on the trail on multiple occasions and appearing to be nonchalant. I did this all through that day’s trek.

When I finally reached Bhagwabasa, our camp at 14,000, I could feel the onset of altitude sickness. A terrible thing to happen in the mountains. People can die from altitude sickness, and it can strike you very quickly. My fast pace had not allowed me to acclimatise well.

At 14,000 feet, where the oxygen is 60% of that available on the ground, my head was reeling. I took a quick decision, but a decision that was detrimental to the team. I would not be available with them when they attempted Roopkund at 15,500 feet. I would stay back at Bhagwabasa and, if required, descend further. My trekkers were angry, and so was I.

From that day onwards, when I am trekking, I have a simple system. I won’t stop to rest. But I will walk at a pace where my breath does not go out of control. My breath is always slightly above usual, but never where I am breathing so hard that I am panting. When I notice my breath is going too hard, I slow down until my breath comes down to slightly above normal. But I don’t stop. This way, I have climbed the steepest treks.

Entrepreneurship works the same way. In our world, we are constantly under pressure — ‘Why aren’t you scaling faster? Why only a few treks? Why not grab a larger market share?’ But growth is not a sprint. It’s a long climb.

We chose to walk steadily. We said no to investors. We resisted shortcuts. We grew slowly — trek by trek, leader by leader, system by system.

The temptation to grow fast is constantly lurking around us. Even today, people want us to constantly open new treks. State governments, too, want us to explore treks in their region and open them up. It opens up employment.

Today, Indiahikes stands strong because we didn’t rush. The Himalayas taught us: slow is not weak. Slow is strong.

A lot of big-pocket names in the travel and tourism industry wanted to get into the trekking world. But it became very difficult for them to build the kind of systems we have. They had deep pockets, so they invested money in acquiring trekkers. They would give ads on Facebook, Google and YouTube.

But when it came to running the treks, they did not have the expertise. They would offer more money to our mountain staff to work for them. Our staff would refuse. They would tell them, 'For these works you offer us more, but you will not be able to give work to us 365 days a year as Indiahikes does.' The kind of trek inventory we have takes years to develop.

Or the kind of systems we have need to be built one day at a time. You cannot replicate them even if someone showed them to you right under your eyes.

In entrepreneurship, the road that you walk slowly and steadily builds a sustainable, long-term organisation. It builds a formidable brand. It takes years to build, but it also takes years for it to dismantle or fall apart.

When I look back at these lessons, I realise that trekking has been my greatest teacher in entrepreneurship. The mountains don’t lecture you, but they reveal truths that stay with you for life.

There are two truths that I want you to take away from these stories.

The first truth is this: what you carry defines how far you go. In business, as in trekking, and in life, if you overload yourself, you’ll lose your balance and focus. Carry only what matters. Do fewer things, but do them so well that they define who you are.

The second truth is this: walk steadily, not fast. Sustainable growth isn’t about speed; it’s about rhythm. It’s about building something brick by brick, step by step, so that it stands strong for decades to come.

If Indiahikes is today the largest trekking organisation in the country, it is not because we raced ahead or because we tried to do everything. It is because we carried light and walked steadily. And that is what I would like you to take away today.”

Introduction by: Naman Rakheja