Xeloda, one of the most respected Indian start ups, because it's one of the billion dollar wood Indian startups that's actually completely bootstrapped story of zero that began with the comment brothers we've already hosted and didn't comment on the runway show. And today it's Nikil Carmen St.. We had the luxury of actually being in Boston with Nicole Garment, who's a dear friend of mine. Now, in this episode, he shares his version of the story, which began at age 14 when he dropped out of school, didn't go to college, missed out on all the school and college experiences, missed out on a formal education, but instead taught himself about the different facets of life, especially the facets related to finance.

Nickols brother Nitin actually refers to Nicole as possibly the best trader he knows, and Nithin believes that trading is a very intuitive skill. You're either born with it or you're not born with it.

So in today's episode, I try to break down that aspect of Nicole's mind amongst many other aspects, including a little bit about his personal life, including a little bit about how life has changed after he's become a billionaire.

This is the the story from Nicole Gometz perspective and also a little bit about what Z that's planning for the future of this country, a very interesting conversation from a finance perspective, even if you don't know anything about finance, the lessons you learn in this particular episode will stay with you for life. Lots to learn from one of the great startup stories of this country. Z has Nikil comment on the radio show. Honored to have another Xeloda co-founder on this show, Nicole Gunmetal, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Randi. Thank you for having me.

Now, this particular broadcast, the subject title is dropped out of school at 15, at 14 or 15 around that age.

And then you ended up cofounding zero out with your brother. I think the audience also knows the little story from that podcast.

Maybe one highlight from that podcast would be how your brother claims that you one of the most naturally gifted stockbrokers he's ever seen, the most natural, gifted traders he's ever seen.

So firstly, before we actually get into the story, do you agree with that statement? Well, I think as brothers, we have to say nice stuff about each other publicly. So maybe a part of it is true. And some part of it is exaggeration, I'm guessing, right? Yeah.

You know, again, I usually try being polite with my guests and I bring this in later.

Yeah. But I feel like I have a bit of an equation with you. So are you are you conscious of that whole billionaire tag which is associated with the Comet Brothers.

Uh, a little bit, but it's a new thing, so we don't know how to deal with it yet, we are conscious. But I think time will tell how we were able to utilize it, if we look upon it as an opportunity to do more and new things by virtue of having capital, I think is a good way to look at it. Also, valuations do not mean you have that money, right? Like anybody can be valued at anything.

It's a company's valuation. It does not mean you have a billion dollars in the bank. So it doesn't really change that much.

Let me just put this in context for the young listeners who may not understand valuations and equity, basically say, listen, it creates a company and owns 50 percent of that company. Eventually the world of investments and the financial world would say, OK, this particular company is worth hundred crore rupees, so that person becomes worth 50 crores automatic. That's right. And what you have in your savings account or your current account or your own personal portfolio is different from that.

So how do the two worlds meet?

Like, so I'll tell you in the startup world. Right. Typically when you start a company, you raise funding to go ahead and spend on acquiring clients or growing your company. Founders don't have secondary loans, but secondary I mean, as when they personally take out money from the company for a long time. Typically, when you do many cases of funding, they will be opportunities for a founder to get some liquidity, sell a part of his equity and take out money.

Then that equation comes into play. But for the most part, a company's value is a company's value. And not very often is it that person's valuation. What do you think of it on a personal level?

Because I know you're, again, getting into the dirty details pretty early, but you are a spiritual guy.

You have a spiritual inclination, I feel. Do you get conscious of it on a very personal level, that wider life? And you also really young men like people don't associate the term billionaire with someone who is, you know, just in their 30s or early 30s at that. So you kind of become existential on a personal level with that. Not yet.

I think luckily for both me and we are surrounded by people who kind of like Mockus at every turn, like colleagues and family and stuff like that. So they keep all of this at check kalasz we were talking about earlier. He gives us a hard time each time, you know, that word is mentioned. And, you know, by virtue of having these people in our life, I think we talking right now coming to your story.

Yeah. You dropped out of school to become a chess player. Is that true? That was the intention.

Uh, partly true. I think I was reasonably good at chess growing up. I started playing very early. I think there must have been five or six when I started, you know, you play that you played the school level and you played the district, the city, the state and play nationally and stuff like that, all of that happened. Dropping out of school was a combination of many things, not chess alone, the fact that it was not very good at school.

I don't think of it as the best student or the best marks. There were also other things at play, like I started doing some business on the side, ESL, mobile phones, like old ones which use. 9TH grade. So this would be 2002. Yes, something like that, a little bit earlier than that or so I think. Well, yeah, yeah. And then I got a job in a call center at 17. And I think the the drive to make money was there from the very beginning.

And I would say, looking back at it, I have more regrets about having dropped out when I did, because you meet people, you know, you meet friends in college and each time I meet people. They talk about how the best friendships and the best times in their life happened when they were in college and I have never had that experience and nor will I ever. So you feel like you missed out on a certain experience in life, but that's specifically what you regret about dropping out.

That's the only thing I regret the rest of it. I don't regret the career because not I mean, we got lucky like so many times in life. Right. So definitely don't regret that. But the whole experience of going to college, which is in every movie and you see friends from college and it's reinstated, you know, all over, every time you meet somebody from a group of people who went to college together.

That I miss. Yeah, I miss having that bro messing around. How did you get into trading? And, you know, actually, you know, before we actually get to talking about trading. Yeah, I heard you say something very interesting. And one of your YouTube videos, you said that chess creates a very good environment in your head because it allows you to be creative within a framework of three decided rules. And you said the same rules somewhat apply to the stock market and finance.

Yeah. So chess is less about intelligence and more about the ability to remember every game which was played historically. So you need to know all the openings that are out there. You need to know the game and game theory. And there are a bunch of basic structural rules in chess. You have to like try and control the center, develop your pieces quickly, Castle, as quickly as you can. You have to follow those rules and then you can add the extra thing which makes your differentiated chess player not just reading, but I think life is like that.

You can't not have any rules whatsoever. A certain level of discipline, I think, goes a long way in making every success story happen. Like what kind of discipline? If I were to equate it with trading, I would say things like having a stop loss, not taking too much leverage, diversifying, not touching penny stocks. There are rules and trading. There are rules and chess. But what you do outside of these rules makes you different.

But you have to follow these rules again, referencing the board with your brother. We call the Test cricket. Yes. It's kind of like Test cricket. Like you play a slow and steady game play article.

You play go into the classic definitions of things. So I just want to highlight something that you spoke about. You you basically were talking about the concept of pattern recognition that, OK, you've seen past Jesse James, you've learned from it. Yeah. And then when you're in a situation where you want to win a chess match, you go back to one of your battle and you say, OK, it is similar to that particular chess game I saw in 1997 or whatever.

And that's the basic concept of how artificial intelligence works. Also, when will you and you know what APower brought out. So, yeah, well, that's that's what's happening at record level. You're feeding in a lot of patterns, right? That system is learning it and then it's executing things based on, you know, what the old patterns were. Which also reminds me of an article I read about intuition, human intuition. You know, people say that, OK, have a good success.

I can read right. Or I can read situations at its core. It's basically pattern recognition. I think we were discussing this yesterday. Yeah. Last night.

Yes, this morning.

I don't remember when this morning. But it's basically you you end up reading someone's eyebrow movements, the way their eyes move, the way their lips get post up or whatever it's going in certain situations. And then you're able to kind of go back to your own memory and highlight a moment from your past really. OK, in that situation, this person was thinking in this way. Therefore, Nikil might be thinking like this. And according to the context of this business scenario, let me say this.

So let me make this decision, which is a very strong it's a very important trait in the world of startups and in just the professional world. But does intuition come into play in the stock market as well? And is that why your brother called you naturally gifted at this game? I think it does, yeah, so I've been doing exactly the same job I do today for a long time, ever since I've been 17 years old. So it's been a good 17 years of watching the markets every day.

I don't think I have missed a single market day. If the markets have been open and I might be anywhere in the world. But I'm in front of my terminals during market hours and looking at one thing for so many years. Every day, I think gives you a sense of intuition. I think it does. And you think it's the same logic that it's pattern recognition. And it could be.

I think there is no structure to it. If you go back in time, like the very early traders, there was something called reading the day. They were just look at stock prices changing and be able to discern trends in the market that has kind of like become passé and is no longer true. But I'm sure there is some level of in need. You can call it feel you need to have a feel for what is going on in the market.

And that helps you decide whether you should go a long shot or what you should do. Is it like gambling? It could be like gambling. It depends on if you're Leawood and, you know, if you have 100 rupees in your account and in a hurry to make money, if you borrow nineteen hundred rupees and buy something worth two thousand rupees, it can very easily become gambling. But if you follow rules and you're looking to make, say, 15 percent a year or 20 percent a year and you're in the market to garner value over the long term, then it's not like gambling.

So, you know, movies like Wolf of Wall Street or The Scam 90 to show, can you highlight certain aspects of the stock market that they've shown which are not really true other than other than the lifestyle, specifically when it comes to the technicalities of finance?

Yeah, one of the issues that's probably not how it really is a scam, 92 date. I've watched it a couple of months ago and a lot of what he did back then is no longer relevant or even possible because technology has come in and kind of streamlined the compliance around trading. Right, Wolf, of Wall Street and other great movie that I love. I think short people in our industry in a very bad light. But I think people in that area were able to drive up stock prices and manipulate it to a certain extent for the lack of regulation and lack of penetration in the market.

Not that many people access the markets at that time. It would be very hard to do that today, especially in large cap companies. There is very little, you know, insider style for manipulation or any of that. Yeah.

Now, coming back to your story, so you see your little brother, you know, getting active in the stock market, you learned yourself because there's a lot of teenagers, young college students, who are kind of fascinated by the stock market. A bunch of them, Stepanovna, just a bunch of them don't because they are afraid. Do they think that? No, I don't want to play with money, money, the real world. So what was your mindset at whatever age you started and how will you know?

I think 17 I still remember because I had an account which aircon and. Yeah, so I did. And Nithin being in the trading world already made a big difference and it kind of maybe drew me towards trading. But trading is one of those things that you can't really it's not a team sport. I don't think two people can trade together. It doesn't work like that. There is a different style of trading for every person and the best teacher is probably experience.

You have to you have to try it. You have to lose money. You have to make money and then lose money again. When you go through that cycle, many times you start to realize what you did wrong when you lost money. And that becomes the the teaching from that time period.

And initially you're playing with smaller amounts. Then once you become comfortable, you play with like, larger. Yeah.

So initially when I started, I used to work in a call center called 24 by seven in Bangalore. Only days of then call center started, you know, and I do the night shift and I trade as well, said the money which went in with savings from that salary. And I used to get paid like eight thousand rupees a month or something. So it was not a large amount of money at all. But the thing with stock markets is it does not matter what your capital you bring into the market.

It is still a lot of fun outside of the money making aspect. To watch something go up in value after you have bought it is very exhilarating and addictive in a in a very weird manner. You explain this further.

Yeah, very often when you buy something and it works out, it is not because you did better research than anybody or it's not because you're smarter than someone else. It's a factor of chance. And, you know, many forces that people will not truly understand. But I think the human mind is wired in such a way that subconsciously you attribute. The stock going up to something you think you have done correctly, and when the opposite happens and a stock goes down, the same thing happens again.

You think you have done something wrong, so you start to evolve and actually start to become a trader when you come to the conclusion that nobody can predict stock prices. You could have been doing this for 40 years. You might have more information than anybody else, but it is impossible to see stock. Is it price 100 and it will go up to 120 in three months. Nobody can make that call. Once you arrive at that spot, then you focus less about predicting the future.

You worry more about covering risk in all market conditions. You think if the stock goes from 100 to 110, how can I have the best risk metrics in place if it goes from 100 to 90 the same, if it becomes 70 the same, and then you arrive at the model portfolio, which should do OK in all these circumstances. And then, you know, you just close your eyes and pray. Yeah, but making predictions on stock price is impossible.

And I think people have to realize that very early.

Again, if you are to like, you know, signal out, one particular skill would probably be pattern recognition or anything else.

I would say more the ability to be able to objectively read sentiment. At the end of the day, stocks move not because of how the fundamentals have changed, not because a pattern which happened in the past will replicate itself. The entire premise of technical analysis. If you watch TV or not, people keep seeing moving average crossover or head and shoulders and stuff like that. It is based on the premise that the past will repeat itself, and I personally think market activity is random, what happens tomorrow might have no resemblance to what happened in the past.

So I don't think that helps as much. But being able to read sentiment because stock is more if more people want to buy and less people want to sell it to look at people around you and figure out if they are inclined to buy. I think that really helps. So understanding human psychology, I think you would be surprised. But equity trading is essentially just understanding psychology and understanding what investors are doing, understanding what promoters are doing, even to the extent that understanding world leaders and politicians are doing, because that in turn has an effect on what happens to the underlying companies.

Right. For the youngest. Got to explain what equity trading is short.

So each time a company needs to raise capital, they either go to a bank or they go to, you know, a private equity firm, which gives them money privately. If they want to raise capital from the people of India, the public, they go to stock markets. So I have a company X, I make hundred rupees of profit. I need 10 rupees to grow my company. So I will go to the stock markets. I'll say I'll sell 10 percent of my company for 100 rupees.

You give me the money and then you become shareholders. In my business, that is essentially equity being created and then people buy and sell that equity constantly and that is equity trading.

And again, speaking of all human psychology. Yeah. So do you understand human psychology on a mass scale because of trading in the stock market that doesn't also teach you human psychology on a very one-to-one level. Do you think you become a better read of people as well?

A lot of people tell me I'm a terrible reader of people, so I don't know. But I enjoy psychology a lot about human psychology, around finance or even the behavioral psychology aspects of things. Uh, I think it's the most interesting thing in the world to try and understand what somebody else is thinking and what is driving them to think in a certain manner. I find it fascinating. Yeah, but if your brother already one of the most gifted Titos, he knows, you know, what goes on in the head of someone like that.

Like like you like if you if I mean, everyone knows that you've kind of proven that with Xeloda and everything you guys have done.

But what goes on in your head if you're actually born with that gift of being great at finance on an everyday basis, do you constantly think of the stock market, the numbers flashing in your head? No, nothing like what's happening and wish that were true.

Uh. So one thing the stock markets teach you is humility, because you might have been doing it for 15 years, you might have made a lot of money trading, but the minute you let that get to you, the 21st year will, you know, take everything away, because every trade is like your beginning and the trade is not concerned by who is placing that trade. Hmm. So it's a very it's the ecosystem which is very levelling because you might have X amount of capital and someone else might have one hundred rupees.

But when you buy or sell to the market, you're exactly the same. But outside of, you know, being able to read and demand and having having a lot of experience and trading and stuff like that, I don't think I'm doing anything special. The only thing I've learned with time is the rules that I have in my trading systems. And these are not fancy or. These are not things which are difficult to replicate, you know, very simple stuff, as long as you do the simple stuff correctly and you don't have ridiculous expectations, you can't go into the market thinking and make 30, 40 percent every year.

If the risk free rate of a certain country that's a five percent and inflation is around, then if you're making 19 percent a year, I think it's an incredibly good return if you're trying to achieve that. I think stock markets are a great place. The one thing people forget when you compare the stock market with other investments like real estate or bank fixed deposits and everything else that is available in India is the liquid nature of stock markets. You can sell it at any point of time and you can take out money.

And that makes this product a lot better than other products which don't have that aspect of liquidity. We all talk about why so many people are coming into the markets today. I personally think that place that has a huge factor to play in all of this, people in the pandemic realize they might have a plot of land somewhere or they might have a home somewhere. But if things go crazy and they need to take out that money tomorrow, it's not easy.

But in the stock markets, it is on it. And I foresee that more money will come in by virtue of this reason as well. Yesterday, we were talking about how generational gaps are reducing basically means that Nikil, born in 1986 and then born in 1993, a one generation, someone born 1997, is a second generation, born in 1999 as a third generation. So the generational gap is reducing, which means the world is getting filled up with newer, fresher, more advanced and more rapidly advancing mindsets than ever before.

Which is why I feel that there's a huge burst in the world of personal finance, asset management and all these domains where, you know, your average person on the road is a little concerned with how do I multiply my money by to mutual funds through, you know, the stock market and whatever you have.

In in this whole ecosystem that the country has kind of entered, I think, zero, that was a very right moment app, but you guys began as with the with the intention of just starting a portfolio management service in Iraq and then something happened along the way. And, you know, let's not build a product. Yeah. So my question is what happened along the way? Because if you you guys are great traders, I'm sure you already have done a great job as portfolio managers for engineers or, you know, just people who invested with you.

But why did it all go down this road of creating a tech startup through the world of finance? Because it's given a lot of inspiration to a lot of entrepreneurs, some other domains, for example, myself and content after speaking. And then I really started thinking about how I can incorporate back into what I'm doing. Right. So I'm sure you all also had some kind of an inspirational moment like that. And that's my question.

So when we began at the very beginning, we wanted to do broking because we were traders and everything which was available out there was horrible. It was very expensive, very clunky. So when we started, cost was our unique USP and people came to us because we were charging like 20 rupees and everybody else was charging half a percent, which is maybe 10 times as expensive as us. The shift from cost being the USPI to technology, I think to be fair, I think the credit goes to college and nithin, maybe because when we hired or when Carlos joined us, I think that's when we actually became a tech player.

And all of the tech products and everything around technology has largely been his or his doing. Yeah. So I think all the all the credit to him and on a larger scale, I mean, the only way for us to reach millions of people across the country is to have better tech products than other people and reach them online. I don't think the brick and mortar way of doing things works anymore. In fact, Bombi, this weekend I've been meeting a lot of people who are in the brick and mortar industry.

So even these guys are now exactly what we are talking about right now. They realize how important technology is and they want to adopt it. But I think I think it's very hard for someone who has done stuff a certain way for like 20 years to suddenly change and become a different kind of company. I think often in every company's lifecycle, when a company does well. Right. Everybody associated with that company, like I was talking about reading earlier, is naturally surrounded by people who are treating them like they have some superior ability or they're gifted in some way by virtue of what happened to the company many times.

How well a company does is a factor of timing, luck and where who was at what point of time. I think it's very important for people running companies to not forget that. But more importantly, I think you have to understand when you're becoming less relevant in every industry and be able to replace yourself with people who are smarter from a newer generation like you were listening to earlier.

Do you see my generation being, for lack of a better word, more gifted than like the previous generation?

Probably I would say so. I think like I'm 34 now, and I'm sure in four or five, six years I will become less relevant than I am today. And a new 25 year old will be better equipped to do what I'm doing. But I think I have to be smart about that and I have to make sure I find those people today and not wait for me to, you know, become less competent in a way and then do it that that keeps companies going for much longer.

And it's also about the guy who started it all, staying humble and taking feedback. Men like this is something I've seen that even if you recruit younger people to join your team, sometimes you're too arrogant to listen to them. Right. So have you heard of the local business media? They don't. You must have seen the local business strategy from them, right? Seminars. And how do you keep your content relevant, considering the content you're putting up?

How do you keep topics, you know, popping in your head and decide to be just hire younger writers every year? You've hired all the 93 born people know how old am I? If I want people to hire all the 1971 every year, you just keep hiring younger at the same time. Take feedback right from the bottom. I think. I think we are there. I think in a couple of years, I mean, nobody remains the largest forever.

Like, we have gotten lucky and we're the largest broker. And like we were talking about asset management, we are coming back into asset management in a way with Rubicon and focused on the ultra Jenise base. But in a couple of years, like everybody who is, you know, me, it then or anybody else who's playing a role of leadership has been doing what we are doing for ten years, 11 years or longer in many cases. So we will have to bring new blood in and allow for that new blood to take roles of leadership because the older people will become less relevant.

Speaking about new blood, I've got to take you back to the time you were fifteen. Yeah. And I don't know what your mindset was then because you seem like a very calm, collected human being who's doing his own thing. But was there any kind of fire to prove yourself after dropping out?

See, what happens is once you stop going to school, you feel very insecure. Your friends, your classmates of the time go on to, you know, colleges and they have a certain trajectory. So you read a lot to overcompensate. I think I went through that feels like self study, self study. You need whatever you find interesting. But while you're reading, you're not actually reading because you're interested in what the book has to offer. A part of it is you're interested, but a large part is you kind of like dealing with your own insecurity of.

Not going to college, right, because you feel like a child. I didn't go to college. All my friends did. But at least I'm, you know, leading and I'm learning and I'm not being left behind. Do you think that's a more valuable education? Uh, in some cases, yeah, but in most cases, no, I would say because I don't think I would ever recommend dropping out to people because we got lucky, but not necessarily 100 people who drop out.

You'll have more than 10 or 20. You'll get lucky. So for the vast majority to have that formal education structure behind them, prepares them for so many other things in life which dropping out is not right.

I mean, I know that you're going to highlight luck as a big part of this whole process.

But other than that, on a very, like human level, what did you do right from a mentality perspective or from an execution based perspective? Not from a business perspective. The guy, Nikil, what did that 18 year old 19 year old think? Correct. What are you willing to do that set you up for the rest of your life? Yeah, see, when we began breaking in 2009, 2010, we were coming off the financial crisis, which happened in 08.

Stock markets were not cool. Broking was definitely not cool. There was very little innovation in money being spent on doing new things in stock markets. So we started at a point where there was a vacuum in a way, for anybody to do anything new in stock markets. And we took advantage of that. If we were to try and replicate exactly what we did back then in any other time, maybe in 2025. I don't think it would work.

So that played a huge part in and personally, I think the. In my entire career of creating a broking asset management, the one thing I think I have, the one thing which has been a little bit of a differentiator is all the time and I spent on the stock market, I'm sticking to my niche. I'm not trying to build something where I have to start learning from the basics. This is something I've been doing all my life and I'm attempting to do new things in the same industry.

They're essentially the same job, but with different skins. You know, I think that makes a huge difference. All right.

You know, I mean that I go to highlight something for you because I just feel you're too humble guy. So you may not highlight this yourself.

You spoke about sticking to your niche, but in its essence, that's preparation for your moment. So maybe the 2008 crash was your moment, but you spend from 1999 to 2007 just keeping at it again. The luck factor could be that you found your vibe earlier in life. You found something that you enjoy, something that comes naturally to you, but you kept at it. And I'm sure that even once all began Xeloda, there were all those learnings of seven, eight years of work but just came into play.

Right place right now. What do you agree? I would agree. And I think what you mentioned that is very important. The fact that I liked this job, the fact that I like the stock market, I think that's the biggest differentiator. Like after 17 years, like five years down the line, if I were to not make any money, I still think I would be sitting and reading even if I were to be losing money because I enjoyed that much.

I think that was the real differentiator.

I mean, they say that success happens when preparation meets opportunity. I also feel it. You should add another Messala, which is called the Masato fun. I really see joy in you when you speak about the stock market or just finance in general.

And so now, after all, it has been established, the obvious question is what? What next? Like you guys, I mean, there's a lot of people who would probably stop doing their job after they've reached a point like which the brothers have reached. But you guys are planning for the annual, you know, hiring more building teams. Yeah.

What's the thought process? Well, so right now, I'm spending a lot of time on Rubicon, which is the asset management company. What? OK, hold up.

I need you to explain to the young listeners what isn't management.

Sure. So if you want to invest your money in equity markets to get a return, you can either do it yourself or do it through a fund manager. Asset Management has three kind of licenses in India. You can be a mutual fund. You can take any amount of capital. You can't really hedge too much. Hedging is covering for risk by taking a position on the short side.

You've got to break that down short. So hedging is say I want to buy it alliance together. I want to hold 100 shares of lines. But if Reliance falls 50 percent, I want some kind of an insurance. So I will buy 100 shares of the lines. And then I will also add to that instrument for which ipca two rupees on my 100 rupee investment on the Lions to cover the possibility that the stock falls 30 percent. So if the stock falls 30 percent, that two rupees will become 20 bucks.

And I'll have, I'll have kind of like go till the part of the risk of cushioning your loss. Yeah. Yeah. But that two rupees is coming off my upside. If the stock goes from 100 to 110, I may not eat it. Yeah. So that is essentially hedging. And there was a mutual fund. So mutual funds can't do any hedging. You can take in 500 rupees thousand rupee investment that a pooled investment vehicle with one hundred investors put money.

All of it gets collected and aggregated and then invested into the stock market. The fund manager will typically charge you a two percent management fee a year and present on the money. You make two percent on the money you invest, on the money you invest. It is expensive. Yeah, it used to be a lot higher and they were distributors and all kind of leakages in place. The regulator has cleaned it up to a large extent, but still a lot of work needs to be done.

The second mode of asset management in India is a RPM's. There you need to have a minimum of 25 legs. You give you money to a fund manager again and he manages it for you. The third way is a Category three alternate investment fund, which is what Rubicon is. Here you have the ability to hedge up to one hundred percent. So you don't have to necessarily. But on the markets long or you don't have to bet on a company going up.

You can bet on a company going up where there's a company going down and gain from the relative arbitrage which is available there. Let me give you an example. In a mutual fund, if you want exposure in the IT space, you will buy Infosys in D.C. is in a Category three. If you can buy Infosys, if the price has gone down and you can short seller D.C. is at the same time, short selling is whenever you bet on a stock price going down.

So if something is a 100 and a short sell it when it goes to 90, I make 10 rupees of profit. So in a Cat three, if I think Infosys is relatively better as a company than D.C. is, I can do that transaction and make money out of buying Infosys and selling these things is what this allows for you to do is not be so dependent on market cycles. You don't need the markets to go up 10 percent or, you know, gradually go up every year.

You can just bet cross-bred in companies in the same sector or in different sectors. That's what we do at Rubicon. What does it mean for the consumer? For the consumer? You have a stable return profile and a much lower volatility profile than buying a vanilla mutual fund. So say, for example, if you buy a mutual fund in the markets, go up 10 percent, you make 10 percent. If it goes down 10 percent, you lose 10 percent.

But here you can create a risk profile when if the markets go up 10 percent, you make six or seven percent. When the markets go down 10 percent, you only lose three or four percent quarter. It gives you differentiated, differentiated risk profile, which is very attractive to many large investors.

So let me just get this straight. Without getting into the details of the finance and the technicalities of it, you're basically creating a system where consumer, where a really rich person can come and say, I want to get a profit from this money no matter what, so I will pop my money with you. I will invest in your company.

Yeah, you can handle my money and telling them, OK, it's very likely that you will make so-and-so amount of money, which is higher than what you would make by allowing your money to just be back up in the bank. Exactly.

OK, yeah, it becomes very attractive now because the interest rate cycles are down and your bank F.D., which is to give you eight, nine percent or seven percent, I'll give you like four or five percent. So people like, what's the minimum? Is that like you said, I'll try to.

Right. Yeah, it's about a million dollars is minimum and seven gross. Yeah. So typically people start that but scale it significantly beyond that. The other thing which is wrong with the asset management world today is say Ranvir wants to invest one like rupee's into a wealth product. When you go to the private bank or a wealth advisor, the guy who is going to sell you the fund will charge you one or two rupees Cobbett 1000 or 2000 already. Then the fund manager will charge you another two thousand rupees a year if you make money, if you don't make money, you will charge you that and then there will be a lock in period.

You can't take out your money for two years and the whole experience is not very transparent. So we are trying to change all of that. We have said we won't have any middlemen. So no distributors. When you invest a hundred or a hundred goes into the fun of you say no management fee. So if the two thousand rupees, you're being with your normal fund here, we don't charge any of that. We go to the extent where we don't charge brokerage clearing fees.

Custardy accounting, DEMATTE, all of this is zero. The only thing we charge is if the hundred becomes one hundred and ten at the end of the financial year, we charge 10 percent of profit as a fee. So we will take one. So what we are trying to do is become more client aligned and only make money if the client makes money, but still charge him much, much lower than any other fund manager out there. Often people do not realize.

But if you pay two percent in fees a year in 20 years compounded, that's half your principal. Or it it makes a huge dent in the return profile you receive after twenty years. And we felt like asset management in India and across the world had not changed for a long time. So to begin is our attempt to make it democratize it in a way and make it a lot more transparent, remove a lot of the leakages and a lot more efficient.

Richard, who you met last night, is the CEO of that company who I hope to bring on the board, because you've got a former Royal Air Force pilot, like worked in the corporate world as your CEO. Yeah, that's crazy.

But from from what you see, firstly, do you think that you said that things have changed in the last twenty years? Yeah. So the the the nodes of the finance world sort of know this, like they know that, okay, this is what happens. And that's the business model they've adopted. So you're applying. Dialogic logic, again, let's disrupt everything now, let's try something new we got the next next question is these ultra Jenice? They Orgasmos, yeah.

How do you find them in the first month?

So this is your own personal network? First, it used to be personal network, but we've been doing this for about 18 months now. So we kind of like finish the personal network very quickly. And now we get a lot of referrals and there is a a little bit of press which is going around and that gets people interested. And typically people seek us out for performance and transparency. So these are great. And I would reach out to us on their own and they'll ask us about, you know, how is it how does it work?

How do we get involved in stuff like that? So with zero, they are basically tackling new everyday consumer, which is your young college kids who have five thousand rupees to sell. And then with this other part of your ecosystem, you're tackling your business owners of the world and you see the world.

Yeah, it's very interesting, though. I find it so for a long time in my life, I did not really meet people or bitch or do the whole sales kind of thing. Right. So these people either are very, very rich, but B, they're also very interesting because, you know, everybody is has a story. Everybody has a story. Everybody has the ego and everybody has a perspective. They're very opinionated. And the fact that I did not meet that many people for so long and now suddenly in the last 18 months, I am like forging these new relationships and meeting so many people.

It's so whenever it doesn't matter who you are or what you have done, when you go to somebody and you're asking them to invest their savings with you, he's going to look upon you from a certain lens. So you have to like sell the product every time. And I think you learn a lot from that even now, like after you guys have that deal. Yeah. So let me get this straight again. Like maybe ultra agents of the 90s or 80s would be those seven growers and probably put it in property or put it in something else.

And you've created a new option for the ultrasonics. My question is, what do the outrage in India today think? Like, can you can you generalize? Can you again?

OK, yeah. So the problem in India is they're all too realistic, heavy and they don't have enough diversification and a lot of money stays in the holding companies, their main businesses, and they don't like to invest in things outside of that. What's the logic protection like? I want to protect myself.

No, I think it's a general distrust of people outside of their own holding companies, I think. In large part, fund managers, mutual funds, banks, private banks are to blame because a lot of these institutions have ripped off people over the last few decades. And now these large promoters are like, instead of going to them, we'll just invest in our business, less hassle, less leakage. All of that will try to change that. At the end of the day, any business and finance is a business of credibility.

Right. So the way to build it, in my opinion, is being very, very transparent. But it takes time. So we have started now and I don't know how long it'll take, but it looks good. So far in the last two years, the company has come a long way. So, again, speaking about these ultra deniers, and I'm assuming that you've embraced the sales role recently, much more than that, although I have no.

Yeah. What are you learning about sales?

Because sales of a concept you can learn as a billionaire founder I heard before and you can also learn it as a 21 year old concepts of the same.

It's very humbling. So you still now have started again going to like, you know, a lot of meetings in person. Many times they will make you wait for half an hour or an hour. And in your mind, you're like being a bit candid here. You are thinking like, why am I putting myself through this? But after the meeting is done and after I have seen what the company is capable of doing, I think there is a need for a product like this.

And I think this company will go beyond just asset management to have a network of billionaires from across the world. So you have a Nigerian, a South Korean, American Indian to put them all on a platform and help them connect with each other enough in a manner which is better than what a private bank or old school Muchin Bank has done up until now, I think will be extremely interesting. Think of it like because there are no bridges between these geographies.

A Nigerian oil refining guy would never have thought in his wildest dreams to approach the Indian cement maker to export cement to that country. But if he can build that bridge on this platform beyond asset management, I think that will be a great ultimate goal for this company and and information at the end of the day. And knowledge is something I really like gaining. And this gives you a differentiated perspective because you're talking to people in so many different sectors on an everyday basis.

Outside of what you can read in the news, this is the best kind of knowledge you can get. I'd rather learn about what is happening to them in price by being a part of this transaction than just read about them in the news. And I think that in turn makes me a better investor and a trader.

Yeah, yeah. There's the saying, I think, from the U.S. military. They say that the lead on the field is always right, which basically means that if you're in the middle of things, you have the best opinion on a subject. So news might report something, but you will only know the truth when you're living through it. And I also strongly believe that your greatest learnings in life come from listening to people. And if you are a podcast host, even better, because I get to do this on a bi weekly basis, I would make such a big difference.

And I did a whole like hundreds of zoo meetings with clients and stuff during the pandemic. But what you learn from physically meeting someone and talking about whatever it could be about the industry, you can never replicate that on a zoom cornea, which is why you dropping out may not have been bad for you. I mean, again, I hear you. I hear what you're saying, but not everyone should drop out. But as long as you have that urge to learn and as long as you ask the right questions, there's nothing that can stop you from a well-rounded education in life.

And education is not just limited to college degrees and books. Yeah, education is about your own hunger and your willingness and your humility to learn.

Yeah, I think if if I had to like, say one thing, I just thought of it like right now when we were talking, which makes me a little bit better, greater than others is my ability to deal with things logically. When shit hits the roof, you know, like when there is chaos and things are going bad, I think I'm able to compartmentalize a little bit better and remain calm and rational and make the logical decision versus the emotional one.

I think that's important.

Investing by creating as with any YouTube podcast, I've got to make the self obsessing about myself.

Yeah. So, uh, I'm I'm in a pretty chaotic mode. And that's why I ask you the question. Yes. Yes. They ask you, what were you like a twenty seven? Yeah. I do understand a reference point for myself. Was there a lot of girls in your twenties when you guys were building zero?

Yeah. I mean cheating is always kills. It's by design because things happen like this pandemic.

Forget twenty seven in March with killers like markets filled with deals for you guys if ok with the markets, but then you'll have a product. Things are just different than even for a tech product. See, we are typically used to a day where the market either goes up half a percent or one percent, down half a percent and one percent. And that in turn leads to six million transactions a day. On a day when the markets for 10 percent or 50 percent, the number of transactions will be like five full time.

And everything changes, like how you service each transaction, the amount of time, the load on everything. So it gets very chaotic and. The flip side of scale is if you have like a minute's downtime now, like, you know, so relative to every other broker out there, all of our peers, if you were to, like, put the amount of downtime each one has had, we would definitely be on top. We probably had the least amount of downtime.

But even then, if you have one minute things like spiral out of control now, you know, every journalist will start calling you. They'll start talking about it and CNBC and I'm talking about like one minute. So the market volatility in turn leads to all kinds of volatility, right.

Wow.

When when you select a finance career, you're at the mercy of the market.

Whatever's happening, it will have little effect on your whole organization. Right to the bottom. Yeah, that's insane. But again, like what happened through the pandemic. Did you guys know because the pandemic is it although I honestly really exploded. It was always there was always growing. But the pandemic is where things just went through the roof.

Yeah. So I think we we kind of like can factor two or three big reasons as to why so many more people started treating. You know, people were at home, they had more time at hand, always wanted to trade, didn't have the time. Now they have it. Interest rate cycle is coming down, largely plateauing real estate sector for a long time, like in India. Right. Residential real estate, if you rent a home, if you buy a home and rent it, you probably get about two and a half, three percent.

And the capital appreciation, which happened in the 90s and early 2000s, we have not seen in a long time. So people are coming to terms with the fact that when I invest money in residential real estate, it the odds of it increasing in value 10 percent a year is no longer true. And two three percent is not really a return, which even matches inflation. So they have to like look outside of real estate and bank F.D. to in wealth against inflation, not even make more money.

So that definitely played a part in why all these people are coming into the stock market. But I think outside of all of that, like volatility, it it gets translated into news and noise, news and noise in turn translate to more people, you know, hearing that there is something going on in the stock market.

And I think subconsciously you are attracted to it, which is what is happening with crypto. Yeah. I have to ask you a little bit about crypto before we get to the crypto question.

The Frigo is a question that is a 22 year old or 23 year old. That guy has an intention of being rich, for lack of a better word.

What should his financial decisions right now be according to it, and considering that not everyone is drawn to the stock market as much as you will?

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, 22 year old Lizzi earning fifty thousand rupees a month, maybe Lessel, 20000 to 30000 rupees a month, and you're saving, say, about 15. Right, you're owning 20 and saving 50, you'll be saving 15.

I mean, you would have to be a very frugal 22 year old. I doubt very many are doing that.

Or you take advantage of remote work and just work from where you are working your skill set and probably save money by staying at home.

Yeah, I think I think at 22, your appetite for risk should be larger. So. I think spend money on yourself. This is one thing I have realized with time and my experiences in my personal life that 15000 and spend it towards learning a skill or training yourself to be better. That's probably the best way with the highest odds of getting rich, because once you've accumulated that many skills and probably when you're 28 or 29, you'll be much more desirable and a lot more people will pay you a lot more.

I would in fact, say if you're earning twenty thousand and you can see five thousand rupees a month in a bank, that five thousand is probably better spent learning that skill. So you can move from twenty thousand to fifty thousand.

Yeah, I think that's I and you know what the issue with at least and this, this wasn't really an issue 22 year old when I was 22. I feel like all of us had a little bit of patience and like long sightedness. I feel like 22, 23 as of today are not patient.

Yeah. And I'm saying that like some that as you do just like five years old.

But I feel like they're a different generation in different ways model. But that smartness is flipside is a serious lack of patience. They want everything now without realizing that you have to prove yourself to earn your stripes, have to start at the bottom, have to learn a lot. Yeah. And then there'll be an explosion later. But battered. Yeah. I think I think one big advice to 22, 23 year olds, especially in the whole entrepreneur ecosystem, is spend as much time as you would on, you know, trying to figure out what problem you want to solve on unpicking which industry you want that problem to be.

And you never want to be swimming against the tide. So because sector and the industry that is growing and looks like it will continue to grow in the next 10 years. And give you an example, I think people who are doing anything in fintech or broking or finance right now probably are in the right place because in the population of India, only about two, three percent of our country has direct or indirect access to financial markets, while that number is maybe 95 percent in America or something like that.

So this population will grow. So definitely spend a lot of time picking the right sector. Like if you're in the if you're a young 22 year old boy trying to start something in the mobile wallet space, it's no longer relevant because, you know, that industry is on its way down. Really? Yeah. Like what? Like what's this logic?

I think you call the use case for mobile wallets structurally and OK, crypto.

We got to talk about this. This is one of the most common questions we get after the second. We look at all the Twitter questions that came in. There was a bunch of like sort of a rapid fire. Yeah, but let's talk about crypto a little bit later. What is your someone who studies money and the behavior money and say what is crypto for you?

I'm not asking you the technical definition of it. You see it as an opportunity to grow your money as a consumer. What do you put your own money into? Crypto. Yeah, so let me preface NCM.

I'm no real expert on crypto. I personally do not have any I don't have any of the popular cryptocurrency available out there. Uh, so when you think of currency. Right, what is currency essentially is government debt.

Um explain it in terms of Nikil gave it only 10 rupees.

OK, uh. So when I give you 10 rupees, what that an ordinance is, if you take that note to the Reserve Bank in our country, they will give you something of a certain value.

That notional value is that entropies now, government debt. And let's leave rupee out of it. And let's talk about the dollar, because in many ways, that kinda is the currency of the world. And that in turn kind of makes rupee beavered eggs and the euro be worthwhile. So back in the day when you took a dollar to the Federal Reserve in America, they would give you the amount of gold and that gold give value to the dollar. The gold standard got removed at a certain point, I think it was Richard Nixon who removed it.

And then we had another system, the Bretton Woods system, where every other global currency was pegged to the dollar. So they said we will no longer give you gold. And if the dollar is at 50 rupees, you can go down to as low as forty five. You can go up as high as 55, but you will trade in that range relative to the dollar that changed. And now we are in an ecosystem where the American government has been printing a lot of money.

So if you were to look at the average amount of money they printed, I might not be exactly right here. But it used to be something like half a trillion dollars a year over the last decade. It became a trillion dollars a year. I think now it's something like five trillion. That's the amount of money they have printed in the last one year. Logically, if there is more supply of something, the value of that should go down.

But the value of the U.S. dollar is not going down because a lot of the countries outside of America hold a lot of American debt and the value of that debt would come down if the value of the dollar were to go down, as basically other countries have a hold of dollars, which they've kept to themselves.

Yeah, OK. Yeah. So there are many use cases as to why the US dollar is relevant and we all benefit like India, for example, where we export a lot of services. Right. If the dollar depreciates by a lot, are 80 companies will no longer remain relevant. So there are many, many like, you know, Denigrations Grecians here. And it makes sense for the world to have the US dollar be where it is right now.

And it's working for everybody. Now, if they continue to print money in the manner that they are at some point in the future, it would be logical and plausible to think that they will be, you know, many people who will question why is the US dollar still holding this much value when there is so much of it available in the world? When that happens, cryptos will become a lot more relevant because people will stop trusting governments with the currency that the government is providing them.

I think crypto to how we use coin at that point, which is how far, according to you, when you say very hard to call, but I would say much sooner than 20 years. And on the flipside, the problem with crypto is it's not good for governments. We had that Silk Road issue where they were selling all kinds of stuff online. And and the fact that a currency which is not really regulated in any manner, is attempting to challenge the global currency that we have today will not be looked upon formally by governments everywhere because you're taking over control from the government to a large extent.

And governments, I think, will make it harder for Bitcoin or any of these cryptocurrency to grow. All this being said, a currency which is that volatile is not essentially a currency. If I told you the 10 rupee note you were talking about earlier, but you are Apple today. Tomorrow you could go buy a car with that same 10 rupees day after tomorrow. You can't even buy a chocolate with that 10 rupees. You would not want to hold that 10 rupee rate and not not hold it in the sense that you would not want your entire wealth to be sitting there.

So it'll be interesting to watch what happens with crypto is going forward. But I think it'll be a fight which the government will fight against crypto across the world, but they will be weakened in that fight if they continue to print money the way they are today.

Got it. Would you invest money in crypto in the next two or three years? Because that's the trend right now, especially the world of Twitter was overtaken by cryptocurrency in Bitcoin in general, Ethereum in general. Are you intrigued? Would you put some money just and pocket and leave it?

If I had to go back in time and buy one thing, I think it would be crypto just because of how much it has a. Initiated, but will I buy today? Probably not. I think for the reasons I mentioned earlier, I think it is. Not just fairly, but maybe overpriced, considering all that is happening in the world today and that it can drop at any point.

Again, I think the Indian government in 2018, they put out the regulation that banks can't do business with banks, can't do anything with crypto. Right. And then all the local exchanges we had here had to shut down and stuff like that. I think they've got honesty from the Supreme Court or High Court against that mandate. But the government is still not going to say people in India should do crypto. But if this happens in something like America, we don't know what the new government thinks about crypto because they've only been in office a short while.

But if they come and they go against crypto, I think it could fall 50 percent in India, you know.

Yeah. So it depends a lot on these factors which are completely out of your control.

Yeah. And, you know, your brother recommended sapience to me.

I was reading the third book by you. Well, at that point and sapience taught me a lot about the concept of fictions around us, which basic. And then again, you well know how that is a big Garecht on this podcast. I spent the whole year reading all his books just opened up my mind that here coming back to fiction. He basically said that the end will be known as a fiction. You owning your house. Yeah. And signing a document is a fiction who decided that a document, a piece of paper can decide the Nikil owns a particular house or any particular house who decided that the jacket you're wearing should be.

That's all. So we are in a world surrounded by fictions. And he goes on to say that the concept of patriotism is also possibly of action. Whenever you want to control a very large group of people, you create a story around something which will inspire them or create an emotion within them.

And therefore, who decided that governments should control the country? I mean, this is like a very anarchist style.

They completely agree with you. I, I don't know how I don't know the audiences and I don't know how this would be taken. But patriotism in its truest sense has lost a lot of relevance in today's world because because of globalization, because of globalization, because of nuclear weapons, because a full war between two large countries is no longer relevant. And I think the world would financially and economically be a lot better if not for patriotism, like we celebrate your pugilism in India, but we are not as bad as the Americans.

If you go to America, you find a flag in front of every third house. You know, if the world were not to have borders, if it were not to have distinction based on, you know, all the stupid things, we distinguish people based on, I think the quality of life of the entire world. The access to resources would go up like the world today produces maybe seven times how much food as the world requires today. But we still have people dying of starvation and we have climate change issues.

We have so many things that will be helped by a less patriotic world. And, you know, the thing is, because patriotism as a concept has been around for so long and I believe it's very good to have your own culture, like if you've been born in a particular culture, embrace it, embrace everything that your country's culture stands for.

But if patriotism is something that can get you to hit someone else or to attack someone else in any way emotionally right or hate, comment on your posts. Then you've got to ask questions to yourself.

I totally agree. I agree with embrace your culture. I don't think you should fight for your culture if something is dying, a natural death, or if something is progressing or transgressing into something else. Naturally, because the world is moving in that direction, I think we as humans are too small. And I think it would be very bigoted in a way to think that we can change that and reading something which is naturally fading away, I think we have to be more accepting to change not just in religion, politics or even in companies write.

Things change all the time. The sooner you are willing to adapt, the sooner you are willing to embrace change. I think the more the more relevant you stay for longer as a company. Does sport add anything to your business career? I don't think so.

I mean, to be physically fit is very relevant because if you walk into work not feeling physically fit, it affects you mentally. But outside of that, I think I used to be competitive at some point. I think with time I have become more and more like less inclined to be very competitive and stuff like that. Did the stoicism kind of, oh, I think I'm going to chill out for you now.

Well, you know, when you realize this like New Year's happened this year, right? And I was like, what is the goal for next year? To me, I had, like, simple things like sleep for eight hours a day and stuff like that that I think genuinely means I'm becoming less competitive. And, uh, yeah, it'd be interesting, though. I hope it's cyclical. You know, you become less competitive and then you won't wake up one day and get dry even when when you got to sign all those ultrarich.

And I mean, like, go get get competitive about it. Yeah. Yeah.

OK, so we are I won't say near the end of the board because knowing the chemistry I have with you, I think I'm going to take you to many more places. But I've decided to include two sections in every podcast, one of which is the Rapid Fire from Twitter, where listeners of the world has ended questions for you. And the second one is possibly a few deeper conversations on life in general.

So I asked Twitter agenda that if you had to ask one of India's youngest billionaires and the killing of zero, the any kind of question, what would you ask him? Firstly, Romney was asked if he can fund my startup. I need to start dairy farming, organic farming in my hometown, where my land of my forefathers are lying idle, and here I'm struggling to make ends meet.

In many cases, a business can be started without external funding and inputs farming.

I'm guessing you can get that capital locally, you know, because you're in the world of finance, you have to study multiple kinds of industries. What is the future of agriculture in general? Because I hear so many mixed opinions from people who have actually been in it. They say that there's a lot of potential. I speak to a business coach like Ben-Dror and he says, I know the margins in that industry are not that happy.

What's your perspective? I'm no expert here, but if I had to wager a guess, I would say aggregation is the way forward. A lot of what the government is doing also seems to be hinting at that. So we might we might have a world where we have fewer farms, but much larger and a lot more organized. They'll create a whole new problem. What the farmers of today will do and we'll have to as a government, I think, pre-empt it and make sure they're taken care of and they have some other avenue to.

Yeah, I think you asked me my goal in about why I'm doing this. And I said twenty thousand jobs for some reason. Something in my heart says that I have to do something for the agriculture where I've discussed it with one of my guys as well who's had a past in agriculture.

I have an opinion here. I think there's no taxation on farm income right now. I think beyond the cap, it is it has been mis utilised so much in our history. If a farmer is earning more than a quarter, I think there should be income tax. I think they should be taxed like other people in the country. The small farmers, of course, have to be protected. And I think that change will bring to bring a lot of clarity in this ecosystem called next ones a little more personal.

Yeah, Mr. Harinarayan asks, it's great seeing you doing a podcast with Mr. Nikil. Ask him how he makes his success after the lockdown and how he's handling it right now. Uh, why don't you expand on the concept of success? I know you don't even think you believe your success. No, I don't think so. I think I'm still an insecure person in many ways.

And that's all of us. Yeah, I think, uh.

I think surrounding yourself with the right people is the most important thing here, I think to have people who criticize, contradict, are skeptical about everything you're doing and valuing their opinion is important. I think you stay levelheaded as long as you do that.

The next question from the same business, what made you guys believe that your idea of starting Xeloda would result in success when you were starting out? What was your initial hunch?

Again, it was very organic. I, I don't think I'm a big fan of planning also because I've planned many things in life and I've never really worked out. So it was very organic. We had a hunch that we would be successful because everybody wants to be. But outside of that, there was no like intelligence there or anything like that. And Miserere and final question, books and people that inspired you.

I was reading a book which I just finished, fear of that. Fear of mortality. I think it's very, very interesting, who's it by the denial of death, Ernest Becker?

It yeah.

So he talks about how we as humans forget that we are creatures. We have a certain amount of time here. And the way we live life often is like we think we are going to be perpetually. So why is it important for me as a 34 year old guy to know that average lifespan is 70 and I have 35 years left and live my life according to that versus thinking I'm going to live on for, you know, hundreds of years in perpetuity.

It's a very subconscious thing. I think we live like that and we don't realize it. But when you put a finite number there, I think you become a better human being. In many ways. You become socially relevant to the amount of greed you have goes down and all of that.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know why I'm referencing this, but I mean, I see as a school where we had some fantastic poetry taught to us and there was this poem about a Greek goddess who falls in love with a really good looking human being. And she's just like enchanted by his raw sexuality.

And that's in a poem for kids. And she blesses him with the blessing of immortality. But she doesn't bless him with the blessing of immortal youth. So this dude becomes old, wrinkly, his bodyboard start falling off. And the whole poem is very dark about how possibly being immortal is one of the biggest curses you can go through life. Yeah, eating a 14 year old is changes for your perspective.

When you kind of echoed that thought in many ways. Um, OK.

Mr. Unger asks as one of India's biggest trading platform, what are the changes you guys are bringing in pulling the youth of the country? Because even then, this thought that the youth is the big customising.

I think education is the only way. I think our system of pedagogy in India, we teach kids for 15 years how to make money, but we don't teach them how to manage their money. I think something is missing there. And it would be prudent for the government to add, you know, financial literacy, early middle school. I think that structurally will change things.

Got Poonam USC's resources for learning stocks and finance for a beginner and got us a very interesting second question. How much finance knowledge is enough for you to begin investing in stocks?

The first one is varsity's we have a platform which is great for beginners to the second one. I don't think there is a finite amount of knowledge that you can actually define because I don't think I have enough knowledge yet. But, uh, as long as you know the rules, I think probably more important than knowledge are a bunch of people I'm going to highlight among Delaneys question, but a bunch of people who ask this same question.

Nitin has got a lot of fan boys and fan, by the way people love is Rahul Dravid ness of life. How do you guys complement each other? And I know you've answered this in Boston, but I don't know your glasses because boys to such bombs, old man, like I can't imagine being no. Your glasses at all in like 13, 14 year career. So my direct question is, what's your solution to that and how you go to jail together as a team?

I think we have clear demarcation of what we do, and I don't mess with what he does and we kind of like don't interfere in each other's roles. That helps. But at the end of the day, you know, it's one life in your brother's. If if you don't have each other's backs forever, who does? Right. We remember that. So even if there's a slight clash, you know, last for like five minutes, isn't you're right in front of co-founders.

Yeah. That's how it ends. Have you had those emotional breakdowns or not breakdowns? I don't think we have had any large fights, especially not about like I mean, not my breakdowns.

I mean, on a more personal level, like you're going through something traumatic, not just maybe in your professional life was life, but some of your co-founders become as good as family. I mean, Yakov Undesirably.

So Villalonga.

Yeah, I know it does happen. I have this issue where I tend to keep things within and I don't communicate where I should. So my interpersonal skills are not up to par. They're very bad. Natrona the hand is much better. He's he has great IQ and he's very good at resolving conflict with his personal relationships.

So we are all just Qamar asks, how do you keep yourself motivated?

And all the markets it's I don't know if it's motivation or addiction, but one of the two is a player, and he got me motivated.

And what's your opinion on Brake's? Because, again, when people are seeing this bootstrap monster gordito that no one thinks that, OK, it's run by two human beings. Who probably get tired and go to the Maldives or wherever you all go, but yeah, so we don't really miss market days, I haven't missed a market day in, like over a decade. How do you blow off steam weekend, OK? Yeah. Like we did last night.

Oh yes. Memorable Nightman.

But that's that's why, you know, I mean, on a very personal level, the subtle gift of the podcast, because even in real life scenarios, when you have the opportunity to go this deep with another human being. Yeah. It's the podcast had me make friends. Yeah. Which then opened up my mind. That's all smart friends mean making on the board because you have something to share. A big, big blessing of my life and just spending time with you and your friends yesterday it was this incredibly stimulating.

OK, this is an interesting question.

Real Obama asks, what was the pressure like in the early days of starting order when apparently you were getting threatening calls from other brokers because you all had, like, disrupted that whole part of the finance world?

Actually, it was not that bad. I think it's always dated with time. But, uh, even at the very beginning, the people we worked with but our closest friends, they there were people who lived in the same apartment where we played cricket growing up, and they were people who were friends first and then colleagues. We had a lot of fun with it. We were not making a lot of money, but we were definitely having a lot of fun.

And we would play Counterstrike for five hours a day to blow off steam like five hours a day. Do you think that that builds a sense of teamwork? I don't know about that, but it was a lot of fun.

But I really I feel football builds such a strong sense of teamwork and team spirit. Like, I force my guys to play football with me.

Got to play football after this game. OK, interesting question. Again, Payzant Medical asks, what if every person in India learns to trade on the stock market? Theoretically, what will happen? It will be good. I think there are there is precedent, there are countries in which 70, 80 percent of the population has direct or indirect exposure, I would say not trade. But even in the US, your photo and gear has some kind of equity component in it.

And I think you become competitive, will become a larger market and become a great place for companies to raise capital. At the end of the day, is Abhijeet?

Prasad asks. What is all without thinking of rural area development, and actually I would also love to know is do you see rural parts of India getting in to Finback at all or just personal finance as a concept?

I think yeah, I think there's a trend which will emerge from all that has happened where urbanization will slow down to a large extent and deodorant or three downs will start picking up. So it'll be interesting to watch what happens and how much financial exposure was done. Skin color.

OK, this is not a question to sort of highlight that. A lot of questions about Rubicon coming in, which is your brainchild. So and these are young kids. These are college kids who are asking these questions. Um, yeah.

And I think almost all the other questions have been answered through the course of this podcast.

But I will ask you one last question from this rapid fire from so Denver asks, what's the role of newspapers and current affairs in your financial game? So I think she's asking about trading stocks. Do you think newspapers play a massive role? No. How do you keep up with current events?

Uh, you do read the news, but I think. What what have you replaced? I don't think I would call financial owning as news often they're not reported. I think reading a company's balance sheet and actually seeing how revenues are changing and margins are changing makes a much more seminal impact than reading news, which is being publicized, because typically that's just for your readership and everything is exaggerated. Right.

And because we've reached the end of the broadcast, you asked me yesterday, man, what are you planning for this show? And I said, I do.

I want to ask you really deep questions. I feel like you're a lucky guy. And Kuneitra tweeted about this once.

He said that the big gift of entrepreneurship, other than the obvious ones like money, fame, power, is that you do go through a journey of self discovery when you're an entrepreneur, which is so true that you get to see the most naked parts of your own mind, your own insecurities.

You get to know yourself with people how to believe meditation does the same because you're sitting in silence for so long of going within.

But speaking about business, are you happy now and do you have a sense of spirituality with everything that's happening around you?

Well. To be honest, I have not understood spirituality. I have many friends who talk about it and how much it has changed them, but I ask them, what is spirituality for you? Each one has a different definition. I think it means a different thing to everybody in terms of happiness. I think, again, it's a very relative concept relative to any other time in my own life. I am happier today for sure. I feel less insecure about many things that I felt more insecure about historically connecting.

Rudely ask you about some of those insecurities, like from when you were younger?

Yeah, I've had insecurities about. Feeling less important than I actually was about relationships, about financial goals, about money. Not everybody did it for you, Altruria. Ever since 14, 15, 16, it has been a different points. A different insecurity has, you know, played a more important role maybe in the last couple of years. It has been more around relationships, feeling insecure there and the people you care for, if they don't care for you and things often, you know, we all have relationships like all kind of relationships.

We have friendships. We are parents, we have romantic relationships, all of that. I have felt insecure in all of those relationships.

Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's again that's many of us too. Yeah. Because you've lived through your late 20s and early 30s, what's that like? And I give you context to this question, I feel like your early 20s about finding your feet and understanding where do I belong in this world, just finding some sense of purpose. I won't even say finding your purpose, but just finding something to do your mid 20s about probably solidification and learning, learning beyond college and academic academics.

I'm curious to know what your late 20s are, because my reading of it as a 27 year old is that now you found your feet, you solidified it. Now it's about getting your weapons polished up for your 30s.

I would agree with you. I think late 20s become about consolidation where you start. It's different for different people, I'm guessing. But you start achieving scale and you become not an expert at what you're doing, but you become a lot more proficient. I mean, I've I'm only going by my experience, but I think 30s and mid 30s is the time, especially if you have don't have dependents, if you don't have kids or you're not doing it in order to be able to do beat.

If you alone, you are going to have to like you arrive at a point where you start questioning the purpose of everything.

A lot more existentialism. Yeah, yeah. I think midlife crisis, which used to happen in 50s, is now happening in 30s because of social media. Could be. Could be thanks to.

Well, you guys are welcome because I mean, if you are dealing with a midlife crisis early, you're probably solving it early. Also through this part, through this particular episode with Nicole, um, is it scary for a man, for an Indian guy?

We are told all your life that I think all that is it. Is it because because the Indian guys do go through that.

That's one stock form of sexism that Indian guys face. And we are told that unless you earn money, you won't on any respect in the society, which doesn't really matter when you when you when you think about wealth games and all that. But you're scared when your kid is when you actually hit that hobbyhorse. Mark, what was your mindset like? What happens to people around you?

I think in many cases you start thinking, I wanted to do ABC by the time I was 30, I have not done see or have not done. You think about that, but I think you change a lot more. Twenty five. Twenty five is a bigger birthday than 30 because up until I was 24, I used to enjoy my birthdays, you know. Yes, I'm 25 now. I'm like, damn, I'm thirty four now. But next year I started going a little different now.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's the only like finite commodity in the world, right. Time and expanding one year becomes less a cause for celebration and more, you know, like I have, I spend one.

And the negatives associated with aging for a guy of course I know that for girls this is something I started with some of my media friends. They got very conscious of their skin and wrinkles and aging. And I'm just like, yo, you know, I mean, even older women are attractive. Why have you had this idea that wrinkles are not good for a guy? What happens? What are you doing?

I think you slow down and you like the changes. You will notice first if you go out and have a drink, for example. Right. You would be hungover for like half an hour. Twenty seven, probably for five hours or thirty four. It does start to change. Your body takes longer to recover. If you want to work two, three days in a row and you've managed to get to three hours of sleep only it will hit you the fourth day you will fall sick.

Maybe a twenty five did not happen socially. You're judged a bit more than you were when you were twenty five, for example. If you're a single man like I'm guessing you are like am I do I don't know.

I sort of tell us more about dude honestly.

OK, I'll answer this after you finish your answer. Tell us. I mean I think this is something everybody would want to know more than the other questions we spoke about tonight. I mean, because I mean, you do want to put my life out there that much. I had like a very serious relationship until about a couple of years ago that ended in a very rough patch. And that just like it kind of put me deeper into my work, too, like whether it was productivity, whether it was the scale of my own vision, everything became more and more divided.

You know that there's a saying, have you seen that there can be a couple of movie rock stars? I have, yeah. Yeah. So I feel like I'm in that zone where they say to do this. And Nicoleta. Yeah, at least I don't remember the dialogue. The the logic of it is that if you've gone through a rough time and it doesn't just have to be through a broken relationship, it can just be through any kind of heartache which could be feeling in life, maybe a particular business collapses, whatever it pushes you into like an extreme drive mode.

And I definitely feel I've been in that for the last two years, which means that I am a little bit emotionally unavailable because my team needs that emotional love and it's kind of cliched.

But if you like them kids. Yeah. And I direct the love there rather than to a stable relationship, which means, on the flip side, that I've had a bunch of not so serious relationships.

They've been relationships, I've not been messing around, not been sleeping around and all that. But I you know, it's not been as serious as what my older, serious relationship was great.

Attempted deflecting and not answering my relationships in my life. Did I think that Nicole would ask me this? But, um, the short answer is I'm like single right now, man.

And I've also Stronsay. It's a good way to promote the fact that you're single. You don't apply podcast to my my my mum started pitching the concept of arranged marriage to me and I'm like, cool. It's it's just a know for adults. And, you know, a girl who was agreed for arrangement is probably in the same mindset as a guy who's a buddy. Which is that. Why not.

Yeah, and I think you can have fun with it. You don't have to go the traditional where you can go and a lot of dates with your mums.

It's, you know, that's that's the plan.

Men, honestly, although I have dated a lot and I've had my fair share of when you were just on my travels, there are these moments you have on travel. We are looking at mountains with snow peaks on top and you're looking at in lakes. You're floating in these boats and you're just like, I paid for this myself. And that's the real joy of life. Probably my daddy to have started appreciating just your own self experiences. What do you see through your own eyes?

Even more than love.

Right.

And I know that you're beyond this age and you're back to appreciate our relationships.

And I also strongly feel when it comes to happiness, you have to define happiness subjectively, like what do you want at this stage of your life? Yeah, what experience autism was really caused you to be happy? Oh, yeah. I had this notion that a relationship should be all encompassing. Like you should get everything from that one person that has now changed to it. You shouldn't put that much pressure on one thing. So, you know, you have like a hundred people in your life.

You get something from a friend, you get something from a colleague, you get something from a brother. And all the love together makes you feel fulfilled. And I think that helps a lot when you're getting into a relationship.

Do you do you feel that you believe in destiny at all?

Uh. If I do, I don't understand it yet. I think often in life I have thought of something to be destiny, but then something else has happened along the way and my vision of destiny keeps changing. So I don't know. Hmm.

I asked Nathan a lot about spirituality and Hizbollah's, and he kind of boiled it down to just being a good person. And I see that in you as well. Like the way you treat people this way, nicer than people in my industry, treat other human beings.

But other than that, like and I also see a lot of men in their 30s, probably once their careers are set or at least careers have strong direction, the search for the bonds or as they search for spirituality, men specifically.

Yeah, I think I'm going through that now. I think the biggest differentiator, I think, for me is the fact that I don't have any dependents, I don't have anybody to look after me. So everything I do in my life, unless the situation changes, there is no end goal to it. There is no I. I didn't have it. Now I have a I want to be. What do you do with the B? I have not figured out yet, but I feel if the situation does not change and I don't have any dependents, you would probably end up becoming more socially responsible and do more for others, because at the end of the day it comes down to that.

And coming back to love, I feel in your heart your romantic doing man like the little bit that I interacted with. Tell you the truth, I have had four relationships in my life and every single one I have been dumped and I've been on the receiving end of it. I feel. I feel.

And the reason has been I am emotionally unavailable and a bit like a robot. That's because of historicism. Could be that that's where a professional weapon ends up slicing you in your pocket in your personal life. Exactly. That is so true. I think what works at work does not work outside of work. And to remember that in practice that is very difficult.

Yeah, I remember my first found of it. I just two years younger than I am, so I had that to your head start. He's way ahead of me mentally now after spending four years in the real world.

But back then I had to teach him to be a little heartless and tough love had to look at inside him. And that did affect his personal life as well and way. You got to draw the own system as a man. You got to come back and just learn this job and still be a child with your mom, still be a romantic at home with the person you're dating.

Yeah, I think what was the show I was watching on TV, on Netflix, Brigidine or something like that? It kind of made me think about how much time we've asked, wondering how we are being perceived and what people think of what we are doing in our personal lives. You know, I think if he paid less attention and we did what we truly want, we'd all be happier. Both persons in both of the parties in a relationship would be happier.

You spoke about perceptions, too, as a rude question, man, but.

You know, the billionaire tag does carry a sense of status with it. Do you see people treating you different after you publicly acknowledge as a billionaire and you also feel women started treating you differently?

People are probably a bit nicer to you than they were before. I mean, I would be kidding myself if I didn't think that women, on the other hand. Maybe, but I have not experienced it yet. Yeah.

Hmm. But like the people aspect, like what happens to people suck up. Uh. A little bit, maybe, but are you able to spot it? Yeah, I think so. I think what what happens see, I the biggest thing I'm trying to change is kind of like, um, maybe a bit more inaccessible. I was the kind of person who would be friends with absolutely everybody. And it puts you. In an uncomfortable position with new people, the old people who are friends for like, you know, 10 years and 20 years, they remain the same.

They don't give a rat's ass what is happening or your family and all of that. They'll be like, you know, they will bring you down to the ground very, very quickly. But it becomes harder to have objective new friendships because you don't know what the agenda is.

And if you know a little bit, there's always an agenda, a little bit, maybe a little bit. It's not gotten that bad. It's not.

It's not too bad, but a little bit, yeah, another rude observation when I was with you yesterday, I felt like that energy in the room was positive, like the people who chose to surround yourself with a positive.

Yeah, the little ups and downs in their own personal world.

But generally it was positive. So, yeah. What does someone in your position keep in mind when you're cutting off slash accepting people into your world, into your world? Is it that intentional? And this wasn't helped me discover myself all that. This was make me feel comfortable.

I don't even think I think that much. I think there are two kind of people. One who kinda. Are negative about a lot of things, pessimistic people who are generally complaining about something that has happened in life, typically takers and not givers. And there is another set of people who are vom sharing and giving and are optimistic in adversity. In many ways, we all have adversity. I mean, everybody has issues. Something like money does not definitely eliminate them.

If anything, the scale of issues will become larger, but. When you find those people, I think the attempt will be to hold them closer in the past, have not done the best job with my relationship, not just a certain kind, but all kind of because you had that Vallario thing that your work.

I think more because I was more insecure than I should have been. Yeah, I. I would walk into a friendship or a relationship thinking what could go wrong versus focusing on the good that it was giving me at that point. That's your 34 year old speaking up. Yeah. Like I do probably.

Is that that that's I something that's which is when you hit that hot meals mark that you are able to notice weaknesses in your own character or.

Yeah. Weaknesses. For me, it's happening now because this the general way to you know, what I would do is when someone said something about me I did not like, I would be like, you know, very defensive about it without thinking about it. Now I'm defensive about it, but maybe I think about it before I'm defensive.

Yeah. And with with the relationship, what's your goal, and I'm going to be like pretty open you, but sometimes if if I'm even dating someone not not very seriously, but I am in a relationship with someone, and if I'm holding that good hand, that's probably my best moment of the day, even after the most successful or most romantic professional experience that I've had on that particular day. That's what I feel love does for the human experience, man.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think for me, relationship goals are much less the person has to be ABCDE, but I'm somebody who values the ability to forgive for giving people a lot because we all grew up like I grew up. She grew up. So to find a person who is very forgiving and values peace of mind as much as you, I think would be the most important thing.

A lot of women have this assumption that most men can stay loyal. And I kind of disagree. Yeah, there are romantic guys out there want to like you have like a long term. Have you seen the Pixar movie up? It's got that old woman and an old guy at Disney shows their love story from the time they were kids till the time they became old. And the lady passes away like I still loves. And the whole movie is about what he does after her death.

Yeah, that's something to fulfill one of her wishes that other guys like that out there. Yeah.

I also I think all of these norms which we associate with the relationship are very subjective to every relationship. The key here might be to communicate what you're willing to do and what you're not willing to do and what you're hoping to get from the relationship. And I feel like as long as that communication is OK, you're fine in the relationship. I've done a terrible job of communicating in the past, so I should not be any kind of a protagonist to kind of like explain or talk about this.

But that's the nature of entrepreneurship in general.

If you have somewhere you do, you're not going to do that again. Yeah, learn from my mistake, because that's what my business grow. This is what will help my personal life business.

Um, final question. We ought to make the selfish about me, man Phelps as you do. Well, how come you opened up so much like on this show? What do you think I'm doing right now so that I can add or polish one of my weapons? I think you did it last night by sitting and chatting with us till five in the morning. So it does not feel awkward now. And, uh, I think you have this you look very genuine and you feel like you're asking a question, not because it has to be asked, but more because you actually want to know.

And that is that sense of curiosity, which is very endearing. Yeah. A friend of mine, good ungrammatically. Although you Duberman, he's from the startup community.

He Heronswood one of my questions during the lockdown and I was having an existential crisis, I asked him, what's the meaning of life? Why am I working so well?

He said that you'll never find happiness unless you define your own version of happiness.

And he said that his vision of happiness happens when he satisfies his curiosity.

He says that keep your curiosity alive and try answering it and therefore your happiness will automatically be.

Yeah, and I have this unique position as a 27 year old to get access to you or Berkeley or Glenn McGrath or, you know, one minute on just such a varied buffet of people that that I can live your lives in an hour of talking. Right. So that's very encouraging for me. More than money numbers, whatever the podcast is not as much for. The growth of my business as it is for my own mind, so that's probably what you pick up, but I hope you enjoyed being on the runway show and I did.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for opening up so much. I am sure we will have you again on the show. I'm looking forward to seeing you in Bombay again.

There were some topics we missed out in this, but I want to leave it that way because I feel like there's more organizations in you. Thank you, brother.

God bless you. And I hope you find everything that you're looking for because I strongly sense you.

You're still in the search for things and knowing the person that you are and just the way you treat people, I think that those things will find you before you even go out searching.

So good luck with that. Super. Thank you. Thank you, brother.