Arijit Hajra builds robots for a living, but on this episode of Deep Down Show he spends most of his time questioning the machinery that shapes people instead — classrooms, parenting, careers, and the stories Bengalis tell themselves about business. Known as the "Robot Man of India" and the founder of Think Again Lab, Hajra tells host Barun that his eight-year-old venture has run without outside investment, sustained instead by a handful of patents — a few filed, and at least one already granted.
Note on this article: the audio for this two-hour-plus conversation was difficult for automatic transcription to capture cleanly, so this piece sticks to the themes and claims that come through clearly, rather than reconstructing every detail of a long, wide-ranging talk.
Think Again Lab: "It's a Philosophy, Not a Company"
Hajra is emphatic that Think Again Lab isn't a conventional business — he calls it a community and a philosophy that happens to also build things. Among the projects he mentions are an inexpensive VR headset and a robotics learning platform built around an English-like programming language, meant to let people learn to program robots without first mastering a traditional coding language. He also refers to having built India's first indigenously developed robot at the lab, which the episode description names Annapurna. He says the lab has grown without formal investors, funded instead by the patents and projects it produces on its own.
The Education System Built for Clerks
The conversation's most detailed historical thread is Hajra's account of the English Education Act of 1835, a colonial-era policy that reshaped Indian schooling under British rule. He argues that the system was designed to manufacture clerks for the colonial administration, not independent thinkers, and that this same architecture survived India's independence in 1947 almost untouched. Flags changed, governments changed, he says, but the classroom-then-exam structure of the education system did not; only the syllabus has been updated since. It's a theme DDS has explored before — the show has also cut this argument into its own short, "How Indians became job-minded: the English Education Act, 1835," available on the DDS Clips channel.
Why Parents Can't Be Mentors
Hajra pushes further into parenting, arguing that most parents cannot function as their children's mentors because mentorship demands a kind of emotional detachment that a parent's love makes almost impossible. He sketches a dream of building a gurukul-style residential system where children would live and learn away from home for years at a time — and says he would start such a program with orphaned children specifically, because there would be no parents around to resist the model. He connects this to his own mentoring work outside the lab: he says he has spent the last four years mentoring student teams in a major national startup competition, and now wants to shift toward mentoring early-stage founders directly on how to scale.
Will AI Take Over?
Asked whether AI or robots will eventually take over from humans, Hajra doesn't offer a flat answer. He points to the speed of recent breakthroughs — citing a quantum computer solving a problem in minutes that he says would take an ordinary supercomputer longer than the age of the universe — as evidence of how fast the underlying technology is moving, alongside the spread of dedicated AI processing chips into everyday phones and laptops. But he steers the conversation away from fear of a takeover and toward personal responsibility: the real work, in his framing, is deciding how humans use and set limits on tools that are only going to get more capable.
Bengal, Business and Choosing Roots Over Profit
On the recurring DDS question of why Bengalis struggle in business, Hajra agrees that Bengalis are often strong on culture and ideas but weak at marketing. He makes it personal: rather than moving his company's registration to a hub like Mumbai or Bangalore — which he says is where most tech patents end up being credited, since patents are filed wherever a company's headquarters sits — he deliberately kept Think Again Lab registered in Bengal. He's candid that this choice likely costs him money, but says he values the relationships and community he's built by staying rooted more than the profit he might have made elsewhere. Barun's earlier conversation with Subhashis Dutt on why Bengalis don't do business covers similar ground from a different guest's perspective.
Balancing Open Source and Paid Software
Hajra also gives a glimpse into how Think Again Lab actually operates day to day. He leans on open-source tools like Blender for design and animation work whenever he can, but says some client contracts explicitly require licensed, paid software instead — so the lab balances free and paid tools project by project, weighing cost against what a client's deliverables demand. He's also frank about manufacturing: designs are 3D printed through Indian partners, while circuit boards are often sent to manufacturing partners in China before the finished hardware ships back to customers in India.
Techno-Spirituality: Meditation as Science
Later in the conversation, Hajra turns to what he calls techno-spirituality. He describes meditation as "the science of controlling electromagnetic fields" in and around the body, and links this to ideas about brain-computer interfaces and a concept he calls the Internet of Minds. In his framing, technology itself isn't something fundamentally new — it's humanity replicating patterns that already exist in nature, just packaged differently.
Content, Contacts and Legacy
Toward the end, Barun and Hajra talk about content creation itself. Hajra says that once people began calling him the Robot Man of India, the nickname pushed him to keep improving and creating rather than resting on it. He argues that creating content matters less for the money it might bring and more for proving one's existence and ideas to the world — a case, in his words, for existence over income. The conversation also turns personal: Hajra admits to a real anxiety about losing his phone and, with it, years of saved contacts, calling the prospect close to a disaster. He recalls an emotional, unfinished exchange with his brother during a video-editing session about what would happen if he died — a moment he says has stayed with him since.
Who is Arijit Hajra
Arijit Hajra is the founder of Think Again Lab, a Bengal-based technology venture he has run on a bootstrapped basis for eight years. He holds several filed patents and at least one granted patent, and is known publicly as the "Robot Man of India." His work spans robotics, hardware design and education-focused technology, including a robotics learning platform and an affordable VR headset built at his lab.
Why This Conversation Matters
Most of this episode isn't really about robots — it's about the systems Hajra thinks are quietly shaping people the way code shapes a machine: a 190-year-old education model, a parenting culture ill-suited to mentorship, and a regional business identity that undersells itself. For a Bengali audience wrestling with similar questions about staying rooted versus chasing bigger markets, Hajra's choice to keep his patents, his registration and his community anchored in Bengal — even at a cost — is the episode's most concrete answer.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Arijit Hajra?
Arijit Hajra is a Kolkata-based technologist and entrepreneur known as the "Robot Man of India," and the founder of Think Again Lab. In the episode he says he holds a few filed patents and at least one granted patent.
What is Think Again Lab?
Think Again Lab is Arijit Hajra's bootstrapped venture, running for eight years without outside investment. He describes it as a community and a philosophy rather than a conventional company, and mentions work including a robotics learning platform and an inexpensive VR headset.
What does Arijit Hajra say about the Indian education system?
He traces the structure of Indian schooling back to the English Education Act of 1835, brought in during colonial rule, and argues it was built to produce clerks rather than thinkers. He says the essential system hasn't changed since 1947, only the syllabus has.
Does Arijit Hajra think AI will take over from humans?
He doesn't give a simple yes or no. He talks about how fast AI processing hardware and quantum computing are advancing, but frames the more useful question as how people adapt, set boundaries and stay purposeful, rather than treating AI as an inevitable takeover.
What does Hajra say about Bengalis and business?
He says Bengali entrepreneurs are often strong on culture and ideas but weak at marketing. He explains that he chose to keep his own company registered in Bengal, even though this arguably costs him money, because he prioritizes staying rooted and building relationships over relocating for profit.
What is techno-spirituality according to Arijit Hajra?
He describes meditation as the science of learning to control the body's electromagnetic fields, and connects this to ideas like brain-computer interfaces and what he calls the Internet of Minds. He frames technology itself as something that ultimately just replicates patterns already found in nature.
Why does Arijit Hajra focus on creating content?
He says that once people started calling him the Robot Man of India, it pushed him to keep creating and improving. He argues that creating content matters less for money and more for proving one's existence and ideas to the world.
