Core Team

Apoorva Vaidya

BTech, MBA  

Though he binges on ice-cream, as a growing child, Apoorva's mother had tough time making him drink a glass of milk - he went on to study Dairy Technology, despite wanting to be an architect. Years of hostel & bachelor life, a 10+ hours, 6 days a week of college forced him to curtail his budding cricketing career. 

Challenged on software engineering & business management subjects during his BTech days, he went on to pursue his master’s in business management from Pune University and later worked with global giants like Oracle, Microsoft, SAS & Tata Group for last two decades.

Unsure of his continual in the dairy industry, in 1998 Apoorva had an accidental landing in Pune, where he continues to live with his family & still struggling to decide whether he is a Puneri or a Rajasthani - yet he has found a decent balance between his Janmbhoomism & Karmbhoomism. Someone who is reluctant to venture into water, he has been living on the banks of river Mula all this while. Walking being his passion, he could be found brisk-walking for hours every weekend on the newly paved pedestrian paths of ever Smart Pune.

During his 20 years stint with IT industry, he made his mark as a growth-hacker and led businesses in highly competitive, new & emerging markets to grow business on Cloud, AI, Data Analytics, IoT & core Business solutions for the companies he worked for, especially Microsoft where Apoorva spent 11 yrs. of his career. He is known for his penchant for driving business in large enterprises & complex situations through Strategic Planning & Execution, Solution Selling, Change Management & crafting Creative Solutions for customers. 

He has demonstrated competencies in hiring talent, building and grooming teams & to deliver results through cross-team collaboration. Apoorva is acknowledged for creative solutions, customer obsession, problem-solving, business value conversation & relationships with CXOs. Apart from being a professional, Apoorva has been working with millennials including his own offsprings to help them craft creative ways to express & evolve better.

Another dimension of Apoorva revolves around Art. Nearly a decade ago he emerged from being a closet artist. Art, music and sports being a family lineage, Apoorva received initial art lessons under the guidance of his parents. He resurrected his passion with watercolors after a vanvas of 14 years in 2010, primarily as a stress-reliever from his high intensity sales & marketing career. 

Born in a village (Rawatbhata) in Rajasthan & having lived through the art, culture & landscapes of Gujarat, Maharashtra & Karnataka, his artistic endeavors depict a strong imprint of the Indian countryside. Being a self-taught artist, he continues to nurture his passion and has been experimenting with various mediums, exhibiting his work through solo & group shows across India. 

Being man of Creative pursuits, a sportsman, an artist & a keen student of technology, he is an avid traveler, reader, nature enthusiast, occasional shutterbug with untiring ear for music and believes in being a perpetual learner with a firm belief in "Learning by Doing" & “Seeing is Believing”.

Atul Gopal

BE, PGDM (IIMC)

Atul Gopal is a pioneer of the ‘home delivery’ industry. In the summer of 69, his mom gave birth to Atul at her home in RDSO quarters in Lucknow. The family shifted to Pune when he was two years old. They haven’t shifted out yet. At the age of 4, he ran away from his first school. His next two schools, though, managed to hold on to him.

College was at COEP, where he was unsure of which branch to join; started with Civil, moved on to Electrical and passed out in Mechanical. After COEP, he went to work with Tata Motors, as a Graduate Trainee. He recalls the two years spent there as an extension of COEP, where he did not do much, but learnt a lot.

In 1992, for the first time in his life, he was thrown out of his family home, when he went to stay in the hostel of IIM Calcutta. Like with COEP, he was not sure of what to major in – he is still not sure of whether he majored in Marketing, Systems or Finance.

Like with Tata Motors, Marico, his first (and last) job after his IIMC diploma was another place where he did nothing but learnt a lot. Unlike Tata Motors, Marico expected that he sells tons of Parachute coconut oil, which he did not end up doing. So, they parachuted him back to Pune from Chandigarh, where he had been trying his level best to sell coconut oil.

Atul then decided it was time that he stopped learning and started Doing. So, he started making machines for the food processing industry. Although he met some good people who gave him business, like Mayur Vora of Mapro Foods, he seemed to be enjoying learning more than doing. He started teaching, as a visiting faculty at IMDR, Pune. He continued doing that for the next 15 years.

In 1996, two of his diploma mates from IIMC, set up an MBA entrance teaching shop at Pune, Bulls Eye. He offered his teaching services there – and was accepted gladly, since he had not demanded any salary from them. 1997 and 1998 saw the original Bulls Eye partners leaving Pune, to do better things in life. Atul, the quintessential Pune boy, stayed on. Liking the learning more than the doing, he shut down his machinery company to become a full-timer at Bulls Eye.

Inspired by the teaching of Masanobu Fukuoka, he has personally applied the do-nothing philosophy to his work (or rather the lack of it) at Bulls Eye. Bulls Eye has classrooms in 12 cities across the country. More than 1.5 lakh students enroll every year in the online training programs at hitbullseye.com

Somewhere along the way, he has dabbled in giving gyan to corporates: Hindustan Unilever, HSBC, ICICI Bank, Kirloskar Brothers, Tata Motors and Thermax managers have suffered through the trauma of having been trained by him. His corporate training programs stopped in 2012, the day he decided that he is going to save the earth by commuting on cycle.

In order to reduce the pains of his washing machine, which used to struggle getting the chain grease marks off his trousers, he took a scissor and converted all his trousers to self-styled half-chaddis. Since then he cycles more than 100 km a week, and has also managed to do some cycling in almost all the states of India, the northern most being Khardungla in Ladakh, the eastern most being Dibrugarh in Assam, the western most being Bhuj in Gujarat and the southern-most being Munnar in Kerala.

In 2011, he helped set up Peepal Tree School in Jammu, targeting the lower middle class. In 2013 Peepal Tree Bilaspur started. That was shut down in 2015. Refusing to learn from mistakes, in 2016 Peepal Tree Pune was started. Both the schools continue to make handsome losses, ensuring that their promoter is slowly moving towards the ranks of the lower middle class, very much like his target audience. The schools though seem to have finally learnt from a lifetime of Atul’s mistakes. His school students spend all their time at school in ‘Learning by Doing’.