my salary and bonus itself was 2 CR and my stock options perom was another two OD CR so roughly 4 CR so that was like a 1.1 CR property which you bought in 2005 2005 what is the value of it right and now it's about 6 and a half maybe 7 I think this was like the most powerful business card I've ever used can I exchange lives with you the YouTube videos I live your life it's just not important to live well it's also important to die well but Pali Hill is like where Shah ruk
Khan stays close you are one of those special people who have achieved kind of the impossible in this country which is how how to achieve Financial Independence uh before you turn 60 right and you are somebody who has achieved that at the tender age of 47 how exactly does somebody know um that they have enough money to kind of say this is done I'm not working anymore in my community of friends Etc relatives not many people even paid attention to the fact that how much is enough because it's a scary question most people I ask
is like nothing less than 100 CR nothing less now let's take that question of nothing less than 100 CR their expenses even if they even if they got the 100 cres it'll take them 10 generations to you know get rid of that money yeah so that 100 is a wrong one to begin with the reason why it is 100 is because they don't know what to do with their time so what was it for you so I'm not going to say something which PE people sometimes may think of it as a little dark it's just
not important to live well it's also important to die well because I've seen what old age can do to you know my closest relatives my grandfather my grandmother they've suffered you know you don't want your last 5 years at least right how long do you want to live I don't mind as whatever is a journey but I want to have a physically Fit Life okay so 3 years you work out three sorry three hours you work out and and then what else do you do in our day so we come back and there's a 3-hour
gap we eat our food and I actually sleep for 1 hour then from 2: to 3: I sleep like afternoon nap afternoon nap mandatory huh 4: to 7 I'm at the golf course 4: to 7 golf golf golf also you play yes okay but there's a reason for it because morning Wala is very supremely physically intense the golf is mentally intense it's a very slow game you have to concentrate every day you do this I do this every day and the last three hours are from 8 to 11: which is study time then I study
Finance with Sharon and I look at the YouTube that you post and can I exchange lives with you the YouTube videos I live your life uh yes sure when you're 48 you could do this much before at 40 I decided I want to leave when I touch 50 years okay randomly I picked up a number it was 10 crores okay and at that age of 48 did you have a sizable savings uh obviously it was not 10c I may have been about 30% of that number okay at the age of 40 at the age of
40 must have been a 2 three portfolio Okay so how have you invested this 10 CR portfolio of yours how have you divided this money to make it last until your lifetime first of all I have a great adviser and a mutual fund distributor taking care of my investments I've always believed in a in a good advisor by your side okay and our uh and our equations are very very simple um 70% of my money uh is either in mutual funds or PMS equities and 30 stock market 70% 70% and 30% is in currently it
is in uh Guild funds currently so can you explain what a guilt fund is to the audience let's it's a debt fund and the underlying guarantee is government of India uh and they issue bonds which you can buy and it's eternally risk-free because it's guaranteed by the government of India got it how did you like start off like can you walk us through Maybe your education what was your first job so can we get back from there so my background is that I'm a for son for son meaning you an army brat uh well Air
Force brat my first job was about selling computers what did you study I studied bcom honors okay uh so thankfully that so this is in Delhi University hrj College and that's where I studied my that's where I did my graduation and school was Air Force bharti so from bcom how did you get into sales how did that happen so the first job I got was about selling computers that just happened that just happened randomly I looked at a job application applied they took me and funnily enough the first sales call I made was to a
finance company okay to sell computers and they were buying computers to set up an nbfc okay I sold the computers and I saw this young set of just like you know youngsters today there were these young 23 year-old starting a finance company and they made a job offer to me huh okay and they just said like stop selling computers come join the sunrise industry of the future Financial Services nbfc is the future okay so how much were you making in that sales job when you started um must be everything put together maybe 8 10,000 bucks
or something 8,000 per month per month this was in 92 92 so okay so 12,000 rupes per month and we joined this nbfc what was the pay they made it I think 177,000 rupees or something which is a pretty good hike and just like the way I came into an nbfc my next big role also happened to be in a very large nbfc which was with the tatas the tatas had a finance company called Tata Finance okay so then suddenly this shift happened to a much bigger brand same work but bigger same work big big
scope so how much was your salary at this point I think they took it to about 23 24 so the tatas won't pay much but then the brand was like spectacular right so that that whole Journey lasted in nbfc is about 7 years between including Tata including tatas okay there is this new animal that comes into the world called mutual funds the first really big story happened when Kari came in as a private sector fund and Templeton launched their business in India Franklin templ Franklin Templeton so they were the really first big how which year
was this this was I think 94 95 is when Templeton kind of came into this is when I was born yes so back when you started let's say the mutual fund industry was Zero investment zero right I think today it's something like 45 lakh 45 lakh CR and they're saying that by the end of 2030 it will become one CR CR 100 lakh crores one yeah one CR CR I like that one that's correct so you were 23,000 at Tata yes and now that's uh but then 10 years would have passed also so suddenly that
number became almost 25 lakhs per per got it at the 2000 which year 000 exactly year 2000 you making 25h 23 before we get to continue the professional Journey because such a sudden increase in your income did your lifestyle change like what happened yeah totally what happened look I I am a big spender I like to spend and how old were you at this point of time um I would have been 32 33 Okay so 3233 coming to Mumbai with a 25 lakh package Franklin Templeton yeah and then we take these houses which are either
in P Hill or you know you got a house in pill I didn't buy the house sorry he rented accommodation but P Hill is like where Shah ruk Khan stays close by that but then rentals were kind of okay at that point in time must have been 75,000 Rupees at that point in time for rent I always was very willing to pay well for house there's a reason for it because it sounds like an investment at that point in time but then please remember salaries at that time were increasing by 10 to 11% per anom
hence the salary was doubling every 4 years or 5 years now it's not the case no it's not the case so the rentals were not increasing at the same proportion so what I figured out is there's no harm in staying at a good place as long as you know that in four years your salary is doubling got it I went straight from a Zen there was a zen store maruti had this fancy car called the Zen right I went straight from the Zen to Mitsubishi Lancer we come on this planet only once what's the point
of living poor and dying Rich yeah um you know people save all the money and one fine day they die yeah so you were investing when you got to 25 lakh pack were you investing it there 32 100% you should you I in the mutual fund industry exctly I was very lucky and I I always had a MFD mutual fund distributed by my side so yeah so this was seven or eight years in Templeton I so within those eight years there was a threee stin in Singapore it allowed me to buy a house then in
Delhi Oh by this time I had saved so your current house is what you bought I bought a house okay so that was like a 1.1 CR property which you bought in 2005 2005 what is the value of it right now now it's about 6 and a half maybe 7even crores wow so it's appreciated well so but this is not a part of your 10 CR plus portfolio never ever count real estate ever as part of your network network it's like a lifestyle expenditure it is a lifestyle expend and I'm not going to sell it
like it's not something that you know I planed to sell like because if you don't sell it it cannot be an investment exactly so so you are in Singapore and then what happened did you like did you not feel like let me just stay here like quality of life is better why come back to India what was your thought process back then I think what the really exciting story about India is its chaos and thriving chaos it's like to do business in India means you will get the best and the worst of everything you have
to use your mental facilities you have to be intelligent you have to be smart you've got to be very creative and you're thinking all the time of how to build your business in Singapore it's all done the mutual F industry was reasonably well established rules were set regulations were there so basically you didn't it was not very difficult to do your job you just had to show up there I'm like done sign this paper done and we came back at the peak of the markets this is 2007 okay and suddenly out of the blue there's
this news that Goldman Sachs mutual fund is starting shop is starting shop okay it's starting shop and this is like the mother of all names in the world yeah they are completely like the gold standard the gold standard of and we all wondering like who will join Goldman like you know it has to be so they Goldman is announcing I'm coming to India and I I read in the papers and I said oh god the guy who joins them will be like wow would be such fun to know this guy and randomly I applied for
it the name of the person so back then applying I'm it's not like LinkedIn apply no was it email apply okay figured out who the person was who it was some guy in Hong Kong who was meeting people I got the name I got his email ID and I just literally randomly wrote to him okay the good news was that I was still in Templeton Templeton being us and Goldman being us at least they could yeah correlate so I gave him a bit of a description and I said it'll be you know just I left
it there let's meet or whatever speak by the end of the 20th interview I got a sense that they may be Keen to make an offer and they did and so I was like hired to start the Goldman's mutual fund business in India wow so you were like the India head I was like the India business head and then what was your salary at that point a COR and 10 lakhs so what year was this uh this is 2007 end just starting of 2008 and then it's crazy Sharon that my car when I got my
card this was like having the I think this was like the most powerful business card I've ever used like I would just say I'm from Goldman and the doors would open okay it was a pretty crazy time so 2007 end is when things if you remember start to get a little wobbly in the global markets right and the world kind of gets into a tumul story in 2008 with lemon collapsing and Mer Eng and suddenly 6 months the world is on its head from what was supposed to be like the best phase turned out to
be the worst phase uh for financial services did you lose your job I did lose my job okay literally lost my job overnight okay Goldman decided to leave shop to kind of just not launch the businessman never made fired one they just fired six seven of us two things happened in 2008 uh and this is very important one is the world markets went crazy and Goldman and Morgan and everyone wanted to defend their home base which is America rightly so another very big event happened in Bombay which is 2611 okay okay the terror attacks and
the reason why I bring that up is because I'm a speaker on the economic costs of terrorism on this country okay uh because we've lived in Sagar Punjab Delhi right and then I personally encountered how companies can off right in after a terror attack so Goldman two things happened uh they really got flustered with what happened in on 201611 and then the financial crisis happened simultaneously they decided not to carry on with the business I lost my job so from the peak of Goldman with a Cora salary huh to becoming jobless what happened uh what
happened was the last of the large organizations in the country were setting up their mutual fund company which is access they hadn't done it under they hadn't done it at all in 20 years they were missing so HDFC had a mutual fund IC had a mutual fund everyone had a mutual fund access didn't and then suddenly out of the blue I hear that access is launching its mutual fund and that's when I said okay now I have to give this a serious shot and know what came over me and I said okay let me put
together a 7 your business plan like a physical business plan I'll put together something I think that effort really helped because it was a 3-day intense you know I really put my head down and worked on it and I showed it to him he liked it and you got him he's a great guy and four five days later he called me in the evening and he said Karen why don't you join us so for me that was like the most um I think that was like a the most beautiful part of my corporate Journey because
sometimes - 2 is equal to + 1 what does that mean that means you could lose two steps back but perhaps God has something bigger for you I never realized that after losing my job at Goldman I'll get something as big as access which actually helped me retire oh wow like how what what is special in accesses compensation my salary and bonus itself was 2 CR okay uh and my and my stock off options perom was another two OD CR so roughly 4es is the peak money that was starting how does somebody leave that I
don't understand by realizing that that's not who I am so that journey of the last 8 10 years in axis has been it was most fulfilling it gave me you know it gave me a canvas it gave me money it gave me Fame it gave me liberty to think and then I said what more do I want in life that's when so the that would be like the peak of your career peak of my absolute peak of my career couldn't have been bigger than this and that is the most difficult phase for a person to
retire as well because they're like this is so much money that I'm making I'm at the peak of my career how were you able to get out of it finally the money has to work for me I can't work for money forever okay the money has to work for me so workouts were part of my integral part of my life that's how I figured out that I'm not born to I was not born on this planet to work h was born because exercising and working out gave you more sat life satisfaction than making more money
than making more money so I was willing to give the money up so that's how it is so as a closing thought what would you like to tell our audience like they've learned about your story you're living like kind of like the dream life that everybody thinks it's going to happen to them but they don't know the path look for such people like what advice would you like to give it's only one piece of advice there's a little Dia that is glowing in everyone's conscience listen to the DIA don't let it Blow Away listen to
the inner conscience that's telling you what to do your inner Compass will always guide you and I'm not saying that work is bad I'm saying if it's if it's a not a great environment then don't push yourself into working but if you love your job get the money and enjoy right all right guys I'll see you in the next [Music] one
