into my creator side which in sometimes if you build an organization you become more operational you're not hands on and i've gone like deep hands on with saying okay i'm just figuring out lenses again after ages i'm doing all of that stuff um i have this one like cupboard cabinet which is filled with like random stuff which uh pooja calls the junk drawer um but it's been fun man i just figured an entire new site must be very like it's like a big sigh of relief right yeah it's like taking a big yeah yeah exactly yeah exactly equals big like yeah because you know i i also think is and i do this whenever i am generally worried about the future is that i'm i just so i don't i'm not a person who goes and checks my investments every day i don't do any of those things i'm but i go to it every month how are things doing um i'm also not someone who'll go and invest into five different things because i think it's


and invest into five different things because i think it's smart talk to smart people ask for their advice and and work with them um and i focus on what i feel i'm good at is that i kind of look i understand trends thanks i weirdly enough thanks to the podcast i understand where things are going from different different business sides of things so it gives me perspective um i start talk to a lot more startups lately do a lot of angel investing but i call it stealth angel investing because i don't put that tag anywhere i meet someone i find interesting kind of do that but um i don't go out and say this is what i'm doing because who doesn't do it that is the only thing i'm worried to do it someone asked me to add it i'm like i'm not doing like why and also not everything is there for you to show i think that's the most important thing is that not everything you do not everything you consume not everything you own is there to show


you consume not everything you own is there to show dude uh so i've gotta ask you about um this right because you've done the podcast so i did the podcast out of breakup angst okay that was my ah i'm gonna do it but then over time i realized wow this is so nice and almost ethereal that i'm getting to learn from so many different people exactly okay now in the last episode we recorded we were talking about how content trends have changed like people are moving away from long form and there's fewer spaces in long form people are moving towards real short form content and all and this is what we call sort of gen z content yeah okay so we are millennials 1993 born 1995 born we look at people born 2000 i'm also millennial 82 just on the border made it into millennials when we look at like 2002 or 2000 three born kids yeah we think that dude these guys are one more intelligent than we were the age 100 uh more sensitive all that


we were the age 100 uh more sensitive all that also a little more because like definitely lower the internet yeah lower attention spans lower uh fuse as we call you know they get angry like really quickly etc but the way they look at content is very different and millennial content creators have to adapt to their uh kind of vibe yeah so are you seeing uh that happen around you in terms of people who weren't your generation or media professionals yeah i i'm sure you looked at us also and said oh now this whole social media wave of creators yeah so first explain that what was it like seeing like hearing of like i think the exciting part now is that we all had ideas but we didn't have the tools to create because you still had to like there was a time when you had to get a camera and you'd be able to do these things you like they were all expensive right i remember in film school when i went to film school um the camera professor said camera to marie majesti


um the camera professor said camera to marie majesti you know use it with care don't use no don't unnecessarily like make her work too hard and all that stuff and now every sort of camera on their phone right every single tool you need to create content today is right in your phone i think that's the important part like you guys onwards it's been like you've had all the things you need to create content on in your phone um just been it's been scaling up more and more tools have been there i think that's the exciting part like whenever i see that i'm like i think back on the things we would do at mtv and chandler and we were there we a lot of the content ideas or formats are the same but it's just that now it's the cul culturally we've changed but i think the tools have changed so it's become a lot more interesting so that's what's really been exciting for me to kind of see this thing okay this is amazing but everybody can do it now


this is amazing but everybody can do it now like i don't think it's about young and old anymore i don't think it's about generations anymore is that what can you create using these tools um and you don't have an excuse saying i don't have access anymore we had a lot of excuses you could say okay like i would go around shooting on a what point-and-shoot camera sometimes in college because they would not give us the handicap which was not uh which is only like you could only schedule and take it and now i look at it and say i could actually think of all the films i made in college and some of the stuff we would shoot in the early days of empty and challenge how that could be really accessible to anyone today to create and then i see what you can do from a business point of view i think a lot of us came in thinking this is filmmaking or this is now i think the creator said what's been interesting for me to kind of see from


what's been interesting for me to kind of see from the media side as well as from the creator side is that this is a business plus a creative mindset which before used to be broken in two parts you know there was business and there was creative so that's all in one um i actually talked to a lot of the agency crowd and i tell them that guys till you get that creator mindset in no matter what function you're in um you aren't going to be able to like in any way match up to what's happening in other spaces because i think that's where agencies kind of are lagging yeah that's true i think they don't think like creators and even brands per se i feel like they need to start thinking like creators themselves because that's the big shift that's happened right a lot of individual creators popping up just the fact that joe rugen's like bigger than cnn's boxes of the world is the fact that people are like getting drawn towards individual voices a lot


are like getting drawn towards individual voices a lot more it also hurts me that um like are you following everything that's happening with joe rogan yeah uh so he's kind of got a bad brand image in the last six months but the last six months is where i've been following him very closely i've been listening to almost all his episodes at least the first hour of all his episodes what he's trying to do is once again the first base context is that both of us are vaccinated completely yeah so we're not anti-vaxxers but the reason i'm bringing up joe rogan is he's been questioning the concept of vaccination but he's just been questioning it yeah he's talking to epidemiologists he's talking to a virologist he's talking to people from the pharma industry formerly from pharma he's trying to analyze it from all angles but because he's trying to analyze it again the polar nature of the internet is kind of bracketing him as someone who's anti-vaccination yeah


bracketing him as someone who's anti-vaccination yeah he's not anti-vaccinated he's just questioning it so now in rooms where i bring up the fact that i'm trying to do something like what joe rogan did in america everyone's reaction is the same he used to be great now he's gone a little crazy now and and the other angle is that he also his political ideologies are not right-wing but they're anti-left-wing yeah so they they bracket him he's almost centrist if you look at it which which is a which how can you have like a balanced opinion on things combined with the fact that he has taken away their audiences he's taken away the news channels audiences i feel like news channels are doing a lot of negative narratives about them and creating these narratives in the public side yeah so you have a section of people who actually listen to his podcast regularly and know what he's about and almost all the rest of humanity which is controlled by international news portals they're thinking very negatively


controlled by international news portals they're thinking very negatively about him i think also the problem is i think that they're two problems to this right one is the fact that that's a problem with short form content it's once you take a nuanced longer conversation you break it into smaller pieces you're only seeing that piece and that's what the piece that's getting shared online you're not seeing the entire what's a two-hour conversation so sometimes you miss the nuance um if you put it into like a minute i feel that's i mean for me i think that long form will always be around because you can only get nuanced with yeah i asked a gen like a very young genji get 15 16 years old intelligent aryan sharma on who we discovered off of twitter so he's a wiz kid and all and i asked him and his friends then how do you guys look at short form yeah he's like everyone watches short form but there's a lot of kids who as they're growing up they're discovering long-form


who as they're growing up they're discovering long-form content which is podcast which is even infotainment 10 11 minute videos and they're looking at it as a sort of aspirational level up as in a 10 standard kid when he starts watching podcasts and longer he goes into an eighth standard kid oh you just watch this by the way this is what i watch man it's like the equivalent of us being in school and that one nerdy kid who says no i only watch the news like i i knew uh the long form the good part is that you are not rushing yourself to hitter time you are saying it doesn't matter how long this takes um i'm just getting it right and i think that's especially like conversations right it's it's so good to kind of leave it open to saying let's see let's let this take as much time as it needs rather than let it fit into 60 seconds the other thing with jorog and i feel what happens is so he does what a lot


what happens is so he does what a lot of hosts do right sometimes you'll find something which you know you can amp up a little bit because it will create that one click one yeah right so you'll do that but so i think in america especially what do you think is the nofap movement i'm kidding i'm kidding i still don't understand it i still don't understand it oh sorry sorry i'm sorry the host brings up yeah so you have that clickbaity point you know it's going to be something which people will kind of resonate towards uh and he does that does he do it sometimes when he shouldn't do it yes but i think all hosts you know fall into that trap yeah you fall into that trap views and clicks guys and but i think the tricky part is how do you make sure the guest you bring in is not seeing something that's not true especially when it's scientific right it's a tricky one um politics and science i feel the two trickiest ones to deal


science i feel the two trickiest ones to deal with and religion do you think he bets that consciously because he does bring a lot of extremis yeah in a sense yeah like yeah i i but i feel he also brings on experts yeah i mean like it's a good mixture it's a good mixture but he's also giving everybody a voice if you look at it he's got a bernie sanders on as well so he's had like uh you know elon musk in yeah exactly so so when uh kovid had started to break out in january of 2020 he brought down he brought on an epidemiologist i forgot that guy's name and that guy said a lot of things that actually ended up happening in two years and it was against what who had said at that time so i was going around telling my family this they're full of like doctors i told some of the teammates this and a lot of people said no but the who said this and i'd rather listen


no but the who said this and i'd rather listen to the who yeah but actually what the epidemiologist said a lot of it came true yeah epidemiologist the guy who had come on uh so that basically what does an epidemiologist do they study viruses all the time and they spread i mean they study the spread of epidemics so they are the kind of subject experts for this and i would trust that person rather than the news rather than even the who uh so i think that's the way joe rogan goes with but i pitched this to tanmay i actually spoke to tanmay about kind of bringing that joe rogan experience vibe and i gave him this example that this is what i'd like to do because even in our country you have news channels which are bought out by one side or the other yeah exactly like and and everywhere in the world everywhere in the world you go you're gonna have i think that's the problem with with larger media organizations you either on one side


with with larger media organizations you either on one side or the other yeah which are people kind of are looking for news online yeah but unfortunately there also a lot of what you find is one side or the other yeah so where do you find credible news only credible news weirdly which i find is business news which i find to be a crazy yeah yeah is there so much yeah there is agenda but it's actually like you know it's not like they're still trying to be safe when i asked tanmay about bringing the jre culture here he said that uh joe rogan talks about a lot of politics and that's his driver for growth which means that yes he talks about science he talks he talks to elon he'll talk to robert downey jr but at the same time his recurring theme is politics and uh here's a cute fact about america in our history books when we're in 10th grade or whatever we learn maybe about the independence movement maybe about medieval indian history at the most yeah


maybe about medieval indian history at the most yeah in america their history is divided into two sections where one section is where they learn the past of america and one section is where they learn the present and every american high school student is also taught the present so it gives them a very kind of yeah it's the inlet into the world of news and politics so most americans kind of are very aware of what's happening in the country and they have a culture there of kind of projecting their thoughts america is a very communication oriented culture and he said that that's why jorgen works another reason why jorgen works is because america has a lot of people who do household chores and drives so there are there's more of a range for consumers yeah and he pitched his doubts about bringing joe rogan culture here and honestly dude even i don't know because he said that even if you stay non-aligned but you go 51 right or 51 percent left as in one percent right politics and


51 percent left as in one percent right politics and religion in india once you start talking about it and having an opinion about it it's a tricky sticky we get to kind of get on to because there are so many points of view on everything um which is why i think a lot of people kind of stay away from it and talk about everything else apart from these two topics as much um and i feel that might also be so that's where the views are that's where the views are that's like the kind of scaling thing for podcasts and and that that's what kind of made me doubt that what what tanmay said actually made sense i feel he's talking about one extreme where you absolutely can't do a joe rogan type situation in india where you can't have a podcast which talks about the news etc i feel you can talk about some pieces of news yeah so that's the new flavor that we're trying to bring here i think it's needed i think at some point till


think it's needed i think at some point till you open up conversations you won't realize how if what works what doesn't work what people are really like vibing with and stuff so i think it's very important to do how are you looking at the future of podcast in this country so i've actually been in this interesting phase where i look at um so my podcasting journey was largely business so advertising is dead obviously now like no 175 give the listeners context every single media professional in mumbai and i'm sure across india has at least heard three or four episodes of advertising is dead and and just the kind of range that you bring on from the media world it's it's media education and you don't get to you know you don't get to get media education in mba colleges the only place you can learn is through podcasts through conversation what you're doing is you're just recording conversations with great professionals that you met successful professionals and that's our higher education as media people because again


and that's our higher education as media people because again we've just done an undergrad we don't intend on doing higher studies you're a higher studies mr degree rather and i think what's been interesting for that show is i also like i think for me when i started off like i want to know more things than i do about the space which i've been working in for a while right so start getting in people who i always want to talk to but now there's almost like a platform to do that with um and over time and kind of expanded because now you can't talk about media by not getting someone from a d2c space in like i just had aman from borton right like amman's insights on how to build a d2c brander out of the world like he's just like he's built a phenomenal company and also my favorite shark so that's a whole different point yeah so uh and and he spoke about that as well so sometimes i get some of those i learned the most i feel from


some of those i learned the most i feel from creators because i think that's the cutting edge of where this whole space is really going let's go a little deeper into this bro uh okay starting with me like what have you picked up from like our whatever we've built in terms of because i want to know what the perspective is so i look at what you guys say build it i look at how if i look at your journey and look at how you started off in terms of your content initially and how you expanded that out with the podcast is that you looked like this is a certain channel but of content that i have but this tracks with a certain set of consumers you were able to scale that out by taking the conversations far wider so you suddenly had a wider audience there then you looked at languages and look at how you did the languages part i'm also talking to bran saying you aren't just doing cut copy paste of the english content onto hindi you are


copy paste of the english content onto hindi you are in many ways making it for different audiences of different mindsets as well so i think one of the key things is and and i don't know this is my assumption i don't know because i've never asked you this just how you look at data for your consumer i'm guessing there's a lot there in terms of just the content that you make as well right it has to be something there because you've been able to kind of try almost like put that finger on okay this is where this entire category of consumer is really at and these are things that resonate with them let me talk more about that let me talk more about this so like i actually was telling some of the other testing if you want to interview for an agency a be a creep learn how to create content in any form and also learn how to look at every single dashboard on every single platform because that teaches you more about data analytics than anything else right now so that's how


data analytics than anything else right now so that's how i look at it i'm like i look at the process what is the process and how has the journey been and what pivot was made or what addition was made at which point and if you look at that from a wider perspective gives you insight as to what a brand could do what another creator could do what what the platforms might do tomorrow like the fact that instagram now is announcing subscriptions is something you can could have kind of tracked almost like two three years ago as that entire part on youtube was happening and patreon is kind of picking up let's say in the states so i i just go macro and i'm saying how is this whole thing playing out with multiple players and then look at individual systems and how that's happening how about okay next let's talk about tan man so tanmay is super interesting right i think tanmay's journey is obviously there are parts which were planned parts which he couldn't kind of help but what's


parts which he couldn't kind of help but what's been great is i think when he started vlogging on his youtube channel there was a rawness to it that people really took to yeah and i feel that what he tapped into with lives and the reaction videos he was doing on youtube i think that's really what scaled up one entire audience there i think that that bot army as it happened was where it was at but i think for him it's interesting to say that how do you build that into sustainable business which is for i i remember honestly with it's called honestly the other one which now obviously changed to super team and i asked him like why is that another channel and the things i want to talk about which i can't do on this channel so i think he still has honestly and super team is also there so good news just for crypto honestly he's just again very serious exactly right so i think what what really worked for his vlogs is that there was no actual comedian person


vlogs is that there was no actual comedian person doing vlogs right so you're reacting like one of the audience exactly so tanmay's like vlogs brought that element also that dude okay there's a dude who actually is funny yeah is now showing us his life and always has been that sort of you know massive figure in the content space always like he's like one of the og so it's like okay we want to see this guy's life yeah also this guy's problems yeah also uh his vlogs have some amount of an experienced writer showing through all his years of writing at aib and writing for advertising campaigns it's taught him how to write a very interesting 10 minute piece using his blog like i was watching his vlog of the making of the credit with couple there and i'm like so that is like i've literally turned to people saying you need to watch that because when you see that that is an entire story which you want to watch not just for the ad but just


want to watch not just for the ad but just because of the stuff ichthyothanvik is laughing throughout the video anyway uh which in itself is funny but i feel he's used his brand of humor in a way that he doesn't have to keep going out and doing stand-up all the time because i feel that most stand-ups at some point unless you're someone who really loves that stage in the long term yeah i don't want to graduate because how many of those will you do um and uh and now what he's doing on the crypto side is interesting because he's i think at some point you want the stability of a business as well beyond the content uh which is what i think the future of the whole space is right that every creator is going to be like being an entrepreneur with physical and digital products but i think the physical product is going to be a interesting one to look at apart from crypto which i still don't fully understand so which brings me to the point about discussing this


which brings me to the point about discussing this whole creator wife in terms of there's a shelf life to it and it's like be honest about it it's probably lesser than a lot of athletes maybe even bollywood actors and all of that right because there's so many creators in the space that it's very you know possible you get irrelevant so soon so what's your exit plan what's your exit strategy is the question i ask a lot of creators that you are a creator sure that's true but at the end of it you either want to go to bollywood you want to become an entrepreneur or you just want to make so much money fast that you can sort of retire early that's like these are three exit plans could say what like what's your perspective on that what have you seen most so i feel that two things that one is if you're someone who likes to create content you need to have one piece that's very foundational which you can do for life um and it's something which can actually


do for life um and it's something which can actually last platforms changing which is why for me podcast and writing are two things which i've always wanted to look at in life because i know that those two things manage the podcast just from the audio content right i love having conversations so conversational content and written word are two pieces which i know i will do for life so that's always going to be there because that in many way is my media outlet i'm putting stuff out i'm almost like every creators in media network to themselves you're putting that out you have distribution um and and and that's one part but then on top of that what can you build that in some ways also generates revenue because that takes care of what you your needs might be what you want to build out what your vision for the future is like for me i want to build content that helps people learn because i consume so much content that helps me learn i'm like how do i share that that is literally how


like how do i share that that is literally how the second podcast started varunakisha was me sitting on in front of a mic and saying oh i learned this from this book so let me just say that today i learned this from that podcast you may talk about it and that's how it started i was just sitting in front of a mic on a sunday evening and just started recording a show um so it's a lot of like distribution has been built now how do you make actual money through that exactly and it can't just be ads i think that's the one thing you can't just be brand deals because at some point that cannot be the only avenue and that's where the other end is look at every creator as either you're an artist like you seem to have built this which means i get into you know i get to become an actor i start like becoming a show runner i'm doing all those things or i'm getting into building a business like i have stuff which people actually


building a business like i have stuff which people actually pay for and i don't think that's a bad way to go because in many ways you are building the sustainable because at some point you want to take a year off you can maybe take a year off because you there is a business to back that up yeah like for me temperature is a great example of that right literally like with all the books tim ferriss can still take a year off he'll still be relevant after that year because there's so much there people keep consuming again and again what will people consume for a lifetime is what you should focus most on creating which is why i sometimes worry about short-term content like will people consume that for life chatting about do deep work like like for a comedian that would be one stand-up special that really lasts long you know or for like of you know comedy sketchy youtuber it would probably be like a movie or a web series that lasts ages instead of just like one youtube video one real or one


of just like one youtube video one real or one video podcast what not like this is a podcast called meditative story that i listen to a lot and i find that super exciting because i'm a person who really likes sound like audio design sounds and all this was my thing like when i used to uh when i was working mtv channel v i would always edit the elimination sequence on reality tv so you know it had the most like drama music right you're cutting around short to short full right so these episodes um i started off on on roadie's post yeah rug was my first boss which season did you work on um i did research for the season that bani was in okay i did research for that and then i came back and i worked with the same crew on another show which is a job it's called on the job it was a based we were outside not on the job i had my contestants in some of the episodes were tanmay but varun thakur um and a few others so


but varun thakur um and a few others so we had they were all contestants in different different episodes because i think they were they were in the advertising episode um and uh so yeah so i so that's the period when i would actually love playing with sound like do like 14 15 layers of sound in an edit and sit and do that so when i heard this podcast this is basically what they've taken um stories from interesting people but almost layered that with really like a great sound experience to make it almost meditative right so it's about half an hour story 20 minute story but you're listening to it feels meditative they've added a membership part to it where you get it without the ad one but also there's they have live events there's a community and suddenly if you find the experience of that podcast great you're paying for the experiences beyond the podcast now for me that's a very interesting angle to take right you made it deeper um you get access to the music of each of the


you get access to the music of each of the episodes without the story suddenly you have an entire playlist which you might want to listen to at night or during the day so i found that like how they built a business out of that to be the most interesting layering of what is in essence a story in a podcast which is almost like a base single person talking format i've actually got to ask you about this channel the mtv situation why have they become irrelevant or are they only irrelevant now in tier one cities because there was a phase where it was at the center of pop culture everyone was watching splitsvillar roadies all that and i feel there's a case study in there about things going wrong because of evolution and i don't know is mtv channel okay at least mtv is it still technically like in india doesn't exist anymore um um channel we stopped airing ages ago but i feel the interesting part is you look at what's happening in the states you look at


at what's happening in the states you look at emily in paris emblem paris is created by mtv um yeah it's produced by mtv right so i think they've realized that because they can't play the streaming game the way everybody else and i forget the name of the ceo i was listening to him his interview on another podcast he said we still understand culture it's not as much television driven so we have to figure other ways so because they understand that they're getting into things like they said like it's it's a show that's done so well for uh they're saying they've accepted that they've not won the platform anymore but we still have the minds we understand the content yeah and but if you look at it from like if what an mtv and channel v was for me growing up i would only watch mtv and channel where right my entire culture lives no actually even for the vgs for the content like i wanted to be a vg at one point of time


wanted to be a vg at one point of time in life i think all of us what yeah was the youtuber exactly video youtuber at that time like you wanted to be like a like a cyrus bro you want to be those people and at some point as that went along i feel they miss the digital bus in just being able to transition a lot of the content that they were doing on television to digital platforms like why did they miss it if you look at it your main money still came from television right so no matter like i think early days of glitch we did a lot of content for mtv right the prime client so we've done stuff like with this show called nano drive we sent four nanos across india four different directions they would make money every day basis how far they went how many tweets they got how many like youtube views they got this is like 2011 12-ish right we had like teams going out with multiple dongles and like uploading video because you had no bandwidth anywhere


like uploading video because you had no bandwidth anywhere and we did three seasons of that and that really did really well for nano because we took nano tata to like like up the hills and everywhere else right i think we only lost like network some point in like andheri in bombay but we we got network in most other places weirdly enough but what happened is that the budget for that would still be far lower than what you would get for a show on the tv channel and i feel that's where the flip happened like i remember we i think the closest we came to mixing both together is we produced a season of mtv unplugged for mtv where we did a digital call out to bring in an audience so we would say if you like shan you like kk um we'll have a bus going around the city which is bombay picking people up and taking them to be the audience so suddenly we do a digital almost a digital call-out for an you know in-person experience offline


digital call-out for an you know in-person experience offline experience which became a tv show um so we did a lot of that but i feel the primary business model is still what money the tv channel makes right and and they didn't flip towards i think what happened later but and what happened i feel they were primarily splits with our ods focused as a platform so that's why that went in their direction but i feel they missed the bus the money that uh roadies splits will uh whatever make now uh it's from brands primarily yeah do brands still pay big money for television shows they do because like how much are we talking i wouldn't know exact numbers but television is still a large medium in india you can't take that away there's a large part of the audience that watches it um and also what they've done smartly is a lot of that content now also resides on on their streaming apps like boot and everywhere else so i think they will kind of do that really well you


think they will kind of do that really well you also kind of get like you know you have other content which is slightly less edited um lower censorship rules etc so you know you open all of that up so they've been able to kind of manage it as a package and most tv networks don't just give you ad inventory for like one show right you want to get it across multiple shows it comes across so the package makes sense even today because a large part of india still watches television but it's just that now we watch it on like you'll have one tv at home but you'll have multiple people watching stuff on their phones so can you kind of tap into both and the best way to do that is to have it still on television because it i there's something about credibility of being on like it's like it's like a holding a tv all these things are still in many ways considered more credible even though digital is far larger now in many ways honestly most of the creators i


in many ways honestly most of the creators i know still you don't see being on a billboard see being on a actual magazine cover yeah because that truly means like you've you know transcended the platform and that's like actual credibility and in saying that i feel like something like shark tank it could have just been everyone was like no it should have been on netflix no no like if they wanted to go to them i'm watching it i'm like that's that's what they they need to be like this is like mass adoption of this entrepreneurship culture and i was speaking to a friend in google who was a friend in sony in the sales team and they were like they got all the sponsors within like 15 20 days of them announcing the show so there was deep interest in the fact that dude how many sponsors do they have this upgrade and bunch of other brands like and it hits your mind now because constantly telling you someone said that our generation who had roadies now people have


said that our generation who had roadies now people have shark tank the only only only similarity is hosting both he's not promoting a charisma he's promoting uh digital marketing so again i'm not a hardcore international shark tank fan because it popped up around the time i was creating and i've kind of not been involved in pop culture that much so what is shark tank india like what are your opinions as entrepreneurs i think it's great i think it's because what we sometimes forget is that startup culture entrepreneurship isn't about that you know tech startup funded out of bangalore or delhi or bombay right it's like you see the companies that are coming on shark tank in india it's suddenly making it easier for someone to be at home in like a small town and say this is what i want to do and i don't think parents will look at it as i don't get it anymore you're seeing it on television you're seeing people make money get funded i'm thinking at some


people make money get funded i'm thinking at some point what might happen is the flipper everybody might have an idea which they want to pitch to shark tank um and trying to think that's your payday your what you have to do as a as a founder is to kind of raise money should it become the focus which it can easily become but i think it just makes it more legitimate right it just makes it like something brings me to the point there was a sneaker brand on shark tank and the next day i woke up i didn't see it with my parents the episode but my parents are talking about [Music] wow shark tank is teaching sneaker culture to my parents who would otherwise have [Music] for me it's uh the highlight of all this is that entrepreneurship will finally be celebrated in this country i used to say that you know entrepreneurs need to be celebrities in a sense that i feel like will now start happening when amman and you know anubhav and


when amman and you know anubhav and vinita and all those really start being recognized on street and be like oh i know you yeah that's why i think television and mass media always have right is that if you're on television if you're on print and all that stuff broader like age groups you certainly have credibility like i remember when i first started off at mtv i had people in the family saying okay when you go to something serious like work for a new channel right here yeah like because they're like you're the media that seems like it's serious work mtv seems like it's just random i'm like no but this is technically more money that i will make here than i will make there and more fun as well uh same thing here now like it's it's credible because it's on a traditional platform which i think traditional platforms or mediums don't ever go away they'll be smaller they'll figure a way to adapt like be it print beat television they'll all adapt but uh it's


print beat television they'll all adapt but uh it's it's very credible because it's been there much longer it's lasted the test of time i kind of like some aspects of the times we're living in and steam of the times we're living in we have to move on to the next section so we start a new section on the show it's called pc news [Music] okay so i'm gonna request you gents to pull out your phones and use whatever app you'll use for your news the most interesting thing i saw recently um is um caroline spiegel who's sister of the snapchat founder she runs an app called quinn which is basically an audio semi pornish platform where anybody has a creator and come in and create content and people get this thing and audio porn basically clubhouse and it's basically it's doing really well she calls it the joys of oral sex that's what clubhouse should actually revert to i think they have pretty much right like what what's on clubhouse now at least in


like what what's on clubhouse now at least in india in india it's purely like audio born now in the us there's still you know mlm scheme entrepreneurs and you know crypto enthusiasts and startup enthusiasts still talking about stuff and exchanging ideas i mean she's almost pushes us saying this is a great alternative to what is traditional pornography which is obviously a lot more abusive a lot more here it's i remember you we made a hype video about clubhouse back in the day root because there was this two-month three-month period where at least in urban centers in india everyone was on it but it's a feature i always felt that clubhouse was a feature and not a platform like if you look at spaces now it's still pretty relevant on twitter linkedin just launched an audio platform but they're calling it audio events they're not calling it like you know chat rooms they're saying if you want to do an event you have an audio and a video option so it's a feature um and that's


video option so it's a feature um and that's a problem where i felt it went wrong for clubhouse was a lack of agility from the team like there's this whole urban legend that it's a 10 to 20 team you have to start moving extremely fast like okay now grip these people how do i take things to the next level it means raising money if it means aggressively hiring do it because again you have like that one time period where the iron is hot and you can mold it into things so i remember once we were having this conversation that if you were in charge of clubhouse what would you do so we pitched that we would probably bring some element of video yeah you know maybe maybe after a certain point you some people get to unlock video you know they've done something really smart product twice so if there are 100 people in the room clubhouse would only show you like you know when you're scanning the different rules okay on the sort of thumbnail for that room they would only show you the


thumbnail for that room they would only show you the most good-looking girls if you were a male user and the most good-looking guys if you were a female user but they just didn't move fast enough that's why it is what it is now and on the side you've got twitter which already has its own native audience exactly which has introduced some very powerful tools in the form of spaces it makes it easier right you're scrolling through you see something on top and you say let me just let me pop into that room and see what's happening and that's exactly what they didn't have they didn't have a what do you do if there's nothing happening that you want to listen to there was no other option but i think the replace is very valuable so it's left as basically a pawn platform audio pawn which will compete now with evan speaker keep ahead what's the term i've heard uh shoot a shot is that where it is so uh in shooter shot you you will shoot the shot like


in shooter shot you you will shoot the shot like steph curry like almost uh moving on so uh on the sandbox platform do you know what this whole vibe yeah so everyone's talking about the metaverse what is the metaphors uh think of it as an unlimited sort of land now in different parts of the land different companies own real estate in the metaphors one of them is sandbox okay the reason sandbox has come to the forefront is because snoop dogg uh the rapper has kind of i don't know whether he's bought or been he's bought land within sandbox okay to build something called the snoop verse yeah and uh nobody knows exactly where the snoop verse will be but it'll be your land in virtual reality maybe you'll have like some sort of a club in that land you'll have a hip-hop lounge i don't know uh you'll definitely have some sort of smoking lounge i'm sure yeah uh the news is that someone's bought a plot of land which is geographically in the meta


a plot of land which is geographically in the meta was next to snoop dogg's plot of land for 450 000 as in in ethereum but equivalent to 450 000 so that's how the world is going yeah what would you ever like invest five years into it into into virtual land i don't think that's far away i think that's going to be there i think it'll be a mixture of physical and virtual in that sense anyway um anybody wants to see how that might be you should watch a movie called ready player one yeah which is exactly that right it's exactly where the meta was kind of is leading but i don't think it's an either or the problem is i think most times people talk about the entire world is just going to be that way but we're going to do mixture i think we wear it like would i do business meetings only in the meta was yes please right like um let's let's keep the stuff which actually needs physical interaction out of that but um yeah i don't see


interaction out of that but um yeah i don't see that not being also opens up a whole new form of real estate right a whole new form of assets that you can buy um and suddenly this whole like you know there's this thing called the divide between what you can own and what you can't own in the physical world right is there something that can actually get balanced out i don't know there might be a possibility to balance that out once you go to the meta versus suddenly people who could not let's say buy a house or you know buy land etc because they've gotten the crypto game early could they actually kind of buy land that that's the logic behind holding on to your ethereum in the long term like they say that it's not something you buy and sell and make money off the uh rises and the falls of ethereum but you hold on to it because it might become a sort of currency in the metaverse which is being available so which brings me to the point what varun was saying


brings me to the point what varun was saying is that i agree it's not an either or thing right like for example would you use meta words to go buy groceries probably not you see that in walmart yeah that demo is dead like i saw them like that seems painful painful but would you want to do some which probably isn't possible in the real world like you know like have your voice if you speak in the form of an ant or some like that you know very whacked out or you're punching out like a demon or something like that that's what you want the metaphors for not like to buy groceries from work it's also a creator and designers game the better the creators and designers make it like you can go in any menial experience tomorrow but as a good uh design thinking oriented person you can just make it better yeah that's how i love it so i think creativity is going to come to the forefront and there's this generation that we're talking about be


and there's this generation that we're talking about be a gen z or gen alpha which is the generation after which is your daughter's generation will she be alpha i don't know if she should be she's anything after 2005. maybe she's the one after alpha i don't know it's called beta yeah but whatever yeah jen alpha is the new term she was born in 2017 so i think she might definitely be the one after that yeah yeah so they grow up in social media with a very good understanding of ui and ux which we didn't have the tv when she was like one year old and i didn't understand why that didn't move around because she thought even have to be like an ipad like so maybe they'll be the designers of the metals um and then we see this with level the app that we're building uh some of our younger ohios oh my god there's someone so many are self-taught viraj and we are talking about we're both single right now and uh you want to say it


single right now and uh you want to say it that whole designer conversation you're having oh yeah so we're just like talking about how you know dating designers is just like a different experience just interacting with them dude they're so creative like i'm like you know i'm in that phase i'm speaking to this one girl who's a designer just the way she thinks like is very deep and very like creative and i'm away from that creative process in a sense but you mentioned i'm very in that operational space i feel like it's very compliments that yeah i haven't dated any designers but i've worked with a lot of them and their minds are very very attractive you know like i think it's something about so there's this concept called design thinking which is supposed to be a very relevant subject which some students are learning in international boards your igcses and ibs of the world actually have design thinking as a subject for six standard students and fifth standard students design thinking is basically you're looking at anything


students design thinking is basically you're looking at anything and asking yourself how can i make this better looking more useful now imagine a whole generation of people trained in design and you can teach yourself design thinking from the internet from a very young age but you will have such a strong edge in the world that's coming up with the metaverse where creators will drive it that's supposed to be the subject at the forefront but it's also an extremely attractive uh subject uh to yeah i mean to see in someone else anyway mr doogie yes the last section of today's conversation so we call this uh bombs of emotion tentatively in bombs of emotion the guests that we have on the show are just gonna share whatever's been up in life and your hyper recent learnings a little bit more from sort of an overall perspective it could be career it could be your emotions it could be your family life so because you're coming out of this book uh even a book is kind of like an outlet of years


a book is kind of like an outlet of years of emotions that are pent up so what's been happening in the mind so book's been an interesting journey right i kind of started writing it last march took about eight months to write a book felt like the longest creator project ever because normally stuff happens much faster but i've been told that books get written over a longer period of time than eight months but i kind of started off with the thought processing what would i have wanted to know and learn when i was 21 now that i'm almost 40. um and i sat down and i realized that there are a bunch of things that education teaches us you know education prepares you for the world for your career for your life but lots of stuff happens to you in your life and you learn things so i said kind of can i almost distill that down to you know just like different chapters different sections and i realized there were five things that you don't necessarily you never taught you


things that you don't necessarily you never taught you but you learned right um you never taught how to start things you always at the starting line people say start but how do you start what are you gonna think about um how do you kind of make choices in life how do you learn you get into education but how do you learn how do you you know connect with other people how do you like when you walk into a workplace how do you kind of connect with your colleagues if you're in college how do you kind of connect with your classmates and how do you reflect which i think is the most important thing we never talk about is how to reflect with yourself so i then broke this down and i realized as i went back to stories from my life and initially i was like okay i didn't want to write a memoir because i'm like i don't i've not had an extraordinary life but i've had an interesting life so i realized there were smaller stories which gave me a lot


there were smaller stories which gave me a lot more insight than big events in my life so the book doesn't talk about okay having built a company having sold it hasn't spoken about big instances it speaks about small incidents that gave me so much insight um in hindsight so last year for me was a lot of reflection because i actually went back like last 20 years and even longer and really thought about things that happened to me and because i've been consuming so much around not just personal development but really learning everything from mental models to understanding some parts of neuroscience which i now finally find interesting like why won't we taught neuroscience this way um kind of getting into that and kind of built it into a book so that's actually been my last year has been a great process for me like i've had so much reflection time but uh like for me this like i also know that now writing is going to be my prime thing beyond podcasting because i enjoyed so much like i want like


because i enjoyed so much like i want like i have an idea for two more books and my publisher said hold on let this come out but i know i'm going to be writing for life because i think when you write and you reflect on what you're learning it gives you far deeper insights than let's say anything else yeah it's one of those habits that a lot more people should adopt because as a writer i've seen what does my head it is a form of meditation it is a form of you basically puking out all your emotions on paper and then realizing journaling this is what's in my mind yeah but it's not spoken about enough and i feel like as uh school students you should kind of be forced into that habit just write what you're feeling has your crush rejected you yeah has your teacher shouted at you and embarrassed you in front of the class today have your friendships broken just writing that as a teenager was extremely therapeutic and i wish someone had told me


extremely therapeutic and i wish someone had told me that when i was like 11 12 years old because i had a very negative relationship with writing because of essay writing they were told to write in the confines of rules you write about your fee at the beach or what i don't give a like i want to write about this robotic design this one is dexter's laboratory but uh writing is at the forefront of your emotional learnings also because i realized they were random i've done a lot of random things in life you know sometimes you talk about when you read these books you people talk about really like in like impactful things but for me i realized i've done like like because i grew up in a small town on the coast of andhra pradesh half family doctors half family engineers tried to become i wanted to be a computer engineer because i still love to code ended up in mechanical engineering when i but i moved from a small town to bangalore and suddenly went through this point


town to bangalore and suddenly went through this point when i went from this confident kid to being this person who felt like i didn't fit in i knew less than everybody else um everything from like fashion sense was off everything was off so suddenly went like full back like walk stand at the back of the crowd because i don't want to be in the limelight don't get into that um i also wore the cool chain from kuchu jyothai which i think was a bad idea in hindsight and uh and so i went through a period in bangalore where it was just like one bad thing after another um all didn't finish my engineering on time uh worked as an alcohol promoter for a couple of companies worked in a call center for many months my fluke got into moscow i've actually written about that actually by luck i got into uh simbi from ascom because the weird part is that i was working this call center where i was doing 2am to 9am calls for aol cancellation so


2am to 9am calls for aol cancellation so people in america would call and like want to cancel their internet connection accent yeah so we were taught a new stuff like hi i'm doogie i talked to aol and this and they said dogi and that's where doogie started by the way because i would say doogie as in doogie hauser and that became a way to start a conversation with someone i didn't know and i would reference the show and they would and like i've tell them from tech problems to different nationalities different you know social strata so that is interesting i think my i learned how to talk to and sell to different kinds of people during those what three to six months when i did that but what was super interesting right after that is i wrote this entrance exam and somehow managed to get in by answering only two sections out of five in the interns exam because my point was that it's for all you know all colleges under the university why will mass comp need stats


under the university why will mass comp need stats let me answer just two sections but i took that punt and i got through but that was for round one and and and i talked about i said that luck happens to you multiple times in your life but what's most important is what you do right after luck happens so after that i made a choice in this i finally have a chance in life now to do something because till then i was a guy who had never been able to succeed at anything i'd always had failed not done well parents had to kind of get me into college get me into school and all that stuff so i kind of made that choice at that time if you don't turn around now and kind of say i got to make something of myself you're never going to so it's like luck gives you like almost a way to get in through the door but your work makes you stay so for me that point was very important um also like i was in this mixture of person


um also like i was in this mixture of person who's supremely confident and extremely shy so i'm still very very of the stage because i failed at a fancy desk competition when i was in third standard on stage right i bombed on stage i went on stage looked at the mic saw the crowd and said mommy i don't want to and i ran off crying right never got back on stage for 20 years uh because i was scared but then when i thought back on it i kind of realized that even me becoming an entrepreneur was a connection to that is that when you map out what's the worst that can happen it's easier for you to take that call to do it because sometimes the worst doesn't feel seem that bad unless you leave it imaginary right like what's the worst like we i remember me and wrote sat down and said what's the worst that can happen we'll go look for jobs and we had done a decent amount of work to say that okay


done a decent amount of work to say that okay someone will give us a job so let's take three months and do that so almost like map part because most times people say don't you know fight fear but i'm saying put down what you fear the most will happen at the end of this and that never seems that bad um and i actually do that very often i said i'll say what's the worst that will happen if i take this call today um and once you do that i've also spoken about like being a father like you even about fitness right like why my focus towards fitness has an entirely different story to it i've always enjoyed going to the gym because you know all of us want to be jim bros it's always a thing you want to have those big muscles you want to do all of that stuff um i remember our daughter was born and i used to feel tired carrying a baby around um and this is like what 2017 2018 um and i would have


like what 2017 2018 um and i would have biceps and i would have all those things but it's a little more puffed up and i remember that puja said what's the point of having muscles if you don't have the stamina for it right and so like i kind of flipped and started to do everything that like today she's what 15 odd kilos i can still carry her in one arm and i'm like i want to be able to carry one arm and she's 30 kilos right and and for me i'm like i want to be fit for what life wants me to do like i want to go surf and have my core strong enough that i can serve four hours together which i did and i enjoyed it so yeah so i just kind of put on these things because i feel like we talk about very broad serious things but these smaller things like um like what you kind of go through in life which i think a young person battles with that how do i get into an organization and


with that how do i get into an organization and kind of make my mark in an internship um how do i kind of build friendships how do i find a mentor all of that stuff so that's what i kind of like really dug into i think what you're basically doing is this quote that i read which is that uh try being the person you needed around when you were younger exactly that's what you're doing through all your content exactly as well in most i think that's the best way to describe it i also call myself a midlife crisis creator because i became a creator at the age of what 36 what should we keep in mind for our 30's dude like what do you expect for 30's as someone in their 20s your 30s are actually when you're doing the ground work for the rest of your life to be honest yeah i think that 20s are about mad experimentation of what you can kind of and i think it's a lot of fun because you're really figuring out where you're


of fun because you're really figuring out where you're at 30s are actually most foundational period because you are building some form of stability in your life it also it's not watching oh this is what i'm going to do for the rest of my life you're building the things that will make you be able to do whatever you want once you're fought like i you're saying you're building like finances financial security you're building life security right like i'm very happy to be a person with a family today because that's something which i know i will cherish in the long term because i i love the fact that i have a family and that's why for me that's so important like for me like puja lay up like they're like supreme importance for me to hold that relationship with that importance because i know for a fact that all the other things will come and go when this is like my close group this is the group that's going to be with me in the long term um and i need to do


in the long term um and i need to do right by them um and and as they would expect that of me i expect that of them as well i think that's important if you if you take your close family as that one central part um and take your close friends that way like through my thirties my friends are still the guys to hang out with since college same bunch of guys we all hang out it's still the same much but invest in those relationships and once you're 40 your your life is in a solid position your money scene is in a solid position that's when you can actually experiment um that's when you actually try out stuff like you want to launch another business venture you want to go out and you want to be a creator you want to be a writer you want to suddenly go and say no i want to just like backpack through the world i think people in their 40s and 50s can actually backpack through the world a lot with a lot more ease there's also less given about


with a lot more ease there's also less given about what people are saying about it exactly right you're not worried about that and also you also realize what you shouldn't do and i feel that twenties you you're understanding what you shouldn't do like you will not have a blacked out day because you've drunk too much the night before because as an older person like let me sleep by 11 so i'll wake up in the morning to actually enjoy the sunrise because that's actually the most beautiful thing ever right i think some of those things you learn as well what about your friends since the last question of the show but it's something we've been discussing a lot we've been discussing not getting married because of who we are in the moment and we've also said that maybe that'll change especially the right people come away yeah uh but right now in this very like let's just be like how we are now in the long term yeah like we're seeming to get peace from our life right now yeah


seeming to get peace from our life right now yeah i'd like to know about people who've not chosen to get married from your viewpoint what's their life like i have a lot of friends who for instance don't want to get married don't have kids everything else i think you all make your choices basis what you want your life to be when you're older are they happy they're all happy i think they're all fine i think i think the whole point is is that you need to take those calls that's why the 30s are interesting right you're taking those calls you're taking a call saying this is what i want to be when i'm like 50 when i'm 60 this is what the kind of life i want to have and whatever call you take it's never too late um i think the kids part because it's trickier if you don't have kids before you're 40 because then like you get much older by the time the kids grow up but beyond that you need to decide who are the people i want around


need to decide who are the people i want around me what will be most important to me when i'm like 50. um and in most cases those are the simplest things in life they're never like okay it's not about that big car you want it's not about that house you want to buy it's about who are those people sitting around the dining table when you're all hanging out on a sunday evening um those don't just have to be wife and kid those can be friends you hang out with all the time those can be people who are around you all the time so you need to kind of build that table if you build that dining table for yourself in life um and that's what i've like i've realized like i think the last two years has also been a lot of soul searching about what do i really want to do for the next decade of my life and that's actually it i want to fill that table with people who i will also value and also invest in like i want


will also value and also invest in like i want to be there for them because i know that they've been there for me as well um and then everything else comes with it and it's not about it's not like you want to make money you will still build businesses you'll still do all of that stuff like i s i'm not going to suddenly go off to the hills um i don't think i will ever do that um but i want to invest in that table um that's a very interesting perspective yeah left us with some thought tangent mr doogie thank you finally we're doing this absolutely did this nice long time coming yeah yeah yeah and we've been planning this since literally the first time we met which is pre-lockdown which is like right after priyanka chopra i think yeah so it's been it's been just a lot of delayed schedule but i'm glad it happened at this point because i feel i've also grown up a bit as compared to what i was back then yeah so thank


compared to what i was back then yeah so thank you thanks for having me man you've been a part of that growing up through your podcast and just being around us as like like we look you're the sword of gangoli to our uv and that's what i will say not sorry to virat kohli then but thank you mr doggie everything is out of syllabus the book is out now we're going to link it down below mr doug's thanks so thank you thank you brother looking forward to having you again on the show yeah for sure for sure would love to come back love it okay everything is out of syllabus there's not a single conversation with mr doogie where i don't learn something and i think this was just his first appearance on the show i really want to know what you guys thought i'm sure we have a lot of fans of advertising is dead and the varun dugi show who are listening in on this episode of the ranvi show as well so i want you guys to


show as well so i want you guys to critique me i also want fans of the redmi show to tell us what we can improve in this new format we're changing things up so i desperately want to know what you're liking what you're not liking how we can take things to the next level and of course keeping this format in mind please recommend guests we're going on a deep co-hosting vibe tell me who you would like me to co-host podcast with viraj my friend zarvan bansha and a bunch of other people are getting lined up to co-host episodes with me let me know what you thought of this co-hosting angle as well remember guys follow us on spotify every episode's available on spotify i have 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world i have nothing to say other than the fact that i love you guys thank you for the support the vibe in the new studio is just starting out so keep supporting us thank you love you [Music] you


so the budget just got announced and of course we'll be talking about the budget in this particular episode but nikhil kamath of zeroda has a lot more to offer his years of experience trading in the stock market his years of experience just learning about the world of finance and economics that's what this podcast is about remember the new season of the runway show is much heavier than all the episodes we've done till this point so if you don't consume the entire podcast just watch the highlights on our new youtube channel trs clips and of course remember to follow us on spotify for a spotify exclusive which means that every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world this is nikhil kamath of zerodha on the runway show breaking down finance the way he sees it i think you money-minded folks and you finance oriented folks will have a lot of fun listening to this episode i do recommend that you take notes enjoy yourselves [Music] mr nikhil


take notes enjoy yourselves [Music] mr nikhil karmath welcome to the runway show again how's it going brother good ranveer how is it going how's everything in mumbai good good i'm glad to have you on the show once again the first time you were here it was sort of our season one which was much more about who you are as a person what you've done season two is about what's happening in the now both in your life and in the world so before we get into the finance news oriented section because that's the theme of this particular episode who better than yourself to update you know young folks about what's happening in the world of finance but before that i want to talk about generally what the last year's been like for you because knowing on a personal level uh you're someone who's very self-improvement driven and you're someone who's kind of in that search for peace and i feel those those elements are even more important than what's happening in the world nowadays so


than what's happening in the world nowadays so what's up yeah so last year has been good interesting uh many victories and uh losses but i would say net net uh everybody in our ecosystem has kind of benefited from the last two years of a bull run in equity markets ever since the pandemic we have been beneficiaries of that we've gotten lucky and you know broking and asset management and all that we do and it's generally been a good time for us so uh nothing to complain about on a personal front uh things are better uh things are uh more peaceful than they were uh i think uh these really big peaks and troughs are the problems in life right like one has to like really work on mitigating the emotional reaction that comes with it but it's been fairly stable for a while now which i like no no i hear you how did you handle the whole situation with vishy anand i know that it got a little fishy in the middle and knowing you


a little fishy in the middle and knowing you i understand the place you came from you know you're a fun guy you like pranking around a little bit but how did you handle that whole angle well not very well uh it i mean i think i kind of like uh should have reacted in a manner different to what i did but netted it's okay you know like uh i've spoken to him and uh we we've never had any like real issues with each other and he's a great guy and i've always found him uh very intriguing probably one of the brightest minds to come out of india so you know like full kudos to him and i hope like you know uh to continue to retain a friendship with him over the long term and it looks like they'll happen yeah we had him on the show and i see why you two would get along very similar energies uh what i do know is that the last year because of all these lockdowns a mentor to me zakir khan


these lockdowns a mentor to me zakir khan actually told me this he's like lots of people are stuck at home and they're looking for people to project the anger upon and he just told me to be careful and i also got into a lot of trouble last year and i remember meeting you right after this whole situation and that's what i told you as well that bro i think this is just youth anger that's being directed upon you because of zerodha being in the mainstream and generally i think people just don't love other folks who've made it as big as you have in life so you become an easy target you know that's how i look at it yeah but i think you know in a way it's a good thing like all these big uh moments in your life where uh you know you're popular for the right or wrong reasons uh i think it teaches you a lot uh even if you were to consider it a failure at some level uh it it makes you better


failure at some level uh it it makes you better prepared to deal with it the next time around you know i've had like three four dramas in my life like really big ones so the fifth time it happens i will deal with it better than i did the first time or you know the sixth time would be better than the fifth time and from that perspective all these really big uh emotional events uh i think they kind of like get you to evolve a little bit faster and become more more uh efficient at like kind of coping with them in the future so i think it really helps you grow as a person emotionally yeah i think that's what entrepreneurship is in its core you know uh you've got to kind of jump on to the next level and problems always going to be a part of the game but uh once last question about this whole face you you spoke about having learnings from say a recent tough time you had probably the over the last year so what was your big learning


over the last year so what was your big learning from the last year mine was that your work will never appeal to everyone and your work is kind of only going to appeal to the people who are on the same frequency as you so that was my big learning how about you maybe that my wins will not last and neither will my big losses uh you know everything passes uh something great happens in your life professionally personally you kind of like rejoice for a little bit of time and then it kind of goes away and the same with the loss it feels like the world is ending and there's no tomorrow but when you look back at it in a year you're like you know you kind of overreacted and you should not have given it as much mind space as you did when it was happening i think we're all uh it's not easy to take yourself out of that situation and think like an objective outsider but being able to do that i think is is really good i hear you


that i think is is really good i hear you so now that we're done speaking to all the core trs listeners who love self improvement and emotional health let's talk for the people who are here for you only which is all the finance geeks and everyone who wants to be updated on what's happened in the world of finance so this past week uh the budget was announced for 2022 uh and i'm sure you've gotten a zillion questions about the budget so i'm not gonna ask you all the cliched questions what i will ask you is that for someone who's living under a rock who doesn't know what went down in the budget how does a nikhil karma look at it you're at the center of the world of finance so what's been up what's happened in the last uh week yeah so let me first take it from investor trader standpoint um what we are hoping for from the budget you know some things we've been asking for for a long time i'm going to put myself


for a long time i'm going to put myself in the investor bracket and talk like that there's something called stt security transaction tax for i don't know how many years now people have been kind of like paying this indirect tax it's paid when you make money or do not make money on a trade but you still pay it and it's about 1800 rupees per crore of turnover and you paid only on the sell side but what people fail to realize is about 80 90 percent of the volume of trades in india or the turnover in india happens on the derivatives market where there is uh leverage inherently so somebody with one lakh rupees is taking positions worth five lakh rupees so it's not hard for somebody with a couple of lakh rupees in his account to maybe do a few close of turnover a day on a notional basis what happens with std is it makes the ecosystem inefficient say for example i'm trading nifty futures or bank nifty uh which


trading nifty futures or bank nifty uh which are the most common uh contracts if i were to enter and exit 10 times in a day or 20 times in a day if i were to end up paying as much as 20 points in std alone for me to then break even i'll need to like capture 20 points of nifty just to be like you know level zero zero kind of thing uh so it it kind of makes it very hard for speculators a lot of day traders people who are doing this full time for a living to remain profitable for a long time the ecosystem you know in some ways the government we all always kind of frown upon these speculators with high leverage but one has to understand these are the guys making the market uh for everybody they're reducing the impact cost they're making it easier for foreigners to come into the country and invest you know if i'm a foreign fund and if i have to buy 10 of a certain stock in india over a one-month period


a certain stock in india over a one-month period if not for these people it would be a lot more inefficient and the cost would be significantly higher so we need these people and we need to support this uh this kind of you know this category of people who are doing trading full-time for a living sdt was implemented when chidambaram kind of did away with the long-term capital gain tax but now we have ltcg and sct so it kind of doesn't make sense that's something i think everybody in the industry has wanted for a long time now i hope it happens in the future it did not happen on this particular budget the second thing is again focusing on these full-time traders again derivatives are taxed at the max income tax rate and in many cases people need derivatives to hedge their portfolio build a better risk reward profile create a more robust trading portfolio by using you know things like maybe you're doing your writing covered calls or maybe you're running strategies which reduce the underlying risk and


you're running strategies which reduce the underlying risk and this shouldn't be discouraged with such a high tax rate especially when on ltcg you're only paying 10 this is what we were expecting from the investor trader standpoint neither has happened but that's okay and maybe in the future it will if i were to go back and look at it as an entrepreneur as a businessman uh taxation in india is really high today uh if i'm a company and i'm the promoter of the company today if i make 100 rupees of profit i pay a corporate tax rate of 25 rupees up front so i'm left with 75 rupees now let's assume i want to take out money and buy myself a home to withdraw the 75 rupees which is left as dividend distribution tax i need to pay another 35.8 percent tax in it so it makes my net effective tax rate about 51 52 rupees and this is not withstanding uh stamp duty and std and all the other taxes like a business guy or


all the other taxes like a business guy or somebody focused on the finance world might have to pay this is bad taxation at such a high level discourages entrepreneurship if you were to go back in time [Music] there's many people politicians across the world who have run this experiment as to what the ideal tax rate should be i think uh nixon did it jfk did it uh i think during jfk's era at one point he dropped tax rates down to 16 from you know different rates they were at 58 1.48 1.30 at one point so when he went from 30 to 16 what he realized is the incentive to evade taxes became so small that actually more tax collection happened more people came out and paid tax so it's a bit counter-intuitive but at the right level uh more people will come out and pay tax and especially in a country like india where one percent of our population pays tax and you know there is a big part of society that should be supported and all


big part of society that should be supported and all of that but there are very many people in india evading tax and you know hopefully bringing down the tax rates to more reasonable levels will kind of incentivize these people to come out and pay so from that that end dividend distribution tax again nothing changed i hope it happens in the future they removed the search they capped the surcharge on uh private companies long-term capital gain tax so what that essentially means is uh you know a lot of people in our ecosystem right you know kunal and you know like sachin so all these startup promoters or promoters of any kind of companies in india which are if the promoter is getting an exit he would earlier have paid a long-term capital gain tax of 28 now because of the cap in surcharge it comes down to 23 this is good uh because we were losing a lot of entrepreneurs to countries like singapore uh jurisdictions where tax rates are a lot more favorable like singapore does not have capital


lot more favorable like singapore does not have capital gain right even on on salaries and incomes i think the max rate they charge is about 17 uh like dubai did not have any kind of tax up until they implemented vat a few years ago and i think last week they came out with a corporate tax rate of nine percent uh so bringing that 28 down to 23 is a great step in the right direction it will disincentivize many people in the ecosystem who were considering uh relocating to better tax geographies so that's that's another thing uh another another big thing that i think the budget was kpex focused which is good the government intends to spend more money next year this is generally a good thing for equity markets because more consumption more spending you know paid on infra or anything will generally boost a lot of stocks in different sectors uh the government intends to if i'm not wrong spend something like 39 40 lakh crores next year we know how they will collect 24 25 lakh


year we know how they will collect 24 25 lakh crores how the deficit of 15 lakh rules will come where the government will get it from what rate will they borrow it there's a lot of ambiguity there i think we'll have to wait and watch uh it's it's even more you know like one has to be more curious because even the divestment number this year is very very tiny compared to what one would have assumed people were thinking two two and a half black crows but it's only around sixty seventy thousand crores so one really has to wait and watch what will happen to that uh 15 lakh road deficit number and how the government goes about uh getting that what what's your what's your hunch about where it'll come from like if you had to guess i think borrowing like you know both domestically and internationally it will probably come through that our fiscal deficit number is you know going up i remember a time like not too long ago when we would look at a


not too long ago when we would look at a four percent fiscal deficit and be like can you explain the term fiscal deficit because we have also trs listeners yeah so a certain amount of goods and services are exported from india for which we get foreign money and a certain amount is imported into india the the difference between the two is the deficit so say for example uh these numbers are not right i'm just giving you an example say india and china does trade uh india exports sells uh maybe like 50 billion dollars worth of stuff to them and we import about 100 billion dollars from them so that means the deficit is 50 billion dollars the basically the money you're making from exporting things like the net money or making from exporting things yeah the net money you're making or losing one or the other so i think uh you know not long ago like it used to be like four percent and it was a big deal like you know like why is it so high now i think


know like why is it so high now i think they're factoring it for it to be at six percent but that since that money is going towards infra projects and development and all of that people are not really contesting it too much it'll be interesting to watch what happens uh broadly sectors specifically i think they did something good around education they increased the budgets by 16 or 17 percent nothing really came for health care one thing which was noticeable is they kept seeing drone drone drone right like a bunch of times we had invested in a drone company recently called omni present or something like that and they're curious we've been in we've been looking at that sector a little bit more closely ever since we got involved with that company uh it'll be interesting uh what else happened you know this this memory is so short-lived right like budget budget budget was like tuesday and then by wednesday it was like budget two times instead of five and by and thursday you're like what happened


and by and thursday you're like what happened did anything really change but substantially i think these other things would change nothing materially changed outside of this so i feel a finance person looks at it one way and you just give us the finance person uh perspective on it and then the mainstream and media and social media specifically look at it slightly differently at the center of social media there's been talk of crypto of course and i know you have some strong opinions on crypto both you and nitin i'd first love to know your general opinions on crypto and then your opinion on all the crypto related announcements that came from the budget yeah sure let me pre-face by saying i am no crypto expert okay like i've been looking commenting uh trying to learn about it for many years but uh i'm i'm still like no expert by uh anybody's measuring stick i'm not but i think what they're doing is confusing uh you know when the parliamentary session was going on and she said uh what would


session was going on and she said uh what would she use virtual assets are going to be taxed at 30 so i looked at the document the definition they have used for virtual assets is really broad uh it's like you know if i send you a picture on my on your phone of some or some kind of a video of something i've done and i charge you some money for it even that falls under virtual assets according to their definition i think oh that's my interpretation of it the crypto guys are always you know half glass full kind of guys right like anywhere that crypto is said by a government or or somebody a figure of authority they're like this is good news at least they're acknowledging the fact that we exist and they will regulate in some form in the future so they they went in that direction all the crypto exchanges the big crypto guys they thought it was good for them uh but when i look at it you know for a crypto trader in india who was trading on listed


crypto trader in india who was trading on listed exchanges in india uh one month ago if you made 100 rupees of profit you kept 100 rupees of profit now if you make 100 rupees of profit you get to keep 70 rupees of profit so i don't i don't really quite understand how it is beneficial for them also that one percent tedious on transactions i think it makes it harder for the higher frequency traders the market makers for all of them to operate because they can't really you know pay that one percent tedious every time and be monitored at that level so what i suspect will happen is the market will become less liquid very quickly for a short amount of time like if you went to you know if you tried to buy a certain crypto at 100 bucks and your orders got filled at 101 up until now maybe in the really short term it won't be 101 but it will be 101.5 or 2 uh because of this tedious thing uh she later came and the finance minister


thing uh she later came and the finance minister later came and clarified that uh you know this is not the crypto bill we have not legalized it uh there will be a crypto bill which will talk about legalization and the regulatory aspect of it so nothing materially changed but in the current form uh if things were to continue i think one interesting opportunity opens up taxation on publicly listed equity is 10 ltcg here they're taxing people at 30 percent i don't know if you've seen companies like microstrategy in america where their main business is no longer their main business but they're they're a proxy or a euphemized version of holding uh crypto assets and people buying to the company in order to you know have the crypto assets that the company has so somebody might well open uh you know companies which are publicly listed tomorrow and give people the benefit of 10 taxation whilst their only business is investing in digital assets uh and that's a nice arbitrage play right because here you're paying 10 and


play right because here you're paying 10 and there you're paying 30 so it's there are many nuances to it uh one will really have to like break down the numbers and uh figure out what happens in the future but on the face of it i think what materially changed is someone who was making 100 rupees uh one week ago uh whenever this bill is active will now make 70 rupees i think and the impact cost will be a little bit higher um you so you know i liked what you said about how a lot of crypto folks look at it as uh as any look at any situation in the crypto world related to governments as positive uh we've had a lot of crypto folks on the show and and being an engineer even i feel super positive my whole generation feels super positive about crypto but i actually want to hear the glass half empty version of it in terms of you're someone who's made a lot of money in the stock market i know for a fact that you know if you


i know for a fact that you know if you play the stock market game right if you play the private equity market game right you can actually make higher gains than the world of crypto has made so people need to know that firstly but secondly what is your opinion on cryptocurrencies in general whether it's bitcoin or ethereum i i know you've studied it for a few years that's longer than most of us have studied it for and the fact that you're saying even you don't understand it despite knowing so much about the world of money it just makes me want to question that situation like uh what's your what's your take on it honestly it's constantly changing like what i thought about crypto like maybe one year ago changed six months ago and is changing today and it will constantly evolve right it's such a fluid concept uh off late i've been talking to people in the crypto world and they've they've tried to you know they've been explaining to me how you know proof of work


been explaining to me how you know proof of work versus proof of stake and proof of history works and uh the mechanisms behind cryptos and how how a lot of different nuances work which i did not know earlier so i think one thing i can uh gather from people i've spoken to is nobody is really talking about it as a currency anymore like they were two three years ago everybody treats it as an asset today many people compare it to gold i have watched debates where you know there is somebody arguing for gold on one side somebody arguing for crypto on the other side uh valid arguments all i personally find myself favoring the side of gold favoring the more kind of like you know tried and tested means of allocating money just because of the history associated with them you know these are asset classes which have been around for thousands of years and uh the one thing one cannot deny is uh you know this everybody has attempted alchemy right every king ruler emperor at one


attempted alchemy right every king ruler emperor at one point or on another another has tried to make gold out of something else maybe there is a way to do it maybe nuclear fusion has some by-product which is gold but it's a lot lot more expensive to produce gold in that manner then it is to mine gold uh so the price that gold is trading it today compared to the price that it the amount of money it takes to mine it dig it from the ground and you know like process it and all of that is not considerably different so there is some amount of like you know raw ingredients going into the process of creating the end product that is gold just for that reason i do not think uh the value of gold will ever uh can ever depreciate in the manner that uh the value of a cryptocurrency can like maybe the bitcoin can fall 90 in one day uh because of some inadvertent in some weird event in the future i don't think that can happen to gold and for that reason


think that can happen to gold and for that reason i really like gold uh i've been looking at gold for a long time and in terms of a hedge against inflation it works incredibly well if you look at it from you know what the median home price in america was in the 60s and how much gold you required to buy a median house let's say for example it was 10 kilos in the 1980s 20 years post that you probably needed 18 kilos in the 2000s you may be needed 15 kilos and today you probably need like 14 kilos so gold has always been a good place to retain wealth and in my experience there's enough precedent for me to say that uh when it comes to crypto currencies and you know bitcoin and ethereum and everything else that is popular my uh my little bit of research okay we tried to like figure out who actually owns let's talk about bitcoin who actually owns uh this asset class that everybody's talking about so we looked at companies with large holdings we


so we looked at companies with large holdings we looked at individuals with large holdings across the world and we arrived at a number that about uh geograph geographically about 85 percent of the bitcoin in the world sits in america that number is probably increased after you know china having gone against it and russia having gone against it and you know kazakhstan and ukraine and all of that so i would assume that 85 percent has become even more uh we talk about this as a currency which is uh democratizing in a manner but uh when you look at it i think you know it's the same like a couple of hundred people who have access to the vast majority of this con of this currency or they've kind of like collated it with time that argument doesn't hold true for me either then you know like it's just like there are so many moving parts runway like i have to figure out like uh should one buy and why one should buy uh see if i were to like you know


buy uh see if i were to like you know tell you like the top line uh thing that i think with crypto i'm like am i going to like lose out so much by not holding it today uh versus taking the risk when it's a regulatory gray and the volatility associated with it uh you know the fact that it has rallied as much as it has and all of that i'm more on the side of you know it's okay like you know you don't need to be a part of every party in town and maybe this one is not for you do you own any crypto no zero we can't like see the thing is we're so regulated as a business right from everybody from like rbi from sebby and we're under a microscope all the time because as we have scaled uh we've had very many people who've been kind of like you know who have lost a lot of business because of us doing the same service at a much cheaper cost uh you know there were brokers back in the day


uh you know there were brokers back in the day we charged two percent a transaction and we charged 199th of that or something like that uh so we've always like we probably have like you know a lot more uh compliance and governance checks than anybody so as long as they don't totally legalize it in the country i would never even you know flirt with the idea of ever buying a cryptocoin wow okay um you know when it comes to crypto so last week we had some smart people on the show we had this econ grad we had ayush as well from pesto and i spoke to them about this concept of money now again i'm speaking to the trs listeners here basically the value of money uh is because of the value of gold uh as in like when i'm giving you one dollar i'm saying that i'm giving you one dollars worth of gold i mean at least that used to be the case now it's i'm giving you one dollars worth of a dollar yeah now


you one dollars worth of a dollar yeah now it's just debt like that used to be the case before like i think uh you know the gold standard existed up until like if i'm not wrong again i don't remember but 1971 70 yeah up until that time everybody every central bank across the world had to show how much gold they have in their reserves right uh it went it it kind of like mutated from there to a point where united states held everybody's gold or a lot of countries gold whoever were part of you know the pro-us crew and 1971 nixon was doing two things he was trying to send somebody to the moon cold war with russia they were on this crazy race who will go to the moon first and they were fighting a war with vietnam on the other side so he came out and he said on a temporary basis we will not show you how much gold is in our federal reserve so when he changed it it was temporary it's just that people have not gone


it was temporary it's just that people have not gone back to it ever since then you know it's it's this arbitrary thing right like we all uh we treat the us dollar as uh as like a place to hide when things get risky in the market we all believe that it can never fail but uh if you look back in history you know people thought about the people thought about the pound in the same way and in the 90s george soros kind of like you know went against the pound and beat it down right like anything can happen the amount of money these guys have printed in the last you know 18 months out of thin air essentially is more than all the currency u.s markets have printed ever in the history so with that much dollar will there be a considerable serious threat to the dollar at some point in the future i would say very possibly so okay i'd love for you to draw a dystopian scenario uh firstly again starting from the abc's so early on the value of