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Investing in Index Funds | Darshan Doshi October 2, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:08) Hi, welcome to DASAR. My name is Darshan and we have an awesome podcast with Devang Kabra today. We are going to talk about investing, about making money. Just a quick overview. Devang is someone who has turned from an entrepreneur to an investor. Through childhood, he’s burnt a lot of...

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What are your options to Invest in Gold? September 12, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

Are you confused about how to invest in gold in India? In this video we discuss why should you invest in gold, the different investment forms of gold (Physical gold, digital gold, gold ETFs, gold mutual funds, and Sovereign gold bond), their advantages and disadvantages, and how can you start investing today.

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How Important is Financial Literacy for All? | Dr Anil Lamba | DASAR Podcast September 4, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

Is the concept of understanding how money works only for finance professionals? Should the common man not learn about balance sheets? We sit with Dr. Anil Lamba, a Financial literacy activist, international corporate trainer, and bestselling author of ‘Romancing the Balance Sheet’, ‘Flirting with Stocks’, ‘Eye on the Bottom Line' and ‘Financial Affairs of the Common Man.’ We discuss the importance of financial literacy, learn about financial mistakes to avoid in life, and get some advice on starting your journey to...

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Smallcap Investing: What you should know before investing in it | Swatantra | Simplify Investing August 28, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

In this video, we sit with Rushabh Doshi from Proinvest Nirmiti and discuss smallcap investing, the expected returns from smallcap stocks, and mistakes to avoid when investing in smallcaps.

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Smallcap Investing: What you should know before investing in it | Swatantra | Simplify Investing August 28, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

In this video, we sit with Rushabh Doshi from Proinvest Nirmiti and discuss smallcap investing, the expected returns from smallcap stocks, and mistakes to avoid when investing in smallcaps.

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Financial Freedom: How do people define it? August 21, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

Financial freedom is an art, hence everyone has their own way of defining the goal. How do people look at financial freedom? How do we look at financial freedom? Watch this podcast with Darshan Doshi exclusively on DASAR streaming now.

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https://youtu.be/fkwQKFHj38s Transcript [00:00:02.290] - Darshan DoshiHello. Hello. Welcome everyone. In this video, you are going to find out what financial freedom really is and why is it important? My name is Darshan Doshi and I am extremely curious about financial freedom, all things related to money. In the last ten years, I've spent a lot of time understanding financial freedom, investing, money saving, and a whole lot of things. I've worked in different jobs, I've invested my own money across different asset classes. And I'm going to bring this to you.

[00:00:36.450] - Darshan DoshiIn this video you will find three things. What is financial freedom? How do people define it? How is financial freedom different from retirement? Lastly, what does financial freedom get you? During the course of this video, if you have any questions about financial freedom, be sure to pop it in the comment section and I'll be sure to reply to you. So how do people define financial freedom? There are a lot of misconceptions, misrepresentations and different definitions about financial freedom. For one, when I go on Google and I search financial freedom, this is what I get. Financial freedom is the point or the status at which one can cover their life expenses without being dependable on anyone else. Say you have a parent, guardian, elder, sibling, you don't have to depend on them to cover your bills and expenses for the year or for the rest of your life. So that could be a definition of financial freedom. On the other hand, many people say financial freedom is the point where you not only take care of your current lifestyle, but any future lifestyle. So, for example, if you're driving a Toyota today and you want to drive a BMW, that would be incorporated in your financial plan and the investments so that you would be financially free to buy that BMW or to drive that BMW. What is my definition of financial freedom? I break down financial freedom into two things. One is a destination. Second is a mindset. What do I mean by financial freedom as a destination? It's an exact point. It's a point where you have enough money in the bank so that you never have to work in your life again.

[00:02:29.910] - Darshan DoshiYou can choose not to work. You would have enough income, you would have enough money in the bank, you would have enough investments in place so that your current expenses, annual expenses, future expenses, as well as all your financial goals, present or future, are taken care of through those investments and the money that you already have in the bank. So it's true or false. You either have that money in the bank or you don't.

[00:02:58.640] - Darshan DoshiThe second part of financial freedom for me is the mindset. Any person who's worked hard to become financially free say, they've worked hard for 10, 12, 15, 20 years to accumulate enough money so that they don't have to work ever again. Do you think this person is going to just retire and not do anything? It's unlikely, right? It's unlikely because these people have made money by becoming good at what they do. And so it's a financial freedom is a mindset. It gives you options to do what you love and what brings meaning to you. And so that impact is what is the most important thing that optionality is the most important thing for being financially free. And that is how I define financial freedom as a destination and as a mindset.

[00:03:53.990] - Darshan DoshiThink about it this way. If you lost your job today, or if your business went through a rough patch similar to March 2020 when the pandemic hit and you didn't have a source of income coming through, would you be able to survive with the same lifestyle for the next one to two or three or five years from now? That is what is important, right? How can we build or create a situation such that you don't have to worry about whether you are getting income or not? Now, according to me, there are three stages of personal finance. The first stage is financially weak. In this situation, your expenses are greater than your savings or the investments that you make. You're basically bleeding money. Therefore more money is going out of your pocket than coming in. This is a situation which could be a really tough situation to be in. You're probably one major catastrophe or tragedy away, say one medical emergency away from being totally bankrupt and really being a tough, tough spot in your life. Clearly there is a need for you to not just cover your expenses, but to build an emergency fund on top of it. The second stage is being financially secure. This is the point where your current income, active income, income from your jobs and investments, covers all your bills, all your expenses, and you're able to meet your current lifestyle needs. So if you are someone who's traveling two times a year, three times a year, lives in a nice home, buys some of the lovely gadgets like the Apple Watch, and you can afford it, and you can meet your financial goals, you're probably someone who's financially secure.

[00:05:45.170] - Darshan DoshiThe last and the most important stage being financially free. This is the point where all your expenses, all your current lifestyle and future lifestyle is taken care of through the investments that you already have in place and the money that you have in the bank. You don't have to work if you don't want to. You can focus on what matters to you the most, that is, things that you love to do the most. And that, according to me, is the best way to become financially free. It gives you optionality, the choice to do what you want to do.

[00:06:22.530] - Darshan DoshiThe last part of this video. What does financial freedom get you? What is the benefit of working towards becoming financially free? I think there are two parts to this. The first part is peace of mind. Here's the situation. Imagine you have a home loan. You're working at a job and you are barely making the ends meet and pandemic hits you. Because of the pandemic, the company lets you go. They fire you from your job. Now you don't have an emergency fund in place. Therefore the home loan adds a lot of stress to you and you're not able to sleep peacefully. This has happened with a lot of people and it's not a good position to be in on the other side. Imagine you did lose a job. You did have a home loan, but you had an emergency fund for about twelve to 18 months. So you could take care of the EMIs. You could look for a job over the next six months and it would still be a tough situation, but not as much stress as the first situation. So what financial freedom brings you, or the approach towards working towards financial freedom brings you is peace of mind. The second part is optionality. You get to do all the things that you want to do. Imagine you love to travel around the world. Wouldn't it be nice that financial freedom lets you travel around the world, explore new cultures? Maybe you like Indian classical singing. You've worked the last 20 years of your life trying to become financially free and now you want to pick up that hobby of yours, which you did when you were a child. Financial freedom allows you to spend a major chunk of your week practicing Indian classical singing. Maybe you'll get a degree in that too. You never know, you could pursue hobbies. Maybe you want to retire. Maybe you don't want to retire, right? Even if you don't want to retire, you can take up jobs, part time jobs, interests, side projects so that you can pursue and be happy with what you are doing. That's what financial freedom gets you.

[00:08:32.670] - Darshan DoshiSo I hope this video has brought a good understanding of what financial freedom really is and what benefit you can get by becoming financially free. I've tried to decode things like what are the three stages of personal finance? How do you define financial freedom defined by people around the world and how do I define it? I've given you some numbers around financial freedom as well, and I've given you some examples around what are the benefits of becoming financially free. Now, all of this was covered in a short span, but what really it comes down to is you. Is financial freedom important to you? Drop a comment, share some thoughts, share your own experiences. If you have any questions about financial freedom, maybe you are someone who does not believe in financial freedom. I'm very curious to hear, listen, discuss with you. So please pop in a comment. If you've enjoyed this video, please subscribe to this channel. Share it with your loved ones, people who you care about, who you want them to become financially free. In addition to this, I also run a LinkedIn newsletter where I write all things about financial freedom. It goes out every Friday. You can take a look at my LinkedIn account. Thanks a lot for listening. I look forward to hearing from you.

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Financial Freedom: How do people define it? August 21, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments Financial freedom is an art, hence everyone has their own way of defining the goal. How do people look at financial freedom? How do we look at financial freedom? Watch this podcast with Darshan Doshi exclusively on DASAR streaming now.

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Personal Finance: How Should Women Look at Investing | Swatantra August 12, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments https://youtu.be/m-JtG7HDlGU Transcript [00:00:00.310] – Avanti Doshi Welcome to Swatantra. In this podcast, we are going to go deep into personal finance for women. We’re going to try and decode everything that there is on how women can get on top of their finances, managing money, investing their money and becoming finance financially independent. So I’m...

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https://youtu.be/m-JtG7HDlGUTranscript [00:00:00.310] - Avanti DoshiWelcome to Swatantra. In this podcast, we are going to go deep into personal finance for women. We're going to try and decode everything that there is on how women can get on top of their finances, managing money, investing their money and becoming finance financially independent. So I'm going to welcome our partner, my partner, Avanti Doshi. Avanti Doshi has a very interesting background. She comes from the healthcare industry as a dentist and has now transitioned into managing personal finances and the investment world. So before we get started on talking about why financial independence is important for women, Avanti, maybe a quick overview of who you are. And I'm kind of very curious how you went from becoming a dentist or being a dentist to now joining the investment world.

[00:01:04.880] - Avanti DoshiHello everybody. I'm Dr. Avanti Doshi. I am actually a dentist by qualification, but since last few years I am in this world of finance and financial planning. The transition actually happened when I had my second child. I wanted a little more flexible hours because I was not able to focus on full-time working. So that is how I transitioned into this new world of finance and which I feel is very important for women. Because as women, we are not really taught anything about finance. And we have been told that this is a very complicated world and it is a man's field. Only your father or your brother or your spouse can take decision. But after being in this field for so many years, I feel that as a woman, you can actually be actively involved in your own finances.

[00:01:55.240] - Darshan DoshiYeah, so it's very interesting you say that last part. I'm going to broaden that a little bit. In my experience, we are anyway not taught about personal finances and how to beyond earning income through job. There's not a lot of emphasis laid on managing personal finances, which I think we want to focus on and that is why we have started Swatantra-Simplifying Investing, right? We are extending that to women where the problem is even more acute. The problem is even more exaggerated, if I may say that. A quick stat. I was reading this article in which they've done a research around Indian women. Only 18% of Indian women are actually in the workforce as compared to men, which are three times. So the first challenge is how many women are at the workforce. And we are one of the lowest as a country in the world. Now it becomes even more problematic, or a challenge that as a society we must face is out of these 18% women, only 70% women are cognizant and on top of their personal finances. Now you can say, well, 70% women are actually taking control of their own money. That should be a good thing, right? But to what extent and what are they doing about it is something that I'm curious to learn from you. So my first question to you I'm completely into financial independence. And so why is financial independence important for women even though when they may be well off? What I mean by well off is they could be at a job, they could be earning money or they could be housewives taking well care of, from a personal finance perspective, at home. Now these are the realities of our society. So if that is the case where they are well off, why should they think about being financially independent?

[00:03:42.450] - Avanti DoshiThe Indian economy is evolving and the next generation is also doing so well. Everybody is really able to manage their own finances and women are managing businesses as well as homes. They are actually balancing and trying to balance each aspect of their life. And if you see even our financial financial minister of India is also a women this time. So why should women be left behind? They should not actually think that it is a man's world to manage the finances. It is very much their own thing. And this is one important thing which this COVID pandemic has taught us. So many men have lost their jobs or they got salary cuts or they will lose their lives. So many close friends have lost their husbands in this pandemic and suddenly they were faced with this huge challenge that now what am I going to do? As a woman she was completely lost as to now what is going to be her next decision for herself, for her children, if she has any, for the husband's parents also. So I feel this pandemic has really broadened the perspective and it has opened everybody's eyes to accept this challenge of managing their own personal finances, is what I feel. So like he said, even if the woman is well off, but in case of crisis, she should be well aware about her finances, is what I feel.

[00:05:02.970] - Darshan DoshiYeah, I think you touched a nerve actually. COVID exposed so many vulnerabilities in families, in individuals and in the society. I think one thing COVID has exposed is you don't know what's going to happen and living a long life is not a surety exactly. There are a lot of uncertainties in place, the worst being death. And death kind of helps you keep the most important thing at the forefront. And so the number one need for women to get on top of their personal finances is even though you might have a spouse or a father or a brother who might be helping you with managing your money, you should be able to do it independently. In the same research that I was reading, there are two things that come out to me. One was at the age of 35, women who are below the age of 35 are focused more on increasing income. They just want to set financial goals. Their financial goal itself is to increase income. And women above 35 are kind of said post COVID, let's get an emergency fund in place so that I get at least a year or a two year breathing space to get everything sorted right. So that, I thought was very important. I'm going to continue asking you on this question, what is financial independence for a woman? You've explained why it is important, but what is it? What does it really mean on a day to day or a year to year basis?

[00:06:32.550] - Avanti DoshiSee, there are some phases in women's life two important, that come to my mind is that when the woman is going to get married and the second phase is when she has children. This is the time when her income is actually going to dip. This is the time when she needs this emergency fund for herself, not just for the entire family. She may have a husband who's earning at that time, but to have that corpus for herself is very important. So after marriage, you have a certain amount of uncertainty whether you may be shifting to a different city, you may be taking a break from your job for a few months. So what I feel is that even if you're earning enough, you've never saved it or you've not invested it into anything. So as soon as the woman enters the workforce, not just getting that money, but actually investing it, is very important. From her first paycheck, she should start investing it in a financial instrument, which currently which is one of the safest and easiest right now, is what is commonly known as very famous called SIP- Systematic Investment Planning in the mutual fund. Mutual fund is basically a professional fund which is managed by professionals and it is one of the safest thing that you can do. So from her first paycheck, she should start investing it. So generally, a woman will start earning at about 24 years of age and by the time she gets married, it is about 26-27. So she has that two years in hand where she can start with something as basic as Rs 5000. And if she puts it in a good fund with a good return, she will have about two to three lakh rupees in her kitty, which she can use in this period of uncertainty post marriage. And the second phase which comes is when she has her children. She has her children and that is the time she definitely doesn't want to be dependent on her spouse because there's already so much of emotional and hormonal changes happening to her that you don't want to be in financial crisis on top of that. So you generally have children at about 28 or 29. So again, she has about three, four years. And if she starts with basic Rs 5000 to Rs 10,000 depending on her salary, she will definitely have some corpus ready with her. Mentally, she knows that she has a fund ready and it is invested. So she has a buffer about of six months to choose what she wants to do after she has her kids.

[00:09:03.540] - Darshan DoshiBrilliant. We'll go deeper into that. But before we go there, I know when you transition from being a dentist into the investment world, you did your own research around personal finance for women. I'm curious to understand what this research was. What did you find out? What were the things that you thought were wow, I could never imagine the problem was such a big problem or this is actually a good thing that's come out right, positive or negative. So just curious to understand what was this research, what was the outcome, what was the insight that you got out of this?

[00:09:38.130] - Avanti DoshiIn your graduation level you are never taught about management at all. You are just focusing on the subjects that you are learning. Something like in dentistry we are not really taught how to manage anything, not just money. So when I first transitioned into this, the first thing I did is that you have to plunge into it, you have to invest yourself, just Google the top schemes, just take the plunge it's like swimming, just dive into the pool and that is the only way you can learn swimming. Similarly investment journey you can only take when you invest your own money that is the time when you actually start looking at the market. So I just chose the top fund that time I think it was the HDFC or top 100 fund that was the most popular that time so I started a basic SIP of Rs 1500 that time and then once I was invested in the fund, I opened the portfolio, I knew what all stocks HDFC top hundred fund is investing in and that is how I started looking at it. Each stock then every day I used to follow only those stocks so that is what you should do and after that SIP that I started, I could actually buy the engagement ring so I didn't really have to depend on my mother to buy it so that was a big achievement so with a small Rs 1500 I could just buy a diamond ring so that's like a huge thing. So the first thing is that you just Google the best scheme, follow that scheme every day, just read what all stocks that scheme is invested in and that is how you're going to learn about it just plunge into the market.

[00:11:19.230] - Darshan DoshiBrilliant.

[00:11:19.810] - Avanti DoshiSo recently I conducted an online survey in the middle of this pandemic in which I wanted to study the impact of gender on the decision on financial planning decision that which gender would actually take this decision. So I got very interesting stats. About 40% women said that they have actually penned down their financial goals and on asking this question, 26% said they will think about it in the future that they will think and jot down their financial goals. About 53% women are actually open to taking help of a financial planner as against only 35% men said that they would actually take help from a financial planner. And on asking this question, almost 26 women said that they will also think about taking help from a financial planner. So that's about 75% women who are ready to take help of a financial planner. That means they do have an inclination to get in control of their finances. And there was another survey which was done by script box which also said that during this pandemic about 70% women have said that they actually researched and Googled about financial planning, about personal finances. So that's also a big step.

[00:12:37.160] - Darshan DoshiI think it's a great step forward and not at all surprised by the stat about men and their ego in terms of reaching out for help. That's just on a lighter note, I'm sure there are enough men as well who know what help they need. Now let's switch gears a little bit and get into how part of it, we've covered the why, now let's get onto the how part of it. Women or men irrespective, how does a person get on top of their personal finances to get on top of it and have control over their money? What would you say?

[00:13:12.540] - Avanti DoshiSee the traditional way of investing so far was looking at the benchmarks like Sensex on Nifty50 but your personal financial life is not going to be dependent on the market. If market says go for this year, my goal placed in that year itself, that's not going to happen. So when I took this transition or when I changed my profession, I didn't really bother whether the market was in bull run or it is doing too well. I first focused on my own personal goals. We as a family wanted to invest towards our goal. So we actually sat and jotted them down that what are we as a family investing for? What is our time frame for those goals, how important those goals are for us as a family and how much is our time frame, how much time period do we have to actually achieve them rather than focusing on the market. So in this way we know how much risk we can take, what returns we want. That was very important. And how long is my sabbatical going to be? I mean if it's going to be little extended I need more emergency corpus. So in that way we can invest in that way.

[00:14:29.860] - Darshan DoshiRight. So this is good. Okay, one is kind of understanding how do I get on top of my finances, know what your goals are. Now let's go down that road a little bit. What are typically the financial goals and can you make it specific for women?

[00:14:46.150] - Avanti DoshiSo even in my survey I actually asked them what goals they want to plan for. And again a very interesting finding I got that many people actually want to plan for vacations. Emergency fund is something which I thought would be their priority or retirement. But about 50% said that they do want to plan for a yearly vacation. So people have varied goals. So let me just quickly jot down the goals that you can actually plan for. Emergency fund is the first one which was actually ignored, that they don't even know what is emergency fund. So basically emergency fund is something you need to have in a very short while you'd be able to get that money in a liquid fund or something which is very liquid. So we recommend about three to six months of your monthly income rather than expense. Generally people say that you should have three to six months of your expense. But we feel that you should have three to six months of your income in a liquid fund depending on your lifestyle. Okay, yeah. So this is something, first of all we plan for is emergency fund. The second one is your children's education. That is very important because the education inflation is really high. Every year there is about 11% rise in the fees. So by the time they reach the undergrad level, it's going to be tremendous. So you can actually plan for even if you're just married and you don't have kids. There are many people who have come across that they have actually planned for even before they have kids. So that's something which is really good and which you should really think about it. The next thing is children's marriage is something even if it is very far off, you can plan for and also I said like early vacations, you can plan for it. And retirement is something which again is ignored in India because it is very long, it's a little far away. So they don't really think, they say that okay, we are investing EPS, PPF, we are doing MPs, but they are not actively they don't know how much they want as a retirement corpus. And another trend that we are seeing these days is early retirement. The people want to retire early. So they want to actually some there is another set of people who actually want to plan for retirement only because they want to retire early. So when we ask them about this, they say we don't want to retire as in retire, but we just want to retire from an active nine to five job. So they are planning this small investment corpus which they will need in that transition phase when they want to go from an active nine to five job to a consultancy or a freelancing thing. So they want to actually plan for this.

[00:17:27.750] - Darshan DoshiBrilliant. So those are some financial goals and you need to have a number against it. You need to start investing based on those financial goals. Your investment vehicle needs to be different based on your financial goal, whether it's short term, immediate, long term. You made a very interesting point around emergency fund. About 33% of people, men and women, kind of give research in india, which said post pandemic, they've actually put emergency fund as one of the top priorities or the top financial goals. Now, whether that's three months, six months, twelve months, it's different. But emergency fund is what it says. Emergency. You don't know what life is going to throw at. You might get fired from a job, you might lose a close relative. Anything could happen. And so at that point of time, you don't want to do things because you need to earn money. You want to ease the pressure off a little bit. And on the other end of the spectrum is retirement or children's wedding. That's so far off. But that's very typical and heavy cultural. Coming out of India. You wouldn't see an American typically think about it this way. So if we live in India and we are Indian, then we need to create financial goals based on who we are, rather than copy paste the American or European method to the Indian lifestyle. Right? It shouldn't be that way. Now, let's go one step deeper in this. Okay, my next question to you, Avanti, is on a day to day basis, what should one do? What are the habits, what are the routines that can help connect the dots between here's, my financial goal or yours, where I want to be financially independent. But what are the things that I need to what are the building blocks that I need to do today or every day or every week? Can you just walk us through that?

[00:19:24.270] - Avanti DoshiYeah. So in older times, women, everybody used to actually write down their expenses and their income, which is not so commonly seen these days. So what I feel is that first you should write down your monthly income. By income, I just don't mean salary. There are other ways also that you are earning that in that month by rental income, by interest, by dividends that you're going to get for that month. So make sure you jot it down. The second thing is expenses. How much are you spending, how much is your necessity and how much is your discretionary expense. So start by doing this daily, every day. Please note it down. And the third thing that you should know is your liability. You should know what kind of loans that you have taken and how much part of your salary is going in your EMIs. Many women are lost as to how much the loan has been taken by their husband. By loan, I don't mean just housing loan. There is car loan, there is credit card loan, there is personal loan. There are so many loans which are taken and which the wives are maybe not aware of.

[00:20:29.140] - Darshan DoshiSo getting on top of that is very important, especially when you have a partner who you are living with. But understanding and getting transparency from your partner on what are the liabilities, because ultimately it is going to come at your doorstep.

[00:20:43.840] - Avanti DoshiExactly. So knowing about your liabilities also lead us to a very important point is does your spouse have a good insurance? It is not like the olden times where your relative is just coming to you and saying I've just got into the insurance business and I want to just take an insurance policy. That is not how it works anymore. Insurance is a very personalized thing. It has to be as per your requirement. So this whole exercise that we did of jotting down the goals, doing the cash flows and knowing your liabilities, all this will give you your insurance need. So you have to know how much loan is left and based on that your insurance can be planned. It is no longer random, it is extremely personal. Another very important thing in insurance planning is the dependency. For a time period there is only a single earning member, the dependency on his salary is more. And plus on top of that, if you have some liabilities then it gets even more. So in insurance planning you also see how much the family is depending on the salary of that one person. So that also you need to plan for.

[00:21:55.430] - Darshan DoshiAbsolutely.

[00:21:55.970] - Avanti DoshiAnother one thing that women are completely unaware or partially unaware is the taxes. How much tax are you paying for that year? They find it is extremely complicated and we have actually not been taught about it at all and no discussion happens over it. And Indian taxes system has become so simplified now. On the website you will find so many sources which you can read on after every budget, each bank, each insurance company publishes its own tax reckoners. So just get hold of them, just start reading them. And another simple thing you can do is that ask your husband for the previous year's ITR returns. It's like a one big PDF which the government sends you. Even if you just go through that PDF you will gain so much knowledge about your finances for the previous year, where you have invested, how much you've invested, how much is the salary, how much is your liability, how much?

[00:22:51.650] - Darshan DoshiI think on that a good practice is really catch hold of your husband or brother or father or your chartered accountant and just say walk me through, I didn't understand this. You know that one hour can be your own education on what is taxation and how it works. You do that over two, three times, over two, three years, you're going to be on top of what it is and how simple it is. And it's not really does not need to be complicated. And this black box unknown the thing we have to fear a lot about. So I think you raise a very important point around taxes but also understanding at what areas are sitting down with your Chartered Accountant because you're trying to get on top of your personal finances and there are only two things that are certain death and taxes. So if you are earning money or you want to get on top of your personal finances, you can't turn over an eye or a leaf over taxes. You have to get on top of it. All right, so we come at the last part of our podcast, Avanti. This has been fantastic when it comes to investing, managing personal finance. Now you can't have a conversation of personal finance without talking about financial advisors. You've talked about going to your chartered accountant and figuring out taxes. But when and how should women engage with financial advisors? Should it be with their partners husbands or should it be independently? How should they go about it?

[00:24:20.130] - Avanti DoshiWhat I have seen is that when you are planning during a financial planning exercise, it is always better that the couple comes and meets the financial planner. You have to go with your spouse or your father or your brother and get to know about who is investing or who is handling your money. That is very important. So in case of any unforeseen circumstances, you know who's your point of contact. So what I have seen is that usually the financial planning exercises that I give an Excel sheet which they fill about all this cash flow, what we spoke about right now. And when I have women on board in that meeting, it just gets concluded in that one shot. Because they know their financial, they have their goals in their mind. We just think that they don't know or they are unaware, but they just know what goals they want to plan for, which was also seen in my survey. So the meeting gets done very faster because as women, they are very goal oriented, they're very detailed oriented. They have the figures, they know what they want to plan for. It's just that they are not being given the opportunity. So in the financial planning meeting, it's always better that a couple comes in and discusses because it's after all, they are planning for the family. So it's always better that they plan it together.

[00:25:37.770] - Darshan DoshiSo this has been an awesome podcast. What we kind of say is get on top of your money. You should be in complete control of your money. You can't outsource it, right? We want to simplify investing and investing financial independence. This is important for individuals, whether you are a man, woman or as a couple, as a family, you just need to get your finances in order. And that's why we've launched this podcast series. What questions do you have? Are you managing your own money? Are you investing your own money? Do you have any questions? Have you kind of got stuck somewhere? Just put that in comment and we'll bring a podcast or the relevant video, topic, conversation expert for you. Lastly, make sure you subscribe to this YouTube channel. Like it, share it, give us some feedback, send us some love our way as well. We're doing this for you. And I'd love to hear from you. Until the next time. Thanks.

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https://youtu.be/6l8orIbM4V4 Transcript [00:00:15.370] - Darshan Doshi

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Swatantra. This is a podcast series where we simplify investing. This is a podcast co-branded by Dasar and Proinvest Nirmiti. You know, the last time we did a sector deep down analysis with Rushabh, and today we are going to do another one with him on banking and financial sector. So, Rushabh, welcome. We're going to cover, again a sector analysis with you today. I have some big data points before I kind of ask you a question, and that is, India, almost 40% of the Indian population, that is almost about 400 to 500 million people, according to the World Bank, do not have sufficient access to finances or access to capital. And the government of India has been focusing, the central government has been focusing on financial inclusion for a very long time. But it looks like we are still further away. What financial inclusion does is it brings more rounded holistic, economic development, economic growth, and it really uplifts the poor. According to another report, 20% of India's population lives below poverty. That's over 200 million people. I mean, these numbers are just mind-boggling. Financial inclusion sounds great. A lot of people, a lot of PR has been talking about it, but really it just comes down to banking and financial sector. So can you just set the context, the macro view of what is this like? How big is the banking and financial sector? [00:01:55.190] - Rushabh Doshi

Yeah, so let's just take a step back. So from an investor point of view, if you take banking and financial services, it's the largest part in the Nifty 50. It accounts for around 38% of weight in the Nifty 50. So it's an important aspect for an investor if he's investing through an ETF from direct equity or from a mutual fund. It's a big sector. And you know what I like about it is that it's well regulated. So everything is organized. We have many industries where there's unorganized or organized, but in this sector, everything is organized and well regulated. And as you just said, we are under-penetrated. So if we take mortgages, which is a big part of banking, in developed countries, it's around 80%. In USA is around 52%. In India, it's just around 10% to 15%. So there's a lot of room there left for growth if we take household leverage to GDP even there, India is almost at the lower quarter, where we are just around 19%. And certain developed countries have even cost 110%. So there's a long way to go in this industry. And as you said, there's a lot of need. And at the end of the day, what I believe is that you take whichever industry, banking is the backbone for that industry, and it drives economics and it actually magnifies gains or whatever could happen in ten years. Banking and easy access to credit makes it possible to do that journey in just five years.

[00:03:37.430] - Darshan Doshi

So another data point is around the Pandemic. Just before the Pandemic, there were a lot of reports around India touching $5 trillion economy by 2025. The updated same research report says that India is likely to now become a $5 trillion economy by 2027. Now, what I find is whether it's 2025, 2027 or 2030, I think it doesn't matter very much because we are almost talking about a 30 or 40% growth in our total GDP economic activity, which means there is money to be made. And if there is a bigger pie, then everybody who's living in it gets a bigger piece of the pie. And so it's natural flow of money going down to the masses. And those numbers are scary. The numbers that you shared right. Are very scary. I wish there was a way for us to put a nitro boost on this. But let's take one step back. Let's go into the history of banking. So what is the history of banking, really?

[00:04:43.090] - Rushabh Doshi

So it all started in Italy. So what used to happen, like traders used to come with their ships to trade, but at that time, the problem was that they had different currencies. So each trader then had to stock seven to eight different currencies and coins. So near the ports, these guys used to sit on benches. So in Italy, it used to be called Banco. And that time they realized that some institutions can handle this problem and make currency transactions much easier. So this is where the journey started, and that's how we got the term banking.

[00:05:17.700] - Darshan Doshi

Brilliant. I did not know that. There's another person whose online course I'm taking. Her name is Preethi Kasireddy, and she's a big crypto nerd. And what she does is she's broken down into how currencies came into existence. Right from early ages till the last 200, 300 years, how the US banking came into the picture, and what is cryptocurrency actually trying to solve, right? So whether or not you follow bitcoin, ethereum, whether you believe it or not, I think that's a really great course which just kind of helps us understand the origins of banking and currencies. All right, we understand this is a big problem or a big opportunity, the way you want to look at it in India. But help me understand and simplify investing. We are trying to simplify investing at Swatantra. What is banking sector really made up of? How does it work? Where is the money to be made? How does lending work and who gets what? Can you just break it down and simplify it for us?

[00:06:28.430] - Rushabh Doshi

So my understanding is a bit different. So I look at banking. According to me, the banking sector is, at the end of the day, a commodity business. So it might sound funny or different in the first look, but that's just what makes a commodity business successful, like the big oil companies or steel companies. The first thing is scale. They need massive scale such that their fixed costs remain very low as a percentage of the business and the second one is they have to be the lowest cost producer of whatever they are producing. So in banking, if we look at the big banks which have globally or in India, like HDFC or SBI, they have massive scale and they are able to leverage that scale and hence they are successful. And the second thing is that these guys have access to the lowest cost of funds. So for SBI, the cost of funds is something between 3-3.5%. For HDFC bank is near about 4%. So you know, this is the reason why big banks can easily make a lot of money and this is the same reason why small banks or smaller NBFCs struggle a lot in their initial 5-10 years of this business.

[00:07:41.410] - Darshan Doshi

So that is good. All right one of the things that I worked at Reliance Industries for a couple of years and this was around when Jio was being launched and Reliance was able to raise just over 20 odd billion dollars and their cost of capital was a few percentage points higher than what you mentioned and that's because Reliance has a better than sovereign rating as a private company. I think it's the only company that has a better than sovereign rating in India. Which means India may default, but Reliance will not default and I find that tremendously fascinating and what I hear from you is the possibility or likelihood that an SBI or an HDFC would fail is minimal and therefore they are able to command that scale and that cost of capital at a very low percentage point and then lend it. But that is one part of them raising that money at whatever rate you've mentioned. What about lending? How do they make money?

[00:08:47.980] - Rushabh Doshi

Yeah, so let's come to the basics. Let's say suppose I want to lend 100 crores so I'll set up maybe a small institution and I'll find people to lend so let's say I lend at 8%, then I have costs which I have to pay and at the end of the day if I lend at 8% I just make 2% then what would I think? That if I kept my same 100 crores in the bank FD I would have earned higher. So how banking improved? Or what is the right way is that you need to leverage? So if I have 100 crores, I need to borrow, let's say 700 crores and then I'll have a leverage ratio debt to equity of 7:1. So I'll be levered seven times and now then I'll lend 800 crores and now if I make the same 2% which we assumed in the first case, I'll make 2% on 800 crores I'll pay some interest on the 700 which I borrowed. Let's say I pay it at 6% but my cost would be same, which would be fixed in nature. So I'll end up making 2% on 800. So my return on equity, which is the 100 crores I have put now, it would be 16%. So if you just take a step back and look what lending does, it magnifies your returns. So earlier we used to make 2%, but with the eight times leverage, now we are making 16% return on equity, which is a respectable number and which is what an investor should look at. Good NBFCs like Bajaj Finance makes more than 20-21% and certain NBFCs like SBI cards make an ROI of 30%. So this is where the magic works. But leverage is a double edge sword. If you use it properly, you make killing while making a return. But if you don't use it properly, you cut yourself.

[00:10:45.230] - Darshan Doshi

Yeah, I think we saw that in 2008 crisis, right? I think the housing crisis that took place, we saw what happened. Even in 2020, I think even if you take a look at the real estate or the local shops, restaurants that you might have seen in any place that you live in, any city that you live in, a lot of hands have changed of the owners of these restaurant or cafes because of debt and unable to service that debt due to pandemic in 2020 and 2021. I think we've seen quite a lot of the downside of debt. One interesting point I was reading while I was researching the banking and financial sector was that India traditionally is the interest rate to growth rate differential has always been positive. In a sense it is a norm and not an exception that our growth rate is higher than the interest rate. And so maybe some thoughts around because you talked about debt. How are you thinking about it from the point of view of an HDFC or a Bajaj to be able to deliver good returns over a 10-year, 20 or 30 years? Any stats around historical performances of such companies?

[00:12:09.260] - Rushabh Doshi

Yeah, so like you mentioned, two of the best companies in the respective sector. So if you take HDFC Bank, they have been able to deliver 20% continuous growth in AUM revenue. And since a very long time, at least even since I've been in this industry, I've been seeing that 20% is there every time. If you take Bajaj Finance, they've been able to do 30-32% since they decided to they wanted to focus on the financial NBFC of their corporate also. So they've been doing quite well. Just what I like, like Sanjiv Bajaj, who heads Bajaj Finance, this thought process about lending is very different to what all the other people or what we think. So when he says when I give a Rs 100 loan and let's say I charge 20% and then if we break it into Rs 10 installments in each month for one year. He says that my profit is in the last two months but when we see or when the things which you mentioned about housing finance companies going busted. What they focused was on lending very aggressively and they used to show book profits. But these profits are not actually there because after a certain time all these loans went back and they had to be written off. So in this business it's very easy to give loan, if you just stand and just say that I'm giving money, return it to me, everyone will put a line there and there'd be many borrowers. But collecting money is the most important and difficult part of this industry.

[00:13:49.170] - Darshan Doshi

Rushabh, you've kind of covered a little bit on the origins of the currency, the banking sector, the trends. Now let's get into the details of banks versus NBFCs, the non-banking financial companies, right? And the regulation has come along the way over the last three, four years. So maybe what you can do is help me understand and just break down banks versus NBFCs, what's really going on.

[00:14:20.000] - Rushabh Doshi

So banks are full fledged banking activities. They carry out activities across the spectrum. So right from lending to accepting deposits, doing forex transactions and all of the not so sexy part of the business, everything is carried out for them. And there are separate types of banks. In India we have universal banks which can do everything. So these are HDFC, SBI, then we have SFBs, which are small finance banks which their focus is more on Tier-II, Tier-III city needs like something like microfinance lending. So they don't focus on big-ticket corporate loans and all. And then we have Payments Bank, so something like a Paytm payments bank, Airtel Payments Bank, whose core job is to help and build better payment products and so on. And in NBFCs there's a wide range of NBFCs. So right, from let's say HDFC, which is a housing finance company, their job is to focus on just pure mortgages and certain developer related loans. Then we have auto loans. So many people think auto loans has to do with passenger vehicles, but the real part of the pie in the auto books is the commercial vehicles or commercial buses and all. So this is a very big market and Chola Finance is a leader here, a Pan India player. And apart from that we have Shriram Transport and all. And then there are also a couple of Gold loan companies, Muthut, Mannapuram. So this is also actually a good business since it's secured. So we have this. And also there are certain interesting public sector NBFCs. These are like semi or pseudo government arms of financing. So we have PFC, which is a Power Finance Corporation, REC, which is Rural Electrification Limited and even IRFC, which help in improving the infrastructure of the Indian railways. And when we look at the bottom part of the bottom tier, we have microfinance institutions whose core job is to provide unsecured loans and to people who don't have easy access to credit or who don't have a credit history. So actually, if you look at in banking, you have to take the entire bank. You can't choose which business you want, but in NBFCs, as an investor, you can choose which part of the sector you want to play. If you want to play auto or even SBI cards, which is just focused on, let's say, credit cards. And then you have Bajaj Finance, who's majorly into consumer electronics. All your EMIs and personal loans, they are used into that.

[00:17:10.990] - Darshan Doshi

So I'm also pretty active in the startup ecosystem. And the fintech startups have got a lot of money. The first wave of it was back in 2014 and 2015, where a lot of startups in this fintech space came up, got some good traction, then it went through a bit of a trough in 2017-18, demonetization happened, and then again, there is a resurgence where there's better growth of many fintech startups, and many of them are NBFCs. Of course, there's a huge element of technology in it, but there's a huge element of vertical play, like you said. So it can be sector focused, it can be personal loans, it can be consumer electronics. There are even payday loans that are being provided by companies like Early Salary. Right? So that's good. One point that you mentioned was making available access to capital to small and medium scale businesses. So here's another stat. According to World Bank, almost, and a recent survey by Trade India, 83% of small and medium scale businesses in India who have revenues between 5 crore to 50 crore said they don't have access to capital, sufficient access to capital. And this is a survey done last year. In the last twelve months, the World Bank says almost all the micro, small, medium enterprises in India are facing the number one challenge for them is access to finance, access to capital. And so this is a massive, massive challenge, right? Which for me, if you flip around as an investor investing in banking and financial sector companies, this is a big opportunity because then the upside is huge. The second part of that report in the World Bank report was in India, even a small growth in infrastructure over the next three to five years, the rough analogy that was used for every 1% growth in infrastructure in India equals 2% growth in the economy of India. Now, that is massive. Again, I tried to connect it back to the $5 trillion economy that we want to do, but who's going to do this? The MSMEs are going to do it, and the banks and the financial sector is going to help it. So now that the context is said of how much money there is to be made, as an investor, as a fund manager, what do you like about this sector? And why should you or anybody else put money in companies operating in this sector.

[00:20:14.970] - Rushabh Doshi

So at Proinvest Nirmiti, when we analyze companies, we focus a lot on something called reinvestment rate. So what it tells us, let's say if I make 100 crore this year, how much am I able to invest for growth in the future years? So what we've seen that not a lot of companies can even invest 30% of that. So they either store it on their balance sheet or they pay it out as dividends or buybacks. But in banking, we've seen companies who can reinvest either 100% or even more than 120%. So this can drive growth in a huge way going ahead. So what happens is, if you are growing at 20%, and if you have a ROI of 20%, you don't need to raise capital. Your growth, which you have to do through disbursement, is matched by what you make as profits. But now, if your ROI is 20%, and if you are making or if you're growing by 35%, which is in the case of banks like AU Small Finance banks, or NBFCs, like Bajas Finance, they have to do a capital raise every three, four years. And these companies, like Bajas Finance, they always used to do a capital raise at very good valuation. So this ensured minimum capital dilution, which was very good for the existing investors. And this could help them accelerate their growth each and every year, and thereby generating a lot of money. So now let's compare this reinvestment concept to, let's say, real estate. Growing there is very difficult. There's also a thing called building a book. So in bank, what you do is you have an AUM and you charge interest on that AUM. So let's say if you have 100K in housing, you originate a loan of 100 crore in the first year. Then you keep on charging interest every month through EMI. The next year. If you want to grow by 20%, your 100 crore could have gone down to 90 crore, because people might have paid their principal back. You just need to originate 30 crore worth of loan and you get a 20% growth. But in real estate, if you sell thousand flats in the first year, you have to build 1st 1000 flats, sell them, build 200 more flats and sell them to achieve 20% growth. So it's like running on a treadmill for these companies. It's very difficult to go ahead. And what I've seen a similar concept is that many SaaS companies, they have the same method, it's a different thing. But what they have is a subscription as a service part, where they bill you each month. And whenever a new customer is added, growth accelerates. So they don't have to start from scratch, like licensing companies. So this is the same concept there. And as I mentioned, why I like to invest here is firstly, it's well regulated. The bigger you are, it's more of a responsibility of the regulator to ensure that you are functioning properly. So the too big to fail concept is very imminent here.

[00:23:29.410] - Darshan Doshi

Yeah, but give me some numbers, right? Give me some numbers in terms of returns, either by HDFC or SBI or any company that you might have researched over the last decade or two decades, or three decades, how much money have they made? Suppose I invested Rs 10,000 or a lakh of rupees in any of these companies, how much would I have made? Any rough numbers that you have. [00:23:56.030] - Rushabh Doshi So in the last 15 years, I guess HDFC bank has consistently since they've grown at 20%. Their share prices also compounded at 20%. Bajaj Finance, whenever they started to focus on the consumer business, they've delivered CAGR of more than 40-42%. So 42% is like your money doubles every two years. So that is the amount of wealth creation which they have done for the investment.

[00:24:25.070] - Darshan Doshi

Brilliant. So there's lots of money to be made on an individual level. And HDFC, those who hold HDFC shares today, they tell me this has been their best or majority of their returns have come from HDFC shares in their portfolio. Compared to everything else put together versus HDFC, and HDFC still stands out. That's a great business to be in and it can only get bigger. Let's get into the heart of this sector and how money can be made or money can be lost. So I think first start with what else could possibly go wrong when you are investing in this sector where there is a lot of money at stake, there is a lot of regulation at stake. And while regulators are there to protect minority investors, the shareholders, not necessarily everything falls in place because not every scenario can be taken care of. So can you give a few examples where it has gone wrong from an investment standpoint in the banking and financial sector?

[00:25:33.850] - Rushabh Doshi

So what can go wrong? So if you just think of the banking business, you might wonder that it's a foolish business. You lend, you get 9%, but if you lose, you lose everything. So in terms of pure mathematics, it doesn't sound quite lucrative, but those are the risks. So if you don't lend properly, you can lose everything. And it's happened to many banks who chase growth very aggressively. This is a big issue there. And also what I think most of these mistakes have also been associated with many times, fraud. So if a promoter wants to defraud an existing company, first to defraud, they need a revenue and then they can siphon off money. But in the banking business, to defraud a company or investors, it's very easy because all you need to do is raise deposits and then siphon of that money. So the risk in these businesses are very high. And apart from that, what I've seen is that the banking business globally, if anything happens, like the slippages, can be very fast and the shockwaves can be very severe. So in 2008, I remember that after Lehman went bankrupt, or when they were at the peak of everything was coming out, that they were not managing everything properly at Lehman in India, rumors started floating that ICICI Bank had some exposure to Lehman's European accounts. So this bank almost raised a bank run. I remember that Infosys founder Narayana Murthy, he had 1000 crore deposits in ICICI bank. He moved that immediately to SBI. And in an unprecedented manner, RBI had to come out with a disclosure saying that ICICI bank has enough liquidity to manage their day to day activities. So these activities can be all these things can be very disruptive if anything goes wrong. And because of their leverage, when they are hit, they're hit very hard. And many businesses, what I've seen is that, first of all, in order to compete with the big banks, you have to do something different. Why? Because you don't have the cost of borrowing backing you. So all these small banks or microfinance institutions, they borrowed 11%, 12%. So they can't go and lend to the Tier-I borrowers, like, let's say, Tata Steel, and all because Tata Steel itself borrow at 6.5%. So if you're borrowing at 10-12%, then you have to lend it at 20%. And when you lend at 20%, the risks, the risks are extremely high and you end up making a lot of mistakes. And there is where all your calculations also go for a toss. So that is why what we've seen is that it's better for investors to stick with businesses which have a track record of delivering, which have access to low cost points, and which have access to high quality customers who they can lend to. So this is what we've seen works very well in this industry.

[00:29:00.430] - Darshan Doshi

So one of the due diligence parameters as an investor is to see the scale of the banks or the companies that are operating in this sector. Take a look at their track record and a bunch of things. Now you kind of given an overview of what could go wrong, but can you give an overview of now I'm ready. I am convinced by your story that this is where at least some of my portfolio money should go in this sector. But there are many banks. There's HDFC, there's Bajaj finance, there's SBI and what not right? So how do I go about evaluating which company I should be investing in?

[00:29:48.250] - Rushabh Doshi

So the most important thing, according to me, is the track record of the guy who's in charge of, let's say, the bank or the NBFC. So we see that what we like is that if these guys are grounded and they know their business well, it gives an assurance to investors that they know what they're doing, or else we've seen many banks or NBFCs go bust because they just aggressively chose loan growth. And what we observe is that their target audience was such that these guys are not good for that credit. And recently I just saw an interview of Deepak Parekh where he just shared his journey of how he started HDFC. So there he just told everyone that for him HDFC was not a cashcow or a way to become very rich, but for him it was more about passion and helping build the sector itself. So he just shared one thing is that we own the very small percentage of that bank. It's in decimals and it's very low. And he told us that when he wanted to send his or when he wanted to help his children graduate through college, he actually went on board of other companies to get some director fee and finances children's education. So these are one or two things which make you or help you build conviction on the people who are running the show. And you don't want actually founders like startup founders here who chase growth like ours. So recently we saw that RBI straightaway denied giving banking license to most of these companies backed by startup founders. And second things, what one should look at here is firstly the NPS. So NPS are basically assets on the book which are not earning any interest. So this as a percentage should be very small and the bank should actually make a healthy provision against the NPS. So there's a thing called provisioning coverage ratio which is the provisions they make divided by the gross NPA. So this should be a healthy number. So for unsecured it should be somewhere between 80%, for secured loans it should be somewhere between 40% to 50%. So this shows the quality of accounting which is carried out by the management.

[00:32:33.230] - Darshan Doshi

So this is another podcast in partnership with Proinvest Nirmiti and Dasar called Swatantra. And we truly, truly believe that if every person is financially independent as a society, we can be incredibly well off and much more better than where we are today. How do you become financially independent? First is earning money and then investing that money in the right places. So this podcast series focuses on simplifying investing so that anyone can invest their money well and grow their money well. And that requires upping your knowledge but putting it to action. If you have a financial adviser you should have enough knowledge so that you can have a decent and a smart reasonable conversation with your financial adviser or your investor about your money that you are putting in to invest in. And that is all that we aspire to do is to educate to level up the finance, the personal finance and the investing knowledge at the Swatantra podcast series we will bring you a series of these podcasts where we will cover sectors companies global investment with Rushabh and Jaydeep. So stay tuned. If you want us to cover any particular topic, let us know. Just add a comment, reach out. To us. And we'll be sure to cover this for you as well. Bye. See you soon. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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Ways to build self-discipline | DASAR Shortcast July 18, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

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How can fitness affect your work productivity? | DASAR Shortcast July 12, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

How can your fitness routine elevate your performance at work? Does it affect your work productivity? Learn more about it as we sit with our guest speaker, Shajan Samuel, an Ultra Runner.

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Identify and Beat Your Weaknesses | DASAR Shortcast July 11, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

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Running Your Way to Fitness | DASAR Podcast July 10, 2022 Darshan Doshi 54:07 0 Comments

How do you manage your fitness routines? How do you maintain a healthy balance of nutrition, sleep, and fitness routine for high productivity at work? Learn more about it as we sit with our guest speaker, Shajan Samuel, Ultra Runner.

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https://youtu.be/Fxzo0mdoZ8o Transcript [00:00:08.650] - Darshan Doshi Hi, everyone. Welcome to DASAR. Today's podcast is on fitness. It's on running, it's on health. And I have an awesome podcast guest with me, Shajan Samuel. He's a runner. He's an Ultramarathoner. He's a business leader. And so we are going to talk a lot of things today. This might be a long podcast. Just like the others, we're going to cover fitness. How do you get fit? How do you maintain fitness? Everybody has a busy life. Everybody wants to have a great social life. But how do you keep fitness as a key parameter in your life? We are also going to cover injuries, sickness. We are going to cover nutrition, sleep, and a whole lot of things related to fitness in this podcast. So, first of all, welcome. This is an absolute pleasure to host you here. I've been an avid fan, a follower of your tweets. And the moment I kind of reached out to you, you said, all right, let's do this, right? And so I'm super excited about this. Thanks a lot for joining us on DASAR. [00:01:17.570] - Shajan Samuel Yeah, I'm very much thrilled and delighted to be on this podcast. And I look forward to sharing my limited wisdom with all your listeners. [00:01:26.360] - Darshan Doshi Brilliant. So let's get started with the basics. How did your fitness journey start? Were you unhealthy at any given point of time? And then how did you build that momentum towards fitness? [00:01:37.990] - Shajan Samuel See, it all started off the fly. I had a very busy traveling job. I used to travel around more than 20 days a month. And while I was in Kerala, I worked in Kerala for a year. I used to have a lot of oily parathas and chicken and stuff like that. So I put on a lot of weight when I was 32. So at 36, 37, one fine morning off the fly, I just went for a short jog and I was surprised to utter dismay. I could not even run 100 meters. I was panting and gasping for breath. And I told myself, this is not fair, this is not done. This is absolutely ridiculous. And that is the day I realized that, what's this? So I came back home and I said, next day, again, I went out and I could run 150 meters. So I realized that there's something wrong with my health. Fitness. [00:02:38.810] - Darshan Doshi So that's how you got started. I'm going to set the context for our audience. Today, you're an ultramarathoner. You are in the Limca Book of records. You won other Indian records as well, maybe better than me explaining. Maybe you can help us understand what is ultramarathon. And just a quick overview of the records and the work that you do in the fitness space across India. Because it's not just running for passion. You're making this a cause. This is a cause for living for you. So maybe just some more thoughts on this. [00:03:16.380] - Shajan Samuel Yeah, I was 92 kg, and definitely I was not in control of my life. I was like a ship without a rudder. And my life was wandering aimlessly. So when I was 37, I started to jog. I was able to do 10 km with a lot of struggles. I was running five, then walking 2 km, then slow walk. So this saga continued for four years. So till 40 years I was doing 10k with lot of effort and struggle and discomfort. I was still 92, so I was not losing weight. I was still not losing weight. So 40 years I made this audacious plan that, look, I want to transition into a long distance runner. And I did not know how and what, but this is a commitment I made to myself. So the difference between the promise and the commitment is that promise you make to others, commitment you make to yourself. So I knew that if I had to become an ultra runner, I have to make things very, very difficult for me. The best place to hang around is the comfort zone. But nothing radical happened there. So I moved to Mumbai. I stayed in a slum, absolute slum, devoid of all amenities. I slept on the hard floor. No TV, no television, no refrigerator, nothing. Just the floor. And at 07:00 p.m., I used to go off to sleep. And I used to wake up in the middle of the night hungry. And I wanted to eat the bed sheet. Okay? So the three months and this rigorous physical discomfort which I pushed myself through to the brink helped me to reduce 21 kgs. So my weight came from 92 to 71 kilos. At the same time, I started to increase my mileage. So I started to run 10, 15kms. So then one day when I was running 10 km struggling, I saw people running 21 and coming back. So I'm running ten, somebody's coming. I look at them in utter bewilderment. I'm running 10k, I'm struggling. These people are doing 21k. I mean, what sort of energy. I used to read in papers Milind Soman ran from Bombay to Ahmedabad and I was like, my goodness, how is this possible? Even is this even possible? So one day I must have a lot of strength. I pushed myself and I registered myself for Airtel half marathon, which is technically 21.1 kms. I'm not confident at all. At the starting line, I was like panicking, like, what will happen? Will I be able to? I've never done anything below ten. So I finished the 21 km in 2 hours, 45 minutes. Nothing to boast off. Very modest performance. But I still remember I wore that medal and came to office the next day. And the entire day I was wearing the medal and I was telling people, excuse me, excuse me, see this medal today, today when I look back, I feel amused by that. So from 21kms, I jumped to 50kms. From 50 I jumped. So I just jumped. I didn't do full. From 21 I stayed, went to 50. It was in Goa. My parents came, they thought I will die, how can I just run for 50kms. But I finished it in seven and a half hours. That is the first time I got confident that human body has got finite capability, but the human mind has infinite capability. So from 50 I participated in the 12 hours stadium run in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi. Nail-biting cold that is starting at 06:00 p.m ended at 06:00 a.m. I finished, completed. I did 82, came 7th. So that is the time I got a grip of this. From 82, I jumped to 161 straight away. [00:07:20.040] - Darshan Doshi So you're running 161kms. [00:07:23.810] - Shajan Samuel Yeah. 161kms I have done thrice. I've got podium. I finished 161 kilometers in some 30 hours or 27.5 hours. I got podium there and then I did 220 km in 37 hours. I've done some of the toughest, challenging ultras in India. Rann of Kutch in 50 degree temperature. Ladakh I have done. I've done SRT ultra. So I have run so far 40,000kms. No challenges now, impossible for me. So tell me to run from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. I will do it if I have the time with me. [00:08:02.220] - Darshan Doshi That is just mind boggling. Right? I relate a lot with what you said with your first half marathon where you took whatever amount of time, but the timing was not important. Breaking that barrier for the first time in fitness was very important. I started my fitness journey similar to you. I don't know what it is about mid 30s that people realize that their bodies needs maintenance, that it needs nurturing, that it needs attention. Right. And back in 2019, I was also unhealthy, not 90 kgs, but 83, 84 kgs. Decided to give up on my most favorite thing, tea for almost a year. No outside food, no alcohol, doing three workouts a week. And then did my 1st 10 km in January of 2020, just before the pandemic. Now, the timing was not that great, 78 minutes, but I'm just happy that I did it. Right. And so the other part of it is also mental fitness. I think a lot of what you're saying has got to do with mental fitness also. Just in that time I also did Vipassana, which is a ten-day meditation course where you are in complete silence, you don't talk to anyone, no eye communication, nothing. And you're meditating for almost 15 to 16 hours a day. And so again, there's a lot of got to do with mental determination to be able to last that long. Especially when you're a talkative guy like me. My next question to you is how does one work on the mental fitness, the resilience? Because one part is commitment, but the second part is seeing it through. And I don't see a lot of people see it through. So maybe some thoughts, experiences? [00:10:02.750] - Shajan Samuel Yeah. Our spontaneous reaction, we have been hardwired, our minds have been hardwired in such a way there was a spontaneous reaction to any challenges? No. I won't be able to do it. What are you expecting from me? How can I do this? I have never done this before. You are unreasonable, you are illogical. This is not possible. So that's a spontaneous reaction because over a period of time our mind restricts us into believing that it is not possible. So we have built this sort of barricades in our mind. The only way to strengthen condition and leverage your mind is not by reading motivational books or listening to motivational videos. There are plenty of them out there. It's by looking forward for such challenges, looking to such challenges and embracing those challenges with open arms. Magic happens only when you dive deep into the unknown. That adrenaline rush which you get running at 10K, running at 21K. You know that it is a straight road. But all moment is not progress and life is nonlinear. What does it mean? Is that when you don't know what you expect, in ultrarunning, you don't know because there are circumstances, there is nature, you don't understand the terrain. There is mountains because they run on some of the toughest mountains where you can also risk your life. So it is uncertain because that is the time when you truly discover yourself. I will advise everybody to go on a solo trip. Don't book a return ticket, just book your onward ticket and get lost in the wilderness. When you get lost in the wilderness is when you discover some facets of you yourself, which is okay. So the first thing is that don't fear for any challenges. Until you don't face challenges you will not know that you had the capability to face it. So you have to accept challenges. I think that's the only way you can leverage your mental health. And one more thing. Biggest muscle in your body is not in your leg, in your hands, in your back. The biggest muscle in your body is your mind. And you have to make pain your companion because pain is the inflection point you have to tip over that. [00:12:38.650] - Shajan Samuel It reminds me of a trek that I did back in 2008. This was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. This is Africa's highest summit. It's a seven day trek via Machame route. Had never done trekking of this sort before, but one part is to I did make it to the top, thanks to my guide, thanks to the preparation that I put in. And so my next question to you is the preparation needed to be able to succeed. Because if you don't get small wins, you just lose momentum. So you can look at it one way. One is what kind of preparation do you do today? What is your fitness routine today? If you just lay it out, it will give a good sense of what people might expect. [00:13:29.690] - Shajan Samuel First you have to build base level endurance. It's called the aerobic base. So you have to build that base level. I mean, layman cannot go run in Ladakh. They will die. You have to build base level. So if a layman wants to run in ladakh, I mean they have to build base level, means they have to focus on their breathing. They have to focus gradually, build mileage over a period of time. So there is nothing called overnight miracles. There are overnight tragedies, but overnight miracles are eight years, ten years. So it's a process. It's a structured, orchestrated process you have to follow and it takes time. So, for example, now I am planning to run from Manali to Rohtang. It is 80kms. The run starts at 10:00 p.m. And I have to finish on or before 02:00 p.m. If I finish by 02:01 p.m., I'm disqualified. It will show as did not finish DNF. So for me to finish the run in 16 hours on 17,000ft above sea level, 2200 meters elevation, -50%, oxygen and -10 degree temperature, I can't just suddenly go there and run, right? So I have prepared for that. So how do I prepare? Of course, you don't get that elevation in Pune. You don't get that climate in Pune. I practice in simulated environment. For the last two months I'm preparing for that. And what I do, I go to Sinhagad, I go to Rajgad, I start climbing that mountains over there. That is one preparation I do. Other is that I run from Pune University to NDA, which is around 400 meters elevation. I run at different times and I run on tired legs. So sometimes I run in the morning. Like today morning, I run 36 km from 04:00 a.m. To 08:00 A.m.. Today evening night, I will run 11kms. I'm planning a midnight run next week, which is I will start running at 12:00 when some people will be awake, some will be asleep and then I will run till 05:00 a.m. So I try to adjust my body clock in different situation and different circumstances. Also I got run in the afternoon, so I will wear some different type of clothing to make myself feel uncomfortable. That's the best you can do. Otherwise, any races like that, you have to acclimatize. You have to go there one week in advance. It's not like you prepare in Pune, in the road, and then you go and run in the mountains. The mountains have completely surprised you. You cannot prepare like that. You have to prepare a similar environment. [00:15:57.610] - Darshan Doshi Brilliant. Thank you. I love the example and the simplicity with which you share your experiences or your preparation. Nutrition and sleep are equally important. One of my biggest learning in all of this was the fact that if you want weight loss, focus on nutrition. If you want to focus on energy, focus on fitness routine. And if you want to really achieve peak fitness, focus on your sleep. Recovery. So your own personal experiences of nutrition and sleep, if you can share with the others. [00:16:37.250] - Shajan Samuel Weight loss is very simple. I mean, it's calorie deficit. So normal human being needs around 1800 or 2000 calorie intake. So, you have to burn more calories than you intake. This is a simple algorithm. There is no rocket science involved out here. But the issue is that people then start taking the, short circuiting the process. They start eating salad only. You cannot live your entire life on having salad. So it's not sustainable. So you have to cultivate good habits which can be sustained over a period of time. And our bodies are unique and different by nature, right? So what food will suit you? One man's food is another man's poison. There's a saying in English so what suits you will not suit me. Everyone's body is different. How can I recommend? I can tell you the broad thing. I can tell you how. And there is lot of myth going around. Everyone recommends different things. Please understand one thing. Everything food in India has got chemicals. There is adulteration involved in everything. So what do we eat then? That is a big question. Simply, I'll just give you a simple thing. Homemade food. Why homemade food? Because your mom or your wife cooks it with a lot of love. And you can control the ingredients over there. One is homemade food. Avoid junk. Anything packaged, preserved, avoided. Let's say you consume biscuit. Where was it manufactured? Biscuit has been made in Chandigarh. That biscuit travels in a truck. From Chandigarh to come to Pune it takes 15 days. Already all the essential properties are lost. That biscuit lies in a shop on a shelf. It is mentioned over there when it will get expired. But it is not mentioned that since when it has been lying on the shelf. So anything which is packaged, preserve, don't have. Have natural homemade food. That is the simple thing. And have balance of protein, carbs and fat. People say that you should have protein. I don't agree. It should be balanced food. A lot of vegetables because vegetable has got vitamins, antioxidants, minerals and lot of water. Minimum intake of water should be around three liters. So don't look at weight loss as a goal. Instead, cultivate good habits. Have simple homemade food. Don't eat outside, don't eat junk. And nutrition is very important. So if you are a performing athlete or into endurance sports, nutrition becomes very important. We have to be very careful about that. Because that can be the difference between peak performance and suboptimal performance. Sleep is very important. It's the third pillar for good health. I am very big on sleep. I believe that if a person is not sleeping for 8 hours, 7 to 8 hours, it has got long-term consequences. Simple as that. You should read this book by Matthew Walker, Why we Sleep. It's scientifically proven fact that today's youngsters, 70% of today's youngsters are sleeping at 02:00 a.m. they are binge-watching Netflix. Whenever you have been binge-watching, you will have something to binge-eat. Make a habit to seep at 10 p.m. Our older generation always advised to sleep early. They never went to a doctor because they were like walking, working in the farms, having homemade food. And they used to go to sleep at 09:00 p.m. And to wake up at 04:00 a.m. [00:20:49.650] - Darshan Doshi Another part at Vipassana also is at 09:00 a.m., everything used to get wrapped up and you had to get up at 04:00. At 04:0 would be the first meditation. I think we have popularized today that sleeping late, two categories. One who stays up to complete his/her work. And on the other hand I have never heard anyone say I sleep early and then I get up early. Unless you are a performance athlete. [00:21:24.260] - Shajan Samuel Yeah. One thing, what I'll tell you is that even this corporate also should be very careful that they start telling that he's so sincere and hard-working, he stays up late, learn from him. He will die of that routine in a decade. Productivity is gone. I mean for the guy to perform at peak levels over a sustained period of time they have to have 7 hours, 8 hours sleep. It is mandatory. You cannot short circuit this process. So today's youngsters, so many people we hired working with us, have illness, I have worked for 25 years I've never taken a sick leave till date. Its just surprising that how people are falling sick is only because they are there because of comfort and convenience. Everything is now on the click of a button. You can perform any activity on the click of a button, the only moment you send the bedroom to the bathroom. But bodies are meant to move, right. So human evolution, people say I don't know how to run. Running is a natural form of human evolution. When you were small baby in diapers, we were jumping from the bed down, right? And we were running and somebody has to catch you. What's the problem is that when children run, the mother follows and picks the child up. The child thinks it was wrong to run. So you should allow the child to fall, stumble, get some bruises, that's what shapes them up, right? [00:23:19.040] - Darshan Doshi Yeah. That was just awesome. My next question to you is you've been a business leader for over 15-20 years. Today you're the chief revenue officer at Safalta, an Ed-tech startup. And you have a family, you have friends, you have social life, you have your own personal goals and you have your career as well. So managing all of this is tough, right? It's a genuinely could be perceived as tough. I hear a lot of reasons saying my work and family and friends don't allow me to create a fitness routine. What would you say to that and how do you manage your time? [00:24:07.850] - Shajan Samuel See, I'll say two things if it is important to you, you will find a way else to find an excuse. Henry Ford once said that excuses are the tools of incompetent people used to build bridges that go absolutely nowhere. If somebody comes and tells me that I don't have time, I'll just tell them only one thing. Both of us have 24 hours. Issue is not time, issue is focus. Issue is prioritizing. Health has to be on top of your priority. Okay, I don't want to mix my words. Has to be on top of your priority. Everything has to be dot tailed under health, period. You have to prioritize health. Absolutely. There is no option for it. 70% of diseases in India are lifestyle disease which can be mitigated with a little bit of prudence. You don't have to do anything supernatural. Do 45 minutes walking without mobile phones because it's about escapism from the rigmarole of friends with agitated life. Walk is also about collecting your own thoughts, having clarity in your mind walk by job. I have never been to a gym. Strength training important because every year your bone density comes down your spine bends. Because that is a natural process. You can only slow it down, but you can't stop it. So it is important that when you become a grandfather or a grandmother, it's important that people prioritize their health. You realize the value of good health when you're sick, when you have bad health. [00:26:31.410] - Darshan Doshi Absolutely. An ill man only has only one wish. Good health, good. And a healthy person has too many wishes. There's no limit to it. I also strongly believe I'm writing a white paper where there is a connection between performance, productivity, performance in life, at work and fitness. How have you noticed that as you become fit, you've also become better at what you do, your work, your purpose? [00:27:07.190] - Shajan Samuel See, today, at this stage in my life, I'm 46 plus. I believe I can do anything. There's nothing in this world I cannot do. I can move mountains. That you only come from altar. Running, altering it has completely transcended geographies, geographies and unleash my inner greatness. Because there is a strong correlation between body and brain. Very strong correlation. So in my case, my overall confidence has skyrocketed that people respect people. And my analogy of running is used. Everybody says life is not a marathon. Life isn't the marathon, not a screen. All business leaders share this dialog. Butter, always that person's advantages was already run. He tells explicitly that he himself is a marathon. And he speaks about how the analogy of marathon is so powerful and so important. So I think it has improved my confidence, it has elevated my performance. It has made me mentally sharp, more nimble footed, more swift, because the market today's dynamic, fast paced working environment, unpredictable uncertainty. We call it the VUCA world. We don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. If you want to ensure that a bright future for yourself and for the ecosystem, the only way to do it by creating that and you have to be healthy to handle that. Pressure, stress, both corporate life, there's a lot of stress, performance stress. So that sort of comparison and stress is there lot of stress, anxiety, stress that can cut a vault into depression. Also the only way we can handle this is by with a strong body and a strong mind. There's no other way to encounter this phases. [00:29:15.750] - Darshan Doshi We've set the context, you set the context on the need for fitness. Okay? Say now I'm extremely interested in making fitness a routine for me, a lifestyle change for me. Okay? It took me almost a year of three workouts every week before it started becoming natural to me, right? I started enjoying it first. It was painful. It used to be challenging to just do the simple home workouts with body weight, the stretches. It was that painful. So it took me a year to make this a lifestyle change and today it's a part of me. Anyone who wants to make fitness a routine, what mechanism or how would you suggest them to go about what is a checklist or what are the deals? [00:30:10.620] - Shajan Samuel Basically there is a difference between fitness and health. Good health simply means that you're not going to doctor often, you're not falling sick often. So that is fitness is about benchmark. So if I can do 50 push ups in an hour or run up ten flows in ten minutes or do a ten kilometer in 15 minutes, that is fitness. So fitness method. I'll talk about fitness also simple habits. Simple habits. Our bodies are very passive. I can say it's in the cold storage. So if you want to live an active life, it takes some time, you won't get results immediately. Follow the process. Outcome will take care of itself. Outcome is a subset. Cultivate small habits and make minor two weeks. Don't try to do anything radical because it is a counterproductive. So start off a small. I am going to just sleep at ten and wake up at five. That's it. Just do that one thing for ten days. I'm pretty close to everybody in this world. At 09:00 if I get one cross, I will not take. My company knows it, my people know, my family know I will be sleep. And even if a thief comes and steals everything from houses, I will know because I will be in this sleep 09:00. They have to stop everything at 10:00. You have to hit the bed in five days. That is one thing they have to do for 20 days. Just do that one thing. Once you master that, once that is into a system and grew, then start having simple homemade food and just walk. Step out. The first step to exercise is just wearing your shoes and stepping out the door. Why is the step out of the door a simple, simple habit. Your body starts accepting that change. Liver and kidney all start talking to each other. So every part of your body is an engineering marble, just like a BMW's engine, right? Just like you care for your car, care for your body. Start respecting yourself. [00:33:20.570] - Darshan Doshi So no short-cuts. It is going to take time. It is going to be a change. It is going to require you to stick with it, right? One of the things that I've done so we have some online fitness courses also where the idea is simple, just get fit, right? We are helping you. You will get YouTube videos anywhere. But what we are saying is what we help you with is consistency. Three workouts a week, simple home workouts and then we do weekly challenges is hafte. No tea, coffee, alcohol, sleep nine to four, nine to five. The third week, no outside food, right? So it keeps it exciting. Also essentially that works with some people. In some people it doesn't work, right? But you really need that clarity to be able to do this. You touched upon a very important topic, which is sickness. I have been on the same side as you where it's very rare that I have fallen sick for a very long time, right? And when I have fallen sick was the time when I wasn't following my fitness routine, to be honest. So is there a correlation between fitness routines and good health? No sickness? And if so, what has been your experience? [00:34:53.650] - Shajan Samuel Yeah, there is of course, especially with youngsters today the Harder Duck is now age agnostic. Earlier times people used to be 60 70 days to harder deck. Now it is age agnostic. All sort of problems are age agnostic. So people were young people they are going for my submission is like this first of all, Do body checkup, full body check up every six, every age. Doesn't matter whether you're 25 or 30 or 35 every six months. Both important because it's very dynamic. Most people don't go for check up because they fear operation. The only time you can solve it is when at that point of time, otherwise it becomes bigger and magnified. So one is that do checkups on a regular basis. To all the people who are listening to this podcast, my humble submission is that life is beautiful and you will be in a much better position to enjoy the beauty of what life offers to if you are in control of your health. So binge watching late night movies, Netflix award and make a calendar saying I've 45 minutes to 1 hour of your time on social media, not more than that. It's important to calendarize things so you know that you are social media. That's it. I'm not sick, don't watch Netflix. People ask me this question. I said that you decide allocate time. So most importantly, you have to be cognizant of and understand exactly what you are doing, the choices. So our choices should reflect our hope and not our fear. So there is a huge correlation between sickness, between health, between fitness. I believe that once you follow a healthy lifestyle, your life has changed. Trust me, I'm telling your life will change. You will be energetic, you'll be cheerful, you'll be happy, you will radiate happiness across people. Life will suddenly seem beautiful and you will have that extra muscle in your body saying that small things like if you are on the fourth floor, just make an extra effort to climb up the stairs if you are going to a neighborhood shop and then one day it gives away. So the only way you can is prevention is better than cure. So the best way to avoid and mitigate this is that by start practicing this and Mughal Emperor Jahangir said that the best time to plant a seed was yesterday. The next best time is now today. [00:38:31.750] - Darshan Doshi Absolutely. One of the points that I want to reiterate from what you said is doing a full body check up every six months. A lot of people are actually reluctant to do it for two counts, right? One is I don't like what I see or what I'm going to see, right. For whatever reason. And second is money. And my request is, what's the point of the money for everything that you buy if you cannot even spend the money for your body checkup? So, we also run personal finance courses. And so we say, well, the first thing you should do is take life insurance, health insurance. Hopefully you never need to use it, but it's a security. Right? And but before, on top of all of that is actually money that you should allocate for every six month health checkups. Put that money aside and make sure you just get that done. Right. So, for all those who are listening to this, you're an immediate action item, outside of so many other action items that we've discussed so far. I want to talk to you about the future, your future, right. That is around fitness goals. How do you set your fitness goals? I just want to understand the thought process behind it. Right. And so, over the next six months, twelve months, 24 months, are there any particular fitness goals that you are looking to achieve? [00:40:04.660] - Shajan Samuel See, ultra running is a very brutal sport. It is a brutal sport because you sell it's a very lonely sport. You can't take him in because the challenges, the complicity in challenges where you differ. So, for me now, I'm planning Manali to rotang, which is on June 28. This is a very tough challenge, and this is unlike all other challenges I've done. Of course, Mind is always ready all the time. Mind says that you can do it. So I have conditioned my mind to my advantage, where I know, but I have to still go and execute the plan. So mentally, I visualize the route. On my GPS route, I visualize mentally, I already run the race before the race day, right? And on that particular race, I'm just physically running it mentally already. So visualization belief cuts. Like Michael Phelps, the celebrated Olympian, the swimmer, he speaks a lot about this technique. That's important. Second thing, I'm planning the Border race, which is going to happen in December. It's a very tough race. 100 is in courting heat and extreme cold, contrasting temperature. That is in December. So I give a gap of good six months between two big ones. And I already did Chandigarh. In fact, I did 92 km in 12 hours. So it was a good performance, but I prepared for that. So to run 92, ran 900 km in two months of preparation, I was hitting 450 kilometer mileage every month. So that's like 120 km every week. So after that, I am planning for Comrades. Comrades is the ultimate human race in the world. It's 89 km. It happens in South Africa. I've already qualified for it. But there is corals in that. So if your timing is x, so you will be placed in a coral where you can finish faster. So if a coral A, you are right in front of a coral B, you are behind. So then if a coral B ten minutes lesser to finish and Comrades has got cut off time. So it is rolling hills, it's up, down, up, down, and it is 89 km. You have to finish in 12 hours, so that's a really tough rate. So I got this one coming up Manality Rotten, I got Border coming up in December and I got Comrade coming up in June. So these are the three sort of challenges. [00:42:46.130] - Darshan Doshi Amazing. Thanks. I had another podcast guest with me earlier, the podcast we've already published with Lavanya, where she became an Ultramarathonor the first time after she had delivered twins and came back and ran, I think, 100 km down south somewhere, and she walked us through the whole experience. Right. She had just done it for the first time. So those who have not seen it, she's kind of taken a full view walk through of what it takes to become an ultra marathon. Right. What is an ultramarathon and what is an ultra marathon? The last part of this podcast, I want to talk to you, is about injuries. One of the things that I extremely focus on in my fitness is to be injury free. So you create routines and preparation and I take extra efforts to make sure that I'm aware that I'm not injuring myself. Right. And so there are certain protocols that I put in for the simplest one is warm up and cool down any ways by which you either had injuries and you had to recover or ways by which you prevent being injured. [00:43:59.330] - Shajan Samuel Yeah. So what happens when you are starting your fitness journey? Just keep simplified. Just walk is enough. Don't try too many things. It's simple. So simple. Just follow a simple process. But when you hit threshold, when your body has accepted the new you, then there's a time when you have to go for structured training. Running is not about movement of the legs. Running is also about the moment of the hands. Have you ever heard of runner saying they made a heart injury over here? But running is all about using your entire body. It's about engaging the core. It's a very scientific thing. So strength training is extremely, extremely important for runners. So if you don't do strength training, your core is not strong. And weak core means you will hit the ball. If you're doing a full marathon of 42, you will hit the ball because you don't have a strong core. So it's very important to have two or three days of strength training, not only for runners, for every single person. You should be able to do 25 push ups in 1 minute. You should be able to do a 1 minute plan. You should be able to climb ten floors in ten minutes. You should be able to do 10 minutes. If you can't do something, you are simply not fit. Simple time pay, so injuries prevent. One is that don't try to push the envelope until the body is getting used to it. Once your body gets used to it, do a lot of strength training. And recovery is very important. So if you are doing like back to back runs, like today, you're doing 21 narrow, you're bouncing or injured. So don't do like a space yourself. Give ample time to recover. Recovery. You should do foam rolling. You should have good nutritious food. You should have good sleep. Because the pounding which the body takes, it cannot be seen externally. Internally, the tissues and the muscles take a lot of pounding. It needs time to recover. Because I've already had the base mileage, I can afford to do it. I'm just telling for the people because I've got that understanding and the progress and the wisdom. Also, one more thing. I was damn fortunate I didn't get injured. I ran an overweight because the entire pressure comes on the knees. So people ask me but if you don't do strength training, if you're running on overweight, if you're having bad food, sugary food for all the people overweight, don't think about running. Form is important, okay? How well you are doing. The reps are important, the process is important. So bill mileage gradually over. Otherwise a lot of people are getting injured and then it puts them out of action for at least six months to one year. And people don't understand the difference between soreness and pain. There's a big difference between soreness and pain. So if you are having pain, you have to consider a sports doctor. Don't keep a lingering, it can be a problem for you. [00:47:35.470] - Darshan Doshi Sure. Thanks a lot for touching. Because touching on the topic of knees, because a lot of people say, well, you shouldn't run because knees may problem, but you've been running forever. Correct? Right. I want to get a little bit technical. This question is around the equipment, the shoes, being ready for an ultra marathon, a half marathon, a ten kilometer, whatever it might be, anything that you would recommend for two kinds of people. For those who might be doing their first 10k first, 21K what shoes, what other things that they should carry and second, for those who might be doing ultramarathons, what kind of equipment would you suggest? Because there's a lot of data around online, but whom to trust? [00:48:24.110] - Shajan Samuel Yeah, right. When I started running, I have to run. And then I had a basic analog wash time battle. No other data ran like that for four or five years. So when you're starting off, you don't need to get into all these branded clothes and branded shoes and sports watch handle not required, no garment, just run by feel, just run by feel. Just enjoy the nature, just listen to the voices in your heart, just listen to just your breathing just go by feel. But when you want to transition into serious learning we are all amateur runners by the way. None of us are professional runners. We are running for the love of running, for the joy of running and running is a close knit community the amount of bonding which happens between runners is like spellbound if I tell you just enjoy it. But if you want to transition into sealers running and if you want to become like say you're running a marathon then of course you have to be careful about your shoes because it improves performance by certain base points. So there are lot of shoes available added as a plumber Nike so you have to decide the budget and what you're looking from the shoe, what type of run you're looking from the shoe for example, if you're doing long run there's a particular shoe if you're doing tempo, there's a particular shoe if you're doing speedrun particularly but middle class long pass is a passion so one is that go for training shoes which is everyday run shoe which is good for your competitive run also when you're running the competition so depending upon your feet, how your feet is you can do a gate analysis to understand your feet. Some people run on heels, some people run on midfoot position never buy a shoe online that is the first advice go to a store, wear the shoes, see how it's comfortable, it is fitting always there should be like a half inch gap between your fitting so that your ankle is nicely snuggled into position then look for heel drop, look for company it depends upon races now if you're doing a trailer on a mountain you have to have trail shoes you can't wear a road running shoes and go on a train because you will sleep loose sand, loose gravel and you will sleep so for the trail is a different type of shoe for ultra running marathon is a different type of shoe but for speed running like people who are running ten k you have lots of shoes which is carbon plated now but they're very expensive that does not have in India also have to import that from us it costs around 22,000 25,000 if you're looking for reasonable shoes available in nine to ten up, please attach important sports watch also like the garment sports watch is there for runners that is if you're too much into technical data you want to know your heart rate, you want to know your cadence, you want to know your trial and order the performance last month, visa this month so you can then synchronize your garbage watch into Strava. Strava gives you all scientific data over everything it breaks up everything and gives it to you but that only when you're transitioning into serious but there are different levels for beginners, just run by field, nothing else. Forgot everything else. For serious runners, yes, you have to play some inputs. [00:51:59.890] - Darshan Doshi So if you are a beginner, first achieve consistency before you buy all the goodies and the expensive shoes and the gadgets and all. Run about 1000 km maybe. And then start investing your money in it. Shajan, this has been such an awesome podcast. You have been so authentic and so transparent and it is such heartwarming to listen to you, to share your own story where you are and in an unfiltered manner. Just provide the right kind of advice. Now always remember, right, we are saying this from one point of view and so you should take it like that. You are the judge of your own body, right? I say this for the others also. You are in judge of your own money. So even if a financial adviser tells you or a Twitter person gives you a tip, it is your hard earned money. So you should be in control. This is your body. You should be in control with your fitness as well. If you haven't started following Shajan on Twitter, I highly recommend you to do so. I learned so much. He is in the same way on Twitter. Very sharing in a very blunt but authentic manner. [00:53:21.700] - Darshan Doshi What are the things that work for him? What is he doing now? And so if you're not following him, follow him right away. You'll learn a lot and follow us. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Go to dasar.in. If you are interested in transcripts to read or you are interested in articles on fitness, on personal finance, on productivity, you'll find them on our website as well. And if you have any questions around fitness, you think we should bring someone else that you believe you can learn from on the podcast, just send me an email at dd@dasar.in Shajan. Thank you. A lot of gratitude to you. All the best for your fitness goals and hopefully we can continue this dialogue. [00:54:10.610] - Shajan Samuel Sure. Thanks a lot. Thank you. It has been an absolute pleasure. [00:54:14.240] - Darshan Doshi Thank you.

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https://youtu.be/8SFBFeVrK9w Transcript [00:00:08.530] - Darshan Doshi Hi, everyone. Welcome to Dasar. We have an amazing podcast today. I have with me Indraneel Chitale. Welcome, Indraneel. [00:00:16.090] - Indraneel Chitale Hi, Darshan. Good evening and pleasure to be here. [00:00:18.810] - Darshan Doshi Brilliant. So let me do a quick round of introduction of what you can expect in this podcast. Indraneel Chitale is the fourth-generation family business entrepreneur. We are going to talk about family business entrepreneurship. We are going to talk about digital transformation. We are going to talk about D2C brands. We are going to talk about how do you position the brand positioning, brand creation, distribution and a whole lot of other things including family business structure, ownership. So stay tuned. Feel free to it's going to be a long podcast. I hope you're going to enjoy it. But let me introduce very quickly, Indraneel is the managing partner of Chitale Group based out of Pune. If you ever think about one brand, if you've grown up in Pune, it is Chitale Group, right? For me personally, this brings back nostalgia from my childhood, going back to Bishop's school days, to engineering days, to be able to celebrate family functions, to be able to celebrate all the lovely birthdays with sweets, the Bhakarwadi. Even when I was traveling to Boston, studying at Babson Bhakarwadi was the first thing that I would pack when I'm traveling to Boston. So we're going to talk a whole lot of things Indraneel. And one of the things that I want to first start with is the story. Because it is such a powerful brand, it is a legacy, it is something which has touched the globe just based on very simple principles and some great but authentic food. So can you just give us a quick overview of how did Chitale Group start, how did the business start and your fourth generation? And so how has it transcended over the generations? We'd love to quickly hear about it from your point of view. [00:02:22.080] - Indraneel Chitale That's an important part of why we exist today. So it started in the year 1939. My great grandfather, Late B.G. Chitale started the company and that time it was B.G. Dairies as it was known as. And that is the brand name that still continues to exist for our milk business. So what he did was he started working out of a place called Bhilawadi that is on the banks of Krishna river in Sangli district. And this place, it was something that he was sure about or he bet on this because it was having a railway line which was at times owned by the British Railways. But that connected Bhilawadi to Mumbai, which was a big marketplace. And that ensured that whatever he was trying to make or the milk products that he was producing, they could reach a marketplace like Mumbai and actually have a market or a potential to be sold. So he tried doing that as a B2B business where this product was sold as a B2B product to other brands in Mumbai. And these brands sold it as their own product, sort of a white labeled activity in Mumbai. What used to be issue is that this was an era where there was no telephone, forget internet, no electricity as well at that time in Bhilawadi. So those were diesel fire, electrical generators that used to exist. So keeping a control on what was happening in the market was something that he did not get an idea of and he could not do because there was no system to do that. So very often he used to be cheated and people used to complain that your product was not up to good and they used to sell it and hive off all the profit and not give anything to him. So that's when he called his eldest son, Late Bhausaheb Chitale who is my grandfather's elder brother, to come in from he was that time working in Gujarat as a mill worker. And he asked him, you better come to Mumbai and start looking into this, because I can't keep attention in what's happening in Mumbai. So business continued and they realized that Mumbai is not a great market to do business for a milk brand, because milk as a commodity is consumed mostly on a daily basis. The hotel business at that time was too small. So how do you target people where Mumbai has a huge migratory population and not a very stationary population at that time. And it was an expensive place to do business. So well, the next big best alternative was Pune. And that's how we came to Pune. Pune was that time Oxford of the east. People were here known as a paradise. So there was stagnant population here, which meant that that was daily consumer. And what my grandfather believed was that a repeat consumer is going to actually make money and you need to have a repeat consumer which Mumbai market didn't have. So that's how they made the switch to Pune, but they still continue doing a B2B. That's also around the time when my grandfather Late Rajabhau Chitale joined the business. And what they tried to do was continue doing the B2B operations. But they eventually realized that it's always going to be an issue when digital systems are not there on how to manage quality and how to manage payments. So why don't we just make a brand of our own and start sharing this? And that is when both these brothers were involved. And that's how Chitale Brothers as a business was coined pre independence. And that continued to exist in some time, even post independence. And when the two younger brothers also joined where Nanasaheb Chitale, who is 88, still in Bhilawadi, where our dairy plan is. Late Dattatray Chitale passed away in 2020. So these four brothers were the ones who started the business. And that's how Chitale Bandhu identity came, because the brothers ran the business together. So we started with one store at Kunthe Chowk in Pune. This was around 1947- 48. In mid 50s we opened up a store in Deccan Gymkhana and these two stores were what the brothers operated into. One of the key transitions that happened was in the mid 70s when my grandfather visited Japan as part of a delegation from Maratha Chamber and there he saw that products were packaged and not sold loose. So that's when the idea started why don't we package milk in pouches and start selling pouched milk still then nobody was doing it in India.. So this was of course a different era. It was not liberalized, it was licensed and that machine took four years to import from France. So nonetheless that machine finally came and that just multiplied our volumes to a great extent because we could package and sell milk to a larger number of people which still there used to be glass bottles. Secondly, what happened around the same time when we got to know of a product called Bhakarwadi. So that's what we are known for today. But Bhakarwadi came into existence because we were exposed to this Gujarati product at that time and my grandfather and his brothers were able to modify it to a way where that suited the Maharashtrian Belt well, where now Bhakarwadi, in spite of its Gujarati origins, is known as the pride of Pune or its identity of Maharashtra and we are proud, we could create that identity. So these both moves were something that basically planted some sort of disruption at that time. It was limited to a scale, but it was disruptive because from say doing 300 kgs of Bhakarwadi a day manually to a point where in my father's generation we progress. Where we could do 300 kg an hour to as of today, where we can do about 1500 kg an hour. And that way that was the scale that was built. And what happened was in the late eighty s and ninety s, when my father's generation took over they realized that probably we have a market bigger than what we are doing through our stores and you couldn't. So let's start franchising. So 89 was when the first franchise was given, which was way ahead of its time because nobody wanted to franchise out or give products outside their own controlled avenue. And which is when we started franchising. And that turned out to be a great move because Pune was expanding geographically, the horizons were expanding and we could capture a great market out of it. With that we also realized that you probably need to start working on how do we package the product because with franchising and distances increasing, the demand was also increasing and then we couldn't service that fresh. So that's when around mid 2000s is when my generation Kedar, me, eventually Atul, Nikhil, Pushkar, all of them have taken up some role or the other in terms of how we can just package and distribute. Where the big pivot that happened in our generation from Franchising was on the distribution side, where now we sell our product in multiple states in the country. We are able to export our product across the world on every possible continent. And while doing that, we've built omnichannel presence, where now our detail is not simply about a transaction that happens across the counter, but it's about ability to service customers throughout the day. So that's the story and that's what four generations have been able to do. And that's the pivot that has kept us relevant. [00:09:17.920] - Darshan Doshi Mind boggling. Mind boggling. And what I see consistently in this are two things. One is tremendous innovation. And innovation comes with risks. These are innovations which succeeded. I'm sure there are a lot of innovations which failed. And the second part of it is longevity, the ability to survive from 1939 to 2022. It's almost a century to be able to cater to different tastes, different types of business models, the different regulations, and then now digitization. And most important, or the complex piece of it is the family complexities. And so I want to touch upon that. We will touch upon that a little bit later. I want to talk to you about innovation because what I see today in the market is the Binge Bar. I see some great packaging. I see the same old taste of my Bhakarwadi which is very dear to me. So retaining what has worked well and then some new innovations coming through. So maybe what you could do is today, how are you thinking about innovation? What are some of the innovations that you have rolled out recently? It could be products, business model or otherwise. And I just would love to hear it from your point of view. How do you think about this when it comes to what's happening around the world? [00:10:57.660] - Indraneel Chitale Well, I think innovation is part of our DNA. I wouldn't say I am the only one innovating. Innovation happened at every generation and every step, which is why we have been able to have this longitude. I don't think so. That could have happened or we could have got this mantle had my forefathers not invented. So I think that's ingrained into us as an organization and that is why we are able to bring that kind of innovative ability on your team. And by innovation, it can be across so many fields. It may not be restricted to simply about one domain. So we can keep innovating in processes where a commodity like milk, where the purchase price and selling prices so regulated by the government. And it's your innovation in ability to process milk, where you're actually able to make money and build volume. If you're not innovating, you're going to survive and be profiting. So that way, that's probably our DNA, which led us to keep innovating all the time and keep changing or pushing the envelope. So the recent innovation has been one major thing has been about how we could package, because nobody was doing that in the country. And when we wanted to expand into the distribution business, which was beyond our store, we wanted to create a choice which did not exist in the market. Because if I was just going to do MeToo products like any other brand, which our competitors are doing, I would have either had to give more margins, which would have wiped out my profitability, or spent excessively high on marketing, which probably does not really materialize into anything concrete. So as innovating factor, we also have to factor in that we need to maximize profitability while innovating. So how do we do that is where packaging is important because nobody was doing it. People are used to buying everything across the counter. And then we came up with the idea that Kaju Katli can be packaged, Mango Barfi can be packaged, but now there are 65 products that are packaged and sold across the world, not any more restricted to a Chitale Bandhu Store. So this could be done only because we innovated on the process and the parameters and the standardization and automation and the innovation of it. So of course there was innovation on the business plan, there was innovation on the technology, there was innovation on the process side as well. And there was also innovation on the way the finances were managed because we did it with very, very bigger budgets because this was an unprovoked idea. So that built over a time where it was a seed that was soon. But then having that kind of mechanism of sowing seeds itself is a great organization to have, which I genuinely enjoy in our organization, which is how we could do it. And then when we realized, moving out, we realized that the ability of our brand to percolate into newer markets where something like Northeast is much lesser than percolating into the west or south part where we are known better. So we wanted to bring down our ticket price of buying the brand to a ten rupee category because that's no commitment cost. People will pay Rs10 without a thought. People will not pay Rs 100 without a thought. So how do we innovate a ten rupee? Because we could just very well do alum or we could do wifes and we could do something snacky, which has made a very bad choice to be honest and not good for your health. Or we could innovate and change the form factor, give something baked in an industry which is fried and just do it better and convenient. And that is where we try to do that. And it's been a series of efforts and multiple years of management and building that kind of R&D team where we are able to innovate and where now I have reached a point where I have team members whose only job is to pinpoint on what they see wrong and try and fix that. So we have that check and balance mechanism internally itself where whatever is the set process, can we challenge it, can we better it, can we modify it and can we keep pushing the envelope ourselves without the need of external competition is what we try to do and we've been able to do that, which is why we fail very often. But then something comes out good and part of it is what Binge Bar or packaged mithai is. [00:15:07.450] - Darshan Doshi Brilliant. So you're an engineer by background and then you're alumni of Harvard. [00:15:16.750] - Indraneel Chitale I'm about to be a Harvard alumni. The last course is still pending. [00:15:21.730] - Darshan Doshi I want to talk to you about that because I see a massive challenge today, especially in second generation and third generation family business owners where either they are not interested in the traditional business because it is boring non technology and the second part of it is not having the capability to be able to take it forward. Now, these are two very different. One is mindset, one is skill set, capability. So I would love to hear your own story where what made you join the family business, what point of life were you at and how do you think about it? Right, because you could very well have said, you know what, I'm not interested in business in doing this because you could do whatever you wanted to, very well educated and you could be in US, Europe, anywhere you wanted to. So we would love to hear your thoughts in terms of what is your story to be contributing to this family business legacy? [00:16:28.050] - Indraneel Chitale So when I went to engineering, many people ask me that why do you want to do engineering? And it was a big question that I had an answer ready at that time. I told them that probably we sell mithai but we just do it very technically and you should come see the factory once. Of course we were out of time at that time. Now we are at a different level and that's because of the formal education I could get. So even before I went for engineering, I think as a family everybody was convinced that I should be doing that because there was a place where I knew I would add value into the family business. And while doing that, I knew that this is the kind of technical skill I need to build because there is a potential to build something. But if I'm not equipped to understand this, I am of no use. So the thing is that is where nepotism gets a big issue. So you can very well be placed under the mental. What do you do out of that mental is in your hand and my aim is to not fail at that. So whether I am successful or not is a very different story. But I would say that I try not to fail. [00:17:29.470] - Darshan Doshi That's a huge difference. I'm just going to stop you here before you move forward. Because I put together a one year post graduate program in entrepreneurship at Flame University recently over the pandemic and I have seen third generation, fourth generation family business entrepreneurs come in and come with a sense of entitlement. This is something that I am. And so there is never a question of failing. It's a question of entitlement, which is very different. So I just wanted to highlight that difference and then kind of continue in terms of why do a post grad program, why continue your education even today when you probably don't need to. So I'm trying to get into your mind because one of the focus areas of Dasar is peak performance and productivity. And that can only happen when you're chasing the 98% is there, but you're chiseling to become in the top 1%. So I would love to hear your thought process of this continuous learning, continuous checking, continuous development. [00:18:38.950] - Indraneel Chitale I guess I must credit this to my parents and my family. We never grew up in an environment where we were raised to be entertained. So we were always flogged for not being up to the mark or taken up seriously when we are not doing something right. And that way merit was what was built into us as a program. Not just me, everybody else around me. So there was this option that if you are not scoring, you're not getting anywhere, or if you're not doing this, then you're not getting this. So the idea of achieving was something that was built into us much younger than we could even realize. We had a business that was big. So I think that could only happen because we had parents who were meritocratic and probably also the fact that they had seen both sides of the story. So my father came in from a time where he lived in a rented house and moved into his own house. Now he owns a big house. So my grandfather probably lived in multiple houses with revenge because they were too poor when he was getting educated. And eventually he could afford his own house when he was probably, maybe 35, 40. Yeah, must be 40. So, in terms of that, we've seen these men struggle also beat the women in the house where beat my grandmother, who's put in great amounts of efforts in terms of working on the recipes and the standardization. And also a lot of women that we employ working on solving their issues because workplaces were not really great at one time. They are getting better now. So, same with my mother or around me. Be it my wife, be it my sister, we've been grown up in that environment where we had to perform and there was a reward to the performance, there was not a reward to your entitlement. So we never grew up in that. And that was a great thing to have, because that way we knew that we are coming into a business which is already running and running successfully. So at day zero when I joined the business, I had zero value to address. So unless I could bring something under the table, I was just one of the many. So how could I do? That was where I started working on it and that is where my engineering helped me. And that is where I probably contributed to a certain extent where that helped me break ice with many of the employees, the managers, the second generation employees and also the family members in establishing that I could do something. So when I did something good, I was rewarded with something bigger. When that came to something bigger, it went on to something much bigger. And that eventually went onto a point where it was a factory. Then it went into a division where it eventually went into a business where that entire product line is something that we understand. So this was a grooming process that was probably not very well engineered but insured to encourage merits. So it went through it. And that is when I realized that probably I spent a lot of time at work but now I don't have formal management education. I know engineering and I know how to manage people but I don't know how to manage finance. How do I do it then? That's where the meritocratic idea was. That and one probably some goodness with my father that I told him that if I go I will educate at Harvard. Otherwise I'm not going anywhere and I don't need formal education is what I told him that time. So you're like, I don't think you can make it to horror. So that I took it upon myself if okay. And I think that worked. [00:21:55.400] - Darshan Doshi Brilliant. So what you've said is such golden words for most family businesses. I'll share a quick story. I come from a background of chemical engineering and family business too. I gave up after running about three, four years of family business back in 2011 and then I've been in tech entrepreneurship myself ever since. But it's not easy because there is a lot of such a high bar that is typically raised which many people can't reach. And so there is either fear, there is capability issue or there is entitlement. And so there are a lot of issues that kind of pop up internally within family and self. So just going back to that point, at what point did you join the family business and what was the trigger point or what motivated you to then say, okay, you know what, this is time. Did you work outside? Did you join directly? Would love to hear some context. [00:22:56.800] - Indraneel Chitale I did spend some time working abroad and then joined in 2012 formally. So after my engineering, I think I did spend time in my engineering doing projects inside the company where multiple companies I was exposed to on, say, handling how installations are done, how certain PLCs to be programmed or how one project could be executed. So I had some exposure, and I knew I wanted to join even before I entered engineering. But what I wanted to do was something that I found out after I joined the business. So I think one year my father told me that no matter what happens, you're not talking to anybody on the floor without asking me. So you can be on the floor, you can observe or whatever it is you talk to me. I will see what is to be done about it. But you don't have the authority to instruct. That was one thing. And another thing would be that my uncle took in great effort in exposing me to outside business. So my father looked more into the operations part of the business. One of my father's uncle is very tech savvy, and he was the one who has been responsible for getting us into a digital revolution ahead of the curve. So he would take me to meetings even during college. And I've done college for that. And absolutely, so that's where my parents supported me. Fine, go over a meeting. Doesn't matter if you miss a lecture or something. And similarly installations and other things when negotiating with people abroad or just getting the last drip of that contract done and executed properly for something that I learned from another uncle. But that way, all three, four of them have had an influence on me in terms of building and probably that scenario where I try to give out a good amount of output. I think I have a long way to go in comparison to what they've done, but that's just a good foundation to be on. [00:24:39.710] - Darshan Doshi Great. So we've kind of covered a little bit in terms of the past, right now, let's get to the present and the future. And I have seen you focus a lot of your efforts on two things. One is digital transformation, and second is branding or brand management. So we'll take the first one, which is digital transformation. If this is a very traditional business, you make Mitai, right? But this is technology-enabled business. I visited the factory completely blown away with the level of automation that you've got there. The kind of things that have been thought and put into detail are just mind blowing. I would love to hear the pre and the post situation of digital transformation and where do you stand today, right. In terms of your business? So if you could give any examples, that would be great. [00:25:39.260] - Indraneel Chitale So both things run hand in hand. I don't think so. They are mutually exclusive as activity. So if you're doing digital businesses, we are in an age where you cannot be dependent on one channel for sale. And that is what we engineered without knowing this very well at that time, because we were having an idea that something like this could exist. Something like this could exist. Let's try to put 1ft into that door, 1ft into that door eventually now it's shaping up well but if you look at us today, Chitale Bandhu does sale in its own stores in Pune which are 25, it has Chitale Express stores, which are 40, which are spread across Maharashtra and Goa. There will be 100 by the end of next year. We have our distribution channel which is spread across nine states. We are exporting to every continent that is habitat. So we did export once to Antarctica, but that's just once because India has a research center. So that way and along with that we have the fifth and the fastest-growing channel which is a digital or ecommerce channel where we beat our own websites or the logistics services like Flipkart or Zomato or the e-commerce places like Amazon or Flipkart places are contributing to your sale. And naturally as a brand we have to be omnichannel in terms of our approach. But when we go omnichannel, the big challenge is that I don't have the visibility of my customer that I have in my stores. I don't know who's buying my product, I know who's facilitating that trade because of my EI or digital transformation and last mile connectivity. But how do I get my consumer on board? Where I don't know who the consumer is, is where the need for digital transformation was fed and where we moved to a point where right from the point where any liter of milk that will come into our plant to a point where any kiji or product that is sold to our customers anywhere we have an end to end traceability that's been built. So this traceability could be built because we invested heavily onto digital data logging and managing which eventually became industry 4.0, which that was not what was known about a decade and a half ago. [00:27:57.420] - Darshan Doshi Correct. [00:27:58.120] - Indraneel Chitale And that's just material. So we are also progressing with technology but it's sometimes like Columbus were trying to buy in America so we still haven't found we are trying to be there, but it's a lot of myth and that's the thing with technology. So when I was in college we were being taught what 3G was going to be because 4G was not in picture and the world used to work on BlackBerry and 2G phones. So when I went to fourth year when I was being taught 3G, 3G actually came but in three years later 4G was there and engineering kids were learning for 3G only at that time. So now 4G to 5G leap has been less than two or three years. So we are squeezing the gap between next generation of technology in that way. All of this is leading to a very fast adoption of digital technologies which help making business streamline better, manufacture better and also reach consumers in a better manner. And while doing that, we still don't know what is the end point of it. It is an exploratory activity which has to be ingrained as activity or a mode of working in a business. So you can be selling beta or you can be selling shoes or you can be selling services. If you are not digitally enabled, you are not going to be sustaining in the world that's coming tomorrow. And the big thing about this is that since we don't know who the consumer is, how do we reach the consumer and make them affinity, have affinity towards the brand? And that is where the marketing plays an important role. So marketing can be multiple things, right? So it can be about communicating what the brand stands for. It can be communicating how the packaging works, it can be communicating about what the brand does beyond the brand of making money. It can be about communicating the values and the people who work for the organization and it can be communicating about the technology that the brand is trying to build. So all of this needs to reach the consumer in a manner which that translates into building brand equity. And then brand equity can now be translated or measured into any of these omnichannel formal that I mentioned before. So that's why if we are not having a uniform look and feel, if we are not having a uniform way of communication, if we are not having a uniform way of approaching our consumers, we are not having a uniform way of dealing with our consumers who have a problem or a feedback or a suggestion for us and all of that having that integrity of being the same on every platform is something that our marketing essential. So marketing and branding go hand in hand. And here is where you communicate the brand value through these channels and that's where social media plays a huge role and we try to leverage that as well. [00:30:20.550] - Darshan Doshi So I'm seeing a lot of social media presence, I'm seeing a lot of positive vibes coming through. But at the same time, a lot of authentic stories is just very nostalgic when I see that, right? And the second part of it that you mentioned on Digital Transformation is data. Capturing data. But using that data for decision-making is something that I want to talk to you about. We recently did a podcast with Rohit Pandharkar. He's the head of Data Science at OLX Autos, right? And previously he was head of Data Science at Mahindra Group. And we had a fantastic podcast where he talked about first is capturing the right data, having the right infrastructure to be able to capture this data for business leaders to actually make sense of it and to use it for their benefit. It seems to me you've already built out the whole infrastructure in terms of what you need. Maybe what you can do is help us understand. How is it that you're using this digital Transformation initiative that you put together for some of the decisions that you may have taken. So do you have any examples? Would you mind sharing any of them? [00:31:36.930] - Indraneel Chitale Well, we had data which is why we realized that 65% of our sale in our stores is Mithai and not Namkeen which is very much inwards to what most other brands do. That's when I realized that our data is pointing something different. Why don't we start packaging namkeen, because we are not doing that and nobody else is doing that and we did that and we've grown in that business at more than 30% CAGR volumetrically for the last four or five years so that was untouched territory and we would have never known had we not been looking at data. So I could bet myself onto this idea because I had data. So as they say, you are as good as your data now. So how good is your data is the question and that's why having the mechanism to get data all the time from different interfaces plays a very important role and that's where industry 4.0 is making things easy. [00:32:27.600] - Darshan Doshi So we've covered a lot of the past and the present. Let's talk about the future. Not many companies are privately owned and have a legacy of four generations reaching about 100 years and almost every country that you can think of globally. It's a popular brand. We are seeing Indian consumer brands now reach out to the world and be successful. So now what happens next? What comes next for you and Chitale Bandhu? [00:33:04.110] - Indraneel Chitale Couple of interesting trends that we observe now is that 60% of the worst population is going to be living in the cities so that's a lot of people in very small areas and that means that our traffic situation is not going to improve any so that means that convenience is going to be next big thing and people will be wanting everything available in the minutest possible time because they will not be having too much time. So essentially your marketplaces, your phone or your laptop or your digital device that you're using and that's probably we all are facing three to 4 hours of screen time every day and I don't work in It jobs still so we have to be part of your screen and we can't be part of your screen all the time because if you're stuck in traffic you're not going to go celebrate somebody's birthday or somebody's celebration or something like that. You're probably going to give that online and send bouquets and flowers and something like that. So wherever this kind of consumption is happening we have to be present and that means that we also probably have to move beyond celebration and we have to be into a point where we are part of the consumption that is daily. So that's why what we are building right now is first we want to target the breakfast serious and what we want to see is that what we see is that breakfast is the only meal that Indians are very likely going to have at home because every other meal is eventually going to be outside, either in the office or in the commute or socializing because per capita income is going up in the cities and people are going to prefer having meals closer to where they work and not in the travel. And with the kind of expenses that it is going to cost, hiring meals in the city itself is going to be very difficult. So we are betting that 60% population moves to the urban part and if they move, they want food. So we want to feed them throughout the day. So not just during celebration, but at breakfast, at meals, at lunchtime, at snacking time, whatever it is, whenever you want to have food, it should be something that comes from. That is what we are trying to build and that's where the R&D, the innovation and the channel development is happening. [00:35:14.140] - Darshan Doshi So what are some of the top challenges? I'm sure you faced a lot of challenges since 2012, right? Any particular challenge that kind of comes to the top of your mind where and how you were able to overcome it? [00:35:30.870] - Indraneel Chitale Here's the thing. Whatever challenges at that time, when I faced it, now when I look at it in hindsight, I don't look at it as a challenge. And all of those challenges were something that I've defined what I am today and also in terms of me being convinced of having that kind of conviction that I want to prove this point right. So that way when these challenges have come, I think I have also been tested, but I have also been forced to, as you said, chisel or just refine myself and be that precise with what I want to try and achieve and communicate that. And that's where I think these challenges have helped me become who I am today. So they can be anywhere from internal shareholders, customers perception. So we got complained when we started giving our stores open. I was like, isn't this for customer service? People are like, no, but then we move beyond that. But then I also realized over a period of time that very often when you're faced with challenges, you become very binary in nature. And at least that was the case with me, where I was like, it's either your point or my point and I want to prove my point, I'm going to work hard for that. But then very often the impact of your challenges in a country like ours goes far beyond the economics and balance sheet metrics of it. It's also the social angle of it. And that takes time as a young person to understand. Probably I'm even worse when it comes to understanding. So this is something that has enlightened over the last two years, especially after Covid, where I've lost a lot of people I've known and I've also come to realize that very often the emotional value is something that binds people to brands. And as a consumer brand, we have to keep retaining that emotional value. Beat with our customers, beat with our suppliers, beat with our employees, beat all stakeholders who matter to the organization. So that way that has also resonated in way I end up taking decisions where it's not just the binary optics of the decision that does this achieve this, that, etc., but what are the ramifications and the effects which are cascading beyond our line of sight that we have to study while taking decisions? And probably I take two decisions less, but I take those better than what I did before. [00:37:46.380] - Darshan Doshi Which is great insight and awareness and reflection. I want to talk to you about your routines. Okay. You've been a high performer for a very long time. I have noticed the way you're able to articulate yourself, the way you're able to think about decision making, the way you're able to sense things. And all of that feeds into based on your routines. And so we would love to hear what are some of the top two or three routines that you follow week in, week out that has made who you are today? [00:38:21.320] - Indraneel Chitale Well, I think discipline is probably my biggest routine that I swear by. And I just work far better when I'm disciplined. So whenever I go in discipline, even say like one empty day in my calendar, that is the worst day to have. So I would rather want to have that kind of visibility that three weeks down the line I have this meeting because I'm prepared for that meeting. So that way, if I'm disciplined and organized, it just works better. And that does not only matter in your workplace, but it matters in your life. [00:38:50.530] - Darshan Doshi Absolutely. [00:38:51.270] - Indraneel Chitale So last week there was an iPhone update where the alarm did not ring. And this happened two days, but I woke up five minutes later than the alarm, which is my snooze time, but I woke up at 5:15, where my regular alarm is at 05:00 a.m. In the morning. And I was like, why didn't it not ring? But the thing is that I could still continue with my 5:30 exercise routine, although I had to rush into it because for last ten years I've woken up at five. So my body clock is used to the idea that around this time you have to wake up. So I woke up and I saw alarm, didn't ring, but that didn't matter because that discipline is built into my body. And that's when I realized that's great. I think I felt nice about the fact that I have something to be proud of, but that way that's what I've stuck to. And I'm not a very sharp person or I was never a very intelligent person. So I knew for a fact that if I have to achieve something, I have to work hard because I had known people who are genuinely gifted or brilliant or great achievers and I was nothing like this. So I knew that if I had to be anywhere around them, I had to probably put in more effort and which is where probably that discipline was ingrained. And I've seen my grandparents do it, my parents do it, where we are all early rises. And what's worked for me very well is that since I rise up early, I sleep early. So if I sleep early, I socialize less and that means that I have less bad habits to deal with and less angles to deal with. And third thing that I have seen is that I just consume a lot of time now of my day trying to read or consume content. So part of this whole leadership thing is that it's about your ability to sense what is happening. And that sense does not come until you build your intuition and your intuition cannot be built until you are tuning your body to be that intuitive and that's your physical and your mental ability. I would say maybe I'm too novice at explaining this, but that means getting a feel means you have to study what's happening around you. So if you're just too involved into yourself and doing this, etc. All you are not hearing other people and if you are not hearing and not sensing the pulse of what your decision is going to make or what your impacts are going to make or what new innovation you want to create, you're probably going to end up in the wrong spot. And that's not a comfortable situation to be in as a business leader because you are responsible for so many people behind you. So how do we make less mistakes is where all of these things happen. And that's why I think this whole thing is about that. [00:41:22.900] - Darshan Doshi So you've talked about this and this is what all Dasar is about. One of the guiding principles that we have at Dasar is we will not be outworked, we will put in the work because we may not be the smartest, but we are going to be one of the most hardworking, disciplined people who will prioritize and go after it. And in all our courses, so we offer online courses on three areas, which is how do you be the best at what you do in your field of work? So that's performance, how can you be at peak fitness? And I want to talk to you about that. And the third one is how can you become financially independent? Because if you're financially independent, you can take on things which are much more meaningful to you, right? Think of it as escape velocity. And so in all of these three things, the base that I believe is consistency, you just have to chip away. Three workouts a week over two years you're going to be extremely fit. [00:42:26.970] - Indraneel Chitale Absolutely. [00:42:27.470] - Darshan Doshi It does not matter if you do seven days of workout over just two months, the rest of the ten months you're going to be consuming sugar or you're going to be consuming something or the other. So love that answer that you shared, would love to hear your thoughts on your fitness routine. What is your typical fitness routine and how do you achieve consistency in it? [00:42:50.950] - Indraneel Chitale Well, first thing, I have a very expensive trainer so that's just a lot of money spent by spending that kind of money, that what is my return on capital employed is what I look into. If I'm not fit about it then there's something generally wrong. So I look at it and I have a penny picture. If I'm spending I want that kind of return but that way that just makes me uncertain. But beyond that, what I've realized is that I picked up a couple of injuries over a period because I've always been into sports and while being into sports because of the injury that I picked up, I also have had those two curves in my life where I was at my peak physical fitness and all the six packs and everything that was mated at that time when the rhetoric Ross was keen to a point where it went down for six months where I couldn't simply even move my arm because that's the injury I had and that was a big mental trigger for me. I was like this is not how it should be done, there is something genuinely wrong with this. And that's when I started looking into this that how do we just move beyond this? That's when I also figured out that accelerates don't really matter, it's your fitness that matters. So after my second injury, which was a freak biking accident, I realized that now I'm just training with the best people, I'm not cutting corners and I'm just doing that and I could recover from both of these injuries because I had a physical fitness which was beyond those two injuries or those spans of recovery. So that just ingrained further. And another thing is that what's very toxic about Indian work mentality is that in my family, many family members in my father's generation had a hypertension or blood pressure issue when they were my age and this was something that was slightly glorified. They were working so hard they are in hypertension at. I was like, no, I don't want to be slaves to medicine that I don't want to be taking tablets at all. So I'm going to work hard, I'm not going to have bad habits and I'm just going to make sure that I don't become a slave to the tablet. So what should I be doing? So first thing, obviously it was physical exercise but secondly also working on your mental health because eventually as your aging and your decisions are also impacting far more than what you can see in front of you, your mental fitness needs to be far better. And that is what I have been working for the last two, three years. And I also had some personal instances in my life where I realized that mental fitness is equally important. So I work on both. I have two great coaches who work with me. And that's the thing that in your life you have to be coached by good people who understand that and you should be working with people who understand that sector well. So have mentors who teach you good things. So we have business coaches. India could not have won the World Cup without Gary Kirsten. And we are seeing what's happened over the last decade that we've not had a great coach. And that's what they're reflecting the team. So if you want to be at peak performance, go work with great people around you and learn from the best and try to keep that as a goal of your financial independence. That I'm going to make enough money that I can afford the best. And if you can do that, then I think your money matters get sorted. [00:45:54.460] - Darshan Doshi The money pays for itself. And I love this part. Because at Dasar, for all the program participants, we just concluded the first cohort of Get Financial Freedom. These are people who are running businesses. These are people who have working at Microsoft for ten years, who have joined a personal finance management program. They have all the knowledge, you have YouTube videos, you have all the books that are there. The difference was, Darshan, thanks for hand holding me and being a coach. I sincerely believe you have a fitness coach. You have a mental fitness coach or an executive coach, but you also need to have a personal finance coach because we need that hand holding. The difference between a coach and a mentor, right? If I may just add over here is a coach works with you hand in hand, whereas a mentor points in that direction and helps you reflect. There is value in it, but there's different from a coach, right? So if you want to build a habit, you need to bring on coaches. And that is what we are trying to do at Dasar. And I couldn't have explained it better myself. So that's fitness routines. We have two speakers. We have someone who runs a startup called iThrive by Mugdha Pradhan. So she is a nutritionist who's undergone medical conditions in her thirty s and has launched a coaching for managing nutrition. So that you live a healthy life using Indian food. We get a lot of nutrition stuff on Western food, but what about Indian food? And she's doing this, she's raised some funding, doing some really good work. And the second one is Shajan Samuel. Now, Shajan Samuel is a runner. He's an executive who works at a job and ten years ago started running, and today, on an average, does a few hundred kilometers of running each week. And just brilliant. We are going to have him, we are going to speak to him and just decode what is it that they do, because they also have the pressure of family. They have the pressure of a job. They have the pressure of money. We all face the same challenges. We have the same seven days, 24 hours. But you have to make time for your fitness. And so that is something that we wanted to bring in. And if you, after running this business, still get up at 5:30 and do your fitness, I don't think anyone else has any other excuse not to do it, right? [00:48:32.670] - Indraneel Chitale Here's my take on this, that you're making a great amount of money trying to run a business, and people are making good money nowadays, so I don't think so there's any disparity in that front. So what's all that money going to contribute to if you're not able to utilize them in your older years and get those experiences? Are those supposed to float your hospital bills? Or do you want to enjoy experiences? And I think that answer is all you need to find whenever you find it in your life. I think that will be a eureka moment. And we'll just go doing that. [00:49:05.790] - Darshan Doshi Brilliant. Brilliant. [00:49:07.350] - Indraneel Chitale So it doesn't come. You can explain all the logic to it, but even with me, I have seen that you need that Eureka moment, that that realization led to this. So that movement will come at different point or phases in different people's life. But whenever it comes, I think we should act. [00:49:22.150] - Darshan Doshi Absolutely. I have one last question. And this is a question on governance. And this is the family business ownership structure. So when I was part of my family business, one of the things, mistakes that we did, reflecting on it today, and most SMEs, most small businesses that are coming from India are facing this is they don't know how to structure and how to absorb family members into the business, have a very clear performance metrics, reward, compensation, it all gets mixed very easily. And then, from a government standpoint, is something that I've been studying over the last ten years, that most small businesses aren't able to put together a governance structure to keep the owners accountable. Right? So any thoughts, experiences of how you are thinking about it? Because you have multiple family members joining in, so maybe you can help us understand how do you approach it? How have you thought about this? [00:50:26.860] - Indraneel Chitale One of the very important part that I probably found out much earlier in my life, and I'm glad I could, was that we are not owners. We are just caretakers of a legacy that existed far before I came into the picture. I was even born. And it needs to be existing far after I'm born. So I am just a small span in a lifetime which is far far bigger than what we can visit and we want it to be anything that never ends. So when we are caretakers of it we need to be answerable to the fact that we need to build systems and institutionalize it in a manner where the hand holding happens that the transition to the next generation is smooth and while doing that whatever the next generation inherits is better than what we as the current generation inherited because we are not doing that then we are actually landing a sh!t show into somebody else's hand and these people would not want to own up to that. So how do we keep improving is a continual process? I don't think so there's overnight answer to it but while doing that I think if this is not established at day zero businesses are going to fail and they're not going to sustain the test of time for the simple reason that the mindset of sustainance is not built into it. Very often in India we've always had a patriarchal look at businesses but now with families getting nuclear that patriarchal value has also gone for a toss and very often we have also seen that around us in the papers that the patriots are also not equally capable of being the patriots so they can be the oldest but not necessarily the patriots and this reflects across industries, not just manufacturing or It but it's also in politics. So how do we institutionalize is a big question and Indians historically have a problem that we are grown up in a society which is Raja and Praja. So there always needs to be one face at the top and everybody below them and that is not how that's going to be institutionalized because what happens when that face goes correct. So which is why I think all key stakeholders need to agree that we are not the inheritors, we are the caretakers of a legacy far beyond us and this legacy is what needs to be preserved and handed over in very very soft golden gloves to the next generation. And by handing over, what I'm saying is not about handing over the ownership but handing over the care taking activity of that establishment. So the ownership can remain owners or shareholders or non active executive members or completely CEO material based on whatever the interest or whatever the family decides to be. But we need to understand that your ownership and your executive abilities are two very separate things and it can be family controlled, it cannot be family controlled and either ways are okay but that's where the family needs to sit down, agree upon a way where that functioning is penned down and that is standardized where it is functioning or functionable beyond the person. So systems need to be built which are independent of people and accommodate people. When systems are built to build by people to control other people, then that becomes a colonial mindset and that does not sustain. So that's why we have to institutionalize from day zero. And that's what most new businesses need to do as first generation as well. Because now the way capital is being raised and way acquisitions are happening and way structuring and debt funding and equity funding is being happening. You're losing equity in first round also coming down to 20%. So how are you going to retain your equity? And that's also a big question about how other investors are going to look at you, that if your shareholding is 20%, are we going to trust you because you can run away. So that way it's all about balancing all of these aspects and looking far beyond what you can think about. And when I say far beyond, I cannot put a definite timeline, but that is what you have to look into and try to envisage when things start building out one by one. And steps are taken towards achieving that longitude because businesses have to survive far beyond you as well. [00:54:34.580] - Darshan Doshi Yeah. And time. Right? So here's are famous quote. The first generation builds it, second generation grows it, third generation blows it. That's the common theme in family businesses. However, in India, I don't have research to prove this, but what I'm noticing is the lifecycle of the business is going hand in hand with the lifecycle of the owner. And most of these owners are in their late 70s or early 80s. And the business, there is no caretaker, there is no legacy, there is no existence. As far as the startup mindset goes, well, it's really just in a very definite span of time, right? It's not necessarily being looked at from am I going to be alive in 3020? [00:55:26.680] - Indraneel Chitale So here's the thing, right. Indian system or the Hindu culture has taught us the idea of ashrams, that you have the one up and I'm sorry, I can't remember the first one, but that is about education. But your businesses also go in the cyclic manner. And there is a very easy word that has been said that the moment your kids are able to fit into your shoe size, you should start treating them like friends rather than just kids. And that way that whole succession planning is so well defined in Hindu culture, unfortunately, it was never written down and that is why it has never been institutionalized. But that is what needs to be taught because we are as a society, we have figured this out, we are just not implementing this. But the one upper side is that when the kids are old enough to go to college, that is when the grandparents should take a backseat and let the son or the next mid generation run the show. And by the time that transitions further and the next generation joins in, you should take sunshine. So I'm not saying go to a forest and be a hermit. But that means that you should take a step out of the business. Right? So I would want to inculcate that as part of how I want to grow it. But while doing that, I also want to ensure that this does not become a cyclic family holding thing. The holding and the ownership remains cyclic, but probably the governance and aspects of running the business can be much more proficient. But we have a lot to learn amidst ourselves, I would say. [00:57:05.320] - Darshan Doshi Amazing. So we're at the end of this podcast. We've covered a whole range of topics. Right. Indranil has walked us through what is a fourth generation family business with a great brand, with a great legacy, and how does he view it? What is branding? What is digital transformation? How do you work on your strengths? How do you look at regret minimisation framework? What are the decision making models? What are the fitness routines? What are some peak performance routines? Followed by him. This is such a rich conversation, and I'm just grateful. Thanks a lot for coming on this podcast. This has been an awesome podcast. There's so much to learn. I hope we can continue this conversation going forward, but then if you guys need to reach out, reach out to us. We'll be very happy to connect. To move this forward, I'm at dd@dasar.in in how can people reach out to you? [00:58:05.320] - Indraneel Chitale Twitter is the easiest thing. [00:58:06.620] - Darshan Doshi Twitter is the easiest way. All right? Awesome. So thanks a lot. Thanks, Indraneel. This has been an awesome podcast, and I'll see you in the next time. Thanks. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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Chitale Bandhu: Building a Food Brand Loved by Consumers July 3, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

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Cross Border Investing: Why does it matter for Wealth Creation | Swatantra Podcast July 1, 2022 Darshan Doshi 22:01 0 Comments

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https://youtu.be/fsdWVnQyjcY Transcript [00:00:15.250] - Darshan Doshi Hi everyone. Welcome back to Swatantra. I have with me my partner, podcast partner Jaydeep Doshi from Proinvest Nirmiti and I am Darshan from Dasar. At Swatantra what we aim to do is to simplify investing so that you can be financially independent by investing at the right time, with the right knowledge, with the right partners. So today what we are going to do is we are going to talk about global investing. And this is a topic which is of very high interest to me personally. And so I'm going to ask a lot of questions to you Jaydeep, which are kind of very relevant to me and many of the people that I know and I'm talking to today. So quickly, what is global investing? I am an Indian citizen living in India, working at a job, earning money and now wanting to invest in the US market, the European market, or Australian market, right? But I don't know how to do this. I don't know what this means from a taxation standpoint. Am I even allowed to do this? How would I do this? How would I choose? How would I research stocks and then why would I do this? So we want to cover all of these topics in this podcast today and we are going to simplify global investing as an Indian citizen living in India. So the first and the most basic question, why should anyone invest in global stock markets when you have sensex, when you have Nifty 50 doing so well? [00:01:52.670] - Jaydeep Doshi Yeah, so I mean, first thing is, while investing, the basic rule is to not have any kind of biases. So first thing is, whether you're in India or you're in the US, you must always consider the right investment opportunity for you. India being just 3% of global GDP, there's like immense opportunities globally. There are a lot of listed companies who are trading and doing very well. To give an example, everyone of us use Amazon, we use Netflix and company and directly-indirectly we know that we are going to be associated with them for the years to come. And I think why shouldn't we think of these businesses also, india being a developing market, we should also, as a part of diversification, have some exposure to developed countries also where there's more transparency, data is more efficient and information flow is more transparent over there or at the same time everybody gets the information. So it makes a lot of sense in terms of diversification and identifying good business and investing in them and having no biases also. [00:03:01.500] - Darshan Doshi Okay, so basically, if I am investing Rs 1000 anywhere in any instrument, as an investor, I'm trying to maximize my returns. At the same time, I don't want to lose that Rs 1000 that I have earned by working hard. And so diversification portfolio management becomes important and this is where maybe we can even discover some great businesses like Amazon, like Apple, like Netflix, although it has taken a bit of a beating recently. So, okay, what are my options? I want to invest abroad outside India. What are the best places and what are the various options that I have to invest globally? [00:03:49.210] - Jaydeep Doshi So the most common or most easy option these days is investing in the US markets. So Motilal Oswani way back in 2009 had introduced NASDAQ 100 ETF. And as you know, the last decade has been for the developing countries, developed countries like US. And they've done better than the emerging countries or developing countries like India. And we have these ETFs which we can buy through mutual funds. We can buy stocks also now and buy them in fractions. We can buy an Indian mutual fund which has small part of it invested only in the global market. It's more to do for the taxation purpose. So, yeah, we have these ETFs, we can buy stocks, we can buy infractions. And this is all about these are the options that we have. But most options that we have are directed are more for the US markets. And we don't really have a lot of choices to buy individual stocks globally. Or say like a company trading in. Japan or Europe or China or something like that. So US is primarily very easily available. [00:05:05.860] - Darshan Doshi Yeah. So two questions as a follow-up to that, one is if I'm investing in the US stock market, you have the NASDAQ 100, similar to say, the NIFTY 50 equivalent. What are some of the returns that from a percentage point, from a number standpoint, if you can throw some numbers over the last 5,10, 15 years, whatever the period may be. And the second thing is, how does it actually work? So today, if I want to invest in any of the mutual funds or any of the direct stocks in India, I just go on Zerodha there, I go on ICICI Direct, I use HDFC. If I had to actually go, what are the platforms that I should be looking at and are trustworthy for me to be able to invest in the US market? [00:05:57.460] - Jaydeep Doshi Okay, so if you are asking me about trust, it's really difficult sitting here and talking about anybody in particular because finally we all are tying up with some broker on the other in US and US declaring bankruptcy. And it's quite different than the way it works in India. But I would say you could partner with people like HDFC, Kotak or even Stockal who are pioneers in setting up their own platform associating or tying up with a broker in the US. Everything is in the name of if you have to buy individual stocks, you can open an account which is dollar denominated and invest also globally. In your first question where you asked about the performances and all, so it actually varies from time to time, but last decade definitely has been for the US. Because the US markets have done exceptionally well, all the tech giants. NASDAQ 100 is typically the technology index. So that has been exceptionally well and has outperformed all indexes, especially in India. If you are investing in India and that's why when I said why you should be investing is for one of the reason is diversification because everything is not in India and God forbid, if something goes wrong to our story, you should have a plan B and diversification will get down some kind of risk. So I have my investing experience and where I had started an SIP in one of the mutual funds and I realized that in 2019, maybe till date, the performance is quite better than doing an investment in Indian stock market. So the weights have been rational. But yes, from the diversification point of view it makes more sense. [00:07:42.080] - Darshan Doshi Yeah, I mean, as an investor I just want to maximize my returns, right? But not at the point where I lose my money. And so that's where the act of balancing is very important. So thanks for giving us how we could invest as an Indian abroad or specifically the US market. I also want to understand the downside of investing globally. So I'm sure there are pros, you've mentioned a lot about the pros, but what are the downsides and why should you not invest in the US market? [00:08:17.710] - Jaydeep Doshi Yeah, I mean, downside is typically an equity risk that you're carrying what is true for Indian markets also. But one of the example is recently, had you invested in Turkey at this point of time and for some political changes that have happened in the country, the currency is divided almost about 45-50%. So these are the risks that you carry when you invest globally. So you should not just do it for the fun sake or maybe most of the investors look at the past track record and get into these markets. These are highly injurious things to do. Just from a long-term perspective, because when I started investing in developed market, the return expectations were as low as 8 to 9%. And my objective was to do well when probably if India doesn't do well. So you should have this written expectation set correctly. It surprised me for sure that the kind of returns the developed markets have generated over the last decade. But I shouldn't presume that the same is going to happen in the next decade as well. So don't look at the past returns. Don't just do it for any kind of just because others are doing it. And the way I do it is every area, supposedly I'm investing, say about 10 Lakh rupees in India, then 10% of that has to go to global investing. I have to do it consistently. It's not about investing in 2020-21. You have to keep doing it and keep balancing the ratios. [00:09:51.160] - Darshan Doshi Yeah, it's not a one-and-done thing. Personal finance, I think one of the things that we say is consistency over intensity. Be at it. Manage your money, manage your investments. Give it the due time. Spend an hour to two hours. Even if you are working at a very heavy job, I think that is very important. And you have to level up your knowledge and you are doing that. So maybe what you could do, you talked about a very important part, which is currency devaluation. But at the same time in India, the rupee has been going down. So now a dollar costs about Rs 77 or Rs 78. And so that can actually work in your favor if you are invested abroad, correct? But help me understand, what are the benefits of this? What is this exactly? When you say Stockal, you're investing in dollar denomination, right? For those who may not know. [00:10:46.300] - Jaydeep Doshi Yeah so it's like when you are investing, transferring, say about $3,000 today, buying about $3,000 at Rs 75 and probably you're going to sell this stock, assume that you sell it after three years and the general history of Indian currencies that we have been developing at devaluating our currency somewhere in the range of about 3%-4%. So next time, when you go and sell over and above the returns that you have generated in the US, you would also, while you are selling your stocks, if the currency is somewhere around Rs 80, Rs 5 is the additional advantage that you carry by sitting in India and investing in the US. So it's an advantage for one who sits in India and invests in US. But if somebody's doing the other way, we meet a lot of plants who are in the US, who are in maybe Singapore, and they want to invest in India, so they are transferring dollars. So for them, it works in the reverse way. So their returns, when we calculate, have to be exactly the opposite way. So they are losing money due to the devaluation. [00:11:59.830] - Darshan Doshi Yeah. In the SaaS, that is Software as a service business, one of the things that we talk about in the startup world is it's easier to earn in dollars than in rupees. But it's also better to earn in dollars than in rupees because of the currency devaluation that we've been seeing. If you follow Manish Chokhani on Twitter, he's been talking a lot about why India needs to use its reserves to avoid currency devaluation. I mean, we're not going to talk about that. That's a whole different topic podcast altogether. But in this case, I'm just summing up what you said that if you invest as an Indian in US dollars in the US market and three years later, if the rupee has become, say, one dollars cost Rs 85, you would have already made some amount of returns just over and above the returns that the company might have given as an investment. So this is great. We've kind of covered why is global investing important from a diversification standpoint? Why is it not important, what are the options? How do I invest globally sitting in India, why should I really? What money can be made? My next question is around taxes and actually you can't just ship money outside India, right? There are rules and regulations around it. The Reserve Bank of India takes care that you're not doing round tripping or some of the other things which may be illegal in nature. So there are some rules and regulations around this. So just help me understand if I wanted to invest, can I invest any amount of money abroad? If so, what are the limitations? And once I have invested, what are the things that I need to keep in mind or the things that I should talk to my CA and especially taxation? What do you think about it? So it's a very broad question but whatever you could help. [00:14:11.650] - Jaydeep Doshi I'll start with the taxation part. So basically, what are dividends you own in US, about 25% is directed at source in India and the same can be claimed back when you file your returns considering your tax slab. Other than that, if you are buying individual stocks the taxation is different from buying a mutual fund or US fund or fund. If you buy individual stocks and you hold it for two years it is considered as long term. It will go under the long-term capital gain. If you sell it within two years, it's considered as short-term. Any gains over and above after selling a stock after two years you will be taxed at 20% if you are buying individual stocks and if it's again realized within less than two years then it is as per your income slab. If you invest via mutual funds which is investing more than 65% of the AUM in global stocks, then you need to hold it for three years to be called as long term capital gain and after three years you can even claim indexation benefit on that. And if you sell it in lesser time in less than three years, then it's short term capital gain tax and tax as per your income slab. So broadly, if you ask me, it's more convenient for anybody to buy mutual funds or ETFs there because of the clean taxation and easy to understand. If you buy stocks, there are additional costs over and above the brokerages that you pay because the bank will charge you a few dollars for every remittance that you do. In a year we are allowed to transfer about two and a half we can remit about two and a half lakh dollars but any remittance over and above $7,000 banks will charge TCS that will deduct tax at 5% which again your CA will have to claim it in case if you're not able to pay any taxes for those transactions. So when you buy individual stocks it's a bit complicated beyond $7,000 because the tax has to be claimed. A lot of them file their returns on their own. So it may be a little complicated. Also, from the cost perspective, ETF cost fewer, very less. And if you see global, especially in the developed markets, investors have been saying that ETFs will outperform everybody in the long run. So it's advisable that or I would consider investing in ETFs to keep my taxation simplified and also getting the diversification benefit. [00:17:13.190] - Darshan Doshi Yeah, but I think first is I want to put a disclaimer. You have to take your own decisions, and this is not financial advice. You have to take control of your own money, of your own decisions on investing. We are here to educate and bring awareness to you, but ultimately you have to take control of your money. And so I just wanted to put that disclaimer because we are providing to be supportive and yet be put at a gunpoint down the line. That apart, this is what I hear from this podcast. Global investing, great way for us to diversify our investments. Take the benefit of the US dollar to Indian rupee conversion, currency conversion, and some arbitrage around there, over and above the returns that you could get from great stocks or mutual funds or ETFs that they might give us. Third is, keep in mind the taxation slabs. Keep in mind, keep your CA in the loop if you are investing in any international mutual fund or indirect or direct stocks which are outside based out of India. And lastly, keep a watch on the total amount of money that you are actually making for international investments, it should not cross $250,000 per year, per year. And in a single transaction, if you do more than $7500, then there's a deduction, which is TCS, which you can claim back depending on working with your CA. [00:19:02.750] - Jaydeep Doshi Annually remittance above $7500 is 5% TCS. TCS will be deducted. So supposing you're doing about $10,000, then you would actually have to transfer ten lakh rupees, then it would be Rs 10,50,000. That would be the cost to you, because 50,000 will be the TCS, which you'll see we'll have to take care. [00:19:22.330] - Darshan Doshi Correct. And so this has been an awesome podcast, Jaydeep. Global Investing, I think I'm a big believer that we should invest in stocks of the products that you use. Today, I love Apple, I'm a massive Apple user. I have the iPhone, I have the Mac, I use Netflix and then I use Amazon so these are like no brainers. [00:19:51.210] - Jaydeep Doshi Also, now, the lithium battery ETF, we don't have any company which is manufacturing lithium or mining lithium in India. So such ETFs are also very convenient for us to buy in terms of diversification and also people who have matured and have been investing already in Indian markets for a long time and I have a sizable portfolio, definitely adding these kind of ETFs and products which are not available makes a lot of sense. [00:20:15.840] - Darshan Doshi Brilliant. So this is a short and to-the-point podcast about how you can get started with global investing. Jaydeep has demystified it. He has helped us really break it down, broken it down in terms of how you could invest and how you can get started today. You can take the benefit of this and all the other podcasts where at Swatantra we have tried to simplify investing which would involve sector analysis with Rushabh, we have looked at with Jaydeep on a bunch of things, Real Estate versus REIT. How can you research, how can you choose? How can you invest in such vehicles? Going forward, what you can expect from us is even more deep dives on sectors, on individual companies, as well as some macro trends or some things that might be happening in the financial world. So stay tuned. Subscribe to this channel. Take a look at our transcripts on our website and if you think there are any topics that you really want us to talk about, that you want Jaydeep or Rushabh to cover, just drop us a comment. And if you benefited out of this, please share it with your friends and family. If we can have more people be aware of how to invest, how to do things themselves, or make sure that you're not losing money based on some Twitter tips. You need to be in control of your own money. And that is what we want every single person, every single audience member to take away from this. None of the things that we talk about are to be considered as financial advice. Take your own decisions, be in charge of your own money. That is the golden rule that we want you to take away from this. And tune in for the next podcast on Friday. Thanks a lot. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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Cross Border Investing: Why does it matter for Wealth Creation | Swatantra Podcast July 1, 2022 Darshan Doshi 22:01 0 Comments

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What are the Important Nutrients Needed for a Healthy Fitness Routine? | DASAR Shortcast June 28, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

Your body requires a certain amount of essential nutrients for you to get the maximum benefit from your fitness routine. What are those essential nutrients that you must include in your diet? Learn more about it as we sit with our guest speaker, Mugdha Pradhan, founder of iThrive.

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/10916/important-nutrients-needed-for-a-healthy-fitness-routine.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Recorded on June 28, 2022

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What are the Important Nutrients Needed for a Healthy Fitness Routine? | DASAR Shortcast June 28, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

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The Rise of Superhumans: How can AI help to be productive? | DASAR Shortcast June 28, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

Is the future of AI slowly converting us to superhumans? Learn more about it as we sit with our guest speaker, Rohit Pandharkar, Global Head of Data Science, OLX Autos.

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The Rise of Superhumans: How can AI help to be productive? | DASAR Shortcast June 28, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

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How Can One Beat Chronic Illness with Lifestyle Changes June 26, 2022 Darshan Doshi 01:09:43 0 Comments

How do you deal with Chronic Diseases? What are some of the best ways to maintain a routine of daily fitness and nutrition to go with it? What are some of the most important preventive measures for everyone to remain disease-free and lead a long healthy life? Learn more about it as we sit with our guest speaker, Mugdha Pradhan, founder of iThrive.

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/10865/how-to-beat-chronic-illness.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 01:09:43 | Recorded on June 26, 2022

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https://youtu.be/hfJCwJ6K1rg Transcript [00:00:09.130] - Darshan Doshi Hi guys. Welcome to DASAR. Today we are going to talk about health and wellness. They say good health is wealth. And this topic today that we are going to talk about is something that's very, very dear to me. And it's about nutrition, it's about chronic diseases. It's about well-being, it's about preventive health care or simple things that you could do to remain healthy for as long as you can live, right? And I could not think of a better person than Mugdha Pradhan. I've known Mugdha for a few years now. She has been through a personal experience, which I'm hoping we'll be able to talk through in this podcast. But a quick introduction. Mugdha is the founder of iThrive. She's a TEDx speaker. She has been or is a nutritionist. She works with a lot of people of different ages on managing their nutrition, their health, their well being, overcoming, curing, chronic diseases, and a whole lot of things that we are going to get into. So in this podcast, it's going to be a long podcast, we go deep on the topic of nutrition, of chronic diseases. So stay tuned if you have any questions. If you think we should cover anything more, drop in a comment. So, Mugdha I have given a quick overview of who you are. I would love to. First of all, thank you for coming on DASAR. It's such a pleasure to have you here. And my first question to you, Mugdha, is how big is this problem, the wellness problem, the health care problem? We are 1.3 billion people nation and growing. We have one of the youngest population in the world, but we also have a very large number of elderly people facing some massive health challenges. So can you just give a context of what is the problem, the size of the problem, what is the problem in healthcare that we are dealing with today? [00:02:05.580] - Mugdha Pradhan For sure, before I answer that amazing question, thank you so much for inviting me. I always keep looking for opportunities where I can actually talk about this because it's like I do this day in and day out. I see people who get sick for such simple I mean, you can just prevent and reverse so many things from happening, right? And I'm like, if I could just talk about this more. So, thank you so much for inviting me. I do have a master's degree in nutrition and I've been doing this work, like working with people, reversing diseases, helping them with their chronic health conditions for the last five years now. So, lots of insights that we've seen. So, in India, what happens with research to answer that big question, right? Like, what truly happens with chronic health conditions, at least abroad? When we go into research, we have so much data around the overall chronic health problem. In India, it's all fragmented. So you'll have data about diabetics and then it's shocking data, right? So, for example, as of 2020, I'm sure the numbers become worse because of how people ate during the lockdown. As of 2020, there were 77 million diabetics in India. [00:03:15.290] - Darshan Doshi Wow. [00:03:15.760] - Mugdha Pradhan Yeah. The number of cancer cases have been going up and the predictions are pretty bad for cancer. And again, people think cancer is something that just happens. But if you look at it deeply, if you go down deep, the way we look at the body and nutrition, it actually is another lifestyle disease. I was looking at the numbers for cardiovascular because so many young people are just passing away with heart attacks, and that number is scary as well. It's around 55 million people who suffer with some sort of a cardiac ailment. And the worst, though, is currently there's an estimate of 190.7 million people with mental health problems, which is not even spoken about, at least diabetes, you get like a diagnosis saying your blood sugar levels are high, and then there's a little degree of compassion around it. People say, don't eat sugar. And all of that happens. Mental health is, again, I would say, largely lifestyle driven, and no one's really talking enough about it. So the numbers are pretty dramatic. In a population of 1.3 billion, you have 77 million diabetes, 55 million people with heart problems, 190.7 million people with mental health issues. COPD is another problem, which is a respiratory condition, thanks to the pollution we have here. So it's dismal in terms of numbers, but we'll talk more. While I'm a little optimistic about what can happen. [00:04:41.360] - Darshan Doshi But those numbers are mind boggling. 190 million, it's close to all of US population. And that is the number that you mentioned for mental health concerns. My guess is with the pandemic, with social media, with lack of close relationships being not formed, I think those numbers could be higher. It's not like a blood test which will pop up and tell you you have this condition. [00:05:12.250] - Mugdha Pradhan Absolutely. [00:05:12.800] - Darshan Doshi Right. So, great. Thanks for setting the context. It's a big problem, and let's make this personal. You mentioned a lot of people with heart diseases passed away. I remember in 2021, few of my friends below 45 have passed away. And they were fit, they were good into exercise, but they passed away. And it's a tough time. Someone who has five year old passes away, you don't anticipate it at all, and it is literally just drop dead. Like, I want to hear this. You've personally gone through a chronic disease yourself. What was it and how did you overcome it and what made you start iThrive? [00:06:02.890] - Mugdha Pradhan Yeah. So, for me and people were surprised, right. Because I have this master's degree in nutrition and I'm supposed to know all about food. But I had a pivot in my career long ago, because when I did my Masters in, the kind of work opportunities that were available weren't really research based, person friendly. They were mostly gym jobs and that kind of stuff. So I actually went into HR, I went to XLRI, and I went into the corporate world. I was there for like 15 years. And in doing that, what happens to typical corporate employees, what happened to me. By 2016, I was at 97 kg, so I was overweight for sure, which even obesity is actually a chronic health problem. It's not just an aesthetic issue, right? It's actually something else going on inside your body. I had that. I had an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto where my body was destroying my own thyroid gland. And most autoimmune conditions are considered non-reversible. People think once you get it, you just need immunosuppressant steroids for you to deal with it. And I also had prediabetes. So I had the early signs of diabetes because genetically my family is prime for diabetes. So all of these things were going on. And I also was going through other stuff in my personal life. I was actually going through clinical depression. I was on antidepressants and like, the whole show of depression, so suicide ideation, everything was happening. It was happening simultaneously. So my mind and my body, everything was messed up. And that's when I moved out of the country. So I had a little bit of respite from working full time to kind of just see what I looked into the mirror for a long time, and I couldn't recognize who I was looking back. So I was like, I have to do something about this. And that is when I started figuring out what was really going on. How did I gain so much weight? I wasn't someone who was eating a pizza every day or drinking a litre and a half of coke every day. I was still gaining weight, and I was still pretty sick. And I went back to the world of nutrition then, though, what I had learned in my Masters wasn't really of any use anymore because it was just the basics of your carbohydrate, protein, and fat. And that's when I had to go into this world of functional medicine, which is what we practice at iThrive also. So it's all about looking for the root causes through data. For example, data from your blood test. So when I discovered there's this entire field, which is beyond just eat your lentils or chapati, just manage your macro, it was beyond that. It was like really understanding what was happening to my body, figuring out what was going on, figuring out which of the tests that were going to tell me how to measure this, and then actually applying solutions to that. So I studied that. Then I actually went deep into functional medicine. I started learning how to interpret blood tests, and then I was back in India by then. So one of the things is I actually thought doctors would help me out, right? Because I was feeling so sick, and I had no energy and all of that going on. And then most doctors didn't have any of the answers, right? One was like, you'll feel low when you don't have tea, and tea is what is giving you energy. Drink some tea. I was like, Okay, wrong. That's definitely not the answer I was looking for. Another person said that maybe it's just menopause and just ignore it. I'm like, Okay, not the answer I'm looking for. So I went from doctor to doctor, actually trying to find a solution, because that's how we are trained. Also, when you feel sick, you first go to a doctor because you think that they have the answers to your health. And this is why I actually created iThrive. So I figured out they didn't really know how to help me. And I started studying functional medicine parallely. And then I did my blood work. I analyzed my own blood test, and then I saw what was going on. So I had this autoimmune thing happening, which was because of food sensitivities, which was because of toxins, and then there was insulin resistance, and there were a lot of things that were happening. And then I started applying the solutions to reverse all of that. So 80% of the work was food. 20% was other stuff, including lifestyle changes, like more meditation, breathwood practices, some degree of supplementation where there were deficiencies like vitamin-D and stuff like that. And in about three months, Darshan, I started seeing dramatic changes. My weight dropped. My Facebook profile picture started changing. So friends and family were like, okay, whatever you're doing for yourself, please share it with us. And I realized that there were a lot of people who were experiencing what I experienced the fatigue, the drop in energy, the mind not really being stable, not liking what you see in the mirror, all of that. Your gut giving you trouble all the time. And when they would go to conventional medicine practitioners, they would usually be given some pill or the other to kind of suppress the symptoms without really being able to understand what was happening in their body. And I was like, Okay, I had to do this on my own. But what if I offered this as a service to the people who are struggling? And I did it to the degree of compassion, and I did it to the degree of authenticity and care, the kind that I wish I had received. Would they be up for it? And I just asked in my network, and people wanted it, and now iThrive. It's a 40 member team. It's twice funded. Yeah, we have people, right from New Zealand to Canada who are taking our services, and now it's not just about helping people with their chronic health conditions, because we also have our own academy. So there were other nutritionists who wanted to learn what I had learned. There were doctors who came to us our first batch of the Academy actually had an allopathic doctor saying, okay, I became a doctor because I wanted to help people. But I finished my MBBS and I don't know anything apart from list of medicine names and surgeries, right. So he came to us to learn this, like how to do lifestyle medicine for people. And we've now run 13 batches, so we're teaching people how to do this. We have our own line of supplements because that's another struggle I had, finding good quality supplements when it came to helping your body with the raw material it needed. [00:12:28.250] - Darshan Doshi This is great. Thanks for sharing your own story. Very inspirational. I relate to this. I think we had talked in 2019 when I was similarly very lethargic, not at all active. 84, 85 kgs looking to, finally something had triggered where I wanted to get fit, and spent the next year to two years mostly focusing on nutrition, simple stuff, and then doing three workouts a week. And that kind of showed the results for me. And so those are lifestyle changes. [00:13:04.890] - Mugdha Pradhan Absolutely. [00:13:06.530] - Darshan Doshi But the challenge is, for anyone who wants to do that, there is not a lot of information or hand holding that is there available today. And so, hopefully, this is what we are trying to achieve in this podcast. So now my next question to you is there's so much talk about chronic diseases. When you just Google search it, you'll find a lot of PR articles throwing a lot of numbers and scaring people, right? And the solution to it is go to the doctors, do a bunch of things. It's basically money, right? Not surprisingly, once you cross the age of 40, of the biggest expense items is item on health. You're spending money to just get better, not to thrive, but actually to get through the daily basics, correct. So maybe you would love to hear, what are some of these chronic diseases? How are you able to reverse them or what is the approach? I just would love to hear a little bit about this. [00:14:10.060] - Mugdha Pradhan So it's been an interesting journey in these diseases also. For example, earlier on, like 2017, most of the people who approached me, it would either be for weight loss or for diabetes. They had been diagnosed with diabetes. They had been told that they'd have to be on medication for life. And they wanted to there was a degree of awareness that, okay, diabetes can be helped with lifestyle modifications. So people came for that. So even now we see a lot of people who come to us with diabetes, but it suddenly feels like there's an explosion of diseases. So the team and I think for the website, we were looking at some numbers of all the diseases we've treated so far, 158 disease labels. When did these labels come, right? Who is issuing all these different, like, surgery syndrome and transpose myelitis, and some of them come to us with a cluster of symptoms without any label also. But I would categorize there's diabetes. There are people with blood pressure issues, like typically high BP, something that they've been diagnosed with, and then they are suffering the consequences of that. So the inability to kind of rest well, the anxiety through the day, the dizziness, the headaches, all of that, that's happening because of high BP. And then there are heart health problems. The other cluster that we see is a lot of autoimmune conditions. So autoimmune itself is a big category. It could be an autoimmune thyroid condition, it could be an autoimmune nerve condition, it could be an autoimmune muscle condition, or it could be an autoimmune gut condition. So we have diabetes, we have high BP, we have heart problems. [00:15:43.570] - Darshan Doshi And these are not necessarily 70 plus. [00:15:46.260] - Mugdha Pradhan No. [00:15:47.120] - Darshan Doshi What is the average age that you're talking about here? [00:15:49.510] - Mugdha Pradhan Our average age in all the people we've treated, it's come down. The average is coming down. So now our demographic that we work with mostly is in the 32 onwards to 50. That's the average demographic we have outliers on both ends. Like, the youngest patient we worked with was a two year old for the autism. That kid was on the spectrum. The oldest is a 75 year old. He came to us for Alzheimer's. Not really reversing Alzheimer's, but some help with kind of mitigating the symptoms and just energy and all that. And other than auto, even now you're seeing a lot of people with gut issues. So post pandemic, I don't know what happened in the pandemic. Maybe it was the lifestyle or the food choices that people made, the ordering in, but every alternate consult I'm having now is a gut issue. [00:16:39.550] - Darshan Doshi What is the gut issue? [00:16:40.620] - Mugdha Pradhan Acidity. Acid reflux constipation or IBS, diarrhea or they're having a lot of gas and bloating unexplained, like, every meal is causing trouble. So it could be that there have been changes in the environment, the water itself. We are also trying to analyze what's really going on. Like, we tested water from a few places in Pune and just to see if the microbiome has changed. So we have an entire research and development wing now. It's six people that just do R&D. They don't work with clients, they don't teach in the academy. They're just doing R&D all the time. It could be water, it could be the environment. It could simply be an outcome of the food they've eaten for a year and a half. But a lot of people are coming to us with that issue. [00:17:25.810] - Darshan Doshi How are you tackling these people with chronic diseases? What's the secret sauce? [00:17:31.190] - Mugdha Pradhan The secret sauce is not so secret because we teach it in the Academy. There's just a price for learning it. But see, it starts really with knowing what is the underlying root cause. Typically in diabetes, the root cause for elevated blood sugar. See, diabetes is just a label given to a person when they have blood sugar levels about whatever the doctor fancies. More than 120, 180, 200. Different doctors have different ways of categorizing it. Or your HBA1C might be high. If someone's blood sugar levels are high, it usually indicates that they have something called as insulin resistance going on in the body. So insulin is this hormone that carries glucose into your cells. Unless you're on a keto diet. Glucose is the primary energy molecule that every cell, including your brain cells, used for energy. So insulin is the hormone that carries glucose inside a cell. Like, it's literally the Uber driving a passenger to a location. If your cells don't open up to insulin, like, there's a barricade saying no Uber is allowed inside. Then the passenger can't get into the cell. So most people with diabetes have this thing happening where there's a resistance to insulin entering the cell. Like, you just can't unlock the cell, and then glucose can't enter, so that extra glucose is floating around in your bloodstream, and that's what's getting measured as diabetes. So we work on reversing this insulin resistance, which we do by eliminating seed oils, for example. So all vegetable oils are very high in omega six fatty acids. Evolutionarily, if humans have eaten high omega-6 fatty acids, like, if our ancestors did not get saturated fat, for example, and they ate a lot of nuts and seeds and that kind of fat came in, the body thinks it's a famine situation, and it starts storing that. So it's absolute biochemistry that's happening. Your body is just doing its evolutionary biochemistry. That too many seed oils. All of us are using sunflower oils and all these vegetable oils for cooking. We don't use ghee that much because ghee has been demonized. So we cut down these omega sixes, we bring in things that will improve the insulin sensitivity. So micronutrients like chromium and magnesium and all of that. Also a little bit of movement and exercise through the day. And we just cut down on all the refined carbs. There's no need for excess refined carbs to go into the bloodstream. And just monitoring and modifying that usually helps a person reverse their insulin resistance. [00:19:56.370] - Darshan Doshi How much time are we talking about? [00:19:58.550] - Mugdha Pradhan Three months is more than enough, actually. So with the diabetes, we've always had pretty dramatic results, unless it's type one, where the body is not making insulin at all, right? Like, the pancreas is injured or it's just damaged and it's not making insulin. But type two diabetes, three months are enough for blood sugar levels even as high as 350-400 hundred to come back into your 90s. Yeah. So, see, this is the fascinating part about our body. People think that this body is just some dense thing that you're supposed to, like, sleep in and wake up and move through the day. But it's a super intelligent there's so much intelligence in it. Even if you think of how your heart is beating, how am I getting this energy to speak at this particular pitch? How does my body know how to do this? It knows how to heal itself, which is why it really works hard to keep you alive. If it was designed for death and destruction, the minute the first stressor happened, it would collapse. It doesn't. We keep assaulting our body through our lifetime, and still it hangs on till 70, 80 years, right? So our body wants to live. You give it the right kind of support, you understand what it's trying to communicate with you through these messages. Because every symptom, whether it's a headache or whether it's your gas and bloating or whether it's elevated blood sugars, is your body just trying to tell you something is wrong inside. I'm sending you this message. Please read it and fix it. So you learn how to interpret that message and you fix it. So with diabetes, it's usually the insulin signaling mechanism that's broken. We fix it and diabetes gets fixed. Autoimmune is a little more complicated because it could be multiple factors that are causing an immune flare up. And then the body is going into this. It's like, you know, at the border, if there's some hidden sniper shooting from somewhere, the first time he shoots, the army here will get alert, right? But then he keeps shooting, and you don't know where the sniper is, right. So you just start throwing grenades and everything. You have everything in your artillery. You just start throwing in that direction, and there'll be collateral damage for you also. So that's what happens in an autoimmune. It's usually a toxin or a pathogen or some kind of an allergen or sometimes even a deep stressor that triggers this immune flare up. And if you haven't treated that particular root cause, well, that immune reaction continues and continues and continues because your actual insurgent hasn't gone yet, right? So the body is just mounting a response continuously and in that, then other organs start getting damaged. So there it really becomes about figuring out what is going on. Again, blood test is how we do it. Gas and bloating, acidity again. So if it's acidity, acid reflux, we've usually seen pathogens. So there's a bacteria called H pylori, which is often the culprit when someone has acid reflux and acidity happening. Sometimes it could just be food that you're not digesting well or you have an allergic when that's causing the gas and bloating. What is, cancer is a long term, longer duration developmental disease starts off with oxidative stress at a cellular level, sometimes mutation because of some thing you took, and then it develops, but it can be arrested to a degree. [00:23:14.450] - Darshan Doshi This is a lot of the physical, chronic diseases, right? But also, you mentioned there's a huge issue with mental health conditions that a lot of people are facing, right? So I have two questions to it. One is, is it across age groups? If so, what can be done? Because there are a lot of startups, there are a lot of people, there's a lot of awareness that's coming through, that there is mental fitness is needed. But how, when, where nothing is being talked about. So maybe that is the area that you could talk about. [00:23:53.520] - Mugdha Pradhan Sure. See mental health again, the demographic that we help the most, like the ones who come to us and say that, okay, I need help, are the ones who are in the 35 to 45, 50 at the most. For some reason we've seen the older people want to just focus on their physical symptoms. They don't really want to acknowledge that they might want to work on their mindset. Like I'm speaking of the 60 and above. They will happily partner with us for diabetes, blood pressure and everything. And sometimes you do tend to see patterns. There's anxiety and there's like a tendency to have mood swings and maybe like, family issues kind of a thing, right. With the very young ones, with them, parents come to us for other things that might be happening to them. Like the kids who are on the spectrum. Of course, those cases are like long term kind of engagement. But even, let's say parents of teenagers who come to us because weight issues are there, or there's some kind of autoimmune condition going on. Or even the kids who come to us for performance nutrition, right? Like they are into sports and they want to improve their sports performance. Very rarely do those parents speak about mental health. The people who are working with us around their mental health are the ones in the 35 to 50 age group. There's a degree of self awareness. I think they're open to that discussion. And what we've seen is we don't really start mental health work unless the first foundation, which is the body is sorted. Because someone could have a B12 deficiency and could be experiencing a lot of issues with moods and sleep and anxiety. Because B12 is required to make a lot of neurotransmitters in your brain, like all the reward chemicals, even the calming down neurotransmitters that are needed, B12 is required to make that. If you have a raw material deficiency, you don't have enough fuel in your car and you're saying the car is not starting. It's a problem of not having enough fuel, it's not a problem with the car. So we always first focus on the body, on the nutrition, optimizing all of these raw materials. So, magnesium, we found so many people who say that, okay, they have issues with mental health, their anxiety, I mean, they're anxious and then even anger issues or irritation or annoyance or they feel tired, they feel no motivation. We wait until the magnesium supplementation starts. So we don't even address we'll be like, okay, we'll just listen to them. We'll give them that space. And then we've seen how magnesium really helps the brain to such a large degree that what people think are psychological issues are basically just physiological ones. So, B12, magnesium, vitamin D, even protein, these play a significant role in mental health. Once this stuff is done, and if someone is still experiencing issues, then we look into what could be happening with the psyche, what could be happening with trauma processing, and what could also be happening in terms of their spiritual connected sense. Because for me, initially, I just started off with nutrition, right? Now, I look at it as a far more holistic thing. It's literally like, you're here, you're alive, and you're here to embrace the entire human experience, right? Which means your body, your mind, your emotions and your soul, everything has to work as one unit. So a lot of mental health issues arise when people have broken mental frameworks around what they're supposed to be doing, how they're being perceived in society, how people look at failures. Failures is such a big thing for a lot of people because we've not been trained to look at failures as a good thing. We've been trained to look at failures as something to be ashamed of. A lot of people are walking around with this broken feeling of they are not good enough, and they're trying to overcompensate for that. So, I mean, I teach this module in the academy, so it's like a seven hour talk. But it's usually broken mental frameworks that we work with, like, reframing the mind and kind of giving them that. Then we start looking at emotions and how people are processing their emotions, because most people don't have the vocabulary for even emotional processing. And sometimes there's so much like men aren't allowed to cry. Even now. Even now, where people are speaking of mental health, a man, when he actually has a breakdown and tears flow, it's very hard for them to do that, right? Its just not okay in society. So we help people process emotions not just through conversation, but also with somatic work. When I say somatic, it's body work, right? So actual movement, breath work. You start activating the vagus nerve, which is your connection between your gut and your brain. And the vagus nerve is really spread over through your body. So when you activate the vagus nerve, that again changes the entire stress processing that you have in your system. There are movements beyond just exercise. Keep telling people that there's a lot of ancient wisdom integrated in the work we do, right? But if you look at a lot of the way, not the way yoga is taught now, like, not cardio yoga and kickboxing yoga, I don't know what that is, but your traditional holding of postures with certain breaths, with certain locks inside your system, which is called as bandhas, they actually really help move energy. So we work on that as well, and then, of course, we work on the spiritual. [00:29:37.560] - Darshan Doshi I think the next part of the podcast, what I want to I'm curious about, is fitness and routines for fitness and nutrition that goes with it. A lot of people who come to Dasar for the fitness programs are primarily saying, I want to lose weight. I mean, that's a good starting point, but my conversation typically is that's a byproduct the focus of the fitness routines is more energy, actually more ability to do more things out of the same amount of time that you have in a day and better quality of time. So my first question really is how are you thinking about fitness, physical fitness? How can anyone build a good mechanism, a routine for physical fitness and nutrition that goes with it? [00:30:32.210] - Mugdha Pradhan Sure. So, to add to your idea of physical fitness, I often speak of functional fitness, like functional nutrition. That it's not just about energy. It's also about all the things that the body is designed to pick up weight or push things or travel long distances. Will you be able to do this till the last breath? Because that's what is real functionality. And we do focus on this, of course, one aspect of the workouts and training, your body itself, which is not something that we do, but we focus on the nutrition. How do you optimize this? So, what we found, Darshan is that people are often deficient in a lot of base nutrients that they need to build their fitness levels. For example, if you're weight training, you're doing that, of course, to keep your muscle masks going. You don't necessarily want to look like a bodybuilder, but you want to have the muscle mass that your body needs to sustain for those 100 years. To do that, you need protein. That's the base molecule that's used to build muscle. Now, especially in India, where vegetarianism is the predominant dietary pattern, so abroad, people would just eat a steak or just some protein, like grilled chicken, and then that's it. Here we eat a meal that's more well rounded, kind, but it's a very carb dominant eating habit that we have. So we don't often get the protein we need. So that's why we need to when we work with our clients, our patients, whatever, the first focus always is on increasing the quantity and quality of their protein. So for people who are watching this, when I say protein, if you're someone who eats animal based protein, then red meat is good. There's no need to be afraid of the cholesterol. We could do a separate podcast on cholesterol. Red meat, eggs, fish. These are good. I'm just building from the base. So protein is the first thing that we want to tackle. If you're a vegetarian, while you might eat Dal and you might eat paneer, your body might not absorb all of it because there are a lot of anti nutrients that could inhibit absorption in plant based foods. So you would need to supplement. Unfortunately, I don't really like supplementing as much as I would like to rely on real food. But vegetarians do need to supplement. And what we found in our work that even these whey protein supplements and all the plant based protein powders, they don't really get absorbed because we do blood work when someone comes to us at the beginning and three months later we do blood work again to check if the interventions are working or not, right? Because that's the most objective way to do it. Otherwise we could send people affirmations every day and they'll be like, yes, correct, I'm the king of the jungle. But we like our data. So what we've seen is there's this particular thing called essential amino acids, which is the absolute breakdown of your protein, right? So when we've supplemented people with EA or essential amino acids is when we've seen their muscle mass go up, their recovery times reduce, they really improve in their performance. So that's the base. You could choose to be a keto diet kind of a person where you're doing fat for energy, or you could choose to be someone who eats carbohydrates and you could eat fruits. Fruits are okay, right? Fruits are okay for carbs. Grains like rice are okay. Rice is not the bad guy. So you could do those carbs. So you first complete your protein needs. Then you could either do fat or carbs. And then you start looking at your micronutrients because those become very important when it comes to fitness. Like I spoke of magnesium earlier. So magnesium is an electrolyte that we lose often when we sweat. I wanted to stand on the road holding a placard saying, make magnesium mainstream. Again, no one talks of magnesium, but there's a lot of research on it. We lose it in a sweat and all of that. And ancestrally we would get magnesium when we would drink spring water because it's a mineral that's on rocks. So when we were hunter gatherers and when we were foragers, we would drink water like that and we'd get a magnesium through that, even though soil would be entrusted with magnesium. Now we mostly are drinking PMC, PCMC Corporation in whichever city people are clean water that's been treated. So a lot of these salts are gone, a lot of the electrolytes are gone. Plus we all have RO, which is important because there's otherwise too much contamination in the water. But we lose out on these minerals from our water and the soil quality is depleted. So our fruits and vegetables no longer have high levels of these minerals in them. So magnesium is the second one that people need to supplement with. And then your vitamins come in, right? So your B complex, your vitamin A, vitamin A can come from food you don't need to supplement. But be complex. Again, if you're a vegetarian, even if you're having dairy, with the processing that dairy goes through because you mostly have paneer for your protein, right? Then the B complex is kind of lost. Even if you're having eggs, you still need additional B complex because B complex also is required for your body to detox a lot of toxins. And now we have so much pollution going around, a B complex needs have gone up. So B complex, magnesium, vitamin D. If you're not getting sun exposure, if you're someone who can get at least 20 minutes of sunlight on as much skin as possible, then I don't recommend a vitamin D supplement because it's best to get it from the natural source, which is with sunlight. So these are your essentials. And then we usually bring in zinc for people, especially if they are in sports and performance. So when you're doing anything like any kind of training, endurance or even moving on to weights or anything where your body is required to do a little bit more than its baseline of just moving around your adrenal glands, which sit above your kidney, they fire up because they produce this thing called adrenaline which is required for you to really have a performance. Right. Adrenalin requires zinc as one of the base minerals to be made. That's the raw material. Now, zinc can get depleted when you get an infection. Zinc can get depleted when you experience regular stress in day to day life. If you're pushing your adrenals to also deliver for your workouts, then your zinc levels are really going to be low. So zinc, B complex, magnesium, vitamin D is what we do once the protein needs are covered. And then if the person has some other underlying issues which we'll see from their blood, we might bring in more customized things. But these are the base thing that everyone should focus on. What kind of food should one eat? Because I just spoke of supplements. Like for me it's like first fix. [00:37:26.110] - Darshan Doshi The before you go there. I've been trying to put on some muscle weight and I'm a vegetarian, no egg. Gujju job by heart and by food. And so becomes a bit challenging in terms of putting on muscle mass. But I'll definitely be reaching out to you after this to learn a little bit more so in the food that we eat for the nutrition, I see there's a lot of research and a lot of articles content around Western food. And they've done a good job, right? For them, they've done a good job. But what about India and Indian foods? Because if you go anywhere 200 km from where you are, you have a different type of food which is very traditional, which I believe is wholesome and nutritious. But we just don't have any research or data or content around it. I think that's through instagram. We are seeing a lot more come out, but would love to get your thoughts on Indian food and the nutrition that goes with it. [00:38:35.180] - Mugdha Pradhan Actually, even Indian food needs are not defined. So that's why we have this R&D department. Because even for me and even for the team, when we make recommendations, even now, we're going more with the generic guidelines that are there for human beings as a species. But Indians are a completely different genotype. Like, if you look at our bodies, we don't look like the Caucasians, we don't look like the Southeast Asia, right? I don't want to go into races right now. But Indian bodies are very different, right? Even when we become diseased or dysfunctional, the way our body displays a disease is very different, very unique to our genotype. And there is not enough research, like even this eight glasses of water. Now, where did it come from? So there's actually, the team is conducting a study on that. We received ethical approval to run clinical trials. We're running clinical trials on people. So we're researching that, like actually India water needs because our weather also is very different. Like, our summers are intense and then our summers in Pune are very different from our summers in Bombay. Because in Bombay, you will be setting three times more than in Pune. But in Pune, you still get dehydrated. So we're studying that. We are studying Indian water needs. We are studying, like, nutrition for Indians. What does it really mean? So one thing we figured out, there's a certain baseline that can be practiced for any human being, which is like the basic protein needs and all, but really being able to customize beyond that, we ourselves are researching that. So still, with the amount of knowledge we have, we've been able to work with so many different diseases and bring good results, and the deeper we go, because even there's just not enough research, even with our foods, right? So when we do our nutrition, we have this textbook from ICMR and all. It speaks of nutritional values of Indian foods. And it's like a big textbook. So it'll tell you, okay, sesame Seeds has 100 milligrams of calcium per 100 grams of sesame seeds. But that's a very laboratory way of assessing it, right? They put it through a machine, whatever that chromatograph. And the chromatograph is said, okay, these many levels, how the body processes these things, is very different. You can't just say that 100 calories from mango is the same as 100 calories coming from white sugar. Calorie wise, they might burn at the same time and they'll just produce the same amount of energy inside the calorie meters, which they use for measuring. But how that food behaves in your body is very unique. And we are genotyped because of all the family patterns and all we had in the past. That's why we're so prime for diabetes as a population, genetically epigenetic changes have happened and how our genes respond to fat and carbohydrates together. So we are creating a repository primed for it. We are primed for diabetes. Like loaded guns working all over. So this statistic I was looking at, right, 77 million diabetics in India. It doesn't match with the data we have. So I must have looked at around 4000-5000 blood reports so far in the last five years. Different people, right? Sometimes just a friend, sometimes a client. I can tell you out of these, there might be ten reports that I can distinctly remember where there was no progression towards diabetes. Like, the insulin levels were optimal, blood sugar levels were optimal, metabolic health was optimal. And somebody from my team was telling me yesterday that but this is a US number that apparently only 12% of the population is actually metabolically healthy. 88% is chronically sick in some way or the other. They might not know it, or they've been diagnosed with something, but that 77 million doesn't match the blood test I've seen. I think it's much higher and it's just underreported. [00:42:24.160] - Darshan Doshi So Mugdha. I want to talk and get your inputs around preventive health care or measures, but I want to take that as the last question. The first one is a lot of people coming and asking, I want to lose weight because it's all about looking good. Any connection between weight loss and wellness loss? [00:42:47.150] - Mugdha Pradhan Lots, like, I don't even know where to begin. But how do you view it. [00:42:52.390] - Darshan Doshi When someone comes to you and says, I want to lose weight, how can you help me? [00:42:55.910] - Mugdha Pradhan Great. The thing about weight is it's a very tangible thing, right? Like, you can see that on the weighing scale. Your numbers are going up. You can see in the mirror that you're looking different and then your clothes don't fit. It happens, so it's something very tangible. And then people don't like that. Because I think, again, as a species, we like aesthetic looking stuff, and a lot of our ability to interact with the external world depends on how we look and feel about ourselves. So when someone says, I want to lose weight, I say, Great. And then I ask, Why? Because if someone says, in one month, it's my cousin's Shaadi, and I want to lose weight to fit into a ghagra, I'm like I'm not the nutritionist you can work with. See people gain. Anyone, like, even when I gained it when I was 97 kg, that weight gain usually has an underlying health issue. It could be the same thing that I spoke of, insulin resistance. Or it could be a liver that's messed up. It could be a thyroid issue. Usually there's something going on and your body is using weight as a signaling mechanism to tell you that something's wrong. Look at me. I'm showing you these symptoms so when someone says, I want to lose weight, the first thing we do is we bring a degree of awareness about why have they gained weight in the first place? So a lot of historical health questions are asked when did it happen? What was the trigger? And all of that. Then we look at blood work. Also, my approach is like, let someone understand what is really at the root of their increased weight. So even if someone says, I want to lose weight, that's a beautiful health goal. It's great because that has motivated you to come and ask the right question. It asks you to reach out to somebody who can help you with it. So it's a great goal, but when people make it just about weight loss, then they'll do very hacky stuff, right? Like keto diets. I have nothing against keto. Sometimes it can be used as a therapeutic intervention, especially if someone's insulin biochemistry is completely off. Keto works well, but it's not a long term sustainable thing for multiple reasons. Or somebody who just do like intermittent fasting, or one meal a day and all these long fast. And at some level it starts feeling like body abuse. So it really is. So when someone says, I want to lose weight, I ask Why? If the why is clear, we get them started. If the why is not clear, we help them understand why they should be thinking what is the context in which they should be looking at their extra weight? It's more about understanding what's going on with the body. We help resolve that. And the weight loss is the side effect. So I never say that. One month, ten kg weight loss, money back guarantee. It's never like that. It's literally like, let's work on all the things happening inside. You will see your weight dropping off automatically. Right? It's a byproduct. It's a side effect because it's a symptom. It's not the cause. People think diabetes happens because of extra weight. It's the other way around that extra weight happens because of insulin resistance, which is triggering both the diabetes and the weight gain. So you fix the root cause, the symptom starts disappearing. So that's how I look at weight. I look at it as another symptom of a chronic health problem internally. [00:46:12.680] - Darshan Doshi And you made a good point that we'll focus on the process. I'm a big believer of putting routine routines checklists, make it a habit. And you can only make it a habit. So, for example, one of the things that I've been talking in my podcast around fitness, and in the fitness programs that we have, give yourself a year to see the results. Give yourself a year to make fitness a habit, a routine, because it's going to take you that long. Because, rightly said a lot of people come and say, I want this fixed in a month or two months. I know of no magic pill which has that right. And so what would be your guidance for anyone who wants to build a routine of having good nutrition? What would that entail? [00:47:08.020] - Mugdha Pradhan So, again, starts from knowing what is needed. So, for example, if someone needs more protein, if someone needs more minerals, we first figured that out, okay, what is it that you need? [00:47:19.840] - Darshan Doshi So that's done. [00:47:20.470] - Mugdha Pradhan That's done. Now we start working on building a process to make sure that remains optimized despite failures. Because I am someone who is not a creature of who wasn't a creature of habit. I am an inherently creative person. So for me to get into habit more, I have to do a lot of work, which included like, literally reading Atomic Habits by James Clear multiple times and underlining. So that copy of my book is literally like it's got food samples on it, like I've eaten and I've been reading that book. But anyway, so when it comes to optimizing your nutrition or making sure that you're sticking to your food guidelines, if you become extremely regimental about it, like this or nothing, then every time you fail, you're going to go back into the same loop of, forget it, I can't do anything right. So we break down what is needed into maybe three or for some people, two meals. Three meals are more or less enough for most people. Like a breakfast, lunch, dinner routine is what we've mostly grown up with. And if we help them figure out that these are the things you need to eat through the day to get what your body needs, let's see which meal is the peak meal for you. And some people are really hungry around breakfast. Some people really like enjoying their dinners with a large meal because that's when they get to maybe cook and be with the family. We integrate it with their life. [00:48:48.160] - Darshan Doshi So everything is personalized? [00:48:50.020] - Mugdha Pradhan Everything is personalized. There's no generic, but if it has to be generalized, then my thing would be that first figure out what is it that you need that always is personalized. Because what you eat and what it can't be the same. Even my sister and I, we have the same parents, the same DNA, but our bodies are different, right? So we have to figure out what is it that I need through the day. For example, I need extra protein because one of my enzymes, digestive enzymes, is not being produced in my gut. Now, I don't know if it's a genetic thing or if it happened over a lifetime, but I need to consume more protein just to compensate for the lack of that one enzyme. So that extra protein gets broken down and gets absorbed. So each person is unique. But then I know this much that I need to eat, let's say about 75 grams of protein. I can choose to make it like more eggs and breakfast and then some meat and lunch, and then more meat and eggs and dinner. And I can choose to break it down like that. So three meals usually fits into our social schedules. Also, because you want to meet someone for breakfast, you can eat a meal. You want to meet someone for lunch, you can eat a meal with them. You want to meet someone for dinner, you can eat a meal with them. So if someone is trying to figure out how to optimize the nutrition habit, first figure out what is a sustainable meal plan for you. I get extremely ambitious. People will be like, I can eat just one meal a day. And I'll be like, how do you fit in everything you need over 24 hours period into one meal? Won't that leave you feeling bloated and lethargic? Yeah. What happens when you go out with friends and you eat on your one meal already? You're going to be the one guy they're going to call out saying you're not eating.How are you going to deal with that? Social pressure. So you figure out what is it that integrates best with your lifestyle? If someone who socializes it a lot, you have to accommodate for that happening. And then you figure out which meals can you manage like that? We had a lady who's a very social person and she realized that the food she was eating when she was with her friends was really contributing to a lot of her gut issues because it was mostly snacky stuff, bar food. So what she then agreed to do, she didn't want to compromise and of course meeting her friends, but she decided to have a big meal before going out in the evening so her stomach would kind of feel full. And then there she could pick up simpler stuff that would not really cause too much damage. So figure out what you need in a 24 hours period for your body and then see which meal pattern works best. And then break these meals down into that. Now this is very easy for me to see. It's very difficult to implement unless you have the right kind of plans in place, like the strategy in place for this. And I think you do a lot of work around that. How we do it is we help someone create an identity. So we never focus on the goal saying that, oh, I have to eat three meals with the best nutrition through the day. I don't do that. And this is a learning from atomic habits itself. You make it your identity that on most days, I am eating what my body needs through the day. So if that becomes your identity versus an identity of I'm on a diet, when you make I'm on a diet, your identity is always in a state of deprivation and tension and anxiety. But if you make an identity of I know what my body needs, I'm going to figure out. Which means it's going to give me this. And then you put in processes. Like for me, one of the processes I had to put and for a lot of our clients we had to do this is get help to help with the base work around your food. Because if you plan on making all your meals on your own, and you plan on working full time, and you plan on doing fitness, like going to the sun system. If we were Huntergatherers, we would be hunting for our food, getting a workout at the same time and getting a rest and naps everything through the day itself. We need a little support. So I really recommend, if people don't have that already, getting some sort of support either to prep meals or to fully cook your meals. Also, if you're okay with that as a person. But get that in place. So know what you need, figure out which meals you need and then plan for failures. Always. I tell them that, okay, you're someone who thinks you can cook all your food. What if you can't do it? Then what would you do? Then they'll be like, I'll order in and say, how many days can you tomorrow so you can't cook? Then what will you do? Then they get the idea. Right. [00:53:34.190] - Darshan Doshi I think one thing that I'll add to that is to celebrate small wins, too, of course, which are once a week, once a month. It's important for us to celebrate the little progress that we make. I think the whole goal based approach is important. We should have goals. We must have goals. But to say it's all or nothing is a failed approach. Absolutely right. Rather put milestones. Think of it as flag poles that you have to go and touch. And every time you do that, you kind of put your hands up and say, yeah, I did it. Right. And so that was one thing that I wanted to add. You talked about snacking. And snacking is so common now with ten minute deliveries. You can order anything and everything at your home. What is the binge eating, binge drinking? Is there a way my question is I know that question has been answered by many people. The difference that I want is, is there a way for us to have healthy binging? And is there something like that, or what would you suggest? [00:54:50.110] - Mugdha Pradhan Yeah, so the idea of a binge itself doesn't fit into my idea of what healthy behavior would be. So it's a behavioral thing. It's not really about what you're eating as much as it's a behavior you would binge. And I was somebody who was an emotional eater when I was going through my entire clinical depression thing. So I would go and pick these carbohydrate rich foods just because I was feeling so low in life. And I needed something to kind of trigger the Dopamine release in my brain. Right, so it's a behavioral thing. Now, let's say you're going through something and you want to eat. I recently had to go to court for some stuff and all of that. It was stressful and it was annoying, and I needed food to kind of just help me kind of feel grounded. Right, so let's say you're going through something and you want to use food as one of your coping mechanisms, which we do as human beings. We do like to imagine that a human being wouldn't use food as a coping mechanism would be like a complete aesthetic yogi sitting in the Himalayas. We are urban people living in modern day stressors. So when you feel that desire to use food as a coping mechanism, there are things that you could eat that won't really harm your body. So my first go-to is fruits. I really do that even now when I feel like sometimes you want to eat something when we do snacking, like you're working on something, and then I don't know why it happens to me a lot, especially when writing or something. I want to chew on something while I'm writing. So then I keep roasted chana next to me, which is okay, which is not fried. It is going to contribute to my protein needs in some way. So roasted chana is okay, and you can't eat too much of that. It's not like your chips. So your namkins from these brands that come in packets, you can't stop because they're also designed like that. So there's a lot of molecular engineering that happens in these food processing plants where they find how to create hyper stimulation. So the taste combinations of salt and fat and sugar and the other flavors are designed in such a way that when you eat a bite, you get a hyper stimulatory experience, which is beyond what you'd get with your Dal Chawal. So your brain wants more and more of that. So it's designed like that. It's evil. But if you do things like roasted chana, you really can't eat too much of that. Or if you just chop up fruits and eat, you're going to get good. So that minute that you have that urge to do something, you're chopping fruits, you're actually engaging your body, and then you're anticipating that meal, and then you're going to finish that bowl, and then the thought of having to go do that another time itself cuts that behavior. But what else could I do? Not recommend nuts too much. Like, a lot of nutritionists say that you could munch on nuts when you're feeling snacky again. Because we do so much work with looking at root causes and blood chemistry. What we've seen is nuts have very high omega six fatty acids, and then that can contribute to insulin resistance because of the biochemical circuits itself. So occasionally it's okay to have like, maybe three, four almonds once a week or something. But if you're keeping nuts as a snack every day, like 04:00 P.m hunger attack, that happens. And that's when you're eating almonds, it's going to mess up your molecule. It is going to compound. [00:58:16.200] - Darshan Doshi So a lot of people, especially youngsters, are focusing a lot on weight gain. So we've talked about weight loss. Now on weight gain, there's a massive challenge that is happening as well. So any thoughts on what's really going on there? [00:58:36.850] - Mugdha Pradhan We have a challenge with this as well. It's easier to make someone lose weight than to make them gain weight. Like when one of our weight gain people gain a kg and be like, yeah, and it's really a very slow process. Multiple reasons. They could have absorption issues in their gut, right? So they could be eating a lot of food, but the gut is just not absorbing all that nutrition, and then that's why it's not going to the body. Second, we've seen if the thyroid is actually running at a much faster rate, it's a thing called hypothyroidism. It really keeps your metabolism at a high all through the day, and you could be burning up so many calories without realizing it. So gut issues, a thyroid that's going really fast. If there's a lot of anxiety and restlessness kind of pattern, there's a lot of twitching, twitching, movement moving through the day that burns calories. It really does. So it's harder to kind of gain weight then, and if you're not challenging your body enough. So one thing that's important for muscle mass to grow is it gets challenged, which means you actually train it with weight. And it's usually young people who come to us for weight gain, right? So if we bring in some kind of a program where they're actually training in the gym with a trainer or on their own, that triggers the muscles to break down and rebuild again, and then nutrition is optimized for that, right. And then we kind of are able to see weight gain, but it's much slower. It's a challenge. Sometimes there could be underlying things like anorexia and bulimia, which might not be reported initially to you, but then you start seeing the pattern there. So a lot of the teenage audience that comes to us for the early 20s now, they've had some sort of issues with body image and some kind of breakdowns in the past with food. So then we have to work on the mental framework, okay. Because they don't eat. Even if you give them the best plan, they aren't eating the food that they need. [01:00:40.970] - Darshan Doshi So now it's been such an awesome podcast, but one last question before we wrap it up. Curing comes after the disease takes place. Reversal happens after bad stuff has happened to you. And nobody likes to be unhealthy, right? There's a popular saying. There are a thousand things that a healthy person needs, but an unhealthy one, an ill person with illness has only one wish to get better. And I think the pandemic made that really close to us over the last two years. So we'd love to hear what are some preventive things that a person can do today, given the fact that there are 158 diseases that you talked about. [01:01:30.510] - Mugdha Pradhan And there might be more, right? [01:01:34.630] - Darshan Doshi I'm 37, I want to be disease free. I want to live 100 year healthy life. What should I do? What could I do? [01:01:45.040] - Mugdha Pradhan What should you do? And actually, you made a very beautiful point and no one really wants to be sick. I've not met a single person who says that, no, I don't care about my health. Everyone says they care about their health, they just don't have enough knowledge, right? And then the question, like you said, 100 years. And when you said that, I was like, yes, live long, but also live well. Your health span is more important than your life span. It could be 60, but you could live really well until 60 versus being 100. And then 60 are good and the remaining 40 are dependent. So what should you do? See, the few components that ensure a life free of disease are one is of course, your body's movement, the functionality of it itself, right? So even before I go to nutrition, a lot of youngsters don't realize this. Like, they spend so much time sitting and not really using the body the way it's supposed to be used, that later in life those muscles have all tightened up, they've lost their functionality because the body is always looking at optimization. It's like, okay, you're sitting through the day, which means you don't need your glutes to kind of move. So let's tighten this. Let's tighten your IDP bank because you don't need it, right? Or your shoulders are like this all the time, which means you're not hanging from trees. So let's make a shoulders like this. Let's do an internal rotation. So move so that you are able to move right until your last breath. Losing the ability to move independently is the worst feeling ever. People can live with elevated blood sugar levels. People will live with high BP taking medicine. I've seen this, right? When they become wheelchair bound or when they become mobility. When their mobility goes is when their desire to live goes away. It really goes away. So even before we talk of nutrition, maintain movement, what can you do to ensure that you remain disease free every six months, if that's too intense, at least every year, get your blood work done and make sure your metabolic health is optimal. Because what is disease? Disease is an inability to produce the energy you need, or diseases, your organs not functioning the way they're supposed to. Like your kidneys not functioning and filtering your blood, your liver not detoxing, your heart not pumping, your brain not working with. So health is having good energy. Health is all your organs function the way they're supposed to function. Health is you get through your day without aches and pains, you're happy, right? Like you wake up, you have a purpose for the day, you plan what you want to do through the day and you deliver that through the day to yourself and to the world outside. And you go to bed with all your dopamine going off saying good job, good job, good job, right? So that is what health is to me. And I tell people also like I might not be the thinnest nutritionist on this planet, I am not. But I can do a 72 kg deadlift, I can stretch like nobody's business, nobody's flexibility is not there. And I wake up at 04:00 a.m. Every day and I go to bed at ten. I never lose energy through the day unless I have some bug, right? So that is health to me. [01:04:56.370] - Darshan Doshi That last sentence is what sticks to me the most is ability to have the energy to do what I want to do. A body and a mind to be able to do what I want to do right when I want to do it. When you want to do it. One of the things I keep coming back to Dasar is say you're really rich, you've made a lot of money also and you're working on some of the coolest stuff in the world, machine learning what not. And you go to Goa or you go to Maldives and you can't kayak, you can't go out for a swim, right? What's the use of all that money or all the work that you do, right, when your body is not able to do the things that you wanted to do? Or go trek the hill, go do the things which are actually experiences. [01:05:51.030] - Mugdha Pradhan And the thing is, it's not when you go to Maldives or when you go to a hill that you suddenly realize you don't have health. These things start you just ignore. For example, when you wake up in the morning with the alarm and then you just want to snooze and then go back to bed. And then when you wake up also you're just not feeling fresh. That's a sign that something's already messed up. When you have this lump in the day and then you either need a smoke or something else, like a lot of caffeine to get through the day. I like coffee myself, I like tea, but I drink it because I enjoy the beverage. It's not like if I don't have my coffee, I'm not going to be able to do things right. So that dependency on a crutch, something to stimulate your energy, right? That's a sign that something's already messed up. It needs to be addressed, but a lot of people want to deny these small. So your body first whispers like, post it for you. But then it's such a small post, what am I going to do with it? That will send you a bigger letter. Then there will be a loud scream, which will be a disease and be like, Shit, I have diabetes. And even then you won't know that the bodies is trying to tell you that. Just fix it. [01:07:08.620] - Darshan Doshi So this has been an awesome podcast. It's been a long one. We've talked a lot, Mugda. You've been absolutely phenomenal. I love the technical terms used, I love the simplicity with which you explained the anecdotes, the examples that you've given. And thanks for sharing your own personal story. It's extremely important to have a fit body and a fit mind. We are launching a podcast series called Dirghayu, which is on living a long and healthy life. The gift of a long life, right? And where what we are doing is people such as yourself, people in the healthcare industry, in the fitness industry, in the start up world, the investment world, who are focused on improving lives, health and wellness. And so we'll be launching that soon. But this has been an awesome podcast. Thanks a lot, Mugdha. And hopefully we can bring you back so we can talk about cholesterol. [01:08:11.250] - Mugdha Pradhan Yes, it's the biggest myth that's been going on on this planet. But thank you for having me over. I kind of lose track of time when I start talking about this stuff because my vision is to kind of create a planet that is free of diseases, right? So for me, it's like more people come, listen, just fix this right now. But thank you so much for having me over. They were amazing questions. It really helped me kind of articulate what goes on in my mind so often. So thank you for asking me those questions and thank you for having me over. And the Dirghayu podcast sounds like an incredible idea. [01:08:50.120] - Darshan Doshi Yeah, we'll do that. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. You may or may not have known these things, maybe you would have seen bits and pieces of it. But how does it all come together? Our body is a marvelous thing. There's a lot of things that we need to learn to take action, right? If you are someone who is looking to improve your fitness, if you are someone who wants to just learn about fitness, about nutrition, subscribe to our YouTube channel. We also run a newsletter that goes out every Wednesday where we have articles written on fitness, personal finance, productivity, performance and the whole thing. And the idea is very simple. We want people to be financially independent and to live inspired and meaningful lives. So I'll see you soon. Thanks a lot. Share this podcast if you liked it, it will help reach out to people who could really benefit from it. Thanks. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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https://youtu.be/0k6OrCkAEdc Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:08) Welcome to Dasar. I'm Darshan and we have an awesome podcast today. I have with me my close friend Rohit Pandharkar. A quick introduction of Rohit, Rohit is the Global Head of Data Science at OLX Autos. Previously he was the Head of Data Science at Mahindra Group and then also involved with one of the fastest growing startups out of India and the US. He's an MIT Media Lab alumni and has been working in the artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning space for a very long time. He has huge number of use cases where he has helped solve problems, business problems, life problems, customer problems through the use of this technology. So we have with us someone who is in the trenches working, building data science teams, solving critical problems, but at the same time has an exposure to various technologies. And in this podcast we're going to cover a lot of topics around AI. What is AI? What is the difference between AI and Analytics? How do you hire data science teams? What kind of representation is needed of AI within large corporations in the country or around the world? We're going to talk about how AI can improve human performance and make us super humans, if I may call them. Lastly, we also cover the topic of Singularity and we'll get insights from Rohit on how will AI converge into Singularity. So stick in. This is a very long podcast. It is a fast moving podcast. I hope you like it. If you like it, please share it in your network. So let's get started. Welcome Rohit. I'm so excited to have you here. I've given a quick overview of who you are, but let's get straight into it. Most startups, most people are throwing words around like artificial intelligence, right? They have cooked that into their technology, into their product. But what is the difference between artificial intelligence and basic analytics that you could do in an Excel sheet? Rohit Pandharkar (02:25) Yes, that's probably the most thrown around world these days. If you hear any startup pitch, people will say, oh, we are powering this using AI. Oh, this is backed by AI, because of AI this will be better, because of AI this will be cheaper, faster, etc. But not everything in analytics is AI. The way I would like to think about this framework and I often talk about this wherever I speak, is four stages of data science or analytics. First is descriptive analytics, which is just describe what happened, let's say Mumbai rainfall. There was a cloud burst in Mumbai on a certain day. How many mm of rainfall happened? That's descriptive analytics. Second stage is diagnostic analytics, which is why did it happen? Is it some cloud burst? Is it some other climate change that could describe the diagnostic piece of it? Again, this is not really AI. It's again, an analytical way of looking at things. Third piece is predictive analytics, which means tomorrow what would happen, when will it happen, and what would happen? That piece is the real machine learning piece because you are using historical data or some learning to predict what will happen in the future. And fourth piece going beyond that is prescriptive analytics, which is if you are predicting something will happen, maybe something good or bad, how do you make it better? How do you make it happen earlier? Or how do you avoid that from happening? That is prescriptive analytics and predictive and prescriptive analytics piece is actually AI. Whenever you are using historical data or some learning data to predict certain outcomes or prescribe what to do better is actually AI and not just analyzing things in an Excel sheet, but actually using algorithms, sophisticated algorithms like Xg boost, deep learning, etc. is the real AI. Darshan Doshi (04:17) Brilliant. One of the things that Dasar we try to do is to simplify, make it really easy to understand, leave out the jargons and focus on action, performance, we talk about productivity, we talk about getting things done. So thanks a lot for decoding what AI is and what is the difference between analytics and AI. I was part of Nvidia a few years ago where they had put together a startup event in which they wanted to support startups working on machine learning and deep learning. And it was really amazing the kind of talent we have in India which is coming through right? The startups that are being funded to solve some really core critical problems. So my next question to you is what kind of data or how likely is it for a business to use machine learning, AI to actually create something tangible which can be used by people in day-to-day lives? Rohit Pandharkar (05:19) This answer is actually given by Andrew Ing and I would just repeat what he said is that probably the highest value addition by AI is going to happen through supervised machine learning. What is supervised machine learning? Supervision of historical data to learn patterns and predict a new item presented to you so that you can figure out what will happen, when will it happen and how to avoid it, or how to make it happen better. For example, think of a loan disbursement. If I could predict which loan is likely to go bad, that's immense value add for a financial services company. Think of a product sales company, say car sales or tractor sales, or selling electronic equipment like television or refrigerators. If I could predict the demand of TV sets for a certain brand around Diwali in India, that is immense value added because all my supply chain, logistics, procurement, marketing can be designed accordingly. Think of again, transportation. If I could predict what is going to be my cost of a trip, say an Uber trip or an Ola trip from place A to place B, that is adding tremendous value and that is happening through supervised machine learning, which means I'm looking at historical trips, historical TV sales during the Valley or Historical Loan NPS and learning from that, what will happen to the next case or next question in front of me? And as a CXO or as a leader of any company, one can add value by being prepared for it and making things better. Darshan Doshi (06:50) Brilliant. You remind me. So one of the startups that I've invested, the name is My Auto IQ. It's a US-based start-up by some awesome founders. What they do is they use machine learning to really help car dealers understand within the five mile radius what is the probability of a person looking to buy a car and help in improving the conversion rate for these car dealers. And it's such a strong use case. And these guys are using various data points because the data is formalized. It's a little bit more structured in the US. And so my next question to you is, all right, I've identified a use case. I think you've convinced on how people could our businesses could drive value out of supervised learning or any of the other technologies that you said. But one of the core questions is forming teams. Since COVID, the demand for data scientists has gone through the roof. And I don't know precisely what is the demand and supply within this talent pool that we have in India or around the globe, but it looks like everybody wants a 100% to 200% hike, right? Whether you're in Bangalore or Pune or wherever. So how does one business, if it is looking to build an in-house data science team, go about hiring such talent? What are the things that need to come together to hire an A-plus quality team? Rohit Pandharkar (08:32) Let's first talk about an ideal data science team structure or an ML team structure. It has three core pieces. One is the data scientists, folks who actually write algorithms, build the predictive models. Second is data engineers, folks who would manage the data lake, data warehouses, the privacy data governance, etc. for pieces. For example, in Europe you have GDPR where a lot of Privacy concerns like amnesia, which means forget everything about me on your platform. If I come and say I want to delete my account, you should forget everything that you have about me on your platform. That should be doable things like take out, which means I want to download all the data from your platform and go away should be also possible and things like storage. Some of the companies, like financial services companies in India are required to store all the data within the geography, even if it's on cloud. The servers have to be located within Indian boundaries and accessible. So to manage all that, you need data engineers who would write your queries, the ETL jobs, the pipelines for real time data extractions, event streaming platforms, etc. And third piece is business intelligence. Business intelligence is all about visualization dashboard, MIS Management Information Systems, something like a CEO cockpit, which will allow the CXOs or the CEO to look at how many products am I selling? At what margin did I sell them? What's my forecast for next three months? What am I likely to do in this quarter? How would the training twelve months look like, etc. So these are the three pieces of a data science team, which is data scientists, data engineers, and business intelligence analysts. To hire these people, actually, there is this concept of an imaginary unicorn data scientist, right? Nobody really gets that. There are very few people in the world today who would be like the best guys in building, let's say the driverless cars or the best algorithms in natural language processing or computer vision. And they probably run into millions of dollars of comp per year. And there are cases where people have said that driverless car data scientist engineer or an ML engineer would be way more costlier than some other leaders as well in the company. So rather than running after this unicorn data scientists, I would say one should look at people who have the right set of skills. For example, if you take any machine learning book or any machine learning course, it all has the same set of algorithms or problem statements, right? You have regression, clustering, segmentation, binary classification, say Xg boost models, random forest models, deep learning, hierarchical clustering, etc. If someone knows 6-7 of these standard techniques, which is something that is like a toolkit to solve most of the business problems, I would hire that person. At the same time, what is happening is because of COVID and remote jobs being available, there are plenty of jobs and too much demand for these kinds of data scientists. And to be able to be attractive in such a situation, companies can do many things. One of the things one could do is offer complete remote work. That is always a win win. Second thing one can do is and I've seen several companies that I know following this strategy, which is give your best number in the first goal, which means don't try to negotiate, don't try to see where the benchmarking is, where the current candidate compares, etc. Just give the best budget number you have and say take it or leave it because it's the best we can do and that's likely to be workout, something that will work out better. Other than that, what you also need to offer is seat at the table to the data scientist, which means in most of the companies I have worked in, CXO level discussions should happen in the presence of data scientists when a particular data science problem is being discussed. For example, if you are thinking of solving the NPA problems for a bank or a financial services company, the data scientists should be able to stand up and explain the story the data storytelling to the MD or CEO of the company. They should be part of the vision and strategy towards how to use data to do better business. This exposure to leadership and then finally rotation among the projects is also important. No data scientist wants to build the same model repeatedly every quarter to just refresh the model and manage ML Ops. He should get exposure to different types of problems, let's say marketing data science problem, operations data science problem, financial data science problem, or any decision making for the CEO, etc. So with these four things, which is remote work, give the great best comp possible, third is exposure to leadership and fourth is rotation. If you do these four things well, you can hire and retain a top data scientist. Darshan Doshi (13:29) So thanks a lot for breaking that down. I have two points to it, but I'll first follow that up with a question because many of our audience members are early in their careers. And one of the things that I keep focusing on Dasar is you might not have the expertise or the background or the education background, but if you are excited about something so you want to enter the data analytics space, you want to become great at machine learning, put your efforts, get your hands dirty, get in and get started. Certification or no certification, you'll find your way if you like it, right? So for someone who wants to get started in this field but has no education background in this, any suggestions of how a person could get started? Because we do want to build a big talent pool where India becomes a force to reckon with, right? So maybe some thoughts on that. Rohit Pandharkar (14:27) There is plenty of material available online today for someone willing to make a career change in data science. You may find several AI influencers AI YouTubers who would have YouTube channels where you could actually get a six-month roadmap with segregated modular videos to learn different things and I'll explain how that works. First thing you should do is probably take the AI for Everyone course by Andrew Ng on Coursera that talks about what is AI, why this is useful today, and what problems it can solve. Next thing one could do is start learning basics of Python. Python is the de facto language for machine learning and data science today. Third thing you could do is slowly start taking practical caggle challenges or any challenge online. Which means take a data set of say COVID patient chest X-rays and try and predict whether the person has COVID or not using your binary classification algorithm. Because if you can classify between yes and no probabilities for let's say a chest X-ray, you can also classify whether a car is damaged or not or whether a loan will go bad or not, or whether the crop is having a disease or not. Right? All these are very similar categorical problems of binary classification. If you do that, once you can prove to your prospective employer that you can solve such problems. Another thing you should also do is learn several tools like say, tableau. Tableau is great for business intelligence and visualization. There is a great dearth of tableau experts or Power bi experts for that matter, who would be able to build great dashboards for MIS, CXO level reporting and management cockpit. Another thing one could do is take up AWS certifications or Microsoft Azure certifications where these companies are offering even Google cloud certification in data science or data engineering, where for free, these companies are offering video self paced courses on their websites to learn how to do data science using AWS or Google or Azure tools. You could do this in six months and I'm confident that if you do this with enough sincerity and your own consistency, you will be able to make a career change into data science, data engineering, or business intelligence. Darshan Doshi (16:44) Yeah. And I think you have to give yourself a good three to five years runway as well. If you are really interested, I think six to eight months gives you enough time to understand. Am I passionate about this? Do I really like it? And after jumping into it, do I still continue to like it? Is this something that I am excited to do? We have another guest coming on this podcast. His name is Darshak Shah. Studied with me at Babson. He's worked in large companies as well as early fintech startups heading their data science and building data science teams. Now he's started his own services shop in data science. And we'll go deep dive on that podcast of how he's actually facing a challenge of where people are not interested enough to jump in and to get started when he is ready to give them a break. And so there are people, if you are interested, there are people who will help you along the way and we'll bring you those people. So let's get to the next part. Examples there is nothing better to showcase value of any technology than through a real example that you may have gone through and you've been in some fantastic positions where you had a chance to influence this technology and bring it to life. So maybe from your experience, without naming names, if you can share the context of the problem that you are trying to solve a business problem, how did you go about it and what was the outcome? If you could do that in just a short time, that would be great. Rohit Pandharkar (18:22) Before we get into a real corporate example, I also wanted to touch base on a very important thing, which is the change happening at all echelons of corporate levels, which means at the board of director level, companies are finding it crucial to have a data science representative. Companies, publicly listed companies are looking at data as an asset on the balance sheet, which is an amazing change because this was not the case a few years ago I have seen publicly listed companies appointing a director on the board who is an expert in artificial intelligence or data science so that the strategy for using and leveraging data comes top down. And there is discussion happening on how we are using AI at the top, most leadership level in these areas. So having said that, I want to give an example of something that I am very proud of from my previous career is having built a credit scoring and risk engine for rural credit dark or data dark customers. As we know, a lot of people in India do not have a credit history. Most of them have just recently started a janthan account and have taken loans but through informal channels. And since these loans are not formal like from a bank or an NVFC, there's no reporting on these loans to the credit bureaus and hence if you search for their civil score, you will either get a no hit, which means this person does not exist in the Bureau records or you will get a minus one score, which means there's not enough credit history to give a score to this person. Now how do you still lend to these people? There is an opportunity to lend to maybe 70-80 crore such people who are yet to get a very strong credit score. There is also another segment called subprime lending which is giving loans to a low credit score customer base. To do all this, you need to have augmented data or alternate data scoring. Which means can you look at say with customer consent and with the legal constraints available, can you look at the phone that the person owns and the model that he owns, the screen size of the phone, the data usage that person is making? Does he have some apps on his phone? For example, having a ride healing or cab healing app on your phone puts you in a certain strata of the society. Or let's say having a location history where you have checked into five-star hotels or some expensive malls can tell you a lot more about a person. Not necessarily that you may have gone and shopped into the malls, but frequent correlated visits to some other locations which are premium can tell you a lot more about a customer. Using all this alternate data through customer concept if we could build a credit scoring algorithm for people with low credit history or no credit history, it can change the fabric of credit access for rural India. And in one of the publicly listed large NBFCs that I've worked with previously, we have tried using different shades of alternate data. Not necessarily the examples that I gave earlier, but rural data points to be able to decide how to give affordable credit to these guys, which means at a lower interest rate to larger set of people whom the traditional banks consider as a risky profile customer having done that one could impact say tens of billions of dollars of AUM and grow the business and reduce the NPA. It does good for people as well while you're doing it this is a real example of AI helping someone get out of the sahukari, right? What's the option for the rural customers otherwise? If no bank gives him a loan to go to a sahukar who charges these pahadi interest rate loans, which means crazy amounts of interest, 10% per month, 6% per month, which amounts to compounded over twelve months, a huge interest, that leads to a dead trap for the rural customer. If instead some companies are able to lend to these guys at a reasonable rate of interest and still manage profitability, that can change the way these people improve their lives, get access to education, health care, working capital, start their businesses and so on. So I'm very proud of this particular example where I got a chance previously to impact this particular area using AI. Darshan Doshi (22:46) I'm so glad you touched upon this example because one of the focus areas of DASAR is financial independence. And one of the things that we say is once you are financially independent, you can do things that you only dreamt of. And really make an impact on the society. Some of the things that stood out for me in the example that you gave were just mind boggling numbers, 70 to 80 crore people in India who could get access to credit which otherwise they would not get. Now just think about it for a moment. We know India has 1.3 billion people, but most of the people are still finding it difficult to get out of the financial dilemma. To have basic things like house, electricity, water, working capital, education for their children, which many of us in the metros kind of take it for granted. So I think the power of this technology is huge. I think also from a GDP per capita basis, India is moving from 1800 to about 2600 over the next four to five years. So that should also bring a lot of our people out of getting access to credit is very important to get out of that wheel, so to say. So thanks a lot for that quick example. Now I want to go back to hiring people. Okay. In hiring people, one of the things that you mentioned is you could do this, you can build all of this team. I'm also a part of a leadership development SaaS company called Adeption, started out of New Zealand. I've built a tech team here in Pune and we have a sales team in the US. And so one of the things that we do over there is while we don't have an in house data science team, we have a partner in shape of a local partner who's been helping us do some machine learning. And so over there also some of the conversations we've had is hiring people is very difficult. Hiring interns is easy. So they have a battery of like 50 interns and then their filtration happens and only about five, six, maybe ten of them last into a full time job who have the skill set. So when you are hiring your own team or building your team, what are the parameters that you are looking at? Or some thoughts around hiring when you're trying to build a data science team? Rohit Pandharkar (25:29) So I look for three aspects. One is the ability to think mathematically and that comes from simple, say, back up the envelope questions or guestimate questions, right? I would start with a guestimate to just see how exhaustively someone can think about a problem. Say how many kids under the age of twelve are there in Pune today? Let's pick a Metro city and ask the person, can you think about this data problem? What aspects of data does he think of? Can he go to government databases? Can he go to school databases? Can he refer to some data points like how many people appeared for HSC examination or SSC examination? What can change the data? For example, people traveling in and out of Pune? What can add more authenticity to the data? For example, the number of people who are appearing for IIT JEE, etc. So that kind of guestimate question would tell you the mathematical thinking and data exhaustiveness of the person. Second aspect I would look at is actual programming and statistical abilities to know the algorithms. I would just ask, hey, if you want to solve a problem where an airline is suffering from overbooking problem, right? There is a 200 people seat airplane and several people cancel at the last minute and you have to sell more than 200 tickets just to make sure that you have no seats empty when the plane flies. How much of overbooking should you do? Now tell me, which algorithm would you use for this? What data would you use for this and how would you write this code in a pseudo code language. That will tell you a lot about the ability of the person to appropriately go back to his repository of algorithms, repository of data sets and be able to think in terms of business problem statements as to why this problem occurs, why this is important for the business, how if this is solved, it will make profitability for the company, etc. The third aspect I would look for is attitude. Attitude is all about different aspects like are you willing to go on the ground and inquire to learn about how the business of the company works? What is the real problem? For example, overbooking, right? Think of hotels and resorts. Can you actually travel to a resort and talk to 20 customers in the resort to figure out why overbooking happens or cancellations happen and why people are unhappy about a certain booking experience? If the person is willing to get his hands dirty, travel and also be able to tell the story back to his leadership team and translate the problem. That is also a piece of softer skills that a data scientist is required to have. So these are the three things I would look for. Darshan Doshi (28:23) Brilliant. Rohit, one of the three areas of DASAR is performance, peak performance or productivity as well. So we have personal finance, we have fitness, and we have productivity and performance. And you kind of exemplify a person who's really good at what he does. And our aspiration is that we want to help people be the best at what they do. Whatever it is that they choose to do, we want to make them the best at what they do. And so even in your hiring process, I'm hearing instances where you're talking about the softer skills, the hard skills, the thinking capability, the doing capability, getting your hands dirty, going out and talking. And that's what elevates the performance. My next question to you is how can this technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, even basic analytics, how can it help a person improve his or her performance or productivity? Have you got any instances, some thoughts? Because tools are there for us to improve and to use. And the way I look at this is this is a technology which is used as a weapon to suit myself, to make myself like Iron Man, for example. So maybe some examples or thought process of how you see this technology improve human performance? Rohit Pandharkar (29:51) It's a great question because we are at a stage where a lot of things that humans do very skillful things are actually being done by AI. And one piece I see is actually using AI as a pacer, like in a marathon. You have a pacer with you, right. To use AI as a pacer who shows you what things could be done and in what way they could be done as the best standard. It could be thought of in a very different way as well. I remember a company in Silicon Valley that I had once met called Drushti.ai, where actually AI is being used at the manufacturing floor for the person at the assembly line, let's say a phone assembly line where say a smartphone is being assembled. If you pick up the gasket or say the back cover of the phone and put it on the chip and turn it around and tighten the screws, this task would be evaluated by an AI and could be timely given feedback on. The moment you do something wrong, the AI will give a buzzer and tell you that, hey, this particular task, third task, out of the three tasks that you are supposed to do is not done properly. That is at a very generic level, maybe at a factory level feedback. Right. At a very high level, let's say for someone who is a remote worker or a programmer, actually AI is doing things like Copilot, which means while you are programming, AI completes the code. And there are things like just describe what you want and it will create an image or an impression clipart like Auto Draw or some NLP driven and generative adversarial networks driven gain driven algorithms now that let you say, hey, I'm making this slide and I want a person working on the factory floor using a night vision camera looking at an auto assembly line. And it would paint that picture automatically. So you don't have to look at a different slide or go to Internet and search it. You will actually dictate what you want and it will generate that image. So that's personal productivity through AI. Another thing that we often can do nowadays is, by the way, use speech recognition for dictating tasks, dictating emails, dictating work, and actually Summarizers. We are working with a company as a project to do legal summarization. See, advocates have to go through so many legal court case documentations before they prepare something quite precedent for a case. So if you had to read 200 pages to come prepared for a particular case you are solving, it consumes a lot of time. But AI today can actually summarize all those 200 pages of documents and give you a three page summary saying, this is what the precedent in such cases is. So these kind of auto Summarizers, auto image makers, auto task trackers can help you pace up your work. Darshan Doshi (32:56) One of my favorite companies since my days in Boston at Babson was Boston Dynamics. It's a robotics plus AI company and they've created some of the best robotics out there. And you kind of reminded me of how one of those robots was able to not just open the door, but do a bunch of things and including dance. So the movements to mimic human dancing is also there. So that was just fascinating. That leads me to my next question, which is what is the future for humans with respect to AI, maybe even robotics, if you are willing to do this, I know you were at MIT Media Lab, and so I'm sure you got exposure to robotics as well. So for the audience, maybe a quick look into the future from your eyes, your opinion as to where are we heading with respect to these technologies? Rohit Pandharkar (34:01) I am a big fan of the concept of singularity and I believe that maybe around year 2045 we may achieve singularity. What is Singularity? The moment in time when an artificial general intelligence becomes as intelligent as one single human brain and can do all the tasks that a human being can do, like painting, making poems, singing, playing synthesizer, playing guitar, thinking critically about, say, a legal court case, a decision on a court case using precedence, or a business decision on where I should open my next branch or which product should I launch. There are AI CEOs of companies as we speak, which are taking decisions on behalf of the enterprise on what is to be done. Google has recently launched multiple language translations and also ability to call a Starbucks or any coffee shop or a salon where you can just talk to an AI and book an appointment. All this is happening in 2022. By 2045 you would reach a level where you are talking to an AI and won't even figure out at the other end which is passing the tuning test whether you are speaking to a human or an AI or a robot. But I am more worried about the way we will be able to digest or not digest this. Imagine if all this is achieved, you would all be superhuman, right? Want to learn calculus? Just install an app for calculus in your extended brain and within a second you would be an expert in calculus. Want to learn how to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix? Just install the Guitar app in your super extended brain and you would be playing guitar like the world's most expert guitar player. But if this is possible, would anything would be worth doing? Because if you could read any book in 2 seconds by downloading that book in your extended brain or ask for any question and get the most accurate answer to an AI, we would not be human, right? Because being super human means losing the human capabilities. And I think our very life and the spice of life is about the limitations and errors we make. The incompleteness that we have in our human life. For example, I enjoy someone who plays guitar better than me because I probably would have to spend years learning guitar that way. Or I admire Ussain Bolt because I can't run like him, but if I can do maths like a Fields medalist, if I can be as intelligent as the most intelligent designer in my own designs, there'll be no segregation left. So where would that excitement challenge of doing something better in life be? Hence, I think it's better we prepare ourselves for a hybrid future where the very humanness, the emotions, the incompleteness, the inadequacies of human life are still maintained. But we are able to live a happier life because of AI and because of robots. Darshan Doshi (37:12) Lovely. Thanks for sharing that. I think there are pros and cons of everything. And so you've kind of laid it out here is where we are today in this podcast to kind of just quickly sum up, you've simplified what is AI? What is machine learning? How does it differentiate from analytics? What are the use cases? Where is this technology today applied in the world? How can it uplift masses of people who may not have access to capital, who may not have access to credit, it can improve life and livelihoods. But at the same time, in the future, the pace at which we are going, we are going to face new challenges, new problems. Nothing better than the pandemic to kind of show this right? Over the last two years, 18 months when everybody was locked in in the lockdown you are extensively most people were extensively on an average people were spending 11 hours 33 minutes on their phone or on devices. And that basically means that's the amount of time you've not spent connecting with anyone else, a human talking to a human and that has shown higher levels of anxiety, depression and some of the other challenges. On the other hand, you've been able to still connect with people across geographies. FaceTime your family member in the US or in Australia while they were still in the lockdown and still maintain your connecting with your grandchildren which there is no filter there. You can see everything, you can talk it's real time and it's awesome. I hope you love this podcast. Rohit is one of the most articulate people I know. He has shared his experience, expertise, opinions in this podcast. If you liked this please hit the like button. Share a Comment If you have a question about data science, reach out to us lastly go on dasar.in you'll find a bunch of courses over there. You'll find a bunch of podcasts writings to help improve performance, personal finance and fitness. I'm Darshan and stay tuned. Thanks. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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Artificial Intelligence: Is this the Future for Better Analytics? | Rohit Pandharkar | Data Science June 19, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

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What's an overview of the trends in QSR sector today? What are the growth prospects from an investor's standpoint? What factors should you keep in mind while doing an investment analysis of the QSR sector? Explore and learn some insightful thoughts on the QSR sector by Rushabh Doshi, Proinvest Nirmiti in this podcast series Swatantra where we talk about simplifying Investing.

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/10740/the-future-of-fast-food-qsr-sector-analysis-mcdonalds-dominos-yum-brands.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 33:20 | Recorded on June 17, 2022

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https://youtu.be/AdWqkNjgISA Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:15) Welcome to the second episode of Swatantra, just for those who are logging in for the first time, this is a partnership between Proinvest and Dasar where we are simplifying investments. Everybody wants to be rich, everybody wants to be wealthy, but you got to put in the hard work and you need analysis. You need to build confidence and conviction. And that is what we will help you to do through this podcast series. Now, with me today is Rushabh Doshi. He's from Proinvest and maybe Rushabh would love to learn. What do you do at Proinvest? Rushabh Doshi (00:47) So I head the Equity research division at Proinvest Nirmiti. So through this podcast called Swatantra series, what we want to do is make investing and research as easy as possible and deliver the rich content without any jargons and make it as easy as possible for our viewers to understand. Darshan Doshi (01:07) Brilliant. So as I understand you're, the person who does the analysis, the deep dive, the qualitative data, the quantitative data, and puts it all together to form what would be the recommendations to invest in stocks or any other investment vehicles. Now, today we have a fantastic topic. What we are going to do is we're going to do sector analysis. We are going to do sector analysis in food retail or the QSR space. Now, I don't know a lot about QSR, but it sounds delicious. My stomach gets going with this topic, but let's break down, right, if you could help understand what is QSR and how does anyone get his or her head around QSR space? Rushabh Doshi (01:55) So QSR is just an industry specific term for quick service restaurants. So basically, these are all our fast food chains like McDonald's, Domino's and Pizza Hut. So before directly jumping into the sector, let's just take an eagle view of what the Indian food industry is. So in 2020, the size was around 4.4 lakh crores. And in 2025, it's expected to grow by more than 55% to 6.5 lakh crores. So anything which we eat outside is captured here. And this industry has a mix of organized and unorganized. So in 2010, the share of organized was only 24%, and in 2020 that has grown to around 40%. But in 2025, it is expected to be more than 54%. And that's where a huge growth opportunity lies. And also inside the organized industry, QSR is going to be the largest pie there and it's expected to grow even faster. So apart from QSR in the organized sector, there are segments like fine dining restaurants, casual dining restaurants, pubs and bars, and even cafes. So basically, the organized segment has stores, franchises which are three or more outlets, or the food which we consume in hotels, like three star hotels or five star hotels. Darshan Doshi (03:22) So if I understand correctly, if I launch a local cafe down the lane here in Baner Pune, then I'd fall under the unorganized sector. But if I had a chain of more than three, saying three different parts of Pune, then I would fall under organized sector. And then that can be either quick service, which is the McDonald's of the world, or then the fine dining restaurants that we see. My second follow-up question to you Rushabh, in QSR is, can you give us a top level view of what is this food retail space, what is the QSR space, and what are the trends that are going on? Rushabh Doshi (04:01) So, basically, when we take a QSR, basically there are two parties involved. One is the brand owner, and the second one is the franchise. So your brand owners are typically McDonald's or Yum Brands, which owns brands like Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell. And the second one are franchises which run the stores on the ground, something like a Jubilant Foods or Devyani International, which partner with these brand owners and operate everything on the floor in their respective territories, which they are allotted. So the basic transaction here, or the contractual terms, are these franchises, they pay a royalty fee to their brand owners, and they also have a certain set of rules where they have to open X number of stores each year in their respective territories, and they also have to pay a fee for each store they open. So this is something like a symbiotic relationship where both the entities, whenever they work, they have to ensure that both of them are successful in their respective feeds. Darshan Doshi (05:09) Thanks a lot for giving an overview of what is QSR. I understand it better, but help me simplify from an investor standpoint. I want to deploy capital. You're an investor managing money. There might be people out there who are looking to invest in this sector. So what are the things that you like about this sector or gets you interested as an investor or as a researcher? Rushabh Doshi (05:36) So, as a philosophy, we like businesses which are highly scalable. So, just to give you an example, when we look for businesses, we bucket them into two segments. The first one, which we consider, is a small fish in a large pond. So the opportunity to grow is humongous. And the second businesses, which we typically don't like, are the large fish in a small pond. These businesses are already big. Let's say a business which has 80% to 90% market share. There's not a lot of room left to grow. And if on top of that in the industry is only growing at 2 to 3%, it becomes very difficult to create shareholder value. So coming to QSR, the opportunity to scale is very large. So, Yum Brands has more than 50,000 stores globally. They have 10,000 stores in China alone. The second largest, which is McDonald's, has around 380 stores globally. And certain facts about McDonald's, which really surprised me is that they serve food to more people than the entire population of the UK every day, and they open a store on an average of 15 hours every time. And interestingly, they're the top distributor of toys thanks to their Happy Meal concept, which kids seems to be loving. And apart from that, these QSR offer convenience at a low cost, which makes them a very good opportunity to grow and take market share from the unorganized industry. So the next three points, which I think has more to do with India, the first one is when your per capita income rises, let's say when India's per capita income would double in the next four to five years, when it moves from two thousand dollars to four thousand dollars. Our basic consumption in goods like, let's say, detergent, toothpaste is not going to double overnight. But certain categories like QSR will see a huge boom because our aspirations are high, our population, median population age is very low. And secondly, because of urbanization and the nuclear family concept, this sector is also seeing a lot of tailwinds and QSR in India is still a very urban formula or phenomenon and it's not so popular in tier two or three or three cities. And lastly, what I think would be a huge driving force, and this has seen happening in China and in US in the early 90s, is that as and when women enter the workforce, this segment sees a huge boom because it's very difficult for a woman to come home after work and cook. So this becomes a phenomenon and it becomes a habit going ahead and people prefer to either dine out or order more frequently. And lastly, all these food aggregators are adding to this market Swiggy and Zomato majority of their sales are also through QSR only. Darshan Doshi (08:48) Brilliant. So if I can sum this up quickly, one is a very highly scalable business area to operate in. So as an investor, that's good. The second is the average disposable income is expected to increase significantly because India's GDP per capita is going from currently about one $850 to expect it to touch about 2600 in the next three to four years. And then the third part, you know, it's interesting that you say as more women enter the workforce, I think just day before yesterday at the Jito Summit, Mr. Harish Mehta, he made a comment saying that women will be the majority of the workforce in the tech sector, which is growing rapidly. And so within the NASCOM, within the IT sector, we're going to see a lot more women than men. And so that's such a fantastic fact because it also adds into the disposable income. Right? For a family. Who doesn't like french fries, who doesn't like pizzas, and as the young population starts getting the money to spend it, they are going to spend it on this. Okay, so we've understood what is QSR. We've understood why as an investor, you like investing in QSR. Now let's get into the structure and the commercials of a QSR. How does QSR operate? Maybe what you could do is you said you have the brand. And then you have the entity which drive in a symbiotic relationship. But who gets what, who makes what money, where are the margins? And we all know it's a volume game, but that's something that India thrives on because we have 1.3 billion people to feed. Yeah, right. So maybe you can help us understand that. Rushabh Doshi (10:53) So, the brand owner provides them with basically the brand trade marks. And also when they start initially in a respective country, they provide the menu and how, and they also organize the supply chain for the franchise. So all the groundwork has to be done by the franchise which is scaling up stores, customizing the menu and also organizing and hiring people and building the ground force for them. And there are many types of contracts which are there. So, Domino's has tied up with Jubilant as an exclusive master franchise, where they have been given the entire country to run stores. Other companies, like Yum brand have two franchises and they have been allocated respective territorial areas where they can operate. Interestingly. Yum in 2015 had reorganized a strategy in India. Before that they had around eight to nine franchises. And then they realized that Jubilant was doing much better than them. And after that they took a decision to rationalize their franchises and organize it in a way which would be more sustainable going ahead. And Burger King has a different structure. The brand owner has done a JV with them and they are the exclusive franchises for India. So, there are many combinations which the brand owner does based on their requirements. And apart from that, the franchise have to pay a royalty fee to the brand on a monthly basis. So this is around 3 to 4% for Jubilant Foods, which is the lowest in the industry. And it's around 6% for all the other brands. There's also store opening fee which they have to pay, which is typically for ten years. And it can be renewed further for ten years. So, for most of the stores, it's around 20 lakhs per store. And apart from that, they also have to spend 6% to 7% on marketing. And majority of this is for national marketing and 1% maybe for local area level marketing. So this is a structure which typically all these MNCs have with most of their global operations. Darshan Doshi (13:22) Any numbers that you have on profitability or the money that is made, it's easy to understand from brands perspective because they get royalty, right? And so there's a brand that has been built, but for the franchisees, how much money do they actually make? Rushabh Doshi (13:41) So actually, if you take Pizza as a segment, it's a highly profitable segment. Gross margins are at 77 or 76% for both Jubilant and Pizza Hut. And the Burger category has a lower margin of around 66% to 67%. So, if you compare this with other FMCG players like I guess HUL and Nestle have a gross margins of 70 and 65% so these are very respectable gross margins and coming to the EBITDA margins, they make around 26% to 23%. Sapphire, which is the second franchisee of Yum Brands, still has to make a profit. But they are growing rapidly. And as an investor, what I think we should more focus on is at the rate at which these companies are growing. So when we look at the growth, we typically break it down into two segments. One is the same store sales growth or the SSG, which means that if they had 100 stores last year, how well did these stores do in the current year? And the second part of the growth is the growth, which is because of new stores which has been added. So usually SSG, that part of the growth is highly profitable because when your same store makes incremental sales just because of operating leverage, it's very profitable for the company. Darshan Doshi (15:06) Brilliant. Thanks for breaking it down. It kind of gives me a very quick overview of the whole sector and how it operates. If I had to dig in, I would probably take two, three, maybe five days, maybe a couple of weeks to go through the company statements, google it, the annual reports. So that was a very quick fire overview. Rushabh Doshi (15:29) So just one thing which I wanted to add is that there's this thing called negative working capital. Or you can also look at from a cash conversion point of view. So these franchises work on a negative working capital principle. This is because they don't sell anything on credit, unlike all the other businesses. Like 90% of businesses in India have to sell on credit. But these businesses sell on cash. And their inventory days are also very low because basically they're working in perishable items. And their payable days are very high because these guys have pricing power. They pay their vendors on an average in 160 to 170 days. So networking capital is around 150 days. And because of this, they tend to be cash rich. And once they open a store, cash acts as a cash generating machine, which helps them to fund their next store. So this is, I guess, a sign of a good business. Most of the popular FMCG businesses also have the same concept, and this is a strong sign of pricing power. Darshan Doshi (16:41) Yeah, it's such a fascinating fact. As a person who has worked with over 150-200 startups across India and the US, one of the biggest killers of startups or any new businesses in the first five years is cash flow. And that's why they call it Cash is King. And so if this sector, QSR sector, is so cash rich, you can just put so much of that money into growth. And that's not even at the cost of debt or anything else. So lovely to hear that. All right, so I'm ready to put my money down. Okay. I want to invest in QSR. Exactly. But I want to now invest. And I'm sure there will be many people in our audience who must be saying, I understand this is a growing space, it's an investment worthy space. But how do I research, how do I analyze, what do I look for? Right? And then you go on tools like Screener and then you can see the financials, the comparable and all of that. Right? But as the head of research, as someone who does good qualitative and quantitative research, how would you research this particular sector to identify what you want to invest in? Rushabh Doshi (18:08) So, for every sector there are certain aspects which we call the KPIs or the key parameters. So for this sector, these key parameters are not so easily available on sites like Screener. And so if you look at the balance sheet, you see a lot of debt. But as we mentioned, these are cash rich companies which produce a lot of cash. So just because of something which is called NDS one one six, all the rental or leases which they have, they have to show it as an asset and liability which increases their debt. But this isn't actually a debt. And other key parameters which we look at is their store opening growth, the geographies in which they are present. So what we don't like is most of these newly listed franchises, they are opening stores rapidly, but half of these are in malls. And we've seen in the pandemic what has happened like this could be a very risky model going ahead. I would prefer companies which open stores cautiously, but we don't have to close down the same store after three to four years. Darshan Doshi (19:17) So location, location, location. Rushabh Doshi (19:20) And apart from that, there's a concept called restaurant-level EBITDA, how profitable they are at the restaurant level, excluding all their corporate costs and SG and related to that and other key parameters are the ADS, which is the average daily sales which they make per restaurant. This is a very key aspect to track. And also their sales per square foot. What we are seeing is that most of these franchises or QSR companies have been able to consistently increase their average daily sales per square feet by introducing combos which are value perceived to be value for money or adding beverages which have an even higher gross margin. Also, McDonald's has done a very interesting thing. They have introduced the breakfast menu which opens up a very huge opportunity. So pizza is something which you can consume for lunch or dinner, but adding that third segment increases your total adjustable market. They also have Mc Cafe, which is doing good. In India, it does around 18% to 19% of their sales. And they are famous for their ice cream portfolio also. So all these things help to increase the average ticket size. Darshan Doshi (20:41) Okay. Screener can't help me as much to evaluate companies in this sector. Okay? That's why we're talking about Swatantra, about simplifying investing. And we are putting our money, where our mouth is. And so in this case, go deep into the annual reports, take a look at the numbers, come out with your key parameters, research them, write it down, make your own notes. One thing that I have learned is do your own analysis. While you may even have a financial adviser or an investor, you have to stay on top of your own money and you have to manage your own money. Just the way you can't outsource the growth of your children, you can't outsource the growth of your money. You have to have some level of control and knowledge about it. And so basic understanding and spending maybe a couple of hours every week on things like QSR, which you think are attractive, and staying on top of the markets. Have the markets increased? Have they fallen down drastically? You don't have to take action, but you need to have that base level of knowledge so that you can take a decision. Right. So, great. Thanks for decoding how to think about investing and what parameters to look at when we are researching this sector. Now, the other side of the coin is what are some of the mistakes that most investors or many investors may have made while investing in QSR or scams or blunders that may have happened in this sector? Rushabh Doshi (22:26) Correct. So there haven't been many Scams because this is a very open industry. But what I think could be the biggest risk is that whenever there's an agreement or a partnership between the brand owner and the franchisee, the agreement is one sided, it's in the favor of the brand owner. So they can choose whoever they want to run a business, but if they feel that they're not doing a great job, they can fire you immediately and replace you with another franchise. And this has happened. For instance, McDonald's has two franchises. One handles the south and west operations, which is Westlife Development, it's a listed entity. And the second one, so the north and east business didn't do quite well, and McDonald's choose to replace that franchise with another franchise. So the older one had to sell all their assets to the new one. And McDonald's decides everything at what price they are going to sell it. So that could make things go haywire. And many people don't consider this as a risk because this is something which hasn't happened on the listed space, fortunately. And also, we've seen this in 2015, when Yum Brands chose to reorganize their portfolio in India, they had eight to nine franchises. Now they've narrowed it down to two for KFC and Pizza Hut. And the third one, they've chosen Birmingham Hospitality for the Taco Bell franchise, which is also doing very good. Darshan Doshi (23:57) Before we go to the next question with Rushab, a quick announcement. If you are a reader like me, you'll find that we've transcribed the whole podcast you can go on Dasar.in and you'll find the videos, all the other podcast series that we've got on investing, on health, on fitness, as well as productivity and leadership. We also have a few courses. So if some of you want to learn how to invest, learn how to network, you can jump on Dasar.in and find out these details too. Now, let's get to the next part of QSR. A lot of the things that you've talked about Rushabh are around physical stores, right? But then there are many other brands which are proxies to the QSR sector. So maybe what are these proxies? What are the alternatives where there is growth being seen? Rushabh Doshi (24:52) So, in developed markets, you have options like you can buy the brand owner directly. In India, you can go for the franchisees, but you can also go and buy these food aggregators, which are also growing at a rapid pace. So Zomato or Swiggy, which is also planning to list. Apart from that, there are also players which are part of the supply chain in this industry. So something like Tasty Bites, they make patties for Burger King and KFC and also Mrs. Beckham Foods, they make the buns, which are used in burgers. And in USA, there are companies like Beyond Meat, which are into plant based meat, and they are disrupting the market there. So these are the typical proxy place. Darshan Doshi (25:44) It's interesting that you mentioned Tasty Bites. We had the managing director and ex CEO, chairman of Tasty Bites, Mr. Ravi Nigam. We had done a podcast with him right here. You can check it out. As a part of the Dasar D2C brand series. And one of the best speakers, one of the most eloquent speakers and thinkers of our time by far, to be able to build, to take Tasty Bites to an IPO, to make it the first India food brand to go in and attack the Americas, dominate that market, dominate Australia, New Zealand, parts of Europe, Japan as well. So the growth has been phenomenal and it has been one of the fastest or the highest return giving stock in that sector, correct? So we've covered what would be the proxies to the QSR segment, where you could still, as an investor, make money by investing in these proxies. Now, the last part is a deep dive and analyzing one of these companies, right? And so let's pick Jubilant Foods. I did a quick research and I found that since 2010, when Jubilant was listed, it has given over 100% returns each year. Just what that means is, if you would have put one lakh rupees in 2010, by 2020 you would have made just over ten and a half, eleven lakh rupees. Now, that's a significant growth for an investor, which kind of grows in multiples right? Maybe any other examples of who might have given multiple returns in this sector? And then what is Jubilant and a breakdown of Jubilant. Rushabh Doshi (27:32) Interestingly, McDonald's has been a humongous wealth creator and it's been very consistent. So they IPOed in US in the 1965 and $1,000 invested during the IPO today would be $38 million. So that's around 38,000 times your money. And it's been 55 or 65 years. But still, if we go 50 years ahead, I'm pretty sure that McDonald's would be there as a dominant brand in the QSR space. Now coming to Jubilant Foods, it has been the most successful franchise in India. They are the biggest franchisees for Dominoes outside the USA. They have 1500 stores currently and they have a revenue of more than 4000 crores annually. And interestingly, they have the highest EBITDA margins in the industry. And this is because firstly, because of their scale, they have been given Pan India operation unlike all the other franchises where there are multiple franchises. So they have the exclusive rights for India and they also have Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. And the royalty which they pay is also the lowest. So this helps them make higher margin. And Pizza as a category has the highest gross margin at 77%. So because of all this, they have the highest margins. And apart from that, they've also done a very well job in customizing the menu for Indians. So if you go back 20 years, Pizza Hut and Domino's actually at that time, Pizza Hut was the preferred choice. But Domino's came from behind and they could understand what Indians actually want. They customize the menu. They also focused on delivery. And apart from that, there are a huge amount of efficiency they gain because of reducing the store's. So Pizza at that time at stores which are 2000 to 2500 sqft. But Domino's at that time they realized that smaller stores are more efficient. And because of that they also focus more on delivery, which is a higher margin and higher operating efficient business. And apart from that, they also focus on their own app. So they have more than eight crore app users. They added 82 lakh app users in Q3 of FY 22. And by focusing on their own app, it builds a strong customer franchise. And this also helps you. Like if you go on to swiggy there are many options, but if you're used to Domino's and you can open the app and they deliver it very quickly. Interestingly, Domino's also runs their own delivery on the roads. They don't depend on Swiggy and Zomato. So you might also book your order on swigy and zomato. But at the end of the day, Domino make sure to deliver that Pizza to you. And this also helps them. So they pay around just 7% to food aggregators compared to all other franchises which were close to 20%. So all in all, they have been excellent executioners in this piece. Darshan Doshi (30:56) So, you know, it's interesting that you say that. One is paneer Pizza was an unheard concept two years ago, but today is extremely common and delicious, absolutely delicious. And we have to appreciate that innovation in it. And the second part of it is the last-mile delivery. Before Swiggy or Zomato took off from 2015. You could still get Domino's would be the ones who would actually deliver to you. I don't remember anyone else being able to deliver food at your doorstep. That's why it became so popular among the parties, especially in youngsters and cheap, relatively cheap. This has been a phenomenal podcast. We've covered the details of a complete sector, which is QSR before we wrap up on a scale of one to ten, where ten means you absolutely love this sector, as an investor, what do you rate this sector? Rushabh Doshi (32:03) So for me, it's maybe a nine. Darshan Doshi (32:07) So you absolutely love this sector. Okay, so there you have it. Just as a disclaimer, all the names that we've suggested over here, they are not from an advisory standpoint. What we encourage you to do is to do your own analysis, equip and skill up. Okay, we have ways to do that. This podcast series is brought to you in a way by which your base level of knowledge increases. But hopefully you're not just learning, you're doing. If you still want to equip yourself, we are going to bring more stuff to you. So subscribe. Share this with your friends. Go on our website, take a look at our transcripts, take a look at our courses, and if you have any questions for us, if you would like to cover us a particular sector, a particular company, just reply to this podcast. Just send us an email and we'll be sure to cover it in our next podcast as well. So I hope you've enjoyed it. This has been an absolutely phenomenal podcast. Thanks a lot, Rushabh, and we'll see you soon. Bye. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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REIT vs Real Estate Investment | Swatantra Podcast | Simplify Investing | Wealth June 3, 2022 Darshan Doshi 27:59 0 Comments

Real estate makes up 77% of the total assets of an Indian. Many have made a lot of money through real estate investments. However, REITs have given exceptional returns in the global markets. Watch this podcast to know everything about REITs, how they differ from real estate and what kind of returns can be expected in India.

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/10686/reit-vs-real-estate-investing.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 27:59 | Recorded on June 3, 2022

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https://youtu.be/ZRN3Avuslq4 Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:08) Welcome to Swatantra. My name is Darshan and I have my partner Jaydeep with me. And very quickly, Jaydeep, what are we doing at Swatantra? Jaydeep Doshi (00:17) So thanks, Darshan. So at Swatantra, we are here to simplify investments for you. Taking investment decisions, informed investment decisions independently is the entire objective of creating this series by the name Swatantra. Here we want to talk about all the investment avenues that one has, the do's and the don'ts about those investments and make sure that we help people take decisions independently on the basis of our information. Darshan Doshi (00:53) Fantastic. So we want to focus on investments. We want people to take decisions and manage their money. Jaydeep, before we get started on today's topic, a quick overview of who is Jaydeep and what is Proinvest. Jaydeep Doshi (01:06) Yeah. So Proinvest basically started in the year 2000. It was started by my father. And we are basically a long-term investment, we are into basically long-term investing. We don't do anything that is speculative in nature and we are very passionate about wealth creation and that's how we have evolved over time. And today I play a role of fund manager where Nirmiti is one of our advisory products, where we actively managed equity portfolios for our clients. Darshan Doshi (01:43) Brilliant, brilliant. So very quickly, at Dasar, financial independence is very important. And that is why we are doing this podcast series on investing. At Swatantra, like Jaydeep said, we want to simplify investing and we want people to make wealth, to be happy, to live a long life, and money plays a big part in it. So today's topic is one of the oldest assets, oldest investment vehicles in the world. We are going to talk about real estate and we are going to talk about the new avtaar of Real estate, which is called REIT. So, Jaydeep, my first question, one of the oldest investment vehicles is real estate, but REIT is the new avtaar. What is REIT and how did it come about in existence? Jaydeep Doshi (02:27) Yeah, you're right. It's a new avtaar, but not so new. Maybe new for India, but globally. REIT came in in 1916 in the US first. In India, 2007 SEBI approved that they would be having REIT's in India. It took about ten years for the first REIT to get approval. And in 2019, it got listed on the exchange, which was the embassy REIT. Darshan Doshi (02:53) So what is REIT? Jaydeep Doshi (02:55) So REIT basically is a hybrid equity and fixed income product. It's something between fixed income and equity product. And the basic essence about REIT is that it can offer you capital acquisition by way of any property which has been sold through that and as well as regular income in the form of rent or in the form of dividends that one can get. Darshan Doshi (03:23) And how many such REITs are there to invest in today? Jaydeep Doshi (03:28) We don't have too many options. We have only about three. Brookfield, Embassy, and Mind Space, three REITs. All of them are doing very well compared to fixed income or equity. Since it's a hybrid product, it definitely gives you a flavor of both equity and fixed income. Darshan Doshi (03:46) Ok, you know what, at Swatantra, we want to simplify investing. Right. Real estate is very simple. You buy a piece of land, you buy commercial space, you buy a house and you've invested and you get rent out of it or you get capital appreciation. Is REIT just a digital version of real estate or what is really happening? Jaydeep Doshi (04:08) Yeah, you can really see that because it's in the form, as units are credited in the Demat account. It's definitely a digital version and it's a hassle free way of investing and getting an exposure to real estate. So REIT, basically the parties who are involved in an REIT is basically a sponsor, manager, trustee, and people like us who are the investors or unit holders there. So sponsor is the key person who clubs in all his assets or existing real estates which are fetching him regular cash flows. And then there's a trust which is formed which overlooks at how the operations are done correctly and the investor's interests are taken care of and safeguarded. And there are unit holders like us who will invest in those in these units. And there is a manager who will manage the entire show, collecting rents, compliance and everything. Basically, to give you an example, Embassy has a partnership with Blackstone. So Embassy and Blackstone are the sponsors, trustees is Axis bank there, and the manager is also REIT, Embassy REIT, who's running the show and managing the entire thing. So this is how the entire gambit of REIT. So REIT basically gives you an option to choose to be a part of certain units or commercial properties which are already established and have been let out for long-term to various corporates. There are even hotels which are part of these REITs. So basically you become indirect owners of these properties. Why I say indirect? Because you don't actually own these properties. You are just part of it. And that's why I mean, it's evolving in a big way. To give you an example, normally people do keep telling us that they want to buy properties here and there. But if I had to buy a sea-facing property in Bandra, it's not possible for everybody. Right? And if you see if you remember Rajesh Khanna, the most popular actor in Indian cinema, he had bought his house for three and a half lakh rupees which was a sea-facing property and he sold it for about 85 crore rupees in about 44 years. So if you calculate the CAGR return, it's about 20%, 19%. And all I want to say is that there are these prime properties. Right? And not everybody can get exposure. Through REIT's we can definitely get one. Jaydeep Doshi (07:18) Okay. So to simplify investing, the way I understand this, you have companies like HUL and I go on the stock market and I can buy shares and become a part-owner of HUL. So REIT is basically nothing but real estate which these real estate companies have listed, and then I can buy a part of it by buying units of whatever that REIT is sponsored by whatever company, maybe Embassy. Now that's great, right? I don't have to make an investment upfront to buy say 2000 sqft or 20,000 sqft, which is an upfront cost, which is what you're saying. But from a returns perspective, how has REIT performed in comparison either to the index or to mutual funds? Jaydeep Doshi (08:10) So in India we don't have a very long history to give you the precise returns. But definitely till now REITs have been outperforming the equity markets. The first REIT which got listed as of today I think is delivering about 15% CAGR return. I'm talking this based on the recent which they have disclosed. And equity markets are slightly below that. But if you see REIT, you should not see it from such a short duration time, we can take some empirical data from the global markets where these products have been listed for about 50 years and any investments over ten years or 15 years in REITs have outperformed equity markets about 2% or 3%. So we can definitely maybe if you go for about ten years data rolling data, you would have instances where equity has done slightly better than REIT or vice versa. But definitely when you for ago bout 10 years or 20 years, then REIT have been outperforming equity markets in general. Darshan Doshi (09:24) Again, simplifying this a little bit. Right. I have a stat which says that an average Indian has 77% of his or her total assets locked in real estate. Tremendous concentration, right? Now in comparison, REIT, there is about 650,000,000 sq ft of commercial-grade A space which is available in India, out of which about half of it, 300 million sqft is REI table, is what the number says. So just from a trends standpoint for the next ten years, where do you see real estate investment that the average Indian has been doing versus getting into REIT, which can be as simple as buying mutual fund? Jaydeep Doshi (10:22) Definitely. It's a very upcoming thing right now. And if you compare it with actual real estate, definitely from the growth perspective, REITs will do well simply because of the lower base that they have right now. Real estate, as you know, globally is like the biggest asset class. It's bigger than equity markets. It's bigger than the debt market and everything. So definitely REITs are going to be one of the as our economy formalizes, I think REIT will pick up surely because of the ease of buying great properties, ease of selling them, ease of even taxation. Because once the document, once you know the tax labs and the different types of taxes that you're liable to pay from an REIT income, then life becomes easier. I mean, it's well documented. Unlike buying physical real estate where you have to take care of the land or you have to be sure that this investment is going to be the best investment that you have done here. You at least get a basket of investments. To give you an example, now Embassy has investments in Hinjewadi IT Park, it has investments in Bangalore Embassy Park, it has in Noida, it has in BKC. So I mean, sitting in Pune, I don't think I have any scope or any understanding a person like me has any understanding about buying any assets outside Pune. And I think this is the classic way of investing where I don't have to look forward for tenants. It's only a matter of time when people start reporting the benefits of REITs. And I think ten years down the line, if you watch this video, I'm sure it's going to be quite fulfilling to know that REITs have come a long way. Darshan Doshi (12:15) Since COVID, I've seen a lot of real estate properties come up. Of course, COVID had its own set of challenges, but can anyone, any real estate builder have the eligibility to put up REIT? What is the criteria around this? Jaydeep Doshi (12:34) Yeah. So there are about four to five key criteria for getting REIT approval. One is that 90% of the assets have to be revenue-generating. 90% of the total revenue has to be distributed in the form of dividends. 80% of the total assets have to be cash-generating. 10% of the entire income has to go in building up new assets or new construction. Asset base of that company has to be more than 500 crores and they have to report the NAV twice in every year. So these are the key criteria while getting an approval in REIT. Darshan Doshi (13:20) So the way I understand this is well regulated, right. So there is good precautions around it. As an individual investor who does not know REIT is well protected, what is the real advantage of having REIT over real estate? Jaydeep Doshi (13:39) Yeah. So REIT has several advantages and I want to elaborate on each one of them. One is diversification. So like I told you before, when we buy an REIT, we get exposure to properties in Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and prime properties in all these places. Also, it doesn't end here. You can actually get exposure to global property. So property in Manhattan can also be a part of an REIT. You can sit in India and absolutely be a part of these properties also. And not just real estate, but also REITs do have, like I said, hotels, they have malls. You can be part of malls. They can have even hospitals as part of it. Nowadays, the most upcoming thing is about the warehouses that are there. So whichever asset can generate a free cash flow and can generate regular income can be a part of this rating. So sitting in India, sitting in Pune, we can obviously own few properties or be a part of these properties globally and make sure that they make sense to our investments also. Darshan Doshi (14:59) Brilliant. So geographic diversification, which otherwise would be very difficult to manage or even get to know. And the second part is not just commercial real estate or home real estate, residential real estate, but hospitals. Wow. I mean that's phenomenal. Warehousing. Its just amazing. Jaydeep Doshi (15:18) There are a few more advantages also which need to be which one has to know actually. One is that they are well regulated. A lot of time you have seen that real estate investments go in the opposite direction. Builders run away, things like that. So when these are regulated and established properties, you don't really have to worry whether they are going to come up or not. So these are major challenges when you directly buy a physical real estate and when you buy it through REIT. Also, all the REITs have long term lease, especially the Embassy one, their lease is for nine years. So they have long term customers ,all MNC well diversified between IT, then Pharma, then Banking. So spread across various sectors also. So that allows me that helps me. That gives me a confidence that I don't have to look out for the tenant or anybody or have to keep renewing the lease, which is like the biggest problem when you do it yourself. So here it is, well regulated, well diversified. Again, you don't have to worry about lease. The best thing is you don't even need a large chunk of money to buy it. So you could just do every month you could buy one lakh or whatever your capacity is. This way you don't have to worry about getting a big sum together and then going ahead and buying the property. Darshan Doshi (16:53) I know you're saying you could invest about one lakh, five lakh and you can do SIP of it. But what is the minimum amount that you can put? Jaydeep Doshi (17:00) So it's like now the Embassy REIT trade somewhere around Rs 388. It's like buying one share of worth Rs 388. So you can buy as low as Rs 388. Real estate if it's a part of your portfolio, definitely REIT is the way to go forward in terms of simplification, in terms of documentation, in terms of transparency, in terms of liquidity, in terms of diversification, regulation. These are when you put big money, normally if you buy a house or a property, it's about a crore rupees or 50 lakh rupees. So this is like best thing. When you put 50 lakh rupees, you have all the kind of assurances. And that's why REIT is very popular globally. In India we are habitual to go and Hunt for properties and we have that, I don't know, but maybe we feel very confident about doing it. But I think this is the safest way of getting exposure to real estate and most transparent. Darshan Doshi (18:03) What about the returns? When I have invested, suppose I invest one lakh rupees in REIT. When am I going to get my dividends? They are dividends, right? Jaydeep Doshi (18:14) Yeah. Basically the income comes in two, three different forms. One has to understand and one of them is rent. Second is through sale of properties and also through the fixed asset investments that these REITs do, so fixed income investments that these REITs do. So each of these three have a different taxation when it comes to income tax. Since I have been one of the investors, I have seen that the company sends you the entire details about the taxation for each for the breakup, about the dividends that have been credited to your account. So that's how it is. And also the best thing is that as per the SEBI rules, every six months they are supposed to distribute the dividends. So one doesn't need to really go and check whether the money has come periodically after every, once in six months they have to do companies like Embassy and all of doing it quarterly, actually every quarter they are trying to do. Darshan Doshi (19:19) There's nothing more brilliant than getting into the bank account every three months or six months. Jaydeep Doshi (19:24) They don't have to do anything differently. It's just that whatever rent they are receiving they have to put it in the bank account of the unit holders and the sponsors basically. Darshan Doshi (19:35) So Jaydeep, this is great. But I know that majority of Indians still prefer investing in hard real estate. Real real estate where you can touch and feel and own and figure out all the different things. So given that REIT is still picking up, when does it make sense for anyone to actually buy real estate? Jaydeep Doshi (20:04) So I basically am a strong believer that it's part of your asset allocation because you don't want all your money to go to equity markets, you don't want all your money to go to gold and you don't want all your money to go to fixed income or fixed real estate also. So for me it's about 5 to 10% of my total assets should go there because it depends from person to person. Anybody who's looking for fixed income and has the appetite for taking risk about the real estate cycle, then you should definitely can have more allocation towards real estate because equity markets in India barely give you 1% dividend. So here the track record, at least for Embassy, which is hardly about three, four years and not just three, four years, these four years have been very challenging for the real estate sector because rentals came down, they got renegotiated during the COVID times and despite that they have been delivering 15% returns to their investors. I think the best time to judge an asset is how it performs during the bad times. And REIT is a classic example to know how it is done during the bad times. And I remember in 2019 when they got listed, they came at around Rs 300. The issue had come at Rs 300. Today it's about Rs 388 and about Rs 26 of dividend. So it's like a fairly nice way of investing into markets in a formal way. So if Rajesh Khanna has got 19% returns in about 44 years and real estate REIT has given you about 15% in bad times. Still, I do respect these. Darshan Doshi (21:47) Absolutely. So Jaydeep, one of the things is taxation. They say death and taxes are permanent and so I'm sure there is some taxation on REIT. Can you just help understand how is this applied to REIT? Jaydeep Doshi (22:04) Perfect. For quite some time India didn't have a clear taxation actually for REITs, but fortunately now it's penned down and we all can know what the taxation is going to be. So basically any income generated in the form of dividend, rent or interest is taxed as per your income slab. And if any unit which has been sold by the REIT by the Trust, if any unit has been sold after 36 months, then it is treated as long term and it's taxed like 10% on the gains. And if it is short term, that is less than 36 months in this case it is 15%. So pretty straightforward and like I said earlier, it's well documented and whenever you get these dividends the company will give you a break up about the entire dividend that has been credited to your account and all you have to do is just send it to your Chartered Accountant and take it forward. Darshan Doshi (23:05) So pretty straightforward. No complexity when it comes to taxation. Love this part. My next question to you and maybe the last one for this podcast could be how do you evaluate REIT? When it comes to real estate, it is very simple. Location, location, location. Right? But in REIT there are a lot more other factors. So how does one select it? Jaydeep Doshi (23:35) Yeah. So it's tough one definitely and one has to really study in detail or read the prospectus of the RIETs that they choose. But there are few things that one can easily get information on is the weighted average lease period for the REIT and second is the Occupancy. So these two, the weighted average lease, if it's higher, the better basically. And Occupancy will tell you how many units are on the lease and the ones that are not. So I think that should give you a fairly good idea. But like I said, one has to really read the prospectus or get into the details and study before choosing any REIT. Darshan Doshi (24:23) Absolutely. For any investment. For any investment I would say that. So REIT up and coming, real estate has been booming. There is also a lot of speculation based on the people I've talked to that real estate in India is already at a global high in India, but at the same time they expect further high returns in the next ten years. So I know this is an all speculative nobody has a crystal ball to predict the future, but what are your thoughts on the trends of real estate overall? Jaydeep Doshi (25:04) If you talk about decades, maybe it could be right. And I'm talking simply on a few thumb rules that I follow. And equity asset class only has about a 10-11 year cycle. If you go to real estate, it's about 20 years cycle. And if you are assuming that the last ten years or if data suggests that the last ten years equity markets have done better than the real estate market, then definitely next ten years, real estate will have to catch up to make so that as the general cycle of real estate is and gold is about 30 years. So that's how I simplify it for myself. So if last 10-11 years, if you have not made money in real estate, probably the probability is quite high to me. Decent returns now. Darshan Doshi (25:51) All right. Jaydeep Doshi (25:52) There's no data which suggests that this is going to be the answer. Darshan Doshi (25:56) You've covered advantages of REIT over real estate. I'm sure there are at least a few disadvantages of REIT. What are they? Jaydeep Doshi (26:05) Yeah, you're right. Obviously, there are going to be a few disadvantages. The ones that I think are very important is you physically don't own any of the properties. So tomorrow, if you have to start any business, you'll actually have to go and buy out a real estate and convert these units into physical real estate. And second thing is, it cannot be bought on leverage. If you see in India, most of the properties are bought on loans and EMIs and things like that. So definitely these REITs cannot be bought from the point of view of leverage. Darshan Doshi (26:39) No. And that leverage also gives you some taxation benefits as well. Jaydeep Doshi (26:43) That's a very important point. Yes. Darshan Doshi (26:46) We are talking about this whole REIT real estate outside of the first home. Right. We are looking at REIT real estate as an asset class purely from an investment standpoint to make money in the future. Swatantra, this is the first podcast of our podcast series where we simplify investing. Jaydeep, I am so excited to do this podcast series with you and decode demyth everything that there is about money, about investments. So subscribe to this channel. If you want to reach out to us, reach out to us. I'm available at dd@dasar.in. Jaydeep, how do people reach out to you? Jaydeep Doshi (27:31) You can reach out to me by sending an email on jd@proinvestnirmiti.com. Darshan Doshi (27:36) You will find a lot of good content around this. We do a lot of writing, we do a lot of podcast reach out to us. We have a lot of events coming up. If you want to be participating in these events, you can go to www.dasar.in. You can reach out to Proinvest on their website as well. And if you have questions, if you want us to cover a particular topic, the best way to do it is to reach out to us or comment on this YouTube or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, wherever you might be. So we're looking to have a lot of fun, learn in the process and hopefully you are having fun in this and learning in the process, too. Thanks. Jaydeep Doshi (28:20) Thank you. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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REIT vs Real Estate Investment | Swatantra Podcast | Simplify Investing | Wealth June 3, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

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Power of Picking Super Stocks May 27, 2022 Darshan Doshi 44:38 0 Comments

Watch this podcast to learn more about approaching investments in stock markets and about the ideation process of investing in stock markets with Rohan Koshy, an Investment Analyst at the New Horizon Fund. In this insightful podcast, Rohan shares his experience of research, ideation, and valuation of stocks for investments and decodes the hard truth of creating wealth from stocks.

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https://youtu.be/zoXmby2yclM Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:09) Welcome to DASAR. My name is Darshan Doshi and we have an awesome podcast guest with me, my close friend Rohan Koshy. He's a part of the New Horizon Fund. He's been in the investment world for almost a decade now. And in this podcast, he covers right from the basics of what is the stock market, what is the art of picking stocks? How do you ideate how do you generate ideas for investing in the stock market? When does it make sense to invest in the stock market? How do you approach investing to the stock market? Should you invest in direct stocks? If so, how do you evaluate? He even goes into the depths of how do you research for stocks. How do you value these stocks? What are the popular methods? And then how does psychology or how does long term thinking affect your stock market returns? So we've covered a whole lot of things. Rohan has been amazing in this podcast. I hope you enjoy this. And if you learn from it, be sure to drop us a note or hit reply or share it with your friends. The more people who become educated with personal finance and investing, the better it is as a society. So go ahead, enjoy this podcast. Darshan Doshi (01:31) So I had a crystal ball which told me today the market is going to crash significantly. And so I brought in all my eight senses to invite Rohan for this session. Of course. I'm just kidding. Rohan, thanks a lot for joining and taking this session. Today we saw 3% market correction roughly in the Indian stock market if you've been following and there are two lines of thought, if the market is dropping by 3% means people are selling. But that also means if you're someone who has been a good investor, you could potentially look at this as an opportunity to build your portfolio and invest in the long term. Rohan Koshy (02:19) So I'm just going to get started. One thing that people do when they start the investing journey is essentially, there's this guy, right? And the idea is that a lot of people think that you can do this on your own. And it is true to a certain extent. But there are certain things that people tend to forget about how difficult it is, and they should keep that in mind as they start their investing journey. I know this sounds very basic, but a lot of people forget this part. And for those of you who are either building a business or have built a business, the stock market is about access to capital, right? That's the main function. And that's the primary market. That's the IPO market. And what we do trading and making money is not a function of the market. It's not what the market is designed for. That's just an outcome. But what it does help is price discovery. Price discovery is essentially every business is valued at a particular level, and that value gets determined over a period of time. And that price discovery informs how capital markets function. I'll touch upon an example later where this kind of comes, you kind of figure out why this is the case. Rohan Koshy (03:46) Right. So why does it generate wealth? It's not there to generate wealth, but it does generate wealth. It's primarily because you're betting on people. So all the people who are here at 08:00 in the morning or 08:00 in the night are essentially very interested. They are doing their own things, but they are essentially working hard and being innovative. And the market allows you to benefit from that, provided you put in some effort of your own. It's not gambling. It is definitely very far away from that. There is one element to why you're investing in the market, because you have an objective. There's no other reason for it. The objectives are essentially very simple. You want to get to a level of wealth which makes you comfortable, allows you to do something which depends on everybody. And that part is really for you to figure out what it is. But essentially it falls into four or five things. I want to make enough money to take care of my family, either quit my job, do a startup, fund the lifestyle, retire early, any of those things. There are a few things you must realize. There is no points for effort in the market. You can earn enough returns without putting any effort, which is essentially what's called a passive fund. It's called passive investing, which is where you don't do the research. You just take a call as to how to allocate your money. Right. Because when you are doing your own research, when you're doing your own stock market investing, we understand that for every time you buy or sell, there is somebody on the other side. And usually it's somebody very motivated, working very hard. So it's not as because it generates wealth over a period of time. But the markets can be pretty brutal, people who don't do the work right. Now, I'm not trying to discourage you, but this is how I kind of started with my journey is that first I said, okay, if I'm learning, let me give myself a few years, if I have an X amount of money, let me allocate a large part of that to managers. Give myself some parts say 5 or 10% of it. Let me see if I can keep up and beat the market. And then as I get more comfortable, let me allocate higher and higher. And that's the easiest way to kind of get into it so that remember, you are just trying to generate wealth. There are two ways. Rohan Koshy (06:28) One is passive, which is essentially you allocating money to these mutual funds and you can see the returns that they generate. This is without any work. Or you can say, okay, I'm putting money with them, but I am also going to do my work because this interests me. While I've given you the reasons for why you shouldn't invest in stocks, which is what I recommend for a lot of people. There is a reason to kind of do this itself. And there are three-four reasons. One is essentially because everyone here is very young, you have a long time to learn this skill. You don't need anybody else. It's one of the few endeavors in life where you get better as you age, which is a great thing. Right. Because everyone here is young, you can be investing till you are 90. And you can generate a lot of wealth simply by sticking around for a long period of time. And what I found is that as long as people are there for a long period of time and don't do something crazy and lose a lot of money, they generally tend to figure it out. So there are no secrets. This is not like if I want to become a pilot, I can't quit my job and say, hey, give me ten years, I'll learn it on the side. There's just no way to do that. But with this profession, you can theoretically do it, and many people do it. So that's really why you've got to sort of start off by asking yourself this question is how much effort do I want to put in? Right? And that's the main question, because you have a day job or you are doing something with your time. And that kind of gives you if you say, okay, I'm going to put in 20 hours a week, then at least, you know, and then you start from there. And then you can kind of decide first how much you want to allocate to mutual funds or external managers, and then how much do you want to do yourself for your own money? Right? There are certain things you have as an advantage which a fund manager does not have. One is you have a very long-term view. You can take a five-year view, which most managers cannot take. That much I can tell you being in the market, if I tell somebody that I'm putting 50% of my fund into a stock which five years later will eat the market, I will have no clients because clients cannot wait for five years. But you can do that. The second is you all work in a sector. Right. If you are a pilot or if you are somebody who has a startup in VR, there are certain industry expertise which can uniquely help you determine whether you want to invest in a business. The kind of issues I have seen is that the people, let's say, who work in IT want to invest in oil and gas. And then there are guys there are people who work in oil and gas who want to invest in aviation. Right? So they never think that the sector that they are in is where you have an edge. So it's basically defined as where is your circle of competence? Let me give you an example. FMCG, which is essentially all your consumer goods, is an easier sector to understand. Something like Pharma is not that easy. So when you start out your investing journey, you've got to figure out where do I want to invest, where are the fish? And that really depends on you and kind of your background and where you work. And the third thing is you can diversify or concentrate as much as you want if you today decide, hey, I don't like the market. You can say, okay, I'm shutting shop. I'll see after two or three years and nobody will come and tell you these are calls that managers cannot take, only people outside the market or who don't have a boss. They can take these calls. And these are significant advantages if you are someone who's doing this by yourself. And the reason I kind of today is kind of like an opportunity because these are all the events that have occurred in the past 30 years. And the fact is all of these events are events that make you worry. But the march is pretty much up and to the right over a long period of time. But then, like I said, you've got to sort of stick around and say that I'm going to be doing this for a long time. And so when I look at these things where I go up and down, I kind of view it with a larger lens. Right. So at any point in time, you could have exited the market here when all these worries were there. Just like if you look at today's market where you have all these global issues, you can say, okay, I'm taking a call in the market. It's too high. There's a crash coming. And actually, when you are in this part of the market where things are going south, it feels a lot worse than it is. Right? Rohan Koshy (11:58) Because let's say in 2008, the market went down 60%, the market is down about 14% for the year so far. But it feels like a lot more. Right? So what you have to figure out is as you do this over a period of time, you are still doing it on the right side of generating wealth. Because the market essentially has all the most innovative companies in the country or whichever country you are investing in. And you are essentially betting on those companies. And because they innovate and they create value, you get to kind of right piggyback when you buy stocks in those companies. So that's the way you've got to sort of think about how you invest and for how long you invest. Right? If you have any questions at this point after this, I'll kind of start how to kind of go through the process of research and stock. But if you have any questions so far, please let me know. Darshan Doshi (13:03) I think we'll continue, Rohan. And then if anyone has any questions, just unmute yourself or put it in chat and I'll bring it. Rohan Koshy (13:14) Okay. So essentially the investment process is simple. It's not easy, but it is simple. There are only three parts to it. One is idea generation, one is stock selection, and one is portfolio management. And really all three parts are equally important. A lot of people just look at stock selection and think that's kind of the end of the investment process, but it's actually in the middle. Idea generation is probably very important. Right. Because what happens is you are looking for a code insight into a stock. Why do you like the stock? And so you've got to look at where your ideas come from, and ideas can come from anywhere. But you've got to sort of have this thing that every time I hear about a company or I hear about a new service, I kind of research it. I have a look at it. I think about it deeply. And that's really how you come across ideas. Right. Because what happens is a lot of people get interested when somebody mentions a name to them, which is not always the best way, because what happens is the other person has done some research and they have a certain amount of connection on it, whereas you do not have that connection because you did not come to that conclusion by yourself. Rohan Koshy (14:43) So let me give you an example of one way that we do, which is called Screeners. Screeners essentially is, you run a bunch of what's called a 'screen' for certain properties of stocks. And then based on that, you come to a list and then you look into that list and then look for ideas. Right? So let's say, I don't know if you can see my screen. Darshan Doshi (15:14) Yeah, we can see it. Rohan Koshy (15:21) Okay. So this is a website that you can use called Screener. I've done a simple screening today, which is essentially 20% lower than the all-time high. Right. If you can see this is how much lower it is than the highest price it has over the last 52 weeks. And all these stocks are down 50% to 60%. Now, this is a way to sort of generate an idea. You're looking at all these stocks and you're saying, okay, all these stocks are down so much. Do I have expertise in a stock where I can make a call and say, hey, this is overdone. Because remember that most of these businesses don't fluctuate 50-60% YoY. The business performance does not, just to give you an idea of how to think about that, just take an example of, this is an example of HDFC bank, which is a stock we all know. This is the high and the low in every year. This is the difference between the high and the low. So if you can see at any point Darshan Doshi (16:47) Can you Zoom in, Rohan? Rohan Koshy (16:49) Sorry, can you see this? Darshan Doshi (16:54) Year, better Rohan Koshy (16:55) Yeah. So this is the stock price of HDFC bank over the last 25 years. And this is the difference between the high and the low price for the year. Right. So when a stock is down 50% it does not mean that the business is bad, that the business is good. So the question you really have to see is, let's say you go back to your screen and you say, out of all these guys are there stocks I can look at, which I think over the long term will generate wealth. And I'm getting them at a decent price. So what I mean by the idea generation phase is, you've got to look at where you generate your ideas from. I'll tell you, the majority of times is, you experience the product, the product itself makes you feel good, or you think that the service was very good or is it something you read in the newspaper and you say, you know what? This I think is interesting. And then you kind of research the stock, then you look at it and then you think about buying the stock. So the main part is Idea Generation is important because you've got to kind of think of it like at any point in time you might have 15, 20, 30, 40 stocks. Rohan Koshy (18:28) Now, how do you generate ideas that come into your portfolio and how do you exit something that's in your portfolio? For that, you kind of need an idea generation engine. It can be anything but you've got to kind of have this thing that every time I think about a business, I think about how would I evaluate that as a stock? So for instance, when Uber first came into India, it would make a lot of sense to kind of figure out what the business model is. Is it a real disruption that is there? And then think about, okay, what are the effects that has on other businesses? And that's how you kind of generate ideas. So today, let's say if you're saying if Russia has done something, what are the opportunities that would pop up? Like, for instance, we know that there's a lot of supply chain in Russia, supply chain linkages. And if those get severed, are there any companies that could benefit from that? So those are one of the few kind of ways. But essentially when you think about investing, you've got to think about your idea generation engine, because this is just as important as evaluating the stock. Rohan Koshy (19:49) Most of the time it's the idea generation which provides the return. Because the stock research is essentially trying to confirm your idea. That's idea generation. This is probably the most important part of today's presentation. If you take away nothing from the rest of the presentation, it's really this slide. The way to evaluate the business, essentially, if you're doing this as a long term investor in that stock, is really these are the parameters that you're looking for. One is, what is the quality of the business? The quality of the business is essentially defined by just by two kind of metrics, which is ability to generate free cash. And the second is the return on capital that the business generates. Now, there's a whole host of factors that go into that. But essentially every business and all of you are either working at one or running one. You clearly understand that it's a competitive landscape. It's the pricing power and the ability to generate free cash. Right? Let me give you an example, out of the US, for the longest time, Netflix was not very well rated because people thought it kept losing cash. The opposite view was that when Netflix required to do it, that it could raise prices. Rohan Koshy (21:25) And over the last three, four years, it's essentially doubled the price of its service. It is continuing growth in subscribers. So you've got to look at the quality of the business. That's one important part. The second part is leadership. Leadership really is management. This part is not very easy to figure out, but there is a lot of return to be generated from understanding leadership. Right? Let's say you look at a stock. Then you look at who are the people running the place, and then you try and figure out, are they keeping in mind the shareholders, or are they doing the business for themselves? And secondly, are they really good at doing it? So there are very few businesses, probably one or two, in every sector where the leadership is generally viewed as being the best in business. Now, you have to figure that out, because the last part, which is the valuation, incorporates a lot of premium to what the market believes is the sector leading, sector-leading leadership. So let me give you an example of a company that we kind of look at, a business that's called Bajaj Finance. We know the chief executive of the business, and he literally works 80 hours a week for the last 20 years. Rohan Koshy (23:14) And they have a ruthless amount of focus on efficiency. Now, why does this matter in a business like lending? Its important because in lending, the rate at which you lend is almost fixed by the market. All home loans are available at, let's say 7% interest rate. The real profit is really in how good your expense management is and how good your operations is. And that kind of determines how much profit you make versus the entire sector. So in every business that you kind of look at, you've got to look at the leadership, because that really is a large part of what creates or destroys value. If you own a business, there are many businesses in the sector. Let's say if you look at FMCG, if you have HUL, genuinely who have the best management, they generally have been able to overcome all sorts of adversities coming out on top, whereas others have fallen by, which is why HUL continues to be the most value-investing company in India other than Nestle, which itself has great leadership. So really the quality of the business, the leadership, the external opportunity, this is an easy one. And you've got to kind of think about how far the runway is. Rohan Koshy (24:54) Let me give you an example of where it is not. If you look at a company like Colgate, it will be easy to say that everybody has to brush twice a day, right? It's the most basic function that you can have. And if you take any parameter, if you take any parameter, that Colgate throws at you, will sort of figure out that 50% of India don't brush their teeth, because that's just how many tubes of toothpaste that Colgate sells. The reason for that is there are alternatives which are much cheaper. What you got to figure out is how long is the runway? And for a company like Colgate, it grows 3 to 5% a year, 7% a year. But if you think that it will grow 20% a year, then you have to have some insight into why it will grow at that rate. And that's where the external opportunity matters. If today, let's say if you are starting an airline for any reason, you can see that India is only starting to fly. Right? We're still not at that part where pretty much everybody takes a flight. It's still a long way to go. You really have only two or three competitors out of which one is good. The rest are really not as good. And so if you find, let's say, a leadership that's starting an airline in India, you know that you have two to three decades of runway in front of you. And that matters a lot, because, as you'll see later on, the value of the business is determined by how much cash it generates and how long it can generate cash for. This is very important because what the market does is, it essentially breaks up businesses and values them in a certain way, which is what it has generated till now, what it will generate in the short term and what the market believes will generate, over the long term. And that's really the external opportunity. The fourth one is essentially execution capability, which is what what you will notice over a period of time. What happens with the business? Can they execute in a way that sort of fulfills the growth potential of that business? So let me give you an example of that as well. So we've all obviously eaten at McDonald's and we all order Domino's, right? There's a very big difference in the execution capability of McDonald's and Domino's. Rohan Koshy (27:46) Domino's has gone from 0 to 1500 stores over 25 years. Mcdonald's, which runs larger stores, has gone from zero to 300. And that's essentially the leadership that has run the business. Now, why is that important is because Jubilant Foodworks, which runs Domino's in India, is valued at twice the value of the company that runs McDonald's in India. So the execution capability is what the market values. What happens is when you look at the stock, you got to kind of go through these parameters and say, where do I rank the stock? Is it an A-class business run by an A-class management with an A-class external opportunity, or is it a mix of these things? It's not that every stock falls as A, A and A. You can have a business that's in an A-class external opportunity run by, let's say, B-class management. Right. So let me give you an example of that. Let's say you have a business which is essentially into electric vehicles. It's clear that the external opportunity is extremely large, but it depends on who the business is. So there's a stock called Tata Electricity. It's kind of looked at as the leader in the business because a large part of their business is essentially providing services to companies within the electricals. Rohan Koshy (29:31) And there's another business called KPIT, which is also there. The market today values KPIT at about 25% to 30% because it believes that the leadership and the execution capability of Tata is much better. And these are the things when you sort of break down the business, you will be able to kind of fit the businesses in these parameters. So if I look at if I look at KPIT, I can say external opportunities is A-plus, leadership is B-plus. And then I will adjust how I valued that business and what price I should pay either to buy or sell. So essentially, if you take nothing away from this session, this is really what you should break down, how you evaluate a business. So this is on the overall basis. Once you understand what the economics of the business is, you can then take a call on buying and selling stock based on how the market value is today. That's the second part of really understanding the business. But what I would suggest is before you kind of get to the part of the valuation, one of the main things is you've got to figure out the unit economics of the business. For most businesses, unit economics is essentially the economics of a single unit. The one I have put up here is for Zomato, which recently listed and obviously generates a lot of interest. So this is essentially a breakdown of how the business operates per order. Right. So if you look at, let's say in 2020, the estimate is every order is about Rs 400 in value. It generates Rs 12 of contribution margin per order into the number of orders, which gives you the contribution value for the year. Now, you're essentially trying to figure out how does it get all of this from a single order. Let me give you another example. This is for PVR, which is obviously the multiplex chain. What you're trying to do is figure out if you have one site, which is one site which has four screens, how many seats does it have, how many shows per day, at what price, essentially? And then what kind of costs do they have in the business per screen? And once you do a little bit of reading on it and most of this information is available. Rohan Koshy (32:30) You kind of have to figure this out or if you have access to broker reports, you can just read this part. The point of all of that is to sort of come to an idea that this is what the business does. And now I have an idea of what the business should generate. So in case of PVR, for an ideal screen, you make about in terms of just profit after tax, this is what you make. This is in the mid-year. So you make about one crore a year in the fifth year. And then obviously screens don't last just five years. They last for 15 years. So you figure out how much it probably will make over ten years. Now what happens is you look at so let's say you say that a screen generates 15 crores of profit over its lifetime of 15 years, probably more, let's say 30. Let's go to BSE. Put in PVR. Then we look at the market cap. This is what the business is essentially valued at by the market today. Now, PVR has about 850 screens as of today. So the market is essentially telling you that 850 screens at Rs 9,000 crores. So you get a per screen value. Right. So what I mean by this is what this allows you to do is to take a call on whether you think that's way too much or way too low. You're trying to get to the truth of the business. Right. So in many businesses, when you do unit economics, it allows you to get a handle of the business. In businesses which have manufacturing, essentially, sometimes you can figure out on a per product or a product basket basis how much money it makes out of one factory. And then it has ten factories, which I have this much output. And what it might do over many years is essentially the call that you're taking. Why is this important? Is because the single most important metric in the stock market in terms of the correlation to stock performance is essentially a metric called return on capital employeed, which is if the business has Rs 100 of capital put into, how much money does it generate out of the business? That's the simple. I mean, there is a calculation and all that, its not that difficult to figure out. But essentially this is how businesses are ranked. Darshan Doshi (35:34) Rohan, I just want to bring to your notice, we are at 8:55 and we do want to keep some time for questions as well. Rohan Koshy (35:40) Sure. Okay. So what you're trying to do is essentially all businesses, all financial assets are governed by this one law called discounted cash flow, which is what you do is you take the cash flow generates in a year. You see how much cash flow generates over a period of time. And when you discount it back by an interest rate, what is the present value of that cash flow for a business like Nykaa, if you look at the free cash flow for 2023, which is expected to grow to Rs 20,000 crores by 2040. When you discount that number back to today's value at an interest rate to get the stock price of 2147. Now, why is this important? Its because every stock price essentially is telling you that this is the amount of cash over the lifetime of the business discounted today that the stock is trading at. So when Nykaa trades at Rs 2000 per share, the market is essentially telling you that 50 crore of free cash flow today will go to 20,000 crore of free cash flow in 20 years. Now, you can always build all of this. But the easier way is essentially to reverse this process. So let's say for Zomato, you can look at the discounted cash flow. All you have to do is essentially say, I think this is too less or I think this is too much. And based on that, you can take the call off whether the stock is cheap or expensive. So in Zomato's case, you're looking at growth of 50% next year, 35% after that, and basically off. If you think that Zomato can grow much faster than this or it can grow much faster for much longer, then the stock price essentially of 90 degrees that this cancellation comes to is cheap. So what happens is when a stock falls, it's essentially these expectations that get adjusted. So if what happens is if Zomato delivers instead of 44% in FY 23, if it delivers 35%, then every calculation after that gets adjusted low and then the stock price falls. What's happened? Obviously, everyone is in the market. When interest rate rise, the value of that stream of cash flows goes down. So if you can see which is essentially cost of capital is put as 12.2%, if interest rates go up a lot, this value essentially falls. Right? So your call, when you take, when you look at a stock is, are these assumptions too conservative or are they too much? And that's essentially the conclusion you have to come to when you research a stock. When you do all your work, you have to come to the conclusion that is the market expecting too much or too little of this company. Once you kind of have that view, you can essentially take a call on whether to buy or sell. And this last part is essentially, when you do this, obviously, you have to look at all the other companies in the sector, right? These are the QSR companies. Now, if you notice, they are all valued a certain way and some of its data is noisy because QSR was shut due to COVID, but this is how it is valued. Now, when you look at, let's say I am Jubilant or I am Burger King. Look at the other guys in the center and you see how they are traded. And then you come to a conclusion as to why they are traded. Essentially, the last part of my presentation, if you're buying and selling, you got to ask yourself, what is the thing that I know that the market doesn't. Or what is the thing that I understand that I don't think the market is understanding.?And that part is really where you make money. If you think that, yes, IT services will grow, but everybody knows that. If you think IT services will go very fast. And if you have a reason to back that belief up, then you are deferring from the market. And that part is, it's not easy to come to this conclusion, but that's the whole point of the research is what is your edge on the stock? Rohan Koshy (40:37) When you look at any stock that you're buying, you have to think about what is the market, what is essentially the market's expectation of the stock, what is the insight that I have on the stock and that is where you make money. You kind of have to have a core thesis on that stock and where you defer from the market in terms of evaluating that stock. So this is essentially how you go about it. I'll kind of skip this, certain things you can do to make your investing process better. If you have some questions, I'll talk about that. One thing on just psychology, especially in days like this where the market falls up and down. So remember that the market is not the reality. It's just a view of a stock at a particular time that the market has. And you can defer in that view and be correct or wrong. So the HDFC bank, if you have all these stocks that have fallen 50% over the last three months, the businesses themselves are not falling 50% in terms of revenue. It's just a market's view of that business. So you've got to understand that if you're kind of looking at a stock, you've got to look at your analysis, understand the sentiment, and then book an entry price. And the same for when you sell the stock. So that's buying or selling the stock. The last part, just in 2 minutes, is you got to think about how your portfolio finally is constructed. Depending on how much time you have, depending on how much risk-taking ability you have, it can either be concentrated or very diversified. There are two types of stocks. Essentially, you can bracket into, one compounding machines. Essentially, they generate more and more and more profit every year over a long period of time. You try to buy them and they have some issue or some problem, and you kind of keep them in your portfolio. The other part are businesses where something has happened and you can get into the business knowing that the business may not generate a lot of profit over a period of time, but over the next couple of years, it might generate a lot of profit. So, for example, when oil became negative, if you bought a company called ONGC, you were taking a call that oil will come back to a certain level, but today oil is on the other side. You can take a call saying that this is probably the highest profit it might make. Rohan Koshy (43:35) The process I described all this time is essentially for compounding machines. The way we do it, try to have two-thirds of our portfolio in compounding machines because that gives you kind of a base amount of growth in profit that is there over a long period of time. And then we try to have one-third of the portfolio in deep value stocks, which is essentially you put oil and gas, metals, any kind of stock where you may not want to hold the stock for a very long time, but you believe that the price is so cheap that it's worth getting into the stock and then maybe a year later or two years later and sell it out because certain things will occur. So that's essentially portfolio management. So that's the process. Darshan Doshi (44:26) That's a lot for joining us. Hopefully this helps everyone to take one step towards doing the hard work that is doing the research themselves and that's what this whole program is all about. So thanks. If there's anything else that we could do for you, let us know. That's not just for Rohan, but everyone, all the participants as well. You have a good rest of the week and see you soon. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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Power of Picking Super Stocks May 27, 2022 Darshan Doshi 44:38 0 Comments

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I Got Fired and it was the Best Thing that Happened to Me May 20, 2022 Darshan Doshi 3:17 0 Comments

Watch this podcast to know more about how I got fired and YET it was the best thing that happened to me!

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https://youtu.be/krQcNXI9Ooo Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:00) I got fired and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Now, here's the context. Year is 2014, I was working at over $120,000 a year job in the leadership development program of one of the best companies in the world in Boston. Now, you know the US Visa system, the H-1B Visa. A lot of you might have applied for it but not have got the Visa or have got the Visa. Darshan Doshi (00:23) I fell on the other side where out of 180,000 Visa applications, I was one of those who got rejected in the US Visa lottery system. What did that mean? I was working in the leadership development program. I was working on one of the best projects under one of the best managers I have worked at. Now this was in Boston. I just graduated a year ago from an MBA from Babson College and I had two little daughters who had just been delivered and I just spent about $100,000 on my education. Now life was good. This was in Boston. I was enjoying the winter, I was enjoying the snow. But the Visa system really just, I fell on the wrong side of the lottery system in the Visa. My boss called me and said, we have to let you go. We can't put you in the 42 countries that they are present in and that really was a bummer for me. Now, I was given 60 days to pack up and leave USA and move back to India. Darshan Doshi (01:27) Here are the three things that I learned from that. First and foremost, you might be comfortable, you might be working at the best job that you like with the people that you love. But it's a job and so always be on the lookout to make sure that you are not left in a position the way I was high and dry. Always be looking for jobs if you are not financially independent. The second part is financial independence. If you have money in the bank, if you've taken care of your personal finances, you can get over the emotional struggle and getting a job over six months. It is extremely important that you've sorted out your financials, especially if you're going to lose a job and you never know when you might lose a job. The third thing is keep an open mind. Here's what happened after I was fired. I met one of my Babson classmates who was visiting Babson, Boston and caught up with him, told him the situation and he said, why don't you come and join my start-up? We are about to grow. It was a start-up out of New Zealand. I continue to work with them and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. So I got fired from a job. But serendipity happened and I had an open mind and the best, the icing on the cake was that the company who fired me hired me back on a six-month consulting project, just because it was a complex project, I had already invested spent about 15 months working on that project and they really wanted to make progress on it. Darshan Doshi (03:01) So here's what I learned. One, always maintain relationships. Second, keep an open mind. Third, keep your finances in order. I hope this never happens to you. But you never know. All I can say is you have to be ready for whatever life throws at you. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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I Got Fired and it was the Best Thing that Happened to Me May 20, 2022 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:00) I got fired and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Now, here’s the context. Year is 2014, I was working at over $120,000 a year job in the leadership development program of one of the best companies in the world in Boston. Now, you know the US...

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Devang Kabra: My Biggest Investment Mistakes May 13, 2022 Darshan Doshi 42:25 0 Comments

In this podcast, Devang Kabra, an entrepreneur-turned-investor shares his biggest investing mistakes and experiences on trading, futures and options, managing family money, and going against popular advice to create wealth for self and others.

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/10207/my-biggest-investment-mistakes.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 42:25 | Recorded on May 13, 2022

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https://youtu.be/2JAqTtYViZ4 Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:08) Hi, welcome to DASAR. My name is Darshan and we have an awesome podcast with Devang Kabra today. We are going to talk about investing, about making money. Just a quick overview. Devang is someone who has turned from an entrepreneur to an investor. Through childhood, he's burnt a lot of his own money in trading, in investing, and then over the last two or three decades, he's gone on to learn and read and practice what he's been preaching by following and testing different ways of investing in order to make money. So in this podcast, we cover Futures and Options. What are Futures? What are Options? When does it make sense for a person to invest through these investment vehicles? We talk about the stock market. We talk about direct investing. We talk about mutual funds. How do you select out of the hundreds of various mutual funds out there? We talk about cryptocurrencies, and Devang, in his own style, in a very candid way, shares his own experience. And lastly, we talk about what are some of the key lessons and contradictions, and the myths that are there in the investment world. And so he tries to debunk a few of those myths for us. Take a look at this podcast. If you're interested, reach out to us. We will be happy to include your questions in the future podcast on personal finance, financial independence, and investing. Devang Kabra (01:52) To start off with, my first stock buy was way back in 1998 when I was in the 12th Standard and I bought a share called Sathavana Ispat for Rs12. I borrowed Rs 12,000 from my mum and I was sitting in the library in NM College in Bombay where I graduated from and there were a couple of people talking about Sathavana Ispat. So I went on the basis of that. I don't even know who told me, I don't even know what the discussions were. I mean, who was talking to whom? I just overheard. I went home, I told my mom, lend me Rs 12,000. My pocket money was Rs 500 per month that time. So I said lend me Rs 12,000. I will guarantee to return it with profit. So that was how I started from 1998-99 till today, I have done all kinds of things. So whatever I'm presenting you can be rest assured that I have done everything. Futures, Options, Leverage Trading, Commodities. So I have traded in the market, invested in the market when you could get a ten lakh rupee future lot for a 50,000 rupee market when the future started in 2006-07. Devang Kabra (03:16) So I've done long term, short term, midterm, whatever you call it. I've done all that. And I've blown up my account. I don't even have the count now. Maybe three or four times my own account I've blown up. And now by God's grace, with the help of the learnings which I have bought over the period of time I can call myself a very mature and a stable investor right now. In the course of this talk, I will tell you a few things which are completely contradictory to what you might have heard about. First thing, which is a contradictory thing is you get more ROI with lesser risk in delivery base rates compared to futures or leverage futures options. This is completely contradictory to whatever people, the big brokerage houses like Zerodha would tell you, or all the trainers which are around the market will tell you, everyone will tell you, okay, because you get the leverage, you will earn more. But the fact is, because you have the leverage, you will also risk more, right? In simple terms, futures trade is nothing but it is leveraging all your trades. Suppose you've got two lakh rupees in your bank. Devang Kabra (04:36) You buy a contract, futures contract worth six lakh rupees, keeping that two lakh rupees as a margin. That is what future trading is all about. It is trading on leverage. In delivery trading, it's very simple. You've got a crore. You can buy only one crore rupees worth of shares. In options and futures if you have a crore worth of shares or cash, whatever it is, you can go and buy three crores worth of contracts which you can sell at a future date. That is what is futures. Options are something more complicated. Let's not get into that. But options is also one form of leverage trading where you don't have the actual stock in your hand. But you have the right to buy or right to sell. In intraday you buy and sell on the same day. You buy for Rs10, try to sell for twelve and whatever it is and you get a certain return on your capital. So now the drawdown on capital is the risk. Suppose if you are buying something at Rs 100 and you are trying to sell it at Rs 120 on the same day, the stock might also go to 80 or 90 on the same day. Devang Kabra (05:38) Now if you are wanting to buy and sell on the same day, this is what the typical risk on capital is, 0.25% to 3% and the potential IRR. This is the yearly return. Now all these figures are my figures. These are my experiences, my actual trades which have documented in my trading journey. And I have come out on the averages based on this. So no one else can certify these figures but me. So it's the choice on you whether to believe these figures are not. There is positional trading which happens from seven days till three months. You buy something, hold it for max three months. There the risk on capital is 12% to 25% and the return is 12% to 80%. You can get up to 80% return if any of your things work out very well. There is a swing trading three to twelve months, again, the drawdown on capital is 25%. The potential drawdown potential risk is 25% on your capital, 12% to 80%, the same as the return potential. Now, long term. Long term is twelve months plus. Twelve months plus going up till five years, ten years. Rakesh Junjhunwala is holding Titan since 30 or 35 years. Devang Kabra (06:53) So 40% to 60% multiple times is the risk. Now, when people talk to you and tell you that you buy and forget, buying and forgetting means actually seeing your capital erode by 40% to 60% multiple times in your holding period. So that is the mentality which you need to carry to get this returns of 12% to Infinity. So Infinity is, I mean again, giving an example of Titan. I will come to that much later again. It has given a CAGR of 40% per year 40% CAGR, but it has given drawdowns of 29 or 30 times, it has given drawdown of 20% or more. 0.000001% of the people who do trading, who do leverage trading are making money. 0.000001%. Darshan Doshi (07:54) So one out of how many people are making money in trades? Devang Kabra (07:57) One out of a crore. And this false hope is given by every trainer on Earth that you are one out of that crore. But I'm telling you, you are not. It's as simple as that. The skill will come to you and your inner voice will tell you that, boss, I'm ready. But when will that happen? When you made good money in your delivery trades and delivery investments. After that, something inside you will tell that I'm ready. Participant (08:30) Maybe like calculus and advanced calculus. Devang Kabra (08:33) So this is not based on any calculations, I mean, Trading and Investing in equity markets is more of an art rather than a science. I'd like to make it very clear. People are trying to put mathematics around the whole thing and they are trying to systematize the whole thing. It cannot be. This market is not perfect because the market runs on emotions and emotions are not governed by mathematics. The stock price moves only when there is a buyer and there is a seller and why the buyer is buying and why the seller is selling. There is an emotional decision. Even if the buying and selling is happening based on an algorithm. The developer of the algorithm or the maker of the rules of that algorithm is a human being who is governed by emotions. So the stock market is always absolutely governed by emotions, which is the reason why you cannot. You can have a math, you can have a math, you should have. But to the extent of risk management and to the extent of broad based rules, you cannot define your rules or your systems of trading to the team. There has to be discretion for sure, right? Devang Kabra (09:45) So this is a broad difference between delivery and leverage trade. So in delivery trade, in delivery trade, basically you have something, you are paying money, you get something in your demat account. In leverage trade, you just have a position. You can convert a short-term trade into a long-term trade. Right? So this happens when you buy something for 100 and it goes for 90 and you don't want to book a loss and you say okay fine, let it be. But then you can decide midway to change your strategy. In leverage trade you always have to be short-term. You cannot be long-term. It's highly impossible to go long-term if you are having a leverage trade because as I told you the 20% fluctuation in price will wipe out 60% of your capital. So the power to stay on is not there if you're leveraging a trade. Time spent to see the markets is minimum. So if you're getting into delivery trade, it's okay. I mean you can buy and forget or you can buy and hold. You just have to see the prices once in the morning, once in the evening and you're done with it. Devang Kabra (10:54) But if you're leveraging you have to put I mean automatically your whole attention goes into seeing the market, seeing the prices, seeing the movement and your attention, mindspace, everything gets focused. Whatever you are currently doing as a full time core focused activity, it gets completely defocused. You are completely defocused. That's a huge price to pay for doing leverage training. Forget the money. Even if you make money this is a huge price to pay because what you are primarily doing is getting disturbed. That has happened with me number of times and I cannot express it in words because for example imagine if you are giving two, three, four hours of your daily time in seeing the markets just because you've done a leverage trade and your chance to win is maybe 20-25000 per contract. But then look at the time which you're spending. Your daily portfolio volatility is max 2% if you have 15 to 20 stocks. Now if you have six to eight stocks where you are doing a very concentrated portfolio your volatility will not go beyond 5%. This time talking on capital. Now here you are having 6% to 15% assuming you're having a 300%. Devang Kabra (12:16) So every day if you've got a crore you're seeing either 85 lakhs or 120. Next day again, it can go to 60 or 70, so on a daily basis you have to see that volatility and sleep. So it's very tough to have a good night's sleep if you're doing this. And that is also I'm sure Darshan would have told you to have a good sleep, to have peace of mind is also a part and parcel of having financial freedom. Right? So this I am talking about drawdowns. I am just giving you these tags because the questions this itself will automatically answer the questions which Darshan has posted me and it will later on come to you. Now Titan Limited, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Marquee Investment $2 billion or investment now it has become for him. Now he bought the stock when it was single digit. Now this I've got from the charts. This table. Now this is the summary. You have seen a 20-30% drawdown from top to bottom, 16 times in 20 years, 16 times, 30% to 40%, seven times and 40% plus six times. So 16 times in 20 years. So at least once a year on an average you are seeing your capital erode by 30%, 40% and 40 plus the highest being here, you can see this 61% in 2007 when the price was 88. Devang Kabra (13:55) So on a CAGR or on a mathematical model basis, the stock has given 38% cap from 2002 to 2008. But this CAGR has not come in a straight line. I'm trying to, if you can pay attention to this, highlighted this thing with Rs 4 starting from 2002 if I do a CAGR of 1.38%, in 2005 it should be Rs 11. Year 2005, the price was Rs10. So almost it's going in a linear CAGR in the way the mathematics is there. But now is where the mathematical models goes for a toss. In 2010 the price should have been 53. But this price was achieved in 2006 itself. So the price has run faster than the calculated CAGR. From 2011 till 2018, the CAGR moment of the stock was slower than your arithmetic calculation or straight line calculation. So the point I'm trying to put here is I will also show this to you on chart after I end the presentation. That chart will depict more about how you are, about how emotionally you have to tackle the drawdown. You can see this, the drawdown lasted for 373 days, 43% draw down lasting for 147 days, 21% drawing for 14 days. Devang Kabra (15:32) Now you have to understand, if the stock is taking 14 days to come down from Rs 10, it will definitely take more than 14 days to go up. Whenever you see the stock market, the stock price comes down faster at a faster, higher pace compared to when the price goes up, it goes up at a lower pace. So whatever number of days I mentioned here it is minimum double the number of days which is taking itself to come to this price, Rs 53. If I'm talking about 35 days, it is taking more than 70 days for the stock to come up to this 53 rupees. Now you see this, 210 days, you're talking about more than a year of zero returns, 126 days, 34% drawdown, 238 days. Multiply that by two and see how many number of years you have to sit idle with the investment. This is the kind of patience and this is the kind of temperament which Rakesh Jhunjhunwala , which maybe me and you don't have. And this is the reason why he's having those $2 billion. These are what I call the risk assets. Equity, mutual funds, SIP, PMS and Investment Advisor. So whether you invest money to investment advisors, PMS, you do sip mutual funds or you do directly in equity. Devang Kabra (16:57) These are all risk assets. Let's understand that there is a risk because the money is flowing into the equity markets what Sip and mutual funds do is they reduce the volatility for you. They act as shock absorbers because you are putting in money at every interval, at every price. So you just keep on putting in money which reduces the volatility for you. Otherwise the risk is there. So there are equity mutual funds. There are PMS who have given negative returns also in certain years. And they've given stellar returns also in certain years. Then there are these index ETFs, Financial, ETFs, emerging markets, if you talk about beyond India. So there are emerging markets like other Philippines, Vietnam, Korea. But all these markets are also very promising. Devang Kabra (18:03) So then there are these new tech stocks which are just recently, in the last one and a half years, the Paytms of the world and the Policy Bazaars of the world have been so these new tech stocks, there is a different science to invest in new tech stocks, which is a completely different session altogether. But yeah, these are risk assets which have potential of giving you very high returns. Devang Kabra (18:29) The bond and the money markets are safe havens. Supposed to be safe havens. Bond is again supposed to be safe heaven, but it is not no longer a safe haven anymore. Because if you would have switched your equity mutual fund and switched some part from equity into the bond, you might be knowing what I'm saying. What I'm talking about. Gold, silver, platinum, palladium and precious metals miners. So precious metals miners, meaning in India we got Hindustan Zinc which mine silver. We got Hindustan Copper which mines copper. Copper is a non-precious metal. Vedanta is one company which has got certain portion of silver mining. So these companies, there are a plethora of such companies in the US. In fact, there are ETFs in the US based on silver miners. Gold miners. There are thematic ETFs in the US which only deal in the mining companies. There is a US dollar then real estate which is supposed to be safe havens. And now we've got REIT's. Then there are developed countries indices which are safe havens as per the textbook, but they are actually not safe heavens anymore. Then there is a defensive sector, for example, Pharma, FMCG, PSU's. These companies which will be running. Devang Kabra (19:52) They will be selling products irrespective of your recession, irrespective of your work or whatever it is the business of Pharma and FMCG will keep on running. Now what the allocation should be? Now, the allocation should be ideally anywhere between 20-30% in the safe haven assets and 70% to 80% in the risk assets, depending upon what you're comfortable level is. Again, as I told you, equity, the markets are not signed. I cannot draw mathematics around it. It all depends upon what your current outlook about the market life in general, what currently you're earning, how much you're saving, what stage of life are you currently? But all in all, with personal experience except for gold. I don't have my personal money invested in any of the safe-haven assets. Except for gold everything else is in the risk assets and gold is also not investment actually. I mean we just make jewelry out of the gold and the ladies of our house enjoy. So that's it. And this I cannot even say. Right. So this is something which is a buy and forget for us. Apart from that, as far as real estate is concerned, we bought a house and we bought an office. Devang Kabra (21:17) That's it. We don't own any other real estate. And again, my logic I will come to you later. Now, whether you should invest directly or indirectly. Now it all depends upon what stage of life you are in, how involved or how focused you are in your current profession. It depends upon that what interest level you have with the equity markets, whether you love equity markets or not, you have to love equity markets. You have to love seeing the prices, the fluctuations, the profits, the losses. You have to love to see the loss and make a Journal and then come back to the Journal, go back to the drawing board and understand whether it's a long term or short term investment, understand where you went from and do the corrective action and then have the patience to wait for eight to ten years till the time you get it of how to do it. So if you have that kind of passion, even on a part time basis, you are perfectly okay to go direct. If that's not the case, it's better you focus on your current profession, earn money out of that and do an indirect way of investing in the equity markets, which can be through mutual fund, Sip, investment advisory, PMS, whatever it is.

Devang Kabra (22:38) So again, what risk you are willing to take? Now, take it from me in writing, safe asset or risky asset, you need to be prepared to lose half the capital you invested, you have to have the mentality to see. Many people, I mean I've got many clients. So I've got clients who are into businesses, I've got clients who are professionals. I've got clients who are doctors. So many of these consulting kind of professionals, they have always spent their time, earned money. They've never seen a loss. They have never run a business where there is a chance of a loss or there is a risk because they are skilled at something, they perform certain services and they earn money. If there is a 20% drawdown, they go haywire, they go bonkers about the loss. On the other hand, a person who's into some trading business or who's into some manufacturing business, he has seen some losses. A first generation person who started a business on his own with a small capital, any business. So he's got a different mentality and a different approach to see the losses, whether it's direct or indirect. So it all depends upon you. You have to take your call. The best what I would suggest is that what I would recommend is if you cannot, take out time from your current profession and you see yourself growing in your current profession, just stick to that, earn money from that and let this money work for you and do an indirect mode of investing. Devang Kabra (24:38) Start off with that. Suppose if you invest, I'm just giving a ballpark figure. Suppose you have 1 crore indirect investment, then use 10 lakh rupees for direct and then you dabble around with that ten lakh rupees and see what you're good at. Because you again have to do the trial and error. You have to do long term, short term, midterm, all kinds of investing. And then you will discover what you are good at after you start doing. So this investing directly is a long process. It's like fighting your cycle. It's like playing golf. You are playing golf and you are analyzing your own shots. You are playing against yourself. There is no opponent. So if you finish a hole in three shots, the next time you have to finish the same hole in two shots, you have to analyze and you have to understand how you should go about it. So this game you're playing with yourself. So only if you have that patience, you should go direct. Otherwise it's better you go in there. Now whom to entrust your funds? That was one good point put up by Darshan. Now one should choose a trustee of your funds if you can resonate with his thoughts and his personality, it's as simple as that. Devang Kabra (25:53) And this is very abstract. This is very right brain thinking. Now if this is not, I mean, ideally I would not choose HDFC because HDFC is the biggest name in the industry. I would not choose SBI because SBI is the biggest name in the industry for mutual fund. I would rather, see it's my hard- earned money. I would take the effort, dig deep and understand who the fund manager. If I'm putting my money in a certain product XYZ product, I should go big and I should understand who the fund manager is for my particular fund. And I should get his track record. Because many times if you put money in HDFC, let's say, for example, Mr. Prashant Jain is managing your fund. Tomorrow, Mr. Prashant Jain moves to ICICI and your fund is still with HDFC. What happens? Then the discretion or the investment discretion of that fund lies in the hands of the new fund manager, which has come in place of Prashant Jain. I'm just giving you a hypothetical example. So it's very important that you understand who the fund manager is, who is taking the decision to manage to put in your funds. Devang Kabra (27:12) You should understand that and I think that exercise is worth it because you're interested in your hard own money. Now, how to assess the Advisor the worst method is to assess the advisor by looking at his terms. This is again a contradictory statement I'm making, but it is very, very true and it has come out of experience now I work with a certain strategy. I work with a certain discipline. Now, my strategy has given a 120 percent return in 2021, but it has given a 28% return in 2022. It has given up 40% plus 38% return in 1920. Now, these returns are different. My strategy is the same. So every market condition is not good for the same strategy. For the same strategy. Tomorrow, I might give negative, I might give maybe 12%. I don't know. But the same market condition is not advantages to a particular strategy. Some market conditions are very good for long term buy and hold. Some market conditions are good for trading. So looking at the returns, you really cannot assess whether the manager is good or not. How you can assess whether your fund manager is good or not is by the way, Darshan is recording. Devang Kabra (28:33) I think if the fund manager is pitching your Zoom or if the fund manager is pitching you personally, I insist that you record or make notes of what he's talking about, what his strategies are. And then you go and you see whether it's implementing the strategies which you are selling you or not. The sales pitch should be the same as the execution. If I am telling you, I will buy and hold for long term, am I doing that? If I am telling you I will buy only fundamentally good companies, if I'm telling you, I will do only Nifty 500. And tomorrow, if I go and buy something which is outside Nifty 500, I am not following my discipline. That is, forget the returns. If I'm giving one, I've given 120% returns. It could be a fluke, right? But the point is when you know that it's not a fluke, when whatever I'm saying, I'm exhibiting the same that you have to assess from the fund manager. It's a funny statement, but it will be good to check if your advisor or your fund manager is doing yoga, pradays or meditation regular. This is funny. Contract free, whatever you call this is very important for me and this is very important for this discussion. Devang Kabra (29:55) So I would again like to have a show of hands. How many of us are doing yoga program and meditation regularly? Darshan Doshi (30:06) One of the pillars of DASAR is peak fitness. That includes meditation, that includes yoga, that includes strength training. And so I'm very happy to hear this from you as well. But please do continue. I don't want to interrupt. I do want to keep a quick time check. I hope if you have any follow up questions or if there's anything more, just interrupt Devang. All right. Devang Kabra (30:43) I'm so passionate about it. I actually did not have a track of time. I was just going on. So if I'm boring you, just let me know, right? Yoga Pranayam, I'll just tell you a basic premise. The basic premise of this is the screen in front of you, which shows the stock market prices. You see the chart, you see the screen, whatever it is, the same screen is being seen by Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. The same screen is being seen by me and you, seeing the same price. Seeing the same screen different. Your own fund manager will buy HDFC. Another fund manager will sell HDFC after the announcement of the merger. This is all the decision. And if you ask anyone, I'm sure you might have read that any big investor, biggest of his investments have come when he has not taken more than 15 minutes to decide on the investment. Do you agree with me? I'm sure you might have read a lot of things. I mean, where does that conviction come from? It comes from consciousness. It comes from what the screen is telling you. It comes from understanding what the data in front of you is telling you and having the conviction to take the call and to stake your capital in it. Devang Kabra (32:14) Now, the point of doing yoga, Pranayama and meditation is increasing the level of your consciousness so that you can perform better. It's as simple as that. Performing better not only the markets, in whatever profession you're doing in your family life, social life, all sports, everywhere. As I told you, that's all I'm saying. Asset allocation should be 80 20 out of 80 risk assets. At least 30 should be long term allocation. That is what I mean. So the starting point should be long term. Long term allocation. There are various filteration processes and various things. I have been in phases where my risk is charge, now there is data, there is free. So you have a certain criteria based on which you filter the stocks and you decide what to invest for long term, at least 30% long term allocation. You start with long term and then slowly and gradually reduce your time frame. Try to trade in the short term with a small capital. Don't do book reading formally under not less than 25 30 people. But the best teacher has been my own experience, my own trading Journal. Even if I bent my rules, why did I bend my rules? Devang Kabra (33:55) Everything is Journaled and that Journal if I see my Journal three years back, I just hit myself on the head and I see so lot of things. Your trade job will teach you everything. Basically talking about safe haven assets. For Indians, gold and silver are the best safe haven assets. Obviously, I would put PSU mining stocks also in the sales haven't category because they give at least 45% divide. From compounding perspective, one should only own two homes. Only two homes. Office shop go down, factories only if you have a certain business and that business requires you to own these things. The reason is very simple. Real estate is a very slow compound. You put simple Excel and the Excel will give you your answer. So you should invest in real estate only according to me. Again, I reserve the right to be wrong, but only if you have a certain skill set or certain connection or certain there are a few people me and you know who buy things in litigation, Rubeka cheese, they do the litigation, they solve the litigation and then they come and sell in the marketplace. So only when there is someone who stuck with real estate is not able to sell and you do a down payment and buy it at a heavy discount and then try and trade that. Devang Kabra (35:52) Only if you have that kind of skill set and capital you should do real estate. Otherwise simple Excel Pay compounding formula. You will understand real estate is only giving you peace of mind. It is not giving you just thinking that okay, I've got this real estate, I've got this rental property from your rental so it's safe and secure. I would rather tell you to buy Brigade Enterprise stock of Brigade Enterprise or Prestige Estates or a DLF rather than buying a real estate.

Participant (36:27) We do have one question by Bhavish. He says he is looking to invest in multiple of Rs25,000 in Sips. So should he choose fund managers like Deserve or look for personal fund managers? Devang Kabra (36:47) Right. So 25,000 per month may investment advisors. I mean choosing investment advisors is I don't know. There are very few investment advisors who do who advise or who work on 25,000 per month who invest rather than an investment advisor would actually direct you to do an Sip or a mutual fund and invest that Rs 25,000 per month on a steady state basis. What I would rather suggest him to do again based on his interests and his capacity and the current job or business, whatever he's doing, you can invest in a certain through investment advisor or mutual fund. You can invest and then you can part them all. Maybe 25,000 equity markets may direct them halfway through mutual fund invest. So for example, you're buying a large cap fund and the large cap fund is investing in your 10,000 there with your Rs 10,000. You buy a Nifty 50 or stock of your choice or whatever you can study, you put in money and then you compare the results. So it is not competing with the mutual fund. It is to get yourself running experience. The capital is very small. Darshan Doshi (38:35) Thanks. So just the way in the course Get Financial Freedom. If you're early in your career, focus on savings, focus on a bit of investment will help in compounding to be able to get to financial freedom at a certain decade, maybe two decades depending on where you are. But if you are someone who inherits a family fortune, then for you to grow that well, you need a different strategy, a game plan, and everybody's situation is different. And so I think if I may paraphrase Devang, it's basically make sure that you're choosing someone who has a game plan for your stage of life or your amount of money for your amount of growth that you are looking for with obviously a value match. So with that, this has been an awesome session. Can we please have quick reactions there's a reaction button at the bottom. Would love to get some feedback. Feel free to drop a comment or two so that it becomes a good feedback for day one and for us as well. I have two major insights from this session and the first one is your candidness and your ability to speak openly and get to the point right. Darshan Doshi (40:03) I think I really learned a lot where you are able to call a spade a spade and give and explain concepts and your contradictions based on your experience as it is. And not a lot of people do that. So I'm extremely grateful for that. The second bit of it is we hope you get into this good problem like another Pune fund which is 7000 crore, where do I deploy you're early in your fund management journey? We wish you all the best. We hope to see you have this good problem that there's so much money, I don't know where to invest. I think it's a good problem to have.

Devang Kabra (40:48) As of today. Looking at the liquidity of the market and looking at the Nifty 500, I would probably stop at 150 crores and stop taking in funds altogether. If the liquidity by that time increases, it's a different story. But I would rather look at delivering 30%, 35% or 40% or 100 crore compared to delivering 15% on 1000 crowd. Darshan Doshi (41:18) Lovely. So, guys, there's a small window of opportunity, right has to come forward as well. Thanks a lot, Devang. You have a lovely week ahead and again, a lot of gratitude to you, rest of you. This is inspiration, this is knowledge, this is insights. All of this is pointless. If you don't take action, you don't do the exercises that are there in the get financial freedom course focus or the main point is to move one step, two steps closer towards financial freedom by taking action. So I hope you're able to do that so we'll close up with that. Thanks a lot Devang. Devang Kabra (42:04) Again, thank you so much. Thank you for having tolerated me. Participant (42:10) Wonderful. Thank you. Devang Kabra (42:13) Please, those of you not started, please start yoga meditation in whatever way you can. That will change a lot. Darshan Doshi (42:19) Don't worry. We've got yoga courses and meditation courses from DASAR online at the fingertip of your phone a week from now. All right, thank you. Devang Kabra (42:35) Thank you so much.

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How the Super Rich Made $1.3 Trillion in 2021? Podcast | Personal Finance | Darshan Doshi | DASAR January 21, 2022 Darshan Doshi 4:05 0 Comments

2600 Billionaires added $1.3 Trillion to their wealth in 2021. How much did your net worth increase in 2021? In this podcast, Darshan Doshi talks about personal finance, investing to grow your money, setting financial goals, and how you can become financially independent through the 90 Day Get Financial Freedom Bootcamp.

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/9097/how-the-super-rich-make-money.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 4:05 | Recorded on January 21, 2022

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https://youtu.be/Nt0Y_Fz9Ph4 Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:08)Did you know that the super rich added $1.9 trillion in 2020? 2600 billionaires added $1.3 trillion in 2021. How much did you add to your net worth in 2020 and 2021? Do you know? What investments did you make and what is the investment returns that you got over the last two years? Here are some stats for you.Darshan Doshi (00:33)The super-rich got rich by investing their money. Where did they invest in? Cryptocurrency gave about a 800% return in 2021. 15 NSE stocks that have given about a 2200% return since March 2020. That means if you invested one lakh rupees in March 2020 in these 15 stocks, they would have given you 22 lakhs today. That's a lot of money. How do you invest? What do you invest in, your asset allocation and more. You have to learn how to research and analyze investments before you put your money down. Don't go by tips. Don't go ask your friend. What did he or she invest in? Do your own research. If you are interested in cryptocurrency in Ethereum, go to a16z.com. Read everything about cryptocurrency, it's utility value, what are the trends? Read all the white papers, form your own investment thesis so you have conviction. You should have a clear idea of how much this investment is expected to give you return.Darshan Doshi (01:41)Now we all know we can't predict the future. There is no Crystal ball. But shouldn't you at least have an expected outcome for the money that you are putting in? So having a clear point of view when you are making an investment is extremely important. If you want to learn how to invest in stocks, startups, cryptocurrency, gold, real estate, I have launched a 90 day Get Financial Freedom Bootcamp that starts this Sunday. It's a twelve week program where you get on top of your personal finances, you learn how to invest, you learn how to manage your personal finances. You get to interact with like minded people and with investors and certified financial experts as well. So if you're interested, go to www.dasar.in and join us because we begin on this Sunday, that is two days from now.Darshan Doshi (02:38)The next part I want to talk about is financial goals. How do you set financial goals? Based on your financial goals, you should be making an investment in relevant asset class. Some of the most common financial goals are owning a home, making secure your future through an emergency fund, taking care of your kids education, retirement planning and owning a car, going for international vacations. Setting aside a budget for these beautiful devices.Darshan Doshi (03:11)Make sure you set your financial goals. Have a very clear point of view. Don't change the goal coast often. Otherwise that will lead to discouragement. That will lead to you not becoming financially independent. Go to www.dasar.in under newsletter, you'll find a very long essay on how can you do annual budgeting, how can you invest and more.Darshan Doshi (03:35)Do you know how many days or weeks from today you are going to be financially independent? Meaning you don't have to work in a job if you don't have to you're going to get enough money coming in through your investments to take care of your annual expenses, to take care of your investments that you need to make to meet your financial goals. That according to me is the pinnacle of personal finance, becoming financially independent and financially free. So if you are interested in joining the program, hop over to www.dasar.in. Subscribe. If you have questions, reach out to me and I'll look forward to talking to you soon. Read the full article: How to get your Personal Finances in Control? Sign up and join 90 Day Personal Finance Program We start on Sunday, Jan 23, 2022. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to:* Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

Join DASAR Club that offers three self mastery programs + a vibrant community of Doers...* 90 Day Get Financial Freedom Bootcamp: This program will take you through actionable steps to start off on the path of financial independence and wealth creation. * 90 Day Get Sh!t Done Bootcamp: This program is for entrepreneurs and professionals what high-performance training is for athletes. * 90 Day Get Fit Bootcamp: Get in the habit of exercising at least 3 times a week on strength training, endurance, yoga and meditation with a personalized nutrition plan and certified coaches.

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How the Super Rich Made $1.3 Trillion in 2021? Podcast | Personal Finance | Darshan Doshi | DASAR January 21, 2022 Darshan Doshi 4:05 0 Comments 2600 Billionaires added $1.3 Trillion to their wealth in 2021. How much did your net worth increase in 2021? In this podcast, Darshan Doshi talks about personal finance, investing to grow your money, setting financial goals, and how you can become financially independent through the 90 Day Get Financial Freedom Bootcamp.

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/9097/how-the-super-rich-make-money.mp3Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 4:05 | Recorded on January 21, 2022

How To Get Hired By Top Companies Without a Degree? | Darshan Doshi | DASAR Podcast December 24, 2021 Sakshi Joshi 9:48 0 Comments Is a Degree really needed to get hired by Top Companies today? How can anyone build their profile and resume to showcase their capabilities? Where does a degree help in today's business world? What are the hiring managers and founders looking for in a candidate? In this podcast, Darshan Doshi talks about the most important thing to get your dream job, understanding when credibility is significant, and the role of building experiences. He talks about the significance of learning-by-doing and...

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/7104/how-to-get-hired-by-top-companies-without-a-degree.mp3Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 9:48 | Recorded on December 24, 2021

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https://youtu.be/ff569g_Q6yY Transcript Elon Musk (00:08) Well, first of all, you don't need College to learn stuff. Everything is available basically for free. You can learn anything you want for free. It is not a question of learning. There is a value that colleges have, which is like seeing whether can somebody work hard at something, including a bunch of sort of annoying homework assignments and still do their homework assignments and kind of soldier through and get it done. That's like the main value of College. And then also, if you probably want to hang around with a bunch of people, you're on age for a while instead of going right into the workforce. So I think colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores, but they're not for learning. Darshan Doshi (01:02) Hi, guys. Today is an interesting topic, something that I've been debating with a lot of people, my friends and family members. And I'm sure it gets a lot of people charged up. Do you need a degree? Do you need a certificate? Do you need credibility to get a job at a big brand like Apple, like Facebook, like Flipkart? Right. And so the simple answer to this is what Elon Musk put it right. People go to a campus to have fun. They don't necessarily need a degree to get a job at a brand. I kind of partly agree with him. Not completely. And let me use a few minutes to decouple this. So one of the things that I want to focus on is what are brands, what are hiring managers, what are executives, professionals, founders looking for? They are looking for people who will get the job done. In certain highly skilled jobs, like a doctor or a technician, lab technician, you would prefer some sort of credibility being built into it. So the question of credibility got through a degree comes into question. So again, it's the question of your mind, not your physical body, your mind. That is where you need to sharpen your mind like a Samurai. And that is what we offer. At DASAR Club, I've just launched a 90 day Get Sh!t Done Bootcamp. This is for people who want the frameworks, the decision making capability to be able to improve what they do and how they operate every week. And so I'll come back to that in a bit. But let's focus on the topic of are you buying credibility by going to an undergrad, postgrad or a master's degree, an MBA degree, an Ms degree? What are you really buying? And the base assumption of this is that an MBA equals to a job. Now, is that true today? Darshan Doshi (03:10) Let's talk about simple economics of demand and supply. Early on, you had a few universities who offered Ms degrees, MBA degrees. And so only a few people went through, and the industry was kind of ready for absorbing them right away. Today, what has happened is, today you have so many schools out of which you have millions of MBAs coming out, but not necessarily getting placed, not even in a place like India. Some universities are able to place all their students like maybe IIM, and IIM Bangalore and IIM Ahmedabad and Harvard’s and Kellogg's, but those are a handful. The ones who are getting into IIMs, into Harvard are people who are by the method of filtration itself are going due to IQ levels. The company already knows that this person coming in is extremely smart, inherently. So the first decoupling to do is is an MBA equal to a job? Not necessarily true today. Okay, so then let's flip this around and say, what does the job giver want? So if you are a decision-maker, if you are a CXO, if you are an executive, you're a founder of a large company, small company. What you want is, can I hire this person to do the job that I need to get it done? Do I care about whether this person is an MBA, Ms Engineer, Non-engineer, does not have a degree, not. It is not needed today. Why? Because today you can build experience directly before getting that credibility or that experience can substitute that credibility. Darshan Doshi (04:55) So show. Don't tell. So what you can do to differentiate yourself is not necessarily a degree with certain marks on it, but rather I want to do a digital marketing job. During the last year, last six months, I have worked with this D2C brand. I have helped them to go from Rs10,000 a month to maybe a lakh rupees a month in revenue. And I have done that by doing a,b, & c VS., I have a degree from so and so University with an MBA in digital marketing. Who would you go for? Would you go with someone who actually has the experience or who knows how to do it but has not done it yet? Most likely you will go with the first one, which is the experience. So learning in form of experience vs book knowledge theory knowledge with great grades is something that you have to think about. Now I'm not here to give an answer to this question. My focus is on asking the questions and for you to decide. I have already said, in certain cases a degree is important, but in most cases today, maybe a degree is not important and what you have done is more important. So I am on the side of learning by doing which is jump in and spend enough time and you'll figure out what you need to do if you are curious enough and then the last part of it is the social pressure. I think any elderly as a father of children today, I also feel there has to be a safety net. And so my advice from the lens of a father is definitely, you know what, an MBA or a degree or a college, school degree graduation will set you up where there is a base foundation that is being set up. That is right. The question is, once you have become an adult, you can take these decisions and should take decisions by yourself. But then you have to live with the consequences of those decisions, of those actions. So you have to then think, I know so many people, so many people who've done a mechanical engineering and are now working in product management and software product companies abroad. Brilliant. Right. That proves it there and then. Darshan Doshi (07:23) Look at people around you. What is their education qualification and what are they doing today? Does it match? And what percentage of people matches? So do your own research, do your own work and then come to your conclusion and then come to a decision, come up with a criteria which says, this is why I'm going to do an Ms, this is why I'm going to do an MBA, this is why I'm going to do this or not going to do this. And then you have to back your own decision. So that I think is very important. Darshan Doshi (07:52) Like I said, is a resume needed? If you're a website developer, show me what website you have built rather than telling me you can use WordPress. Do you need a degree? Answer is not. Most companies today will tell you that we don't need a degree. They'll hire you. If you can show and prove that you can do the job that is needed to be done right. And the best way to learn is by jumping in, is by spending time being curious, getting your hands dirty, getting rejected, failing, getting up and doing it again and just sticking with it. Consistency over intensity. That is what we talk about at DASAR. Now, if you are someone who wants to improve how you work, how you operate, join the 90 day Get Sh!t Done, Bootcamp. Go to www.dasar.in. What we do in that is every week there is one framework, one concept which is broken down in hardly 20 to 30 minutes. As a group of people, like minded people who want to improve themselves, we get together, we push each other. But the one consistent part is whatever that concept is, you, me and everybody else in that club will take at least one to two actions in that week. So that when we come back, we are going to ask you had promised you had said you would do this. What happened? What worked? What didn't work? Why did it work? What could be done better? What is your next plan of action? And therefore you then will be in a group of people who are also trying to figure out things and who are also losing motivation, who are getting rejected but also achieving things right. Darshan Doshi (09:37) So if you are interested in such a program, please join me at the Dasar Club. Go to www.dasar.in and you'll find all the details there. I hope you found this useful. If you like it, if you share it, please get people like yourself involved in this and I'll see you soon. Thank you.

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Join DASAR Club that offers three self mastery programs + a vibrant community of Doers... * 90 Day Get Financial Freedom Bootcamp: This program will take you through actionable steps to start off on the path of financial independence and wealth creation. * 90 Day Get Sh!t Done Bootcamp: This program is for entrepreneurs and professionals what high-performance training is for athletes. * 90 Day Get Fit Bootcamp: Get in the habit of exercising at least 3 times a week on strength training, endurance, yoga and meditation with a personalized nutrition plan and certified coaches.

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How To Get Hired By Top Companies Without a Degree? | Darshan Doshi | DASAR Podcast December 24, 2021 Sakshi Joshi 10:04 0 Comments

Is a Degree really needed to get hired by Top Companies today? How can anyone build their profile and resume to showcase their capabilities? Where does a degree help in today's business world? What are the hiring managers and founders looking for in a candidate? In this podcast, Darshan Doshi talks about the most important thing to get your dream job, understanding when credibility is significant, and the role of building experiences. He talks about the significance of learning-by-doing and...

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/7104/how-to-get-hired-by-top-companies-without-a-degree.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 10:04 | Recorded on December 24, 2021

What all goes into launching a podcast and a newsletter? Why should you launch one? How to actually create a newsletter and podcast recording and editing? How much does it cost? In this podcast, Darshan Doshi talks about the most important things to consider while launching your own podcast and newsletter. He covers his own learnings over the last year and shares ways to overcome challenges that one could face during the journey of launching any podcast. He also shares...

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/6202/how-to-launch-your-own-podcast.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 16:44 | Recorded on December 17, 2021

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https://youtu.be/zySDug9wGdY Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:08) Hey, guys, welcome back to DASAR. We're almost at the end of 2021. I thought I'd use this podcast to recap on what we've been able to do at DASAR, which is a newsletter and a podcast. And then we've just launched DASAR Club. So in this podcast, I'm going to talk to you about how you can launch your own podcast, how you can launch your own newsletter, and hopefully you'll want to become a part of DASAR Club as well. Darshan Doshi (00:32) So first thing, why did I launch a podcast? My idea was simple. The vision of DASAR podcast was to really bring and distill experiences of people who have been there, done that into a 30 minutes snippet. And so I've been fortunate. You must have seen a few guests come on my podcast where we've talked about money, about fitness, about productivity, leadership, resilience, and the whole lot. So the first part about podcast is what is it that you want the podcast to be about? This should be something that's extremely meaningful to you. This is something that you are curious about. I'm extremely curious about personal finance, about fitness and how to be better every day. And so that is what the focus has been about DASAR. Darshan Doshi (01:20) Now, I've done about 34 episodes this year. I launched it on February 19, and it has been a very fulfilling experience. Yes, I've had my share of rejections, and you will have to deal with that, too. When you put yourself out there, you're going to have people come in and say, who listens to this? Why are you posting this to me? Why are you sharing it? You are not serious about this. I've literally had these feedback come in from people I know. And so you're going to face that kind of rejection. But you just have to go back to why is this meaningful to you? So the next part of the podcast is, what kind of podcast do you want? Do you want an audio podcast? Do you want a video podcast? Is it going to be a five minute podcast? Is it going to be an hour long? Is it going to be over Zoom calls? Is it going to be in person in a studio? And so when I was thinking about it about a year ago, exactly. I thought the whole world during Pandemic has moved over to Zoom calls. So let me actually go into creating a studio in one of the rooms of my house. And big credit to my friend Rohan Wekhande. He runs the Fitster5 business. He kind of came in and he said, I want to learn how to do video recordings, video editing. So why don't we combine and we launch this podcast together? So a lot of credit to him over this year to have helped me bring me this far at DASAR podcast, where we invite a speaker and I ask them very specific, topic-focused questions and distill the experiences of these people, people like Shridhar Shukla, Jaydeep Doshi, Jaideep Merchant and so many other folks. So the first part of it is, what kind of format do you want? It's easier to do on Zoom, but also the quality is not as good, as this that you might be seeing. So be very clear what kind of quality that you want, because it's going to affect how much money it's going to take. Doing over Zoom will not cost you much. You can take Riverside.fm, which is what I have used for some of my podcasts where Nick Petrie was in New Zealand, Garrett was in the US, and so that cost anywhere between about 1000 to 2000 rupees in subscription per month. So you can use Riverside.fm; you can use MS teams, and you can edit it using Adobe Premiere Pro or Descript or Happy Scribe as well.

Darshan Doshi (03:57) So another thing about DASAR podcast is I love to read. I love to read, I love to watch, but more so reading. So I was very clear that when I do the podcast, I also want transcription on my website. So the transcription is done through a software called as Happy Scribe. And this is again, a few hundred rupees or a few thousand rupees, depending on whether you take monthly subscription or annual subscription. But it'll really get you there about 80-85%, because of Indian accent, it doesn't necessarily capture everything. So you might want to spend some time editing it and then posting it. So the next question is, where do you host the podcast? Well, you can host it. I've hosted it on WordPress, but there are various platforms where if you just Google, you'll find a bunch of them who make it extremely easy for you to do it yourself. In today's creator economy, with no code and low code tools, you can do things yourself. And so I've used DASAR podcast, newsletter, DASAR Club as a way to upscale myself as well. What do I mean by that? I didn't know how to create websites. I have built dasar.in website by myself. Go check it out. I've used WordPress I learned online over the weekends. I've sat. I've spent a lot of time I've figured out how to make it secure. How do you get SSL? How do you do hosting? I've hosted it on Bluehost, so it takes time and effort, but there is enough content out there where you can just do it yourself if you are willing to put in the effort. So I host it on WordPress and then the audio version of the podcast goes on Spotify, Tunein, Stitcher, Google Podcast and Apple Podcast so you can listen to it if you are a listener as well. Darshan Doshi (05:51) So that's the thing about podcast. What has podcast gotten me? First, it has supercharged my network. I cannot believe the number of people who messaged me saying, I love your consistency with which you publish your podcast every week. And the second thing that they say is, I really like this. I published Nick Petrie's podcast on Resilience last Friday. I got a message on Saturday from someone who I know and I respect saying you might want to read the book on Antifragility by Taleb. Like, brilliant. Right? Suddenly you see so much learning coming through from people who you respect and who you want to connect with. So the first part about podcast is it supercharges your network. The second thing about podcast, you are doing it for yourself. While I might be publishing only 30 minutes of the podcast, there's almost an hour to 2 hours worth of video recording that goes in it. And so I'm learning so much more from these people. There's so much to learn and form really strong relationships. So that's another thing about why you should launch your own podcast. Darshan Doshi (07:04) The third part of it is upskilling. I did not know how to do video editing. I did not know how to transcribe. I did not know how to host. I did not know how to distribute among so many other things. What a podcast does is if you are willing to put in and not outsource it is, you will learn a lot by learning on the job. So I think that's definitely something that I recommend you to do. Darshan Doshi (07:32) What are the challenges? Distribution. It's easy to produce. It is difficult to distribute. You might find that we have just over 500 odd subscribers on our YouTube channel, but a lot of people have had over, I think, 1500 hours of watch time by people on these 34 podcast episodes. I value every single one of them. It is very important, very meaningful to me. Distribution. How are you going to distribute it? What's your edge and are you going to spend on distribution? I haven't spent on distribution. As a matter of fact, I'm looking for someone who knows how to; like a growth hacker for YouTube subscribers. So if you are one or you know one, please connect them to me. We are looking to grow our podcast and our YouTube channel as well. So distribution is tough, and that is something that you might want to have a plan around. You'll obviously learn, but it has to start from you reaching out to your friends, family, work colleagues and then just be consistent at it. So that is something about podcasts. Darshan Doshi (08:44) The second part of this podcast is newsletters. What are newsletters? I love to write. I love to read. I consume books a lot. I've read a lot of articles, and I thought from 2011 I've been curious about fitness, about personal finance, and about how to improve myself through frameworks, decision making frameworks, productivity, leadership. I've operated in these fields for the last 10-15 years now, so I've saved all those links of audio, video articles, web links, books that I had saved from 2011. So I thought in newsletter, let me bring those curated reads to people who are like me, who want to improve themselves and who want the best of the best content. Because content is there. Even if you Google search it, you might not find the right content. So let me bring that to the people who are like me and build my own tribe. And it has worked wonderfully because I've gone back to those curated links and then I've read them again. So one again, very selfish of me. But I've learnt a lot in this. Second, just that art of curation is something that we have to all improve upon because there's so much information out there we have to be able to understand what's bullshit and what's good. The signal versus noise. So it helped me do that better. It helped me to become really good at editing, whether it's a podcast, whether it is your own writing, you can take all the time to write and to curate. But how do you distill it down to a punchline? How do you distill it down to 100 words? How do you distill it down to a tweet, is very very important. So this art of editing is something that you learn, and if you just be consistent at it, you'll become better at it. So that's the belief I'm operating on. We are smart enough that we will learn by failing and by improving over a period of time. Darshan Doshi (10:45) So in this newsletter, what is it set up on? It is set up on a simple MailChimp. It costs a few hundred rupees a month. It takes a lot of time. You don't have to be graphic heavy. In fact, what you are trying to focus on is what is the open rate? You send it to 50 people or 100 people? How many people are actually opening it? How many people are clicking on the curated links to read those articles? How many people are forwarding it to other people? So if you haven't already signed up, please go to dasar.in and you'll find my newsletter over there. We have a decent group of people who have been enjoying these podcasts. We have a click through rate of over 50%, which is not too bad, which means my tribe is formed, right? And I'd love for you to be a part of that tribe as well. In the curated reads, you'll find content on fitness, on personal finance and getting sh!t done. So productivity and leadership. Darshan Doshi (11:50) This finally brings me to the last part of this podcast. What is DASAR Club? DASAR club is an online community of doers. People who want to up their game. One thing that I have come across in my life is with thousands of supercharging conversations with people who have built things, who have done things, who achieved things, who achieved fitness is that they operate in a triangle. And each part of the triangle feeds the other. And here's the Renaissance framework that I have come up with. And so my hypothesis today is that people who I know who are really good at what they do, and these could be founders, CXOs professionals, whoever they might be if they are good at one thing, they also tend to be good at other things. Namely, managing money, personal finance. They understand the importance of money. Money is not everything, but it is a very important part to be financially independent because it propels you in another orbit. You can do things, you can be more impactful than what you are. You are not only looking to live a life, you want to leave a legacy. If you want to leave a legacy, you have to take risks. You can take risks when you are financially independent. So personal finance is very important. And these top performers, the 1% of the top performers in the world. They are action oriented. They take action. They don't just think, they don't just intellectualize. They take action. They know they might not take the best action, but it is something to move forward and they will learn by doing. The second part of it is personal finance. Like I said, you have to manage your own money, you have to know where you stand and you have to build a nice 5,10,15 year plan. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. Darshan Doshi (13:42) And then the last part of it is fitness. I know so many people, founders, who probably spend 10,15, 18 hours working in a day, seven days a week or six days a week. And it's very decision-making, very high pressure situation. But they are still the fittest in their company. And I was like, wow, that sounds awesome, right. And why can't I be fit? And so I was unfit two years ago. What you see today is probably, I've been at the peak of my fitness that I've ever been in my life. I'm 37. It's taken me two years to get here. But what I want to say is that these people make it a point that they do three to four workouts a week. They manage their nutrition, the food intake that they do. And they are very conscious about their health because they know they need to manage their energy. If they are not fit, if they don't manage their nutrition, it affects their work and what they can do. Or it affects one part of their life, which could be family, friends, social circle. It could be anything. So what you want is a balanced life. How much energy do you have so you can get more energy just by doing three workouts a week. With this in mind, we've launched yesterday, the 90 Day Get Fit Bootcamp. Go on dasar.in. Sign up for it. We kick it off next Sunday. You are going to go through this program with other people like you. And we are going to make it fun. The only thing we promise is not a six pack, right? Not a bikini or a beach body, but rather you being consistent on your fitness and making a routine at it. I think if you can do that, that is the building block for six pack down the line. It is possible. But you have to start somewhere. And unless you're consistent, three months is not going to get you there. Can you make this a way of your living? Can you become consistently fit for the rest of your life? Darshan Doshi (15:51) Imagine all the things you can do. If you had the energy. Would you pursue a side project? Would you launch a podcast? If you want to be a part of this, please join us now. That's my ask from you. Call me up. Reach out to me at dd@dasar.in. Lastly, have fun. It's the end of the year, we are still in the festive period. Christmas is around the corner. New Year is around the corner. Be healthy. Be conscious. Do things. Push yourself. Set some really good life goals for 2022 and beyond. And if we can play a small part in that journey, the thing would be more fulfilling for me than becoming a part of your journey of self development. I'll see you then. Thanks.

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Join DASAR Club that offers three development bootcamps + community of Doers... * Get Financial Freedom Program: This program will take you through actionable steps to start off on the path of financial independence and wealth creation. * Get Sh!t Done Program: This program is for entrepreneurs and professionals what high-performance training is for athletes. * Get Fit Program: Get in the habit of exercising at least 3 times a week on strength training, endurance, yoga and meditation with a personalized nutrition plan and certified coaches.

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https://youtu.be/SIWxSqWuuaA Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:09) Welcome back to DASAR. My name is Darshan Doshi. We have a super guest with us today, Nick Petrie. I've known him for a few years, admire a lot of his work, learnt a lot from him. Nick Petrie just a quick overview of Nick. Nick is someone who has worked a lot of years in leadership development, in people development in Brazil, and he's going to share a little bit of his own personal experience today, which is going to be quite fascinating and interesting to hear about as well. But professionally, he's the head of executive development at Cultivating Leadership. He's also part of the center for Creative Leadership. He was the owner at Performance at Work and has a master's degree from Howard University. So overall, Nick is someone who has years and years of experience of coaching executives to become better. He's also part of the Adeption and the JumpShift family. He's on the advisory board helping us create some of the best experiences, some of the best thought leadership around resilience, around vertical development. And we are going to touch base on a few of these topics today. So Nick, welcome to DASAR. I am so excited to have you here. There's so much to talk, so much to learn from you. But welcome to DASAR. Nick Petrie (01:25) Thanks, Darshan. Thanks for inviting me. Darshan Doshi (01:27) Nick is joining us from New Zealand. My first question to you, Nick, is around resilience. You've spent so many years around resilience and post, COVID there are a lot of challenges around mental health, mental fitness. And one of the things that I see quite widely is around friends, family who are having a lot of tough time dealing with the pressure, the stress at work, the stress at home, livelihoods, their own lives were in danger with COVID- 19. And I think what we have seen is the pandemic coming through COVID. But we are now starting to experience a pandemic on mental health. And this is where I feel resilience is a very important concept. But maybe you could start by giving an overview of what does really resilience mean. And how does one go about being more or becoming more resilient? Maybe some thoughts on that? Nick Petrie (02:20) Sure. So the way people have traditionally thought about it is it's about being able to bounce back from adversity and that's sort of true. But that also denotes that life event is going to knock you around. So when you think about sort of stress, for example, it's on a continuum. One end is trauma and then the other end is day to day stress. If you experience a trauma, you might grieve, you might need to get counseling. You might need to take some drugs. But what most people are dealing with most of the time is this day to day stress and getting overwhelmed by it. Nick Petrie (02:57) So I was heavily influenced by this body of research, which is what my mentor did at the University of York, and he sort of looked at the idea that traditionally, we think our stress is caused by events. And really, if you have these various events, you're going to get stressed. But one of the things they saw in their research was that different people were going through the same events. Some people were getting completely stressed and overwhelmed, and another person in the same job, exactly the same event wasn't getting stressed at all. They were resilient. They weren't getting overwhelmed. And they were interested in why. And so it's a couple of big ideas which emerged from the research. The first one was that there was a difference between pressure on one hand and stress on the other. Usually we put this together, but if you separate them part, you start to get some options. So they came to define pressure as external demand in your environment. So it's workloads, it's deadlines, it's changes, it's moving house. It's just all the normal things which happen, which most people are sort of feeling overwhelmed by. Nick Petrie (04:06) Everyone had pressure. Everyone's got pressures on them. It's pretty much unavoidable. But not everyone is stressed. You can see this when you go into workplaces where you've got different people in your family. And what the researchers noticed was that to convert the pressure into stress, you need to do something very specific. And that was to ruminate about the event. And rumination is thinking over and over again about events from the past or the future, attaching negative emotion to them and churning over and over and over about. And so if you think about things you are stressed about at the moment, you'll probably notice those are the things you are ruminating about. And there might be some areas in your life where you've got a lot of pressure on you at the moment, but you're not stressed. And if you pay attention to that, you'll notice that you are not ruminating about those areas. So a big part of the resilience work I do is around trying to get rid of the pressures of your life, because in fact, a lot of those pressures are what might make you very successful is becoming much more effective at handling the pressure without turning into rumination. And that's a lot of the work we do is helping people just notice how much of their day they are ruminating. And if they were to be able to reduce that, as I sort of learned to do and many others who we've done this work with also learned to do, they end up being quite resilient. It is less about trying to keep your head above water. It's more about starting to notice there is no water there. There is nothing to keep your head above. You're, creating it in your mind that's sort of the first pieces that we sort of get into around resilience. Darshan Doshi (05:42) Brilliant. Just a simple way of explaining what rumination is and what pressure and stress are. Now you work with a lot of executives around the world to help them make more resilient and thereby their companies as well. Maybe some examples where you see a person or a company like a before and after scenario where they have become slightly better or significantly better on the resiliency scale, maybe some thoughts or examples around that. Nick Petrie (06:13) Yeah, sure. One of the things people get when they do this work, we get them to take an assessment because the first step is really about increasing your self awareness about how much you are doing this rumination, and also what is driving your rumination up or helping you get it down. So it's on a scale of zero to ten. When people do this, they often notice they score nine or ten out of rumination. So they're doing it all the time. And then we'll do just that first self awareness. At first, people get quite stressed about that. They start stressing about rumination, which you really don't want to ruminate about your rumination, but just actually knowing that you are doing it and having a word for it makes an enormous difference, because then you can actually start to catch yourself doing it. So I did it with an energy company in Houston. It was the top 120 leaders. They went through it, and we measured all of their results to see how they were. And we did three, two hour sessions. Nick Petrie (07:12) But people only came along for one of those, and we taught them what to do, which is essentially around catching yourself waking up because that's the first step of for when you are ruminating while are having a dream. We feel like the stuff is real. But what we're actually freaking out about is the dream we are having in our head. We are having a nightmare about some scenario, but we don't realize it's a dream. We think it's real. And so the first step we help people to do is catch themselves and then wake up. Nick Petrie (07:43) It's a nightmare that you are having. And so we taught the various different steps. And then we did a follow up twelve months later. And what we saw was that there was a big drop and the origination scores there's eight measures, all of their scores came down, there's other ones around toxic, achieving avoidance of issues. All of them came down. So it's really good results. What was better, though, as we gave them resources to go out for each of them and to teach their team. So there was 120 of them, and each of them taught about ten people what they'd learned. And they discussed it as a team. So it went from 120 up to 1200 people. And so it scaled really well. In fact, as you know, Darshan, knowing what I know now and you know, now we could have scaled it in a different way and collected all the results. But we did do a case study. Twelve months later, you could see the numbers had changed. We didn't have it all on Adeption at that stage. Darshan Doshi (08:39) Great example of how to tackle and how assessments also play a big part. And second, how to scale this ability across organizations and people. And we'll get back to that now. I want to talk about something which is very personal to you, and I'm curious to learn about it myself. You've beaten cancer, and that's only the thing that I know about. If you're willing to share, I'd love to learn what was your feeling? What did you feel? What was the experience the moment you figured out you had cancer? What were the early years like and just some thoughts around your own ability of your mental fitness, your resilience, some thoughts kind of looking back today on beating cancer. Nick Petrie (09:29) So it was in my 20s, I was playing rugby for a living professionally around the world. And then one of the seasons I was playing in Japan, I was playing a game and during the game, my head was just throbbing and I couldn't run. So I had to go off the field. It was the last game. So I flew back to New Zealand and my mother met me at the airport and she said, you don't look good at all. And she took me into hospital and over a series of about a week, they did various tests, but they couldn't quite work out what was going on. So they did an operation to have a look. What they discovered was I had three big cancerous tumors in my abdomen. So they did a big operation for 5 hours. They took out the tumors, but they had to take out my stomach, my spleen part of my pancreas. I couldn't eat for several months, actually, and I lost a lot of weight. But what I decided to do afterwards was I just tried to pretend it had never happened. And so I said, I'm going to put my old life back together the same way I'll go back to Japan, which I did. And I essentially just tried to put all the ingredients of my life back together exactly the same way and same ingredients. Twelve months later, I got the same result. And so my oncologist said, it's come back spread to your liver. And they got a temporary treatment. And they said, this will work for a while. But what happened to me is same as all cancer patients. They just say, you've got to get another test every three months or six months. You just spend your whole time worrying about what the results are going to be. What if it comes back? I was like, what if I don't live till 30? What if I never get married? I got really stressed. And that's actually, when I came across my mentor who helped me with the stress stuff and he taught me what to do. And that's how I was able to bring my stress level down. So that was a huge thing. Being able to bring my stress level down was the first thing. But even once I've done that, I sort of left with a big question because I didn't want to go back and repeat what I've already done and get the same result again twelve months later, I just thought something's got to change. I've got to change the ingredients or I'm going to get the same result. I did research on who lives the longest after a cancer diagnosis and sort of thought there seemed to be general patterns. People who live the longest, they made transformational changes in different areas of their life, physically, stuff like, what are they eating? How they're exercising, how they're looking after themselves, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And so I looked at all the things, and I just started doing a whole lot of things differently, changed as many ingredients as I could, and things went really well. One of the hard things for me, though, was like I was looking at if I'm not going to do that, what am I going to do with my life? I don't know how long I've got. I might have three years. I might have 30 years. I don't know. They didn't have a treatment, still don't have a treatment for this type of cancer. So I thought and I thought for like, a year or two. And the question I keep asking myself is what really matters. And I thought about this being initially I was saying, what can I be as rich as I can? I was like, I don't know if that matters. Can I be as successful as I can? I don't know if that matters. I just keep asking when I look back at the end of my life, whenever that is, what will tell me it's been a worthwhile life? And thought about this for a long time. And my conclusion in the end was, I'll feel good and that it was worth my life if I've contributed as much as I possibly can to others around me, I thought, okay, I'm going to go out and I'm going to volunteer in all these different places and contribute lots of stuff. And I got the shock of my life because no one wanted my help. And the reason was I didn't really have a lot to offer. I've been playing rugby. I'd say, I'll do this for you. I'll do this for you. And no one really thought that would be helpful. And I was sort of shocked. But I had the big wake up. It wasn't enough to sort of want to contribute. I needed to develop something which was valuable and rare that would be useful for people. And that's when I said, what is that going to be? And I looked and I looked and I looked and I wrote down three circles. It was, where do I have some talent? Where do I have some passion and Where's the world's greatest need. And I sort of tried to work out what's in the inflection of those three circles. And for me, that looked like helping people grow, develop, get unstuck. And so I took that path. And that was my start into this field. Darshan Doshi (14:27) Brilliant. I don't have any words. So you've not beaten cancer once but twice. And I hear this from you time and time again in our conversation is you're always trying to bring everyone, the whole team, the Adeption team, and everyone that I've kind of seen you talk to is what is the most important thing, which is what matters the most. And it's always very heartening to see this. But one of the things, as a follow up question, if you don't mind if you wanted to contribute, you wanted to figure out which popular concept is IKIGAI essentially what you're good at, what you're passionate about and what the world needs. But even from there, it's a difficult point, right? You thought you could contribute the most when you're helping people become better versions of themselves. And for me, it's the same. At DASAR, that's essentially what we want to do. We want to impact a few lives and just get them fitter, get them financially free and get them in the ability of taking action, not talk less, do more. But once you get started on that journey, how does that look like? Because in your 20s, there's not a lot of experience around domain expertise or not a lot of corporate experience which you today have. But at the time, maybe some thoughts around. How do you go about building that mindset, that skill set, that expertise, that domain knowledge in the earlier stage? Nick Petrie (16:02) That's exactly right. I mean, that's the right order. I found that once I've worked out what was the general path to take, and it felt to me as well. I remember at the time it was always about what's my natural path at this point in time, because I felt like it's very easy because I saw it around me with other people. And I've seen it with myself. It's very easy to go down sort of false paths. But once you can sort of sense into what's your natural path, and it takes a lot of reflection, I think in going inward, things just start to flow. Good coincidences happen, lots of luck. It just feels like the path opens up was my experience. It has been, but there's always sort of these diversions which want to pull you off towards this or that. And as soon as I notice myself going off on those paths, things would slow down, get hard. But there's always these temptations. And so once I knew that I knew what I was looking for or the world provided or something. But I ran into a friend of mine from high school, actually, and back in Christchurch, I had no idea how it's going to get started. Nick Petrie (17:11) And I asked him what he's doing. And he said, I've got this training company. We train people in workplaces. And I said, I'd love to be able to join. And he was an entrepreneur getting things started and this company is going well. And he goes, what experience have you got? I said, Look, I've been playing Rugby, but I said, if you give me a chance, I promise you I will make it work. I will make it work. And he told me later it was my conviction that I would make it work that made him decide to take a chance and give me this job. And I was terrible to start with, but I was enthusiastic and I was very motivated. I just thought this is the right place, essentially what most people improve quickly. I just kept putting myself out into situations I didn't know how to do, which was everything at that stage. And I just stayed on that path for a decade, essentially keep doing stuff I didn't know how to do. And I was in a field where there was so much new stuff. There were so many different opportunities and different clients and up and down the organization that as long as you would just keep consistently on that path and keep being uncomfortable, you couldn't help but grow. So that's what I did for a decade. But I will say I was so motivated and driven not to waste my life. It itself turned into a bit of a trap because I got so obsessed with not wasting my life that eventually I overdid it. And I pushed myself too hard, and I actually needed to lighten up a bit. It wasn't actually that important. So I'd say that's the sort of also the balance of it. I probably didn't understand balance and polarities, and what I was doing didn't matter quite as much as I thought it did. In my mind. It was the right path. But take it lightly. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Myth Busting: Personal Finance is Easier Than You Think | Darshan Doshi | Managing Money | Wealth | DASAR Podcast * Experience Design (XD): How to Create Experiences That Transform People | Garrett Gatlin | Adeption | Leadership | Learning & Development | Podcast | SaaS * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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Darshan Doshi (19:10) Amazing the kind of reflection that you're sharing. I just hope everyone in this world is able to listen to you and listen to this podcast. So I'm going to just talk a little bit about vertical development. You've done a lot of work around vertical development and helping people move up the level. But what does that really mean? Because there are two camps, those who believe that it is natural and I will get better irrespective of someone helping me or not, because if I'm hungry to become better, I will figure out a way to become better. But then there are also a line of thought which says, Here are the frameworks. Here are micro models. Here are some experiences, here is a coach to guide you through this process. Now, personally, I've been fortunate to get a bit of coaching and level up over the years myself. But coming back to the question of vertical development, what is vertical development? What are the stages of development of an adult and maybe some examples around in your experience that you've seen people and companies move up or down these stages of development. Nick Petrie (20:25) So it's probably worth just thinking, first of all, for people, about times when they have grown or got better or learned, what did that look like? Because there are different types of development. So sometimes you've got people saying, if I just work hard and focus, I'll get better and you probably will. But it might be skill acquisition. It might be information. It might be knowledge. And that's sort of like if your mind is a cup, you are filling up the cup with more content. And that's one type of development we call that horizontal development. You sort of grow the content in your cup, but you stay on the same level. There's another type of development and to sort of give an example, after I got sick and did all that reflection, it was incredibly hard situation, did a lot of reflection, and I came out of it at the end, and my mindset was different. I wasn't really the same person as I had been before I went into the situation. I used to just sort of drift around wherever the wind blew me. That's the direction I'd go. Nick Petrie (21:32) Afterwards the things which used to matter didn't matter anymore. Like, for example, I couldn't play golf because afterwards I found it pointless. And I used to love golf. But why do I want to put this little ball in the hole? Things which used to be really important to me had sort of dissipated and I couldn't care about them afterwards. Someone had fundamentally changed. And that sort of gets the second type of growth. We called vertical growth. This is when you are growing, and instead of filling the cup, it's like you're expanding the cup itself. Your capacity is changing. The cup is transforming. You are transforming. And so people think back to, let's say, ten years ago or 20 years ago, how used to think about the world, what used to value? We think it's consistent, but it's actually not. Our mindset is quite different. So researchers who studied this, especially around people in workplaces and leaders, found that people evolved through these predictable stages of development. One of the early ones I run through, some of them diplomat stage is a lot around conforming, fitting in, wanting to know what the rules of my tribe or my group or my company are so that I can be part of the group and often in our 20s or when we're at high school or College, when we first joined a company, it's a lot about that diplomat mindset of wanting to belong and fit in. But then people can grow out of that. And they start like me, who said, I need to have some skills, something to offer. I need to have a craft, some knowledge. And that's getting into the expert stage where you want to master your craft. You want to know everything about your field, your domain. I want to have all the answers. I'm going to use a lot of logic and see doctors, lawyers, accountants are often dominated by people in their expert mindset. Nick Petrie (23:35) And it's good. However, once you start managing people, it's not enough just to have knowledge. You need to get outcomes. And this is where people get into this achiever stage, where it's about outcomes, results, numbers, delivering. And that's where most organizations and their leaders are roughly at the achievement mindset. It's a really good one. It's a really important one, but it's not the end of development. People move beyond that when they start to say, Is that all it's about? I've already achieved a lot. I've already had a lot of my goals, but I don't feel as satisfied as I used to. What else is there? Is this something more meaningful than this, or do I just keep achieving for the next 30 years? When people do that, they get into this stage called redefining, and people talk about a midlife crisis. We'd see this more as people are starting to redefine who they are, what's important, what sort of work they want to do, what sort of career they want to have? What contribution do they want to make? And there are a lot of leaders and organizations right now who are shifting from achieving to redefining. And this pandemic has got a lot of those people really rethinking things and quitting their jobs. Frankly, it's one outcome which is happening. So a lot of people are in there, and it feels very shaky because it doesn't feel like achieving and it feels disconcerting. But you're asking a lot of new questions. It's very valuable. People can go beyond that and to transforming. And this is where people can really start to see the systems they're operating in. They can start to use power in very ethical ways. They start to take a longer term perspective. It's almost like they can see the big picture now. They are not in it like they weren't achieving. Now they are up on the balcony and they can see much more. Stages can go on beyond there. But you tended not to see people and organizations from those stages. Darshan Doshi (25:33) Brilliant. And just on continuing the thought of COVID, we have had massive lockdowns around the world. I know there's a lockdown going on in New Zealand, some parts of Russia, China and the US has been on and off. Right. But in India, at least let's say March to May 2020, a lot of people were stuck at home, and that's where a lot of people got time to really think of what's important for them, because they were also thinking about survival and existence. And I think that's something that you shared a little bit about as well. We are seeing definitely a lot of people giving up their jobs. But back in, I did a quick research study of what happened during the Spanish Flu, that is, from 1915 to 1919. And what you'll be surprised with is similarly, at that time, there was a lot of liquidity, a lot of innovation in technology, a lot of infrastructure projects being made. And so what the economy saw was one of the greatest periods, which they called the roaring 20s, which was kind of an economic boom. People were starting businesses pretty much more consistently. And my hypothesis is, I think we are entering that phase in again, roaring 20, where we will see people launch businesses. We'll see them doing, pushing the envelope, pushing creating new technologies. And the outcome obviously is better economic development. But really, if you think about it as society development, I just wanted to share that quick thought, and we need to study our history. We need to study what the Spanish Flu did to the people, to the society. And there's a lot for us to learn from those historical experiences as well. Now, you've talked about vertical development. You've given us laid out very nicely what these stages of development are. You also talk a lot about heat experiences, right. I'm curious to learn, what are these heat experiences and how does this help anyone or how can one create? Can you create an artificial heat experience? Does it always have to be a life situation that throws up a situation to create a heat experience? Maybe some thoughts around these two topics? Nick Petrie (28:03) Firstly, if you think about and if listeners think about a time when they grew a lot in their life and we've done research on this, what people tend to talk about is not a course they went to or something they read, they talk about some experience they had, which really put a massive amount of pressure on them, and they didn't know how to handle it with their current tool kit. And so heat experiences have five conditions. It's a first time experience. You haven't done this thing before. It's brand new to you. You've not faced it. You don't know what to do. Results matter. This is something which is actually really important. There's a chance of success or a chance of failure. And you don't know which way things are going to go. Important people are often watching to see how things are going to go, whether in the workplace or in your community or family. These experiences are extremely uncomfortable. Most people want to avoid these experiences. In fact, in the research that we did, a lot of people said they didn't want the experience, like the boss gave him a big new role, and they're like, I'm not the right. I'm not ready. I'm not the right person. But looking back later, they said, that was the time in my career of my greatest growth. Sometimes they're in within work and they're given to us. Sometimes they just come from out of the blue, from life. It's your health. It's a divorce. For a lot of people it's living overseas for the very first time because nothing about how they used to live in India or the US is the same when they get to this new country. And it is so disorientating. The only way through it is to make new mental maps and models of how things work. And then you've got a whole lot of new ones. So that's what heat experiences are to your other questions. Sometimes they're all around us, always. Sometimes they're really big things. Sometimes they're small things. What I've noticed as I've studied people in workplaces and leaders, the real question is, are you someone who moves towards them or moves away from them? That seems to be the big differentiator? The leaders who I see grow a lot. They tend to seek the heat, we would say. And I've often noticed what people grow fast in this sort of three year cycle. In year one, they'll get into this heat experience like, whoa, I'm head over my heels those sort of waters up here, and I'm sort of trying to survive here in year two, they start to get the hang of it. They sort of know how to do this. And in year three, you can imagine what they like. They're sort of bored. They're looking around and they're looking for their next heat experience. Nick Petrie (30:49) And it's often sort of cycles of about three years, I see. And they just stack these up. And then eventually they get to a point where they just feel like they've seen pretty much everything and they become and your words dash and antifragile because they've seen there, they've done it. It doesn't matter if there's new experiences. They know they can handle a lot of heat to become antifragile.

Darshan Doshi (31:10) Now we can't not talk about Adeption and the vertical mindset indicator, right? This is a program that you and Carl have developed. Jan has been involved right through. So vertical Mindset Indicator. What is the program about is catching or it's being adopted across the world like wildfire. It's been growing rapidly within Adeption. So maybe you can share some thoughts around what is the vertical mindset indicator? Who is it for and what can they expect out of it? Nick Petrie (31:46) We were very interested in how people grow through these stages because it makes a big difference to people from what stage they're operating at. Often we'll get stuck and we just need to unblock and grow. And we'll overcome many of our challenges because we'll be able to see them from a new vantage point. And one of the things which gets people really excited and motivated to grow is being able to get an assessment to show them. Where is your mindset or stage? Where do you tend to operate from at the moment? And there are assessments out there, and I've used a lot of them. So I knew that people really loved them. The problem was they were pretty expensive to do them and get debriefed was over $1,000 for many of them. And they were really good. And so you could use them with the very top executives because they had the budget. But you couldn't go much beyond that. And we were very interested in this is so valuable. We'd like to get it out to as many people as possible throughout an organization and potentially outside of an organization as well. We said, how would we make this assessment shorter, cheaper and much more scalable? And usually the answer to that question is technology. And so we said, let's see if instead of getting a human to score this, which takes a long time to score the results, and then debrief, could we get AI or machine learning to do this? So the Adeption team over in India worked hard on this to see, is it actually possible to do this? And thanks to you and the team over there, we're able to learn that the machine learning could, in fact, score these reports and they're sort of open ended narratives. And so we're like, wow, that's amazing. Could we rather than do full on coach debris? Could we do the debris on the Adeption platform? So you're getting all the best coaching questions, but it's on the platform. Would people answer those questions on a platform? It turns out they did. They put in all these great answers, and then you do a follow on coaching session from there. So what it meant was people really uncovering something very important about their mindset. A question was, would people want it and they talk about you've got product market fit when people are grabbing it out of your hands before you sort of ready to let go of it. And that's what ended up happening. So it's in big organizations at the moment, spreading. And then we're also doing it outside for individuals who want to take it. And essentially, it will help you see where your mindset is, where your next stage of development is, and what are the methods and actions and approaches you can take to develop yourself to see things from a different stage? Darshan Doshi (34:34) Brilliant. It's truly democratizing leadership development, people development at scale, using technology. I mean, the world would be a better place for sure. And this is how I guess we have to use the technology the right way. Now my last question to you, just like entrepreneurship in the startup world, they say entrepreneurs are born, not made. Obviously, I don't agree to that. I think entrepreneurs can be made. They can be nurtured. Similarly, in the leadership development world, there is a lot of debate or has been for a few decades around, can leadership be taught, or are people born and brought up with leadership skills? So the whole nature versus nurture debate. I'm kind of curious to learn from you because you've been in this place for a very long time. You've been able to transform people and companies through your efforts, through your coaching, through your programs, through your experiences and what not. So some thoughts around how do you view leadership being taught versus people being born with it and just a general debate on it. Nick Petrie (35:53) When I was living in the US, I used to work for Centre Creative Leadership, and we would have 30,000 leaders each year come through our programs and experiences from all around the world and all sorts of different companies. And so we would watch to see what happened for groups as they did this and what happened to the individuals. And it was very clear that leaders would change and grow. And what is leadership? It's a lot about your ability to influence others. And so can people learn to influence others in a more effective way? I think the answer most people agree is yes, if you know the right methods, tools and the impact you're having. But what we were most interested in at CCL was always been a big emphasis on the leader, which is a sort of very heroic way. Who is the leader? What we became very interested in as leadership and what we saw was leadership as a process. And it wasn't just situated within one individual, it was a process which could happen across groups or multiple people. And leadership was helping clarify the direction, building alignment for people around that direction and building commitment. And it wasn't really within one individual to do that. That was a process which could be spread across lots of individuals. And so it could certainly be learned by the whole group rather than requiring one leader who was heroic and was born with some sort of charisma or something like that. So I'd say yes to the individual. Can it be learned? Definitely. But two, it's good to go beyond that. Think what is the process of leadership rather than just the leader? Darshan Doshi (37:44) Brilliant. So this has been an awesome podcast, Nick. Thanks a lot. We've just crossed about a 40 minutes mark right now. So much to learn. So many insights. And what we try to do is bring people such as yourself who have had such meaningful impactful, experiences who transformed people who changed the world to make it better and really just decode and distill it down to a few insights so that we can be better. Thanks a lot for joining all the way from New Zealand. This has been an awesome podcast. Really looking forward to doing a follow up on this sooner rather than later. And look forward to staying in touch with you. Nick Petrie (38:25) You too. Thanks, Darshan. Join DASAR Club to achieve your health and wealth goals with the help of an exclusive community of Doers... * 90 Day Get Financial Freedom Bootcamp: This bootcamp will take you through actionable steps to start off on the path of financial independence and wealth creation. * 90 Day Get Sh!t Done Bootcamp: This program is for entrepreneurs and professionals what high-performance training is for athletes. Improve every day by taking simple actions. * 90 Day Get Fit Bootcamp: Get back your energy to become Superman (well almost!). Get in the habit of exercising at least 3 times a week on strength training, endurance, yoga and meditation at home with a group of like-minded people.

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What can help you achieve your fitness goals? How do you plan ways to achieve them? What are the most important factors to be kept in mind while creating a plan? What is your 'why' to do what you do? In this podcast, Darshan Doshi -- Founder & CEO, DASAR -- shares how he set his fitness goals and managed to systematically achieve them over the last two years. He shares the outcomes, learnings, and importance of having regular...

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https://youtu.be/wGbOvHIpp5o Transcript Darshan Doshi (00:14)Today, I'm going to talk about setting and killing your fitness goals. Now, if you've gone through the GetFit Podcast series, you would have listened to Lavanya, become an ultramarathoner, you've listened to Ram Iyer, do all the things what an athlete does. Now, your goal could be to just stay fit or it could be to become ultramarathoner or it could be to become an athlete. Whatever your goal is, how do you achieve them?Darshan Doshi (00:41)There are four ways that have helped me to achieve my fitness goal. First is ambition, and I'm going to talk to you about all four of them today. Second is focus. Third is sacrifice, and fourth is discipline. All right? Ambition, focus, sacrifice, discipline is what is needed for you to set and achieve your fitness goals. I'll give you the most recent fitness goal that I have achieved. Mid August, me and few friends decided that we will go do an international trip because we've been in Pune for the last couple of years with COVID and the various lockdowns that we've had. Now we decided that we'd go to Maldives during Diwali time. The kids have holiday that time. That's the only time that we could step out of the country. And Maldives seemed to be a good place for us to enjoy our vacation. Come September, we finalized the booking and there was about six weeks of planning, six to seven weeks, which gave me enough time to come up with a goal with my trainer in one of the workouts. I said, we are six weeks away. Why don't we do a six week fitness sprint where I try and achieve a six-pack abs? So it looks good in Maldives. Now, very simple goal. There was nothing more to it than try and convert what was already being done into a fitness goal. We agreed upon it.Darshan Doshi (02:12)We said, all right, not six pack abs, but let's tone up the body, shape up the body as much as possible. Now, mind you, I was already doing, I had done about 350 plus sessions in the last two years, about 25,000 minutes of workout in the last two years. So I'm in good shape. I'm doing four workouts. My weight was about 73 kgs. I was still enjoying my two cups of tea, one cheat day and enjoying bread, rice, dal, all of the good food made at home. But in order to achieve my goal first was ambition. I told you what the ambition was. The second was the discipline. So the discipline around nutrition. I would focus on protein heavy diet. What that means is no outside food, no cheat day, no tea, no sugar, no coffee, no rice, no bread, no roti. And I am a vegetarian, I don't even eat eggs. So there are only very few cases of protein intake that I can have, rajma, dal, protein powder. So I had to increase that a little bit.Darshan Doshi (03:26)Now, in the last six weeks that was on the nutrition bit. On the second bit on exercise, I still did about four weeks of workout, but they were much more intense, and I added three sessions of walking about 40 45 minutes or climbing the Hill, making it a seven day workout. Now, every alternate week, we took one Sunday off, which wasn't too bad. Now, in the last week, something happened. You have to have the discipline and you have to have the sacrifice in place, right? You need the discipline. My trainer, Ashish decided to trek Sandakphu, which is in Himalayas. It's about a week long trek. Out of these six weeks, if he's gone one week, it gives me an excuse to not follow the routine that we had set.Darshan Doshi (04:17)It takes this one simple thing for all of it to fall apart. But me and my friend Gaurav, we decided to climb Sinhagad. Sinhagad is a trek which is not too bad here outside of Pune, and we did that twice last week while my trainer was away. Not only did I continue focusing on the fitness routine and the nutrition, but I actually upped the game a little bit working all seven days and not taking a rest day. This week, now that my trainer is back, we are back to five days in the gym and then two days of walk just on the hill.Darshan Doshi (04:59)So to sum it up, here are some of the photos from Maldives. Hope you'll enjoy them. It's a good place. You must check it out for sure. And although I didn't achieve my set goal of achieving six pack abs, it's a lot difficult and it takes a lot more time to achieve than just six weeks. But I did move forward. I've reached a fitness level, which I have never been before. And that is what these fitness goals are for. It helps us to move forward. It helps us keep things interesting, keeps things simple.Darshan Doshi (05:37)What's the next goal? What is your next fitness goal, right? Is it an ultra marathon? Is it a marathon? It's just 42 km running. Is it Boston Marathon qualifying it in what, 3 hours and five minutes, or is it to trek Mount Kilimanjaro? Now, that was another fitness goal that I had almost twelve years ago. I was going to give my GMAT back in 2008 and I said, you know what? I want to go for my Masters for my MBA in the US. Let me couple my MBA goal with my fitness goal, signed up for Mount Kilimanjaro that if I reach to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, this is what I would celebrate it with.Darshan Doshi (06:26)I was lucky, there was a lot of preparation involved, but that's another story which I'll share down the line with you. Or if you join DASAR club where we have a GetFit 90 day fitness program which includes strength training, endurance and yoga. You'll find a community of people who want to get fit or just stay fit. Maybe they want to become ultra marathoners. Or maybe they just want to remain healthy and do one walk a week or one walk a day.So if you are interested getting fit, staying fit, making friends, becoming healthy, join the GetFit program on DASAR Club. See you there. Thank you. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to:* Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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Join DASAR Club that offers 90 Day bootcamps + a vibrant community of Doers...* Get Financial Freedom Bootcamp: This program will take you through actionable steps to start off on the path of financial independence and wealth creation. * Get Sh!t Done Bootcamp: This program is for entrepreneurs and professionals what high-performance training is for athletes. * Get Fit Bootcamp: Get in the habit of exercising at least 3 times a week on strength training, endurance, yoga and meditation with a personalized nutrition plan and certified coaches.

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Setting & Killin’ Fitness Goals | Darshan Doshi | GetFit | Fitness | DASAR Podcast | Nutrition | Health | Goal Setting December 3, 2021 Sakshi Joshi 07:31 0 Comments What can help you achieve your fitness goals? How do you plan ways to achieve them? What are the most important factors to be kept in mind while creating a plan? What is your 'why' to do what you do? In this podcast, Darshan Doshi -- Founder & CEO, DASAR -- shares how he set his fitness goals and managed to systematically achieve them over the last two years. He shares the outcomes, learnings, and importance of having regular...

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/5741/setting-killin-fitness-goals.mp3Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 07:31 | Recorded on December 3, 2021

How to Train for Ultra Marathons? Lavanya Tekumalla | GetFit | Fitness Podcast | Running | Training | DASAR November 26, 2021 Sakshi Joshi 31:41 0 Comments What is an Ultra Marathon? How does one train to run an Ultra Marathon? Should you even consider running a marathon? In this podcast, Lavanya Tekumalla -- an Ultra Marathoner and Founder of MachineLearningInterview.com -- shares how she prepared to run her first ultramarathon of 100 km. Lavanya is a busy professional and a founder of a startup in the Machine Learning space, and she shares her journey to becoming an ultramarathoner. She talks about injuries, equipment, the reason why...

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/5671/how-to-train-for-ultra-marathons.mp3Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 31:41 | Recorded on November 26, 2021

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https://youtu.be/v6hh-YqcULc TranscriptDarshan Doshi (00:10)Hi, everyone. Welcome back to DASAR. As a part of the Fitness podcast series, what we are calling as GetFit. I have an incredible guest with me, Lavanya Tekumalla. I've known Lavanya for a few months, and I just recently saw her social media update where she had completed an Ultra Marathon. Now, I don't know a lot about Ultra Marathon, so I reached out to her to just learn about what is an Ultra Marathon. What does it take to become an Ultra Marathoner? But just a quick introduction about Lavanya. Lavanya is the founder of machinelearninginterview.com. She's also doing a PhD in machine learning at IISc, Bangalore. She's an ex Amazon InMobi and Myntra. So we have someone with us who is a thorough professional who thrives in her domain of expertise, which is machine learning, data, science, analytics and the world. And so as a part of the GetFit podcast series, we try to bring to you people who have competing expectations. So you're running a house, you are running a job, you're running a company. But fitness is important to you, and you're doing something about it. And so that is what we want to decode in this GetFit podcast series. So, Lavanya, thanks a lot for joining this morning. And I'm absolutely excited about this podcast.Lavanya Tekumalla (01:39)Thank you, Darshan, for having me here. It's lovely.Darshan Doshi (01:43)Great. So, Lavanya, let's just get straight into this, right. You've completed an Ultra Marathon. Now for someone who doesn't know what an Ultra Marathon is, I know what a Marathon is. I know what a half marathon is. I know what a 10K is, what a 5K is. But what's an Ultra Marathon, really? And how did you come about thinking about doing an Ultra Marathon?Lavanya Tekumalla (02:03)Right. So Ultra Marathon is any distance beyond a marathon distance. So marathon is 42.195 kms. And Ultra Marathon is any distance beyond this. So Ultra Marathons could be like 50 km, 80 km, 100 km, and so on. So what I ran recently, Hennur Bamboo Ultra was a 100 kilometer Ultra Marathon.Darshan Doshi (02:30)Wow. 100 km. And in what duration did you run these 100 km?Lavanya Tekumalla (02:36)So I completed it in 16 hours and 5 minutes.Darshan Doshi (02:40)Wow. That's just incredible. 16 hours you're running. I don't think I could run more than 30-35 minutes. I have done a 10K. So I have ran a 10K, but that's probably the max that I have ran. So is this the first Ultra Marathon that you've ran? And I just wanted to get a sense of have you been a marathoner right throughout?Lavanya Tekumalla (03:05)Right. So this is the first Ultra Marathon that I ran, but I have been running for four plus years. And I did run a marathon distance a few times before. So at least two races. And, like, five to six times, I ran the 42 km. And the next thing was, I would still say I'm a relatively new runner because four years is not very long into running. And I wanted to try different distances. So in fact 50 was what I had in mind when I wanted to try an ultra. And in fact, I wanted to do it on my birthday. I'm turning 40 this year. So I thought, okay, I'll do my first ultra, but then COVID was at its peak, and that didn't happen. And it turned out that Prasanna, my husband, PK he's called, is actually turning 42 this year in October. And then 100K race was there exactly on his birthday. So it's like it's a good thing to actually go and try to do it.Darshan Doshi (04:04)Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And so, sorry, a lot of questions coming to my mind. And you're saying you've done a few marathons. You've been running only for four years. I think people don't even make it through for four months. So that's a long duration enough. But again, you know, one of the things at DASAR we say is consistency over intensity. But you seem to be matching consistency with intensity, which is the next level, of course. So this is your first Ultra Marathon. You have already gone to 100K. What was preparation like for you? Because I'm assuming in Bangalore again, you have lockdowns, it would have taken X amount of months. So maybe can you decode exactly what your routine was to prepare for this Ultra Marathon?Lavanya Tekumalla (04:56)Sure. Before I go into that, I need to mention that the 100K was, relatively I signed up for the 100K a few weeks before the 100K, though I was preparing for 50K before that. In fact, there's an interesting story how I signed up for the 100K. So should I just go over that for a couple of minutes?Darshan Doshi (05:18)Absolutely. Please.Lavanya Tekumalla (05:20)Yeah. So there are a lot of runners in my building, and I was thinking of running an ultra. And one day one of my friend Sini came over and he told me that there are four people in the building who are actually trying to run 100K for the first time in a race called Hennur Bamboo Ultra. I should join them to actually make it five. Now, I did not believe that I could actually go and run 100K at that point. Right. Because 100K sounds like a long distance. I was preparing for 50K, though, and somehow he convinced me that if my target is completion, preparing for 100K is very doable with what I'm doing. And he gave me a few tweaks. So I signed up for this 100K. Like, let's say three to three and a half weeks before the race time, and not a lot before that, though, I was training for a 50K. So at that point, the advice that I got for preparation was that I should concentrate on how much mileage I do per week. So I should try to run at least 100K plus in a week in order to be able to complete 100K. And since this was my first ultra, I also did not have a very clear picture on how to actually prepare for it. So I went and talked to another friend of mine. So I'm part of a running group called Jayanagar Jaguars, and there was a team from JJ that actually won the Trail Walker walkathon a couple of years back, and they did 100K of walkathon. So I went and asked them, how do I prepare? I got advice that I should prepare a bit of walking fast along with running, because in 100K ultra, I might not be able to run the whole distance. So it's important to practice a little bit of run, walk and walk as well, because otherwise, as a runner, I tend to always try to keep running. So I think those were some of the things. Otherwise I was doing like 70 to 80 km per week over three days, and for the 100K, I had to increase it to 100 to 120 km per week. And I was doing two more days of strength training in addition to this, in order to make sure that you need to also do some strength training in addition to just running to make sure you don't get injured. And if you get small during the race, they could become injuries. And strength training both upper body and lower body helps avoid that. So these are the four components of training for any race.Darshan Doshi (07:56)Brilliant. Thanks a lot for sharing that. Hopefully I can do an Ultra Marathon down the line as well. Haven't planned for it. But three and a half weeks seems like a really short time to plan for this. Typically, people would spend six months or a year preparing for an Ultra Marathon. So you were already preparing for a 50K. How did that preparation look like for the last maybe 12 to 16, maybe 24 months?Lavanya Tekumalla (08:23)Yes. So I need to tell you that while I say I signed up three and a half weeks before, three weeks or so before the race, I was preparing for marathons before that, right. And then I was preparing for a 50K even otherwise. So definitely all these things did help me. I was already at 70 to 80K per week and just had to increase it to 100K. So I was now starting from scratch there. So for preparing for an ultra in general, for preparing for any race, you need to typically give at least 12 to 16 weeks of preparation time. And this includes some shorter runs and some longer runs. So you need to do a long run at least once a week. And these long runs typically range from 30 km plus if you are trying to do an ultra, and in my case for the 100K run, I did a long run of 50K. That was the maximum I did, just two weeks before the race. But in general, you will do some shorter runs and you will do a long run, and then you will have some days of strength training, and depending on the distance, depending on your pace targets, you might do some of these runs at a faster pace. But the important thing is, if you're thinking from an ultra perspective, especially if you are a first time ultra runner, if you want to complete that's your goal, it's important to make sure that you are able to stay on your feet that long and not get tired and not hit a wall. So in order to do that, it's very important to focus on doing those long runs. While doing the long runs. You also make sure that you practice the same nutrition that you're going to do on the day of the race. You practice wearing clothes similar to what you're going to wear that day. You wear the same shoes and so on. So all these constitute part of the training.Darshan Doshi (10:14)Now you have touched upon two very important topics that I want to talk about. Exercising is great, but nutrition plays an equally important or more important role has been my experience in the last couple of years. So maybe first one we'll talk about is nutrition. What does your nutrition intake look like, or has been looked like for the last year to two years? What do you eat? How do you manage proteins? How do you manage eating outside food? Sweets. We are in the festive season, Diwali is coming up, and so a lot of sweets going around. Rightly so, I think we need to enjoy that part of life, too. But what was your nutrition plan? And maybe not just over the last three or four weeks, but over the last couple of years?Lavanya Tekumalla (11:06)Yes. So I think it's very important to take care of nutrition. The first thing is I'm a vegetarian, so I don't eat meat and that cuts down some sources of protein for me. So I have a simple diet. I eat some hand pounded rice along with a lot of things. And it's like a typical South Indian diet. But I take protein supplement once a day, like 20 to 25 grams of protein, at least as a supplement. Then sometimes I have a protein cookie, which is like ten more grams of protein or so. Whenever I feel the need, I eat one egg a day, at least to get some more protein. Then I do take multi vitamin tablets, vitamin D is very important. So I take vitamin D supplementation regularly, and I keep measuring my vitamin D levels. I think these are important parts of my diet. Otherwise, it's a pretty regular diet in terms of sweets. I don't have a sweet tooth as much, luckily, but I don't mind having sweets occasionally because I do work out a lot, and I am doing a lot of other stuff. So occasionally I do have sweets. I like ice cream, dark chocolate. Have them whenever I feel like.Darshan Doshi (12:19)Brilliant. My kids just ordered some Baskin Robbins chocolate, I think they have some of the best chocolate ice creams. I haven't had the chance to eat as much. Now, the other part that you mentioned was around equipment, the clothes, the shoes, the training, even the protein. Maybe you could just very quickly run through what brand of shoes, what clothes? Where do you shop? Second. And then the third is what protein, what proteins have kind of worked for you.Lavanya Tekumalla (12:52)Okay. So I use muscle blaze whey protein, and there are many variants there. And I take something that gives me minimum 20 grams, 20 to 30 grams of protein per serving. So it's just something you can shake and have with water. So that makes it easy for me. In terms of shoes. Right? I'm a barefoot runner. Now, not everybody is a barefoot runner, and it really depends on what works for you. But my experience with shoes talking to a lot of people has been that different shoes work for different people. So you just need to see what is comfortable for you and not go by what somebody else is using in terms of shoes. So as a barefoot runner, I use vibrams, which are popular barefoot shoes, which are just like a small, it looks like almost like a sock, it's very thin and it's a five finger shoes so you can see all the fingers when I wear them. And in fact, the gear is very important when you prepare for a run, especially for an ultra, because you are going to be in it for a very long time. It so happens that wearing barefoot shoes actually helped me for my ultra because that day I ran Hennur Bamboo Ultra and this was a trail run. It was raining. The trail was very sloggy and it was full of slush. So being light on my feet and wearing these barefoot shoes, which have like, Vicking property, and they sort of push the water out, they don't get soggy. And if there is sun in between, the shoes dry, that help me a lot. The important thing is whatever you train with, it's important to train with the right shoes as well. I've done my entire training with vibrams. In fact, I was lucky to stick to them during the race because at the race I looked at the trail and it was very different from what I trained on because I don't really go and train on slush. So it was very different from what I trained on. I almost consider changing my shoes at that point and wearing normal shoes because I was scared whether I'll be able to go barefoot in that slush. And luckily, my running friend and mentor also happened to be running with me that day, Ashok, and he told me, just stick with whatever you have been training with, right? Don't make last minute changes. And I just stuck to those shoes. And it helped me a lot. Right. So it's very important to practice with whatever you're going to wear that day, even when you talk about clothes, right? It could cause a lot of chafing if you don't wear the right clothes, it's important to apply a lot of Vaseline so that no chafing occurs during the race. So these are some things to keep in mind and even not only during the race, but also during the training runs to make sure that in terms of equipment. And another point for the ultra was the socks, because they are like if you wear cotton socks, if it rains, it could get really soggy and it would cause a, lot of people actually ended up with blisters. So it's important to buy good quality technical socks with antivicking property. And I got compression socks. And that actually helped me a lot. So, bottom line. Think carefully about the kind.Darshan Doshi (15:59)Brilliant. Now I want to switch this a little bit you've got about how to prepare for 100K. What was the original story? How did you train for it and what kind of equipment we've gone into. But you also have twins. I know Prasanna has mentioned a lot about the lovely twins that you have, and you also are founding a start up. You've been working for a very long time. So how do you manage your energy and time with kids, with work and with training? So how does a typical day or a week look like?Lavanya Tekumalla (16:34)Typically, I run three days a week and do strength training twice a week. That's my typical running schedule. So with respect to my kids, I'm lucky to have a lot of help. You really need to go and ask people for help, and some people will help you on this. So he's extremely supportive. In fact, he's excited about my running. So when I was doing like, 80 km week or 100 km week, people look at long distance runners as a different species, to be honest. And also most of the long distance runners are male. Right? So if I want to find running friends, it becomes like I have a lot of running friends, but it's important for me to build this tribe, right? In anything like be it professionally or be it for running or whatever activity I take up, it's important to have the support system of people in that activity. And I'm lucky to have many running friends. My favorite past time during my weekend is, of course, going for my long run. So I go for long run with people in my running group. Jayanagar Jaguars, I have these running friends, Chaitra and Chandrika, like all these names that pop into my mind. Right? During this ultra, an interesting story is that during the last 10 km of the 100 kilometer ultra, I actually thought about it's important to fool yourself sometimes. And I actually thought I was running with one of my running buddies, and I was just doing like a 30K run. And this is last 10K. This is how I kept thinking so that I could actually run through the last ten K of 100K ultra. It's just that I run so often the buddies are thinking about them.Darshan Doshi (18:20)I'm just going to do a quick shameless plugin over here. So at DASAR Club, I have also launched a GetFit program, and this is basically three months long, 90 days. And in 90 days you get strength training, endurance, yoga and meditation. And that's three times a week Monday, Wednesday, Friday, at your convenience, these are prerecorded videos with some trainers. You get a nutritional plan. We do weekly accountability groups, all of that. Right. But the most important part of this is you're going to go through the GetFit program along with your peers who could be from any part of this world. So I think that community is what I think is the gel, which keeps all of us going and keeps pushing us forward as well. So thanks a lot for bringing that topic out. I thought I'd just share this with the audience as well. Now, my next question, Lavanya, is you've been running for about four years. You just completed your first Ultra Marathon. Now, one of the big challenges that I see with most people is setting either too ambitious fitness goals or no goals at all. So how do you go about thinking about fitness goals? And maybe you could give an example of now that you've done the first Ultra Marathon, what is your next fitness goal if there is any?Lavanya Tekumalla (19:47)Okay. So I think there are many kinds of goals. When it comes to running, you could either want to improve your pace or you could go longer and so on. So I would still call myself a relatively beginner runner because I know people who have run more than ten years and so on. So relatively having run four years, the first thing I wanted to do was to experience different kinds of distances and what it involves to train for them and figure out what I enjoy with respect to running.What is that which I enjoy? And the second part is what is that where I will do well? So these are two things because if you do well, it's something that will also motivate you a bit more to continue doing that. So I think these were two questions that I would ask myself. I did ask myself. And one way to get an answer to them is to first try everything a little bit and which is what I did. So I started with, my first run was like a 5K run. So in fact, when I had my twins, I gained a lot of weight. And before running, I was actually into a lot of dancing. I was a fitness enthusiast, but I was into a lot of dancing, and I had to give it a break when I had twins and one of my building friends, Kirti Gupta, pulled me into a 5K race. And that's how I started running when I ran that I really liked the whole feeling of running. And in fact, I used to run a lot. I used to travel a lot. I was at Amazon and used to travel a lot. And whichever country I go, I used to run there. I ran in over ten countries, even though not in races. But the point is, I tried different distances after that. So then okay, let's try a half marathon. Then after that, let me try a full marathon. No, let me run it and see how it's done. Okay. Let me train for a half marathon. I wanted to train for an ultra to see, okay, how well will I do in an ultra and do I like the experience. And the idea is I think at the end of it, I want to pick something that I enjoy training for, which is not maybe it fits well into my work routine as well, something that I enjoy training for and something that I am doing well at and probably stick to that for some time and then experiment with something else. So that's been a thought process around figuring out.Darshan Doshi (22:21)Any sort of fitness goals that come to your mind for the next, for 2022 that is on the top of your list right now?Lavanya Tekumalla (22:27)So I think having tried different distances and I have tried training for pace for shorter distances, I'm not, of course, tried for pace training for ultra yet, immediately after this, I would probably, in fact, I'm running another 50K tomorrow, this weekend, Sunday. After that, I think I will take a small, probably like a short break from running where I would do only short distances. And then next year I'm thinking maybe I will do more of go for pace training for shorter distances rather than just go for longer distances. So I think this plan keeps evolving a bit. But the important thing is to come up with the plan for maybe the next three months. That's usually the time frame, I think of, because at the end of three months, usually things change a bit. Maybe your work situation, there are changes at your workplace and your changes with respect to things you need to do with your family, and you might need to keep updating your plan. So unless you are completely professional athlete, it's hard to come up with a rigid one year plan. So I plan three months to six months at a time.Darshan Doshi (23:32)So another factor is COVID. We are seeing new variant of COVID come through, new lockdowns happening in Russia, China, New Zealand. So we never know what's there. So I love this 90 day plan, right? And that's why most of the DASAR programs are only 90 days. These are habit forming programs. And so again, I relate with that a lot. My last question to you, it's very important to think about rest, about being injury free. So having done an Ultra Marathon and so many other marathons and you're thinking of doing another 50K this Sunday. What's your viewpoint of managing rest, like, how do you get your rest? And second, how do you remain injury free? Some thoughts, some experiences around it.Lavanya Tekumalla (24:23)With regard to rest. First of all, I usually have one or two rest days per week, so different things work for different people. But I run mostly only three days a week and two days of strength training. So that leaves me two more days. And usually it's either rest day or I do one day of dancing. But otherwise I don't run every day. So that's one important thing because your muscles need time to recover before the next run. Then after running for a while, it's good to take a short break. So in fact, after this 50K this weekend, I am planning to take a short break, maybe. So it's okay to take, like, a few weeks off sometimes in order to make sure that you're mentally and physically feeling okay to think of another target again. So that's about the rest aspect of it. What was the other question?Darshan Doshi (25:25)How have you thought about being injury free?Lavanya Tekumalla (25:28)Yes. With regard to injury prevention, there are a few things to keep in mind. The first is to set your targets correctly first. So if you aim to go too fast or too long, too soon, there is a high chance of injury. So you need to set your targets gradually. That's important. Even when you set the right target, it's important to make sure that number one, the rest days that we talked about. Those will help as well. So you need to make sure you're giving your body adequate rest. The other things that I do to prevent injury, one is foam rolling. So it's important to actually make sure that if you have any small niggles and your muscles might be fatigued, foam rolling has been really helpful for me. So I do it at least once or twice a week. And another thing that helps is yoga. So occasionally I do yoga for, like, 1 hour, half hour, and it really helps. Once a week I do half hour of yoga like Surya Namaskaras and a bunch of other things, and that really makes me feel refreshed. And if I have any small niggles and some muscle ache, it feels really nice after I do any of these activities, like foam rolling or yoga. The final thing is strength training. So strength training, the two days that I do a week are very important for runners because they make sure that you don't trip and fall. You don't have muscle imbalances and so on because you're on your feet running for so long that it's important to make sure you're in shape.Darshan Doshi (27:00)Brilliant. So one last question for you is if you were to do an Ultra Marathon again, you just completed the first Ultra Marathon. What are some of the things that you would change in your routine? What would you do? And what would you not do based on your, because it's pretty recent, right? You've just done an Ultra Marathon in the last few weeks, given the recency of doing this activity, some thoughts around Dos and don'ts?Lavanya Tekumalla (27:30)Right. I think of course, the first thing is to be in that 100K or whatever that ultra mindset for longer. So it's important to come up with plan over a few months, like you said. So usually you prepare for a race a few months in advance, three to six months for an Ultra. In terms of Dos and don'ts, I think some things I would do more for ultra are I did most of the runs only in the morning. It's important to practice at different times in the day for an ultra because usually smaller races, you just go early morning on a Sunday and finish them off. But ultra you're running the whole day and especially for 100 days, you're running the whole day and you're running after meals. So it's important to practice that kind of stuff to make sure, I've heard stories, though. I was lucky to not have that experience, and in fact, I was lucky to complete this 100K successfully, come first in women, and fifth overall. But a lot of people throw up during the run or have a lot of problems because they're not able to run after they have a meal, for instance. So it's important to practice all these things I think for an ultra, then I would have done more run walk practice. So I'm a runner and I was lucky to run through most of the ultra with minimal walking. But I think in future I would also practice walking because, a bit more. Then taking an extra pair of running shoes is important. In my case, I was pretty convinced that I would not be able to do the entire distance in vibrams, and I might need to change. I might walk the remaining part of the race because this was my first experience that I did not take a spare set of vibrams. So next time I think whatever shoes I'm most comfortable with, I will carry another set of that in an Ultra, especially because you're on your feet for so long and you don't know what will come up. And then, of course, don't change things the last minute, which I'm lucky I didn't do. And I think in terms of DO's, I would also say that for an ultra, gear is very important compared to a normal rate. You are going to stay with it for like a really long, and if you have some chafing, you can still finish a 10K race. Usually chafing doesn't come up in a 10K race. It comes up only after you're in the clothes for a few hours. But if you have to stay for 10 hours plus and like your T shirt or whatever shorts, you need to really pay a lot of attention to these things.Darshan Doshi (30:09)I've been mostly doing strength training, going to start a little bit of yoga, but then the running is something that I want to do. I want to prepare for an iron man. So that's something that is on my to do list. We'll see how that shapes up in the future. But this has been an absolute brilliant podcast. This is a topic which is very important and close to me. I sincerely do believe that if most of us follow a fitness routine, could be any routine you've taken up to running. I've taken up to strength training. Whatever might be to get you going to become consistent. To do three sessions a week, three workouts a week. I think we not only will become happier as a society, but also much more productive overall, even in the work front, family front, the happiness level will go up. So thanks a lot for doing this. Any last thoughts? Any concluding thoughts before we head out of this podcast?Lavanya Tekumalla (31:15)Message to everyone is to stay fit. And if you want to do running, one thing I would add is if you go to a race. Cheer everybody in the race, make sure you encourage everybody.Darshan Doshi (31:30)Brilliant. Thanks a lot Lavanya. Looking forward to seeing how you continue your fitness journey in the coming years. Thanks a lot. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to:* Myth Busting: Personal Finance is Easier Than You Think | Darshan Doshi | Managing Money | Wealth | DASAR Podcast * Experience Design (XD): How to Create Experiences That Transform People | Garrett Gatlin | Adeption | Leadership | Learning & Development | Podcast | SaaS * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/5671/how-to-train-for-ultra-marathons.mp3Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 31:41 | Recorded on November 26, 2021

How To Stay Fit During The Festive Season? GetFit | Darshan Doshi | Fitness Podcast | Health | DASAR November 19, 2021 Darshan Doshi 6:39 0 Comments From August through till New Year, we enjoy a series of festivals from Diwali, Dasara, Thanksgiving, Christmas to New Year. We enjoy some delicious food cooked at home and outside. And not to forget the Sweets!!! So watch this podcast to learn how you can balance enjoying the food and company of friends and family while staying fit through a range of activities and rest. Take a look and share your own fitness goals. Let’s #GetFit together!

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/5651/how-to-stay-fit-during-the-festive-season.mp3Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 6:39 | Recorded on November 19, 2021

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Join the waitlist to DASAR Club that offers three habit-forming programs + community of Doers... * Get Financial Freedom Program: This program will take you through actionable steps to start off on the path of financial independence and wealth creation. * Get Sh!t Done Program: This program is for entrepreneurs and professionals what high-performance training is for athletes. * Get Fit Program: Get in the habit of exercising at least 3 times a week on strength training, endurance, yoga and meditation with a personalized nutrition plan and certified coaches.

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How To Stay Fit During The Festive Season? GetFit | Darshan Doshi | Fitness Podcast | Health | DASAR November 19, 2021 Darshan Doshi 0 Comments

From August through till New Year, we enjoy a series of festivals from Diwali, Dasara, Thanksgiving, Christmas to New Year. We enjoy some delicious food cooked at home and outside. And not to forget the Sweets!!! So watch this podcast to learn how you can balance enjoying the food and company of friends and family while staying fit through a range of activities and rest. Take a look and share your own fitness goals. Let’s #GetFit together!

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How to Start Training like a Triathlete? Ram Iyer | GetFit | Fitness Podcast | DASAR November 12, 2021 Darshan Doshi 29:16 0 Comments

What does it take to become a triathlete? Is triathlon reserved for only a special few or can everyone train and achieve peak fitness? In this podcast, Ram Iyer -- a triathlete and a management consultant -- shares how he started training for triathlons, what his day-to-day routine looks like, what nutrition and sleep habits he follows, and how he chooses fitness goals. Take a look and share your own fitness goals. Let’s #GetFit together!

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https://youtu.be/qkThQw8_cVQ Transcript [00:00:00] Darshan Doshi: Welcome back to DASAR. As a part of our fitness series today, I have an incredible guest with me Ram Iyer. Ram, welcome to DASAR. So let me give a quick overview of Ram. Ram is someone who is in extreme fitness, in swimming, running, trekking, yoga, meditation, and more. And what we are going to do in this podcast is I'm trying to understand or get in his mind to understand why does he do what he does, which is train seven days a week. And those extreme fitness goals. Why does he want a goal? How does he approach his training? How does he build accountability? How does he make his fitness routine over the years. So let's begin. Ram let's first, my first question to you is, what is your fitness routine today? You've done a lot of marathons. You've done trekking. You've done, I know you do a lot of swimming. So maybe how would you define your fitness routine? [00:01:24] Ram iyer: Currently, the focus is on getting to a BQ, Boston Qualifier. So for my age group, I need to get to a 320- ish full marathon. Right now I'm at 340. I need to cut 20. So the last six months I've joined a coaching program, which gives me a very structured program saying so much mileage, so much pace, and he defines it and he has delivered. I mean, Atul Godbole has delivered a lot, and I think he has set out the first sub three marathoners in Pune. So I said, hey, that's a good guy to go. And then also, as we discussed earlier, a lot of it is whom you train with. I need to enjoy whom I am running with. Because you are in a zone of semi pain, it's what I call sweet pain. But that sweet pain also has to be with people whom you like being with. You can't run with someone just because a person is running fast. And over the last few months I discovered that hey there are a few people whom I like running with, and that helps. So BQ is the target. Triathlon wise, I would try to get to a half iron man in five and a half hours. Once that goal is about 546-ish right now. So the next two years I would like to get to a five and a half. If that happens, then I will move to a full iron man. In short, I would like to get to a sub 12 iron man. I don't want to do a nine, because at 54 there'snot too much of time. You could save and keep doing iron mans as we discussed. It's also that if you have to do an iron man, six months of your year is gone. Every weekend, pretty much, it's all devoted to that sub 12 iron mine target. And that means my trekking will go for a toss. My music will go for a toss. I don't want to compromise on all this. Can I get as much as possible within this program? So most of my programs are like three-year programs, five-year programs. So this year I'm focusing on two things in 2021 and 2022. I want to get two or three 15 marathon. And I want to get to a point. I don't. I learned swimming very late in life from the age of 16 to the age of 40, 44, I would go to every other swimming coach, never managed. At 44, luckily Walavalkar Sir at Law College, which is just below the tekdi. So I loved that space. You liked the teacher and you liked the whole ambiance. So that helped me learn swimming. It took me like, kids learned swimming in like three weeks, four weeks. I took 12 weeks to do breaststroke, it's the simplest of all the strokes. But then I managed and then, but even then he said, this is not good enough if you want to do a sub-12 iron man, because you have to keep your legs fresh. And coordinating the body at that point, as age goes by becomes a challenge. So for the last six months I been learning what Walavalkar Sir calls the ocean Swimming. So you have you get the angles perfect. He keeps saying that, "Change this angle". He wants an angle at 45, not 40 not 50. So just that and he keeps going back and forth. And it's like you're saying why? And three, four times in the last six months, why am I doing this? But yes, I want to swim from Elephanta to Gateway of India these are like, I mean, not next year, but maybe three years down. And I would like to do that. Because I have very, very close friends who do that. I'm like, this sounds interesting. I mean, I have a very close friend who is 65, he did the Channel swim. I can't do the Channel swim, but Elephanta to Gateway in India is not a bad deal or Alibag to Mud Island, something, one of those 20k things, perpetually to get a very efficient swimming thing. So this year, and next year is pretty much going to be swimming and getting it back, getting my running technique back and getting the routine perfect. The year after I have to join a running, cycling coach and say, okay, I'll clean up my cycling because right now I can do a 30 kmph average over three-four hours. But if I want to do a triathlon in 30-32 kmph, that means that a year of training. So, you know, you get your swimming. And so this year swimming, cycling is pretty much like 100K in weekdays, 100k in weekends. So it's 800 K a month of cycling, but it's all in the maintenance mode. I really don't do intervals. I don't do stuff like that. So it's like my, so something called VO2, which we all comes and say. So my cycling VO2 is stuck at 56 for the last five years or four years that's since I've been monitoring it. My running VO2 has been, it started at 52. I'm like, it falls at times, but now I'm like 58. And then, I mean, I guess by the time I hit a BQ, I should get to 61. But one doesn't know one hopes it happens and every time it drops one you feel happy. It's like, that's a elation. That's a, that's the score card. Hey, Bob my VO2 raised or whatever. So these two years are going to be mainly for getting my swimming right, the freestyle and the running to a point that I can say, yes, I can comfortably do a five pace, easy, done is five. And so they are, I've been lucky that for whatever reason physiologically or what all, my heart, resting heart rate is really low. So on any given day, I'm talking to you, my pulse must be like 50 or something. I, at night it goes to 35, 36 and nothing happens. It's like somebody testing is always 40, 50. So even if I'm doing by 540, 550 running things, 20k, I think I should be able to get to a sub to half marathon with a 120 zone too. That's my, one of my targets. I mean, in spite of my experts, that's one of the targets that I have. Can I really keep going at zone two for a longer time and maybe on the next three, four years, these are all very cheap thrill kind of goals. It's really that. I don't think they are real. I mean, a true athlete won't come and say, Hey, this is a fantastic goal to have. This is like, oh. And I like the idea of being able to zone into a run and keep going. And then yet keep, not keep your heart too high. [00:07:11] Darshan Doshi: But, you know, I love the clarity of your goals, clarity with which you measure and do the measurements. I also hear a lot of competitiveness. Like, this is what I want. This is what I want to do. And you know, this is what I'm going to do over the next two years, three years, five years. Right. So having a long-term view. But my question to you is what all have you done previously? Because now you've said you want to do Boston marathon, which is amazing, one of the best ones out there. Previously you've done a lot of treks. You've done a lot of marathons. Maybe you can share a few things which you've done. [00:07:47] Ram iyer: My first half marathon, about five years back, 2016 Hyderabad. I wanted to do it in sub two, just for the sake of it. Unfortunately it became 2 or 6 level, very disappointed. So luckily, I mean, three years later, I did my first Bombay marathon in 348-49. So I was like, I mean, I know it's my training partner and we get really close. We targeted 350 and we got to 349 or something. So I think as a person, as an investor, as an ex investment banker numbers mean a lot. I measure the numbers and say, okay, the number have gone up or down. And I monitor them very closely. So I've done three marathons. It's not really too much, but I've gone slowly up. Six years back, I would run from one end of the university to the other. That's all I have done. Then , from 1.6 kilometers I moved to a 10 K. So my last, my first 10 kprbm was 2015 October. And one of my beloved teachers said that Ram, now this is 10 years old, and she said, Ram , do you remember I overtook you on the last kilometer? And then now I'm like ahead, but it's nice. I mean, she's a dear friend today and So, yeah, we have done. Half marathons are very easy for me. I don't really think too much, I mean about doing a half marathon, but then yet I've yet not reached the hundred-minute, half marathon limit. I'm yet stuck in the 145, it is a whole thing about all this. It's never a straight line it's back and forth, back and forth. And it's also about step function. You are like meandering for a long time, along a particular thing suddenly, and there's no particular reason why the boost happened. And then you boost. And then, ah, now you're five minutes less. And then again, you, you remain there for a long time. You can't say, you know, as one of my coach says, fitness doesn't happen. Sorry, fitness actually happens to you. You can't decide that I'll go, you could do all the things you could sleep well, and you could eat well, you could do the strength training. You could do the yoga for stretching, but you can measure the goals and say, this is the goal I want to reach, but there's no guarantee that you'll reach the goal today or tomorrow or yesterday. You have to be so because the body reacts differently, there are so many factors external. So you have to go with the flow again and again, and then the only thing you can manage is what you are aware of. What enables the flow or does it enable the flow. So I've discovered that running with people whom I enjoy makes a lot of sense. So, I mean, the people like after the swimming pool, we all hang around and chat. I mean , lot of times I keep saying, you can't put two hours and then you, you're away for five hours. What happens? Large part after the run, even a training run both in an hour and a half after breakfast and partially it's about running and running stats or whatever, but a whole bunch of it is about bitching and pampering. Yeah, so it's, whether the trekking, or the running or the triathlon training, at least for me, if I don't like the people I'm with, I don't, I switch off, I walk away. Not because they are good or bad, but didn't work. So, yeah. [00:10:46] Darshan Doshi: So this is great. Now let's break down how your typical seven-day looks like because you shared this earlier with me. But for the benefit of the audience members, can you break down how many days, how many times a day, what kind of exercise routine do you follow? [00:11:06] Ram iyer: The running coach has given me a four. I said four days is all I can do. So he said Tuesday is a particular kind of an interval run. So he makes my score run up the hill or it makes us do fast intervals. So running, I mean earlier I would just do random. Like today. I felt like running around, but that I realized is not taking me too far. I'm not aiming to hit the goals to sustain them. One needs to be able to hit the goal, because you keep training, the body benefits. But they don't sustain the goal. Afterwards you're back because there's a certain structure. And so that's our advantage of going to a good running coach. He looks at it from a six month, nine month program. So I told him, Atul, for the next year, year and a half take me to a BQ. So I think broadly it's factored as that. So, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday are my running days, one and that's in the morning. That's always, I prefer in the morning, but only if I let's say I'm work stuck .I have been having an early morning meeting and early morning flights are not happening these days. But if that happened, I would ensure that, I mean, as he says, don't miss the alarm or the, unless you absolutely have to. I mean, unavoidable it happens, but I don't miss it. I mean, and he also is particular about what pace. He doesn't want me to, if he says 5:30 to 5:40, you have to stick to that. You do 5:10, and he says, why, why are you doing this? What are you achieving? To a point where he will come and give you a very caustic comment so you're like, okay, you know, you don't. And it's very funny because he's, while younger at a certain level is like a school teacher grading you. And then you, you look for that. He has something on final search or a fitness or something, some FS program where he marks you, you record your workout. And then he gives comments after two weeks, it's like, and he gives good work, not good, everything. And some of his comments are really caustic and some of them are good. So it's like receiving a report card. Anyway, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the tempo down. So he makes us run a specified, not a long distance, but short run. Most of these workouts are an hour or an hour and a half. Third is a Saturday is an easy run, so it's like, you can just go, very easy. So your heart rate is not supposed to go beyond zone 2 or zone 1. Some days along, but I'm just preparing some days along right now because I'm supposed to be preparing for a marathon. So four days a week, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday are my running days. Monday, we go to a lake near Pune and we swim. It's supposed to be easy and also sort of friends outing. It's a nice way to start the week, because Sunday is heavy. So Monday it gives me that. Wednesday I have yoga, the Iyengar Institute, unfortunately, it's online, but I mean, they're good. [00:13:31] Darshan Doshi: Hopefully we'll be back. [00:13:34] Ram iyer: Friday, friday is good. I mean, I love trekking. I mean, it's my, all my group says we, we love running, we like triathlon, but the primary love is the mountains. The primary love is like just walking quietly through the forest and soaking it in. So Friday morning is a Sinhagad workout. So that's, and that's one day I don't even have to, that's the only day I don't need an alarm. I think my body says that, Hey, you're going to the hill. So 3:30, 3:45 I'm up irrespective, irrespective of whether I slept at 10 o' clock or I slept at 2 o'clock. I can wake up at 3:30. That's the only day. All other days, you never know, even for a run or a cycle, I'll enjoy, but it's not the same. Sinhagad, body says off you get, get up and go. So 4:45 we are out, 5:30 we are up there and that'd be a whole bunch of us, very close friends. So all of us have different paces. So I do it in 30, 32 odd minutes. Somebody does it in 15 minutes. So, so no point in just hanging out there. So I do that go up and then come back down to them and then we go up and then the coming back, the last stretch is a pure bitching thing. Like we take our own sweet time, we sit and talk about it. The car rides from home to the Gadh is of absolute delight, we all pick up on what's going on in our lives. And it's it's very easy. That's the whole, so it's not only about the trekking or the running or anything. It's the social life for me. I mean, I enjoy working out with people and then we all compare and it's a lot. It's all but the competition, at least in my group has been very, very kind, I mean, there's a, there's actually a group called 'Roasting Ram' because they bitch about what I did bad. But, but at the same time, it's all like pushing happens in a very gentle fashion. We all are interested in like the next person doing better. So it's like, one of my dear friend Sanjana, you know, she's like 55, but from 55, she's come to 50. And it's a, it's a point of achievement and she's not a, not, he's not a morning person, but she manages. And the joy of that one of our friends does it. And then the journey. [00:15:33] Darshan Doshi: Yeah. Yeah. That's brilliant. Yeah. You talked about waking up at 3:30-4:00 in the morning and also one day a week at what does the typical routine look like? Because recovery, your sleep is a big factor. [00:15:46] Ram iyer: I crash by 9:00-9:30. 9 o'clock I start zoning out, 10 I'm mostly fast asleep. Luckily I'm lucky that I don't need much time to sleep, I can have a strong cup of black coffee at 9:00 and sleep at 9:05. I'm lucky that way. I also take power naps in the middle of the day. [00:16:04] Darshan Doshi: And then from a nutrition standpoint through the day? [00:16:08] Ram iyer: I eat small meals, somewhere along I don't know, 15, 20 years back, no meal is larger than the palm of my hand, irrespective of what it is. I mean, some are some are salads, fruits salad, vegetable salad, but broadly even like dal chawal, it's all homemade. I rarely eat out. I'm very picky regarding who's house I have eaten or which restaurants I go to and you know, what have they done? Because you can't, you know, it's. Yeah, but this is the kind. So I eat like six, seven meals a day, every two hours. I was diabetic. I was peak-diabetic. I mean, the H1 number was like really obscene, which is what started the whole process because it was really bad. And I said, I can't do the incident. [00:16:47] Darshan Doshi: So when was this? What age was this? How did it start? What did, what all did you do? [00:16:54] Ram iyer: 40 I got all the osteopetrosis, hypertension, blood pressure, diabetes, everything, all genetic. My lifestyle may not have been the most healthy one, but it was not bad by an sense. So my weight has been constant. When I passed out of business school was like 80 and 25 years later, it was 80. It would go down by half a kg, it would go up by half a kg, but the metabolism was never an issue, but you get all these diseases, you get there. And I said, I can't do the medicines. Medicines, won't accept with me. So it's like, then they said, stop. My acupressure guy said that I said that I had a bad accident somewhere, bike accident. And then I fell on my back and the knees, I was taking acupressure because surgery was risky. And I said, I don't want to do all these medicines. What do I do? And he says, sweat, half an hour in the morning, sweat half an hour in the evening, daily seven days a week. It doesn't really matter what, how, intensity. So I started with walks. I mean, I. Home to the front gate of the university was 3.8 kilometers. So I would walk back and forth briskly in the evening after work, then the walk became a run, jog run. So it was a very slow process. I've been very kind to myself as far as a journey is considered. Like for example, one of the things my cycling has not been that fast was like, I had a friend of mine who said, let's do a cycle. I would do 10-15 peacefully. He made me do a 40 which is okay. Next day, next week he'd make me do a hundred. I was like really? And then the weekend after it ended up being a BRM, they have this 200 kilometer thing, which went from Baner to Lavasa to back to Baner, to Lonavla and back it was the early obscene. And I did it. I did it in 10 hours, but I did not enjoy it, which is when you realize that you know what you need to be kind to your body. And what is the threshold of sweet pain the body will take? And then I'm usually very aware of what's going on from the sweet pain point. Okay. This is my limit. I'll push it to this, so I dropped out of cycling for a very long time. Then much later I discovered that hey you know what I liked short sprints. I want to do 30 k, 30 kilometers fast. That's what I enjoy. 30 can become a hundred, but it has to happen at a gradual pace. So, I mean, one of my friends was doing a training for iron man. So I would go on training with him. So we did 30, 45. There's some cycle athletic insights, but they actually say that from week one to week two, month to month, don't increase your volume by more than 10%. So you start getting all these insights and I have very close friends who do a lot of research of like, what happens when you do a fast plan? What happens when you do a slow run? How does the cells break down? I mean, I, to be very honest, I don't go into the research of like, what's exactly happening, but they say, okay, what is the result? What am I supposed to do. And Shubhankar will come and say that, yes, this is what you're supposed to do. I'm like yes, I'll take this. So you constantly receive all these people who've been doing it and they do it. They do it very, very sincerely. So, yeah, my, so that, that's what helps in terms of the training concern. And I kind of measure my load and don't push overboard. [00:19:51] Darshan Doshi: I really like the concept of, you know, the point of sweet pain because you got to enjoy it, but not get it to the point where you're gonna, you know, not do that ever again. Right. You want to gradually build it up. And I see that in myself over the last two years, I'm very early in my journey. It's just been two years of fitness. Yeah. So and then what are your approach off, you know, fitness today? How are you thinking about it going forward? What are some of the things that inspired you? What are some of the people that inspire you towards your own fitness journey? [00:20:24] Ram iyer: Inspire, I don't really, I mean I look at people whom I can relate to,. so I've known people in my own running group, for example Vishwas, he is in his late thirties. He's been almost all three marathon and I've seen him over the last journey. He says his first half marathon was eight years back back. So I've seen people improving delta delta over a slow period . And that they are the ones who inspire me. I mean I have very close friends who can you know climb up the wall very fast so, that's a nice thing. So inspiration are from people whom I know personally, so you relate to them on a personal level, they are the inspirational people. Pune luckily, the advantage of Pune is that there are people who you know who have made the transition from a slow runner to a fast runner and they have a certain approach. There is a guy who makes a point to stretch 20 minutes after every run. I don't do 20 but I remember after having a run I should stretch so not 20 but atleast I should do 10. So all my closest friends much younger, they all are fascinated by the triathlon journey. So then I kind of helped them through that. I made them. So when they come around Saturday morning , I make them stretch because I got into the bad habits, you all don't do the bad habits. Like when you're running, you would think, so every 30 minutes, 300 meters I would say can you all loosen out your fingers? Can you get, you do a spot check on the body? So the habits which I got wrong, I try to ensure that please ensure that you don't do those things. You set the good habits, you will move faster. And one of the pitfall of this kind of journey because you are putting the body through a degree of stress is injuries. And sometimes injuries can take you back a long way. How do you ensure that injuries don't happen? And what about it, you go up the Himalayas, you are going to fall, and three years back I fell and somebody had to jack me off from the shoulder, I didn't have an option. And for a year and a half I couldn't do a handstand at all. Well then that's part of the game, but then you have to ensure that you stretch, so the yoga and the strengthening has happen, whether you like it or not. People say, how can I go to the gym, everyone is very young, it doesn't really matter. You just go, you just go for your sake. Okay, you have lots of money, get a personal trainer to do it at home. But ensure that it's not only the triathlon. Along with the triathlon there is a whole bunch of other, the strengthening has to happen, the stretching has to happen, the sleep has to happen, for example the body as it ages it requires your care, for example, some small, thing like a folic acid tablet, so there is a random iron test that is lower than expected so that one folic acid thing made so much of a difference. There is one tablet which I pick up, the lactic acid concentration becomes low. So you all, the advantage today is that there are a lot of tests which are possible, sensible tests. which will tell you what's going off. but now for example, if they say I want to go from a 350 m, not 350 yet , 330m if I want to go to a sub three marathon for the next three years I have to drop all processed white sugar. It's not going to happen in a hurry, but I know that that's what happened. So like, 5 years back I started dropping off cola, so there's cola. In Pune, in its summer, I would come back from wherever, I would drink fanta. I stopped doing that. So next step is sugar, I mean I love but you don't have an option, you have to do it. I love all that, cream roll, you know Vijay Bakery, but not I can't eat any of that. The body also changes. [00:24:15] Darshan Doshi: So that was really good. Now, someone who's kind of getting started in their fitness journey at DASAR, you know, fitness is a very important or health is a very important aspect of our lives and focus at DASAR. And so we've created a 90 day GetFit program, you know, for people who want to get into a routine of doing three to four workout sessions, exercise sessions. And so it's not about a six pack abs. It's not about, you know, doing the iron man or running a marathon at whatever pace it's just, you know, let's just get started, be at it, enjoy it, get into that flow. And so for this kind of an audience who may or may not be at peak fitness or want to get into a routine, what would you advise them? [00:25:07] Ram iyer: Very simple, you could just say you know at the end of the day do things and go to say did I get my half hour, one hour, or whatever and it has to get kicked off, but then you see 10 o'clock at night when you have not done your half enough do that. Because anyway if you are not very fit or not very focused, you have to sleep and get up at 6 o'clock or 8 o'clock, doesn't make a difference. So 10 o'clock go do your exercise. Do whatever is necessary. Maybe have a shower. For example, I discovered that for my evening workouts, before the workout, I had a good hot shower. That helps me freshen up to do that. So see what works because every body is different as you grew older or the body gets into bad habits. What, will give you that burn up? Maybe a hot cup of coffee, maybe , whatever works for you. Maybe a gel, for me gel works, a good packing based gel, so what works for you to give you that push, which is to get you that. After three months you drop off, you don't need that because the body gets used to that. For example, if I don't run three days in a row, third day at night my body says no you have not done it, so at 9:30 I go for it, and Pune is a reasonably safe place, but at reasonably nice places you can run. So you can go on a half an hour or if the body says more, then more. I mean, now I don't do that because my coach will not like it, but the fact remains that at this point in time, you need to get into the discipline of half an hour, 20 minutes, nobody has, nobody's that busy, that 30 minutes is not possible, but then you do 30 minutes from the point of view of exercise, not like I have to run this long, so I will club along something like that. Focus on the exercise so that, you know, the body also knows that you are going to put it through a degree of endurance or pushing off limits. Comfort zones don't work. You are in the comfort zone, remain there as you grow older or though as you go, you will be like, you want to go anywhere, run twice as hard. You have to run hard just be where you are. So you have to factor that if you don't, if you don't have goals and say, okay, can I walk 5k, can I walk 8K, can I walk 10K, you know very small, delta goals. That 30 minutes, 30 minutes itself is a long goal, but there are friends who have moved that. So 30 minutes its like now they come and say 15 minutes of jogging and 15 minutes of walking. Its a long way. You have to start small. and overtime if you go 90 minutes at DASAR program, it's a good program [00:27:43] Darshan Doshi: Oh no, its a 90 days program but about 45 minutes per session is what we are doing. Okay. [00:27:47] Ram iyer: Yeah, I already saw stuff. Because more than 30 minutes, you know, one of my earliest coaches said if you want to run, run for 24 minutes, he said 24 minutes is some magic, muscle memory number. So he said, if you run 18 minutes, it doesn't count 24 minutes is just some magic number that the body registers it. Okay, so I do the 24, 48, 72, that kind of thing. I don't know if there's a particular logic to it but it seems to work for me and the memory works better actually. [00:28:20] Darshan Doshi: Sure. Brilliant. So this has been an awesome podcast. Thanks a lot. You know, the numbers, the variety, the types of fitness, you know, trekking, yoga, strength training, Gym, running ultramarathon, all of this. So this has been an awesome podcast. Thanks a lot for coming on DASAR, Ram. Hopefully we can bring you back with your friends and maybe we could even have a group discussion on how everyone looks at it. Maybe a little bit of that you're talking about as well. So this has been fantastic. You know as a part of the fitness series. We are bringing in people who are working professionals, who are athletes, who are trainers, who are coaches, who are nutritionists. What we are trying to do is bring to you people with experience and expertise who are going to share and make it simple for people like us to consume and apply. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Do take a look at GetFit program if you're interested in in getting fit and building a routine. And I'll see you soon. Thanks a lot. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to:

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https://youtu.be/mbcA82rl1Vk Transcript [00:00:00] Darshan Doshi: Welcome to DASAR. We are launching a new series on fitness. Fitness, which is for common people, working people, moms and dads, youngsters, people who are working in various companies and different roles. And what we are going to do in this fitness series is really decode, how do we get into a routine? What are the benefits of doing fitness? And just, how do you get in the habit of building a fitness routine day after day, week over week, year over year. As a part of this fitness series, I've invited Gireendra Kasmalkar. Giri is an entrepreneur and an investor. Most importantly, we are going to decode, how has he built his fitness routine over the years? So while we can talk about entrepreneurship, we can talk about investments. We are not going to talk about it, and we're going to focus on his fitness routine and what got him started. And why does he continue doing what he does? A quick introduction of Giri. He is the lead investor and managing partner at Pentathlon Ventures, which is a SaaS focused venture capital fund based out of Pune. And second, he's also the founder of Ideas to Impacts. A quick overview of what we are going to talk in this podcast. We are going to decode what got Giri started in his fitness journey? What is the routine that he follows? Why did he start? What does he do on a day-to-day basis and how does he keep it simple? So Giri, I've given a quick overview of who you are, first of all, welcome to DASAR, an absolute pleasure to have you here. We'd love to hear any thoughts that you have at this point. [00:02:00] Giri: Thank you so much Darshan. Basically I think that I would do anything to come on your show, so it's not investment and the other things that I typically talk about, I'll talk about fitness today. To be honest, this is the first time I'm going to talk, will be talking about fitness. And I think your audience might be wondering why is this guy going to talk about fitness? So I recently had my 56th birthday. And I made a '56 till now' poster for myself and shared it with my hostel mates on the WhatsApp group. So maybe that photo, or that poster, maybe a better introduction. So I'm putting it up now. [00:02:38] Darshan Doshi: Fantastic. It's amazing, you know, 56 years old you're fit as you have ever been. I think that's a fantastic thing for most people to look up to. Before we get into the fitness, what routine you follow and what is it that you do on a day to day basis or a week by week basis, I want to learn about what got you started into fitness. How long ago was it? What has been your fitness journey so far? [00:03:06] Giri: Sure. It started in the childhood. I went to Dyanprabodhini, it's a famous school out of Pune. And there, the school includes not only the classes during the day, but the sports in the evening. And I think that's what got me started. So every day in the evening, two hours, we were going to play something or the other on the ground. And although the focus was not so much on specializing in any particular sport, we really got into fitness. I think that's what it got started. So yes, there was, of course, interschool competitions. And I remember representing the school in Kho Kho, for example, I used to run and then that carried over to when I went to college in IIT Bombay. There also, in fact, we started Kho Kho and I was a representing IIT Bombay in Kho Kho. One more interesting thing, in IIT, I also represented IIT Bombay in gymnastics . And gymnastics is a tough sport, but I got into gymnastics because I had some flexibility problems, actually. So to be honest, it was, I wouldn't say that I was a talent in sports or something like that. I was more of a trier. And that's what continued. So when I went to the U S for example, I actually took courses in swimming, in the first one semester took a course in swimming and learnt swimming. In the second semester, I took a course in weight training. And these were of course audit courses because I was a master's student, but these are the kinds of courses that got me into these kinds of fitness routines that I have today. [00:04:26] Darshan Doshi: So I know you've done a few marathons in your life and we'll get to how to remain injury free, but you're running a venture, you're running a venture capital fund. I'm sure you're having like 10, 15 hour days, six days a week, maybe even seven days a week. So as our working professional, how do you, how do you continue to remain fit? What is the routine? Because when we were children and when we were in school, I think most people enjoy playing some sport or the other. It's when you graduate, then that fitness routine kind of tanks. So how, how have you managed to continue doing that? [00:05:10] Giri: I'll actually start from the college, like you mentioned in the college and school, of course you have the time. When I came back to India in 89, I continued with the gym routine because I had started learning on the gym part. So that was also finding some part of the week to-do or some part of the day to-do, go to the gym and do it. And so there are different focuses that I have had, we'll talk about one by one. So when I was doing the gym, it was more focused on the strength part of it, as, you know, strength is the one aspect that we are trying to build and I was younger then, so that was important. Then I started to run into your point about marathon. So it was slightly later, then I started running at long distances and marathons, and that is where the stamina part became important. And so for marathon now you're trying to run 42 kilometers and there you have to practice. And there because of the business and the routine I used to get only on Saturday, or weekends that I could run because I used to run regularly about 10 kilometers. But before the marathon, you have to ramp it up right. For three hours upto three hours you have to run. So that time I could find on Sundays. So this time management thing that you're asking about, so for the marathon running, I was only using Sundays to slowly ramp up my run up to about 30 kilometers. And then I would go for the marathon. So that is how I managed that time. Now of course it is a different routine, and I'm more focused on flexibility than strength and stamina. All the elements are there, but more focused on flexibility. And now I find it that I have to do it at a certain time of the day, in the morning. And that's six days a week. I'll talk about my routine shortly, but that's how I manage the time, but I have to do it in the morning. Once the day starts, then you're gone, in the afternoon evening, you're not going to be able to get time. At least my in my case, I know that you are doing in the evening. I have to do it first thing in the morning. [00:06:55] Darshan Doshi: Yeah. So let's get to it. How many marathons have you done? And have you had any injuries or have you been fortunate to remain injury-free? [00:07:06] Giri: I have done three marathons. So luckily Pune has an international marathon. And so I did one in 91 and the second one in 92 and third one in 97. My best time was actually in 97, 4 hours, 31 minutes. And even more satisfying in that run was that it's a 42 kilometer run . I did every 14 kilometers, exactly in 1.5 hours. So it was a very steady pace that I could set for myself. That was very, very satisfying. And I did continue to run after that for about 3-4 years . I think I was running until about 2002 or something, but interesting thing, what I found out was that there were many friends also I knew who were also running marathons. The guy that got me to marathon was also a batchmate from IIT Bombay, and he has done like hundreds of marathons. One thing I noticed is that everybody who's stopping marathons, running of marathons is because of some injury or the other. And that I did not want, neither from the fitness perspective or from the work perspective, you're trying to run a business. You are not wanting to deal with some kind of an injury or so on. So that is where I said that, let me not get into any injury and then stop running. And then around 2002 or something I stopped running before I got any injury. [00:08:21] Darshan Doshi: I think that's an important part. When I work with my trainer, Ashesh Chandran, we, the number one criteria is remain injury free. I haven't been exercising for so many years as what you've been saying. I've just been, I just completed two years in August. But we remain injury free so far. So I, I definitely understand why, you know, stopping running is, is important. Now let's get into your routine. What do you do today or on a weekly basis, what have you been following? And can you go as much in depth as you can? [00:08:55] Giri: Okay. So I talked about stopping running in 2002. And then for three or four years, that was also, the time I got into solo entrepreneurship. So it was a very, very heavy workload. And for three or four years, I did not do anything to be honest. And then my weight crossed 70 kilos and I was, since childhood, I've been a very small, weak, hardly sporty kind of a guy. And so that kind of was an alarm for me. And then that is where I started the routine. So the routine that I have is now, now for fourteen years, it's six days a week. I alternate those days for upper body and lower body. It's not more than 40 minutes at the most. If I do fast, I can do it in 25 to 30 minutes. If I do it a little slowly, taking more gaps between different exercises, it could go 40 to 45 minutes, but six days a week. In fact, if I miss anything, I use Sunday as my makeup day. And so I have not missed many. So this is how I've been doing. What are the exercises that I do? Well for the upper body, it's mainly the pushups, the crunches, and so on. There are four different types of crunches that I do. Three different kinds of pushups and alternate them. So there are what, a hundred plus push-ups that I do and a hundred plus crunches that I do in sets of say 30 plus each of push-ups and twenty-five plus each of crunches. And that is what I do for the upper body. And then for the lower body, the next day, it is more of lunges, squats, arches. I also do cycling and skipping. So that's the lower body exercise. So this is what I've been following for the last 14 years. [00:10:33] Darshan Doshi: Brilliant. And so, you've been doing this consistently. I'm actually equally curious that those who are, people who follow a strict fitness routine and are extremely fit, are also good at fixing different parts of their life, including career, family your wellbeing overall. So how has this fitness routine helped you in your various ventures, in your investment, you know, funds, anything that comes to your mind? [00:11:05] Giri: Yeah, sure. You, you talk about the discipline part. I don't know what is the cause and what is the effect? If it's a fitness brings in the discipline or discipline brings in the fitness? However there are obvious things that everybody knows about that fitness will give you more energy to work with. So you don't feel tired. I don't feel tired at all so that you are alive. You can put up long hours and that helps you at work as well as at, at home as well, that you are able to do multiple things that you want to do. Ultimately, why do you want to be fit? You want to do the things that you want to enjoy. Somebody was asking me, you want to live a long life. I said, that is not in our hands, but whatever life we live, we should be able to do things that we want to do. So that, fitness allows, allows you to do. However, two more subtle things that I will talk about. One of the things I should mention that if, if you look at my routine, it is all done solo, right? So I, I don't like dependencies. In fact, that is one of the things that has helped me sustain this routine. I've travelled a lot for business, not in the COVID period, but before that travelled a lot. So how do you maintain this kind of a routine when you're travelling, for example? So I, the routine that I mentioned to you can be done in my, the room of my house. Or if I go to travelling, it can be done in the room of my hotel, the only thing that I do outdoors is cycling. And so at hotel you'll find a biking machine and do that. So because of removal of all this dependence of needing a partner or a trainer or a machine or something like that, I think that was one big reason that I'm able to keep up with this routine. Very interestingly one of the things that you talked about maintaining this routine, the hardest thing is to get started. How do you get started on this routine? So I started, like I said, on a, in 2007, it was on my birthday, 7/7/07 was the date, I remember it very distinctly that's when I started. But even before that, what? 14 days. So 23rd June is when I started preparing myself to get into this routine. And one hack that really helped me to get started was not to touch your laptop before you have done your exercises. That absolutely was the game changer. So if you put that rule in place, because otherwise what happens once you start getting into emails, the day's gone, you don't know when the day ends. So if you do put this rule in, and to be honest today, I don't know that need this rule. Today, the routine has become very, quite common and you don't need that, but initially it was quite important. [00:13:37] Darshan Doshi: Consciously you had to kind of focus on that. [00:13:39] Giri: Yes, yes, yes. So that is how the routine was started. And that is how I'm maintaining the routine during my travel and so on. So today also I do it in the morning. Because again the same rule, but I don't have to not watch my mails. Today what has happened is if not laptop, there is a phone and phone is always besides you. So you are going to look at the phone and so on, but today it is such a habit that you will feel bad if you don't do it. So I don't need this kind of, so that's how, I have managed to continue. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Myth Busting: Personal Finance is Easier Than You Think | Darshan Doshi | Managing Money | Wealth | DASAR Podcast * Experience Design (XD): How to Create Experiences That Transform People | Garrett Gatlin | Adeption | Leadership | Learning & Development | Podcast | SaaS * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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[00:14:05] Darshan Doshi: Thanks for that. You know, if I can share my own routine order to get started, when I got started two years ago, I had a simple rule that I asked Ashesh to do. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 6:00 PM, show up at my house. Don't ask me whether I should come, are we doing an exercise or whatever, just show up, I'm not going to say no. And we are going to do the workout that we've said we were going to do. Right. And so that builds the routine. And for me, accountability through a buddy, which is the trainer has really helped me cross that chasm of inconsistency to making it a second nature today. Today I don't need a trainer for me to work out four or five times a week, but the first, forming that habit, takes a good three to six months before you can do. What worked for you, there are different things that work for different people. And just on that note, I'm going to also make one announcement, we've put together a habit forming program called Get Fit, which is at the comfort of your phone and you do three workouts a week. And you have to go through it. It's three months long, 90 days long. So hopefully that will get you the point where it becomes second nature. You also have an accountability, buddy. You have trainers. There is strength training, there's indurance stamina and there's yoga meditation. [00:15:35] Giri: Great. That's fantastic. [00:15:37] Darshan Doshi: We launched that on six October. So let's see how, how that shows up as well. [00:15:41] Giri: I just remembered that you asked the question about how it is helping in business. And so I started on. But digressed a little bit to tell you that I was doing the solo. And the reason for that, I was, I brought up that point was that one of the subtle benefits. That's not very obvious of doing exercises both in your life and in your work is this solo time has become my meditation time. I don't do any meditation separately. So because I'm by myself during that time, it is very easy for me to think about things. And a lot of good ideas have come just when I'm biking or when I'm doing my exercises and so on, because you are just by yourself. So that to me is a big advantage that you can do. And it helps in all the aspects. The second subtle one that I should also mention is that I believe that once, if you're fit, then you are able to handle the stress better and I'll tell you why. See stress is external, it will always come from you from external sources, whether it is work, whatever it is, stress will always come, but how you will reduce the strain that it brings on you is the real question. Right? How do you handle that strain? How does your strain gets reduced? And, from our engineering, that this ratio of stress to strain is called Young's Modulus. So, you may have high stress, but if the strain is little, then the Young's Modulus is better. I believe that fitness increases the Young's Modulus for all of us. [00:17:06] Darshan Doshi: Incredible analogy! [00:17:08] Giri: No, that is true. And I have seen that myself, that in business, almost an unfair advantage, if you can handle stress better than others. [00:17:15] Darshan Doshi: investments also. And your kind of your entrepreneur fitness and investment, you're doing all three. On the investment side, is there anything that kind of sticks out to you as, as being consistent on your fitness? [00:17:32] Giri: Actually , speaking, work-wise, I'm doing only Ideas to Impacts. I don't consider fitness as work. It is something like sometimes people ask me that, you maintaining this routine, doesn't it get boring and all that. So I asked you the question that do you get bored? You get bored of brushing your teeth. You got to do that every day. So this is something like that, that you have to do it every day, which means that it is not part of the work, but what it does come into the investment space is in a way that I always talk to the founders about whether they are keeping fit or not, because that is very important. They can get very carried away with the funding that has happened with the work that has to be done. And these are, you know, some people are young, but some people are also in the thirties and forties and people got to take care of the fitness. And so at least with one founder, I know for sure that, I had this talk specifically that he has to take better care of his fitness. Actually two I can think of now. I specifically advised them and I offered them any help that they might need on the fitness. [00:18:30] Darshan Doshi: Giri, you talked about you brushing teeth. So I'm just curious. I see braces there. What's the what's the idea there? [00:18:39] Giri: No, what I thought was for all the other body parts, you can do exercises. My teeth were crooked. How do you do exercises for your teeth? So I didn't have an answer for that. And you have to go to a orthodontist to correct that. So that's, jokes apart. What actually happened was I have a teenager son. Two or three years back he started his orthodontics treatment. And I had to anyway take him every month to the orthodontist. I was going to sit outside. I said, why not get it done for myself as well. His treatment is over, mine is still going on. [00:19:08] Darshan Doshi: It's easier with the kids right. My nine year old daughters just removed the braces two days ago. So that's good. You've talked about your fitness routine and been solo cycling, but we have some challenges around the weather. Pune is blessed with some good weather but still there are days where it pours or some days you just get up and feel oh, today is a lazy day. So how do you overcome the challenges of weather? [00:19:41] Giri: To be honest, like you said in the last 14 years, the days that I might've missed my cycling because of rain, can be counted on the hand or fingers of one hand. Pune weather is such that no shower lasts for more than 15 minutes, you can always wait it out and then do the cycling. I mean, of course, if you do miss it out, I have skipping and I just do more skipping that day than cycling, but I, I think at least in Pune that should not be an excuse at all. There could be a lot of excuses, but not the Pune weather. [00:20:10] Darshan Doshi: And since you talking about cycling, I know cycles have been out of stock for a very long time. What cycle, what brand of cycle do you use? [00:20:18] Giri: This is going to be embarrassing. I use the cycle, my elder son ditched in his eight standard because he got a geared one. I'm using an ungeared old style cycle. And in fact, that's what I think using better exercise. I would do the cycling on Hills. So instead of a geared one, I actually use a normal cycle. And my exercise is done in 15 to 20 minutes, rather than the hours of cycling that you love to do to do long distance. [00:20:41] Darshan Doshi: Brilliant, and this is why I love this podcast with you because things are simple. Not a lot of fancy stuff, focus on what matters, which is the fitness. Which goes to the next question there is, you talked about injury or remaining injury free, but there is a lot of talk about sickness also. Right? So any experience or thoughts around how exercise has affected? [00:21:11] Giri: Some people do ask me that, that if you're doing this continuously for 14 years, what does that mean? You don't fall sick or something? And I did talk about that makeup day, so if I, I'm not able to do on one day, I'll use Sunday, I've relaxed. So I remember once I, I was not well for a week or so. And then the next subsequent month, I didn't take any break. I just, just doing those exercises on Sundays as well. And for the next month, I didn't have a single break just to make up on Sundays. I have just relaxed a little bit now with age, you've got to give your body a rest. So now I make up only on if I have two days a week or something. So that's the kind of adjustment that I've done. But the interesting point here is I might still do not know, that is it because I don't fall sick that I've been able to do the routine or is it because I'm doing the routine that I don't fall sick. I mean, that cause and effect really needs to be figured out. [00:22:03] Darshan Doshi: But I think it's an important point. Regular fitness, consistency definitely will affect the sickness days. You've also talked about right now fitness goals. We are not going to the Olympics. Our focus, primary focus of the day is to build a business or to invest in startups. And so fitness is a part of life. So what are your fitness goals? And how have they changed over the years? [00:22:36] Giri: To be honest, I'm as a person I'm more journey oriented as I would like to call it rather than goal oriented. And which means in the fitness context, I would say that. I would much, rather, rather than having a goal, like let me get to 60 kgs of weight or something like that or do an iron man or something like that, that my goal is to remain fit. So that's a steady state that you want to achieve rather than a specific goal. In fact, I have a very good quote here from Bill Gates actually. He was saying that if I had set some kind of a finish line for myself, don't you think I would have crossed that long time back? So in fact, sometimes goals could be limiting actually speaking. So if you have a steady state kind of a goal, or that is what I call journey orientation, that's what my intent is. And so that's if you look at whatever I'm doing is towards that what keeps you going is that if you don't do it, you're going to feel worse. So that's what gets me going that that's how the fitness routines maintain. [00:23:36] Darshan Doshi: Brilliant. One of the things that you also mentioned about was sleep and recovery. A third part that I see a lot that I focus on is also nutrition. So sleep recovery, nutrition, any thoughts or experiences around, what is it that you do to manage this? [00:23:54] Giri: On the nutrition front, I can tell you Darshan, I've never in my life done any kind of fast or any kind of diet. I have to thank my wife for this partly I think, at least partly because I basically eat whatever is given to me. And that has kept me healthy. The only limit that I've put on myself is that rice and chapatis. If you reduce that intake, everything else that I know, I eat a lot of vegetable, non-veg, ice cream, sweet dishes, everything, I can eat everything, but if we can control your chapatis to just one chapati and a little bit of rice, I think that is what has kept me kind of healthy. [00:24:31] Darshan Doshi: So that's the nutrition. [00:24:32] Giri: On that front let me also tell you this and this I learned from somewhere. Apparently our brain comes to know that our stomach is full after 20 minutes. Now what does that mean? That means if you keep eating till you're full, that you're already over-full. So you got to stop eating when you're a little bit of half-full, because 20 minutes later, your brain is going to know that. So that is the key. I think that you have to eat little, you can eat everything, but you have to eat little. [00:25:01] Darshan Doshi: And just then on the sleep pattern, how is it that you're managing your recovery? [00:25:07] Giri: On the recovery side, first of all, I said that I do upper body lower body, right? So that 48 hour cycle I'm maintaining anyway. But on the sleep side I have been since a very early days, sleeping for six hours and more and more, I find these days that I set the alarm for six hours, but I'm getting up early. So it's maybe it's because of age that, you know, roughly five and a half hours of sleep is, seems to be sufficient. I don't know. People may not agree, but that is what it is. Right. What, what do you do if you're getting you up early, cannot sleep more. [00:25:35] Darshan Doshi: But as long as you don't feel tired or there is enough energy through the day. For me, that's about seven, seven and a half hours. Some days it's six and a half hours. late. So I think each person is different. Whatever works for you, as long as you wake up fresh and you're good to go for the day. The last part of the podcast, I think I want to talk about working professionals, those who are going in, working, building their business, being a part of a job of a company for these working professionals, what would you suggest? What are the do's and the don'ts from a fitness standpoint? [00:26:16] Giri: So, as I said earlier, regularity is the biggest key. There is nothing else, whatever you do, if you're doing it regularly, it will show. But in terms of don'ts, I would really like to highlight something. A lot of us, you know maybe as our age grows, don't realize that we are not our younger self and we try to compete with others. That I think is a big no-no. You should only try to do yourself, whatever you're doing it for yourself, it doesn't help to compete others. And that's also one of the reasons I don't get into these sports as such for fitness. Because that starts getting competitive. If I have my own routine, then I'm at my own. Even when I'm doing myself, I don't push myself too hard. And that is also, again, I've learned over the age. For example, let's say I'm doing a hundred pushups and it's in the the sets of say 33. And one day, if I'm able to do that, one set will be 31 or something like that. I don't care too much. Don't try to push yourself. What I have realized that if whatever you can do is in a smooth motion, then that's good. If you have to jerk yourself and push yourself to do something, that's not, that's what causes injuries and so on. So that is another, you know that, that I would, I would say. [00:27:21] Darshan Doshi: Brilliant. Okay. I haven't thought about it that way at all. Now. The last question that I have for you of this podcast, is, we've talked about fitness, we've talked about you being an entrepreneur, you being an investor and how it has helped you in your overall life. This is a podcast focused on getting people to just follow a fitness routine, not to go win the Olympics or not to think about building a six-pack. So any last thoughts in terms of, what is it that you'd like to leave for the audience? [00:27:58] Giri: Sure. The way I think about it is this. Exactly for this kind of objective, the journey orientation to remain fit, not to go to Olympics and so on. From that perspective, I think fitness is the easiest life goal to achieve. And why do I say that? It depends on two things, how many calories you consume and how many calories you spend. Both of these things are a hundred percent in your own hands. Nobody can consume calories for you. Nobody can spend calories for you. Now, what does, what does that mean? That means if you consider any other life goal, it is not like that. For any other life goal, whether it is in your home life or business or whatever it is that you're doing, there is always an extraneous factor. There is luck involved. There's somebody else that does something that causes your success or failure. On the other hand, as I showed in the fitness, there is no such thing. So fitness goal should be the easiest to achieve for anybody while we're striving so hard to achieve other goals. The fitness goal should be the easiest for anyone like us to achieve. [00:28:59] Darshan Doshi: But yet it is so difficult, right? Most people are not able to remain fit. And so this has been a fantastic podcast. Thanks again for joining this podcast. I hope you found this useful, what we are trying to do in this fitness podcast series is just to break it down into simple things that you can achieve peak fitness for your own self, not for the others, from and hearing from people who are either building businesses, who are working at a job or those who are actually working with athletes. So we are going to bring you some incredible guests on this podcast, and hopefully you get the benefit out of it. Thanks a lot, Giri. [00:29:42] Giri: Thank you. Great. Being here. Join the waitlist to DASAR Club that offers three habit-forming programs + community of Doers... * Get Financial Freedom Program: This program will take you through actionable steps to start off on the path of financial independence and wealth creation. * Get Sh!t Done Program: This program is for entrepreneurs and professionals what high-performance training is for athletes. * Get Fit Program: Get in the habit of exercising at least 3 times a week on strength training, endurance, yoga and meditation with a personalized nutrition plan and certified coaches.

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Myth Busting: Personal Finance is Easier Than You Think | Darshan Doshi | Money | Wealth | DASAR Podcast October 22, 2021 Darshan Doshi 7:20 0 Comments

There are a lot of myths around personal finance and money management. We haven't been taught about how to manage money in school or many times at home too. But that's no excuse if you aim to achieve financial freedom and achieve your financial goals. Watch this podcast that's part of the Demystifying Personal Finance Podcast Series covering the popular myths in personal finance and how to overcome them.

Know More https://dasar.in/podcast-player/5480/myth-busting-personal-finance-is-easier-than-you-think.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 7:20

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https://youtu.be/T-VzTW1CAJc Transcript [00:00:00] Darshan Doshi: I hope you've enjoyed the personal finance podcast series, it was a lot of encouragement and we have to be very grateful of these experts, the fund managers, Parin Gala, Mandar Mhatre, Jaydeep Doshi, Jaideep Merchant for sharing their insights and expertise and years of experience with us, which now brings me to the culmination of this personal finance podcast series; is myth-busting. Personal finance is easier than you think. Now, if you've grown up in India like me, you probably have had or have been safeguarded by your parents and your family members. When was the last time you went and met your chartered accountant for taxes? May not be your taxes, but your parents' taxes. Did you spend a lot of time in that? Unless you are studying finance or accounts, it's unlikely you ever did that. Shouldn't you have been exposed to how to manage money? Shouldn't you know how to manage money even at the age of 15? I believe we should have, we should have been taught how to manage our own money because money plays a big part in what you have to do over a very, very long period. We are talking about 50, 70 years of your life. So let's break down personal finance, what are some of the myths? The myth is it's very difficult to do. I don't understand finance. I don't understand accounts. I don't know taxation. Well, that reason is simply not good enough. Why? Because all you have to do is read a few books, meet experts, make it a habit to spend about an hour, a week with your chartered accountant or your cousin or your father or your mother who actually knows and has been managing your family you know, taxes. What that will do is you'll get in the habit of just looking at these documents. Even if that means, what has been your family, if there's a family business, the balance sheet, the income statement or just the bank statements. If you are a salaried professional, what is form 16? What are some of the taxes ? How much taxes are you or your family paying each year? Shouldn't you know that? The second part of this is expenses. How much are you actually spending in different categories? How much did you spend last month on hotels or restaurants? Last year how much did you spend traveling? How much have you spent on Amazon or Flipkart last year? Do you know? Do you have that number? Refunds. Let's talk about refunds. Suppose you purchased and you returned things on Amazon. Did you even cross check whether you got all that refund back? Now, these are very simple things. You might say well, this is really silly. But you have to do these things. It's very silly, but it needs to be done. Due attention, needs to be given, which is my very important point. You have to form habits and allocate time to give the necessary attention to manage your finances every week. If you join DASAR club, one of the gain financial independence program, you will go through and you will be forced to be accountable and to spend time on your personal finances each week. If not, you'll be asked to leave that program. So the next part about personal finance, one of the myths is also, I don't know how to make investments. Hopefully this podcast has been helpful, but the only simple way to kind of be better at investing and to grow your money is first to earn more money and then to deploy. Read, or talk to experts, talk to people like Jaydeep Doshi. Read books like the Psychology of Money or The Richest Man in Babylon. These are all books there is enough written material, there are enough podcasts, there are enough people who you can reach out to and really understand whether what would make a sound investment and whether that would make you money and what is the risk involved. So I think that's another part which you need to think about. I talked about taxes, taxes is very important. We end up managing our personal finance only end of the year. And not also end of financial year. In India, your financial year ends on March 31st, but your taxes are going to be filed in September. So almost for 18 months, you've gone through without keeping yourself accountable on how you've been spending or earning or saving or investing money. A stitch in time saves nine. What that means is, if you had money and you had decided that you're going to invest in nifty 50 or any of the index funds, any of the mutual funds on the 7th, on the 20th of every month, X amount of money was supposed to go in. And it does not auto debited. It, you have to do the transaction yourself. Did you do it? Did you put a reminder for it? How did you make sure that you've deployed the capital and made those investments at the right time, because remember compounding is the eighth wonder of the world. If you put X amount of money in SIP's over a 10 year period, even in these index funds, you're probably going to be extremely wealthy and you'll create generational wealth. So I think that's what I'm trying to say. Get in the habit. Focus on the mind and create action plan, create a buddy system, figure out a mechanism to keep yourself accountable on a week by week basis. Just the way, I see a lot of similarities between fitness and investments. In fitness ,if you don't exercise for four days or five days, you can see the effect in the gym on the sixth day. Similarly your finances also, you're going to see the effect if you don't manage your finances regularly, frequently. What you pay attention to will get the right decision making for it. You will start measuring, you will start getting curious about it and you will start spending more time on it. So what I'm encouraging you to do is to spend more time on your finances, because I, for sure believe that, as a society, we might be better by just doing the simple things, the boring things right week on week, so that we have a society, which is much more fulfilled and doing things which are much more meaningful. I hope you found this useful. And I look forward to seeing you the next time. Thank you. If you liked this podcast, you may also want to listen to: * Decoding the Indian Fund Management Industry | Mandar Mhatre | Investing | Personal Finance | Wealth | Stock Market * Gaining Financial Independence | Darshan Doshi | Personal Finance | Financial Freedom | Optionality | Career | Wealth * Why You Should Manage Your Own Money * D2C Brands | Creating #1 Consumer Food Brand | Ravi Nigam | Tasty Bite | IPO | M&A * Building Enterprise Tech Products | Shridhar Shukla | SaaS | kPoint | Video Analytics | Tech Services vs Products | DASAR * Building Billion Dollar SaaS Companies | Monish Darda | ICERTIS | Contract Lifecycle Management | Culture | Bikes

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