The guy is a 37 year old trailblazer of the Indian corporate world. He's the CEO of Alawi's Asset Management, but more importantly, she is possibly one of the most inspirational women I've met in my life. Trust me, whether you're an entrepreneur or an aspiring corporate, you've got to listen to this. Absolutely. And she's also one of the most eloquent speakers I've met in my life. I am going to have her many, many more times on the run, Michel.

But this is a basic story, how she went from being born in Pakistan to living all over the world in countries including Nigeria, including USA, treats from all those countries applied to her entrepreneurship, Gourriel and applied it to her already legendary corporate career. She's also become one of India's top Twitter influencers. And if you don't follow her on Twitter, man, you are missing out. Trust me when I say this 50 years from now, when we're looking back at the story of a developing India, there's going to be a big chapter written on Rodica.

That's the kind of mindset she has.

That's the kind of impact that she's already created at the age of 37. In the corporate world.

You guys have to listen to this woman to understand this kind of a powerful mindset and believe that these kind of mindsets exist in the modern day. If you just want to watch highlights of this episode, makes you log on to the Runby, show clips on YouTube. And also keep in mind, we've already started releasing our Hindi podcasts that are equally as powerful.

It's called a reality show in the search for it on your audio platforms. But for now, I'm going to leave you with one of India's most powerful minds, radical Gupta, featured on the run Beashel. Rather, go back, though, ma'am, thank you for being on the runway show. Thank you for having me. So for our listeners, rather, Gupta is one of the trailblazers of the corporate world, one of the most fascinating stories I've come across before every broadcast I do in Ben's read up on our guests.

And I just kept reading about your story. Like everything, you've grown up all over the world. You eventually found yourself in the corporate scene. You're one of the country's youngest CEOs. And your kind of what I would like to call you. This is not written, but this is my gauge of it. You're one of the country's most fearless CEOs.

Featured in a very positive field of fearless knowledge of the fearless. And you're now, you know, is one interesting.

So today you are the CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Funds. Yes. Interesting story. But Editorialise was one of the companies that I was targeting in terms of my first job when I was in engineering. Really?

Yeah, but how did you find out about it? Always.

So, you know, while you're in engineering college, you're constantly told that, you know, there's other things you can do outside of engineering and you just assume that the other things are finance or startups.

So I don't know, I might be too young for startups, so why not drive finance? And it seemed like a cool company from the outside. But I have I have so many questions about the world of finance in general. I have so many questions about the corporate world. But that's something I've never delved into. And honestly, you know, like when you're a young entrepreneur and you're brash and you've also had and I've gone through that phase of the obnoxious young entrepreneur.

Exactly. Obnoxious. Yes. It's a part of you, you know, for lack of a better word, you kind of look down in the corporate world because they look down on you as well.

Yes. Yes.

Like I mean, I have so many questions about the corporate world in general. But let's let's start with your story. Where did this start? And very interesting. I know that you were born in Pakistan.

Yes, I was born in Pakistan. And it's really funny. So I was born in Pakistan and I'm not that old. Contrary to the attires, I was born in 83 in Pakistan, which is kind of rare. And in fact, once in the office, I have to tell you this, I told some guy I'm born in Pakistan, and he looked at me with a strange kind of disbelief. And then he held my hand and he's like, it must have been really sad coming on the train during the partition.

It's like, OK, no, I was not. So my dad is a career diplomat.

He was actually born in a village in Yuppy called Congo Street Village kind of thing.

And he sang in those seven Hollandia, which is crazy in the Civil War is his first one. And then he got into the Foreign Service and he had the choice at that point of going to Pakistan or Switzerland.

And my mom keeps telling me this is like, you know, when we got married, I was like, I've met at a foreign service officer. And there was this whole Yash Chopra until July and all that is going on. I was like, let's go to Switzerland. And he's like, let's go to Pakistan.

It's good for my career because it's a neighboring country. So we lived in Pakistan between 83 and it is seven.

You have any memories of Junior Gady in Pakistan? No, I could not go to school because in Pakistan it is too unsafe for an Indian diplomats kids to go to school. In fact, it is so unsafe that you can't even see an external doctor. I mean, as you think about it, it makes sense. So what the government does is the embassy has their own doctors for you, too. They have journalists, they have doctors, they have a whole ecosystem.

And it's one of our largest embassies in the world.

Do you have any memory of Pakistan? I have memories of a very, very big house. My parents have lots of memories of Pakistan and they have very, very positive memories of their Pakistan.

First, they said the Indian embassy was a very bonded place because there was nothing else to do. I mean, there was nothing else to do, no one else to do. But I was really home schooled. I was home schooled for the first four years. And I keep joking with my friends these days were obsessed with their kids getting into play school. At one point two years. I was like, it is fine, I'll just homeschool them till four or five.

OK, so that was our memory of Pakistan. And my mother has some very funny memories of guys spying on us and our phones being tapped.

And she's like, we knew people were sort of outside our house watching over us and they knew that we knew and we had a kind of nice like they would even say at our big mill.

Then they just used to go on. So that that is all it was. And I was brought up. So my first language was actually Urdu.

Well, and eventually you found yourself in Nigeria and eventually we found ourselves in Nigeria.

So the government has a funny rule, which is that the rich countries in the world, so they take the world map and they read it from it, you see.

So like is cool countries like Italy or the U.S. and B is like average countries. I don't know what that is. And C is countries like Pakistan and Nigeria. And because they're super Democratic, once you get posted to another country, the next country will be A, B or C country and then it'll keep rotating.

So like we did Pakistan, then we were rewarded, so to say, with New York, which is a plus country after New York, then we were punished with Nigeria.

So that's actually how the way and it's it's really interesting because as a kid, you're actually going through very drastic changes because you're moving from a country like New York where you have everything which is so luxurious in New York in the late 80s and 90s.

I mean, this was a time and nothing used to get nothing in India. Like I remember coming back from New York and all orange packets of that bang.

I mean, you might be to U2, but we used to carry this for everybody, you know, I mean, nobody does that anymore.

And then you move to a country like Nigeria where you can't get out of the house after six o'clock, where your house has a bulletproof door, where many of your friends and family have been robbed at gunpoint and it is nothing to do except sit at home.

So the government I mean, affordance all this kid's life actually is subject to a lot of extremes.

And this was in your teenage teenage years and what you went through. And this is pre Facebook and YouTube and Twitter.

So you can't even keep in touch with friends, right? I mean, who's going to send snail mail to Nigeria? Right. Like you keep in touch. Right.

So the other thing with this life is that you don't have school friends.

So like my husband grew up in Bombay, he has a ton of school friends. I don't have any school friends. I mean, I don't know anybody. So you also you also grow up with that.

But, yeah, Nigeria was a super interesting place to grow up. I mean, I've spoken about this a I really don't envy my mom because I think I was 12 and my brother was nine and there was no place for my clothes in Nigeria.

So if you wanted if I wanted a swimsuit or like a prom dress and I went to an American school, you had these prom dresses and all she would have to go to this market called the Obamacare to this cloth market where you actually buy clothes, buy the cotton, and then would not be allowed in the house and he would stitch every piece of clothing that you owned.

Wow. So it's just a very interesting kind of childhood.

I'm going to bring you back to the president. Yeah. What did America to the CEO's mind was? Is Nigeria adding to the CEO's?

So I think the change has added a lot. I think rather than, you know, this something you pick up from each country. So one of the things I picked up from Nigeria, which is very true. So Nigeria is the most corrupt country in the world, right? I mean, you can't get that all you need days of standing in line to get petrol. That's what people have to put drivers in Nigeria.

But if you look at the stats, Nigeria is actually one of the happiest countries in the world. Nigerians are constantly optimistic about life. And I think that's something that I picked up a lot. And a mentor of mine told me this.

He said, leaders naturally have to be optimistic.

You can't have a pessimist inspired a team or leader team. So I think that was a really important learning that I got from my Nigeria days. And I think I've picked up something from each country I've lived in relatively.

Why do you think Nigeria's one of those? Because even I've heard stories about like I was with a relative once, and he said that he feared going to Nigeria on assignment. And he said Becky's an engineer in America. And he said that a friend of his went there or landed up at the airport. Yeah. His driver picked him up and instead of taking him to the hotel, they took him into a forest. And then they found that the driver wasn't the real driver.

He made it believable. Yeah. He made that guy stripped down under it.

Look, his watch took all his belongings, left him in the forest and drove away.

And then the actual driver and said, listen, I'm a driver, APC's. I think it's a very violent history. It's still got a lot of tribalism and communities and it's a very poor country that is, you know, one thing we're very lucky to have in India and I'm speaking from the hand of someone in finance is a big middle class in Nigeria.

There is extreme richness and extreme poverty. And that creates a sense of why do they have what I do?

They have what I have.

And so there was there's an interesting thing that when you go roam around in Nigeria, you always wear ROBERI jewellery, even a man. So he's going to wear a gold chain around his neck or a ring or something, so that if someone robs you, you don't get killed, you can give your ring rather than your life.

I got mugged last year. We were McGlashan like in Bombay, walking in Maiduguri, which is actually pretty relatively safe in the city.

Five gardens. Well, that's impressive. Yeah. And it's you know, I've walked around all my life and I was on the phone with someone walking.

I was on the phone with my actually you me something about business. He's also been on the podcast and I'm walking and I suddenly get whacked in the head. My specs fall off and my phone rolled off as well. This guy, I was just confused because he backed me hard. I was on the floor. I mean, I was. The footpath, and he picks the phone randomly, another guy comes on a bike, picks them away and goes, I couldn't even chase them.

I got in the leaf gardens, which is like super safe. Yeah.

And so here is the creepy part of the story. He basically me, I was in shock. I went to file a police complaint older and immediately after getting mugged. You have a sense of shock and you have a sense of why did that happen to me? And this was like last year when businesses established by I'm blessed, famous. Yeah, but everything's going well inside you and mugged. And then over the next two or three days you realize, OK, wait, maybe that person just wanted that phone way more badly than I wanted.

So you kind of start asking questions about life that why I I'm a good person, I've not done bad shit to anyone, but why has vouchered should happen to me. And then you realize this class difference we all like, you know, even even in India, while it may not be as much as Nandita, that is that class division of people who are given a lot of us as people who are not.

So I went to school in Philadelphia, in the US, and our area was actually a very unsafe area. So I saw a lot of mugging there. And if you come to this, I mean, you think about it, it actually had a community of very poor people and then all these university kids.

And it's the same class difference.

I mean, you wonder why people would mug a college kid because a lot of kids in Philly at that point, I mean, there was a point which you knew you would not cross. Why would you make a college kid?

Right. But it's the same thing, right? These people have come into our community and they have something that we don't have. Yeah. Yeah, 100 percent.

So to be a part of my story was laid on from an anonymous Instagram account. I got a message saying, hey, brother, I'm sorry. I was the guy who was doing to go on. And that Instagram account was it had like zero followers or whatever following. It was just like an account me for telling me this, that it was some fan who had, like, mugged me and he said, this is your phone's IP, whatever the ID number.

And it was actually the correct ID number. And I didn't know what to do. And I was too busy by that point. I'd forgotten about mugging. I mean, I'd moved on, but it kind of just changed my whole perspective on fame, this concept of class difference. But, yeah, it was it was like an eye opening then. That's where it actually got fascinated about West Africa. This is other you lose a lot who has a lot of business in West Africa.

His name is technically Guruji. He has explained to me how difficult it is to establish things.

And you talked about your friend who was scared to go. There is an I.T. professional. I remember I think my brother graduated from an Indian institute and he said one of his friends go to college or four, and it was some three hundred thousand dollar orphan in Nigeria. And he asked me for advice. Two hundred thousand dollars of the offer was the worth of life insurance.

Hmm, so does that country, other than giving you optimism, which, again, I find a little find a little strange from the outside, but I've never been in it, so I never know what it's just an idea I'll give you.

It also tells you about the importance of a community. Right. And I think we can be very individualistic. So if you look at Nigeria and we all had help in Nigeria, you know, your help will run out of money by the 15th, 20th day of the month.

And so you'll ask about it. But basically, you know, where is the money? And she's like, you know, I help my sister in another village. So my mother asked on month after month.

And at some point she's like, how many sisters do you have? Because she thought, real sister.

But in Nigeria, sister means anybody from your community because they believe that when tough times come on them, the community comes to support them.

I think that's a great learning at this time. I mean, I always tell people in financial services to that build a sense of community around you. It's interesting.

You know, I you haven't asked me this, but as I've sort of grown up, I realize that women are a real community in most of the corporate world.

And when I was in my 20s, I was I didn't care about feminism.

I thought this whole debate was quite nonsense because we are all 50/50 at that point.

That 50 percent guys, 50000 girls, as I have become older, have actually realized the importance of community, especially being a goal and the importance of building a community of women and standing up for each other. So this whole concept of sisterhood that I launched in Nigeria, it's now kicking in in a very different way.

Yeah, it was a scary start, which actually might get slightly wrong. Well, good.

Al Shabaab, the founder of Credit, was on the show recently and he said that in urban metros, in bomb in Bombay, Bangalore, something like 80 to 90 percent of the women are just like sitting at home.

It could be because 25 percent of our women participate in the workforce. I mean, I get into trouble for this, but in my own industry, we have 45 mutual fund companies in India. I mean, let's do some quick math there, about four or five leadership roles, see your head of investments, etc., etc..

So forty five times five means it should be 200.

Otherwise 150 senior positions I counted and I think five are filled by women.

And it's not, by the way, but we don't know how to manage money. Yeah, no, it's it's not that at all. You know, as a guy, you kind of take this for granted because it's not really your pencil and you don't know all these things till you grow up. Maybe if you were going on and on and you have women and men working, but that's when you start noticing these little things, cracks in society, which is actually the first kind of reason I thought I should have you on the show.

I read one of your tweets, which I just told you before the break. I remember this dude posted a video of basically rampant media together walking down this pathway. Yes. And there's like Engler's they're wearing Bharatanatyam costumes and one guy wearing this traditionally 9/11. And that one guy, it's a kid and he's a white kid in a white outfit.

The kid pulls out his phone and goes up to the Internet. Is he going to get a photo? Yeah. And they realize they did the photo with them. And your caption on that was, I'm going to let you actually complete.

So there's two parts to it. My caption on that was ask for opportunities because nobody is going to do anything for you. And the other thing about that photo is so the kids tapping and asking, look at the expression of the gods. So a lot of people told me on that saying, well, what if the girls didn't want the photo? But my answer is look at the expression. The girls, they were like are almost like that missing the moment.

Like, I can't believe he got it. Well, my point is, why did he get it? He asked. And you know what? The girls were first in line, but they didn't ask. And I was like, what are all these women sessions?

And they keep asking me, you know, what's your advice for young girls? And I'm they just ask for opportunities, ask for the big promotion. If you're competent. Did something ask? I think, you know, on average, if a woman is eight out of ten, she's probably going to rate herself six and eight herself 11.

Yes. That that's an actual study. One of my friends who's a consultant at Bain, she sent me this. That's an actual study. There you go. What you quoted it. They actually asked a bunch of women this and exactly that happened. Most women read themselves lower than the capabilities and most of the guys rated themselves high on the cables. And it might be societal conditioning, genetical pre conditioning. I don't know what it is.

It's all that. So it's it's the smallest thing. So I remember when I was getting married, I had these pitas and I was waiting on reasonably light up.

So I was walking and I walk fast. So I was walking around the fire quickly and my eyes were look.

And the pundits actually told me I might get into trouble for saying that this slowdown you should look try.

Wow. Mhm.

And from a young age I told stuff like this, but why should I slow down your walking and I'm walking at the pace that is comfortable to me. So you're taught not to ask, you're told to slow down. But I'm saying nobody is going to look in a room and say, well that girl is really great.

You know, I should give this role to the Nicole has to ask and she's to raise her hand up. And that's helped. By the way, I got to see your role only because I asked for it.

That's crazy. And, you know, again, as when one in a leadership position, what do you understand about women in your workforce is that they are completely different dynamics to the same projects compared to men. Even men have their own good things that they are to the project. But the same goes for women. And the best organizations will always contain, according to me, an equal mix of men and women. But we are probably far from that.

And it's also it's actually not just about gender. I mean, I learned this in my first job at McKinsey.

It's a diversity of every kind adds value. Right?

You have someone who's a physicist versus someone who is a lawyer versus someone who's an engineer. They will all have different perspectives. I mean, I believe organizations should have diversity of age. You can't have 30 you're not 50 year olds and no younger population. So it's not just gender is one form of diversity.

Diversity of everything that looks like you have one whole section on this board does is going to be about how you overcame this gender wise age bias, all these things. But before you actually went on to the corporate report, you also had an entrepreneurial side of things. And before that, you were in Wharton. Yes. And right afterward. And you had an extremely dark phase of your life.

Yes. Which dogface? But so what?

What after Knightdale, what had happened?

So after my father moved to Italy, which is where I did my high school or someplace, by the way, like the best place I've lived on what?

And then I think by the time I was in 10th or 11th, it was this thing that, you know, what do you want to do next? And so that is in the government home has been a teacher.

So what what what what what about your personality or at least such a lovely place?

I think firstly, I think most of my habits, personal habits are shaped by like my food, everything I want to do.

But I think what I love about Italy and I actually do a talk on what different countries add to my personality, it is very proud of who they are. I think Europeans are very proud of their roots. Like I always say that Italians celebrate every. On the terrorists in their country, because they have a very rich heritage, they celebrate, so, you know, it is a home of espresso and cappuccino and being a coffee fan, you love this.

But, you know, there's no Starbucks in Italy, right? Because the Italians are not going to let until then there wasn't, I think, and the Italians are not going to let some random American company walk in and walk all over their culture.

They make pizza. The way they make stuff there is. So they know they are caught and they celebrate it. And I think sometimes we can lose touch with it.

I it teaches you to celebrate your Indianness, so you should be proud of speaking your Hindi and walking around in your sari and celebrating not on my own and celebrating your Mahabharat and celebrating your culture.

I mean, I keep joking that one at one point in time I have a secret desire to be the tourism minister.

And this comes from living in Italy because I just believe we have such a tremendous heritage of tourism in this country. I mean, India should be the best place on Earth for the tourist. And we do a terrible job.

One hundred percent, it's going up. You know, my hope is that in 20 years time, if I'm in politics in any way, that's one department I wish to clean up from an entrepreneurial perspective so that you can make money off of tourism.

So tourism is your soft power. It's your brand and it's business. And the Italians celebrate literally everything.

So that's that's that's what they brought to the table.

You know how many questions opening up of you through telling me all these things. But okay.

Let's let's come back to your you know, carry your story. Yes, ma'am.

So, like, what did you what was your intention behind going to Wharton?

So I and I guess, you know, I have to thank my mother because she was super aspirational for me. She's like, you should apply abroad. And we didn't have government doesn't pay very much money. And a college education is expensive overseas. I mean, it's forty fifty thousand dollars a year then just like unthinkable for four years.

That's like I remember saying it's like a crawl at that point in time, which is a big amount of money in our world.

And I said, let's only apply to the places where I'll get scholarship. And, you know, the big schools don't give scholarship, they give loans and financial aid. My mom was like, apply to the best in the world and why don't you just try?

And it was worth it. It was worth it because I actually got into Wharton. I got in with financial aid, which is so the college counselor told me that if you applied to Wharton as a normal candidate, you have a one in seven on one. Any chance of getting in?

He said if you apply and ask for money also to support your education, you are the one in 40 chance of getting in. And it's like their way of saying, OK, don't do this way.

And my mom was like, no, but we are going to apply and we're going to apply that financially. And we did. And she made me apply to the best in the world and she actually sat with me through the whole process.

She had no idea we didn't use, you know, fancy college things. And, you know, there was none of that. I mean, sitting in it, we didn't have very much of that, but we actually just did it on a lark. We wrote essays from the heart and that was it. And I always used to tell her that, you know, Mom, I'm not an athlete and I don't have anything. I can't play any music.

She's like, just tell them who you are. You have such an amazing background. You're a good student.

Just go tell them your story. Honestly, what's the worst that can happen?

You won't get in way. You'll go to India.

And that's how I got into college. I mean, that's actually how I got into college.

What does this Ivy League education I do ahead? Because, you know, I mean, a lot of parents. So, OK, I'll give you my perspective. Yeah. So my dad's Punjabi and my mom is Half-Marathon half good, but she's much more moderate and then she's Gujarati and Martiens give a lot of importance to education.

So since I was like three years old, it was my mom's heartfelt dream that I go to an Ivy League education of some sort. And it broke my heart when I used to make videos for a living.

So. So she still has that thing, you know, like, all right. Now, listen, I'm kind of considering applying to an Ivy League college.

She, like, jump. She will be like, yes, finally. Finally. It's like that's probably not going to happen. So my vision of having that happen to me is asking people like yourself, what have I missed out on in life?

So, look, I don't think an Ivy League education is the be all and end all. It's not like, you know, your own get an Ivy League education because people like overdo the crazy about these days. So ultimately, you know what you do. I mean, you can be perfectly successful without it.

I think it can change your life.

And I don't think it can change your life because of the four years there only and sitting in classes. I mean, classes are good and you meet world class professors.

But I just think the community of people that you get exposed to is incredible for starting with kids from all around the world.

And that is and look, I had a global background, but studying with kids from all around the world is very different from traveling to Europe on a holiday. I think it's just a very different perspective. So I think you're always taught to like.

Really, really. Hi, so your thought that you have to be alone or that you have to push your mind, and I think that's what it stays with you even when you're 30 and 40.

And the most powerful thing it does is it gives you an alumni network. So I used to head an alumni club here. We have about a thousand alumni from my college in India and we're very connected to each other.

And they all must be holding top jobs in the country.

Yeah, they're, of course, very, very successful professionals, but they're also very close knit community. And in my case, it's really interesting. My husband I met my husband in college and all our close friends also married friends from college.

So we have this group of about five, six of us couples and we meet every weekend and we just look at and now, you know, I mean, some of them are CEOs of listed company and people have done very well for themselves.

But we're bonded by those four other conversations, very intellectual.

They're not can be, but they're not. Sometimes they can be very silly, actually, because ultimately you're a group of college kids who were bonded by an experience when you were 18, 19, 20, 21.

So I just think that's what it does. I think for me, it changed my life. Gave me a lot of confidence. I have today. I went through my tough bouts through it gave me a lot of the exposure and confidence that I have today.

You know, I always try finding polite ways to ask questions, but I'm not going to make this question OK?

And it's got to be a question to ask. I read articles about you where they spoke about the phase where you even considered, you know, something like suicide legs. What had happened in that phase after you've had so much perspective, what drove you to that thought process?

So I think rejection is something I didn't handle with. And professional rejection. Yeah, I mean, it was rejection from on campus placements.

And, you know, anybody in India or overseas was gone through this process of what I call looking for a job on campus knows that that is the most stressful phase of your life. And like, if anyone is watching this or hearing this and looking for that, just calm down. I think that process brings out the worst in people. I mean, it makes you unnecessarily competitive and it's a dog eat dog world. And, you know, honestly, buildOn, I mean, I had never faced rejection because all through my life, I was like a good kid, Glasspool.

But, I mean, the only insecurity I grew up with was that on my looks because of my neck issues and my weight. Yeah. And I think it's a little worse as a goal because, like, you're an ugly looking teenage girl in like 13 and 14 olds will go out there and say, oh, you're ugly looking and you're my mom happens to be beautiful.

You're so beautiful. And she just teach in the same school. How did you turn up this way? Like people actually see this kind of stuff?

So if you see all of that coupled with the rejection, I think that's what. So I got rejected from a bunch of consulting interviews at that point, actually seven in high school. And when I got rejected, I rationalized this later. So when I got rejected from the seventh one and I decided to try and jump off the 19th floor of the building. It was not even a huge consulting firm, you know what irritated me, it was the fact that I got rejected.

But friends of mine who I thought had less great got the job. It's like that dialoguing three idiots could kill hardly anybody like dealing in Boston. And so then you feel even worse. So I think my inability I don't think our system prepares you for rejection. Right.

You're always told to work hard, keep doing your thing. Study said what? What happens if you work hard and fail? Who prepares you for failure at any point in time? So that was my first mode of failure. And on what?

Because I mean, I'm sure you've sat through many hiring drives yourself. To what basis do you think the trajectory one I don't know.

And I found it to be above a conversation. Right. And it's not like I haven't been rejected after that. It's just an I handle it much better.

But I always believe that rejection in some way is redirection to a better place.

And this could even be a romantic rejection. This could be a romantic rejection. This could be college rejection. This could be rejection from, you know, I mean, you're going to book a hotel and you didn't get it and you ended up staying at another one. I mean, it just it could be rejection. I mean, any kind of rejection.

For instance, when I was applying to college, I thought MIT was my dream school. Like, I wanted to be an engineer, not the all that I didn't get into M.I.T. In retrospect, I think they rejected me because I was not the right fit. Maybe this consulting firm rejected me because I was not the right fit or someone else was a better fit than me. And I ended up at McKinsey, which was great for me. So I always think rejection could be just swell seeing, you know, you're meant for something else that's a better fit for you.

Yeah. Hundred percent rejection opens up new dimensions. It does. And as I said, redirection to a place that might be better for you, but you're not taught how to handle rejection.

Well, how old were you when you had climbed to the 19th floor when that was happening? I think I was twenty. Nineteen or twenty. Well, I mean, you've already seen Nigeria. You was Italy. You had experiences that you're flashing through your head.

I was like, why is this? So in my head I was like, I'm a really good killdeer. I really worked very hard. Ah.

I went to Wharton on a scholarship which was very that I've kind of survived all this.

And how can I be rejected seven times? Like one time is how can someone be rejected seven times after being part of a whole class, going through all of this, being super sincere about everything.

I mean, that's what goes through your head.

How can they reject me? Why did you not jump?

Oh, I was lucky. My best friend at that time, who most people don't know, is my husband today. He was sitting with me and he just called the cops.

And he's like, this guy is trying to jump out of the window, do something, and that's when the cops came and they took me to this mental asylum. This thing that existed on campus. And then I had to escape. And my father was in the country, Colombia. At that point in time, he had moved to Zambia from Italy. So I remember calling him at 3:00 in the morning saying, Papa, I need to get out of this.

He said, how did you end up dead in the first place? I said, you know, boy, I was trying to do this. And a boy I mean, he asked me the same question, right. You know?

I said, listen, I was with this guy and he called the cops and he's like, who is this guy?

He was more worried about, I think, the boyfriend than jumping off the floor, traditional Indian father.

That's how I got out of the way. And then story with you. You got. I'm sorry.

I'm just a little blown away and I've lost my floor. Did that did that add any layer to your personality? Just coming out of that?

I got when I finally after that, I was a lot more relaxed. I was like, so I had a job offer at Microsoft.

And then I went into my last interview at McKinsey, obviously in a good week.

And I say that you stop digging yourself.

I yes, I was just like I stopped making life a little less seriously. I still take life seriously, but I calm down a little bit. It's like this is just normal. I was like, OK, I can't be this dramatic about everything that happens in life, you know, I just have to pull it.

My husband always says, you know, stop and smell the coffee, stop and smell the roses, just calm down. Like, what's the word?

I mean, what's the worst that could happen to you? You'll get rejected by seven consulting companies. I had a job offer at Microsoft is like, that's not such a bad deal in life.

Right? So I just started seeing the other side of life and putting my problems into perspective. And I think that helped. Yeah.

And now you're building one of the biggest corporate careers.

And, you know, I think telling the story obviously much later has helped me a lot. I mean, I'm glad I lived through that story because I also had the ability to tell a little.

Oh, do you do you think you've been free of mental health issues since? Pretty free, actually.

Pretty free. I it's not that I don't go through pretty crappy days. I mean, I keep saying one day a month, like, I hate my life and I want to kill somebody. Are it or I'm like, oh God, I can't do this. Or, you know, my team is troubling me or I'm having some personal problems.

So it's not like I don't go through bad phases, but I've had the ability to talk about, you know, rather than just internalize it. And I think that helps. So that was probably my lowest mental health phase. I think the last three, four years, ever since I have discovered the power of sort of sharing my stories, being vulnerable and realizing that I don't need to be perfect, have been really good for happiness and confidence.

That's beautiful. I'm not like the corporate Cordia in the trailblazing start, should the corporate career is one.

I have to tell you, the corporate career is less glamorous than it is not to be. And so I like try to jump off road for this corporate career. And so my first job was at McKinsey, which is like a top consulting firm in the work. Now, when I joined McKinsey, I was like very excited about it. I was like, OK, I'm going to be a strategy consultant and I'm going to sit in this conference room and come up with, like strategies.

And, you know, white smoke is going to be more just for the listeners.

Could you explain what a consultant does?

So a consultant is basically consulting companies, basically advice corporate Fortune 500 companies, large companies on various boards, how to turn around the record, how to change their operations.

There's basically a problem that a company could be going through and they hired a consulting company because they have got expertise in many different companies. So that's what a consulting company does. And consulting is a career that people are very excited about because at a very early age, it gives you exposure to different businesses, different problems.

And you think I actually want to sit down, advise them?

Right. So when you think consultant like your consultant, do you think you're probably advising me on something?

So my impression was you're not going to sit in a suit and a big boardroom and the CEO of this company is going to walk in and I'm going to give him advice on how to run his business.

That's that's that's that's the perception so far. In my first assignment at McKinsey was for like an equivalent of Kromah and all one of these electronic retail funds.

And it was in a city called Houston and Texas where there's no vegetarian food. And my job was to go to this electronic store and start at 4:00 in the morning and follow people around in the store and just catalog on open and people what they were doing from 4:00 in the morning till 10:00 at night. And I was like, what is this? I was like, I tried to jump off a 19th floor of a building for this and that's how my corporate career started.

And I mean, the reason I'm saying this is because I think entry level jobs are not what they're made out to be. And it's not just at McKinsey.

McKinsey is a great employer, but you need to go to the tough Grania. Nobody is going to give you the reins of the company and say, solve my strategy and you don't know anything. Right.

So that was the first thing actually I learned in my corporate career. And I always tell younger kids who joined the don't expect the first two, three years to be glamorous.

You're going to do a very, very, very basic walk. I mean, you always start life at the bottom of the totem pole again. Like if there's a totem pole, you just start life again at the bottom, which is the biggest problem.

Even busy in hiring, even for the media industry. Today, we'll hear some very talented kids who will severely lack patience and they'll fight with you for the opportunity or do they need to put you through a grind first to ensure that you're capable of handling those even in financial services.

Your first few years are sitting in front of an Excel spreadsheet and cranking models. And it's good because it builds your analytical ability. It teaches you to understand detail. It teaches you to make mistakes and go wrong. No one's going to hand over your company to a 22 year old kid on the first day. That doesn't mean you can make it as a young person, but a little bit of the grind you have to go through in life, right.

Like a lack of patience and a lack of the ability to sacrifice things. Yeah. Can really put a stop on your career growth.

And I also think no job is too small. Right. And I struggled with this a lot. So I would sit in Texas at like ten at night and I would sit in the warehouse and start crying. And I would be like, what am I doing? And I wouldn't tell my parents about this because I was like embarrassed that this was my role at McKinsey. But I realized it was the right thing for them to do.

And it wasn't just me. It happened to everybody. Right. You just go through the grind for your jobs.

I like that. And they get better and better. And by the way, even now, I mean, people wonder about the CEO's role, 30 percent of my profession. Is a lot of this growing. I mean, it's just a lot of random stuff that doesn't appear glamorous.

That's not very fun, but you have to do it.

Before the CEO journey began, I'd like to call you a multibillion dollar CEO as I have to sell my podcast with a little bit of Mozart.

And the thumbnail might contain a multibillionaire managing multibillions.

So that's accurate.

But you had an entrepreneurship journey before that, or what took you from consulting to starting your own firm and then being bought by someone else?

So I always say that young people have a little bit of hunger and foolishness in them. I again try to rationalize why the so I did the consulting gig and then I worked on Wall Street for a few years pretty close because I did two thousand, six and seven and then I did eight, which is like most of what you see in the movies is true about Wall Street.

Wolf of Wall Street, Wolf, is a little extreme, but things like the Big Short, etc.. I mean, elements, I was actually trading mortgages. That was my first job on Wall Street and also very selling loans to people who had no income, no job and no asserts. They were called ninja loans at that point in time.

So like these, you don't have a house, take a loan from us or the rest of the year you're eligible for a two million dollar loan. I know you have no income, no job, no assets, something like that.

So, yeah, we did that for two, three years. How I was even on Wall Street. Very smart people.

I mean, what it has a ton of us. Oh, I think globally. And I have I mean, this is an interesting conversation. So my dad's represented India from the 70s to, you know, twenty twenty or twenty fifteen when he retired. I think the perception of India globally has changed completely. And he said this when he retired, he's like so he keeps telling me, he says you market mutual funds for a living.

But I sold India for a living, which is just a beautiful thing, he says. But he has seen the kind of respect that he was given in the 70s, which, I mean, your U.S. and German counterparts, I don't think thought of him very much at that point in time.

But then there was this 80s phase and it wasn't a great phase. Mid 90s happened in the it happened. So when I moved to Nigeria in ninety five kids would ask me in school, you're from India, do you go to school on elephants?

And I go from the land of snake charmers.

This was the perception by the time 95, 96, 97 happened, the whole it boom happened.

We made a statement with Bull Conundrum in mind that made a lot of news there, sanctions on us at that point in time. The you know, the whole test happen.

And then by the time my father retired, India had gone through and become an economic superpower. So the kind of respect you got from the German ambassador or the Japanese ambassador changed totally.

And that's a reflection of Wall Street, too. So I think is on economic standing has changed.

Our perception is change, the perception is Indians are very, very smart, capable people on a very personal, selfish level. Yeah, my goal in life is to change the perception of India's creative capital of the world and the artificial intelligence capital of the world, because I do feel that in designing artificial intelligence products, there will be a huge requirement of creativity. And that's that's the phase of life. I want to begin at 35.

So creative is an interesting one because I think we're very good jugaad artists. And I don't like the word jugaad, even though it's been associated with India, but sort of original thinking and innovation and creativity, I think we can still do a lot more.

So we think we're copying while, you know, we've had people on the board, we're not very hopeful about India's future people in the 40s.

Yeah, but I don't know whether it's the meditation based intuition, whether it's just my gut from running YouTube channels and talking to the youth. On a macro level, I feel like we're heading into a good phase.

So if people your generation and my generation are not optimistic, then I really worry.

I feel we are the two generations that are optimistic. It's the ones, you know, older than yours. You're eighty three. I mean, people born in the 60s and 70s.

They're the pessimists, interestingly. I mean, this is a detour when I moved back. You know, it's been 10 years since I've moved back from the U.S. and this is lovely. The Indian thing that when you move back from the U.S., it's a very big deal to move back from the U.S., Wall Street cuccurullo. You've left to come to India. So people always ask me this question, did you regret it?

Like everyone asks me this question, you know, do you miss the U.S.? And then, of course, there's a famous one. What would your salary have been in dollars if you were living in the U.S.? Which is a totally irrelevant question. I always say talking about optimism, that I don't regret it at all. And the reason I don't regret it is, is the U.S. is such an evolved place.

It's a great market, but it's a market where most problems have been solved.

So if you really have to do things at a court order to make any impact here, I think with what you're doing or what I'm doing, this so many people we can cater to and we can do basic things and solve a lot of problems. So you can make a tremendous impact here, which I don't think you can make in a market like the U.S. I completely resonate with what they are seeing at the age of twenty seven.

But at age 22, it was my alpha ego kicking in and I want to be a king in this country and not a second class citizen. That may not even be true. Like I'm sure that one's in the US.

Yeah, you settled it. It's a country that takes you in very nice, very accepting. Be very, very rich.

I've learned over time that back then the ego told me that no, let's not and I want to be a Raja.

Yeah, but that brings me to my question on entrepreneurship. What was that journey like starting your own business? Because I've seen a lot of people who try transitioning from the corporate world into the business, marginalizing. But I have seen a bunch of people who can't really keep up with the world of entrepreneurship because, for example, in the world of corporates, if you eat a banana and you want to talk to people somewhere, there's a dustbin, you can throw it.

In the world of entrepreneurship, if you eat a banana, there's no dustbin to throw it into and you have to buy the dustbin yourself.

Yeah, sorry about the dustbin, but no, it is a very I mean, people keep saying the U.S. to a near transition. I think employment entrepreneurship is a very big transition, especially when you're young. I will say I was a super arrogant, like Wall Street kid.

How old were you? Twenty four. OK, so and twenty four is not young for a start up person. It's a little young for a financial services startup because we are great here and you know, we like it here.

Right. It's a it's a business of trust.

I'll do what I tell you. I've got a new job. Yeah, but why? For example, I chose content entrepreneurship because I was very fascinated with the world of content. You know, I loved watching television. I thought, wow, I want to get into this business. I want to show people visuals. And that's why I chose content and media as my domain. What initially made you choose finance? Because on the outside it can seem boring to a lot of people.

OK, so I'm not going to give you the glamorous answer to this. See, there are people like you and I think you're taught that, you know, you should find your passion and you should follow your passion and all that stuff.

And I think that's great. Right. And there are people like you who find your passion in life. I was just a good student who went to a management school and it happened to be a finance and management centric school. Now, dad had never had a corporate career for me to know that I.

So if you were going to ask me, did you want to do finance since you were a kid?

No, I have no idea what this was right on. I think some of us just start in careers and we grow to love our careers as we it's almost like arranged marriage, right. Some of us find our life partners and we choose them and, you know, we fall in love and that we can get married.

But some people I mean, a lot of this country has arranged marriages and you marry someone and it works. And I think that's my guess.

And now I have stayed in the profession for fifteen years because one of the good things about finance is that you're constantly learning something. So one of. My old bosses are like, you are used to say, so I used to ask him that. Listen, you have your straight you have all the money in the world. Why are you doing this at the age of 50? And he's like, you know, this is the only profession in the world where you always have something new to learn every day because either you should be making money every day or you have something new to learn and nobody makes money every day.

So I think it's a very dynamic industry and that's what I love about it and that's why I've stayed around it.

But I just found it.

Because I was relating, very, very stimulating and can be as stimulating as you want to do, especially in a country like India where the market is, and you were living in a country where the prime minister is going to people and still sing open bank accounts and you have hyper rich people who know how to do that.

And you so you have the whole range and you have a capital market that is constantly evolving. So you have lots of people where you can make a tremendous impact.

And it's it's the most heartening thing in the world to have someone say, you know, I didn't is happy and I'm so happy. I invested in mutual funds and I was able to pay for the surgery or do something like that. All my dreams were able to come through. I mean, ultimately, we are in the business of money management and we we make people's dreams come true. People invest and people save and they make dreams come true, whether they are a vacation or a business or whatever it is.

So in that sense, it's a very rewarding profession.

That is, the stimulation and the ability to help other people is the joy of I mean, you know, you could you could make a woman independent and enabled her to start her own business.

You know, you could change the financial fortunes of a family. So there is a deeper purpose. I think it's not, Wolf, of Wall Street. We're not the only industry that the media makes us out to be.

By the way, we're also not like the hype. But I mean, I hate the media portrayal of us. We're not like the, you know, high glamorous, like the gold all around.

And there's this rich life.

Most financial services professionals are actually very if you talk to fund managers who manage money, like fund managers, someone who manages your money, if you give me money, they're very quiet people and they're very burdened by the responsibility of managing someone else's money.

It's actually very easy for me to manage my own money. But when you give me money to manage, I feel stressed here.

There is a responsibility that there are thousands and lots of people who we are responsible for. So I think that's also another. So we are there's a word in our industry called fiduciary, but fiduciary means you're responsible for someone else.

And I think we live with that responsibility every day.

I sometimes think people don't understand that.

So that's the stimulation part of it. But it was it's stimulating enough for you to say, OK, I want to start a business and this business can be a very brutal game. Some business teaches you some things.

So I was an investment professional. Right.

But as you said, there are lots of other things that happen in running a company that you have no idea about when you have a corporate career.

I think there's so many things that you learn once you run a business. For instance, if you run on money management business, someone also has to run the office and the administration. Someone also has to do accounting. Someone also has to hire people. Someone also has to do marketing. And we are a regulated business. So someone also has to do legal and tax.

Now, in the U.S., someone else was doing it for us when we started. There were three of us partners.

And so it was you or your husband, me, my husband and a third partner who was a colleague of mine in the US. All three of us had only investment backgrounds. Now somehow I became the person who decided to leave investments and do everything it. So I remember setting up our company with registrar of companies and going to the RNC website and filling the name. And I remember applying for the bank card and fighting with the idea is this why I'd been called has not come and opening our phone bank account with State Bank of India.

So it really teaches you that, listen, you know, in corporate India, ownership can be like it's his department. I mean, it's almost like when you call someone at a call center, it's like, ma'am, this is not my problem. When you run a business, everything is your problem. Right?

And I was the one, in fact, on and get into trouble for saying this. We had come from the U.S. So we don't realize you have to have a sign in Hindi and Marathi on the door outside of the company.

And we didn't do that. So I actually got a of an establishment tax notice in my name.

And I realized this is also the stuff that you have to manage.

And I'm so grateful I did it because today in a your student, you don't only look at money management, you also manage marketing.

You also manage an office. You also manage to spend more time managing your yea.

I learned all of this in my full capitalist and so I was very well prepared.

But your basic product was that you take someone's money and help them take care of it. Yeah.

So I'm it for our first product was a portfolio management service, which is basically that you'll take someone's money, rich people's money and help them manage it. Our second product was something called an alternative investment fund, which is like, ah, it's like a mutual fund for the rich. So it is more sophisticated in terms of what it can do than mutual fund.

Probably you need more money to invest in this than you would one at minimum vs. minimum wage. I managed to do it. So those were our full set of our products.

How do you convince rich people to part with the money and give it to you? It's hilarious.

So the minimum that Sebi lets you take from a client in a portfolio management service is five. So that's what we started with. And we would go to friends and family and say, please give us money. And, you know, you have this belief that when you want a Wharton return graduate, people are willing to give you money. You don't use it. Ivy League record, nobody. But does every Wharton graduate or every Ivy League graduate have that capability of actually multiplying those twenty five blocks?

Well, forget multiplying and you can you even convince someone that you can multiply it but say you have good sales skills? Do you think they have the like they are good enough and strong enough to.

So I think money management is, is a very basic profession. I think, you know, it's a profession that involves understanding what is a good business and what is not a good business. And with a little one graduate or not, Wharton graduate, I think if you're a strong thinker, if you are disciplined about your approach and if you know what is a good business, you will be able to do it. So I don't think it's that difficult in industry.

It's a difficult industry in terms of improving. So one of the things my husband says, because he's also a money manager, is that this is a career where every week it's like a report card comes out on you.

It's almost like the film industry because you do badly for a month or two months and people start, you know, questioning the last 10 years of what you've done.

So in that sense, temperamentally, it's a very difficult business and markets move up and down. And, you know, we live in like a social media and noise induced world. So there's so much noise.

So just to maintain discipline and promote and have conviction that I like this company, it's going to do well. I don't care about what other people say.

I think the mentality of money management is pretty underrated.

So most portfolio management services in India, like because I know a lot of our listeners actually think of their life with that target of at some point I would definitely invest with a BMW WALGA. That's just how young people think the influencers like myself are. They love to basically a form and and what do they do with those 25 or 30 like ones they have. And then is it all stock market is a mixture of F.D. stock market?

Sure. So I mean, look, there are multiple ways to get your money managed in India. Mutual Fund is one or the other and there's a third called. If the Amazon, if I meant for supremest requires a minimum digitizer of not just 50, Lexy's the minimum may have to put an ETF requires one grow, one of them invest basis certain rules. So all of them have an objective. Right. So you could have a mutual fund or business that is focused on the stock market.

You could have one that is partly stock markets and partly that markets. You could have one that is just doing safe instruments. So it's only important to understand what the objective of what you're getting into is like. You want to have a health podcast or you could have your food podcast or whatever music.

And I just want to add one nugget of listeners, like people often who are not from the financial world, get intimidated by these words like RPM's Mutual Fund. That's the big hurdle, I think, for your industry to tell people, listen, this is very basic and simple. Yeah. But all these things are very clever, man saying if you're not understanding it was this bar gossip, was this YouTube video, go Google it and come back.

Yeah. And this you know, there's a ton of financial education out there. So I always tell young people, just learn and I'll let you know guys like you have made expertise out of it. But the big challenge for my industry is to try and just simplify communication.

We've interested started a podcast where we're trying to explain people the basic principles of investing through Damayan, which is a very homegrown kind of thing, or we're releasing a TV ad next week where we're trying to use Kabaddi as a medium to explain one of our financial products. So we're also trying to simplify it because I agree we have too much jargon.

Yeah, I mean, and that's that's the big hurdle. Honestly, I remember being a 23, 24 year old getting concerned about managing my money. Yeah. And the big intimidation factor was this, that I do not understand what my wealth managers were talking like. And then I had to stop them. I had to actually go on my phone, Google or collabo friendly environment they brought. Can you please explain? There's an exit wound and there is always a simple way to explain her.

Absolutely. But it's still a challenge that your industry faces as a whole. It's not.

One thing I would tell young people, though, is that, you know, even if you are a financial services professional, you will screw up in your twenties with your money management.

I mean, I have made major mistakes and out of recklessness or lack of knowledge.

And it's okay, because if you make them in your 20s, you make them when you are not very rich. I mean, you have your life to want to is better.

The stock, learn, invest a little bit, make mistakes. Hopefully in five years you learn something and you learn what suits you personally.

Right. And then you be OK. So it's OK to make mistakes in your 20s, in fact inevitably will make mistakes and make mistakes in your career.

Also, why not the money and these financial mistakes are being spoken about by someone who created an extremely successful, violent this business and then got bored a little bit.

So I mean, tons of mistakes, which is OK. So I mean, I'm guessing that you finally got over this. Led to a snowballing effect where you did a good job for that person, so then you got more Glines So I got my first outside client and this is a really hilarious thing I miss about social media. So the first few clients we got, we're all friends and family. Right?

I just again, when I got for a second just to explain to the listeners that I'm guessing the business model here it is. You manage someone's money and the profit you make on that when you take a cut from those.

No. So, again, that's it. So you manage someone's money and you charge a small fee for managing that money. So it could be like one, two percent is typically the fee. Sometimes in some products you charge something above the profit. So like, if I make 15 percent, then I'll take something of that. But the basic money that we make is a small it's like a bank charge. It's called a management fee in our business.

So it's a fixed fee for managing your money. Typically, it's one to two percent of your money that we charge now.

But then what? So what happened? Once you got your Soulforce, your clients were all friends and family.

Then I got this advice from someone very famous in financial services. I would take his name. I was like, OK, so all the clients were getting off friends and family. Now, do we get the friends and family because you want to run out of that bank of people, right?

And you're a young kid. So he said, you know, there are all these TV channels like CNBC and eating oil, etc. He's like in the army. And he actually said this in him. The dictator will be I mean, whatever is visible actually sells.

So he's like, you have to promote your brand. You have to go out and build a brand.

So I remember going on LinkedIn and talking to all these journos and I'm like, can I follow up on your TV channel?

That's what I did. And I started writing articles on Money Control. My first external client actually was a guy who read an article of ours in Money Control and he showed up to our office. He lived Anthony showed up to our office, which is a little industrial estate, and Raleigh, and he gave us two crores.

At that point in time when we had a total of two crores, he gave us another two crores and he didn't know us and he just liked what we had said in the media. That's actually how we got out. And then the business grew from there.

In fact, it's it's unfortunate. But he died three months ago in the lockdown, but he remained an investor with us for years.

You did not read about this on your Twitter. Please, please go follow the imam on Twitter. You were one of the reasons that I say that there's a new wave of Twitter happening in this country. So people's perception of Twitter is that it's entirely political.

Yeah, it's one of the easiest ways to grow your mind. It's a very unrelentless tool in the world.

Share your thoughts. Good about. Yeah. I think you discovered assholes off Twitter. I'm guessing I discovered more school people.

I know of Twitter. I mean, Twitter has done so much for me.

And I just think that people complain a lot about Twitter. But if you look at the positive side of Twitter, Twitter has like we're a young brand. It's totally democratized. I mean, in the earlier days, marketing was about having big budgets, etc. Now you can have good content and Twitter gives you rich as an individual and as a brand. So I love Twitter and you're not.

If five percent of people are trolling me, it's OK.

It is all good. Yeah, I think that's a modern life. You just need to learn how to embrace the concept of trolling early in life.

Yeah. And you will be able to grow. Don't do it all offline. Doesn't relative failure to what would you like.

I'm told offline. So why do you get why do you object online trolls.

And it's a part of the new modern human experience. So it's all I actually have fun with them sometimes.

I've chosen to not talk to them, but I have fun reading them of trolling and Twitter being troll in the corporate world by older guys. Yeah. So why did it always buy you guys out? Like what does a big company like Idealise or even a privately owned company and say, look, we need to buy these people. Is it that they want to buy the assets, which is people like you that I want to work at, but they see that.

They see although portfolios you're managing. So I think it's a combination.

And, you know, selling your company is a super emotional thing. And we talk to a lot of buyers. We actually spent about nine, twelve months in this whole acquisition process.

How long do you actually run the company before? Four, not five years, 2009 to 2013. So long enough. And then we started this process of kind of selling the business. And honestly, we spoke to companies, big brands. One of the ways now people think these deals are done only for the money.

And, you know, you sell your stock product. So I can promise, you know, you said that you wanted to talk to it always, you know, and work for them out of college. The reason we picked it always was the brand and the culture. You have to find sea financial services.

Businesses are not food businesses where you just sell it and you walk away. They buy the business for the founders because they expect the team will hang on.

Now, if you as a group of people have to walk with a company afterwards, your primary criteria is good. Is this a place I want to walk?

So it's a marriage rather than a buyout?

Absolutely. And I said this again and again when I did the deal, that it's a partnership, it's not an acquisition. And, you know, people always in fact, when we sold the business. People keep saying they're going to eat you alive, corporate India, because this was our first time working in Indian corporates, they were like oil company will eat you alive and all the standard stuff. Thankfully, they have not eaten me alive.

And in fact, the partnership was a four year partnership after which my husband and I could have gone. But we haven't moved on, right. We've stayed and grown.

One of the things I like about Eloise, and this is very rare, I don't think we get enough credit is it's one of the few financial services companies in India that really cares about young talent. Most of the CEOs are super young. I mean, there are a lot of CEOs were in the 35, 40. It doesn't happen in this country like we'd be just like people with grey hair.

I mean, I got this opportunity when I was 33. So you have to give something to people.

What do you think this on? You are? Thirty three. I think with it always it's always been our passion to do something. They know that the good or the advantage of young people is that they are passionate and they adapt to change.

So if you want to challenge your brand, you have to be someone who is open to changing. Right. You have to be someone who is like, OK, I don't care what anyone else is doing. I don't care if I'm small.

I'm just going to go out and make them OK. So I think that ability to adapt and change in young people is something that they like to take a bit on. And because they saw that in me, I've had the confidence to hire young people in my day. So most of my hiring has been minimal.

Like I know like you're one of the most humble people I've spoken to and I've spoken to CEOs. I don't sense humidity and I hate doing this to you, but I read a very, very interesting stat about what happened that I realize after you took over. Could you just share some of those just like that number with the viewers, what those many billions of dollars that you're managing now and what do you mean by 2025?

OK, so one is the aspirations are super large. So I have seen it always mutual fund. And we have ranks right in our industry of forty five mutual funds. I like a hierarchy. Yeah.

It's like, it's literally it takes the money you manage, which is called assets under management. So that's the money you manage. So I manage a hundred crores, you may manage to 100 crores and you'll be ranked to be your ranked based on that.

And these ranks come out every quarter and there's like a lot of social media hoopla about these earnings.

So it's a very good develop sister industry. So I've seen other statistics, Frank. We just broke into the top fifteen this quarter, which are super excited about. And I've seen us manage 6000 crores of money, which is a little less than a billion dollars, and we probably manage a little less than fifty thousand crores of money in the last few years, some 6000 to 50000.

Yeah. And I mean, look, the aspiration is and I've said this in interviews that we want to manage three crores people also ask, you know, what's the strategy to get to three, like crores? And I don't think I have an answer to that. I don't think you need to have answers to that. Even at six thousand crores. I don't think I had an answer as to how we'll get to 50000. But I did know that from six, I'm going to grow this business to nine and ten and from personal growth to fifteen.

So life is a series of small steps taken daily.

And as you take those small steps and a little bit more confidence develops in you, a little bit of luck also comes into play. A few opportunities come and you grab them and, you know, lo and behold, you grow.

The CEO is intimidating. Yeah, especially on the outside ALMAGOR listeners, college kids, we don't even know what a CEO does.

So I have two questions. One, do every like do all the companies have different rules for their CEOs and do what does your life I you you like, what do you do? Like what your budget delivered.

Okay, so the daily changes down there. But I think it's unfortunate that a CEO role is intimidating. And I've had these debates with my father.

I think the word module of this you're all being intimidating in itself is a problem. I don't think the CEO is the one who sits in the corner office and like everybody is really scared of the CEO who's going to walk in. I think a CEO is a people's leader, right?

The coach of the team, the coach of the team, the manager of the team, the guide of the team. And it's your one among equals. And I always say that, you know, organizations have these designations, et cetera. They're all playing roles. But the CEO is, I think, a few things. One, you lead a team and I think I spend fifty percent of my time doing it, child, by the way, I literally spend fifty percent.

I mean, you think it is the easiest thing to do to hire a bunch of smart people and you just assume they're all going to work together.

They don't. You have to facilitate all goulashes.

They are you manage egos, you manage interpersonal issues. Sometimes you'll just be sitting in meetings with not only you have not technical contribution, because I'm not a technical expert in every department. Right.

But I'm just there to facilitate people working together or I'm there to just motivate a team and then tell them that they can do it.

So I think firstly, we are people leaders, secondly, and I think you will understand this well, we are also carriers of the brand because, you know, when you see your lowest mutual fund, your responsibility is to carry the message of it, always mutual fund everywhere that you go and make sure that people think the highest of our mutual funds.

So I wake up every day thinking like I represent the brand and I have to be the best investor of the brand.

I mean, this is something I learned from my father. So he said, I'm ambassador of India. Right. His estate and all these years was ambassador to India. And all his life he spent marketing India and making sure that people thought the best about India. And I think of myself as an investor, always mutual fund. So I think that's the second role that we do. And then, of course, you know, you do a lot of routine staff and you manage business and you make sure the company is profitable and all that stuff happens.

But you're a leader of people and you're an ambassador of the brand.

The one common thing I've seen in all the CEOs I've met as yet, they have different personalities, different ways of doing things. But all of them are good communicators like any any thoughts that they have. And it's often a massive amount of thought. They were articulated very simply.

So I'm told this and I didn't believe this, but actually I over time I've realized that I think it matters because, you know, it's one thing to have talks.

And in India, I don't think it's as much about sports. It's about convincing a large number of people that this is what if I see it tomorrow, we all have to wear red shirts because that's what's going to be good for the company. It's about convincing everyone that they have to wear a T-shirt tomorrow and making sure that they wear a T-shirt tomorrow. And that is communication.

Hmm.

And I think, you know, I think a CEO has to be an optimist and has to be a communicator because you have to lift people up and inspire them.

What would you like to tell Yungas or watching this and telling them says I'll never be a CEO. It starts with you believing that you will be a CEO. In fact, you know, the thing that irritates me or inspires me the most when I interview fresh candidates is I ask them, look, what do you want to be in life? And then they'll say, you know what?

I just want to be a manager. Or like I want to run for I want to hear that you want to be a CEO.

This is a beautiful little quote that I read a long time ago as a kid, that if you aim for the stars, you'll reach halfway through. So if you'll aim for less than a CEO, I don't know where you'll get. I mean, it's like only if you wanted to play cricket and yosano you aimed to be a cricketer, you would always want to be Tendulkar. I want to play for the national team. Nobody said I want to be around.

You drove me to play for my state.

So I'm saying the biggest thing to tell little goals and set aspirations, you know, be hugely ambitious and ambitious is not a bad word. It's not a bad word for a goal. Yeah.

And I also want to highlight is I do think it will do me when money issues are common for India. And this is also something I only learned after starting my own businesses and learning about professional life to people like yourself. It's a beautiful country.

And there's something you and Mukesh Ambani, Assad himself, he said that it took my dad my money maybe 40 years to build out his legacy. It probably took me 20 years to build out a much larger legacy. And it'll take my kids 10 years to build a much larger legacy than what I built in 20 years. And the reason for that is India, the spectrum and the number of people that we have. This is something that young people underestimate.

I remember being an engineering college and I always had the same question that why are these people living so low in life? Like and I had that perspective, fortunately, because of having a lot of business savvy friends outside of engineering college, one studying engineering, starting BBVA who are running their own businesses in college. I said talk much more to them. And I still have this disconnect with my engineering college friends. And I asked my business savvy friends in engineering, I do sense this with all these other people, why are they are so low?

And they told me that it's just cultural upbringing. They've been told that you're in engineering college. You better have a stable job at the end of it. And that's it.

It's that whole. Oh, man. Not good old, no criminal Gergi stallholder all at the core of it.

It's a status game. The parents want to be able to tell their friends that, oh, my kids got a great job.

All Laguerre, if it was Kishida would be. And then if you're a woman then you have kids and all that.

But why am law aimed at me start by aiming really, really high. And I think this is this definitely an Ivy League education. It forces you to aim really, really high. At least start thinking that you are the best in the world. Right.

I you know, one of the things I always used to tell my team, even when we were in college, is that, you know, the league table can call your bank anything, OK, that's reality. But in your head, you have to be number one.

And in your head you have to be number one, because if you think like number thirty six in your head, you will always stay at number thirty six hundred percent.

You know, and one thing I've learned about business and entrepreneurship and careers is that anything is possible. Oh yeah. Oh my God. You can aim for the stars and it'll just boil down to how much you're willing to execute.

And sometimes, you know, and I've seen this in my last three year career, you know, when things like Paradorn and some of the things that we've done, I mean, opportunities come at you and you think there's no chance that I am going to have to get this.

Well, you know, why would this come to me? Why would I get this? And it just happens if you want it hard enough. I mean, look, so don't judge me for this. I'm a total Shotokan fan of him.

And I actually really believe that whole dialogue about other people's attitudes that I actually the world conspires to make you to succeed.

Yeah. My my my reason for choosing this career and not creating a comedy gone or lightwater gone, is that I want to breed entrepreneurship in India. I want to share my mistakes. I want to share the feel of I've been blessed. I've been born with a lot of my own. I just want to put it out of the world. And, you know, if there's ever a hundred billionaires of the world list, I want fifty to be from India and I want forty nine.

We like listeners of this board because I want to hire them, but at least they should have heard one board and got something. I want twenty five of them to be women. I really hope so. I like twenty five of them to be a woman. I want that to be a change through the broadcast and I'll tell you why. Again, there's this concept I read about a lot. So it's this concept of matriarchal societies. I believe that Bhutan is a matriarchal society, parts of the northeast, parts of the northeast, Kerala.

And you know what? It does it. I've been to the Northeast. I've been and spoken to men from matriarchal societies. Again, I will get hate from this because, you know, in the end, there does have a section of people who do not believe at all in this country.

Anytime I say something from a woman on Twitter, there's like 10 percent of people who. Great. Yeah.

So it's OK. That's OK. I will will will will bear some of those arrows shot. Why do you think a matriarchal society is good for the Lord, I let you take that answer and then I'll give my own perspective. Also, could you just explain on matriarchal societies on very simple words to the listeners?

I think matriarchy is where women play a strong role in society. I think you mentioned Kerala in the Northeast. I've also seen this. My mother in law hails from Bangalore on. And I think the advantage of a matriarchal society and forget matriarchal society of lifting women is that when you lift the women, you lift a community.

And when you lift a community, you lift the economy.

You just want to give a nugget like a to you. Oh, yeah. In Israel, the country was developed after World War Two where they had Jews from all over Europe. And although all of the world's I into Israel.

Yeah, but they do know how to unify everyone. So they did this very interesting thing where they made Hebrew compulsory and Hebrew was like their Sanskrit because that's the unifying thing. Yeah, sounds good. That's kind of dying out and it's coming back slowly. It's coming back gradually like people are getting interested in Sanskrit again.

But Hebrew was the language in daily dialogue and the government didn't know how to bring back Hebrew completely. So they made Hebrew compulsory for everyone to afford standard, but for all the good to Dunstable because the girls would become mothers and they would be Zendaya families. That's the core control matriarchy that women have. This ability to unify what we call galvanizer galvanizing and engineering is when you dip another lensink and the whole middle gets lensink, that's the ball matriarchal society. When people learn to look at societies, businesses, life like that and not I don't want women to get power, women to be in power.

That's when we really started.

We had, you know, my mother in law had this made and I think I've told this story before from Mangler. And she I think maybe it would have been fourth or fifth bus. And she came to Bombay and she started working with my mother in law. Now, she didn't know any English, I think, medium or whatever, and then was forced to drop out of school to support a big family of brothers, etc.. So she brought up my husband.

And then I think when my husband's aunt went abroad, she went abroad with her and she traveled the world.

She learned English, she did everything, came back to Bombay, and she was able to migrate all three of her sisters from the village in Bombay. She was able to settle down her family and buy them land in Mangalore.

And she became a base for other goals of that community in Bangalore, Bookham, settle down in Bombay. So that is the galvanizing effect that a woman can have.

She now, by the way, she paid for her own wedding. She's now sending her two daughters to English medium schools.

And I think that shift now from Hindi medium forward standard dropout to sending your daughters and getting them educated.

When there is an orbital shift in our society, they are like, what do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of both men and women? Like really our strengths and weaknesses of women and also strengths and weaknesses of men.

So I won't see men and women. I see masculine and feminine because I do believe that there are feminine qualities that also exist in men.

But I do believe the world actually, if you look at the skill set of the future, it favours the feminine side. So the all skill set, which was the masculine skill set, is analytical. I mean, like, you know, you remember these books that used to say if two men can do a task in this much time, then how many men can screw a light bulb? Then how many men will it take to do four light bulbs, etc.

? So it was all commodity stocks.

I mean, nobody wrote those things about women, by the way, because they know each woman is different.

But if you look at the skill sets of women, they are creativity, customer experience, for instance.

But at its core, it's compassion, it's understanding.

So your mother is the best provider of compassion and customer experience in the country. You are Indian mother on average knows how to manage her husband. She knows, like my mother managed my father's profession and career and she cooked Somoza's for everybody on 26 January because that was part of his profession. She knew how to bring me up and sent me to an Ivy League school. She dealt with my brother. She dealt with her in-laws, and she had no job of her own.

She had four or five different customers in her life who she was managing to perfection every single day.

What is this customization of expedience?

You know, the goal of spirituality from a career in practical perspective is to balance your internal, masculine and feminine energy, which in the real world means balancing your masculine and feminine skill sets. For example, if you think too much like a guy, which was me or my early twenties, it was about so I list out some masculine and feminine strengths and weaknesses. Yeah, so masculine strengths. I feel that guys for some reason. And am I wrong?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in my experience I. That guy's skin unscalable deblieux, and you can make a guy work with another guy who are kind of in sync with him and the video, and then even we don't know if the 100 guys things are really 100 days will work.

And, you know, if they think similarly, if they think similarly, if the things of women's trends, on the other hand, again, it's multitasking, it's endurance, being able to take like a huge amount of being able to handle pain.

I mean, you know, one of the one of the most beautiful memories of this whole period is what are the countries who handled covid well?

Well, they seem to have women, prime ministers or presidents do understand what's happening on the ground and handle the situation of human suffering.

They say that if there are only women leaders, there won't be any wars.

So, I mean, you look at and again, you know, you don't at someone like Jacinda Ardern, right. She's a mother. And during the period she's sitting and managing her kids at home on a sweatshirt and talking to her people on video, and she's just making it like she's part of the problem.

She's not above everyone else because she's this untouchable.

So vulnerability which we talk about.

Yeah, but I'll tell you, I'll also bring in a bit of truth here at the cost of being pessimistic, OK?

And OK.

Now there's a big weakness that women, especially in Indian society, have a lot of conditioning that they've gone through. Yeah, because Indian society, from the time you're a little girl, you're told certain things or even even in the matriarchal bartering.

And that's what I'm saying women need to have because you're not told to be ambitious, you're not tall to have big aspirations. And unfortunately, and I think Sheryl Sandberg said this in the American context, I think it's even more true in the Indian context. You are told to quit your job well before and make a huge deal out of this whole management thing.

So I have women still coming to me saying, you know, I don't want to take on a bigger project or, you know, I can't change jobs because I'm planning to get married.

I mean, yeah, it's it is how it is. And this is the bitter truth. I feel like we are one generation away from the equality you spoke of when we spoke with us. Twenty five. Now, according to me, practically what's going to happen and this is not something I wish I wish that it's 50 50 now, but I think it's going to be something like a best case scenario would be 60 40.

I hope my daughter's generation. I mean, I know that it's I know my generation will always hear things like the only woman CEO and all that stuff. I hope my daughter's generation is able to change that.

I'm seeing some signs of it because, you know, what's happening now is that while there is a strong feminist movement, there are two sections of the feminist movement as well. And the majority in that is all just a lot of highlighting the negatives without thinking of solutions. But the next generation will start thinking of the solutions.

And by the way, I should also tell you, people keep asking me these questions of like, what are your challenges as a woman and all that stuff. There are huge advantages to being a woman.

For instance, when you're the only woman of forty four men and my peers often tell me I get no attention, maybe much more than I should.

I've had the opportunity because I'm one of the few young women CEOs to interview people like out on the table idea to spend time with people like Darmody to talk to Mediacom. I have been given opportunities because your gender makes you different. It makes your thinking different. It makes your approach different.

And the world is looking for different people. So I will not step back and say it is only winnable. And I think it is about how you look at yourself. I think people are ometer, right?

If I think being a woman is an advantage the world will make in, then, ma'am, like when I meet other you Dubas, I know that they've been through a similar struggle like like like myself, like. And it's very similar. Our journeys, our initial struggles. We had to figure out Gamora. We had our team other the difficult scaling up.

So when you meet ambitious, successful women like yourself, um, what's that underlying vibe like where you connect assistance?

We connect on so many levels.

Even when I meet women see yours, by the way, and there are so few of us and I have friends who are women CEOs in manufacturing businesses and who are film producers. Oh, my God.

The bond is incredible because we connect on shared experiences and we all have shared stories. We all have shared stories of going into rooms where we're the only girl and maybe the guys bathroom is working, but the ladies bathroom is not working in the office. We have stories as banal as that. We have stories of being scared to talk in a conference room because I struggled with this even now, like they're fifteen days talking and there's like an hour. No, Goswami kind of like everyone talking over each other.

I get very withdrawn and many of my girlfriends tell me these stories.

We have stories about how a lot of the socializing is done over dinners, especially in financial services in the US, over drinks and Denine. You just don't feel comfortable talking about that. And unfortunately and I'll get into trouble for saying this Midwest. Helped our causes, women either in some ways, well, it's made the workplace a lot safer. People are getting more scared while women.

So we have those stories also. So women born on many different levels. And I think probably the best part of my job is do I do is the sessions I do with young girls.

What would you like men to know about an ambitious woman's mindset?

It's not very different from this and it has no reason to be different. But the only thing I would say to guys is and I'll give you a funny example, that women are going to behave differently from you. So I get this thing with you guys. We get very scared when women cry in the office like they managers.

They get scared in the office and you almost see them hyperventilate or then they start judging then or she's not emotionally mature and stuff like that.

So I keep trying to tell guys and I told one of my former bosses this, that is it okay for a guy to use bad language in the office once in a while? We forgive it, right?

We say it was a moment of anger. If a woman can express her emotions through crying and it's not like she's crying on the floor every day, but once in a year, if she's cried, don't touch it. So we're as ambitious as you, but we express ourselves differently, so just don't judge us for it.

Are you so from your outlook, from where you stand, are you hopeful about where India is going with respect to this gender equality thing? Professional gender equality mainly?

I think it can't get much worse. I only think it'll get better. I also think young girls are a lot more aspirational now. And I think even from your 20 or 30 city. So if I look at my father's family and some of the girls from Sadan, you with our family from they all want professional education. I'll tell you another really interesting thing. There's this whole myth that men have in the office that the minute a girl gets pregnant, she's not going to come back.

OK, I have had countless number of girls because we have a lot of women in the 30s bracket. All of them have their kids and they come back to work.

And so they know their careers are important to them.

And my mother's generation, I don't think that was the case was it's gradually, though, now I'm criticized by this.

I mean, again, I'm criticized for this by my co-founder and also by my team occasionally that I bring in too much emotion into my work. But that's a creative profession. Creativity comes out of the same place of emotion. So as my career is going forward, I'm even more emotionally balanced but emotional. And that's why I'm going to use this opportunity to just request people that if there's any girl who's watching this board who who's looking for an opportunity, I have this goal of collaborating, like, as in establishing 1000 entrepreneurs.

So if you're watching this and you want to get into entrepreneurship scan, you don't know where to start writing to us that he knows. I'd be amazed at the dot com, I hope. To be a part of that change, for the sake of my sisters as the single mum, they've told me all my life and want their daughters I'm sorry, and one the daughters definitely like I mean, I'm not a father yet.

But one day, if you know the next generation, definitely I hope to be a part of that change, you know?

And while I also have been in rooms with just guys. Yeah. So I know what that side of the game is. And I know how guys look at women also. And there is sexism like that is like and there is bitching about women that happens the whole gender.

But you know one thing. So it's really interesting. My husband joined I'm part of a sort of CEO forum with mostly guys, and my husband also joined the forum, which was for spouses, OK? And he's the only guy in this group that he's in, which is all women. And he says it totally changed his perspective because he says that is reverse sexism. Also, it's not about men. It's we villainize men. It's the majority that vilifies the minority.

And it is very subconscious. So, you know, it's not just about men. If you were if you were, you know, 50 people from one state and there was one Mauboussin from somewhere else, then all speak in their language.

So it is also a majority syndrome.

It's not men versus women syndrome.

My husband has just seen this and he said every guy should be in a group with the majority of women who understand what it feels like. I think you tweeted about this. He tweeted about this and he said he totally says you should do it. I've seen it change the kind of man he is.

And I I mean, I just hope that these series of the actually the first podcast in the series of Women Entrepreneurs podcast never stop. OK, so there'll be lots of them.

So I'm honestly, as a guy, only organizations like this give you the correct kind of perspective. Yeah, it's an organization they have on a daily basis. But thank you, ma'am.

This is a lot of fun. Uh, I'm hoping to do a lot more podcasts with you going forward.

Thank you so much. It was a lot of fun. I think we talked about everything under the sun.

Yeah. And I'm sure you will reach that thriller, Kromagg and beyond. Thank you.

And I know that you need a podcast also influenced to, like, people positively. Yeah, that's that's the hope that this this podcast goes out to a lot of people. So if you watch it at this point, please share it with everyone. You know, men, women, everyone on board. Yes. We need we need the content like this to really go to the right people, the leaders of this country. So, again, thank you.

Thank you so much. Beautiful.