a short position against gamestop and they all lost money gamestop's rise was predominantly driven by retail investors okay the combination of retail investors having money uh having the tools like robin hood in the u.s zero da in india to make relief transactions available at a cheap cost and finally the power of social media to connect all these retail investors to behave almost like one right where someone can say on twitter or on on reddit i'm doing this and suddenly it gets caught up and people start tweeting that information power is coming together along with money and technology to make the retail investor a very powerful force right so to me these are three things that have changed pre and post pandemic i mean there are lots of others but three things that have really changed in how investments are happening you know young dudes in a particular industry know [ __ ] that probably old dudes in the industry don't do the old dudes in finance understand all this i would say that that's um i would


all this i would say that that's um i would say yes okay um i think um old dudes in finance are are fairly i think finance is a fairly uh you know it's an industry where information flows fairly quickly right and i think people have perspective when i speak to uh guys or to you know senior bankers or when i speak to senior private equity officials i think i get the same answer and i they see it they they may have their hands tied in terms of how they can act on it because uh from in from the institution or from their you know the way they're set up they may have not have they be flexibility or nimble to be able to react to this but i do think that there's an awareness that this is happening um and to the best possible you know they're able to they're able to make moves obviously a new age companies new edge fintechs are taking the world by storm right and are really uh making a huge change in the way


are really uh making a huge change in the way people interact with their finances um you know because retail investors are also the primary listeners of this podcast what should young people keep in mind who have that little extra money and they're figuring their personal finance game but they're also parallely trying to get as deep into financial knowledge as is possible yeah so what should the young 20 to 25 29 year old know right now according to you well um i would say the first thing is that there are certain fundamentals which are always true right we live in a constantly changing world and hence you may not know what is the right thing to do in finance in the next two or three years but there are some things that you know will always be true in investing the first one uh which you know was one of the premise behind starting starting our current company grip was diversification okay it is always going to be true to diversify your assets right do not go and put money in a single asset class whatever


go and put money in a single asset class whatever it may be your choice but do not go and put money all behind one asset class make sure you look at two or three asset classes which have a fundamentally different nature if you're doing stocks make sure you do something fixed income non-related stock market if you're doing gold do something which is going to appreciate in a certain way right uh i think that's the number one thing that people should be thinking about second is invest what you can invest okay a lot of people end up putting out more than they can do um and especially in very volatile investments you know we've seen a crypto craze in cryptos while you can probably see a very high returns you can also see very high losses and hence it's important for you to put out money in certain asset classes which you're ready to lose okay or ready to give away there are definitely other investment classes like a bond or real estate right which are tend to be more stable in nature and there


are tend to be more stable in nature and there you can be you know you can take the right levels of exposure on that asset uh third i i would say that there is a huge there is a new age of um investment platforms and avenues for investment that are coming up they should definitely go out there and explore and understand and then choose the right partner for themselves they no longer need to be caught up by saying fd may pass it online bank me i have to go and buy blue chip stocks i think there is a whole other world which was never accessible today that is now coming into their domain at you know completely digital low transaction sizes um smart smartly executed a lot of diversity and they should explore those like what well well um i i'm a little biased uh but i i i would definitely say you're the money man go for it um i think i would definitely say that we're doing something interesting at grip i think that's one definitely a platform um i think


think that's one definitely a platform um i think there are other platforms which are doing us for example us listed stocks and they should explore it but if there is an interest to put money into fixed income instruments i think there's something interesting we're doing at grip we started that business you know two years back uh we've enabled um close to 210 crores of of investments from exactly these from exactly such investors giving them i think more than you know what we have built i think we have given the power of information and decision making and diversity to a large group of people okay you can start your investment journey at as low as 10 000 right you love a brand like blue tokai for your coffee you can invest in a in an option along with bluetooth guy you take uber for rides you can invest in an option which is associated with upper right uh you love a brand like fab valley because lots of women in our country love wearing fair valley products you can purchase you can get associated


fair valley products you can purchase you can get associated with that brand so i think we're giving a different kind of investing power to users uh and that's definitely something that you know uh people should should try no i dated a girl in finance once dude and that was my big financial education in life well at least you got something out of that relationship i hope that's not the only thing i got a lot of relationship man that's a good thing uh no that was a good relationship i dated a girl in finance and honestly that's what taught me just generally a lot about money and that's why i really started trusting people from the world of finance like my my mom always told me when i was a kid that always have sindhi friends around you they'll teach you how to manage your money well and my sindhi friends always told me that dude the first lesson we are taught when it comes to personal finances always have physical assets yeah and that's a cultural thing because if you actually


and that's a cultural thing because if you actually go into the history of sindhis they had to migrate from pakistan so everything that they had um in the 1930s and 40s and they were a business community even then so they were loaded even then but they couldn't take all the assets to india so it kind of became a cultural thing where um they started focusing on i mean i don't want to use over hoarding but investing in gold yeah investing in real estate so when i with my sindhi friends that's what they'll always nudge me towards that have physical assets and i kind of feel that what you're creating is a modern day version of that in some ways yeah um i think that's the intent right i think um you know the reason we chose the name grip it was you holding on to something right and this is what exactly what you're mentioning uh comes from the from sindhi community right to say that are you sindhi i am not sindhi but i can tell


i am not sindhi but i can tell you every landlord i've had a sindhi like every landlord and i have a lot of sindhi friends but i think that comes with it also i started my career in the financial crisis right in 2008 financial crisis so at the beginning of my career i saw what it meant to you know possibly lose financial wealth right what it meant how difficult it was to get a job because did you lose money well i was a very young 22 year old in um in 2008 but i had started investing in stocks and i lost a lot of money in my in my stocks but i also remember how difficult it was to get a job out of out of campus because companies are not doing it right but you grew up in an you very early you saw an environment where you could lose everything and literally overnight right and that's what happened in 2008. some of the people in in in group that we work with who are now 25 26 actually


that we work with who are now 25 26 actually don't remember back to 2008 right they don't remember what it meant to do that um our parents generation do right they have they have seen crashes they've seen the 1990 crash and stuff but i think in some ways it was a great learning experience to see that this could happen to your career so the obvious question to you is dude what's happening right now because of the whole russia ukraine thing and people do have this conjecture that yo maybe china is going to kind of do a similar thing in taiwan which will just change [ __ ] up for the indian ocean to change it up for india are you into geopolitics um i would like to be more i think it's very fascinating i'm a big world war two buff but yeah i think it's i think it's very interesting to as a subject of study yeah dude you know like we've had lots of army folks on the show that's their subject right geopolitics


on the show that's their subject right geopolitics and actual military stuff yeah and uh a lot of them had said in the past that you know i we think the world has moved away from hot war and that's until the point where putin invades ukraine and does all this [ __ ] to ukrainian cities when there's a war going on in the world our generation is too young to remember 2008 honestly and secondly we're really really young to even think of how the world war impacted the world so what is the impact of wars and [ __ ] on financial markets let's speak specifically about this scenario you know if i could say it in one word it's uncertainty right okay no one can predict how a war will play out right there are like you can build a decision tree and say this may happen and then this may happen but honestly it's all probabilities right and no one knows the outcome we don't know whether um the us will take a retaliatory position against russia we


us will take a retaliatory position against russia we don't know if ukraine is going to sign a peace deal with with russia we don't know right and everyday [ __ ] changes every day changes and when that happens people were in the financial world trying to make projections about one thing having an impact on the other and we live in an incredibly connected world right everyone is dependent on someone else in that situation you just don't know and when uncertainty happens you know assets can get completely mispriced okay so what we're living what we know for sure is that we're living in very uncertain times okay and hence it's better to take from your financial investments a safer position with respect to how you're deploying capital as in go for more low risk low return investments absolutely and idly go for something which is not necessarily linked to the stock markets because the stock markets in such times can be very very volatile um there's there's you know historically a preference for going for fixed income


know historically a preference for going for fixed income instruments which say okay you will get x amount of return in a month irrespective of the how the stock market performs right so that is typically what science would suggest or you know which traditionally silver gold what else um those are great because they tend they tend to be safer instruments right so say gold silver even buying us us treasuries is is typically this thing but even if you go for a triple a graded corporate bond okay like for example um hdfc's bank corporate bond right the fixed income instruments however the stock market perform there's very little correlation to these stocks or these assets and that's another opportunity for people to consider hmm cool let's go let's go back into your story sure man let's get away from like world wars and 2022. yeah you were an investment banker and back in college when i didn't know what i wanted to do with my career someone asked me what i wanted to i says i used to say that


i wanted to i says i used to say that yo i want to become an investment banker without really understanding what it was and then i had an internship at ey in my final year of college where i was working in m a and that's what i kind of understood what investment bankers did but not exactly because i also figured that investment bankers in different firms do different jobs so explain that like when someone says i'm an investment banker i part of my wishes that was true but i can before i answer your question i think if you ask a graduate today what they want to do i think the answer is they want to be a youtube influencer yeah that's that's honestly true that i think that is actually that is now that's not what's happening you know why though it's it's like a platform to get into another career yeah you get into acting shakting yeah you get into like business and i think audiences are smart enough to know that by this point that's anyway yeah um


know that by this point that's anyway yeah um so um an investment banker very simply is a if i was to uh well i'll answer the question on the life i think that's more interesting uh but very simply an investment banker helps companies raise money or advises them on on m a transactions right and it's um what what does mna just explain that mna is a merchant acquisition uh maybe i put in a different way right um there for any story to be told there needs to be a storyteller okay you're a great storyteller but there is a story that needs to be unfolded that unfolds on on this set here an investment banker unfolds the story for companies who are looking to raise money right there's a way of telling that story that makes that story more attractive all brings out the right aspects of it is it like doing sales for that company in boardrooms it it is and then after you sell the com after you communicate the story there's also a certain execution


you communicate the story there's also a certain execution process that needs to happen to bring the story to an end right to make two people meet and that's what an investment banker's job is uh you know if i was to explain it very simply i unfortunately joined banking it was very boring i started my career in 2010 in banking and um uh worked for an absolutely fantastic firm right um as as blue chip as it gets um i think i just i cannot replace that experience with anything else um at morgan stanley and um morgan sally is probably the dream job for a lot of mba grads in this country right i would definitely i definitely think so and um i can tell you that it's also the right culture right it's the the place where the i mean the professional the team is there really will nurture you to be a better to be a better professional uh so i couldn't have started my career at a better place than morgan stanley what's the rush of that career the rush


stanley what's the rush of that career the rush of that career maybe i can just give some examples from uh from my what gave me a real kick right i think i was about two years into my role and i was sitting in a room with uh sachin bunsal bini bhansal and uh and listening to them explain us how they're building building flipkart right uh and getting to hear like as a 24 year old old getting to hear from the guys who are creating india internet right india e-commerce on what their journey has been i i cannot be a bigger rush for a fresh mba to have that kind of opportunity right or um to be in a room with uh deep calra who's the make my trip founder just off you know coming out of a u.s ipo um and telling about his journey at building make my trip i would think genuinely that the most people who stick around in banking stick around for the learning okay intellectual stimulus for the intellectual stimulation because you see


stimulus for the intellectual stimulation because you see money at some point of time um serves its purpose right i think money is really important okay but at some point of time money serves this purpose it's not and you will never i think very few people can be slaves of money all right money can't keep you in office for 120 hours a week this is coming from a finance guy yeah this is uh coming from a finance guy who's who's gone through all sides of it right and i've also seen the other side of it as being an entrepreneur uh and having you know zero salary right so i can tell you that in both situations i was working 120 hours a week all right and it was not never the money right the money could have been a like the hook you know you saw a girl and she was really good looking and that's how you began the relationship but that's not why you stayed in the relationship right that's not why you are happy uh you were happy because of something else


are happy uh you were happy because of something else um and um i think that's the same same story for for banking so so here's what i want to know um we just did a podcast with someone called pratham mithal of masters union and the thumbnail of the podcast said why mba is dead and that was my version of hook to bring people into the podcast obviously the podcast was about many other topics future of education bringing neuralink into education things like that now people took that as a dis on mbs i'm not dissing mbs i'm actually here to learn from you uh you did an mba in finance and jitna i've understood about indian mbas the top one is mba in finance obviously i'm assuming because the pay packages are the highest i i think it's i think it's a fair assumption but i think things are really changed as i can understand them um a lot of people are now choosing not to do mps okay especially if you're an engineer you're earning you know you


if you're an engineer you're earning you know you have an opportunity to make far better money if you just talk about pure money far better money uh as a pure engineer getting into a development or a product management role but yes outside of that as an mba mba finance definitely is a great pay package um i would say don't do an mba for the technical skills all right i think the mba is a normal ground to learn how to be a better professional it teaches you a tremendous amount of soft skills it's like preparing you for dealing in a professional environment and for succeeding in a professional environment right how do you interact with people how can you be better at communication how can you be better prioritization planning right all of these things which i believe are far more critical for a role than any technical knowledge that you can get so who should do an mba right now in the modern day scenario um actually i think everyone should do an mba okay because all of us have to be


an mba okay because all of us have to be in a professional world right if you and you know you're in a professional setting as well you have to you're running a um a outfit a media outfit you're interacting with people and even for you i believe in mba will help you enhance what you're doing okay so mba is irrespective of what skill sets you want to do i genuinely believe that an mba program is a great program for for anyone in the professional world okay it doesn't have to be focused on finance it doesn't have to be focused on marketing i think a general mba is a great professional tool we were talking about uh your relationship outside and i found it really fascinating can i can i stalk her please okay so uh basically you married someone who you once dated in college you lost touch you had your own trajectories and then you met again in life and got married yeah and uh when you were talking about your startup you had a smile on your face but


your startup you had a smile on your face but when i spoke to you about your wife then your eyes lit up i hope she's listening to this um you know and and that that's what's in your heart yeah you know whatever man like even though you're a finance guy i just want to say the money yeah you know what's what's money worth if you know there's not a source of happiness like that in your life it's also coming from a place of being single my man well i hope that changes soon enough yeah hopefully my point is that you spoke about um your current relationship and you've had your own like ups and downs as a man purely as a man you've had can i talk about it yeah okay so you've been divorced as well yeah uh i know that when you said heartbreak right now there was a part of you that went back to that timeline let's talk about this men on the internet don't speak about like vulnerable [ __ ] dudes yeah or even in bro


[ __ ] dudes yeah or even in bro groups you know we're always around it's always like good things right we always talk about good things and good times or strategy and how to make money yeah yeah or strategy how to make money or uh you know do the next big thing yeah that's why guys love sports that that is true in fact um you'll you know if i don't know how frequently you you use linkedin but linkedin is my predominant social uh and if you call it a messaging platform there is almost never negative news on linkedin right it's always i'm excited to be i'm honored to be i am like uh you know i'm celebrating this but that cannot be the case right life always has both sides to it um yesterday after a very long time i saw a post from a founder who said i'm starting on my company right and he wrote about that experience and i really appreciate that he did that um but uh we actually see all around us only as if the world


actually see all around us only as if the world is a is a great place right um and um i i think that's a little must be very uncomfortable for a lot of people uh like it almost feels like if things are not going right in your life you're the only person dealing with [ __ ] yeah yeah that's that's the big curse of the social media generation that you're only exposed to the positives of people so you think that if there's a small negative in your life that only your life is but that's not true dude that's not true everyone's having to deal with their own [ __ ] but man-to-man honestly uh maybe maybe this is like a younger brother in me asking you this but uh dude like what what does something like divorce feel like in the trajectory as a man because here you're flying in your own career best finance job you're enjoying what you do and often in college we think that that's the real goal of life you know let me fly in


real goal of life you know let me fly in my career let me be like the sachin tendulkar of this [ __ ] and sometimes you do become the sachin tendulkar of that [ __ ] but on the side things are like breaking down yeah so like what was that whole experience like dude um very difficult obviously i mean that's a maybe a understatement uh to say because it's not just the event right it's actually what leads up to the event um which keeps going on um and if it's someone that you know you've obviously loved and you've you know had a great great relationship with and then things are not great anymore i think it can be incredibly hard um and at the same time when you are balancing other things in your life there will always be pressure on both sides right and you know uh most people go through this hopefully only once in the life at max um we're never prepared for the situation right then mba doesn't teach you this if you could


then mba doesn't teach you this if you could gauge back to the younger version of yourself like the late 20s guy or you know his mindset what would you have changed to just have things pan out differently you know from for example for me uh when i look back at failed relationships earlier i should just blame the girl that you're you know it's her fault this that eventually as i grew up i realized no that's not true obviously it's not true it takes two hands to clap etc etc when you go a little bit deeper into that obviously it's not to what's your end of the bargain because you always think you're the good boyfriend many indian guys are like that where they're taught to be loyal we've also grown up in shahrukh khan movies dude we visualize ourselves by shahrukh khan when girls visualize that they want to come that's right so we have good intent but somewhere indian guys we don't have a good eq that's


guys we don't have a good eq that's what i feel like i completely agree like a lot of indian girls especially this is just my experience and i might be wrong and correct me if you ever had a different experience many indian girls um um sometimes you have to guess what they want from you in relationships and that's why indian guys yeah am i right like 100 absolutely that's my experience as well yeah and i've had breakups because of that dude like a girl just goes away and i'm like what happened and she's like no you didn't pick up the queues i'm like i didn't know no and then if you pick up the queues if you they tell you then but i told you to do this so it no longer counts yes right yes and then you get and then you're double screwed um so yeah i i think that that's the story through i have become a master at like reading goals like like in terms of who i'm dating maybe that's the next uh that's


who i'm dating maybe that's the next uh that's the next episode where you interview yourself and talk about the how to date girls that's all the past episodes i've gone through whole content tangent there out of all the mistakes i made in my own relationships no but uh uh for real like uh what what was your gauge of what you could have done differently man i'm also asking the finance professional in you because there's a movie called american sniper i saw it's got uh bradley cooper that's right and uh the movie is about war and this top quality sniper rifle uh soldier like a guy who handles a sniper rifle sniper yeah but uh the actual messaging of the movie is that every man because we don't know how to deal with our own emotions we look at our professional life and our personal life in two very different lights even tamasha talks about this in some ways guys creatures in their own way dude i'm sure we have it easier than women in many ways


sure we have it easier than women in many ways but there are some things very [ __ ] up about being a guy which we don't speak about and that's why you see that they say that three-fourth of all suicides are committed by men there must be some reason for that dude yeah we don't understand our own minds yeah so what was that for you like when you gauge back uh lots of things uh for sure i'm just trying to um maybe pick the pick a couple of ones that i think one is um the first one that comes to mind actually is that in that situation i think i spent i went deeper into work okay and i started investing more time actually working which was exactly the opposite of what is healthy like that was your response to that was my response to that that that situation right to say okay i'm just going to because i don't know how to deal with this i know how to do my work okay so let me just do more work okay because it


so let me just do more work okay because it said it felt easier it felt familiar to handle with and hence that's what um that's what one of the things that i think did i did and definitely a mistake right i think what you need to actually do is to take the personal life that's not going well heads on and you need to solve for it uh and i think that's been one of my biggest learnings in the relationship now to say you can't ignore what's happening in your personal life and just go into comfort zone right whether it is you know you'll disappear to have a drink with your friends or you'll just go and watch a movie you can't wish it away right it keeps building up and you need to solve for it i think so that to me was my i wish i could go back and and do that the outcome may still have been the same right but at least um i would have dealt with it the right way um this is useful [ __ ] advice


way um this is useful [ __ ] advice man like this is honestly when we speak about life mbas yeah young people need to know this [ __ ] yeah otherwise go through it yourself and then like you know whatever don't learn from the funny thing is that and and you'll see many entrepreneurs also do the same mistake i think sometimes you just need to go through it yourself right i hope no one does but i think some life lessons can not be taught what's the good that your divorce did for you um i think it helped me discover a little bit more about myself emotionally emotionally for sure um but also just be able to you know i got i got married uh when i was fairly young and um you don't you you don't know but you don't you don't realize it but you don't know much about yourself right you know about men having low eq it's because we predominantly spend time with our parents and then we a lot of us don't necessarily go


then we a lot of us don't necessarily go to hostel right it's it's rare um and then we get married okay so the ability to spend time alone and really discover yourself in a situation which you are uncomfortable with is where true discovery happens okay so for me i was for the first time really outside my comfort zone okay uh in a in a place where not everyone could relate to how do you actually pull yourself out of that dude and then we'll be you know what i honestly feel is when you're in your mid-20s or late 20s you have a certain amount of fire that can help you kind of launch out of any situation but i'm curious about the 30s because i've also i'm going to turn 29 this year dude and i've seen that gradual drop in energy from 22 to 29 it's very gradual it's almost not noticeable but it's there it is it is totally there so yeah like uh i i know you work out and you know in


i i know you work out and you know in when i was 20 i used to you know you don't sleep for a few days it's okay you've had a little bit too much to drink it's okay you go to the gym for two days and you're sorted right it no longer happens in 30 is right i'm like oh [ __ ] it's i need to put in much more work i need to be much more conscious so it it definitely happens um i was listening to your um this video done before you met arnold schwarzenegger and i i know i i heard about how you came out of out of that out of that phase of your life um i think for me it was about uh discovering certain people around me right who really helped me get through it um one of them obviously was uh was my my my is my wife and i think that that really helped me um i was obviously also going through a journey professionally with building a company and having that as a


professionally with building a company and having that as a area where i could spend more energy um you know very productively into building something was another huge enabler you channelized all all of it all the emotion into like the business that's right channelize a lot of that energy into that business um a business is like a it's like a child right it requires so much nurturing um and if you can give it you know it can take a lot it can absorb a lot of your time and energy but it can also give back a lot of very important life lessons and um i was at very early stages of building that business and i think that that served a huge purpose in my personal life i have respect for you bro honestly like uh you know to bounce back from something like this i you hear a lot of people kind of playing victim and just staying where they are sure uh fact that you built out multiple companies after that it's it's honestly inspirational man and we're like in a generation where a


man and we're like in a generation where a lot of people think that 29 is too late to do [ __ ] you know like it's such a wrong narrative it's totally wrong um you know it's another rude question for you but i'm just trying to dive a little deeper because there are life lessons here man um you feel you're healed completely now because i'm sure you're over the breakup etc etc but sometimes trauma is one of those things that just stays in men's heads yeah so while you've seen professional success do you think you're completely healed i would say so actually and maybe you know to your previous question the last thing to add is i actually did a lot of therapy a lot of professional therapy uh to deal with that uh that phase of my life uh because again once again it's not a simple event right there are so many complications and linkages family linkages and and how you react to it and how the other person reacts to it and those need professional guidance uh


reacts to it and those need professional guidance uh to go through uh i i took uh you know counseling for many years uh to help me deal with that phase of my life and that really made things and i feel i've healed right once again this is one thing that people don't talk about right we where do we where we talk about the about having to go to a counsellor but i strongly recommend it to a lot of my colleagues uh we have a um we have a coach in the company that helps us deal with certain situations because we're constantly you know we're dealing in a with a high stress environment and i think that's really important uh for people who go through it otherwise we live with that burden what's therapy like dude like i mean i have gone through it yes what was your experience so i exp i'd actually try different types of therapies um maybe not to go into the form of therapy but i think that the therapy is if i were to simplify it


that the therapy is if i were to simplify it um it's a way of um are asking and answering certain questions for yourself no one can answer them for you right but it's a way of whatever the technique is it's a way of sort of getting those question answers and achieving a level of clarity which you can't unless you're in that environment let's call a spader speed you're a rich man now i want to ask you how you build the riches sure well rich is a relative term um i would like i would i would like to say i'm an ambitious man okay and um definitely would like to if if we're in the top point one percent of india i think we're very rich in this country we're very fortunate we're we are more fortunate than we can expect to be the questions from the perspective of a truly middle class or lower middle class kid yeah who's not comfortable with the phone he's holding or she's holding in his or her hand yeah um how do you


in his or her hand yeah um how do you become rich in this country yeah well the good news is that it is possible okay and it is more possible today than it was ever before okay today you can build a career and make money in in ways that make you happy okay in our parents generation there were probably only two two options you could either be a doctor or could be an engineer and there was no other way to make a career right or be make rich in my generation and i consider you as another generation all together but in my generation that options expanded and in today's generation that options have really expanded um i again go back to certain basics which are probably in my view true for everyone right put in the hard work okay at some point of time in your life whether it's college whether it's school whether it's post college at some point of time put in the hard work right you don't have to put in the hard work throughout if you do great no problem but put in the hard work


do great no problem but put in the hard work number two is get you know be true to yourself okay be honest with the kind of work you're doing with what you want to do with your strengths and your weaknesses because if you're not you're going to go down the path that's not going to work out and i think third is to have a very high level of integrity towards the work you're doing because if you have that you'll always stay on the right path it may not go as fast as you want but it will get you there ultimately these are three true principles for everyone you don't have to necessarily do an mp you don't necessarily have to become a doctor i think there are enough ways to get rich today and be successful and yet be happy for it in the world yeah i think again you're part of the startup ecosystem now i know enough entrepreneurs in this country now to know the fact that there are incredibly rewarding and incredibly fun jobs out there


incredibly rewarding and incredibly fun jobs out there for indian youth there's a lot of indian youth that cries about their jobs that i hate my job i'm not earning where i'm not enjoying what i'm doing well look at the startup ecosystem we are constantly looking out for talent um you know figure out how to get yourself hired man yeah that's the big uh messaging but specifically again from a finance perspective one more rude question to you mr agarwal but where's your money like how have you what's your personal finance game okay um so like i said the first thing you have to diversify right so um i have you know followed that principle and and diversified quite a bit and between my wife and i we've diversified up quite a bit of our portfolio my wife also works in uh my wife also in venture capital so her fortunes are also linked to the startup universe um a lot of our money is in fixed deposits okay uh or in fixed income the


fixed deposits okay uh or in fixed income the reason for that is that our careers are very high risk all right and our incomes can fluctuate but and hence our money needs to be in this so one of the principles of diversification is to balance things out right so a large part of our portfolio is in debt mutual funds or in bonds which are very fixed have a high security cover and others part of our portfolio is in stock markets increasingly so given that the stock markets are are reducing in price part of our portfolio is in investing in other startups um we have the op we have the fortune to be able to access that and and invest in them and then a large part of my portfolio is also on investments in grip right um as a rule in fact in the company we invest in every single transaction that we list on grip right and i personally invest in every single transaction that we put in the portfolio because our rule of thumb is that if we are not going


rule of thumb is that if we are not going to put our money in it i can't see anyone else putting the money in it right so we have a sizable chunk of our investments also on uh invest in grip um just generally learnt a lot from you on this episode dude i uh i'm very excited about everything you guys are doing at grip i think that what you said about retail investors being at that right point in time uh i think that's key because um again man even like five six years ago when i was 22 people my age didn't know anything about personal finance there wasn't that much content available for indian students indian professionals we're living in a different world covered you know the anchor varicose of the world the rajya manis of the world the abasif's of the world have done a lot to like just tell the country that listen you need to take better care of your money as you said a lot is happening um i'm not talking just about crypto


happening um i'm not talking just about crypto i think often people uh at least my age uh a lot of people associate fintech with the zero question for you sure what's what's so exciting about crypto um to you as a person to me on the generator are you excited about crypto as an investment because i've done my engineering i'm excited about ethereum but you excited about the technology yes forget the technology and i'm talking about the excitement about crypto as an asset class to buy and to trade what's so exciting um it begins with my idols talking about it in terms of gary vaynerchuk who i trust blindly who i see that he's got he's validated his own career by creating material success for himself it begins with that the engineering mind then dives deep into why is ethereum even a thing uh apparently it makes me think of why is bitcoin i think ethereum actually has some value that's true you're familiar with the whole uh but it made me question that why does bitcoin have


but it made me question that why does bitcoin have value and what i realize is it's got enough people who point at bitcoin and say that okay this is valuable and when you actually study the nature of money or gold or diamonds or platinum it's basically the same concept that people saw this yellow shiny metal and said this is going to be worth something so that's what's happened with bitcoin with ethereum there is uh engineering use cases i agree with that um therefore it's exciting same with polygon uh sandeep nalwal these guys uh and i feel that generally because of what's happening in the web 3 ecosystem we are going towards metaphors i feel there is a lot of hype for sure there's a lot of hype but i've constantly tried viewing it as a neutral uh and i feel that neutrally speaking it is a positive kind of swing in saying that if you're purely talking about making money there's already some tried and tested fantastic methods in the world of


tried and tested fantastic methods in the world of finance that aren't being spoken about enough and therefore i notice a lot of finance professionals being pissed off about the hype around crypto because they see numbers and they see money making techniques and they say that listen you can make much more money in a private equity you can make much money into the stock market why are you looking at that yeah uh i just feel it's a cultural thing man this generation is hyped about that because of the gary v's of the world and the thunder of the world etc but people are learning about the tried and tested methods also it's that whole angle about how once t20 is given every other test cricket will die but test cricket is still there and it's still popular that's an interesting comparison well i'm i i think the the technology behind it is phenomenal in fact we are exploring how we can use blockchain as a way of uh executing contracts on grip right um and making it smarter making it


grip right um and making it smarter making it easier for people um at the same time we're trying to see if there is if the rbi brings in the digital rupee is that a great way for people to make investments so i think we're i think the technology is phenomenal um i think there is there is more to be discovered about some of the coins that are there uh and i i wish people would apply a little bit more filter yeah into into making some of those bets just for their own sake do you own any crypto i don't uh i don't own any crypto um uh but i understand the use cases for things like ethereum uh but i don't own any crypto because trading in crypto is not something that i have bought into it sure no you're fine but okay let's speak about your finance experience and why that has led you to not believing in crypto sure curiosity yeah um i think more not just my finance experience but just overall experience right like you said that so what


just overall experience right like you said that so what uh what is the science behind what is the notify the science of the engineering behind it what is the value being coming out of right people said that crypto is going to be a hedge to the volatility okay it's going to be hedged to the uh two events like the war it's going to be stable it can be a currency okay um that's in theory you're saying that's the hype hypothesis hypothesis of crypto okay this is why crypto was started sure what we have seen now is that crypto uh or coins are not um stable pricing right we have seen that they actually have com great correlation to the stock market they're not uncrowded to the stock market and if it is truly a currency it cannot move that way it cannot have that kind of variation right so what you're then trying to see and also supposed to be incredibly decentralized when in reality the holding of most crypto is incredibly concentrated in the hands of few in


incredibly concentrated in the hands of few in silicon valley how in silicon valley for sure but also among other pockets of really um you know miners or people who have incredible amount of money or have and are really invested in when invested in this asset class which means that for a lot of purposes you are not achieving the true tenants behind which crypto was thought to be an answer if that is not the case then it is simply what a group of people believe is the value of this asset class diamonds still have a real body utility gold still has a real utility bitcoins and other coins or most of the coins don't have a real-world utility okay there are certain use cases and certain types of coins which do and i think those are great right i've heard some absolutely fantastic applications of what uh crypto and blockchain can do and it's mind-boggling right for a country like india what what can what can be enabled like for example um the most recent one i heard was


for example um the most recent one i heard was that farmers used to go to mundi's right and they used to give their produce now they used to get a contract to say you've given your produce paper contract but they needed money so they used to go to the bank and bank this contract okay that i have provided my 100 quintals of wheat to this guy the bank would say i'm not really sure is this contract real okay so now that contract can be issued on blockchain right with a unique stamp and they can go to the bank and it can be so easily verified no chances right now that is fantastic because this for a country like india is an incredible use case okay and i'm a total believer in that okay there are certain use cases which i think are not really required right money is already decentralized but uh to a very large extent you don't need to find another way to decentralize money so that is why i am unable or i'm not a big believer in in crypto


or i'm not a big believer in in crypto as an asset class blockchain yes not crypto what about ethereum i think the ethereum use case is great um but from a folding trading perspective that hasn't got at least me excited to do it we'd love to find use cases for it in our business and and i would love to see that expand uh but as an asset class to hold and to trade etc that's not particularly my risk appetite i think i think when people buy the ethereum token they are basically betting on uh the the possibilities of that ethereum network and what can be built like what blockchain technologies can be built using the ethereum protocols yeah so you're sort of betting on the sector yeah uh basically so that's that's i think the story about ethereum and then polygon is supposed to be a layer built on top of a theme it's the same logic yeah that you're betting on the possibilities there you're betting on the whole new web 3 ecosystem in saying that even i


new web 3 ecosystem in saying that even i don't i'm not i'm not that much of a web 3 expert to understand the exact future of what's happening and i turn to people like yourself because i feel that as with politics or geopolitics or news or crypto you try learning it from all sides of the spectrum i agree and and i would be very far from uh knowledgeable on the subject uh i'm i'm trying to get smarter myself on and these are some of these you know some of these concepts are out there right metaverse is really out there i don't know if you've seen ready player one um but a steven spielberg right for him to he literally imagined the metaverse uh so many years back and i think um maybe if you're going off topic but um the metaverse in my view and ready player one captures this is a reality that happens when society starts functioning in a different way right for you to spend significant amount of time away from physical conversations


spend significant amount of time away from physical conversations like this in a pure virtual environment something has got to fundamentally break in our society okay even in ready player one and sorry for anyone who's not seen it but they come back to a place where there's a healthy balance and they actually shut down uh ready player one or whatever they call the the game for periods of time so that people can enjoy physical company now is once again you know this isn't that nuanced point i was making is a virtual world is a web 3 environment great for certain use cases in certain environments for certain people 100 go for it no problem but it cannot be imagined to be something that we will spend majority of our time in the day we start doing that i think we're living in a in a society that has fundamentally broken its basic principles no no for sure coming coming and i think i think what you're also trying to say is uh that for all these crypto dreams to actually take place


that for all these crypto dreams to actually take place for bitcoin to surge even further we need to see an active metaverse like that where there will be active crypto trading i think that's what you're getting towards also uh well that's what it seems like now because where is the real world application of crypto of bitcoin right which brings me to a conversation i had with a vc who invests in blockchain she was talking about um africa she was telling me how she keeps visiting africa to invest in african startups etc neoghana nigeria that area and i asked her what's africa like so she effectively told me that it's almost entirely bought by china firstly like almost all of africa and uh china has made it mandatory to use the digital yuan which is their blockchain based currency that's right which uh some people say is supposedly going to replace the dollar as the stand like what's the world standard the gold standard what gold used to be became the dollar yeah and


gold used to be became the dollar yeah and now they say possibly there might be a fall of usa which american media will never speak about but that's what the world is witnessing and the war happening but the inflation rate the inflation rate too many things are pointing towards i won't say a complete fall of usa it's not gonna go down it's probably gonna be the second country it's not gonna be the the ultimate superpower in the world not the big daddy of the world honestly china with its economic strength is likely to become that big daddy in the world okay um and they are going forward with their own cryptocurrency called digital u1 now what i understand from it is every time you want to trade in digital you want you're supposed to give a lot of your details to even buy one digital you want i know you said one you won you are you are uh so my point is china is collecting a lot of data of anyone who's using digital you want so they


of anyone who's using digital you want so they already have data on all african business owners who they deal with plus if someone's trading with african business owners right uh and because data is the new oil which is 110 as my career keeps going forward i realize the power of data that when we talk about gulf countries which made their fortunes in the last 50 years through oil the next massive fortunes are going to be made by whoever absolutely holds data yeah as we see with the big tech giants of the world in terms of twitter facebook etc but imagine a country's government that holds all data and honestly the progress that china has seen is because they have so much data on its citizens probably i'm sure they're using that data to hold their country better now imagine that they basically kind of take over the world economically which they have done they've taken over almost all the poor countries you can think of the small poor countries they're taking over all of africa um man like talking about


over all of africa um man like talking about the next 50 years of china will be the emperor of the world yeah no i think china will have a very large presence on the world uh it's obviously to be seen whether they you know really displace um the us i i i mean i think it's uh there's never been a credible threat to us's position as it has been today i think that's for sure uh but i'm i'm with you and um once again you know blockchain will have is a very powerful technology once again blockchain was supposed to protect people's identities uh and not the other way around right but but look at but again it's the use case right of how it's being deployed uh which is exactly opposite to the point of of blockchain um but countries will use it it will get abused it will also serve great purposes and that's true for any technology other finance and fintech lessons from china um i would say that i mean i i'm looking back at what i


that i mean i i'm looking back at what i have been exposed to obviously there are many things from china that i don't have exposure to but i think that there are um [Music] there are at least a few things that i can think about one is and these are some of the in public domain you know the first thing when i visited china for the first time maybe uh four or five years back everyone was using the mobile domain right there was no question about it it was integrated into um wechat it's called vpay and it was a payment solution that everyone used people were not carrying wallets right they were just carrying mobile phones and to believe that we are going to get some get to something similar is not difficult to believe right um and hence the to me the one of the biggest opportunities that continues to exist in india is on the payment space uh upi has been obviously a great enabler of that um i can't remem you know i'm most of the times i


remem you know i'm most of the times i take out and pay by upi instead of paying my credit card even though it makes no sense right i have no reason why i should pay by upi but it's so damn convenient i will pay on upi versus credit card and i think that's something that's still going to hap explode and continue to explode in india second is what has recently happened with alipay which you know maybe people have looked at alipay ended up uh being controlled or being have being subject to a lot of sanctions from the chinese government um once again i would like people to you know that there's only some information that is available i don't know all the information but it does it did seem that some of the loans that were given were um not not as kosher or as good as they should have been um we're seeing a lot of bnpl by now pay later happen in india we're seeing a lot of lending uh applications come out in india uh and


lending uh applications come out in india uh and that's in that's an industry that has been taken by storm okay i'm not saying it's bad but i think there's a lot of amount of care that needs to be taken in how some of this lending is being done um and the examples of china where some of that has gone wrong is important for us to take as we build out fintech especially on the lending side intense wow okay that's so that's a whole other podcast conversation dude it's just at this moment in time i'm extremely fascinated by what's happening thanks to the podcast thanks to people like yourself who've been on the show we're in the middle of exciting times but incredibly i also feel that when there are exciting times there are waves of money making opportunity and uh again that brings me to everything you're doing i just wish you luck with grip invest dude i think you guys are sitting on a fantastic product and it's a matter of time before


fantastic product and it's a matter of time before like the kind of educated retail investors understand that hey there's some more ways to become richer yeah well we're trying to do our best um i think um i would say we're fortunate to be have this opportunity to build um i believe businesses are built uh predominantly on timing i think we're in an interesting environment where fixed deposit rates are really low um and investors are looking for alternatives stock markets are incredibly volatile and the indian investor has not had access to a lot of investment options right on the principles of diversification there needs to be the option created whether you invest or not is your decision right and based on your risk appetite where you are in your life how much money you want to put in what you want to invest behind but at least creating access giving people options is something that we are trying to do as a platform and then leave it to you know the decision-making capability of an individual to say okay fine this


decision-making capability of an individual to say okay fine this is something that i'd like to try i think it's important for people to be able to try to low ticket size um and start their journey somewhere and then then do what's right for them what's the lowest people can invest um currently it's about 10 000 rupees right so it's it's a place where you can start your journey by discovering something uh make sure it's right for you and if it works out right sure do more of it um allocate a certain amount of portfolio to it but start small right um but at least have the option i think that's the most important part what you what you can do with it is your choice but i think what we've restricted to is having not having the option imagine enough parent generation the only car you could buy was an ambassador in a field it doesn't mean that today you have an option you want to buy a mercedes s-class or a you know a fancy car but at least you have the


know a fancy car but at least you have the option to doing it you have the ability to strive for what is available in the market but what if the market only told you that you only have two things right i think that's what we're trying to enable you nikhil agarwal thank you brother this was insightful this was an another kind of uh kind of portion of my own higher studies in life which i gained through people like yourself no i love the chat i um you know it's um like i told you it's a friday evening um and um maybe this chat was too serious for a friday yeah in the middle i was thinking where's the ladies i'm kidding but uh no it was great chatting with you um thanks for those questions um and um i think it's an i i i can't agree with you more that we're living in an incredibly interesting time however you look at life and whatever you're doing in life um and we just i think you should be just fortunate


and we just i think you should be just fortunate and grab as many opportunities as we can um i'm trying to do the same um and i think interacting with people like you is definitely one of those experiences i would i would say the same about you my brother but uh you know as angkor varico says [ __ ] the fix deposits but also uh think about how to get rich and as he also taught me in life that try deriving your own happiness from your sense of curiosity so this podcast statement yeah yeah i mean it's great for my brand and the views and content but at its core for me on a personal level it gives me happiness man when you when you are able to channelize your intellectual uh stimulation through a medium like this it's fantastic i agree like i said it's not visible money yeah maybe that's the right way to to to sign off yeah yeah it's not the next one is about the money we do things for many other reasons most of them


we do things for many other reasons most of them for the other reasons mr agarwal thank you thank you thanks so much thank you so much hey guys so that was the episode for today currently shooting this outro out of dubai really opened up my heart in front of nikhil bhai uh met him a lot prior to recording this podcast but i wanted you guys to see his mind because he's someone who's always given me a lot of practical advice be it in money or be it in life that's what i gained more of through this conversation and i hope you gain as well remember follow us on spotify every episode's available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world from the ranvier show from beer biceps and the entire team we'll see you soon [Music] you


the first author i really became a fanboy of was this man ashwin sanghi he's been on my list of potential podcast guests for the longest time and this conversation was deep it was extremely gray you know in an era where the internet only understands black or white ashwin sanghi and randy spoke about all the grace in our world our country our sense of spirituality our sense of psychology our sense of ourselves deep fun conversation authors always give us the best podcast because in order to become a popular mainstream author you've also got to read a lot of books yourself you've got to hoard a lot of knowledge and therefore you turn into one of the best possible guests that a podcast could have remember follow trs on spotify we're a sport of exclusive now which means that every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world this is ashwin sanghi on the ranvi show [Music] to the runway show so delighted to be here ranveer uh you


show so delighted to be here ranveer uh you know i keep i keep watching your podcasts and i realize that uh even though you claim that uh you were probably one of my earliest readers it's taken you a bloody long time to call me on your show you've been you've been a dream guest for us see writers generally are dream guests because you all have the history in your own life of reading a lot i think that's what creates a good writer when you read a lot secondly the first book i ever read into in my life was chanakya's chant so like it the just i mean the way you had written it with that much pace and those many details gripped me and i was like okay this is the true joy of reading so genuinely i know it's a little unbelievable but you were very early on in my list of guests i'm delighted to be here i'm really truly touched and delighted i'm glad so uh i liked how we met in the morning


so uh i liked how we met in the morning today i'm just like sitting out in my balcony doing my pranayama and then you're just you're just like kind of engaging in fact i didn't want to disturb you because i know how important those moments when one is in pranayama or dhyan actually just stillness because it's so completely missing in our lives right so that's the reason i was standing at the edge just looking at you for a while it was a matter of chance that you opened your eyes i felt i felt some happy energy walking towards me but that's that's that's honestly what i want to say to you and that's what i was holding back until this moment now that we're recording um you seem to have one of the happiest energies i've come across on this show and generally in the recent past so does that come from the world of being a writer because i've been to dave the patnak's house i've spoken a lot to amisha party


house i've spoken a lot to amisha party so dr radha krishna is a mentor of mine and now i meet you and the common trait between all of you all is that you're extremely contented peaceful happy human beings who's still kind of living the life of a child in your heads probably because of your writing probably because of the creativity that has to be activated but even even when you speak there's a lot of happiness in your eyes and at this stage in my life happiness has become a strong goal for me so what's the secret i think for the you know as as you know uh for those who are aware of the background of ashwin sanghi i spent the better part of my childhood training to be a businessman i was born in a banyara marwadi family and as you know that in uh in the culture of a marwadi family when a child is born particularly a boy the two most important words that he must learn other than mama papa is probably debit and credit so


than mama papa is probably debit and credit so you you know i mean you grew up in an environment where those are the two most impo once you've learned that you your vocabulary is actually complete and when i was writing a novel called the vault of vishnu there was a very interesting little nugget of wisdom that i gained about the merchants of samarkand the ancient silk road and the merchants had this wonderful tradition that when a child would be born in their home they would touch a drop of honey to his tongue and a drop of glue to his palm the idea was that when the child grows up he should have a sweet tongue so that he can sell anything to anyone and he should have a sticky palm so that gold coins would stick to the palm so in that sense uh the banya or marwadi culture is not very different so that was my training that was what i was really sort of expected to to be involved in i had a couple


to to be involved in i had a couple of years ago a very interesting moment i was on a holiday and i was sitting in the garden of the hotel it was the 31st of december and i was waiting for the new year to kick in where was this this was in jaipur on the lawns of the rambak palace and i was waiting for you know thinking to myself i said okay you know ashwin you've achieved quite a lot in your life but what is it that you really want and i realized it wasn't about money it wasn't about fame it was about happiness wanting to be happy wanting to be content so i started putting down a list of points and you know i love thinking in terms of formulas so i was wondering that if happiness is the dependent variable then what is the independent variable for happiness what what is that function what is that mathematical function and you know ranveer it was very strange i could count all the independent variables on one


i could count all the independent variables on one hand number one i realized that yes money cannot make you happy but a certain level of wealth and financial security is necessary so that you can have the freedom to do what you want the second thing i realized was that you not only want yourself to be healthy but you want everyone else around you to be healthy the idea being that today if you have a really close family member who god forbid has cancer how can your happiness not be affected at that point of time the third thing i realized is that you need to have a purpose an outlet i mean for me if i get up in the morning at five o'clock i'm ready to go because i know that today i need to write chapter 36 and this is what happens in that chapter and this is how these characters uh will react in that chapter so that's very important having a purpose in your life i would say the fourth is relationships probably in terms of having loved ones whether it's your


in terms of having loved ones whether it's your parents whether it's your siblings whether it is your children your wife your spouse it could be a spiritual guru it could be your closest friends it could be your childhood friends but those relationships are what makes life worth living i mean you could be very famous but if you don't have anyone who can turn you turn around and pat you on the back and say beta i'm so proud of you then what is your life really worth and finally i would say probably it is that feeling that there is some greater power than you which is controlling your life i would say that's the fifth that you may not believe in allah you may not believe in ram christian you may not believe in brahma vishnu mahesh or lakshmi saraswati you may not believe in jesus christ as being the son of god uh you may be a physicist and you might say may say that the universe came from a event known as the big bang that


came from a event known as the big bang that happened 13 billion years ago but if you have the ability to question yourself that okay if the big bang happened then what was there before the big bang or if it came from a single point of energy then what was that single point of energy that there is some greater hand that is directing the universe and what is happening within the universe and what is giving you creativity and what is giving you creativity so i would say that probably if you can handle these five things then probably you'll be a happier person i can vouch for the fact that you at least give out a lot of happiness so i'm sure that's coming from a place of interest partly that's also because i'm happy to be here with you thank you sir but generally like you know you have a lot of joy in your eyes when you speak especially about writing and absolutely as a podcast i'm always looking for the moments where my guest has a lot


looking for the moments where my guest has a lot of joy in the eyes because that's usually the subject then that'll give me the most uh kind of meat on the podcast what i liked about something you said outside is i pitched that we should do a topic related to ancient indian culture or maybe something in hinduism and you said no no we should do something which is an overlap between ancient indian culture and the sciences quantum physics etc so i have a simple but profound question for you sure which is that big bang thing you spoke about about three or four years ago uh there was uh an event known as the penguin annual lecture and the keynote speaker for that event was dan brown and then penguin came back to me and said ashwin he will deliver a 20-minute talk and then can we have a 40-minute discussion between you and dan brown uh in terms of the stuff that interests you guys i said of course i'll be happy to so we went away to the obroy and we


to so we went away to the obroy and we sat down for dinner after a couple of drinks dan asked me he said what do you consider to be god what is your definition of god i called for a pad and pen and i wrote down on that g is equal to infinity minus k and i passed it on to him and he said now you have to explain what this means i said think of it mathematically g is what we call god what we consider divine infinity is the whole universe the brahman the word brahman comes to you from brahm creation and under the egg shaped universe so the creation of the universe so everything that has existed that exists that will exist in in every possible dimension at every point of time is the brahman and then k is the extent of human knowledge what do we know so god is everything that is there less what we know so he said but why do you say that i said think about the egyptians the egyptians they saw the


the egyptians the egyptians they saw the sun rise in the east and set in the west they didn't know what it was so they said this is ra the sun god and he gets up in the morning and he travels across the skies in his chariot and then by the evening he is tired so he goes to sleep and that's when night occurs and then later on you had uh aryabhat and copernicus and galileo coming up with their theories and telling us that hey listen you know what the sun is a giant ball of fire and the earth revolves around it and so the day and night is created as a result of that and by the spinning of the earth on its axis and suddenly poor ra lost his divinity because now we could suddenly explain it so in effect to my mind whatever we can't explain we attribute to god g is equal to infinity minus k the more we can explain the less room we leave for god yeah true knowledge is knowing that you


leave for god yeah true knowledge is knowing that you know nothing that you know nothing i want to ask the 50 something version of you that what is your 50s like what is a person's 50s like because we usually know about what 20s are like what 30s are like but i'm assuming by that by the time you're in your 50s you're also observing life around you observing the life of your friends and then where do you equate this god angle in your 50s because because i'm assuming that it becomes stronger for a lot of people like people kind of become more spiritual as the age but i want to know the breakdown of that well i would say that if you are lucky then you begin to understand what is of value to you in your life and that's subjective that's and that's subjective it can be different for different people i mean my uh my uh you know my entry into the world of writing happened as a result of my maternal grand uncle uh i mentioned to you


my maternal grand uncle uh i mentioned to you that i came from a business background and uh my maternal grand uncle lived in kanpur uh and he himself was a businessman he ran several textile mills so he was very wealthy in his own right uh but the one thing that he was also in his parallel life was a scholar a poet he was multilingual he spoke sanskrit urdu english french latin i mean he was truly in that sense a remarkable scholar and he had this wonderful library where he had some eight ten thousand books and he would very lovingly pick one book every week and send it to me you know when i go to my father's office the munimji always tells me that i should be focusing on bookkeeping rather than book reading and that the only thing worth reading is a balance sheet and he would tell me he would say beta remember one thing that you have been born in a business background family so doing puja on diwali of lakshmiji is


doing puja on diwali of lakshmiji is going to come naturally to you that's something that you are born and brought up with he said but remember one thing that the relationship between lakshmi and saraswati is very strange he said if if saraswati happens to be sitting in this room then lakshmiji comes into this room because she's curious about where saraswati is and if saraswati gets up and leaves from this room then lakshmi also gets up because she's curious where is she gone so he said even if your objective in life is to run after lakshmi he said the short short way is to go after saraswati because if saraswati is here lakshmi will also come and he said remember one thing in our mythology the only deity that can keep both these devices together is ganesh he said he can have lakshmi on one side and he can have saraswati on one side and he sits viraj man in the middle so he


he sits viraj man in the middle so he said if you want to live your life then live your life like ganesh which ranveer probably explains why ashwin sanghi looks the way he does because i have lived my life like ganesh which is what which is in other words understanding that there is always a middle ground our world unfortunately uh ranveer is one where we are very happy to compartmentalize things this guy is a writer this guy is a leftist this guy is secular this guy is communal this guy is a liptard this guy is a bhakt um uh this this person uh is uh fundamentally uh uh uh of a view where uh everything uh that is ancient indian uh should be discarded whereas this guy is a complete rationalist why do we create compartments isn't it possible to to not be in any compartment you know i'd written a very interesting book called keepers of the kal chakra and in keepers of the kaal chakra what i was talking


keepers of the kaal chakra what i was talking about was the fact that a lot of the stuff that our ancient rishis and munis were seeing was very similar to the stuff that modern quantum theorists are talking about do you think that people around you like in in their 50s like your friends who you observe who may not be at the level of happiness you're at kind of feed into this idea of compartmentalization oh absolutely because that's what our generation feels about your generation yeah but but the point is that in fact it's very easy to get caught up into that compartmentalization trap and that's what's happening to most people that at a given phase in their lives they feel that oh this is the end all and be all if you'd asked me uh when i was a student at st xavier's college uh studying economics uh my end-all and all was that i need to go for an mba to an ivy league institution and i went to yale uh and once i was at


i went to yale uh and once i was at yale then the end all and be all was that i need to be a tremendous business success so i need to make lots of money and that's what i did for the next 15 odd years uh when i decided to step out of the world of business the entire focus was that okay listen you know uh uh in the world of creativity how can i make a name for myself so even though i didn't admit it to myself but the truth was i was searching for that illusive fame it's over a period of time that you realize that you are looking for so much more you know in the world of writing i'm always called the overlap guy uh but but i realized that that was actually what i also wanted in my real life that i wanted my family life also and i wanted those little material pleasures also and i wanted a little bit of fame also and i wanted a little bit of health also and i wanted a little bit


bit of health also and i wanted a little bit of financial security also it was almost like uh gotham buddha saying that walk the middle path i think it's called this absolutely absolutely or or the so-called noble eightfold path that that he listened you know i mean to my mind i think if you can have a little bit of everything it's far better than having lots of one thing now if i'm meeting you for the first time it's a very important moment in my career when i woke up in the morning today um i got just a voice in my head i don't know whether it was the carry over from a dream or what happened but um the the voice in my head said speak about maya today speak about simulation yeah and i didn't understand why because that's not what i planned to speak on with you i told you in the balcony what i wanted to speak about uh have you been thinking about simulation why did i get that intuition because my morning intuitions


i get that intuition because my morning intuitions are very strong and it's a big part of this podcast as well sure and and maybe ties into this whole angle of happiness that why is someone else's maya unhappy like i see i see maybe 90 of the people your age that i've met in urban centers and i don't think the same for like small towns in india i think people are happier but urban centers 90 of the people your age are unhappy so what's going wrong in that maya no i i think i think to a very great extent i believe that in larger larger towns and cities there is there is that old english proverb of keeping up with the jones uh where to a certain extent you peg your own self-worth based on what others think of you comparing yourselves to the comparisons uh and i don't know to my mind i am now convinced that that that is the sure shot path to unhappiness uh where uh where you are unhappy even though you


uh where uh where you are unhappy even though you have a flourishing business you are unhappy because someone has a business which is twice your size authorize your size uh or for example you have a very comfortable car to travel in but you are unhappy because someone you know has just picked up a bmw 7 series or uh to a very great extent uh you you you have the most wonderful life partner in your spouse but you look at the the page three model that someone else has and you say well you know wouldn't it be nice if i had that arm candy there is no end to this ranveer there is no end to that comparison and one also needs to be able to come to terms with the fact that be happy that it's there because it may not be there tomorrow i also want to talk about sadness in the same equation like you spoke about comparison leading to sadness so i think of the people who have that comparison mindset and with while they're comparing themselves to others


and with while they're comparing themselves to others what will actually be giving these people happiness it can't be that material gain or you know the fame gain or any any kind of gain because no matter how much gain they get they will compare themselves to someone else yeah but i feel the moments that make these kind of people happy are when their thought narratives are validated through polarized media which and and this is a strong reason why so many people i age don't uh follow the news as closely as they should yeah because they see an entire parent's generation kind of taken over by news and i think following the news is important but from a bunch of sources actually doctor radhakrishnan bill i spoke with this that you need to read the left wing uh piece on it you need i have long maintained that you know politics is tomorrow's history and what we read as history today was yesterday's politics [Music] but the world of history what is it other than a fable that has


history what is it other than a fable that has been agreed upon yeah and history is always written by the victors exactly uh today you um i think it was a william dalrymple uh who said that uh who in in one of his books he said we've not taught colonial history and the horrors of colonialism to the vast majority of english students so in other words their version of history is very different to us you take a single event like let's say the great mutiny what we call the 1857 revolt we teach teach it in india as the great rebellion of 1857 where the sepoys rose up in rebellion where they do teach it in europe it is known as the sepoy mutiny of 1857. it's the same event but a very very different lens has been applied on that same event so it was uh george santana who said that history is a pack of lies about events that never happened written by people who were never there it is coloured by


by people who were never there it is coloured by the observer people who say that history is unbiased don't know what they are talking about there's no way to prevent your bias from creeping into a narrative you know the one thing that is truly amazing about dharmic thought is its essential pluralism you can have 33 million deities which are part of the same narrative you may look at a stone and you may say that this is a shiveling and i may look at that shiveling and i may call it a stone but we are both equally welcome you could be as thick i could be nasty we are we are part of the same plural system someone may worship shiva someone may worship shakti i wrote chanakya's chant which is one of your favorite books but chanakya if you look at his life and if you look at his writings you could call him the greatest statesman you could call him one of the best strategists you could call him a great political economist of


you could call him a great political economist of his time but you could also call him a male chauvinist pig because his views on women were extremely derogative uh derogatory because of the times that he lived in uh you could also consider him to be an extremely evil person in terms of the kutniti that he prophesizes what is that so kurt niti basically and that at the end of the day the ends are more important than the means like achieve a win no matter what it is exactly and that is the way that we need to start looking at narratives especially political narratives i think that's especially political that's the cause of so much hate within people's hearts uh and i'm not just talking about you know when i say hate within people's hearts lots of people picturize i mean visualize people from the interiors of the country like yeah those people have hate in their hearts no no you'll be sitting in this city absolutely and you will also have


in this city absolutely and you will also have hate in your heart if you're that into the political narratives that we have fed through mainstream media in every atheist there is some part of him that is itching to believe and in every believer there is some part of him or her that is itching to doubt we need to allow those to get free reign the idea being that even though i may be a devout hindu there is nothing which says that i should not be able to doubt my beliefs and the same should apply in every religion this is very important in today's world uh and genuinely if we are looking at let's say the next 50 odd years i think the only way that this world will be able to uh see peace and stability is in case all of us are willing to get up and question and stand up and and doubt our own faith faiths faiths speaking about faith so uh you said something very interesting you said that abrahamic thought processes are kind


interesting you said that abrahamic thought processes are kind of copy-pasting themselves onto eastern thought processes so we uh we went to the mandarin banaras and we made a vlog on it and we spoke about our kind of heartfelt experience about it now the shiv quran has one story about the khal bharava and the vishnu purana has another story about calvary we stuck to the shivpuran story because it's banaras you know shivji the people get offended with it we bring on iskcon monks who are uh obviously kind of vishnu and uh the shivpuran people say that no why are you only bringing on this company why not bring people from the uh shiva way of looking at things correct and this is what i mean that why can't we just accept everyone else let's speak about just hinduism sure you know i'm a very very proud indian person i'm very proud of my religion my dharm my culture but man i see so much hate around me and it's it's


see so much hate around me and it's it's not just hate for other religions it's also hate amongst each other yeah like as in you'll hate other hindus for just having a slightly different thought process there's so much hate directed at even someone like devdar patna yeah who talks about uh the plural way of looking at things the same version of stories can be viewed in multiple ways i personally believe algorithms are to blame here and i say that because um i don't know who it was it was someone who was carrying out an experiment i think someone from the world of social media where they said that you just try interacting with some hardcore right-wing pages and the algorithm will learn that oh okay this person likes being fed right-wing politics so he'll feed you more yeah and the system will feed you more the system will feed you more and they'll feed you such negative narratives about other religions that you'll really begin to hate the other lives of course there'll be videos


hate the other lives of course there'll be videos of some someone in a gulf country killing a kid and all that and they'll say you know they'll demonize islam generally which is not it's not the right way of looking at other people in the world absolutely um you know my my question is one where do you see us going as like carriers of the hindu faith and you are one of those people yes like there's so many hindu elements in your writing as well of course um you know so somewhere i feel that as media professionals as creative professionals we pass on the baiten but i don't know where we're going as hindu culture i think what has happened to us what my effort has been ranveer is to basically try and explain the fact that uh even though we consider religions to be sort of compartmentalized but the truth of the matter is that there are there are far more things that connect us similarly take for example in the world of hindu faith you


take for example in the world of hindu faith you have trinities right lakshmi saraswati brahma vishnu mahesh but even in christianity you have the father the son and the holy ghost now you consider that if you were to take the male trinity and female trinity in hinduism and depict them as triangles lakshmi saraswati kali and brahma vishnu mahesh bring the two triangles together what will you get a six pointed star you see the six pointed star along with the om symbol very often in mandir's outside manders you'll see this as a repeat swastika om and six pointed star you see it in several mandirs particularly in the south then you go back to judaism and you have the star of david which is a six-pointed star so did they evolve independently or was there some was there some interchange was there some borrowing of knowledge happening between the two faiths i have a lot of parsi friends growing up around barses and they constantly


friends growing up around barses and they constantly told me while i was growing up that there's too many parallels between the hindu faith and the parsi of course and as i've grown up i've begun like studying a little more and that's true yeah i also we had i can't remember who on the show uh it was a writer i believe who said that in in parsees there's a word called ahura yeah and in our like philosophy there's a word called asura correct and there's some linkage between those words yes where for us in our uh uh cultural teachings we talk about asuras as the enemies of the devs and similar similarly there's a parallel there where they look at the heroes as ahuras and then there is like enemies which i think it's something from d i can't remember the word um but there is some linkage between even ancient subcontinental cultures which is india pakistan afghanistan and then central asia of course which is parsis which makes me think that maybe


course which is parsis which makes me think that maybe it was one origin group well you you think about this know that when when we are talking about the so called vedic expense and uh uh trust me i'm not attempting to attempting to to colour it in any way but whether it was india whether it was pakistan whether it was afghanistan whether it was iran whether it was central europe and whether it was further south east from india whether it was malaysia cambodia vietnam and all of that i consider it to have been one great vedic expanse or today some some of the uh i mean if you go back into let's say afghanistan today we see it as a as fundamentally an islamic muslim nation but uh uh when when uh hyun sang visited uh india and came through afghanistan he was just fascinated because at every at every 10 steps there was a buddhist stupa or a monastery some of the most remarkable monasteries were there for me it is very interesting that


were there for me it is very interesting that you have on the one hand in zoroastrianism you have ahura and we have asura but ahuras are the good guys ahura mazda is the great one [Music] and on the other hand the asuras uh are actually the negative forces uh as far as in in our ancients as subjective reality they're in our subjective reality they are negative but uh actually if you now again that that will lead me into a completely different discussion that actually that that by that binary approach to asura deva is actually not really relevant because some of the greatest asuras uh were actually worshiped why why don't we actually go into that tangent because of the podcast yeah but but the point is that from from the angle of on the one hand you have this asura ahura divide and on the other hand you have the diva and the devad dividing was the word diva was the zoroastrian word which was basically talking about guys like uh uh the


was basically talking about guys like uh uh the indra and those were the negative forces i also i feel that the the narrative that should be put across here is that while it's very good to be proud of your own country's culture and hinduism in general we can't always assume that hinduism is the seed of everything else oh absolutely that there would have been a huge interplay yeah there would have like today for example if you take let's say the concept of vegetarianism uh within the world of hinduism to a very great extent the world of vegetarianism in hinduism would have been influenced by buddhism so each religion has in some ways played on the other uh read the sermon on the mount uh and the beatitudes uh in the new testament uh and they read like a lot of the teachings of the buddha [Music] and you know for example there is a monastery in ladakh which is known as hemis and a russian explorer by the name of nicholas


a russian explorer by the name of nicholas notovitch uh had landed up there in the 19th century and he was injured his foot was injured as a result of which he had to stay in hemis for a far longer time to wait for his leg to heal and the chief lama out there showed him a scroll and the scroll talked about a young boy called isa uh who had uh come to study under the buddhist masters and he apparently came from a distant land called judea now in the in the bible we have a specific period of time which is known as the lost years of christ which is between the ages of 12 and 30 because at age 12 we see christ has walked into the synagogue and has actually been able to teach even at that young age and then we see him re-entering uh judea in at the age of 30. but we don't know what happens between those in those 18 odd years and that fits into a piece of that puzzle that could


that fits into a piece of that puzzle that could it be that he could have actually taken some of his wisdom under the buddhist masters in our country we are proud of the fact that for every bhim saint joshi we have a zakir hussein we are proud that for a vikram sarabhai we have an abdul kalam for a shashi tharoor we have a salman rashdi that is the gaga jamuna tazee we have all grown up with that but if ganga jamuna this is an indication of the genetic character of the subcontinent then ask yourself why did it not take root in bangladesh or pakistan the underlying answer will be clear that if the ethos is plural ie hindu that hindu ethos ingrains a respect for pluralism for the faiths for other faiths that is very important the moment islamization creeps in which is what happened with our two neighbors whether it was earlier pakistan or whether it was bangladesh later the ganga chaminade was gone look around


later the ganga chaminade was gone look around you at the 49 islamic countries and there is no scope for ganga jamuna so if you truly want that there should be secularism then you need to preserve the dharmic ethos you have to understand what that means which should even make us turn inwards and if there are hindu brothers and sisters who are accusing other faiths of being below them we need to say hold on you need to have a sense of equality when it look when you're looking at other faiths equality but at the end of the day with every with every technology you have a version 2.1 2.2 you have an update your software needs to get updated regularly the same applies with faith and unfortunately there are a bunch of people who are keeping that faith at version 1.0 why is it not possible for me to be secular and still be proud of being a hindu why should i be called a bhakth for being proud of my hindu roots why is it not


proud of my hindu roots why is it not possible for me to be someone who believes that law and order is of paramount importance but at the end of the day i still feel that the justice system needs reform yeah it's it's social media sir we're living in like the age of the internet and that's what's no but at times it gets tiring it gets tiring because there are people like you and me who want who do not want to be boxed in even as a writer i started out writing books which became very famous in the world of history mythology people started saying oh is a mythological writer in order to show that i am not a mythological writer i wrote two crime thrillers with james patterson which had no mythology in them then people said he's a crime writer in order to prove them wrong i started writing the 13-step series which was the world of non-fiction and self-help because i was so terrified of being boxed in i the same applies to my own


being boxed in i the same applies to my own life i don't want to be boxed in and i do believe that at the end of the day faith is something that should be in your living room it should be in your heart it should be in your puja it should be on your prayer bed it should not be outside what i liked about this conversation was that we spoke about multiple religions multiple angles on it how at the end of the day the world is one big family how every single religion in the modern day has kind of begun from the same offshoot absolutely or borrowed yeah or borrowed like ideas you know which have kind of crossed culture but i also like that you highlight uh the fact that we need to get updated and after speaking to yourself and all the writers we've had on the show i have understood how you guys package your ideologies into stories and then sell them to the world and for the people who can read between the lines they pick up on what the


read between the lines they pick up on what the writer's heart actually says and for the rest of the masters these are just stories the one thing i've realized over the last couple of years from my own life of doing business and you know trying to create so there's an app we're creating called level which is centered around meditation and focus how beautiful yeah and i'm an editor in my heart right like i'm a youtuber i love editing videos i'm a writer i write my own scripts creating this app was like a two year long editor two year long script writing process i'm taking all the creativity and experiences and learnings and packaging them into this technology based product it's it's tested me as a creative professionals tested me as a business person and what i've learned now is that my thirties need to be about storytelling and filmmaking and i need to feed into the creativity because the same joy you have in your eyes mr sangi i wish to have in my eyes when i'm your age


wish to have in my eyes when i'm your age yeah but it's already there in your eyes when you are doing this session for example i find you know ultimately uh ranveer we are all storytellers we are all we're also it does you mean humans are storytellers we we all tell our story in different ways i i have a three-year-old golden retriever his name is simba he when i come come into the house in the evening everyone else ignores me he will be jumping up and down he will be wagging his tail he will be pointing at me listen i want to be loved and he tells me a story through those actions through those gestures he's telling me how much i love you why can't you love me back the same amount [Music] when a politician gets up modi is one of the greatest net uh in some ways i would consider him to be one of the best orators we've had in our times it's probably the core of his powers as well of his