talk about it Vipassana absolutely from what had happened to you at the end of like can you describe you have a passion I've shown it's like what happens Joe so again I was introduced to either chinmaya mission or even with passion about my father so what happened in said since Papa used to actually meditate and it still continues casually told me that you know I also do I don't you do one thing so the curiosity was that the best part about getting into spirituality for me was that and I was never forced into spirituality so he just took me casually during my mission I became a member so you wanna do it do it so he never told you you have to do it so as a young boy I said okay so let me try so the push 9 is a form of meditation taught by Buddha and it said that basically lot of these secrets of ours were stored in the purest from outside India as an essence for example the people who now


India as an essence for example the people who now practice depression and meditation are actually most of them followers of Goenka ji who is going to G he was a person who actually lived in Burma an Indian settled in Burma and once he had a migraine problem now think about it going Kaji had a migraine problem and somebody told me you know there is some we portion of meditation in Burma okay so there was this Buddhist teacher who actually told you no I will teach you something which actually comes from your country it's called be person I said what's the person and I never I'm only concerned about one thing where am i green jhana see he taught him and interestingly he realized that the migraine is anyway gone as a byproduct but there is a secret that not many Indians know about it so we came back to India and I started telling people you know so what this repression of meditation it starts it basic steps off you know watching your breath so


basic steps off you know watching your breath so you know watch your breath it's not very easy because you'll watch over it into three cycles then your mind will go then bring it back bring it back slowly through the practices that you have to do it for ten days and you can't do it alone by the way it's very important that meditation also requires somebody to guide you in the process because you can go bonkers and you may think that you're going in the right direction any kind of meditation which is my passion I think any definitely types of meditation should have a guru a quote so even if you are going into the gym you require a coach because you might just spoil your muscle you may think you're doing you need to pull it up no actually maybe tearing your muscles yeah so I think it's important it makes that initial process fast also I feel and you don't do the mistakes which probably other to reach your goals faster because you're actually talking about China conserved here


because you're actually talking about China conserved here it's called Visayan yogaha being associated with a person but why is an experienced person was walked the path before you so interestingly what happened is that when I did meditation so I came to know that going cause you actually got trained under a guru he came back to India and taught started teaching and this form of meditation and today my portion of meditation is crossed the globe there's lot of centers in either puri in Bombay in the police in Maharashtra they're full fledge Centre in Bombay we have a cell world it's a theme park just next to that there is a Buddhist pagoda ten thousand people can meditate together and it's a worldwide movement so the basic I think all of us who are interested in knowing the person I should attend the course of ten days and the best part is that absolutely free of cost we don't charge you so what happens at the end of the course so I think one of my


end of the course so I think one of my very dear students and colleague in my office spread-out Patil he just went to be personal campaign came back and the first thing I always calm quiet I say okay let's do business together now the idea is basically after 10 days you start realizing that actually you can be a normal person without speaking to anyone okay even somewhere we especially you know till we don't speak it out we don't feel comfortable of course human beings have to speak out good thing is that you can go within so all the energy that is used to go outside it's now getting used to go inside and use for what in fact I think it's like having a very sharp nice knife okay to ask you that use for water depends on you so if you're a surgeon you will use the same sharp knife to save somebody's life so basically if you waste a lot of your energy talking and thinking outwards and doing things out words your blunting your knife is that


doing things out words your blunting your knife is that like what you're saying absolutely so you're using it and so anything is very important coming back to the basic question of meditation to actually conserve your energy conserve your thoughts in addition is also about not allowing certain thoughts to come in and you know so if you look at the basic level they say you know there's a time for meditation there is a place for meditation and there is a way of meditations of basics for example you can't sit outside a dustbin and say normal America yeah so meanings are you going to pooja room light a candle have a photo of a guard and then like a tiger Bertie and get up in the morning at 4 o clock so now many people think why is this basic required the reason is that basically these are all ecosystems that will help you in the initial baby steps those four o'clock half of the world is sleeping but the real Yogi's and Rishi's they said meditating the


real Yogi's and Rishi's they said meditating the Himalayas but later on as you practice it's like you know driving a cycle so initially you require somebody to support you balance you but you know once you've got in the habit of it you can be on a highway also and not even think so real meditators are 24 hour meditators so they are actually active in the business we were running a kingdom probably as a king or maybe doing an acting show and show like this but the mind is like it's on a very fast mode at the same time very calm mode yeah that knife is sharpened it sharpen and use it for the right reason the sharpened knife can be dangerous if it is used for killing others so robber can use it so sharpened mind should also be used for noble purposes yeah so what is important that meditate first service of the people for a person so I want to ask you coming back to your ecosystem or topic lot of people gravitate


to your ecosystem or topic lot of people gravitate towards these meditation apps and they bring a lot of technology into meditation like I know someone who uses a device to actually measure the brainwaves yes like I'm also aware of it you yeah so what is your take on that like because a lot of people watching this they rely on those meditation apps and you swear by them yeah my personal views like I don't think that there's anything wrong with that but I think it's just gonna give you the benefit of becoming calm but beyond all these mental and spiritual benefits you need to do a proper technical meditation which is free of technology that's just what I think but so what do you think I think you're absolutely right because see that too many apps around and you've got one more app maybe a fitness app or a meditation app you download it so I'm saying that it's good but you know as we say Google search is not research correct so it's information base all these tools are


research correct so it's information base all these tools are good but the interesting part is that if you were to really be a serious meditator then you should actually have a guru yeah so you know somewhere you should get associated with some organization you know some like people a lot of people especially in the modern day or kind of look down on this practice of gurus you know the factors of joining a organization like V assess what should mention just because either they think it's too old-school it's like a budova comet or they look down on it thinking that no this is religious I don't want to get into it you know it's that I think that if you just give yourself that one you know moment of reaching out in search of knowledge and then practice that not forward you'll see the rest of your life change so for that one month also just follow someone get that initial spark and then take it up yourself but do p'n to joining one of these courses that's what I feel absolutely right you know


courses that's what I feel absolutely right you know so the biggest problem now is guru shopping like what do you mean so it's like you go into this guru and this guru and that finally landing up with no guru yeah yeah so let me ask you what is your definition of a meditation guru um wow that's a deep question definitely someone who speaks to you okay I'm very drawn to Sat guru just the things he says and also obviously yss which is yoga on par immensity when I read his book I felt like it was talking directly caring talking to my heart so I feel listen to your intuition if you feel that there's something in this person that really connects to you there is a chance that that person could play a gurus role in your life sure and it's not necess I'm in in the long term if you are following one guru that's beneficial for you in your advanced meditations but initially you should have perspective at least of what what is that


should have perspective at least of what what is that Guru ji saying what is yoga and paramhans you saying just to kind of develop your own mind in a 360-degree manner so I feel someone who speaks to you you know to your heart yeah and also a place where you definitely you feel like a - enriched awfulest you know that person no that's the other thing you feel like okay have intellectually been stimulated as well as on an emotional and spiritual level in my heart brilliant now let me go to the next level ask another question chosen so do you require a guru who is physically interacting with you speak to me discuss with you is it necessary this is a topic I wanted to bring up in this podcast which is astral bodies it's a deep topic okay now this is something again I've not spoken about on YouTube earlier and this is something that a lot of everyday people will laughs upon we will say that name what are these people saying I I actually


that name what are these people saying I I actually don't want to elaborate on this topic because I'm in the presence of dr. Radhakrishnan Pillai so I'm going to allow you to I'm gonna push that question back at you yeah that's called the smartest man in India Thanks thank you who pushing it back to me so I think the basic question right now is first of all do you require a guru and then second question is basically do you require a guru who is around with you physically you know with whom we can discuss talk I think for most of us we require somebody with whom you can talk to discuss with you because see what happens is that you're absolutely right you know if you look at what Sadhguru ji is doing amazing I think I know of friends who have heard and seen every single video of us but then I also know that the first step and actually lined up doing a course with Sadhguru in his prodigal Ostrom and they say


in his prodigal Ostrom and they say you know I already knew guru's thoughts I've seen it I've read his books etc but then when I went over there I could actually feel the vibes very differently so I think reading about gurus is very important but what's very important that if you by the grace of God and that's very important okay by the grace of God you actually find a guru then we can speak to talk to then you know it's a different it's like saying you know I'm charging my battery somewhere but I'm directly charging from the source and that doesn't mean you know if you don't have a physical guru we should not make it right over to gurus can be astral aswell non-physical absolutely so what I am saying the quality of the student is more important when it comes to the teacher so let me look at two great students of mohab are so what is Arjun directly trained under the teachers like you know Dronacharya crop acharya be sure


like you know Dronacharya crop acharya be sure and one colleague Libya who never even met his guru so we made some idol out of him and whom do you think is more better as a student I personally think a killer whale absolutely but you know eclipses are rare also yeah so let us in for a close but let us be also original also so a lot of people are watching this thinking that okay but how do I get a guru which is non-physical hundred-person a quick modern-day answer is books written by yes absolutely absolutely right I think when you have those great masters were no more physically around still the books can inspire you just told about autobiography of a yogi' yeah again I spoke about memories from H Inman and G or Sai Baba you'd be surprised all those people have written books these are guiding people I'll tell you one very interesting book it's called I am that by nisargadatta maharaj he's no mother but half of the Europe


maharaj he's no mother but half of the Europe follows yeah and he's just around the corner yeah so I think you're absolutely right so books like are with us and all our books are actually guiding people in meditation I feel like some books are actually alive but you only understand their life once you read them hundred-person so book is a documented form of the knowledge of the guru a myth is not just a book yeah it's a living master in a book form 100% yes I understand that and I think you understand that more deeply once you've read a lot of spiritual books the other book I'd really highly recommend to people is anything written by Sadhguru himself but also this is one book called doorways to light it's a very easy read it's about the astral world and that is a topic I want to tackle right now your podcast now this book is written by someone called guru ji Krishnan and they have a massive meditation center in Bangalore it's between the


massive meditation center in Bangalore it's between the Bangalore Airport and the main city you know village called the PO Nagar I think that's the name of it I highly recommend you read that book if you're interested in this concept of your soul leaving your body and traveling around the world magazine you your consciousness in your mind going using that pole vaulting technique getting past your own physical body and then going and seeing the world in the universe yes it's a very deep book not everyone's cup of tea yeah a lot of people don't understand a lot of people laughs upon this yeah I also strongly recommend this one sentence which you should register in your head true knowledge is knowing that you know nothing I just feel that with the topic we're going to talk about right now it might seem little crazy but keep listening so I'm gonna let you elaborate on what is the physical body versus what is the astral washer so we are talking about astral bodies astral travel Eastern meditation it's


about astral bodies astral travel Eastern meditation it's a different plane altogether so what happens is that many people who are the beginners may not even believe it seeing that I saw Bhutan you know how can you just go out and travel the world and come back but there are enough evidences of people actually having out of the body experiences and maybe we'll say once a person is dead can he come back of course he can there's a processor you're not going to tell you about other body experiences but it Peter I have personally actually going through this experience same so exactly so what is happening is that till you experience it you know it's like talking about sugar to somebody who's never a station it I'm saying how does how does sugar actually taste I think it's very seat now what do you mean by sweet sweet means this I don't understand this you know so it means ah yeah the sweet means not bitter said okay it's not bitter it's a habit what


said okay it's not bitter it's a habit what is sweet it's a okey wait open your mouth like this no you do not speak well you experience what is sweetness so I think coming back to astral travel I think it happens with lot of people who practice it so it's like any other with it's not like a rocket science but if you're actually in that space you can actually go to the body usual your soul leaves absolutely and then comes back yeah but this body is only an instrument and you know that's why when you look at the whole concept of punar janma so what is happening so in the body is changing rebirth this is exactly the rebirth is that I am now the soul is in this particular body or this soul is actually using this body the body will get one off like an old cloth Bob are pen yeah so let me go to a new one so actually a body is traveling from one bird to another and it is using different bodies to in his


another and it is using different bodies to in his spiritual journey you know says somebody put it we are not human beings on a spiritual journey it's actually we are spiritual Souls on a human's astral travel there are people who actually can use this body go this body maybe entrant one on the body use that body and come back Wow so now this is at the more the physical element we can people can actually go to different planes I also feel that you know these all these things are beyond science but you should also understand that science isn't as advanced as you think it is there's still a lot for science to discover especially Western world the Vedas the ancient Indian books talk about things like this and this is something you will not believe because you are do you into reading your textbooks understanding that the world works according to physics chemistry biology mats when there might be a fifth subject which you don't even know about so this is that subject so just listen to it with an open mind


subject so just listen to it with an open mind also understand that this is I don't need none res and I don't drink alcohol because if you make a body impure you don't get beautiful experiences like this remember one thing beer biceps is beyond Bo and beyond biceps also very much here good and these are few of the factors which keep your body pure there's a lot of mental factors in terms of not getting agitated not losing your peace coming angry hurting other people all that also kind of makes the system impure and you're not able to have astral experiences I am NOT some astral travel I've just had like a few you're in there when I'm in deep meditation sometimes I can feel like you know I do get an astral experience where I can see my body from yeah like a bird's eye view yes so has something like that happen to you so I think most of us go through it okay so I think but we're not aware of it on Sisley so like you


not aware of it on Sisley so like you know have you felt sometimes you know that you are in a place completely for the first time and for a second it's you I've been to this place before deja vu do so what is that experience it's not by practice but yeah I think I've been you yeah I've seen this person I've seen the same color same room this is not neutral but actually you have come there for the first general so that is actually a different experience maybe you can call it at a different plane maybe or the body but it's not exactly or the body of different plane seeing that you know okay what is this you can't explain it so coming back to me also I have seen actually I've seen people who have been almost declared dead medically but you know there are some processors so there are other people in AI guys and actually after almost like 24 hours he's come back and he's actually experiencing it no I had gone and then you know somebody stopped me I went


gone and then you know somebody stopped me I went to a different plane and second no no no no no you have to go back so and you know there are many books also so I am NOT saying it is about science it's also about real experiences so there's a very famous book called as the law of the spirit world and if you heard about it it's actually written by a person who actually was made to write through a spirit so yeah so and it is not don't let frightened it's not for her yeah so when you say somebody makes you right the book it's not like some development ring into you so we're actually allowing somebody will use your body some divine soul yeah so many people when insects like black magic no it's not black magic it's maybe white magic yeah so you're allowing yourself good empty and hot okay so there are a lot of souls in this particular world who wants to do a noble work but they don't find a noble soul tomato by


they don't find a noble soul tomato by that Chuck I'm gonna have to do something very noble but you know so you're is a guy they actually wanted Christian can I use your body if you allow it actually lot of noble works happen so let me tell you since you're asking about my experience one of the spiritual masters is return something very deep he said you know the God also looks at the right people to do his work but the question is that are you that right person so coming might restore volume and a lot of people we call them Russia Moniz and there are sub Pharisees who are always there they're all around and there are Chiranjeevi is you know they never die so if you look at Hanuman ji there a lot of people who say you know when did Hanuman ji actually die he never died and there are great Rishi's were still around so when the astral world using they are in that world and this world simultaneously so they travel in the astral world but


simultaneously so they travel in the astral world but they come back to our world people have experiences with them so I think what is very important in that you know let us not look at this world only being what we touch and feel and see yeah there's something beyond what we can and feel around and it exists parallely yeah like if you look at this coffee glass you know there are many dimensions to it so one of the color the shape but it's also got heat so can you see the heat but it's hot okay at the same time there is a quality of you know on the material so what happens is that you like it's like a spawns you know so take a sponge and put it in the hot water and take away everything so if you look at this point they say there is wetness in it there is heat in it there are pores also in it and there's a color and a shape to it now are they not different they're all properties of the same object at the same


they're all properties of the same object at the same time yeah so I think the mind also can think simultaneous it can be two places simultaneously it can travel and come back and there are no four cases about you know I still traveling at the physical level I would say so I don't know if you heard about stories of great realized Souls so they have been seen at two different physical places at the same time so we're at 7 o clock here and somebody's is you know but he was 7 o'clock at my place which is like not 200 kilometers away no no no no I have a photograph 7 o'clock this particular place I said no I also have a photograph look it's my mobile and streams right but it's possible so there are people who have used the same physical body to multiply then there is asteroids traveling people go from this body help out somebody come back and use this particular body yeah so let me give a very very famous example from our indian scriptures and history i


famous example from our indian scriptures and history i would say it said that basically adi shankara charity ok he was a yogi astral travel so what happened is that he was a ball a Brahmachari so he never got married and all those who's had a debate with a scholar and some where he was getting defeated on the part that he has never gone through the whole experience of being a married man was in his Abal Ramachari so at the physical level whatever the intellectual okay I buy your point so when you're asking me questions about marriage probably since I'm about how much I don't know so it is said that actually the okay wait I will debate with you but let me have an experience that doesn't mean not going it married well that doesn't mean how to go through the whole cycles or being a married man so it's said that you know he just went around and left his body you sitting when you do woman's body or a man's body over is married so we went


or a man's body over is married so we went through that experience to understand what was the mind of a person who's married and gone through it and it comes back and say ok and already you still have a brahmacari so that is consciously being on the Yogi's can do that you can do it for example let's say I don't know there's a lot of people who said ok if I were to be like Gandhiji ok so hand it is so easy still their natural plane may be so invoke him and talk to him and then so what I'm saying is that if your mind is getting tuned to other Souls you can actually go experience them out of the body or invite them into your body now all this looks very very grand and you know very very magical but remember one thing the moment you start misusing it or rather using it without a guru it can be dangerous so I'm saying that it is important they all are true they all exist but what's your purpose the purpose should


they all exist but what's your purpose the purpose should not be going to more powerful famous and misuse it so I think all these know is important that you as long as you're using it for your own spiritual and other spiritual benefits do you think there are people in the world who've used these powers to become rich and famous oh I'm not sure of that but why not so I think a person who is rich and famous for me is there two levels the people who are actually you know put a lot of harder force and say I have become rich but the rich people feel there's a karmic connection to it so I don't just become rich overnight you know so I think there's a blessings of maybe the divine universe or some God that you believe it so I think I have met a lot of rich super rich people across the globe they're truly humble because you know in spite of all the footage that we put there is something beyond which they feel which


we put there is something beyond which they feel which we don't feel and they sometimes don't explain it in yeah so you try to tell them you order the secret of your success I have Bill Gates said it very nicely probably luck yeah I'm saying that say that's a quite an Ewald statement he's just writing of signal I'm not successful because I am great so maybe one factor but probably he must have its own destinies and Karma's he's gone through well that's what this so humble yeah in fact I could see a lot of spiritual connection with people like an even Steve Jobs so that matter yeah she's a young person if you look at he was going around like a hippie you know delete a part of Steve Jobs is very different from the first you know he's gone through a lot of experiences the bad days in Apple just kicked out from his own company but he also officially courses that he was a part of the Hari Krishna and he goes there somewhere if you looked at


and he goes there somewhere if you looked at the connect the dots as you say you know you find these souls who become rich I mean for that matter Rockefeller they're all people who had at a very different level they're at the physical level they're like you n mean you know but the realities of the mind is a very evolved mind and I think somewhere they have those secrets which probably they never disclose writing why did Steve Jobs not allow his children to use iPhone everybody knows about it's a very strange story the person who actually made iPhone for the whole world absolutely disguised his own children from using it so they knew and the technology which I created may be distraction to a different level of growth yeah so I think it's important to understand that spirituality has to be the base event to understand success at the material level yeah but coming back to Astrid yeah I know a lot of the listeners are still stuck on that how do people get astral experiences nice what do


how do people get astral experiences nice what do you have to do to get an astral experience so two three things I think if you're really interested in astral travel I think first of all sit quietly it's like in a small child who actually saw somebody else having a chocolate [Music] mama please you don't know where the chocolate is coming from which shop to go to so I thing you first put the thought into the universe that's a very basic level but I think what's very important is a probably read about it rect is it understand it and try baby steps yeah and I would say that for all those people who want actually get into the real experience please find a guru but as I told you before you find a guru you have to be really since yesterday yeah so we can read about try about it all those things yeah but you know it's very important that you start with the help of those people who already are in a group so probably the spiritual organisation yes there could be


group so probably the spiritual organisation yes there could be organizations which actually practice these Sciences yeah so become a part of it because don't make it a lonely journey have some people who are travel the journey for you and they will give you those experiences so you know a lot of people actually as a youtuber we've made basic meditation videos yeah my ex Mary yes is how you do basic chanting yeah but when we are learning advanced meditations in our meditation schools this specifically told that do not share this knowledge on a public platform true because they don't want that Chinese whispers yes they don't want that knowledge to be little bit tweaked around what's weak yes and even after practicing no I think I've been practicing advanced meditation with wise for around 2 years Wow and I'm still not perfect with the technique there are still tiny mistakes I make which I'm doing my yoga in the center some seniors will come and correct missing you know you're moving your finger not the way it should


know you're moving your finger not the way it should be moved and all that so I'm still perfecting my own technique that's why we can't put out the information on the internet but if you are and search for it I think the call to action for you is first read those books read all about read such gurus books yeah read doorways to like would you recommend any other books that people should read initially so in fact to inspire all of you if you're not even into it I would suggest that been very beautifully written we just inspired me into astral travel also is many life many masters yeah a very common book it's actually about an American doctor who actually sees a you know after that experience of many of his patients many life when he masters when he sees you know this so he's actually since the doctor and he's able to observe lot of people who are dying he says during death people go through very strange experience and he tries to map it scientifically maybe like science logic right and then


map it scientifically maybe like science logic right and then he finds that you know whenever person is dying is actually communicating to someone speaking a different language so what is the pattern he lies that every particular soul actually has got a spiritual master with him throughout the life Wow but you're not even ever always like a shadow around you but it's actually which is protecting you so it seems I mean a child in the womb or the person was closer to the death actually can speak and talk to them so he starts talking to them understanding them and then he realizes he actually we are all people who have a karmic way of keeping those masters with us so I would suggest that in that book he'd be course and this many life and that many masters who are with you it's a very beautiful book and a real life experience book of a great doctor so scientifically proven that it works so please read that also yeah so read the books and second genuinely go for one of these courses


and second genuinely go for one of these courses foundation Jochen my machine has yes self-study course which i use basically they send you self-study material at your home yes so you can practice in the comfort of your own house you are absolutely right or maybe sushi revision or any of them at the best part the best part about this particular country is that too many masters yeah but at least choose one who is closer to your heart yeah and don't kind of keep yourself away from going down that master bath because of yeah you know the bad reputation of all these like the random gurus and all that that's not that's not a good generalization to make there are a lot of evolved souls yes who have way more knowledge than any scientist in the world right now can I give a practical trip Chaucer I think if you really get into this try and expedition in Himalayas okay because that's a different please him Allah is a part of this earth but it is not any specific so


of this earth but it is not any specific so I would say just go from Rishikesh anything approached it could be Turkish it could be gonna go three kids on em you know three so I am singing the Himalayas is the closest place that he can connect to the other world and there are so many Yogi's you know just sitting that I have met so many of them and I mean I'm so fortunate and actually run a company called optimization which isn't a spiritual tourism and I remember in the initial stage managed to do my research I say just land up in Himalayas and I found so many people's in that cold without a single you know piece of clothes on their body and how is it possible and all these people still exist what we're talking about the Guru's right now is those gurus will maybe meet in the normal situations the popular gurus but there are also Yugi sitting in the Himalayas today I'm talking about today's generation so I'm thinking that you just


about today's generation so I'm thinking that you just get a feel of it just take a trip to the Himalayas with an open mind of course just go there and you will come back you know if you look at autobiography you go by still their physical form but you know many of you have not seen it but many people have the experience of talking to such gurus so I think the basic thing in all your travel plan an itinerary Himalayan trip and especially the Indian spiritual Himalaya part of it and when I'm saying Himalaya you know many people go for the every part of it also yeah I'm not talking about everything just go just be there I'm telling you God will bless you yeah the key takeaway I want people to take from this podcast is something that's helped me throughout my journey even if you are just starting out have a very open mind yeah true knowledge is knowing that you know nothing so just be open to any kind of experience at your physical body you will


any kind of experience at your physical body you will have any astral experience or you will have anything that someone else is teaching you from a spiritual perspective don't just dis and say then it is not possible so what do you say yeah because you've not experienced that yet remember that you only use 10% of your mind and there's still 90 percent to go but if you start meditating you can go down the 90 percent road so spiritual growth to all of you right the Great Lord there help you and guide you in the field of meditation and resign doctor navigation Pillai sir thank you I hope you enjoyed the podcast I'm learning from you thank you sir Thank You Sanne of course I'll be linking all of dr. allocations police books down below all the links down below please check it out misho we will see you later thank you


so i got rejected from a bunch of consulting interviews uh at that point actually seven in a go and when i got rejected i rationalized this later so when i got rejected from the seventh one and i decided to try and jump off the 19th floor of the building it was not even a huge consulting firm you know what irritated me it was the fact that i got rejected but friends of mine who i thought had less grace got the job it's like that dialogue you know in three idiots so then you feel even worse so i think my inability and i don't think our system prepares you for rejection right you're always told better work hard keep doing your thing study set a lawyer but what happens if you work hard and fail radhika gupta ma'am thank you for being on the ranvi show thank you for having me so for our listeners uh radhika gupta is one of the trailblazers of the corporate world uh one of the most fascinating stories i've


world uh one of the most fascinating stories i've come across so before every podcast i do an intense read up on our guests and i just kept reading about your story like everything you've grown up all over the world you eventually found yourself in the indian corporate scene you're one of the country's youngest ceos and uh your kind of what i would like to call you know this is not written but this is my gauge of it you're one of the country's most feared ceos i'm feared in in a very positive way yeah feared or fearless now you have to fear less and fear fear is a nice one interesting yeah so today you are the ceo of edelweiss mutual funds yes uh interesting story but edelweiss was one of the companies that i was targeting in terms of my first job when i was in engineering oh really yeah back i didn't know that how did you find out about it always um so you know while you're in engineering college um you're


you know while you're in engineering college um you're constantly told that uh you know there's other things you can do outside of engineering and you just assume that okay the other things are finance or startups so i thought no i might be too young for startups so why not try finance and educause seemed like a cool company from the outside but i have i have so many questions about the world of finance in general uh i have so many questions about the corporate world because that's something i've never delved into and honestly you know like when you're a younger entrepreneur and you're brash and you've also had and i've gone through that phase of the obnoxious young entrepreneur exactly obnoxious yes obviously a part of you i you know for lack of a better word you kind of looked down in the corporate world because they look down on you as well yes yes uh like i mean i have so many questions about the corporate world in general but let's let's start with your story um where did


let's let's start with your story um where did this start and very interesting i know that you were born in pakistan yes i was born in pakistan and it's it's really funny so i was born in pakistan and i'm not that old contrary to the attire so i was born in 83 in pakistan which is kind of rare and in fact once in the office i have to tell you this i told some guy i'm born in pakistan and he looked at me with this strange kind of disbelief and then he held my hand and he's like it must have been really sad coming on that train during the partition it's like okay no i was not so my dad is a career diplomat um he was actually born in a village in up called gango district village kind of thing and he ranked 10th or 7th all india which is crazy in the civil services first one and then he got into the foreign service and he had the choice at that point of going to pakistan or


the choice at that point of going to pakistan or switzerland and my mom keeps telling me this she's like you know when we got married i was like i've met at a foreign service officer and there was this whole yash chopra and silsila and all that phase going on i was like let's go to switzerland and he's like let's go to pakistan it's good for my career because it's a neighboring country so we lived in pakistan between 83 and 87. uh do you have any memories of junior kg in pakistan no i could not go to school because in pakistan it is too unsafe for an indian diplomats kids to go to school in fact it is so unsafe that you can't even see an external doctor i mean as you think about it it makes sense so what the government does is the embassy has their own doctors for you too they have journalists they have doctors they have a whole ecosystem it's one of our largest embassies in the world do you


of our largest embassies in the world do you have any memory of pakistan uh i have memories of a very very big house um my parents have lots of memories of pakistan and they have very very positive memories uh of their pakistan phase they they said the indian embassy was a very bonded place because there was nothing else to do right i mean there was nothing else to do no one else to do but i was really homeschooled i was homeschooled for the first four years um and i keep joking with my friends these days who are obsessed with their kids getting into play school at one and two years i was like it is fine you know just homeschool them till four or five they'll turn out okay so that was our memory of pakistan um and my mother has some very funny memories of guys spying on us and our phones being tapped and she's like we knew people were sort of outside our house watching over us and they knew that we knew and we had


and they knew that we knew and we had a kind of nice it's like they would even say ada just used to go on so that that is how it was and uh i was brought up so my first language was actually urdu wow and eventually you found yourself in nigeria eventually we found ourselves in nigeria so the government has a funny rule uh and which is that they rate countries in the world so they take the world map and they rate it from a through c so like a is cool countries like italy or the us and b is like average countries i don't know what that is and c is countries like pakistan and nigeria and because they're super democratic once you get posted to an a country the next country will be a brc country and then it will keep rotating so like we did pakistan then we were rewarded so to say with new york which is us a plus country after new york then we were punished with nigeria so that's actually how the way and


with nigeria so that's actually how the way and it's it's really interesting because as a kid you're actually going through very drastic changes because you're moving from a country like new york where you have everything which is so luxurious and new york in the uh late 80s and 90s i mean this was a time when nothing you used to get nothing in india right i remember coming back from new york and there were these orange packets of that tang i mean you might be too you too but we used to carry this for everybody right i mean nobody does that anymore and then you move to a country like nigeria where you can't get out of the house after six o'clock where your house has a bulletproof door where many of your friends and family have been robbed at gunpoint and there is nothing to do except sit at home um so the government i mean a foreign service kid's life actually is subject to a lot of extremes and this was in your teenage years this isn't your


this was in your teenage years this isn't your teenage year and what you went through like and this is pre facebook and youtube and twitter so you can't even keep in touch with friends right i mean who's going to send snail mail to nigeria right like who do you keep in touch with right so the other thing with this life is that you don't have school friends so like my husband grew up in bombay he has a ton of school friends i don't have any school friends i mean i don't know anybody so you all you also grow up with that but uh yeah nigeria was a super interesting place to grow up i mean i've spoken about this uh i i really don't envy my mom because i think i was 12 and my brother was nine and there was no place to go buy clothes in nigeria so if you wanted if i wanted a swimsuit or like a prom dress and i went to an american school where you have these prom dresses and all she would have to go


these prom dresses and all she would have to go to this market called yabba market this cloth market where you actually buy clothes by the thaan and then put a tailor in the house and he would stitch every piece of clothing that you owned wow so it's just a very interesting kind of childhood i'm gonna bring you back to the present yeah what did america add to the ceo's mind versus nigeria adding to the ceo's mind so i think the change has added a lot i think rather than you know there's something you pick up from each country so one of the things i picked up from nigeria which is very true so nigeria is the most corrupt country in the world right i mean you can't get petrol you need two days of standing in line to get patrol that's why people have do two drivers in nigeria but if you look at the stats nigeria is actually one of the happiest countries in the world nigerians are constantly optimistic about life and i think that's


are constantly optimistic about life and i think that's something that i picked up a lot and a mentor of mine told me this he said leaders naturally have to be optimistic you can't have a pessimist inspire a team or leader team so i think that was a really important learning that i got from my nigeria days and i think i've picked up something from each country i've lived in whether it's italy why do you think nigeria is so unsafe though because even i've heard stories about like i was with a relative once and he said that he feared going to nigeria on assignments and he's a techie he's an engineer in america and he said that a friend of his went there or landed up at the lagos airport yeah his driver picked him up and instead of taking him to the hotel they took him into a forest and then they found out that that driver wasn't the real driver he made it utterly believable yeah he made that guy stripped down to his underwear took his


that guy stripped down to his underwear took his watch to call his belongings left him in the forest and drove away and then the actual driver like called him and said listen i'm a driver yeah i think it's had a very violent history it's still got a lot of tribalism and communities and it's a very poor country there is you know one thing we're very lucky to have in india and i'm speaking from the hat of someone in finance is a big middle class in nigeria there is extreme richness and extreme poverty and that creates a sense of why do they have what i do they have what i have and so there was a there's an interesting thing that when you go roam around in nigeria you always wear robbery jewelry even a man so he's got to wear a gold chain around his neck or a ring or something so that if someone robs you you don't get killed you can give your ring rather than your life i got mugged last year we got mark


your life i got mugged last year we got mark last year yeah like in bombay i was walking in my area actually which is actually a pretty relatively safe area of the city five gardens oh that's super safe yeah and it's you know i i've walked around all my life and uh i was on the phone with uh someone um talking i was on the phone with manish actually he was telling me something about business he's also been on the podcast uh and i'm walking and i suddenly get whacked in the head my specs fall off and my phone falls off as well this guy i was just confused because he whacked me hard i was on the floor i mean i was on the footpath and he takes the phone runs away another guy comes on a bike takes him away and goes i couldn't even chase them i couldn't take that guy five gardens which is like super safe yeah and um so here's the creepier part of the story he basically mugged me i was in


the story he basically mugged me i was in shock i went and filed a police complaint all that and immediately after getting mugged you have a sense of shock and you have a sense of why did that happen to me and this was like last year when businesses are established and i'm per se famous yeah uh but uh and everything's going well and suddenly you went mugged and then over the next two or three days you realize okay wait maybe that person just wanted that phone way more badly than i wanted it so you kind of start asking questions about life that why like i'm a good person i have not done bad [ __ ] to anyone but why has bad [ __ ] happen to me and then you realize this class difference where you're like you know even even in india while it may not be as much as nigeria there is that class division of people who are given a lot versus people or not so i went to school in philadelphia in the us and uh


went to school in philadelphia in the us and uh our area was actually a very unsafe area so i saw a lot of mugging there and if you come to this i mean you think about it it actually had a community of very poor people and then all these university kids and it's the same class difference i mean you wonder why people would mug a college kid because a lot of kids in philly at that point i mean there was a point which you knew you would not cross why would you mug a college kid right but it's the same thing right these people have come into our community and they have something that we don't have yeah yeah 100 um so the creepier part of my story was later on from an anonymous instagram account i got a message saying hey brother i'm sorry i was the guy who whacked you and took your phone and the instagram account was it had like zero followers zero whatever following it was just like an account made for telling me this that it was some fan


made for telling me this that it was some fan who had like uh mugged me and he said that this is your phone's uh ip whatever the you know the identification number and it was actually the correct identification number and i didn't know what to do and i was too busy by that point i'd forgotten about the mugging i mean i'd moved on but it kind of just changed my whole perspective on fame uh this concept of class difference uh but yeah there was it was like an eye-opening thing and that's where i actually got fascinated about west africa this is other youtubers a lot who has a lot of business in west africa his name is technical guruji he has explained to me how difficult it is just establishing yeah and you talked about your friend who was scared to go there as an i.t professional i remember i think my brother brother graduated from an indian institute and he said one of his friends got a college offer and it was some 300 000 offer in nigeria


offer and it was some 300 000 offer in nigeria he asked me for advice 200 000 of the offer was the worth of life insurance wow so does that country other than giving you optimism which again i find a little uh find a little strange from the outside but i've never been tonight yeah so i never know what else does nigeria give you it also tells you about the importance of a community right and i think we can be very individualistic um so if you look at nigeria and we all had help in nigeria you know your help will run out of money by the 15th or 20th day of the month and so you'll ask your help you know where is the money and she's like you know i helped my sister in another village so my mother asked her month after month and at some point she's like how many sisters do you have because she thought real sister but in nigeria sister means anybody from your community because they believe that when tough times come on them


they believe that when tough times come on them the community comes to support them i think that's a great learning at this time i mean i always tell people in financial services too um that build a sense of community around you it's interesting you know i you haven't asked me this but as i've sort of grown up i've realized that women are a rare community in most of the corporate world and when i was in my 20s i was i didn't care about feminism i thought this whole gender debate was quite nonsense because we were all 50 50 at that point they're 50 guys 50 000 girls as i have become older i've actually realized this importance of community especially being a girl and the importance of building a community of women and standing up for each other so this whole concept of sisterhood that i learned in nigeria it's now kicking in in a very different way yeah here's a scary stat which actually might get slightly wrong but uh kunal shah the founder of cred


wrong but uh kunal shah the founder of cred was on the show recently and he said that in urban metros in bom in bombay delhi bangalore uh something like 80 to 90 percent of the women are just like sitting at home it could be because 25 percent of our women find participate in the workforce i mean i'll get into trouble for this but in my own industry we have 45 mutual fund companies in india i mean let's just do some quick math they're about four or five leadership roles ceo head of investments etc etc so 45 times five means there should be 200 otherwise 150 senior positions i counted and i think five are filled by women um that's crazy and it's not by the way that we don't know how to manage money yeah no it's it's not that at all so you know as a guy you kind of take this for granted because it's not really your concern you don't notice all these things till you grow up maybe if you become an entrepreneur


you grow up maybe if you become an entrepreneur and you have women and men working with that's when you start noticing these little things cracks in society which is actually the first uh kind of reason i thought i should have you on the show i read one of your tweets uh which i just told you about before the podcast remember this uh you posted a video of basically uh trump and modi are together they're walking down this uh pathway yes and there's like 10 girls there wearing bharatnatyam costumes and one guy wearing this traditional indian outfit and that one guy it's a kid and yeah he's a white he's a kid in a white outfit yeah the kid pulls out his phone and goes up to modi and travis says hey can i get a photo yeah and they obliged they'd take the photo with them and your caption on that was i'm gonna let you actually complete so there's two parts to it so my caption on that was ask for opportunities because


my caption on that was ask for opportunities because nobody is going to do anything for you and the other thing about that photo is so while the kids tapping and asking look at the expression of the girls so a lot of people trolled me on that saying well what if the girls didn't want the photo but my answer is look at the expression of the girls they were like almost like that miss india moment like i can't believe he got it well my point is why did he get it he asked and you know what the girls were first in line but they didn't ask and i so i go to all these women sessions and they keep asking me you know what's your advice for young girls and i'm like just ask for opportunities ask for the big promotion if you're competent at something ask i think you know on average if a woman is eight out of ten she's probably going to rate herself six and a guy is going to rate herself 11. yes that that's an actual study


herself 11. yes that that's an actual study uh one of my friends who's a consultant at bain she sent me this exact that's an actual study there you go what you quoted uh they had actually asked a bunch of women this and exactly that happened most of the women rate themselves lower than the capabilities and most of the guys rate themselves higher than the capabilities and it might be societal conditioning genetical uh pre uh conditioning i don't know what it is it's all that so it's i mean it's it's the smallest thing so i remember when i was getting married i had these peras and i was wearing a reasonably light lengha so i was walking and i walked fast so i was walking around the fire quickly and my husband look and the pundit actually told me i might get into trouble for saying that this slow down you should look shy wow um and from a young age you're told stuff like this but why should i slow down we are


like this but why should i slow down we are walking and i'm walking at the pace that is comfortable to me so you're told not to ask you're told to slow down but i'm saying nobody is going to look in a room and say oh that girl is really great you know i should give this role to her the girl has to ask that she used to raise her hand up that's how by the way i got the ceo role only because i asked for it that's crazy um and you know again as once you're in a leadership position what you understand about women in your workforce is that they add completely different dynamics to the same projects compared to men even men have their own you know good things that they add to the project but the same goes for women and the best organizations will always contain according to me an equal mix of men and women but we're probably far from that and it's also it's actually not just about gender i mean i learned this in my first


about gender i mean i learned this in my first job at mckinsey it's a diversity of every kind adds value right you have someone who's a physicist versus someone who is a lawyer versus someone who is an engineer they will all have different perspectives i mean i believe organizations should have diversity of age you can't have 30 you know 50 year olds and no young population so it's not just gender is one form of diversity but diversity of everything matters right yeah one whole section on this podcast is going to be about how you overcame this gender bias age bias all these things uh but before you actually you know went on to the corporate path you also had an entrepreneurial side of things and before that you were in warton yes and right after wharton you had an extremely dark phase of your life yes one dark phase but so what what after nigeria what had happened so after nigeria my father moved to uh italy which is where i did my high school awesome


italy which is where i did my high school awesome place by the way like the best place i've lived on earth uh and then i think by the time i was in 10th or 11th there was this thing that you know what you want to do next and so that is in the government mom has been a teacher so what what did what what did that add to your personality oh at least such a lovely place i think firstly i think most of my habits personal habits are shaped by italy like my food everything i want to do but i think what i love about italy and i actually do a talk on what different countries add to my personality it is very proud of who they are i think europeans are very proud of their roots like i always say that italians celebrate every stone that there is in their country because they have a very rich heritage um they celebrate so you know italy is a home of espresso and cappuccino and being a coffee fan you'll love this


and being a coffee fan you'll love this but you know there's no starbucks in italy right because the italians are not going to let until then there wasn't i think and the italians are not going to let some random american company walk in and walk all over their culture they make pizza their way they make stuff their way so they know their core and they celebrate it and i think sometimes we can lose touch with it i it teaches you to celebrate your indian-ness so you should be proud of speaking your hindi and walking around in your study and celebrating your ramayana and celebrating your mahabharat and celebrating your you know culture i mean i keep joking that one at one point in time i have a secret desire to be the tourism minister of india and this comes from living in italy because i just believe we have such a tremendous heritage of tourism in this country i mean india should be the best place on earth for a tourist and we do


best place on earth for a tourist and we do a terrible job monetizing it 100 uh it's going you know my hope is that in 20 years time if i am in politics in any way that's one department i wish to clean up from an entrepreneurial perspective so that we can make money off of tourism so tourism is your soft power it's your brand and it's business and the italians celebrate literally everything so that's that's that's what that brought to the table um you know how many questions you're opening up for me through telling me all these things but but okay let's let's come back to uh your you know career story yes um ma'am so like what did you what was your intention behind going to wharton so i and i guess you know i have to thank my mother because she was super aspirational for me she's like you should apply abroad and we didn't have so government doesn't pay you very much money and a college education is expensive overseas i mean forty


college education is expensive overseas i mean forty fifty thousand dollars a year then which is like unthinkable for four years that's like i remember saying it's like a crore papa at that point in time which is a big amount of money in our world and i said let's only apply to the places where i'll get scholarship and you know the big schools don't give scholarship they give loans and financial aid my mom's like apply to the best in the world and why don't you just try and it was worth it it was worth it because i actually got into wharton i got in with financial aid which is so the college counselor told me that if you apply to wharton as a normal candidate you have a one in seven or one and eight chance of getting in he said if you apply and ask for money also to support your education you have a 1 in 40 chance of getting in and it's like their way of saying okay don't do this way and my mom's like


okay don't do this way and my mom's like no but we are going to apply and we are going to apply with financial aid and we did and she made me apply to the best in the world and she actually sat with me through the whole process she had no idea we didn't do you know fancy college things and you know there was none of that i mean sitting in italy we didn't have very much of that but we actually just did it on a lark we wrote essays from the heart and that was it um and i always used to tell her that you know mom i'm not an athlete and i don't have anything i can't play any music she's like just tell them who you are you have such an amazing background you're a good student just go tell them your story honestly what's the worst that can happen you won't get in anywhere you'll go to india that's how i got into college i mean that's actually how i got into college ma'am so what does this ivy


i got into college ma'am so what does this ivy league education add to your head because you know i mean a lot of parents so okay i'll give you my perspective yeah so my dad's punjabi and my mom is half marathon half guju but she's much more maharashtra than she's gujarati and maharashtrians give a lot of importance to education so since i was like three years old it was my mom's heartfelt dream that i go through an ivy league education of some sort and it broke her heart when i choose to make videos for a living so she still has that thing you know like even if i tell her right now listen i'm kind of considering applying to an ivy league college she'll like jump she will be like yes finally finally it's like ultimate thing and that's probably not going to happen so my version of having that happen to me is asking people like yourself what have i missed out on in life so look i don't think an ivy league education is the be all


don't think an ivy league education is the be all and end all it's not like you know you don't get an iv league education because people like overdo the craze about it these days so uh ultimately you know what you do i mean you can be perfectly successful without it i think it can change your life and i don't think it can change your life because of the four years there only and sitting in classes i mean classes are good and you meet world-class professors but i just think the community of people that you get exposed to is incredible firstly you're studying with kids from all around the world um and that is and look i had a global background but studying with kids from all around the world is very different from traveling to europe on a holiday i think it's just a very different perspective secondly i think you're always taught to like aim really really high so you're taught that you have to be a learner that you have to push your mind and i think that spirit


have to push your mind and i think that spirit stays with you even when you're 30 and 40. and the most powerful thing it does is it gives you an alumni network so i used to head our alumni club here we have about a thousand alumni from my college in india and we're very connected to each other and they all must be you know holding the top jobs in the country yeah they're of course very very successful professionals but they're also very close-knit community and in my case it's really interesting my husband's uh i met my husband in college and all our close friends also married friends from college so we have this group of about five six of us couples and we meet every weekend and we just look at and now you know i mean some of them are ceos of listed company and people have done very well for themselves but we're bonded by those four years other conversations very intellectual they're not they can be but they're not sometimes they can be very silly actually


they're not sometimes they can be very silly actually because ultimately you're a group of college kids who were bonded by an experience when you were 18 19 20 21. um so i just think that's what it does i think for me it changed my life it gave me a lot of the confidence i had today i went through my tough bouts through it it gave me a lot of the exposure and confidence i have today you know i always try finding polite ways to ask questions but i'm not going to make this question okay and it's going to be a dark question okay ask um i read articles about you where they spoke about a phase where you even considered you know something like suicide like so what had like happened in that phase after you've had so much perspective what drove you to that thought process so i think rejection is something i didn't handle well and professional rejection yeah i mean it was rejection from on-campus placements and you know anybody in india or overseas who's gone


know anybody in india or overseas who's gone through this process of what i call looking for a job on campus knows that that is the most stressful phase of your life and like if anyone is watching this or hearing this and looking for that just calm down i think that process brings out the worst in people i mean it makes you unnecessarily competitive and it's a doggy dog world and you know honestly till then i had never faced rejection because all through my life i was like a good kid class stopper i mean the only insecurity i grew up with was around my looks because of my neck issues and my weight yeah and i think it's a little worse as a girl because like you're an ugly looking teenage girl in like 13 and 40 and teenagers will go out there and say oh you're ugly looking and my mom happens to be beautiful so they're like your mom's so beautiful and she used to teach in the same school how did you turn up this


in the same school how did you turn up this way like people actually say this kind of stuff so if you see all that coupled with rejection i think that's what so i got rejected from a bunch of consulting interviews uh at that point actually seven in a go and when i got rejected i rationalized this later so when i got rejected from the seventh one and i decided to try and jump off the 19th floor of the building it was not even a huge consulting firm you know what irritated me it was the fact that i got rejected but friends of mine who i thought had less grades got the job it's like that dialogue you know in three idiots so then you feel even worse so i think my inability and i don't think our system prepares you for rejection right you're always told better work hard keep doing your thing study set a lawyer but what happens if you work hard and fail who prepares you for failure at any point in time so that was my first


at any point in time so that was my first power of failure and um on what because i mean i'm sure you've sat through many hiring drives yourself yeah what basis do you think they rejected you on i don't know and uh i found it to be a perfect conversation right and it's not like i haven't been rejected after that it's just that i handle it much better but i always believe that rejection in some way is redirection to a better place ah and this could even be romantic rejection this could be romantic rejection this could be college rejection this could be rejection from you know i mean you're going to book a hotel and you didn't get it and you ended up staying at another one i mean it just it could be rejection i mean any kind of rejection um for instance when i was applying to college i thought mit was my dream school like i wanted to be an engineer naughty all that i didn't get into mit um in retrospect i think they rejected me because


um in retrospect i think they rejected me because i was not the right fit maybe this consulting firm rejected me because i was not the right fit or someone else was a better fit than me and i ended up at mckinsey which was great for me so i always think rejection could be just god's way of saying you know you're meant for something else that's a better fit for you yeah 100 rejection opens up new dimensions it does and as i said redirection to a place that might be better for you but you're not taught how to handle rejection well how old were you when you had climbed to that 19th floor that was happening i think i was 20 19 or 20. well i mean you've already seen nigeria usa italy you had experiences there it was flashing through your head i was like why is this so my in my head it was like i'm a really good kid here i really worked very hard uh i went to waton on a scholarship which was very rare


waton on a scholarship which was very rare i've kind of survived all this and how can i be rejected seven times yeah like one time is okay but how can someone be rejected seven times after being topper of her class going through all of this being super sincere about everything i mean that's what goes through your head right how can they reject me why did you not jump oh i was lucky um my best friend at that time who most people don't know is my husband today he was sitting with me and he just called the cops and he's like this girl is trying to jump out of the window do something and that's when the cops came and they took me to this mental asylum this thing that existed on campus and then i had to escape and uh my father was in a country called zambia at that point in time he had moved to zambia from italy so i remember calling him at three in the morning saying papa i need to get out of this asylum


papa i need to get out of this asylum and he said how did you land up there in the first place i said you know boy i was trying to do this and a boy i mean he asked me the same question then why did you know i said listen i was with this guy and he called the cops and he's like who is this guy he was more worried about i think the boyfriend then jumping off the floor traditional indian father but that's how i got out of it wow that's a very intense story but um you you've got i'm sorry i'm just a little blown away right now and i've lost my flow uh did that did that add any layout to your personality just coming out of that um i got when i finally after that i was a lot more relaxed i was like so i had a job offer at microsoft and then i went into my last interview at mckinsey obviously you know in a good way can i say that you stopped taking yourself


good way can i say that you stopped taking yourself i see you no i was just like i stopped taking life a little less seriously i still take life seriously uh but i calm down a little bit it's like this is just normal i was like okay i can't be this dramatic about everything that happens in life you know i just have to cool it uh my husband always says you know stop and smell the coffee stop and smell the roses just calm down like what's the word i mean he was like what's the worst that could happen to you you'll get rejected by seven consulting companies i had a confirmed job offer at microsoft he's like that's not such a bad deal in life right so i just started seeing the other side of life and putting my problems into perspective and i think that helped yeah and now you're building one of the biggest corporate careers in india's scene and you know i think telling the story obviously much later has helped me a lot


story obviously much later has helped me a lot i mean i'm glad i would lived through that story because i also had the ability to tell it later do you do you think you've been free of mental health issues since pretty free actually pretty free i it's not that i don't go through pretty crappy days i mean i keep saying one day a month like i hate my life and i want to kill somebody it work or i'm like oh god i can't do this or you know my team's troubling me or i'm having some personal problems so it's not like i don't go through bad phases uh but i've had the ability to talk about it rather than just internalize it and i think that helps so that was probably my lowest mental health phase um i think the last three four years ever since i have discovered the power of sort of sharing my stories being vulnerable and realizing that i don't need to be perfect have been really good for happiness and confidence that's beautiful oh but


good for happiness and confidence that's beautiful oh but like the corporate career how did the trailblazing start so the corporate career is one i have to tell you the corporate career is less glamorous than it is made out to be in your so i like tried to jump off right for this corporate career and so my first job was at mckinsey which is like a top consulting firm in the world now when i joined mckinsey i was like very excited about it i was like okay i'm going to be a strategy consultant and i'm going to sit in this conference room and come up with like strategies and you know white smoke is going to emerge just for the listeners could you explain what a consultant does so a consultant is basically consulting companies basically advise corporates uh fortune 500 companies large companies on various parts how to turn around their hr how to change their operations there's basically a problem that a company could be going through and they hire a consulting company because they have


through and they hire a consulting company because they have got expertise in many different companies so that's what a consulting company does and consulting is a career that people are very excited about because at a very early age it gives you exposure to different businesses different problems and you think you're actually going to sit and advise them right so now when you think consultant like you're a consultant to me you think you're probably advising me on something so my impression was you know i'm going to sit in a suit and big board room and the ceo of this company is going to walk in and i'm going to give him advice on how to run his business that's that's that's that's the perception so for my first assignment at mckinsey was for like an equivalent of chroma you know one of these electronic retail forms and it was in a city called houston in texas where there's no vegetarian food and my job was to go to this electronics store and start at four in the


to this electronics store and start at four in the morning and follow people around in the store and just catalog on a pen and paper what they were doing from four in the morning till ten at night and i was like what is this i was like i tried to jump off a 19th floor of a building for this and so that's how my corporate career started and i mean the reason i'm saying this is is i think entry-level jobs are not what they are made out to be and it's not just at mckinsey mckinsey is a great employer but you need to go through the tough grind here nobody is going to give you the reins of the company and say solve my strategy and tell you don't know anything right so that was the first thing actually i learned in my corporate career and i always tell younger kids who join the don't expect the first two three hours to be glamorous you're gonna do very very very basic work i mean you always start life at the


basic work i mean you always start life at the bottom of the totem pole again like if there's a totem pole you just start life again at the bottom like yeah which is the biggest problem even we see in hiring even for the media industry today we'll hire some very talented kids who will severely lack patience yeah there you go and you know they'll fight with you for larger opportunities you're like dude i need to put you through a grind first to ensure that you're capable of handling those opportunities even in financial services your first few years are sitting in front of an excel spreadsheet and cranking models and it's good because it builds your analytical ability it teaches you to understand detail it teaches you to make mistakes and go wrong no one's going to hand over your company to a 22 year old kid on the first day that doesn't mean you can't make it as a young person but a little bit of the grind you have to go through in life right like


grind you have to go through in life right like a lack of patience and a lack of the ability to sacrifice things yeah uh can like really put a you know stop on your career's growth and i also think no job is too small right and i struggled with this a lot so i would sit uh in texas at like 10 at night and i would sit in the warehouse and start crying and i would be like what am i doing and i wouldn't tell my parents about this because i was like embarrassed that this was my role at mckinsey but i realized it was the right thing for them to do and it wasn't just me it happened to everybody right you just go through the grind first your jobs are like that and they get better and better and by the way even now i mean people wonder about the ceo's role 30 of my profession is a lot of this grind i mean it's just a lot of random stuff that doesn't appear glamorous that's


of random stuff that doesn't appear glamorous that's not very fun but you have to do it before the ceo journey began and i i'd like to call you a multi-billion dollar ceo see i i have to sell my podcast with a little bit of masala anticipate that the thumbnail might contain multi-billion managing multi billions so that's accurate but you had an entrepreneurship journey before that so what took you from consulting to starting your own firm and then being bought over by someone else so i always say that young people have a little bit of hunger and foolishness in them i again try to rationalize why this so i did the consulting gig and then i worked on wall street for a few years great years because i did 2006 and seven and then i did eight which is like most of what you see in the movies is true about wall street wall street wolf is a little extreme but things like the big shot etc i mean elements i was actually trading mortgages that was my


elements i was actually trading mortgages that was my first job on wall street um you know so very selling uh loans to people who had no income no job and no assets they were called ninja loans at that point in time so like you don't have a house take a loan from us you're eligible for a two million dollar loan i know you have no income no job no assets something like that um so yeah we did that for two three years uh how are indians perceived on wall street it's very smart people i mean wall street has a ton of us oh okay i think globally and i have i mean this is an interesting conversation so my dad's represented india from the 70s to you know 2020 or 2015 when he retired i think the perception of india globally has changed completely and he said this when he retired he's like so he keeps telling me he says you market mutual funds for a living but i sold india for a living which is just a beautiful thing he


for a living which is just a beautiful thing he says but he has seen the kind of respect that he was given in the 70s which i mean your u.s and german counterparts i don't think thought of him very much at that point in time but then there was this 80s phase and it wasn't a great phase and then 90s happened and the i.t boom happened um so when i moved to nigeria in 95 kids would ask me in school you're from india do you go to school on elephants and are you from the land of snake charmers this was the perception by the time 95 96 97 happened the whole i.t boom happened we made a statement with pokhran remember and that made a lot of news there was ancients on us at that point in time the you know the whole test happened and then by the time my father retired india had gone through and become an economic superpower so the kind of respect he got from the german ambassador or the japanese


he got from the german ambassador or the japanese ambassador changed totally and that that's a reflection of wall street too so i think as our economic standing has changed our perception has changed so perception is indians are very very smart capable people yeah on a very personal selfish level yeah my goal in life is to change the perception of india as a creative capital of the world and the artificial intelligence capital of the world because i do feel that in designing artificial intelligence products there will be a huge requirement of creativity and that's my that's the phase of life i want to begin at 35 like so creative is an interesting one because i think we're a very good jugaad artist and i don't like the word jugaad even though it's been associated with india um but sort of original thinking and innovation and creativity i think we can still do a lot more so we're very good at copying yeah while you know we've had people on the podcast who are not very hopeful about india's


podcast who are not very hopeful about india's future people in their 40s but i don't know whether it's the meditation based intuition whether it's just my gut from running youtube channels and talking to the youth on such a macro level i feel like we're heading into a good phase so if people your generation and my generation are not optimistic then i really worry i feel we are the two generations that are out mystic it's the ones um you know older than yours you're eighty-three born people in born in the 60s and 70s they're the pessimists so interestingly i mean this is a detour but when i moved back you know it's been 10 years since i've moved back from the us and this is lovely in the indian thing that when you move back from the u.s it's a very big deal to move back from the u.s wall street career you've left to come to india so people always ask me this question did you regret it like till date everyone asks me


you regret it like till date everyone asks me this question you know do you miss the us and then of course there's a famous one what would your salary have been in dollars if you were living in the u.s which is a totally irrelevant question i always say talking about optimism that i don't regret it at all um and the reason i don't regret it is is the u.s is such an evolved place it's a great market but it's a market where most problems have been solved so you really have to do things that are third order to make any impact here i think with what you're doing or what i'm doing there's so many people we can cater to and we can do basic things and solve a lot of problems so you can make tremendous impact here which i don't think you can make in a market like the us yeah i completely resonate with what you're saying at the age of 27 but at age 22 it was my alpha ego kicking in saying that


it was my alpha ego kicking in saying that no i want to be a king in this country and not a second-class citizen which it may not even be true like you know i'm sure that once you're in the u.s yeah you settle down it's a country that takes you in very nice yeah they're very accepting people very very which i've learned over time back then the ego told me that no let's begin i want to be here raja here yeah uh but that brings me to my question on entrepreneurship what was uh that journey like starting your own business because i've seen that a lot of people who try transitioning from the corporate world into the business and i'm not generalizing but i have seen a bunch of people who can't really keep up with the world of entrepreneurship because for example in the world of corporates if you eat a banana yeah and you want to throw the peel somewhere there's a dustbin captain you can throw it in the world of entrepreneurship if


can throw it in the world of entrepreneurship if you eat a banana there's no dustbin to throw it into it and you have to buy the dustbin yourself yeah i'll tell you a story about the dustbin but no it is a very i mean people keep saying the u.s to india transition i think employment to entrepreneurship is a very big transition especially when you're young i will say i was a super arrogant like wall street kid how old were you 24. okay so and 24 is not young for a startup person it's a little young for a financial services startup person because we are a gray hair and you know we like gray hair right it's a it's it's a business of trust what uh i'm sorry i'm cutting you shortly yeah but uh why okay for example i chose content entrepreneurship because i was very fascinated with the world of content you know i loved watching television and i thought wow i want to get into this business i want to show people visuals and


into this business i want to show people visuals and that's why i chose content and media as my domain what initially made you choose finance because on the outside it can seem boring to a lot of people okay so i'm not gonna give you the glamorous answer to this see there are people like you and i think you're taught that you know you should find your passion and you should follow your passion and all that stuff and i think that's great right and there are people like you who find your passion in life i was just a good student who went to a management school and it happened to be a finance and management centric school dad had never had a corporate career for me to know that i so if you are going to ask me did you want to do finance since you were a kid no i had no idea what this was right um i think some of us just start in careers and we grow to love our careers as we it's almost like a ranged marriage right


as we it's almost like a ranged marriage right some of us find our life partners and we choose them and you know we fall in love and that we get married but some people i mean a lot of this country has arranged marriages and you marry someone and it works and i think that's my case and now i have stayed in the profession for 15 years because one of the good things about finance is that you're constantly learning something so one of my old bosses at aqr used to say so i used to ask him that listen you have yachts right you have all the money in the world why are you doing this at the age of 50 and he's like you know this is the only profession in the world where you always have something new to learn every day because either you should be making money every day or you have something new to learn and nobody makes money every day so i think it's a very dynamic industry and that's what i love about it um and that's why i've stayed


love about it um and that's why i've stayed around it but i just found it because i was a kid at a manager stimulating very very stimulating um it can be as stimulating as you want it to especially in a country like india where the market is involving see you are living in a country where the prime minister is going to people and still seeing open bank accounts um and you have hyper rich people who know what to do yeah and you so you have the whole range and you have a capital market that is constantly evolving so you have lots of people where you can make a tremendous impact and it's it's the most heartening thing in the world to have someone say you know i did an sip and i'm so happy i invested in mutual funds and i was able to pay for a surgery or do something like that or my dreams were able to come through i mean ultimately we are in the business of money management and we we make people's dreams come true people invest


we we make people's dreams come true people invest and people save and they make dreams come true whether they are a vacation or a business or whatever it is so in that sense it's a very rewarding profession yeah the stimulation and the ability to help other people is the joy of yeah i mean you know you could you could make a woman independent and enable her to start her own business uh you know you could change the financial fortunes of a family so there is a deeper purpose i think it's not wolf of wall street we're not the evil industry that the media makes us out to be by the way we're also not like the hyper i mean i hate the media portrayal of us we're not like the you know high glamorous like the girls all around and there's this high rich life most financial services professionals are actually very if you talk to fund managers who manage money like fund manager someone who manages your money if you give me money they're very quiet people and they're very burdened


they're very quiet people and they're very burdened by the responsibility of managing someone else's money it's actually very easy for me to manage my own money but when you give me money to manage i feel stressed here there is a responsibility that there are thousands and lacks of people who we are responsible for so i think that's also another so we are there's a word in our industry called fiduciary but fiduciary means you're responsible for someone else and i think we live with that responsibility every day i sometimes think people don't understand that so that's the stimulation part of it but uh it was it's stimulating enough for you to say okay i want to start a business in this business can be a very brutal game so business teaches you some things so i was an investment professional right but as you said there are lots of other things that happen in running a company that you have no idea about when you have a corporate career and i think there's so many things that you learn


and i think there's so many things that you learn once you run a business for instance if you run our money management business someone also has to run the office and do administration someone also has to do accounting someone also has to hire people someone also has to do marketing and we are a regulated business so someone also has to do legal and tax now in the u.s someone else is doing it for us when we started there were three of us partners and so it was you your husband me my husband and a third partner who was a colleague of mine in the u.s all three of us had only investment backgrounds now somehow i became the person who decided to leave investments and do everything else so i remember setting up our company with registrar of companies and going to the roc website and filling the name and i remember applying for the pen card and fighting with the id guys as to why our pan card has not come and opening our first bank account with state bank of india so it really


bank account with state bank of india so it really teaches you that listen you know in corporate india ownership can be like oh it's his department i mean it's almost like when you call someone at a call center he's like ma'am this is not my problem when you run a business everything is your problem right and i was the one in fact uh get into trouble for saying this uh we had come from the u.s so we didn't realize you have to have a sign in hindi and marathi on the door outside of the company and we didn't do that so i actually got a shop in establishment tax notice in my name and i realized this is also the stuff that you have to manage and i'm so grateful i did it because today in a ceo stint you don't only look at money management you also manage marketing you also manage an office you also manage hr in fact you spend more time managing hr i learned all of this in my forefront capitals 10 so i was very


in my forefront capitals 10 so i was very well prepared but your basic product was that you'll take someone's money and help them take care of it yeah so our first product was a portfolio management service which is basically that you'll take someone's money rich people's money and help them manage it our second product was something called an alternative investment fund which is like uh it's like a mutual fund for the rich so it is more sophisticated in terms of what it can do than a mutual fund and probably you need more money to invest in this than you would one crore minimum versus 1000 rupee minimum which i managed today so those were our first set of uh products how do you convince rich people to part of the money and give it to you it's hilarious so the minimum that sebi lets you take from a client in a portfolio management service is 25 lakhs so that's what we started with and we would go to friends and family and say please give us money and you know you have


say please give us money and you know you have this belief that when you are a what and return graduate people are like waiting to give you money you know you said ivy league return nobody cares but does every wharton graduate or every ivy league graduate have that capability of actually multiplying those 25 lakhs oh forget multiplying it do can you even convince someone that you can multiply it but say you have good sales skills do you think they have the like they are good enough and strong enough to so i think money management is is a very basic profession i think uh you know it's a profession that involves understanding what is a good business and what is not a good business um and whether you're a what in graduate or not what in graduate i think if you're a strong thinker if you are disciplined about your approach and if you know what is a good business you will be able to do it so i don't think it's that difficult in industry um it's a difficult industry in terms of


industry um it's a difficult industry in terms of temperament so one of the things my husband says because he's also a money manager is that this is a career where every week it's like a report card comes out on you it's almost like the film industry because you do badly for a month or two months and people start you know questioning the last 10 years of what you've done so in that sense temperamentally it's a very difficult business and markets move up and down and you know we live in like a social media and noise-induced world so there's so much noise so just to maintain a calm disciplined temperament and have conviction that okay i like this company it's going to do well i don't care about what other people say i think the temperamentality of money management is pretty underrated so most portfolio management services in india like because i know a lot of our listeners actually think of their life with that target of at some point i will definitely invest with a pms okay that's


i will definitely invest with a pms okay that's just how young people think thanks to influencers like myself but uh basically a pms firm in india what do they do with those 25 lakhs or 30 lux once they have it in the end is it all stock market is a mixture of fd stock market sure so i mean look there are multiple ways to get your money managed in india um mutual fund is one pms the other and there is a third called aif pms and aif are meant for so pms requires a minimum ticket size of now or just like 50 lakhs is the minimum you have to put in aif requires one crore all of them invest basis certain rules so all of them have an objective right so you could have uh a mutual fund or pms that is focused on the stock markets you could have one that is partly stock markets and partly debt markets you could have one that is just doing safe instruments so it's very important to understand what the objective


so it's very important to understand what the objective of what you're getting into is like you could have a health podcast or you could have uh you know food podcast or you could have a music podcast and i just want to add one nugget of listeners like people often who are not from the financial world get intimidated by these words like uh you know pms mutual fund like they get very that's the big hurdle i think for your industry to tell people listen all this is very basic and simple yeah uh but uh all these things are very whatever ma'am saying if you're not understanding it pause this podcast or pause this youtube video go google it and come back yeah and this you know there's a ton of financial education out there so uh i always tell young people just learn and i mean you know guys like you have made expertise out of it but the big challenge for my industry is to try and just simplify communication uh you know we've interested we started our podcast where we're trying


we've interested we started our podcast where we're trying to explain people the basic principles of investing through ramayana which is a very homegrown kind of thing um or we're releasing a tv ad next week but we're trying to use kabaddi as a medium uh to explain one of our financial products so we're also trying to simplify it because i agree we have too much jargon yeah i mean and that's the that's the big hurdle honestly i remember being a 23 24 year old getting concerned about managing my money yeah and the big intimidation factor was this that i didn't understand what uh my wealth managers were talking like and then i had to stop them i had to actually take out my phone google or call up a friend who's in fine and say bro can you please explain this in like simple words and there is always a simple way to explain it absolutely but uh it's it's the challenge that your industry faces as a whole it's not well one thing i would tell young