New Delhi, Dec. 30 -- Indian boardrooms had a peculiar problem in 2025: they kept getting blindsided by predictable events, including regulations with published timelines, supply chain vulnerabilities exposed by previous crises, ESG (environmental, social, and governance) commitments turning into legal obligations, and inevitable succession transitions.

Consider IndiGo. The airline knew for months about new pilot roster norms, but did nothing. The result: thousands of crores in lost market cap, over a thousand cancelled flights in November alone, and punctuality rates that collapsed to single digits. This was no black swan event, but a scheduled regulatory change with a published timeline. Yet, India's largest airline treated it like a s...