Voyaging Towards Excellence

'Voyaging Towards Excellence' is Achyut Godbole's autobiographical account of his rise from a modest, lower-middle-class childhood to becoming a global IT leader and a hugely popular Marathi writer. It reflects on the values and attitudes that shaped his relentless pursuit of excellence.

A poor but culturally rich childhood

Godbole grew up in a 300-square-foot house without basic amenities like a fan, refrigerator or gas stove. Yet his childhood was 'culturally rich': eminent poets like Vinda Karandikar, Mangesh Padgaonkar and Vasant Bapat, and musicians like Kumar Gandharv, Bhimsen Joshi and Jasraj, visited his home and discussed literature and music late into the night.

This milieu gave him a firm, lifelong belief that the arts, music and literature enrich life and give it meaning as much as, if not more than, science, and that money, though necessary, does not mean everything.

Learning for beauty, not marks

Though he loved science and mathematics, Godbole studied them not for marks but for their 'inherent beauty', he found Newton's laws beautiful and the Pythagorean theorem elegant, and enjoyed solving higher-class problems just for the joy of it. This nurtured a strong 'problem-solving attitude'.

He scored 100% in mathematics in almost every exam, stood 16th in the SSC Board and first in the University, and entered IIT Bombay, all driven by his love of learning rather than the desire to show off.

The English inferiority complex, and the fightback

At IIT, coming from a Marathi-medium background, his poor spoken English gave him a deep inferiority complex; he felt lonely and wanted to run away. The humiliation reached a peak when an arrogant senior mocked the errors in every sentence he spoke, 'the last straw'.

But his self-esteem stopped him from giving up. Determined to achieve excellence, he resolved to master English. Reading English newspapers and novels, studying etymology and phonetics, and practising before a mirror, he grew confident in about 9–10 months, a skill that later let him negotiate million-dollar contracts and lead global software companies.

A renaissance of the mind

In his third year, Godbole joined a circle of about 15–20 brilliant students, researchers and professors from IIT, TIFR and BARC. This friendship had a lasting impact, teaching him what real brilliance meant and instilling humility. Meeting great thinkers and technologists worldwide broadened his horizon and gave him a global outlook.

The group's boundless curiosity, spanning science, philosophy, economics, the arts and more, launched a personal 'renaissance'. He plunged into many branches of knowledge to pass the 'examination of life', and embraced curiosity, humility, humanity, rationalism and equality, treating 'Nature as God and humanity as religion'.

From CEO to writer

After IIT, Godbole even joined a non-violent Sarvodaya movement for tribals and went to jail for ten days during a satyagraha, before settling into a 32-year IT career as a CEO/MD of large global companies, travelling the world and writing four technical books. Running these companies taught him the value of teamwork, leading by example, treating colleagues as friends, motivation and delegation.

Finally, he returned to his 'first love', writing, giving up salary offers of about three crore rupees a year. He has since written about 34 bestselling Marathi books that have transformed readers' lives, even helping some overcome depression or abandon thoughts of suicide. What keeps him going, he says, is touching the hearts of thousands of readers, guided always by his cherished values: thirst for knowledge, curiosity, humility, humanity, rationality, equality, teamwork, quest for excellence, 'never say die' and 'thinking big'.