someone when they're already it's another thing to see somebody coming up and being in able to invest in them so you really you're investing in in social currency and the same reason that somebody wants a mercedes benz or to wear very expensive sneakers or to wear jewelry you don't need the metaverse to show off your digital assets nfts are going to become as prevalent as social media and so showing off your virtual currency in the real world you know when you meet somebody now people go to google people go to instagram people go to tiktok to look that person up if they don't fully know them hey meet my friend john and they walk away they go to the bathroom or after night they're like who was that in a decade i believe i'm predicting that people will look at people's public wallet i believe today we are public with social media we're starting to go private a little bit with the way the world's going in crypto in in blockchain we're private people are anonymous and


in in blockchain we're private people are anonymous and i believe that you're about to see people become public and as people start having public wallets to showcase their tokens you're not going to need the metaverse i'm going to meet you at a conference you're going to walk away i'm going to google you your wallet's gonna be the second result whoever wins that game or or i'll just go to it because it'll be as prominent as instagram and i'll see that you and i both love mumbape the footballer and that's gonna make me and i'm going to say wow you have the so rare rare moombape and immediately that's no different than me saying wow you have those sean weather spoon sneakers or those off whites or wow you have look at that you know why do people buy lamborghinis they don't buy it for any other reason than to show off or to show status we are animals you know the the early cavemen and the early settlers they would have you know


and the early settlers they would have you know they would put paint on their face to show their status chiefs would have more feathers army would have more metals this is what human beings do this is what we do nfts are going to be the most scaled most global most universal language of of communication through non-words one of my business mentors always told me that if you want to ever make a high profit business create status driven products so that could be that that's a very good point whoever said that is very right the difference between chanel and louis vuitton and competitors that make the same product same quality but there's a thousand ten thousand dollar difference absolutely brilliant by whoever said that that's exactly right i wanna talk to you about this theory that i've been thinking about for the last maybe month or so i constantly ask myself what the future of social media is everyone that facebook is the ultimate thing and instagram came in everyone thought instagram's the ultimate thing and all new things


everyone thought instagram's the ultimate thing and all new things are coming up my hunch is that there's gonna be niche social media in five to ten years people are gonna break away from the popular platforms and go into niche platforms where it's thematic social media and we are seeing bits and pieces of that sprout up but i feel it's a design game and it's a user interface game whoever creates the best designed social media platform whoever has the most easy interface is going to win and then social media is going to be broken up into niches i'd love to know what you think i i think i'm not sure if it's niches though it could be but even if it starts off as a niche if it's highly successful it will get broader look at look at things like discord discord was a niche it was for video games but then it became for everything right instagram was for photographers and then it got bigger right facebook was for college kids you couldn't even have an account unless you


college kids you couldn't even have an account unless you had a college right so i would say that you know even if you went as niche as a social network for football fans or cricket fans do i think if that was built properly that other people say well i'm a cricket fan but i also like chess so i'm going to start another room or another calendar you know so niche goes to scale i would say it's more about the person that figures out the vulnerabilities let me explain humans by nature are incredibly insecure when social networks start they tend to be nirvana very good very nice oh i've been there for all of them they all started nice and then as it gets older it becomes more cynical and it becomes more negative and the environment becomes more difficult you know two years ago the amount of negative tick tock comments was very low and so i think that i was thinking about a social network the other day almost rebuilding instagram only pictures no video only pictures not showing


instagram only pictures no video only pictures not showing follow count and likes not showing not showing comments only allowing very basic plus and medium and low because you want to let people communicate so literally maybe thumb up thumb you know hand even thumb down and that's it and my intuition on that is right now everyone needs a mental break from the judgment and the anxiety that everyone gives towards them um and so i wouldn't even show the data to the user i would not even show them how many likes or thumbs down they've got it would be there because you want to build community um but i i think that uh i think that there's something to that for example or like we saw with clubhouse it was audio in a group so it's something we're not thinking about right now maybe it's ar the whole social network has to your every photo has to be an ar execution or or not a photo just the execution of the content so there will be something what social networks have absolutely proved absolutely is


something what social networks have absolutely proved absolutely is that they are like television shows and television networks they ebb and flow some will have two years three years like vine some will have 15 years like facebook some will have five and six and ten and zero months or six months or six weeks and that's what's happening there's a very cool product i'm working on in my life outside of being a creator don't want to talk too much about it on the podcast maybe i'll tell you offline but it is in the self-improvement space and we are going with that niche social media kind of vibe there uh there's also a gaming aspect i feel people want things to do going forward they want to engage their head in a certain way so maybe i'll tell you about this after the podcast but while we're on the podcast this is going out to your indian audiences you have a massive indian fan base i don't know how aware you are of that you're really really big in india okay


of that you're really really big in india okay thank you so a couple of questions again coming back to the product i'm building we're targeting the world as our market because we feel indian startups aren't thinking like that indian startups don't want to sell to the world therefore they kind of target india itself but i feel that india has products that you can sell to the world yoga is a great product like that it's a soft product it's a concept that you've sold to the world but there's like a pyramid of products that the world doesn't know about that in some indians know a lot about so that's what i agree with that a lot actually i like that i like that hypothesis a lot yeah uh yeah and that goes for any culture in the world you always have something from your culture that you can sell to the world so the question to you is a couple of things one what's your advice for indian entrepreneurs content creators and two how's the world looking at


content creators and two how's the world looking at india from the outside because maybe we're blindsided to that as indians great questions let's start with the second one uh i think in the business community people understand the sheer size of the market you know i think in general the most thoughtful people in business and geopolitical ponderers are thinking about nationalism on the rise all over the world china america india brazil right so i think that's an interesting when i get into my most thoughtful conversations i think people wonder about america russia china india brazil as well if they put up walls to each other because we went through this huge globalization what would that mean what's the opportunity india's got a lot of people and it's continuing to grow so if that happens that's a very exciting place to do business you know for example i think most people don't want that to happen you know definitely not the youth we want a globalization and so i think that um i think people for


and so i think that um i think people for the market inside of itself i think people see incredible potential i think in general in the entrepreneurial ecosystem more than the corporate ecosystem i feel like there's a deep respect for the natural talent you know i think when you look at you know many of the great startups in the world first of all there's just an enormous amount of people from india but i think the culture has represented itself the country has represented itself on the global stage very well there's an incredible amount of individuals who have innovated who brought impact i i would argue that it's very hard to find any great company in the world that doesn't have many high prominent indian resid you know citizens or or people that were born there uh within the organization's most senior brass so i think people think there's a lot of talent and a lot of opportunity i personally because i am aware of what's going on with my fan base there i get the


going on with my fan base there i get the opportunity to listen to a lot of uh emails and and and dms from india from youth and i feel like there's a level of ambition from the indian youth that feels right to me we're a country full of garyvee's i just want to highlight that you know it's funny i believe that i'll tell you something you may not know about this but i you know for everyone's listening i grew up in edison new jersey and for some of the people listening they may know this edison new jersey mutuchen island new jersey um in the late 80s became one of the first places that a lot of immigrants from india were settling and overnight in 1986 7-8 overnight one summer i came in and we had six new kids in our class all from india oh and the reason i know there's a lot of little gary vee's is in those last five years that i lived in edison because that i moved to hunter


lived in edison because that i moved to hunter and county new jersey so many of my core friends who were entrepreneurs and selling baseball cards with being hustlers and willing to work were my indian immigrant friends right and so i know that to be true the other thing that has been prevalent because i gave a lot of thought to this podcast and what i wanted to say so probably the last couple weeks i paid a little more attention to the dms and interactions i've had with indian fans one thing that is universal but was very prominent in the last month in my interactions with youngsters specifically in india is an incredible lack of patience that i think is grounded in twofold one ambition which i find beautiful and i think is great as long as you can balance it two which is very cultural in many cultures not just indian culture an incredible desire to prove their parents wrong [Laughter] you got that right man and so the advice i would give is cup is


and so the advice i would give is cup is going gonna be very very very good advice i hope number one your parents love you they do it's just as a parent i promise you it's the truth no matter how emotionally weak or screwed up or whatever is going on your parents even alcohol abuse whatever it could be deep down promise they love you very much you're a piece of them most parents around the world and i do think at a higher percentage in india parents care about the status of their child's job and who they marry and that's terrible it is bad it is bad and you kids are right about that you're what you do for a living and who you marry is yours and if that disappoints your parents so that they can't brag to their friends well that's their [ __ ] problem so you're right on that one next parents love their kids so much most of their decisions are based on fear many parents don't care that you're a doctor or lawyer or an


care that you're a doctor or lawyer or an engineer they just think that you'll always be safe and get paid and they worry about you they actually don't care about the status of their friends they just actually believe in their brain because they're not an entrepreneur because they didn't grow up with the internet that this is good for you and right now you're just young and wild and they used to be young and wild and they know the decisions they made that were bad and they think you're doing it if you can understand those three things it will help you be more patient because you can have a better relationship with your parents do not try to prove your success to your parents to your sister do it because it makes you happy you have to fall in love with your process not with the trophies that come from your process beautiful garyvee one last question for you because i know you've got a busy day ahead of you it's gonna be a tough question but when garyvee is on his deathbed


question but when garyvee is on his deathbed what would be a good life to look back at would it i know i know you want to buy the jets i know you wanna i know what you're working towards [ __ ] the jets and here's what i mean by that people are very confused about the jets thing for me i want to try to buy the jets that excites me so much process got it i don't need the jets on my deathbed i need to think two things one tomorrow when i die how many people are going to show up to my funeral how many lives have i touched so much that they even though they're busy you know even though you know i've inspired them and now they're doing so so great that they have a big meeting of their own even though they're busy or live far away will they go out of their way to go to my funeral that's number one what i'm gonna be thinking because that's a life well lived and number two i'm just


a life well lived and number two i'm just gonna think about you know the 10 15 closest people to me how grateful i was to live life with them to be with them and just really think about my great obsession which is to give more than i took did i give more than i took and i think the answer is unequivocally yes and i think i have another 45 plus years to keep giving even more and that's my plan we love you garyvee you don't know how much of an impact you've had on young indian entrepreneurs and indian content creators and i'm sure entrepreneurs and content creators all over the world i'm a product of your videos in many ways uh they've kind of helped me with my pivots helped me with my direction and aims from the bottom of my heart brother thank you thank you for being on the runway show india loves you and we want to see you here after covert i will be there thank you my friend [Music]


ar raman needs no introduction what does need an introduction is this particular piece we went extremely deep conversations about spiritualism about creativity about the future of the music industry and so much more it wasn't easy preparing for this podcast it wasn't easy settling down for this podcast it was extremely easy once the conversations began i felt like we were in sync and i promise you you won't believe the kind of stuff that mr armand has opened up about on the runway show i'm deeply grateful that i got to do this with one of my idols the master of creativity the maestro himself aya rahman on the runway show [Music] it's an honor having you on the show i have so many things to speak to you about i want to just begin this particular podcast with one phrase i read that really stuck with me the phrase the quote is every man has two very important days in his life the two most important days in your life are the day you're born and


days in your life are the day you're born and the day you realize why you're born so i'd like to begin by asking you that so what was the day you realize the reason for your birth um i think doing roja is when i realized i think the whole how it happened like destiny one of the the most favorite directors of mine the most renowned uh director and amazing human being ratnam k balachander one of the most respected producers and all of them came together to sign me up and and then how that soundtrack won you know like national award and the love of the people and how it transcended um before that i had a penalty for i don't want to movies i don't want to do movies because movies was something i was doing 10 years and almost jam-packed every day two sessions two sessions almost like 40 years of experience in 10 years so i was tired god and so i said i could do this one last movie and go out but then how it transformed like


movie and go out but then how it transformed like how there's a greater responsibility greater love greater giving back all that stuff so when you were growing up did you think you'd go down this same path and i'm not saying movies i'm saying this path of creation this path of uh you know the whole spiritual side to what you do did you think you'd go down this particular path while you were a teenager maybe you know in your early 20s i went through now i've drills many many times like i went through this roller coaster ride in life where it's a very unusual life where my father's passed away i grew up taking you know lunch and breakfast for my father along with somebody you know like he was tagged on as a kid then he died and then mother took over then that whole life of how she struggled how she was single-handedly the most courageous woman i ever seen and so we consciously took this path where she felt very strong about uh the spiritual


path where she felt very strong about uh the spiritual sufi path and and i said that whatever we decide we decide together and then we decided and um yeah after that restless history there's a sense of accomplishment within us thinking that we were strong enough and we were convinced about the decisions we took whether we moved in the other house or building the studio where i'm sitting here or um standing by what like like what my mom did you know what we did together as a family and also being fearless about things that you believe in you know beautiful uh i wanted to bring on sufism a little later in the episode i'm so glad you brought it on early sir uh i know it's something you consciously think about we hear it in your music as well with kunfayaku there's elements of it but on a personal level as a man what has it changed in you especially when you were growing up seeing your mom uh were there some learnings from that part that you've


were there some learnings from that part that you've applied to your own mind and then you saw changes i personally was an introvert and so this the mind is the result of i mean the mind does all these things to you you're feeling and then if the mind gets refreshed the mind gets thick takes a larger purpose in life then you see many things manifesting you know your your actions manifest beautiful things and if you the most strongest man if you have a small mind vice versa no the opposite happens so i'm here uh a very small person timid low self-esteem inferiority complex and the mind became empowered the mind was saying bigger things um under that shadow of that spirituality everything reflected in my life the decisions i took and the confidence with every step is about praying and wishing that it will go well for either for me for other people and it was everything everything was a risky step nothing was a safe in a safe step in it so um whether doing the music or


step in it so um whether doing the music or doing when people record it in bigger studios me having the smaller studio and feeling that oh i can do this this will do well and or using new singers or um or even finishing you know after 10 years of working here going to throwing all the stuff prime time you know music direction stuff and going to lloyd webber in the uk and thinking that this is what my mind wants and this is what i need to evolve into and going doing bombay dreams as a musical stage not just for myself as a statement for indians abroad so that we have an indian show the help of sheikha kapoor and anthology first the time yeah lovely um do you feel you're still evolving at this stage so like uh you know because the evolution if it began in your teens in your early 20s after you've seen wins in life you've seen victories you've seen so much already done what's the evolution that's going on right now within


what's the evolution that's going on right now within your mind you can never stand still because the world is evolving the world is being born every second the like you were not there before now you're there right i'm speaking to you that means uh like we're both interacting and this is the new world and i'm getting used to it i'm learning from you so no no in a way i'm just saying like uh interacting with you yeah the enthusiasm in your eyes is speaking to me is telling me to cheer up and answer those questions so it's not just you asking me questions it's there's a relationship beyond that happening right and you're catering to your people whom they follow you and so this is with music too like when you go to a concert we we start singing if uh when we rehearse it's all dead like yeah we are saying nobody cares you know that one person who's doing the stage it's like ah it goes up and then the crowd comes in


it goes up and then the crowd comes in you know with thirst they come into it like beasts like give it to me i want to take it all i want to drink the you know the nectar of love and then everything changes like we even if you're tired it it just goes away and you feel like your body can do it and you you want to perform another half an hour more you want to do a loop where you just take one and stop for 15 minutes make them sing back call response so this is life i feel like it's not just one-sided it's always two-sided and the more adversity the more i think should shine the more we should uh rise up and positively and that's the beauty of the today's world 100 so and that's the beauty of creative professions right like we are the only professions in the world which get to experience two extremely out of the body highs one is when you're performing like i'm a motivational speaker so that energy that enters you


a motivational speaker so that energy that enters you on stage it would enter me in my world when i'm giving motivational talks to many people uh and the second high is when you're actually in your deep creative process where you're first listening to kun fayakun in your head before actually creating it you know it plays in your head before it plays in the real world and that process of getting from point a to point b and creating something out of your own mind that's the real joy of creativity but i specifically want to ask you your opinion on creativity so there's something i truly believe in that i have never created anything myself it's always given to me and i somewhere feel that a part of you believes in something similar so what is your take on your own creations because when people say oh you know ar rahman the man he's created all this do you and i feel like that's also what's kept you humble i think in your head there's a voice that says no no


in your head there's a voice that says no no it's not just me that's created it maybe it's my technical capability but it's given to me also so i'd love to hear what you think i think uh this famous uh chinese story you've heard that like uh three students went to a chinese master and then and they were all sitting and their cups were actually already full so he was pouring all the empty cups and then when it came to their cups it was already full and he was pouring it was overflowing so they were asking master is already full yeah it's full get out he said you have to be empty to learn you have to be empty to receive that emptiness is just uh not just literally emptiness it's about being ready to receive being ready to empathize being ready to change and so yeah i think there's it's a loaded word i think emptiness you're talking about keeping the learner active inside of you which i believe it definitely is for you yeah also also i think


it definitely is for you yeah also also i think um the most beautiful things come to you when you i don't know how do i put it they say a lack of ego lack of personal ego it's not there because the ego is the one which probably puts screens on seeing the right things and but the ego is the one ambition is also part of ego but that is actually self-destructive in a way because you have to work hard it makes you sleep less but you can achieve things greater things so it's important to separate uh you know and to glorify the the gift which is given to you and to be humble also like because you don't know when you're to fall and when you fall and you're egoistic and you fall and then you can't look at yourself again you will be wrecked yeah um have you ever had a phase like that after your career took over you to wrestle with your own ego or pull yourself down or your family had to pull you down or something no i


family had to pull you down or something no i think when we in the process of refining constantly every day every day there's an exercise to surrender you know like to not exist at all and i think that kind of keeps you in the exercise of being free being able to receive and surround yourself with good people surround yourself with people who who teach you where you are look who can you know or if you can see yourself clearly that's good but sometimes you it there's a screen between you and your real self yeah um what would this version of you go tell the 20 year old yarman and the 30 year old liar rahman i know sometimes i feel like life is a burden i always said life is a burden uh i have to do this well and you know i think it's also because lack of holidays sometimes you know you need to just go away from things and your mind is fresh when you come back but when you overwork you feel like the sense of tiredness coming


overwork you feel like the sense of tiredness coming to you with a sense of but a new idea a new song a new work of art when you see you know uh probably energizes you immediately you feel like oh my god look at that kid singing and then you feel like that kid makes you feel like small why am do you practice why can't you sing like that why can't you play like that and that's why i love all this younger generation now which is because then villagers they're in in towns they're abroad and not only just musicians you know like illustrators and everybody has a gift it's not this gift of creativity is not just uh there's no elitism in it the best ideas come from the most simple people and they have a sense oh i don't i don't like the song i don't like this movie i like this movie and you see that they're right actually because the real piece of art is just has to touch your soul and there are no screens to them


touch your soul and there are no screens to them yeah 100 um but do you i mean i understand you're on the floor with your creativity always thinking about the next project you're learning is there any point where you've looked back at your life and says maybe i could have done that different just from the perspective of giving lessons for this youth that is entering the same path you entered when you were 18. no actually um can i look back i've dodged many bullets what do you mean dodge many bullets in the sense like many things could have gone wrong if i had just done um and i think because of the guidance of my family my mom and um you know guidance of good friends you know um um things have gone probably in the right way i mean nobody can go 100 right we all fall down get up learn our lessons come back and we do that and we need to acknowledge that right and in my case i was always drenched in music um or songwriting or background score


drenched in music um or songwriting or background score or always feeling this this need to learn more feel like i have not learned enough i don't know how to do that i can't do this fast and that you know that why it actually makes you there's a everlasting thrust for uh not perfection i would say to extend what you have so that i can sometimes you know i do a song for like a month and feel like it's not good then maybe it's a different style and [Music] the lucky thing about india is like they'd let you do anything and get away with it you know you can do a jazz thing you can do a folk thing you can do a carnatic thing you can do a raga best thing you can do a symphonic thing and they're up with open arms you know if it sounds good to them they're yours it's fine you're not being like super critical oh you change the nishadam to you know you shouldn't have put that card there that's blasphemy


shouldn't have put that card there that's blasphemy you know nobody's going to tell you and this sense of freedom is there i feel that that sense of um what they call naivety here is the best thing and artists should take advantage of that and create amazing things so because you've composed music for different kinds of indians the question is about india what do you think ties our culture together because i know that composing good music is a lot about compassion understanding how someone else would perceive it so i'm and i'm sure every time you put out a song you've understood something about humankind especially in our country so what ties all indians together because we're multicultural but what's that common link see we all like melody we all like something rooted in our culture but then we all like something new you know we don't want to worry i don't give me my culture back you give me something new that's that's why you are there i can do that you know like um if you're


i can do that you know like um if you're a singer if you're a composer especially people are expecting um something to be potent something a little coming alive and alive in the sense it should touch your there should be a tear in your eyes when you listen to it and so sometimes you know it's a simple thing sometimes that um even the art of arranging and recording sometimes you feel like you overdo certain things and you lose that quality for instance we did a song um six months back and uh shaker kapoor listened to it and he said can we remove all the rhythm and just make it a cappella and then did that and then it worked much better than all the rhythms so we tend to learn things from great people even now and i was thinking how did shaka kappa know that without the rhythm it will work right now you know and so then people responded much better so there's something she knows that i'm still yet to learn right um and about the west what is


to learn right um and about the west what is that world like because you work there so what was your learning from that world like how do they think different what are the good aspects of it what are the bad aspects of it the good aspects is like they really go deep into you know every detail of it and um they're two different kind of um best thing one is driven by a director like danny boyle who says nobody comes to me and my composer it's just my our two relationships it's like a friend you know like how i work with manuela and the other one is having 12 executives telling you what to do all come with the suitcases and like oh we did the screening and uh with this 10th music has got 94. if you change anything if you lose that it'll be a disaster for the movie i think music should be driven by passion driven by um an ambition to to express you know originally not uh having a history of many ideas together and yeah do


having a history of many ideas together and yeah do you think far ahead for yourself like what am i gonna do five years from now ten years from now do you think like that um sometimes it's actually um 96 i think i had this urge to do like spiritual medicine farming and what do you like like ayurveda no it's like more prophetic medicines you know it's um there's like books of um healing and then i found a teacher and and then i became busy then i went back and he passed away in 2004. so the land was just lying there and then i said the best medicine is cinema let's build a cinema shooting floor and when i did this movie we built this big flow you can watch it on the net uh it's a 36 000 square feet so you can do all this new unreal engine um filming virtual you know set filming and all this stuff there gordon so why go into movies in this way at this stage of your life what's going on in


at this stage of your life what's going on in the background like what have you been thinking and do you think this will continue with 99 songs at the beginning well what i was saying was the the whole uh power kept changing like the power has gone from the director to big corporates which is very good and those corporates whether it's a is it a music company or anything they have now control over creativity also they have like i can get five composers for a movie which is a good thing which a lot of people do that stuff and i can get uh remixes i can do this i can do that then you realize okay it's all about power and if i'm a composer i'm the hierarchy of the fifth or sixth or something like that and i don't have a say later whereas things get hijacked so there should be everything there should be that there should be pure director working with the composer and there should be an expression of the composer by myself so i said the third one


the composer by myself so i said the third one i can only do if i write my own script i produce my movie i engage myself to do the music fully if i'm not given a chance to do music fully where are you going to get that the prime time of your life is limited it's depends on health it's upon mental health and physical health and many other stuff life and family and so i didn't want to waste my prime time arguing about all the stuff in a way and one of the biggest reasons is like so that empowerment was necessary that i produce my movie i write my script i get a director so it's my vision to do greater things in music now if i go to a company which is making movies like content the word movies become content and um that word content makes things more like a business rather than art of something coming out of love and stuff if there's a there's a period of that thing you're getting paid this much you have to sign all the rights so


this much you have to sign all the rights so it's like one butcher shop like track track when i first 15 years of my life i never signed any contracts like i rarely signed two or three it was all out of trust out of love and a lot of respect and um it was like that and then this is a great thing because our industry has to grow but then everything should co-exist i feel like this should co-exist with that and if i had not done this it's a failure on my part after being empowered not taking the power to do something to make a change right this is really inspirational sir because at this stage you're challenging yourself and from everything you've said even when you spoke about your teenage i see this constant learner mentality along with a warrior mentality you know you're going out then like taking action you'll be taking on people if you actually go deeper down this path but you're pretty fearless about it so that's the inspiration i'm taking on a personal


so that's the inspiration i'm taking on a personal level from this but uh speaking about taking inspiration from you uh i've had probably two extremely dark phases in my life and in both those ways my first instinct was go home go to your room sit alone and listen to kun fayakun i don't know there's something about that particular song so so maybe you're wrapping up these same emotions in music uh we we have like a twitter section later on in this podcast where we'll take fan questions but many of those questions about kunvayakun i'd love for you to speak about that song saki what was going on your head because it's helped so many people all over the world there's something even more elevated in that song compared to just the rest of the music in the world so i'd love to know that story sir it's a very deep story like if you take all the truths in the world um as a sufi i believe that it all comes from the same


i believe that it all comes from the same source the every message uh is from the same source and two different tribes and different um they form the different religions different faiths different um way of life whether it's africa america whether it's india that's you know far and so the politics of religion comes in hardcore people come in in every religion no religion is you know saved from that but if you look at the core we go deep in there is a union there like rumi says there's a place beyond uh beyond good things and bad things i'll see you there and what is that place he's talking because he's talking very metaphorically he's that place where your heart and consciousness meet so you know the confederate comes from the holy book and it says how god created the world so when an empty azalea and uh you know he said that um can we use this as a kavali i said am i going to shaken us like what are you trying to do you


shaken us like what are you trying to do you know destroy me what because it's the most sacred word from the holy book and i don't want to do anything which should you know what he called corrupt or blasphemy you know pure faith not about hardcore people trying to do stuff for a true believer he said no no i won't do that i'm careful i'll be careful i promise i said okay i'll do it so we all know like many faiths are all interconnected with commonalities you know commonality is about empathy commonalities about uh glorifying the creator who's created all the stuff they call them different names different ideologies different shapes and shapeless and but we all believe that above all that there is a light we all believe that that light is with every one of us whether we believe or not and we are connected and uh so i think that's one of the reasons why i kept telling my assistant the same like oh my god everybody talks about this uh somebody


oh my god everybody talks about this uh somebody from the west who don't understand a word of it is responding to it and from india every faith like whether the muslims christians or anybody is responding to that hindus and this is beyond politics this is the true core of spirituality transferring from an audio from so it doesn't need the it doesn't need explanations it doesn't need the what you call i don't know meanings or anything it it passes from the truth to truth the truth in you is realizing another truth and beyond all the fabrications beyond all the um what you call um leos i don't know yeah beyond all the days so so these are the fascinating things about life like uh for instance um this is one story like a han but from 99 songs we felt like we should introduce a guy with a different set of tool set like you should be able to play the piano it should be singing and like how disney trains their artists and then they


like how disney trains their artists and then they become big you know pop stars and so what if india has that and we present ihan to my k music concept they trained him in piano he sent him one month to hollywood to learn about understated acting and all this stuff he came back and the movie finished we made it last whole year for theatrical release patiently he was in the low and we gave him a piano two weeks back he comes and sings in tune he sings teddy nazar in tune i feel like oh my god he's like a singer he is almost fifty percent singer he just needs little more coaching now he can be playing a piano and a singing hero who's educated in music and so we we've felt so proud that we invested that time with him and how seeds of intention becomes when it becomes a plant and when it becomes a tree in a banyan tree later you know multiplying that to the whole world so that's one thing


that to the whole world so that's one thing which is fantastic to see whether it's ihon or whether it's our school from sunshine orchestra or other students who are doing beautifully well um so one thing i'm hearing from you at this stage is the kind of emotion you wrapped into kunfiakone or all your music there is this sense of inspiration motivation healing maybe you're doing it partly for a past version of you maybe you're doing it for your audiences maybe it's a bit of everything um do you think about like the future of the indian music industry in general and i'm not just talking about the world of films independent artists um you know like there was this whole pop wave in the 90s that had happened uh do you see something like that happening again because of youtube because of the world of content because of instagram reels tik tok will we see a rise of a lot of independent artists and also what do you want you know what do you want from the future of


you know what do you want from the future of the indian music industry yeah i won the grammys i said that this grammys for all the people who are going to shine in ten years evolving into amazing songwriters and storytellers not trying to be somebody else but themselves and coming in a very glory uh you know very complimenting glorified way to to stun us you know and uh we started an app called maja i'm a part of it and we released a song called njami by you know adiva and v and santosh narayan and then it hit like 120 million already and so that feel like um every state has the potential potential of becoming you know doing things dominating the world because every culture in india it's like 24 different states 24 different countries together holding on together to the idea of india and come being completely different being completely having its own culture food dress code and you know but still holding on together is a miracle and so this is high time to empower


miracle and so this is high time to empower these artists to tell the stories to tell their past and also go into the future like expressing themselves to go into their culture 2.0 um yeah i mean we're seeing the pratik kuhars justly royals of the world killing it and i'm hoping that we see 100 more of those if a kid wants to become the next ar rehman what would you tell that kid be passionate that's it keep learning be passionate try to be the best don't uh take failure as an option like there's no option it's greater um i saw the chat you had with my brother yashiraj mukhati uh you spoke about meditation you briefly mentioned it so i i personally want to dive deep into that question so i'm a meditator as well and because i'm a creative professional i've seen the power it's given me for the creative side of things you know you get your ideas you get your perspectives you get your sense of calm so for


perspectives you get your sense of calm so for user what is the meditation you practice and what has it given you over the years the meditation i practice is actually um um the ultimate meditation meditation is to see yourself mingling with the sublime and um the process of refining more and more like they say there's 70 000 screens between you and god and each screen is removed by your actions you know your action of becoming humble your action of killing your ego action of not eating too much your action of refraining from illegal activities you have action of fighting a lust your action of uh not being greedy your action of being a pathetic action of being good to your family being you know paying your respects to your mother paying respects to your teacher paying respects to anybody who's doing good and not harming them and each screen goes off and then you finally mingle with your divine and so these are the formulas which every book talks about every uh mess messenger talks about this every


about every uh mess messenger talks about this every book talks about and um so it's pretty clear and then it's important that every every person gets access to this knowledge so that they can also experience the full human potential and excel themselves but do you sit in any form of meditation so like do you take 20 minutes out where you close your eyes do you do some kind of chanting i mean you're in the lift sometimes i'm going to lift i'm really dating okay come let's go okay i hear you um gotta ask you about a day in the life of a.r rahman what happens because uh there are rumors that you only work at night there are rumors about you know again the stuff you mentioned about those 70 000 screens i'm sure you fixed your lifestyle in certain ways you know you must have shed off certain things certain ideas certain thoughts so i'd love for you to highlight what a day in your life is right now along with a few changes you've made recently or in


with a few changes you've made recently or in the last 10 years my life i think at first i get people who are friends and not superstars and beavers and people who understand me people understand my way of life how i work how i come late so it is like a frozen zone you come here you don't think you're waiting or you you don't think your youtube won't think and then sometimes i'm doing something i'll come and meet people they'll be doing the browsing or they'll editing or something they'll meet them and go back so it's not like an appointment oh i have to make this editor i want to meet this um person who was doing something so their sense of zoned out we zoned out and um sometimes we work for like five hours sometimes we don't work at all right yeah because it's it'll be too monotonous to listen to music constantly also when you when you are in silence and you listen to it you understand the value of it then constantly desensitizing yourself with


value of it then constantly desensitizing yourself with bombarding your with all the stuff i was going to ask you sir does music play in your head all the time uh because that's what a lot of people would assume but i'd actually rephrase that question is what else do you do outside of music so like is there any kind of place of interest where you get inspiration from what you do to recharge i go i go for drive sometimes um sometimes i go for like kilometers to a sophie shrine or something or um or take a flight get out of india now i can't do that but for me i had to go every two months to l.a because um just to refresh and come back just to be in up to date with things happening but now past one year i've been here like we all been in india and more time with family more time um discussing talking and also my mom was ill like the whole last year she was in and she passed away in december so um so


in and she passed away in december so um so that whole parallelly for the past eight years we've been going through sitting in ventilator rooms you know icus my sisters and me both of us experience this seeing her like you know fading away and and also the life has to go on come back to the studio come back develop the story go lay musk go back to the icu and bring your back to the home and so this is not just like uh easy run it was tough but we all have to understand the cycle of life and everybody has to go through that stuff recently what have you learned about suffering and death like what's your opinion on it ah sometimes you know death is released and um yeah we have to take it a very philosophical way we have to take it in a way where we have to [Music] just be grateful for the health we have and we have to be grateful for the health we have to be grateful for the gifts we've got and be


be grateful for the gifts we've got and be grateful to for all the friends we have all the you know the people who have helped us all the people have smiled at us you know and i'm grateful for everything i want to pray for them yeah um the meaning of life for a lot of young hustlers you know people who want to make it big is they want to create legacies and leave you know beyond money beyond fame they want to leave something for this world so do you ever think of your own death and what you wish to leave behind or how you wish to be remembered by the world i don't because that's very nasty click um yeah because that it sounds too boring like you have to sweat for your name after you're gone like who's gonna see that you're not gonna see this so um i felt like be that um be kind when you're alive be resourceful when you're alive and do things which benefits you my humanity not for your name but because


you my humanity not for your name but because it's a good thing to do like in a simplistic way a well and a tree plant a tree and a good word or a or a smile at least no that's beautiful um just any advice for the young musicians of this country sir um you know who i'd even actually go as far as saying people who don't pursue a career in music because of the fear of it when i say musicians i mean everyone who's currently in bank jobs doctors whatever who hasn't taken that plunge actually just just watch this movie the movie's about them 99 songs is about um like luckily my mom uh said you you need to do music you don't you don't need to do studies your father did that it's exactly opposite to any other family like any other family if somebody says i want to do music they'll say no beta you just finish your doctor you finish your engineering finish your graduation then you do music it's fine they all over concerned


you do music it's fine they all over concerned and overprotective about the children that sometimes they jeopardize what's good is going to happen to them of them being a creative person by not encouraging them and making them suffer so much so yeah i think the new world requires these people the new world requires these entertainers these creative people who are changing already you know they're coming from nowhere and doing amazing things and making us smile lovely i really wish to see what you create on this journey so this visual journey that you're going on but i think it's time to turn to twitter and get the audience questions uh so we will do that in this coming segment okay okay um so these are the twitterverse questions niraj fatnani asks sirs views on remakes and a lack of creativity within the modern music industry or do you have any viewpoint on this do you feel like there's a lack of creativity the sense of investment of time and trust is not there i feel like um


time and trust is not there i feel like um unlike the directors in the you know from the 50s 60s 1780s who trusted the composers and extracted beautiful things from poetry to tune to execution and to executing the song on screen has become like okay let me do this song it'll be in my head i'll pump in money get some millions of views and we'll pull in people and it's become like a formula four weeks of marketing and let's do this and so everything should not be like you know it's not a blanket uh doing things on things like it's not binary and you know art is something which is very personal it's very subjective and each one has its own tricks one own process and we should recognize that and you should trust and you should encourage that and that will bring beauty back to the compositions lovely uh chandra kiran asks what's the one song that you turn to the most out of all the songs in the world for me it's honestly gunfire


songs in the world for me it's honestly gunfire and i'm not just saying that to you it's giving me too much healing for me not to turn to that i don't lead to any song because then i can't create anything i'll be going back to that i have to forget all the songs to make something new yeah um okay uh adarsh mishra asks how did you manage to create your own identity within this saturated music industry when i think it's from your early careers i think the likes and dawns what we we start believing and when we have this quality of searching for something new it automatically you know we listen to a thousand different things and that thousands of different things become an entity by itself becoming you you know and uh that becomes your personality i like funk i don't like jazz i like reggae i like film music then film music has all this stuff and then that becomes cool um so lots of questions about uh the indian cultural music scene the folk music


uh the indian cultural music scene the folk music scene the classic music scene adash mishra asks what's the future of all these you know which are non-commercial the future is to have great art centers across all the states and create a whole ensemble of things where it becomes a statement not just single single single talent but join them to make huge entities like you know if you look at cirque du soleil or if you look at broadway from the contestant they bring in multiple extraordinary talent multiple different departments to make a statement there's a lion king there's this thing and uh if you go to africa there is this if you go to even bali you they have the culture and then people come to watch that stuff but here we don't do that it happens in the villages sometimes but the cities should encourage and we should probably celebrate each culture we should have um a question from sanjit keshwani how do you deal with negative opinions about the work you do um i mean if there's


about the work you do um i mean if there's with the no negative opinions at scoring there's always the conflict result conflict is always good but you need to have your own opinion first of all and if that opinion is pushing you to be better take that and then improve yourself the one who takes criticism actually becomes better hmm okay satyam pandey asks or do you take any pressure about being ar rahman at this stage you have to live up to your past no no how do you do you ever think of that so like what's behind you i feel like i just pray and i feel like whatever is good for me i leave it to god i live i pray a lot and so that way your your burden actually is taken by somebody else you become just an instrument yeah that's the meaning of spiritual growth so taking all your burdens giving it to that energy that universe that god and saying it's not my burden you take me through it exactly uh which which


you take me through it exactly uh which which brings me to the final question i have for you on a personal level always wanted to ask you this so what is um your view on god everyone has their own image of it you know what is your how would you how do you tell your children about it if you were telling them the first about god what would you tell them there's a beautiful story of rumi says that do you know why the the bamboo the flute cries because it's been cut off from its source and uh so we all of us are here you know that whole thirst of meeting the source is always within us and so we temporarily meet that source while you're praying we temporarily meet that source when you're glorifying it you temporarily need that when you're recognizing it whenever you're uttering the names uttering the qualities of god so that way we're connected we're also getting the support of that and so this connection and remembrance is all life about for me the glorification of


is all life about for me the glorification of somebody eternal and we are a piece of you know that blessing all suffering and is moving one step away from that thing called god uh and all forms of prayer devotion are one uh way of moving one step closer to it ar ramansa honor speaking with you uh honor listening to your music growing up honor listening to kung fu con repeatedly thank you for the healing you've put out in the world so and of course as a you know admirer of your admirer of your music thank you for being on my piece of content this is a huge day for me thank you god bless thank you so much


today's guest kunal shah is primarily known as the founder of free charge and cred in the startup community he's extremely respected because of his business skills his business knowledge but you know what in the world of twitter he's one of india's most influential twitter influencers you know why because he's one of the most well-read people he's someone who's got access to some of the world's best minds and in today's episode of the ranvi show kanasha is going to unleash all that intelligence on you guys have fun this is a very deep heavy conversation but i promise you if you're a young entrepreneur or if you're just someone who wants to get smarter this is the episode for you enjoy yourselves [Music] mr kunal shah welcome to the ranveer show thank you so much for having me dude how have you gained this reputation of being one of india's smartest people in general but also one of india's smartest people in the startup space i i don't know man i


in the startup space i i don't know man i don't think i'm the smartest person around i i probably vocalize my thoughts which sometimes appears smart sometimes they just go above my head and people's head and that people are very smart so uh uh i i guess i am just curious i would not say i'm smart uh i would happily take the title of being the most curious person i don't know if i'm the smartest person how have you built out startups which have been so successful like what has been you know the work that's gone behind it and by behind it i mean right from the time you were in college what has the preparatory period involved i guess i became financially independent when i was 16 and not a lot of choice the family went through financial crisis so i had no choice but to regard my way into it so i've done anything from selling pirated cds to selling mandi cones to all sorts of things that i've done to kind of on income


of things that i've done to kind of on income i used to run a small cyber cafe i used to do tuition of computers i have done all sorts of things that made money and i had no choice but to do that good news is that it taught me how to make money very early on in life and i think that is what i think our education misses completely uh we get to learn to sell something so late and and also because we have a lack of dating culture we are terrible at selling in general right so that makes us a country of terrible salesmen uh because the 98 percent of the country is doing our age managers which makes us terrible at sales uh and i think i learned that doing that extra matters so much in a country where people are just not trying to push for it like i i appreciated the effort that you took to get the perfect setting for this podcast and i like people who do that because it's the extra five percent that makes all the


because it's the extra five percent that makes all the difference and not just like actually you you send me a microphone you you get all these settings done to me all the value that i have seen people create is by the that they have in their work and i think that's been my thing that i do not like to work with people who do not do this to the last level i i like to hang around with people and i think businesses just happen to be happening around same time but if i have to look at my journey i've done all sorts of things i've probably done i don't know 15 20 different types of businesses i'm known for one or two but the thing is it's been a constant journey of iteration and if i have to point out to one thing that has helped me kind of create some successful businesses is to understand the core concept of human motivation what do people want and will they pay money for it right and i think most of businesses miss exactly these two


i think most of businesses miss exactly these two points and and they imagine problems and therefore start solving it and they imagine the severity of problem that people will pay for money for that problem right and i think that is the core two insights through which i have kind of been very fortunate uh to constantly build businesses and i don't know anything else to do in life so i keep building businesses i want to know why you think you don't know anything else in life because your twitter says otherwise but is it would you would you reframe that sentence as you get your biggest kick out of business like you get your biggest lives high out of business i think that's a fair point i think my core need is to be curious and to know things but do i really know it can you only be tested if i made a business out of it right so let's say business is the application of knowledge because knowledge for the sake of knowledge is not as valuable because you have not tested it right uh


as valuable because you have not tested it right uh and i think india has too many guardians otherwise right so the uh application of gyan is is everything i i believe that otherwise knowledge is freely available on youtube as much as we want but most people are so addicted to just listening to gan and motivational stuff and doing zero things in life and i think that to me is the biggest problem of india i would say summarizing it that way too much knowledge way too much gang very few people trying to apply and improve that hmm completely agree while i do feel that's changing because right before this podcast started i gave you the gyan that i give most entrepreneurs in their 30s which is that a 27 year old and a guy even in his late 30s are way more similar in india compared to that 27 year old and the 22 year olds of this country because of the impact of the internet absolutely i mean i want i want i want to ask you a very broad question


want i want to ask you a very broad question feel free to answer it in whatever way you wish to answer it what is indian 2016 going to look like oh that's a hard one either we have an extraordinarily bright future or a very dark one um the reason it could be dark is that what capitalism has done the world has become like a one big superconductor right all of us are connected to each other and the way to understand this is very simple a joke becomes popular instantly right like everybody knows about the joke saying the joke next day also is not cool because everybody's murdered already right so the world is super hyper connected and everything is spreading very very fast and because of that when innovations come they spread very very fast as well right and sometimes they take away jobs right and when we are not prepared for that change quickly the skills that we have will be irrelevant very quickly india has this unique curse of terrible education system not having the curiosity


curse of terrible education system not having the curiosity mindset to learn more things right and fundamentally the world will therefore take away the jobs and automate them but the job losses will happen in india because the world is connected right so an american becoming more efficient is taking away a job in india and we don't even understand this connection right now for example let's say because of kovid all centers in the u.s are not working and they somehow all figured out to outsource two homes but now they realize that oh all the homes are outsourced so they give it to india but now they figure out we can automate this stuff because people are doing ibr on their own and app or airline booking all that stuff everybody has learned how to become protect sally boom millions of jobs are gone but they're not gone in the u.s they're gone in india right so i think the world useless jobs are getting accumulated in poor countries and in 2016 uh unless we shut our borders


and in 2016 uh unless we shut our borders and make like like kind of think of a north korea kind of an imagination where we are only creating and we are only using kind of a thing it's going to be very very hard now the positive side of this is that we have a very very young nation probably the youngest in all the nations and if people figured out that they don't need to depend on education system to become smart and learn skills and just that basic skill is taught and habit in people's mind i think we will learn how to crack things i think creating an entrepreneurial mindset the country's biggest curse is that we are all job seekers right uh if you look at google trends and look at the top 10 keyword searches every day out of the top 10 two are for government exams right and that is the level that i am worried about that if everybody is just hoping for that one government job the problem is the government does not need so many people and


is the government does not need so many people and and do please understand the largest employer of the world is inefficiency and when you remove inefficiency those jobs are gone right and uh the problem is the skill sets that we've had there are so many jobs in india which are not required like lift bank like or atm watchmen like there are probably i don't know millions of people guarding atms but what if people stop using cash what happens then right so i i think we are just not ready our education systems are not just there our dependency on agriculture is way too high and one more scary factor which nobody pays attention to the number of women working in labor force is dropping every year okay less than 10 of urban indian women work and have financial independence this is lower than pakistan oh wow this is lower than bangladesh bangladesh are 68 we are at 8 china is at 90 right and we just don't notice it because we don't notice it because we don't pay attention to it


notice it because we don't pay attention to it but look at airport how many cues for women and how many for men how many compartments in metro for women versus men when you stand and rush hour how many women do you see and how many men do you see 94 to 92 of all credit cards are owned by men 95 of all personal loans are taken by men we have not fundamentally understood that we are a fairly patriarchal and regressive nation because we don't look at data yeah and the scary part is every year the female participation of labor is dropping not increasing what do you think will be the catalyst to change all this there has to be a solution and this is where you know maybe the entrepreneurial side of people like yourself has to kick in it's a scary thing because india is trying to play the game of capitalism but the blood is of socialism hmm oh okay hold up can you explain capitalism and socialism really easily for the listener like in very


socialism really easily for the listener like in very basic terms capitalism is very simple you you use capital to produce more kids uh employ more people the whole society focuses on wealth uh innovation is rewarded disproportionately to one inventor and one manufacturer one businessman one industrialist if they do good stuff and therefore the overall wealth of society increases right but socialism unfortunately which has failed everywhere in the world and india is still not adopted to this is that where you say that everything is governed by the state it's shared equally so if like if a patent is made in india you don't get the benefit of it it is assumed to be a public good right and it's a complex topic but the thing is 99 of indians have no clue what is capitalism or socialism for example a lot of people think mrp is a good idea her product mrp author and fundamentally that is against capitalism because why somebody like you and me who are staying in affluent neighborhoods


and me who are staying in affluent neighborhoods paying 30 rupees for diet coke and somebody who's not seeing an affluent are paying 30 rupees we should be paying 100 rupees for that right because our real estate is expensive in our area storage is more expensive delivery cost is more expensive but mrp removes this and it's a very socialistic approach saying that subco ac price and this fundamental concept is not under surveillance if you tell people is mrb good for you everybody will say yeah it's great but and this is why we have no clue about capitalism and it is going to take a complete overhaul of our education system or our government's thinking to really improve that because the government somehow operates also with a socialist mindset because the country has been this and therefore like there are lots of subsidies and and all of that stuff which does not create wealth and another problem is most of our taxes are coming from capitalism right the 30 40 million people who are doing their


right the 30 40 million people who are doing their jobs are paying taxes uh a lot of businesses who are in capitalistic market are paying taxes uh but the thing is that we have still the mindset they are ps you may job like that government will object that's the mindset we are operating at right you you've heard about stories about how 10 uh 100 jobs created like one crore applications like that kind of mindset that we are operating with and the country is fundamentally status seeking more than wealth seeking and therefore the indian crap story is a very popular story i don't know if you've heard about the story where there's a story which says that one guy goes to a crab store and there are lots of these containers where crabs are stored and then one container is kept open and the guy's like like why is this container open yeah these are indian crabs he's like what do you mean don't worry as soon as one guy starts to climb up three guys will pull


guy starts to climb up three guys will pull him down right and this is the fundamental problem of difference between wealth driven society and status driven societies right a status driven societies fundamentally dislikes anybody going up in life a well driven society like therapy right and they are way more collaborative and i think we don't understand this because we've never seen a collaborative society i'll tell you another factor that india that we don't understand india is not one country india has 25 countries merged to become one country and therefore we have need for neutral platforms let's take example of neutral platforms our neutral sport is cricket not from india the way kunal and randy can speak to each other is through a neutral language which is english our neutral beverage is tea and coffee not from india ah when we have a party at office the neutral food that is ordered its pizza not from india samosa is not from india biryani is not from india in fact i


biryani is not from india in fact i recently discovered that even khichdi is not from india oh really is it from nepal it's from the east so china the point is we do not realize that the need for this country to come through neutral platforms for example let's say magically we ban arranged marriages and we also ban same language uh relationships let's say a gujarati cannot marry punjabi cannot marry punjabi fundamentally all the kids which are born after that will be english naturally because the neutral platform that connects gujarati to somebody bengali is english right and i think we don't realize and accept these things and and we are confused between still fighting elections on the old topics uh uh are stuck on some old principles and the reason we are like that is that nobody is interested in future everybody is happily celebrating past right uh the fact that we are still thinking about let's say building statues of some old people or creating some uh things which take a


old people or creating some uh things which take a lot of money to build some of these stuff about past glory i think every time i've seen nations super obsessed about their past are usually delusioned about their future yeah yeah 100 um you know a lot of the things you're saying actually echoes this book i'm reading which i'm dead sure you've already read it's called 21 lessons from the 21st century by ul noah harari and i know for a fact that you're a very avid reader and considering everything that you've said i have a couple of points to add take it as points take it as question so i was recently hanging out with this colombian girl uh we were she was the cinematographer at a shoot i was at and she's been in india for six months so she's actually been stuck in india because of kovet asked her what have you noticed about india that separates it as a society like what's different about the people here she's like there's a lot of


the people here she's like there's a lot of beautiful things like spiritual sensibilities and empathy and you know a sense of warmth and friendliness but she's like there's way too many internal battles people are having you so so what do you mean like insecurity she's like no not insecurity she's like everyone has an ego about themselves and their sense of ego is extremely strong here and that again echoes your status driven point that you made where everyone's fighting for or you know i should be respected more i should be respected more in fact i remember early on when i co-founded one of my failed startups with someone that guy had told me specifically that dude the one thing i looked for in my own career always is a respect i don't want money i do anything i want respect and i told him okay but the thing is i was a youtuber by that point and i was automatically getting the bow everywhere we went i was getting the attention and that's why he kind of


was getting the attention and that's why he kind of drifted even as a co-founder and then when i thought about it over the years i was like no it wasn't respect it was this ego massage like because i mean you know that's that's that's what masks itself as saman and you know these kind of concepts which are very deeply ingrained in our culture and the second thing i want to kind of talk about is uh now in that book they spoke about how throughout the last 200 years there's been capitalism and socialism and communism and all these different governance systems where every country has thought our system is the best our system is the best and we've gradually seen all of them fail in one way or another they thought that capitalism was the answer they thought that america and europe's model was the answer and now suddenly brexit is happening america's elected donald trump things are collapsing every year so there's no answer anymore and you all know harare's intuition


answer anymore and you all know harare's intuition is that the whole world is going to move back to what it was in ancient times in terms of china is going to go back to its own ancient version of itself where they had one government that ruled everything that thinks that we are the not just in china but all over the world russia thinks that there's gonna be one tsar which is putin india might become a collection of kingdoms just like it was that's and he's actually written about this in the book interesting i might have read the book yeah but but really i i've read the previous book sapiens i've not read the book uh second one i've never got a chance to look at it but i'll tell you what is interesting what he's saying and it's actually true see society adopted religion capitalism or anything else to collaborate at large scale but when you collaborate at large scale automatically some people become more successful right and unless we accept the wealth divide


more successful right and unless we accept the wealth divide we will say then come back so grab mentality brings it down we will not care about that we are all richer than before because wealth is not zero sum right but the fundamental thing is status is zero sum so we will pull people down right see i remember one person or one very senior banker is so and therefore you will notice one thing about all the people who are affluent over here they'll always do this right the reason is that because flashing wealth in this country is considered to be bad like when i sold my company the first advice i got is that drive simple car do this thing because uh people will hate uh your success and will work very hard to pull you down and the thing is why are we like that what if we all became wealthy what if we all of us income grows because that's how many countries income per capita has gone from two thousand dollars to fifty thousand dollars right but we are fundamentally not


thousand dollars right but we are fundamentally not accepting that part of the nation uh mindset now to your point about why we will probably go into this borders is very simple let's take a small example if you go back in 500 years ago the person who entertained used to be poorer than the person who got entertained right but slowly as they found distribution let's say that theater milk and all 400 people could watch something then suddenly the person who entertained became richer than the person who was being entertained then they got cinema then they became really rich now they have found internet and they become even more richer because the distribution is significantly high now but there's an interesting angle to this what is happening with education you tell me now everybody's learning on the zone every student is learning on zoom why shouldn't physics be taught by the best teacher of india to everybody in this country and this is one going to be a one hard question to answer because if you do that


one hard question to answer because if you do that yes everybody will like physics because there's this extraordinary teacher who's come to start teaching physics now but what about all the other millions of teachers who have been teaching physics maybe slightly poorly or or extremely poorly right and and suddenly this creates wealth in that teacher and teacher was never a wealthy profession but if you notice one thing all the youtube teachers are really good they're actually entertainers they make physics really interesting but our teachers did not make things interesting for us because they were teachers they had power they had respect right and the point is that this is going to create a very very different society and and suddenly we will see but the problem is can you stop this change now kobet is like a catalyst of future it has accelerated future boom boom boom boom boom it's there right and you can't stop it and therefore countries are going to behave differently families are going to behave differently uh and we don't know if


behave differently uh and we don't know if the world needs so many people one of the things that i remember watching a documentary it talks about this before cars were invented the horse population went like this and as soon as the car came the population just went down in ten years because you did not need so many of them now this is a very scary possibility because human beings are not horses so suddenly if you have to keep giving them free income to survive will they be happy with it [Music] and and we are entering fairly scary possibilities that we don't even have the mechanism to prevent a civil unrest and what if we are not going to get them like we all used to take cabs down billions of drivers are not having a job what happens now right so the thing is the moment a country becomes emotionally charged you do not know what outcome it creates because it behaves like a mob after that and i think to me imagining 2060 for india seems


think to me imagining 2060 for india seems like a very hard thing because we are going to go through a lot of pain before we get there and you know it's a fun story but if you go like look at every country that made it big first went through insane amount of crisis it almost looks like it's a compulsory step before you become big in life yeah yeah 100 uh which also echoes a scary thought that i read in the book yesterday which is that the next war is always going to be a civil war within countries countries aren't gonna fight each other it's just that that's been the nature of mankind that the worst and most pivotal wars in human history are always when a brother fights a brother as in when you fight your neighbor so all the future was possibly according to the trajectory of where we are are going to be within countries uh again echoes all those thoughts we spoke about with this whole concept of artificial intelligence becoming a crucial part of


of artificial intelligence becoming a crucial part of mankind taking away our jobs you know the concept of retail actually going to a mall actually going to shop to buy something versus 3d printing everything at home all these concepts are probably going to let a lot of people remain jobless and even you are noah harari experts of the world have no answer the way i look at it i kind of feel that man and this is just the optimist inside me talking i feel that humanity will find a solution in some way will that be that there will be a very good model of communism or socialism where the government takes very good care of its citizens i don't know what the model will be but my big hope and this is something i feel strongly about is that the next facebook of the world and the next amazon of the world might come out of this country and that's also a flaw of india where you know we always aim to create national businesses and not international businesses but do you agree


businesses and not international businesses but do you agree with me when i say something like that that possibly the next ai startup which will revolutionize everything in the world can come out where the next virtual reality startup can come out of here uh i have very little hope on that the reason i have a little hope on that is naturally the country has always lost its best talent to the global audience right uh i'll give you a story i was once in stanford and i met bunch of indian and chinese students over there and i asked every indian student so papa sarah and not a single person was coming back and i asked all the chinese that hey what's your plan after stanford and all of them are going back to china so if our smartest brains are going to be leaving the country and i think that's where the tricky part of socialism comes in right if you feel that as a taxpayer the country is not rewarding you back let's say bombay bangalore contribute to a large chunk


say bombay bangalore contribute to a large chunk of taxes but what if the taxes contribution back to the city is very very low because we have a lot of people to take care of this country then you're like yeah let me just go and now with technology you can actually be anywhere right for example facebook can employ somebody in colombia with an indian sitting over there so world is going to be getting all mismatched and and the whole different kind of matchmaking is going to start happening where everybody's okay with anybody being anywhere and that is a scary possibility now coming to can we build these companies the thing is talent and audacity and money and product mindset is something that is extremely hard right like i said we've had like a lot of global company ceos are indians so it's not that there is no brain but the exposure we forget that all the indians that we are proud of have changed their citizenship long ago have lived abroad they are way more americans


have lived abroad they are way more americans than indians but there is in psychology there is something called as basking and reflected glory right so it's called we were happy or googled us for the years and years but we are constantly losing talent and as a country it's extremely hard to take care of the smartest people over here where we have millions and billions of people to invest behind right or their education or their food like the amount of subsidies that we have to take care of or around the loans that we have to wave off so my worry is that the brain drain that is happening constantly is scary because it is happening in my circles like some of the people that smart people that i have hired have now moved abroad and working in big companies like uber and spotify and all these places and i'm like i'm just going to keep losing people who are really really good then who's building the products for india right and that is the scary part and


india right and that is the scary part and you notice one interesting pattern is that many times we had indian startups doing something global companies came and they became bigger in the same space right and almost competing neck to neck in many cases right like you look at uh cab companies or e-commerce companies or payment companies right fundamentally we are not able to keep up and competing with them so the thing is that how do we become global companies right the the sheer ruthlessness or the sheer relentlessness that we need to make it big and the amount of capital and talent required is probably likely to not be there because great talent can work anywhere are we creating a country where people would love to stay be enjoying their time would love to have their kids raised i think these questions are hard and as a nation we are conflicted between there is a small group that feels like they're in singapore and there is this rest of the nation that feels like africa and we've joined them together in


like africa and we've joined them together in average india right and therefore there's an interesting thing when you fly over bombay or bangalore you see certainly the sky rises and then zukiyas right and that is the state of india right that if now let's say medical care is not there like where would you want to be locked down during covet india or abroad if flights really opened up do you think many indians would just probably go in countries that are likely to have more better health care so i think those are the questions which are harder to answer and it's not in government's hand so a lot of times we just start coming and blaming the government government the problem is country is built by its people [Music] all the knowledge available on youtube how much are people reading right we are having to constantly dumb down content so that it makes sense to people but the point is that you are competing in a global world we are making textbooks easier to understand we are making videos


making textbooks easier to understand we are making videos easier to understand we are summarizing books so that people understand a little bit about it but we are competing with global talent how are we going to win so my worry is that our skill set our talent is not keeping up and general curiosity is just very very low and everybody thinks but in the world we are living in you can never say paday hogay because you have to constantly up your game to be relevant in the game right uh you can't just say are a degree builder in fact i would say most degrees are extremely irrelevant now but who's gonna give people who are currently in college this bad news dude you know i man there's so many things i want to say right now right from the fact that back when i was in college i feel like parental psychology was very different from the parents of college students today but they actually telling them youtuber whatever you know social media business coal parents are thinking differently that's


social media business coal parents are thinking differently that's a positive i do feel that um you know how we're getting a brain drain so who's actually leaving the country it's like urban kids maybe ti2 kids not really the interiors of india because they don't have the money to leave now just my experience has been that some of our pivotal hires have been from the interiors of india including during the pandemic where i've had to actually fire some long time people at our organization because they were too expensive and they weren't working as well as someone who we could hire for one-third the price and who would do triple the uh amount of work so that's my personal big hope i feel like those kids need to be taught concepts of entrepreneurship leadership uh even very human concepts like you know like just thinking that relentlessness things like that uh my question to you very quickly uh it's actually a pretty vast question but i'd love to hear your opinion on this today i think jeff


hear your opinion on this today i think jeff bezos's net worth crossed 200 billion dollars what can a kid sitting in a village in india that you've never heard of what can that kid learn from jeff bezos in terms of a mindset and that which he can adopt if he has to become the bezos of india that's a very good question i think all the billionaires who have become billionaires have become big through very basic principles of life right and understanding how things work right and understanding is not responsibility of your teacher understanding the world and how it operates is your responsibility and if you are waiting that our like our biggest curse of this country we're all getting coaching classes to solve a super dumb exam suit super dumb hacks and then we think we are smart when we have understood nothing and i would say that's very simple thing is you are not going to make it big if you do not understand not when you score marks when you do not


understand not when you score marks when you do not understand what is the business what is the principles of the business how many people are curious about understanding like geocaching right what is the revenue model what is the average arpu we don't know these words also and are we waiting for education system to teach us this stuff because by the time you get bigger and go to college all these words are irrelevant anyways and you look feel like a beast on the purana right because is our entrepreneurs building education institutes no so they are already their head on some of these things right so many stanford courses are available for you on youtube i i sometimes see 5000 videos viewers the reason it is like you're talking about y combinators how to start a startup in so many videos like you can just keep surfing and and i think all of us you i all of have become smarter not through our colleges by watching content constantly having this need to improve we're constantly searching in


this need to improve we're constantly searching in fact it's funny the the word how huw uh if you look at google trends in last five years ten years the world has declined on searches okay how certainly wow right and the thing is but there is so much more to figure out i searched for almost every house okay i searched for everything recently i was showering i was like yes uh glass paper solution and i searched for that and i thought if you put to shampoo and wipe it with shampoo then never fogs i was like this is great like uh 40 years of my life i did not know this now i know it right the point is the the need and curiosity is just not there and we are very happy getting our status from this tick tock videos and likes and can you watch over here right and and the problem of likes is that not everybody can make it big right we forget that no matter what we are seeing in a country with low trust there's always going to


in a country with low trust there's always going to be 25 companies who have all the profit 25 bollywood guys will have all the profits uh 25 uh apps that will have all the users right the thing is you have to really break out and create new territories right actually one fun story in india inheritance was always shared so uh naturally when person dies the land was divided between two sons right and we did not have female inheritance which was a different controversial topic but in the west there was a concept called as first born so the first bond got inherited the second born has to go and do exploration to get his own property so naturally that society became exploratory and capturing and india kept dividing right and this is a fundamental difference only one more thing i observed i was in once in portugal and i went to a beautiful church there is a beautiful monument put for vasco de gama or one of these explorers and i was like why is it inside the church because normally


was like why is it inside the church because normally you see this thing outside the church right this is a culture in portugal that all the explorers were given higher status more than the king and they were buried inside the church wow so suddenly explorers are respected but who's more popular in india bollywood star entrepreneurs so what will you desire to be you will decide to be the cool guy like a bollywood star you don't want to be an entrepreneur because it's not cool to be your entrepreneur right we've not made them heroes yet and i'm thinking this is yet and i think that's the one interesting thing that we have to be very sure what we want we've made a lot of people popular because of being politicians a lot of people want to be politicians they like to go and college politics here well because again status i think one interesting fact right you will see all sorts of people who manage to get status through comedy through poetry or whatever become politician but you will never


poetry or whatever become politician but you will never see a politician become a poet or a painter or an actor and that is the ultimate status game right and and the point is that we have fundamentally have wrong role models now the question is do we want to become a wealth driven society it is the question that we need to answer and and if we are then we need to make them the heroes right we need to make people who create wealth heroes uh we need to encourage people employees to have stocks in the companies that they work for we don't have those concepts we don't even understand these concepts how many people have participating in stock market 20 million people in 1.3 billion people right mutual fund purchased these millionaires maximum the point is that wealthy shares capitalism means then how are we playing this game yeah uh wanna just bring in two three concepts from past podcasts a mentor of mine dr radhakrishnan pillai keeps speaking about this concept of anvik shiki which


speaking about this concept of anvik shiki which in ancient india was the first subject you were taught in junior kg you were taught to look at an object and ask yourself why is this object shaped like this why is it not shaped like this which is again the same concept you said that why is that uh ideology kind of left us somewhere over medieval times i think it left us which is something i spoke to uh with amish tripati about um so he basically he said that you know something's gone wrong it was this whole again an ego game the king started fighting each other therefore society got destroyed and um the third thing i want to talk about is uh again the present times um there was this conspiracy theory i read about how not all warfare is physical so you can have wars like between two nations where there's tanks and missiles and planes and soldiers killing each other or you can have psychological warfare and the big conspiracy is that hmm has china started


the big conspiracy is that hmm has china started psychological warfare in india by introducing tik-tok in this country and by introducing pubg in this country side firstly my question to you is let's hear your thoughts on psychological warfare and what do you think of this conspiracy and the second question is what do you think about gaming in general and do you think gaming is benefiting or spoiling the future of the youth of this nation first of all whenever you find flaws in people and their first reaction is to blame somebody else they are not really reflecting on what the problem is [Music] as a country we should stay away from all the people who sell conspiracy theories to us because their method to gain followerships do not idolize people because they give you the goalie through which you come and gather and become make them the leader you have to question every single thing right and unless you question every single thing you will always be manipulated because the human brain does not like to burn


because the human brain does not like to burn energy fattah shortcut answer here we talk about tick tock have we checked our weddings it is the largest tick tock ever yeah and we keep forgetting that we keep dressing up like prince and princesses for last 50 60 years in our weddings what is that isn't it status seeking half we need to ask these fundamental questions and anytime there is a shortcut answer that comes to our mind the first tendency should be to reject it and ask a deeper question otherwise we will keep shifting from conspiracy theories to theories because the brain wants shortcut here nate will be a shortcut hearing a shortcut right and this is our country's biggest problem we have never been trained to think or critically think i'll tell you one thing any country that default respects elders stays dumb i'll tell you why because you are just accepted and you fundamentally kill curiosity to ask hard tough questions how many kids in india will be allowed to ask question about why


in india will be allowed to ask question about why does god exist why should we be doing this ritual how many people have questioned why should raksha bandhan exist now that we are in a equal society the moment we ask these questions we will have so much of outrage in the society because we accept parampara we accept norms to not be messed with and i think that creates a very interesting society by itself that there is a value for values right but the question that if we don't allow questioning then we will always be ruled by the next person who can give us a story right and i think for a country to become wealth driven we we will always be manifesting what we truly are right our our country will be like what we are a lot of people say that a bollywood movie kaiser movie like how can people like that stuff but we have to understand that those movies make 200 crores because probably the average iq of the country has stayed low and what have you done to


country has stayed low and what have you done to improve that we can't keep judging i see so many people from netflix keep judging there is a meme right now but the point is this content is the highest trp content yeah why is it the case there is a reason for it right and i think unless we ask ourselves tough questions take efforts to really evolve minds we are not going to get better and i think that the biggest problem is about worship oh knowledge because he's questioned the thought about this why what if he's wrong what if ranveer is wrong why are we following people and like we keep moving from oh let's follow garyvee because we bought say bank but what if he is wrong what if everybody is wrong why are you not questioning why are you not seeking truth and i think truth seeking is very hard to learn late in life because like it's like muscle i know you have to build it very early on in life i'll give you a small example in