The Art Of Investing And Institution Building Ashish Dhawan

TITLE: The Art of Investing & Institution Building | Ashish Dhawan CHANNEL: Exploring Minds DATE: 2026-04-04 ---TRANSCRIPT--- You invested around $8 million in excess bank when it was called UTI. Within 3.5 years, it turned to $333 million. Same you did with Sriam Transport. $28 million went to $266 million in 4 years. Same with Slon. $22 million you put in. You exit at $339 million within 1.5 years. How do you do that? What is one thing that you have read today which will make you a billion dollars? I worry that the world is going through severe churn because you have a rising power in China and you have an established power America and that always leads to conflict. Last 16 incidences when you’ve had a rising power compete with an established power 12 have led to war.

This intent of some developed countries like America of being inward-looking and focusing on their own manufacturing on their own human capital is it a hindrance towards the ambition of India? Our world goods trade is only 1.8%. Which makes no sense for a country that represents 16 to 17% of humanity. Bajage product now dominates in Africa and Latin America and more than half their revenue comes from intern. They can play on the global stage. They’ve beaten the Chinese in these markets. That’s the lesson learned. As an investor, how do you know which company to back? Shall I back Baj or shall I back Ola? Your entire life you did deal making and dealm is about people about negotiation. What was the most complex thing about people and negotiation that you learned later in life the hard way in investing? What I realized is that private equity is pro- cyclical. When markets are good, people want your money. But that’s when valuations are high. When markets crash, the entrepreneurs say to valuation down I don’t want your money. That’s when you want to invest. At least with the public markets, I don’t have to argue with anyone. If some foreign investor is selling a 10% block, I can just buy it. The beauty is fi is dumped when markets are down. Originality is the art of hiding your sources. Do you know who said this? As I always believe, discovery is the art of seeing what everybody else has seen but thinking what no one else has thought. Can we do a small role play? I want to learn how do you convince wealthy people to do two things. Scenario one when you are a 25 year 30-year-old guy with almost no track record to convince someone to trust yourself with their money. Assume that I’m a wealthy person. You have to convince me to give back to Ashoka. How will you do that sir? Do you think sitting in 20 let’s say 45 or 50 what we are saying about the world of early 2000s we will say same thing about 2025 we are in an everything bubble hi everyone I’m your host Shivank and we are part of the 01 network by zerohub together we intend to bring you insights from the top thinkers in the field of entrepreneurship technology and investing So I was in US and I had an opportunity to meet the managing partner of Din family office which is Stanley Draen Mirror and he is an Indian. He said one thing that Stanley used to ask all his people in the office one question often which was what is one thing that you have read today which will make you a billion dollars. I’ll retrieve that question for you because I know that you don’t have fascination about being a billionaire because you’re already one. So what have you read recently which has made you think a lot? Yeah. So I recently read a couple of books I’ll tell you. One is called AI snake oil. So obviously I’m a believer in AI. I believe you need to lean into it. But I think there’s a book written by Princeton professor. Yeah. And it talks about some of the limits of AI like you know people are overestimating the predictive AI for instance and what it’s capable of doing. So it’s an interesting book makes you rethink. Um I um recently also read um a book on by a professor from MIT on China’s sort of governance which is very good. It’s about how China governs itself not only at the central level but at the provincial level, county level, uh how they set targets, how they motivate uh and how they build state capacity, the training that they do in their central leadership institute etc. It is a fascinating book. I think they may have targets about three things work, play and uh number one target this is true even they have about 3,000 counties. So we have 700 plus districts and about 7,000 blocks. So say a county is between a district and a block. It’s a few blocks two three blocks put together and um there that person is like a CEO of the county and the main target is GDP growth and job creation and investment attraction. I think that’s the main and then of course delivery of services to citizens uh because the party wants to make sure that citizens get good services often digitally of course. So those are the main objectives. What have you observed about the world in general and about India very recently and where do you think what’s the direction we are heading locally globally? What are you worried about the most? What are you excited about the most? So I worry that the world is going through severe churn. Okay? Because you have a rising power in China and you have an established power America and that always leads to conflict. Right? Graham Allison has written this wonderful book about the tides trap or whatever I get the name wrong the Greek guy. But basically in the last 16 incidences when you’ve had a rising power compete with an established power 12 have led to war. Now we we have a hot war. The others have led to a cold war, but there’s always been a war. There’s always conflicting. And I think that’s the stage that we’re in. And it’s no longer just about these two. There are also other powers that are rising like India which is a meaningful power. And Russia is still military militarily strong. The EU as a block is reasonably strong. So I think the there’s the pieces on the chessboard are moving quite rapidly. Mhm. It creates opportunity also for India. It creates uncertainty like the tariff uncertainty right now. We don’t know and in the near term some of our labor intensive sectors could get hit and we don’t know whether we’ll be stuck at 50. Hopefully we’ll be down at a much lower rate. But I think the golden opportunity for India is we have been a good actor on the global stage. We have not gone to war unless provoked by our neighbor. We are people when they go abroad are model citizens. They integrate into societies. uh we have been a fair player in terms of global trade uh we have contributed to the world in terms of knowledge services etc. I think we should have the ability to get along with everyone, you know, not necessarily be in the US camp or the China Russia camp or what have you. And I think that ability to navigate, which is what we’re seeing today, will be important going forward. Uh but at the same time, maintaining access to OECD markets because remember, we’re not going to be able to export to China or Russia. It’s going to be very hard. We’re going to be our exports markets are primarily going to be the US, EU and the other angophone countries right and so maintaining access to these having preferential access to FDAs and stuff is going to be really really critical for India and I think we we’ve already seen we have a UK FDA hopefully we’ll get one with the EU it’s imminent the Trump issue will get sorted out so on once it will I think okay so once that happens you know with the UK EU US the major and Canada, Australia already we have something the Middle East I think we’ll have partners across the world with whom we can trade with in a fair manner and and hopefully our trade will increase our goods trade as a percent of world goods trade is only 1.8%. Which makes no sense for a country that represents 16 17% of humanity only as a minimum be at 10%. So we need to get rapidly from 1.8% to 5%. and say in the next decade and then thereafter get to 10% in the next 5 seven years after that. So we need to have an ambitious target around exports because the only way a country can grow fast is not just by accessing its home markets by actually accessing world markets. I mean that’s the example of East Asia. They did well because they were able to export to the rest of the world and access global markets. So I think that’s the opportunity for India. A friendly nation that has a huge labor endowment, extremely capable, now has emerging infrastructure. Hopefully, we will deregulate, make it easier. Hopefully, our industrial policy will be smarter. Hopefully, you’ll be pro business. Mhm. Right. While we’re building human capital so that we can compete with anyone else on the world in the world. And this intent of some developed countries like America of being inward looking and you know focusing on their own manufacturing they’re focusing on their own human capital is it a hindrance towards the ambition of India that you are mentioning sir so firstly it’s a reality that every country looks at its own national interest and America for its own reasons it de-industrialized in a very big way most of that went to China or to automation now wants to reindustrialize and partly ly for strategic reasons. I think they’ve woken up that if they go to war, they can’t even manufacture a ship anymore or even some basic stuff they don’t have access to like you know steel or aluminum or what have you. So part of it is for national security reasons. Part of it is they hope they can create job. I don’t think America can be competitive in labor intensive sectors because they don’t have their labor is very expensive and and they don’t have a large endowment of labor that’s available for these basic jobs. I don’t think Americans want to do these basic jobs. So for India, I don’t see it as as much of a challenge. I mean there are some risks. I think that America will re-industrialize by bringing TSMC there or by getting a steel plant back there or by ensuring that the pharma companies that went to Ireland back to America etc. or car companies that are selling into America build their plants in America. you know as you’ve seen is starting to happen. Those are areas where India is not really exporting to the US. Our play is in generics, in garments, in electronics, in a number of other areas, more labor intensive sectors other than the generics one and with labor intensive I think we only have opportunity because China is the dominant player and that market share should come to us uh versus even Southeast Asia because our competitor will really be Southeast Asia countries like Vietnam, Indonesia etc. So we have an opportunity the world will this manufacturing will move away from China. I don’t think it can be restored back to America the really labor intensive stuff and that should find a home here. Do you think automation is a risk? I hear you that they don’t have labor right and somehow Indians have some solace in doing all this work but what about automation if it comes automation is a risk I I think um a service export for instance uh while the companies say that AI won’t make a major difference and maybe in the near term that’s the case because companies are still deploying AI use cases and they need Indian IT companies to do so but I do worry that either it could shrink we plateaued. I’m talking about in terms of employment not not the dollar revenue because it’s these jobs are very meaningful jobs. Each one creates three to five other jobs in the local economy. It’s a huge knock-on effects with manufacturing also there is a risk of automation. Um I mean we’ve seen it that many sectors are already quite automated. chemical sector or um you know prochemicals uh pharmaceuticals quite automated the manufacturing automobiles but there are many labor intensive sectors so far where there’s a little bit of a finer process not taking a huge sheet metal and slapping it on like in an automative factory but in electronics like Apple where you’re putting lots of components together into a phone so far it’s done by humans could a robot do it someday Okay, possible. I’m not saying not possible. Apple’s a smart company. They’re also ruthless. If they could automate, they would have done it. It just isn’t there today. With garments, it’s the same. If you could automate, it will happen. It is happening on the margin, right? And there’s a risk in 15 years, there may be much more automation. But as I say, while the escalator is running, right? While we have the chance to go from $3,000 per capita income to 10,000 let’s say in the next decade, we must ride this escalator. It is critical for us to ride this escalator. What other jobs are you going to create in Bihar? Labor is so cheap. Let’s be a winner in these labor intensive sector or Urisa or you know eastern India and northern India. So I think it’s very very critical that we succeed in labor intensive manufacturing and that in services also beyond ITVO we are competitive in many other services as well. When I was studying about you, one of the clearcut ability was predicting the high growth sectors that you did in your first leg of career, right? If you’re again 25 years old right now and you understand that to lift people out of poverty to go to the next step, education and job creation are two fundamental co-levers for us as a society, right? How do you identify those high growth sectors? Again, I know that you predicted a lot of things back then. Can you help us by giving example understand this ability of predicting the growth potential and then building an institution which creates so many jobs? How do you do that? Yeah. So look, it’s hard to know 25 years out but I think the next 5 10 years you can always see where you have tailwinds and where you have headaches. Okay. Right. So we know that in labor intensive manufacturing we have tailwinds because our global share is low. We can definitely with the right policies, we can definitely increase our global market share. When you have no toy industry to speak of because everything got hollowed out and now thanks to some tariff protection, non-tariff QCOs etc. We now have the emergence of a toy sector in India. There will be Indian brands, maybe Indian brands will be able to export. May not be the most glamorous thing versus building some app or doing something but there is an opportunity uh in a sector like that which maybe didn’t exist before. I would say they’re tailwinds. Okay, they’re definitely tailwinds in consumer discretionary. So as per capita income goes up, humans are very similar. You know, when your per capita income goes up from $3,000 to $10,000, our consumption basket changes. There’s only so much more food you can have, right? The basics share of basics come down. India is still focused on basics and so the discretionary products will go up. I mean obviously in personal products whether you look at skin care, cosmetics, those are going to grow much faster than staple like rice for instance right so you can look by looking at the consumption pattern and the same is true not just of discretionary it’s also true of discretionary services what I consume so I think there one can just look at China which is ahead of us and see what that pattern looks like and India will look like that or countries that are somewhat ahead head and that should give you a good clue as to where consumer demand is going to shift and you can lean into consumer demand and then there’s a third set of sectors that are more deep tech sectors where I think India will succeed because we have the human capability we now have better policy I think to address it we have a diaspora that is connected with us and as tariff barriers come down we will have to put more money into R&D so I think we have to pivot from just doing genetics manufacturing to novel drugs to biotech we have to succeed in not just setting up fabs but fabless you know design companies so in a variety of deep tech areas because we we almost non-existent in these areas there are hardly any products out of India there is huge opportunity as well so these are three areas there are others as well where I mean obviously Mr. Dani is going to make a lot of money on infrastructure as India grows there’s going to be huge infrastructure growth as well. Mhm. Whether it’s airlines and therefore number of people flying so and then airports which he’s got a plane or ports because if India trades more ports will obviously do better. So I think looking at you know where what are areas where there are favorable long-term trends where generally your growth is faster than GDP growth. Mhm. So you have tailwinds and you have a reasonable economic model and most sectors have a reasonable economic model. I think as an entrepreneur you can’t predict how much competition there will be and I think too much of what we’ve done in the past is live behind closed walls. We have very cozy existence in a sector that two players three players actually margins in India are much higher and therefore return and equity is much higher. As an investor you like it if you’re paint companies the same three paint companies forever. Now there are a couple of disruptors. I think we need to see more disruptors in India. We need more competition. Competition will lead to better productivity and will lead to better export competitiveness. Is why? Because if you live behind tariff walls, if you live in cozy markets, then you can never compete globally. So that competition muscle will only come with more competition. Yes. Very interesting. And it’s not just competing with local folks. So obviously you need capital so that new people can come and jump into the game. Mhm. But you also should be open to foreign competition as well. I think the fact that today uh I mean we had an era when you had an ambassador which is the car I learned to drive on or a Padmmini premier you know those are the cars made in India to a point where now you know a Mahindra or Tata has to compete with the Japanese Americans everybody and you see today I mean I drive a Mahindra XUV 700 I think it’s a fantastic car I I used to drive Toyota I think it’s as good right so but Mahindra’s only gotten there because of competition if they lived in a cozy market where it was they’d be in that ambassador world then we’d be making ambassador and frankly now as tariffs come down you know what you’ve seen in the UK deal the same thing similar will happen with the US with EU we’ll have even more competition you know Elon Musk now wants to set up in India and others will come the Chinese will come in through JVS as you know we’ve seen with MG Jindal is now getting in look competition is good I think when you compete your product becomes much better you’re forced to invest in R&B I think these companies if you look now uh look at the two-heer market it was a cozy three-player market largely in the days of heroh Honda before they split it was Hiro Honda it was Baj it was TBS it three-player market hero Honda was The biggest Vaj was number two, TVS was number three and uh look at it now. I mean you know the Japanese other ones didn’t succeed Yamaha and Suzuki and all. Today you have competition from Ather from Ola from other upstarts but Hero and Honda split up. So you have two companies now competing with each other. So it’s no longer a three-player market. It’s much more competitive and guys like Aether have I think almost a thousand people in R&D may not be as much R but at least a lot of B and so Baj I believe has 1,400 people now in R&D yeah and Baj had invested in R&D earlier to give them credit and that’s why Baj’s product now dominates in Africa and Latin America and more than half their revenue half their revenue comes from intern they can play on the global stage they’ve beaten the Chinese in these markets that’s the lesson learned I mean the Bajage lesson is the lesson we should learn which is you need to pivot to investing in R&D so that your product can be so good that you’re not just going to compete with hero Honda and TVs here you can take on the manufacturers in other markets as well cuz you’re going to encounter the Chinese when you go into these other markets any product we make today when we go into whether it’s the developed world or the emerging world we are going to encounter the Chinese and from the lens of an investor sir when you see this let’s say for example of two wheeler market. So how do you know which company to back? Shall I back Bajage or shall I back Ola? So it’s become harder now because earlier you know when you had a three-player market the market share would shift marginally right then you had Aisha come in and disrupted the high end. They took away the market share. They created a new category almost and as Indians were getting richer there were more who could get by their bikes you know and then you have this disruption now with the new guys now I don’t know how good the bikes are Olas or Ather I’ve heard is very good but I think it is a six seven player market today so it’s harder to know who will definitely the incumbents will lose some market share in aggregate now is someone able to hold their market share or come out a winner even out of incumbents who knows and are some of the new guys able to disrupt and come to becoming number two or three player already you see if you look at the monthly market shares it bounces around like crazy true for these so I think there’s much more uncertainty today you know you I would not be able to guess earlier if you asked me here’s the market share of these three players tell me a year from now I could tell you within a certain confidence interval which is quite narrow and within 5 years within a reasonable confidence interval you knew And there there was a long history of 20 years that you could rely upon and you almost always right that was in that confidence almost like a one two it going to be a two sigma event that it’s going to be outside that uh so I I actually think that that now is I would find it much harder to predict that’s very you know I was reading one report where you mentioned that one of your in miss inure opportunities was Amra batteries where they’re constantly getting their market share up but again this is a problem. I hear you. It’s getting difficult, sir. But anybody who’s able to predict it, right, will be able to, you know, win in the markets, will be able to make money. But how do you know who’s going to win as an investor? How to solve this problem? No. So, look, I think it’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. I’m not a day-to-day investor anymore. So, but someone who is will have a view on who they think is going to succeed and we’ll make a bet on that. And I think it’s good that it’s become harder. It’s no longer cozy or lazy investing. It was lazy investing when you knew you could just buy Asian paints and close your eyes and they’d have the same market share and they’d just grow and it’s a great company by the way. So I have nothing against the company but as you have now disruptors coming in you know that they may lose some market share. How much will they lose? I don’t know. Will they lose only one two points of share? Will they end up losing 10 points of share you know over the next 3 4 5 years. So I’m not in the investing game anymore directly but I think that’s it’s become harder. So it means you got to make a stronger judgment call on management on the execution capability uh and understanding the products who’s got a superior product or superior price performance uh you know do much more due diligence in the market to see what the distributors and dealers and retailers are saying. So it’s um cozy investing is not as easy anymore. Mhm. I think you’ve got to really make bets on people. I’ll come to understanding or your understanding of people. But I I remember that your grandfather had a significance significant you know impression on you while you were growing up. Uh and he had a poem that he remembered by her. Do you remember that poem sir? No. So my grandfather actually had a poem on the history of India which he wrote in Udu Udu. Yeah. uh because he grew up in Lahore and it was a 100 plus stanza poem unfortunately we didn’t write it down but till he died at 97 but he remembered that he could recite the whole thing by he was he had a passion for history uh he could recite the whole thing verbatim what he written was a young man probably when he was 17 at age 97 do you remember some part of the poem sir I don’t remember the the words because I don’t my udu isn’t so good So okay but he spoke with such intensity about you know you know that but starting from the Indis Valley civilization all the way to bottom but I think how many languages do you know I remember that you learned Portuguese to but I mean I I’m not so good anymore because I’m rusty but of course Hindi English and um Bengali a little bit because I grew up in Kolkata Kolkata but again rusty because I don’t practice but at least the I can listen and understand some Spanish I learned when I was in college. And I can still understand some Spanish. I don’t speak it as well because I don’t practice it. Portuguese I learned because I wanted to work in Brazil. Yeah. And um I did it. It was more utilitarian. But again, I don’t remember. I know I remember more Spanish than Portuguese because I I did Portuguese just for that period of time. Why were you so passionate about working in Brazil that time in yourself? You know I see I wanted to I had friends in business school who were Brazilian but also more importantly I wanted to come back to India and I thought that while it’s great to be in the US you there’s a certain professional work ethic there’s a lot of start great startup culture investors who are very sophisticated etc. I also wanted to learn from an another emerging market uh which is very different from India but also large and so Brazil was attractive in that sense you know and Brazil had not had a smooth ride so if you look at from a macro perspective which I’m also interested in it did very well and then its growth really plateaued for a good two decades you know turned very left of center in terms of their ideology uh and then finally Fernando Enriquei Kadoso came in in the ’90s and then turned Brazil again um but it was uh stuck in the doldrums for about two decades and most of Latin America was for those two decades. I want to know there were a lot of negotiation and people understanding that you borrowed from your grandfather and your entire life you did deal making sir and dealm is about people dealm is about negotiation. I want to know two things sir. Number one, what was the first principle understanding of negotiation and dealm that you learned from your grandfather and over the course of years? What was the most complex thing about people and negotiation that you learned later in life the hard way? So my grandfather I think was a fairly large-hearted man. So he always believed that in order to get you have to give. Okay. And uh to win the war, it’s okay to lose some battlelets. Uh so that’s fine. The art of negotiation is should we win win. I know it always feels like lose lose or win lose. I have to. But I think the art of being able to find, you know, what the other person’s um what they want and what your want is and finding a way to give them 80% of their want and you keeping 80% of what you want. That intersection is where you want to land. And I think just generally I think through my grandfather was a good observer of people. See, it’s one thing to learn learn through reading text or whatever through your classroom etc. But you learn a lot in life by observing other people. Mhm. How they behave, what they say, how they are with their children, how they run their business just through observation uh and and the the sort of longitudinal data you gather uh over multiple interaction over a period of time over multiple interactions. That’s the other thing I think I learned is to become a better judge of people. Mhm. You know, because when you had to do deals in India, you know, particularly 25 years ago, corporate governance standards were much lower. True. So knowing who the badmash was, who you had to avoid, who was who was trying to you, which a lot of people were um was very important. So I think those were maybe some things that I learned. The things I learned on my own were you know in investing human psychology is a key part. So it’s not only understanding others it’s understanding self being able to control your own emotions and that you can observe others but ultimately you have to do it yourself. You can read about it. I can read books written by Warren Buffett or anybody else who writes about the importance of not being bullish when everybody else is bullish being contrarian. But to actually behave that way. Mhm. To actually not fall in love with your stock or actually look at something objectively is is hard in the real world or when your portfolio is down 50%. that pain you feel in the stomach and the the what it does to your neurons and to your immune system you feel how do you still manage and control yourself so I think a lot of that you learn by yourself and through personal reflection through managing your own mind uh and and that’s a very important part of being an and knowing what will make you happy there are different ways to invest I’ve always believed in more value investing in investing long-term as you said finding the trends and staying with them finding good people who are good managers good stewards of your capital backing them and staying with it so even today my brother invests for us average holding would be five six seven years uh because that we believe in that and when you do that then you only need to find two new things every year there’s no foro true and you know there are many things that’ll do very well I could have done I have no for I think having FOMO is the worst thing. It’s okay. Or even when you’re in a bull market, maybe we switched to more cash earlier because we thought it’s too risky. You’ll underperform in that last year or 2 years or whatever it is. It’s okay. I know that long-term having seen cycles that a day will come when I’ll be happy about the fact that I have that reserve. So I think having that perspective, being able to control your emotions, having certain principles that you stick by and not getting swayed by others or moods, having mood swings. I think that’s something that I I learned on my own. We all uh we are a mask, we have a facade, right? Everyone has it. What what is your learning about cutting that facade? Cutting that mask and understand the true person that you are interacting with. Yeah. So I think one is of course in that human interaction firstly to start by being very personable. I think you have to connect with the person chat about other things about their children their family their interests that get to know them as a human being. I think that’s very important because then you can understand their motivations and two is in conversation I think to throw some googies here and there. Okay. Which and then see how the person reacts. Give an example of this. I think body language often tells you a lot about uh you know a person. Mhm. So example would be you know people talk about what they’ve done and things like that but when when you if you’ve done your homework and you can pin them down on a particular situation then you see how they react to it. That’s the u so I think that that’s really the the way to sort of discover is someone bullshitting you or not? body language. Are they shifty in a meeting? You know that their eyes the they get twitchy you know that sometimes sends you a signal about them getting uncomfortable when you say something. It’s not only how they verbally respond. I think body language tells you a lot. And then of course you check with others. I mean your own interaction will be biased can be biased can be biased or you may have a professional artist who can fool you also on the other side. Okay. But they can’t fool the world forever. There has to be someone who knows their true true nature and you have to find that person who works closely with them, someone who’s been their auditor, who’s seen how they pushed back and the shenanigans they up to. Uh so I think knowing being able to check with others because you know I realizing even when you hire someone Mhm. you go wrong so often despite so many years of experience I wouldn’t say that any of us is perfect. we make mistakes. So I always believe that having others around you as well or other data points is extremely valuable because you you won’t always get the right answer just by yourself. And the same is true when you’re evaluating people or trying to peel off that mask. You invested in excess bank when it was called UTI and you invested around $8 million. Within 3.5 years it turned to $333 million. Same you did with Sri Ram transport $28 million went to $266 million in 4 years. Same with Slon. $22 million you put in exit at 339 million within 1.5 years. This to us sounds like magic sir. What was the inside there? What exactly you did after investing in these companies and exited a crazy value ship? No, I would say got lucky is the net net. So firstly the access UTI bank number is somewhat overstated. Okay. Uh the others may be right. The um look we were in the beginning of a bull market then. Okay. We got lucky that we leaned in and realized that there was an opportunity in if you were investing in 2001 2002 it was quite morose because you know India had gone through a slowdown in the late ‘9s. The Asian financial crisis had happened. And then the dot bubble also burst in 2000. But it was a great time to invest. And if you’ve got the right companies with the right people in the right sector, not only did you get good revenue growth, you got margin expansion, which meant that earnings grew much faster than revenue, and you got a huge PE expansion price to earnings multiple because it was so low when you started. So each of them had its own nuance. I would say Suzlan was uh led by an entrepreneur Tulsi who unfortunately passed away who was very dynamic in a new sector wind where India really didn’t have a manufacturer he was very ambitious and so it was a it was a high growth new sector in the case of access UTI bank you were transitioning from an old bank to a private sector a real true it was a private sector but a a much more dynamic bank under the the leadership of Dr. Nyak who was coming in uh and in the case of Shiram you had a fantastic person Mr. with a Rajan but it was four different companies and they decided to merge three of them to create Shiram transport get scale they had survived the NVFC fallout of the late ’90s they were very well positioned to grow they were very very strong in used vehicles used commercial vehicles they’re able to capitalize that and grow AUM grow ROA and the multiple expanded so but I would say look there’s good company identification but a lot of it was also So we got a lot of PE expansion also because we were in the middle as you remember from 2002 to 2008 we had a massive bull market in the emerging world. So that’s what I’d say is the luck portion. But do you think sitting in 20 let’s say 45 or 50 what we are saying about the world of early 2000s we will say same thing about 2025. No I think right now the market’s not cheap. Mhm. So I don’t think you have the 2000 2002 opportunity today. I think as an overall market will India do well. I think it’s predicated on our growth. I’m a bull. Mhm. India b and I think India will grow at you know 10 to 13% nominal depending on where inflation is over the next uh 20 years and uh the market should grow roughly in line with that cuz even if your starting PE multiple is high even if it shrinks by 15% or 20%. over 20 years that doesn’t have as much of an effect on the uh overall irr that you get or return that you get. So I think India will do well longterm. There’s no doubt about that. It’s just that when you’re entering today, you’re paying a high price for almost every any business. And this is not just true in India. It’s globally. Mhm. We are in an everything bubble. Everything. Everywhere. Yeah. So I think now is the time to even though our long-term trend is good Mhm. It’s better to be a little bit cautious, defensive and there will be a cycle. So even though you have long uh good long long-term nominal growth and India’s had that the last 25 years also but market cycles can be vicious. Mhm. despite that there will be another market cycle when it happens is it a few months from now is it a couple of years from now I don’t know but I am worried and what you see geopolitically what you see in terms of the fact that there’s almost been no productivity growth in the western world Mhm. uh the fact that it’s everything is so concentrated with the mag 7 in the US the fact that there’s so much speculation in meme stocks and in Bitcoin and all of these things even small cap India there was so much speculation that I just worry that um things are not going to be it won’t end well so they say um originality is the art of hiding your sources do you know who said this no your favorite man Benjamin Franklin. Okay. And you know the idea is that every idea is inspired, every desire is mimic and hence I want to know that you pioneered the pipe model of investing in the country. What was the original? Two questions. Number one, how did you came to that model? Number two, that you’re a big promon proponent of independent thinking and original thinking. How can a young person cultivate that? So firstly I I agree we should be humble enough to realize that even when we say original thinking it is in that context in the moment it’s not like it’s some brand new I mean as I always believe discovery is the art of seeing what everybody else has seen but thinking what no one else has thought right uh and in investing it’s not like you’re being so original it’s more context specific right in that moment because the market keeps changing sectors keep evolving that principle has already been discovered by someone else before we are just applying it as you said uh I don’t think it’s that original at the end of the day so what was your question about my question was that two questions how can a young person okay develop independent thinking every person every young person that most of the young people have some kind of FOMO you’re epitome of not having a FOMO you’re epitome of independent thinking thinking origin How can a young person develop that? Second question was what was your inspiration? How did you came? What was the you know genesis of this pipe model of investing? Okay, I’ll start with the second. I think the genesis of the pipe model was more we were a private equity fund in structure. And so when we looked at we would look at private companies but then when we looked at listed companies there were many companies that were listed but had very low float okay outside ownership or very low trading volume and so in a way they were like private companies but happened to be listed. So the pipe model is not anything it was done in the US done elsewhere. We just looked in this context if I’m evaluating a sector and there are these companies that are private, there are these that are public, right? They have the same they’re the pretty much the same irregardless. Now some large company like Sunfarmmer that’s been discovered is different. But you know if it’s a smaller company whether it’s listed unlisted doesn’t matter. So we managed to convince our investors that even though we were only going to invest in private that we should also be investing in public in a private equity mode. That is you take a chunky stake. You have some influence. You possibly get on the board, right? And you do your due diligence in a much more thorough manner. You’re not just buying stocks. You’re going to own this for the next five, seven years. So that was the the and the insight was that you know if you have that flexibility it allows you to to have a wider universe because what I realized is that private equity is proyclical. Okay. When markets are good, people want your money. But that’s when valuations are high. When markets crash, the entrepreneurs say valuation down, I don’t want your money. That’s when you want to invest. True. At least with the public markets, I don’t have to argue with anyone. If some foreign investor is selling a 10% block, I can just buy it. And the the beauty is FI is dump when markets are down. So I said here is the way to solve this procyclicality is that now I have the opportunity to invest when markets are down to be a contrarian which I couldn’t be otherwise. So that’s where the insight came from. the in general I would say I don’t know if I am the best person to ask but I feel generally by um reading diverse sources or so I think firstly being a good listener is important u to have uh but you know just being openminded if you get too fixated in your thinking you could either take a consensus view or you could take a very radical view independent thinking doesn’t mean being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Whatever the view is in general, I’m always going to oppose it. No, that’s radicalism. That’s, you know, that’s not necessarily independent thinking in it. Independent thinking means you you get information from diverse sources. Your own reading, you listen to others, but you do it very calmly with the objective almost at a distance, almost being detached from the thing. And then you’re able you have enough time for reflection and you also have enough understanding of history to be able to see patterns. So it’s not original in that sense. It’s more applied into that context. And when you say discovery, this is one of my favorite quote that you have you know mentioned. You see something which you know you you’re seeing the same thing which everybody is seeing right. But the discovery happens when you have an you know insight that nobody is seeing. How do you have that insight that what’s the genesis of looking at things in a very different way? Of course it’s your nurture. It’s the lateral thinking approach. It’s your understanding about different subjects. Yeah. But what’s the idea? Where’s the where’s the inspiration? Where’s the thought? Where’s the point? Where’s the genesis of just looking at things in a you know very unique way. I don’t think there’s any it depends on the circumstance. So let’s take you know even Ashoka University because they’re different idea. Now there were other people also who had the idea of setting up new university. I because of my own experience I had been to Yale undergrad. I didn’t uh I was studying for IITs but there was a person in school ahead of me who went to Yale and I was inspired by him so I decided to apply. You teach? Yeah. Are you in still in touch with him? I’m not in touch with it, but he’s older and went off. But he was a genius. He was a topper in class 10 and all that nationwide. So I I wanted this is something I wanted to do and uh I got in and I went there and I had a transformational experience. That may not be true for everyone. I felt like I was a kid in a candy store. I had act opportunities, things I had never read before. You know, the conversations were so different. It was not linear. And so I felt that at least we should have some options in India that are similar. Now the fact that Sanjib Chandani came at from a different angle. He had been to St. Stevens. His daughter had at that moment recently gotten into Colombia. So he had some idea of the difference. But at the same time I think Stevens had this koto 50% Christian kota. But the bigger issue was that the standards were different for the two. he was not necessarily opposed to but the standards were being compromised. So I think there was a group of these Stfanians who were almost revoling saying we need a new college. So I think it’s in that moment you start to think boss there is a real I mean maybe that idea was there but it hadn’t crystallized it started to crystallize in the moment and then you studied a little bit further and said you know we we maybe in India need to push our higher ed system in the direction of more of a 21st century education it needs to be more holistic more multi-disiplinary more project based more authentic in terms of learning that may more create people who are curious learners for the rest of their lives right and who are not too narrow in terms of their focus and that it seemed like it was the right opportunity also because India was changing you know we were not there were many jobs in the economy there was a time when you graduated from the IIT and you couldn’t even stay in India you went abroad because now the world had changed so it was just an understanding of these different the external factor s my own personal experience, others around me saying something, you’re able to crystize and say, you know, this is this is genuinely the opportunity right now. There are some tailwinds now and there’s a missing gap and now is the time to do it. a GPD to be you know act like a role. Can we do a small role play? Sure sir. I want to learn how do you convince wealthy people to do two things. Scenario one when you are a 25 year 30 year old guy with almost no track record to convince someone to trust yourself with their money. Number one. Number second, let’s play a role play of let’s assume I’m a wealthy man and you are the promoter of Ashoka, trustee of Ashoka, chairman of Ashoka and you want to convince me to give back to become a trustee. Now I want you to do two things. One share certain stories and also share certain sentences. There are always you know orbit shifting sentences or very convincing sentences and you know they change their mind. you have convinced almost half of the Ashoka trustees to you know invest to give back what was those what were those sentences how would you play this role so I’ll I’ll start with the first one I think um and a personal experience I was 30 years old when I started Chris Capital I was very young I had never worked a day in India I had gone abroad for undergrad for business school all my work experience was sitting in a grin branch at the end of class 12 and then is in a city bank Kolkata office uh at the end of my first year of college backing my internships were in the US my work experience my higher ed all that but I saw the opportunity wanted to come back to India wanted to set up a fund so I would say that as a young person to be convincing one is you have to be passionate about what you do you and that came out I mean I was super passionate about doing this right two is I had something maybe that others didn’t have in terms of accumulation of knowledge I had worked in Goldman Sachs I had worked here I had studied emerging markets I had certain insights that in a meeting I could convince someone that I was pretty thoughtful when they asked me about a business in India or how how I invest largely through my reading through my work experience etc because if someone is giving you the money they’ll quiz you on a number of things true what do you think of this why would you invest would you do this or not right so you can’t plan for every question but if you’ve done a lot of thinking in advance you’re better prepared at least to answer those questions and the third I think is just the mindset of you know being a bulldog I think when you’re young I I when I set up at that time the Asian financial crisis had happened in 97 and we had done the nuclear test in 98 so it was a moment oment when the New York Times was saying most dangerous place on earth. Yeah. You know there was a financial crisis everybody was saying don’t touch Asia. So in that moment nobody wanted to part with their capital for an India fund. Mhm. But just by being a bulldog you know we accepted the 98% rejection rate. Yeah. It just meant doing a lot of meetings and persevering. So I think a young as a young person I see a lot of young people you just have to work really hard. You have to persevere. You have to have thick skin. You have to be okay with rejection. There will be failure along the way. You have to pick yourself up and try try try again. Those things I think were really essential for me when I was getting started. Sorry please. So when I switched to the other one you were talking about convincing other people to give. Uh before that tell me the story of how did you convince Microsoft and GIC because convincing anchors after you have convinced anchors convincing HNI is easy because they have some anchor to look at you know shared trust. So so I think each situation is different I think with it really built also I think on relationships. I was able to so not only convince someone that you’re somewhat credible even though they may say no to you but get them to open up another door. So some one opened a door to the folks at Microsoft there were some Indians there went and met them senior guys they liked me and at that time m you know this is the go- go days the era Microsoft actually was taking some punts they said let’s take a punt on this guy it was as simple as that with EDB it was not GIC because we were too small for GIC it was again I I had some friends in Singapore they knew me they thought that you know I was credible they introduced me to them and I said listen why don’t you start in a small way so they were just a small investor I thought by getting them in the door we get a beginning so I think there was some degree of luck honestly um but mostly just you appear to be credible and you just know how to work the network and you’re a bulldog you just try try try again now we have to play a role assume that I’m a wealthy person you have to convince me to give back to Ashoka how will you do that sir so firstly I I think it’s our obligation as wealthy Indians to give back period whether it’s to ashoka or any other cause that you are passionate about so I think the first thing is that we must build a movement of philanthropy in India almost make it the norm I think what Carnegie and Rockefeller did in America is they made it the norm that if you are well off you must give track whether it’s to your alma m whether it’s to some cause or whether it’s to the geography you came from and you play a role in nation building through philanthropy and I think in India thanks to Azim Premj thanks to Nandani we have great Rohini we have great role models already so we can build on that now to get people to so and so so second thing is I myself am a giver you know so I think it’s One thing you can’t it’s I’m not trying to convince someone without eating the pudding myself. True. I I walk the talk. I’ve been the you know largest donor one of the all always. And so you lead from the front. You walk the talk. I think that’s very important. And the third is the mission and purpose. Look there may be things that go wrong along the way but I think the intent is good. The intent is pure when whether it’s a Sanjibik Chandani or Pramat or anybody else or the academic is there is a strong desire there’s a strong feeling that India needs new institutions that private philanthropic institutions can play a big part in our higher ed ecosystem that we need a new paradigm of higher education in India I think and once someone believes that they are more likely to give than not tell me a story about how did you end up convincing any I know the largest donors of uh you may take their names you may But um tell me the story of how did you how were you able to convince or what was the hardest but what what convincing took the longest but the fruits were humongous a convincing which took long time but when you were able to convince you got a largest check see there’s no pattern I think you know different people are different because they are different life stages so you know sometimes in one meeting I remember with raki jingjunwala Mhm. Because he already knew me from my investing days. He just felt that because I’m involved, he knew of Sanjie. Mhm. Um and I was putting money in there. That for him was convincing. Or someone else, you know, who didn’t know me as well or who didn’t know the institution. We were younger. Maybe they wanted to see the track record of the institution. Maybe it was their own life journey. They were not ready at that point in time. you know they had an exit or maybe their children are now settled and they are thinking about their philanthropy. So it’s it’s hard to generalize from this because it’s very situation specific. As long as people know that your intent is good, right? And you stay in touch with them. Even if it’s a no initially, it could become a yes. It could become a maybe and then a yes. Which if a young person comes to you and says that um we want to open a university, um what are the first three actionable items that you would say? I would say firstly you must do it. Mhm. Because India needs 100 class to bloom, a thousand class to bloom. So I would say must do it. Uh two is that it is a long journey. So don’t think of it as a startup where you’ll do it in 5 years and exit. It’s not it’s a 25 year 30-ear journey. So you have to be committed for a long period of time. Three is that it is a big project. Mhm. you can’t do it with small amount of money. Uh it requires large at least if it’s a physical university, large physical infrastructure etc. Fourth is it’s a slow game. There’s no point rushing it and trying to build too quickly. I think that defeats quality uh coming in. And fifth is I would say the the trend is favorable. You know India’s academics who are abroad more likely to come back. Uh so the and there’s so much white space I mean look at all of Bihar or Uttar Pradesh show I mean one California which has 40 million people has so many instit one Massachusetts which is tiny has so many institutions so we have so much dark space or open space that um the institutions of the future are yet to be built. The institutions of future are yet to be built. Uh I remember that you mentioned that in your lifetime you want to start 14 15 of them. What’s the next institution that you’re starting sir? No. So apart from Ashoka I do run a foundation called the convergence foundation through which we have incubated many institutions or seeded. Mhm. And I believe that many of them well they may not be as large in terms of physical. When I say institution, it could be an institution working on a particular cause, but as opposed to looking at it programmatically, you know, it works on it long term, has some real technical expertise, is recognized as a thought leader and owns the objective for long term. So take Central Square Foundation which I started 13 years ago and there’s great set of leaders who lead the institution. I’m not in the day-to-day anymore and they’ve done a great job staying committed to foundational literacy and numeracy in India. M their northstar metric is we need a higher percentage of children at the end of class 3 who are literate and numerate you know that percentage is 50 plus% we need it down to below 20%. Now that may take 15 20 years but you have to stay with the problem. You need enough technical expertise in terms of the how so that state governments want to work with you. You need the passion and you have to be able to lure good people into the organization who will stay because they’re committed to the cause with you. You need good execution capability as well if you’re going to work. You need to be able to raise resources so you stay the course. So I think in any good non so firstly my belief is that the government is the biggest actor. True. It has the money, it has the will to want to the political class wants to deliver you know uh welfare whether it’s education, health, whatever for its citizens. It’s been easier to do it in areas like drinking water, electricity, a number of areas. But in areas like immunization, but in areas like health or like nutrition or education, these are slower moving indicators. We need to now and these are more complex. If I’m doing drinking water, I just build a pipe to the home. It’s a technical problem with education. I still need to work through the teacher. I may have some tools. I may have some tech etc. But really if that classroom transaction doesn’t change nothing will happen. Nothing will change. No it’s much more complex production function because it the teacher produces over many years or many teachers do and then it leads to a child who’s literate and numerate. So I think you have to stay with these problems for a very long period of time. So my belief is you need institutions. Mhm. One is because you work with government and two is you stay the course 20 years 25 years and as opposed to just working on a 5year program and then you move on to something else. Tell me a problem statement that you’re facing in your life in work which you would pay any young person to solve for a real problem statement right now you’re facing in your life or work. This is a small way of understanding problem statements. Maybe someone who watching this has the potential to solve it or has already solved it. He might reach out to you. So I think for me the biggest one is how do you outsource entrepreneurial energy? So we have lots of people who are there in various places that but I think that entrepreneur still brings the ideas pushes the thinking true is not willing to accept whatever you’re doing currently you’re always dissatisfied cuz you want it to be better. Finding more people like that grooming more people to become that has been the hardest stuff. Not to say there are others but replicating that and so disengaging then becomes a problem. At this stage of life my biggest problem statement is how do I disengage? How can I just be a board member and provide strategic inputs and not get involved in any day-to-day matter and ideally that should happen. Central Square Foundation has been around 13 years. Ashoka has been around since but it hasn’t happened to the extent that I would have liked. What is one product or service that you wish existed? I think something that helps you sleep peacefully for eight or nine hours. I I I don’t take pills, so I can’t say I lean on those, but I have an active mind, so I I go to bed at a reasonable hour, but um if I wake up, I have a very hard time going back to bed. So I need a if I have ideas then in my head being able to calm that down and get a good night’s sleep. Ma’am every night for me would be the biggest thing. I see. But I assume you have changed so many lives that the amount of peace that you get helps you a better with a better sleep. I go to sleep very well but but if you wake up with some idea then it’s hard to hard to Yeah. So that’s the my biggest problem today I would say. Do you still read Financial Times the the British newspaper? No, I don’t. I I sometimes I get it free on WhatsApp. So sometimes I’ll just airdrop it to my iPad and look at it. But no. What do you read often now? I still read Indian newspaper. I’m an old fddy daddy. You’ll see on my desk the old business standard mint economic time. So I I read the daily newspaper every day. You still solve match the economist quite regularly. Yeah. Nice. Do you solve maths problems? Not anymore. Okay. What’s your favorite country to travel? Italy probably. Okay. What’s one experience that you would recommend everyone to do in their 20ies? Get out of your comfort zone and learn something new. So I for me I think learning to now this is inaccessible for many but learning to ski or learning a new sport or learning you know was a great thing. Travel was great. I’m more restricted now. Mhm. Uh I with a friend I rented a car and we traveled drove through three countries. Which one? Guatemala, Biz and Mexico. Wow. When I was in my 20ies, can never do that again. So this time, so I would say as opposed to thinking about always thinking about your job when you’re in your 20s, do something you may not be able to do when you have obligations. you know, when you have children, when you have a spouse, when you are better off when you can’t stay in that $10 hotel room anymore, you know. True. Uh true. So, yeah, I remember I went to Thailand diving. I we stayed in a $10 hut with a friend of mine. I can’t do that today. My kids to my wife even used to certain luxury now that I can’t uh True. And not to say that I’m I can’t adjust, but it’s harder. So I think you’re free as a person when you’re in your 20ies and enjoy that freedom because you don’t have the baggage you know after that you have obligations to your family to society to your if you built a business to your employees other things so so enjoy life would be my message uh I think work hard but enjoy life it’s Mr. Baj was your batch mate at HBS and you spend a lot of time at Bajage factory which is the best factory that you have ever visited in your lifetime. So at that time actually the project we did was in Bajage Hindustan which is a sugar. So it was not the auto business. Yeah. Um best factory I visited actually would be in China. Which one? I went to SMIC which is a semiconductor. They don’t allow Yeah. But we we were allowed to go not deep inside. Okay. But see some of it. I’ve been to see I went to Huawei a while back. So I was very impressed with China and it’s not just the factory factory but the R&D culture they they were thinking advanced manufacturing uh long time back. Have you seen any dark factories there? They say the entire factory operates with bler robots and I haven’t been since co so I haven’t seen anything but uh but I was always impressed with China’s focus on manufacturing and manufacturing leading to R&D also advanced manufacturing this labor intensive jobs that we are talking about and um I know that you were you wanted to become a teacher um and there is this thing called AI right which has two very interesting roles that I see number one in being a teacher there is a study and learning thing there a lot of AI tools which are teaching the second thing this AI affecting the IT industry of our country what’s your understanding and you’re the best person to answer this because you were at the cusp of the first technological revolution that happened in US and then you saw it happening in India right um how do you think what’s your understanding of how AI is going to fundamentally shape two things of course please add the third thing if you have thought about the teaching and the education. Yeah. And the IT and the you know white collar work that Bo does. Yeah. I don’t have the answer firstly I think because nobody knows how this will evolve 10 years from now. But I think AI and education uh will not replace humans. So if I look at a teacher in school, she will still be around but she better be AI literate. You better know how to use AI and there’ll be many use cases of AI. The use cases could be student facing where now you could get hyperpersonalized learning because say if I’m a teacher teaching in class 4, children are often at three or four grade levels. There could be a child at grade one level, there could be another child at class 5 level, right? Very hard to teach in that setting. But with tech and with AI, you can definitely assign homework that’s much more hyperpersonalized, right? And there are tools that students can access. Mhm. Now, some of those tools are available today already, but the reason you need that teacher is the motivation, the persistence in the human and then and then also taking the analysis from there and seeing where the kid is struggling, what you may be able to do, etc. We know even from the early experience of Khan Academy even before AI came and even now with Khan Migo just being left alone right it actually helps the motivated kids who are generally doing better in school do even better but it has not allowed for catchup right because if I’m already tuned out why would I go and spend my time on Khan Academy until I realize there’s no I’ll do it I’ll start and then I’ll drop off it’s the same Corsera drop off rate right like yeah so I think the humans are very very important in this equation because and also education is not just about content it’s a motivation shaping character it’s about making citizens for the country and for the world it’s about values ethics much more than just the content right uh it’s about making you you know like in life you need to be a curious person and a learner for the rest of your life making you committed to your country or to the world you know to be environmentally conscious to be socially conscious there’s so many things that are beyond just the content right which I think a human can inspire you uh to do uh so I think the role of the human is there but there’ll be tools that are student facing there’ll be teacher facing tools so if I want to use a lesson plan AI could generate a lesson plan for me if I want uh teaching is a lonely job. A coach doesn’t come to observe me very often. Mhm. But today, in fact, at Central Square Foundation, we developed in partnership with someone an AI coach where the teacher just records her self on the phone and then after the class, it gives the teacher feedback on the class. Or another tool is when you do formative assessment workbooks or some practical the kids you just take a picture and the AI can now segregate the kids figure out what you need to retach you know if you have to segregate the children into three groups what’s the right segregation now in the real world we know all of this is very difficult to do on your own because this is a solo job true right so I think a bunch of AI tools can help at the teacher level at the student level and even at the system level in terms of analyzing data, figuring out which students are falling behind, how you need to tweak the curriculum, the assessment, you know, all of that. But I think humans will be at the core is my sense with other kinds of knowledge work that you talked about VO and all. I I think we’ve already seen like in areas like customer service, there is already a what can play the role of the human. Why would I talk on the phone when my issue can get resolved? Basically, if it’s information based and basic task, yeah, it’s a very basic task, you know, I don’t need that human there really. The empathy of the human, the inspiring capability, all of which a teacher has, I don’t need here. Um, with coding and all, you’ll know better. I mean, the tools are there today. Right now, they’re already global CEOs who say it gives a 20 30% bump, but that could increase over time. But you know it’s a question of this Jevans paradox is does that then lead to volume growth more than offsets. I don’t know the answer. My hunch is in some of the very basic things it’s going to lead to a hauling out of jobs. um there’ll be other jobs created but there is a real in aggregate in the economy it’s hard to know where you’ll end up for countries like India other than the service export there’s less risk because we are a more rudimentary economy where you still the most of the tasks are human physical etc 45% of our labor is in agriculture right now someday a robot could do what but right now AI is a good use case for the farmer in terms of pest control in terms of identification guidance in terms of what crop to plant or you know a variety of things information advisory etc. So I think AI should be our friend. Without AI, I think the humans or or productivity will slow down or grate. Will it really replace a lot of jobs in the Indian context? I’m not sure. And it’ll obviously create some jobs as well. Sir, New York versus San Francisco. New York. You are the only Indian person on the board of Bill and Meinda Gates. Because you are on board of because you’re on the board, you have multiple interactions with Bill Gates. What is one observ unique observation that you have made about him that you believe every young person should know? I think look I think you’ve seen from the announcement of the Gates Foundation that I think they think big hundred billion dollars done so far another 200 billion. So the idea that you know you’re willing to give all of it away but in your lifetime I I really like this idea versus you know building in the US the old model was to build an endowment that outlives you it lives forever kind of thing because you bring the entrepreneur energy the ideas the passion all of that to bear I think the second is just strategic thinking you know being very even though you’re so large to say that health is going to be the predominant focus agriculture to some extent some other areas But health is even at that scale. I mean the challenge even you know when you’re doing philanthropy at 100 to scale is you want to do 10 things versus one thing really well and you realize even when you’re so big to solve that problem requires not just your resources but the resources of government of you know other multilateral players so many people providing technical capabilities doing the work it’s an ecosystem of actors so I think working with that ecosystem is really really critical do you know about the theory of the pursuit of scientist is to find theory of everything. The intent was if there is a disaster and we lose everything, what is one theory that we find which can lead to all other possible theories in life. Congruent to that, if you were to tell just one thing, it can be a line or a paragraph or anything uh to your kids, right? uh what is that one thing that if they know you will you will feel that these people are sorted they will know everything I think know yourself and how to live a good life you know that just being u happy in your own skin being able to manage yourself being able to control your mind tune your mind to be happy with and comfortable in your own skin is the most important I think technology and all will In fact, technology will reinforce our humanity even more that are we empathetic, are we uh self-aware? Do we can we control our our state of mind uh and just enjoy even our leisure time? Uh if you get your satisfaction from work, can you find it elsewhere and still be as satisfied? U can you be happy when others are doing well and maybe you aren’t doing as well? uh you know so I think know yourself and being able to live a good life uh irregardless of the circumstance to me is the most important. Maria sir thanks a ton a million times for doing this on a Saturday morning. Uh we have got a small uh gift for you. I was in a dilemma that whatever book I should you know I will figure out you would have already read that. So we got this one. Thanks so much. It was very real. Thank you so much sir. Thanks so much.