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Madhabi Puri Buch was speaking at the annual convocation of IIM Ahmedabad.

Madhabi Puri Buch, chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), said that she has a “long list of colleagues” who have found her very difficult to work with. Ms Buch, the first woman to head the share market regulator, was speaking at the annual convocation of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad on Saturday.

Addressing the students, Ms Buch, who was invited as the chief guest at the convocation ceremony, said, “I have a long list of colleagues as well as bosses who will testify to the fact that I am not only a very difficult boss to work with but an almost impossible subordinate to work with because I just won’t give up. Until a problem has been dissected to the last degree, I will not give up.”

Explaining why her colleagues feel so, the SEBI chief added, “My colleagues often tell me that problem-solving with me is like peeling an onion. It makes everybody cry in the process. But by the time you are done, peeling layer after layer after layer of the onion, you suddenly realise there is no problem left.”

Ms Buch also shared that she abides by the mantra of doing what is right, “no matter how hard”. She said that she leaves no stone unturned, irrespective of how hard the problem is.

She added, “I believe that at a conscious and a subconscious level, my mantra has been very very simple. Do the right thing, no matter how hard. Leave no stone unturned, no matter how hard. The wonderful thing about this mantra is that eight times out of ten you actually succeed. And the two times that you don’t, you have absolutely no regret.”

She elaborated that each graduate would discover their own guiding mantra, serving as their innate “default setting” to effortlessly navigate their path ahead.

“And until you find that mantra, it is as though you have a quiver full of arrows, some sharp, some not so sharp. And as you aim for the goals that you choose, you may find that your sharp arrows were perfectly well, wonderful, or that you need to sharpen some of your arrows,” Ms Buch added.