so it says uh how did you land your first job and starting salary at least ITB has a pretty decently sorted out placement process I was shortlisted in Flipkart at that time and the starting salary was 11 CTC uh but there was some 3 lakh which was supposed to come in like some chunks or something like that College placements it Bombay and salary were six lakhs per annum in my college the employment rate was like 40 percent and my first job was at a series a media company and there I also getting 12 laptop how
did you get the job uh I actually was Consulting with that company I was helping them build their system and we actually went to IIT Bombay to recruit I was helping them recruit and we didn't like anyone so then at the end of the process he's like hey why don't you join so it's like okay how much will you take I said 24 he said I'll give 12 I'm like I wanted 12 anyways they had a very different education backgrounds I did my chartered accountancy it was an early stage startup my salary was about six
lakhs back then disadvantage of being an iiten or non-it Indian Institute of Technology playing and then it's a huge problems for me I think perception is that you know you have everything on the plate I I don't think that's true I am I don't think I've ever hit apply on a job site and had my resume shortlisted it's always some roundabout hustle path you know reach out to the founder do some Consulting for them maybe you know prove your words to them and then they reach out to you but there was never like a hey
send in your resume to this inbox and like expect a response I think that is true and the privilege level starting with like but I I guess it's just the start while I after that there is no and again like there is a compound you get a better start yeah if you convert your start then the compounding is I've never experienced being able to say that hey I know an alarm there let me reach out through my network or you know let me LinkedIn inbox my co-student my core students are nowhere where I want to
be how is like do you think IIT is correlated with mental health um do you think that it's a positive or A negative basically plot that right IIT non-iit ambition non-ambition when there's a non-iit non-ambition is chilled out yeah IIT ambition is but having fun also yeah and I think so I think I would rate the toughest job being a non-iitian and being ambitious uh I think then it would be sort of IIT and non-ambition life I think IIT ambition and non-iit non-ambition you cannot beat in happiness I was reading a book and you know
they had that quote and I I still remember it where they said you know my life would have been a lot more happier if I had a little less ambition in life and I keep thinking about it yeah but I think advice this is perfect so did you have self-doubt like ever in the journey despite the pedigree I think my first self-doubt would have come once I'd entered Flipkart options so I think once the job happened and uh I went in I think that is when the stakes became equal right that once you get in
no one cares that you are an iitn and I got Supply chains when I started talking to my IIT and friends only and I started seeing their growth Journeys you know people in the VC space people in the product space were just talking a different language they were like yeah foreign oh advantages of being an iitn versus non-iitian one friend who was into cop death second friend was talking about here I want to do something in music tech and you know another friend has already switched from something to computer science and all of that so
I think when you have such a peer group I think you are never allowed to be complacent and that is a big advantage of being in such a peer group so I think it's very interesting that that peer group can also be a disadvantage I feel because everyone tends to compare to their local Maxima so my local Maxima is doing you know the jobs that I didn't want to do in your case your peer group may go on to start billion dollar companies like no one here is going to compare themselves to Elon Musk and
feel bad because that's not our local group correct but in your case your group may actually do really well right and at every step you're comparing oh they became a CDC finder now what am I doing with my life and it works I think it you're constantly push to do better right versus our local maximum the lack of a peer group telling me what is possible also like kind of expanded my ambition saying that anything is possible yeah and I feel like that also plays into the confidence that you have uh every small win feels
bigger because to your peer group it's bigger yeah ah okay there's a different sort of question where do you invest uh so they're talking about portfolio allocation and I think I and Ashwin used to have a lot of conversations on investment uh I think he's the one who made me invest invent also the first time around I don't you don't invest like money under the carpet savings account savings FD yeah not everybody yeah and worst saving account also I have been told there are some banks which give you more if you are in savings also
like oh they're like idfc account Union what I'm best at is passive investing and it's gonna buy and hold nothing else I'm not good at picking stocks I recently took control of all this right when I was getting on my sabbatical so I I don't know everyone would not sort of agree with me but I don't believe in real estate I believe in assets which are slightly uh liquid which keeps sort of you know growing uh and uh majorly also having more of tech right so I have this Excel sheet where I have all my
individual assets tracked in real time so every day I wake up in the morning I know how I'm saying this one how they are doing money goals slash plans for retirement do you before that do you actually have a view of your net worth right now you said that yeah I'm a feature a check balance money goals I sort of always Envy like what ratan data or these people you know philanthropists are able to do in this world once they've gotten to it and while the pursuit of fun does not really need a very massive
money goal but the pursuit of impact may be required me to you know money not only sorted like money money I do agree with that point of impact right like for me it's like I Define myself as 40 years still 40 years I'm a capitalist after 40 years I'll define whether I want to become a socialist right because when I have enough money again like I think the money that I wanted is only for psychological safety I don't think now that you say oh yeah I've honestly never thought of that but it also comes from
the fact that impact doesn't always come from Manila but you know even in the day-to-day I feel like just having psychological safety lets you place that swiggy order without a discount coupon and I think that is also a privilege there I've become accustomed to 100 uh Nikita has been trying to convince me to become an entrepreneur then I look at my monthly expenses and my credit card bill and I'm like I don't know if I can continue that lifestyle on an entrepreneur's salary and I I like that lifestyle somehow there is this constant now feeling
of not needing to be accountable to anyone no I'm always questioning am I working because I really like this or am I working for my boss at all points of time right and uh and maybe I am very uncomfortable with my self-care if I'm doing this just because someone else will screw me up if I don't do this expectations from your child at least for me just give me Ambitions I think those are just unfulfilled Ambitions of themselves for example I also for the longest time thought child named my kid Ronaldo so that it is
very clear to him what I want out of him would you send your kid to an IIT or would you want more or less or you would not care I didn't hear chai are you uh the answer has to come from my experience with the kid but love it's just impossible to say it right now my love but I think the answer will come I am looking at that guy daily for uh 14 15 years whatever so but that presumes that a lot depends on nature and not as much on nurture which is the values
no I think at least logically it feels nurturing though will be 360. right as in uh and then if there are spikes but if it feels like it is somewhere else or something many of my friends around would would say this uh because sort of they have seen this as more like a rat race to you know sort of get somewhere right I don't 100 agree with that so again like I would just agree with his answer I actually over index a lot on church and there was a Polish researcher named Polgar he had three
daughters and in order to prove his hypothesis that nurture is the only real thing that matters right yeah he made all his three daughters become chess Grandmasters and he wanted to prove that it's not something that you're born with that I was supposed to be Grandmaster he did three out of three right and he's like his point was that if you wanted your child to be a Grandmaster you should have trained them like that's why I think what he should have done he should not nurtured one at all someone else would have made them bread
Masters yeah I think I think my hypothesis is that whatever they do they have to be the best in the world or at least they have to aim for it and for that they may need ingredients and resources and what is in our control nurture is the only thing in your country but if someone was wanting to become a footballer right now I would be like be very very sure of your skill I understand you love it but is I think your normal domestic player is also easily earning so then there is some security but
football is but I'd want to have enough money for my kids to like keep experimenting with different things to give that accessory and I I feel if I have to compare it across all the strata it's just axis right uh access to information which you know someone XYZ would not have right do you have a bias for pedigree when hiring for your teams why should you not while at misho I think to some extent it was there it you know when you have 500 CVS to look from which which is when you're at such a
large company I think that bias to some extent was there HR maybe bias when you're hiring for certain roles once they interview I I don't think there was a bias in pedigree then it was all about Hey how well did you do in an interview do you have the right skills I go right fit for the role culture fit it's a heuristic no it's a shortcut like if I wanna quickly look at a resume for 10 seconds and say yes or no having an IIT nit IM something just checks the box and no one ever
got fired for hiring an IIT person saying yeah oh I mean there must have been something that went wrong but it wasn't because of the resume screening but if you take a chance on someone who's unexpected like a quirky CV you are a little bit putting your name on the line that you know I want to take a bet on this person yeah us ually
