What Indias Wealthiest Families Can Teach You About Investing Ft Soumya Rajan Waterfield Advisors

TITLE: What India’s Wealthiest Families Can Teach You About Investing ft Soumya Rajan, Waterfield Advisors CHANNEL: Shrishti Sahu DATE: 2024-11-30 ---TRANSCRIPT--- I think uh it’s very early days for India I mean I think some of the data that we saw in terms of uh number of family offices in India is something like 300 right now I think PWC brought out a report and only about 30 billion is managed formal Indian family officers when you look at what has got created there and you think about family offices in India whether it is FD invest or catamaran these are all the big investing houses that are going to get created over the next 15 20 if not Beyond Years first and largest independent multi family office and wealth advisor firm that has over 40,000 per assets under management if you just look at the US the Mac 7 at $12 trillion bigger 3xa economy so you know like the numbers are just huge in terms of tech disrupt but if I was to look at waterfield’s own allocations in 2020 we had 7 and half% of our overall AUM was in private markets by 2024 that is double we’re already sitting at about 15% of our entire AUM that we manage is in private markets today the differential between the top performers and even the next next quartile is very very high I think the hardest business decision try was not to do distribution seriously lucrative to have said no to that and completely shut my mind so when you create your portfolio on the investment framework that I spoke about in terms of risk pools then you will actually see a black spawn event as an [Music] [Music] opportunity welcome to the India opportunity podcast hello and welcome everyone to the India opportunity show today I’m thrilled to have somia Rajan on the show a Trailblazer in the Indian Financial Services industry and the founder and CEO of Waterfield advisors Waterfield is India’s first and largest independent multif family office and wealth advisory firm that has over 40,000 crores assets under management somia has transformed the way wealth management operates in the country building trust and fostering innovation in an evolving equ system catering to ultra high Network individuals families and corporates with over two decades of experience in private banking and wealth advisory her insights go beyond numbers they touch on Legacy leadership and the changing aspirations of Indian wealth creators so excited to do this deep dive with somia today hope you enjoy watching good morning somia welcome to the show so thrilled to have you with us here today thank you stin it’s an absolute pleasure to be on the India opportunity show with you this morning thank you s you’ve had such an illustrious career in finance and wealth management before founding Waterfield what personal or professional experiences inspired you to start India’s first independent multif family office um so I started the company s in August of 2011 uh if you’ll remember this was the period which was just after the global financial crisis um I was in my previous employment at that time with a large Bank uh standard char chared I was heading the private Bank of Standard Charter then and what I saw at that time after the global financial crisis is was that there was considerable anger at one level that clients had against their Banks because you could see in terms of what was happening at that time that clients felt that they were being pushed products in a particular Way by their Banks the banks in turn had other positions that they were taking on their prop books and this was a complete you know one 80 degree difference from what they were suggesting to clients and that led to considerable risk as well as principal loss that many families actually um had to kind of uh undergo in their investment portfolios that was when when I was reading more about this I said look this conflict of interest this inherent conflict that we sit in when it comes to wealth management because we are a distribution Le industry is one that’s also going to hurt Indian at some point it’s not as if we are uh imperious or impervious to what is happening in other parts of the market so I said well this is going to happen in India and I said well all right we always keep saying let somebody else start a company like this and then I said no let me start it because I genuinely believe that we need to have good advisors you need people who are sitting on the client side and that was one driving motivation to start Waterfield as business which was on the client side which was advisory Le um so that was one part that I wanted to solve for in terms of a conflict of interest for clients but the other part I also wanted to solve for was that wealth management in India is equivalent to Investment Management uh you only talk about Investments whereas for families people who are setting up family offices they’re always thinking about how can this wealth be um can be passed down to subsequent Generations you’re thinking about a lot of non-investment related issues you’re thinking about succession you’re thinking about family governance you’re thinking about philanthropy and none of this is what private Banks or wealth management companies were doing because they were just so focused on a transaction they were focused on investments they were focused on very short-term returns that they could make from a client and that again was not again in sync with what families wanted so that was really the motivation uh to start Waterfield to solve for an inherent conflict of interest through the distribution model and say that let’s do advisory and the other is to say could you have a more holistic brand of uh wealth advisory that you could propagate in India amazing truly sounds like you found your mission in purpose through Waterfield uh but help us understand uh where this entrepreneurial Drive comes from with saw I remember when we first connected I think Waterfield was managing just a couple of hundred million uh dollars at that point and now it’s scaled to over 40,000 crores assets under management so obviously there was a lot of entrepreneurial inclination and hunger to prove yourself so where does that come from I think that comes from just belief you know I think the way I look at it is that any founder uh srishti is you have an idea you have an idea that this is something that there is a need for uh so for me the belief was very important in a more clinical sense you’ll always look at what VC is called Product Market fit uh and in that so when you look at it through the clinical lens it is where demand if you have strong demand and you have people who love the product or love the solution then you’ve got a winner on your hands so for me I think a lot of that ear days was about belief because I just felt that this was the right thing to do but it was also extremely challenging at that point as well because you didn’t have the awareness of what is a family office you know when I went and talked about you know uh we are a multif family office because that was the original uh origins of Waterfield people would look at me you know quite blank they couldn’t understand what is a family office supposed to do what is a family office office do I need a family office so the early days was about building awareness but for me it was about knowing that I wanted to build a company that was going to last beyond my lifetime now when you start with that motivation and intent you’re not building a company to sell it you’re building a company that is beyond your lifetime and is your legacy you then start looking at the business also very differently um um but I come from a family which is not in business U my parents were both Bankers my father and mother were both with State Bank of India um my mother was you know one of the first probationary officers of State Bank she was the fifth one uh in way back in the 1960s for me she was like a Trailblazer you know she was her parents sent her to work in remote cities literally towns in India when most other people wouldn’t send their daughters uh to those places and it was it was inspiring uh for me to see my mother you know having done what she did so I always felt that you know I had an opportunity I was given privilege I had an education it needed to count so for me it was about how can I have what I was given and have a belief that I can do something and really create a business of impact um so that’s where the motivation comes from amazing I think you know so much of what we achieve in life can be traced back to our parents and uh your story as well because your interest in finance and banking probably came from your parents at that point um how do your parents feel about what you’ve accomplished I I can tell you when I first told them I was leaving Standard Charter they were in deep shock uhy because they just felt oh my goodness uh she’s at the peak of her career um so I was 40 I was heading the private Bank of Standard Chartered at a very young age and I literally had perhaps the whole world in front of me in terms of a corporate career in banking and to really grow um and to become um an industry leader in the corporate sector so when my parents suddenly heard me at 40 saying I’m giving it all up and I’m going to just you know become an entrepreneur and I have this idea and I think this idea is going to work uh they were extremely flued and uh were trying to tell me that you know maybe this is not the right thing to do but I will say that at that point uh my husband actually was very supportive to say if this is really what you want to do go out and do it um and I think having a supportive family to say you know just Live Your Dream uh and go back by your gut and let you know let let things flow the way you wanted to you’ve already achieved what you wanted to and I I really did feel that I felt in the corporate sector i’ done what I had to um and there was much more that I felt I could do as an entrepreneur I could create jobs if this idea worked I could make a difference to the families that we worked with so bringing all that in some sense higher purpose that you want in terms of what you’re doing is what really motivated me uh but today my parents are super proud I mean I can tell you whenever um they see something that I’ve done or U made a difference to you know a family or when I tell them about you know something that’s worked well there’s a huge sense of Pride uh and the fact that I can see that that they now look at my journey and say well uh you’ve done a lot of things but they still tell me you know there’s so much more you will do uh it’s it’s really what kind of I I feel very blessed s to have had that opportunity uh but really supportive parents supportive husband to really say Live Your Dream yeah I think for women especially that’s so powerful even I grew up with having all the support uh from my parents there was a lot of discipline in a household but also a lot of unconditional support which I think truly gives you uh it’s like having Wind Beneath Your Wings right so it’s the force that pushes you forward absolutely yeah uh when you first envisioned Waterfield what was the biggest challenge in creating something new in India’s wealth management space since you mentioned that you were meeting families who didn’t even understand what the family office concept was what was that Journey like in terms of customer education and getting them to a point where they wanted to be your clients so the biggest was really around awareness uh and the awareness was The Advisory business model the fact that uh um and that was the single biggest challenge everyone who I spoke to initially when I was even setting up the business would always tell me Indians don’t pay fees so I think I must have heard it a million times and I just kept saying look you pay your doctor you pay your lawyer uh when you want advice which is valuable to you and value adding to you you will pay a fee and that was really what I kept thinking about in terms of when I even pitch to a client I had to pitch to them in a manner where we were really saying that we are adding value to you uh and we are looking at trying to help you with creating a great family office to set it up correctly uh to try and ensuring that we see all the best practices that we have learned from other families to bring that to your um to your doorstep now and to help them actually Implement what we’re saying so it’s just not about telling them that you know this is how you do it and then walking away it’s about saying this is how you can do it this is customized for your family because every family is different there is no two families that are the same um you can have a broad construct but at the end of the day every family is unique and you need to be able to be sensitive to that unique of the family and the problems that they’re solving so in the early days it was about education uh educating them about why this makes sense for them showing them the economic benefit of doing it as well because it’s just not about saying it’s good to have it has to also have a tangible outcome so when you demonstrate for instance in the investment world that if you were to go Direct in all your Investments whether it’s mutual funds whether it portfolio Management Services pmfs uh aifs and you go through the direct option it is actually saving you money in the longer term because ultimately you know families always feel if I don’t have to pay a fee then it’s for free it’s actually not true the fee is you’re not paying the fee but somebody else is taking it and that fee through distribution is ultimately coming out of the your Returns on the portfolio so every year if you take out a little bit of money in terms of the distribution fee you’re not getting the full benefits of compounding so these are small things that you have to educate somebody they will not know it because these are nuances that um a family may not know because they are so steep ssty in building their family business in ensuring that their operating business is doing well that they don’t have the time for this so our role was to really say let me help you let me help educate you let me be that of that group of professional managers that can help you on this journey so that as you build your business can we also be partners to you on this side which ensures that your legacy your succession your passing down the wealth uh is something that we can continue to help you on in your longer journey of life yeah I think uh fantastic points you brought out I one being the that the incentives in banking banking are truly skewed um and most people don’t even realize how much they end up paying for fees because uh people don’t have the awareness of going direct versus through a distributor and uh secondly I think uh you know even on the fee structure people might not want to pay it upfront but you know in the long run I think that can truly save them uh so much money effort resources but people don’t have the accountability for it but also uh let’s talk about some of your earliest Believers because for a Founder that’s truly special uh people who P anchored your fund or helped you get started I’ve hosted someone on the show also who did uh play a part in that so let’s talk about that a little bit yeah uh the patney family uh Amit in particular was uh instrumental in uh pretty much getting us off the ground in terms of early early seed funding literally for Waterfield um I had bootstrapped the company for about 3 years between 2011 and 2014 and um I wasn’t really thinking of raising capital for the company and um Amit had just completed the transaction with iate the family had completed it he had just set up his family office um and um he had kind of heard about Waterfield what we were doing as a multif family office and somewhere I think what we were trying to do resonated with him because uh we were in some sense trying to solve a problem for many families he was trying to do um set up a single family office so when we met it was really talking about issues that most people don’t talk about when they set up a family office because it’s about the non-investment Rel at ated part because one of the things you have to remember Sr is setting up a family office is when typically a large liquidity event has happened that large liquidity event could have been the exit of a business uh for many families it’s quite an emotional time because you have gone through a phase of your family being identified with a particular brand and suddenly that brand is no longer which is the company no longer part of the family so I always believe setting up the family office is like creating a new identity for the family when they have exited a business and I remember chatting with Amit and we would speak about the fact that no private bank was really talking about the non-investment related part or if you had this large liquidity event the first thing that Banks were doing was straight away coming to you and tell telling you you must invest here here and here uh in three different places and nobody is pausing to try and understand a little bit about the emotional side of what’s going on for these families and also that um you need to give them a little bit of time in space because they’re going through a bit of a transition themselves and you need to be sensitive to that the wealth and the investment management follows but you need to earn the trust of the family first and you need to start understanding where where they’re coming from and where they’re going if you’re going to just give them the right solution so a lot of what Amit and I discussed at that time really resonated with each other and that’s when he kind of also helped me think through what is the next phase of Waterfield so I was bootstrapped I didn’t want to raise any external Equity I always thought that you raising external money was a bad thing you lose control of your company you won’t know how to build but the discussions we had really helped me think through the fact that if I brought in external capital I could actually scale this business so instead of just being a Bombay based uh family office I could then start an operation in Delhi I could start an operation in Chennai I could start an operation in Bangalore and these are the things that he helped me with so I am always grateful uh for the support that the family extended in those early days to actually help me start thinking through what this could be uh and that it didn’t need to be just a smaller uh outfit which was just local in one city but it did have the potential to be something much much larger and bigger so that was really how the PES came in they’ve been with us on this journey the last 10 years they’re still on our board amitan arihan and very grateful for their support yeah absolutely I think you highlight how how a power how powerful an investor and founder relationship can be if executed right and this sounds like an example of exactly that uh but after the patney family what were some of the other clients that you were able to onboard because I’m sure when you get into a room there’s also a lot of ego in the room right um apart from all the other dynamics that might exist in the family business but uh a promoter is usually very proud of what they’ve built and you know that they know everything they understand everything so what is it that you could possibly teach them which they already don’t know U so there’s always a clash in egos when you get into a room so how do you manage that dynamic because telling a promoter that they might not understand the investment world as well as they think they do is also not an easy conversation to have um so I I actually go into the conversation actually wanting to learn so I think when I meet any successful family entrepreneur founder um I always try and learn from that conversation swiy so I think two things which are really important one is learning because they’ve built very successful businesses and you want to First understand what help them create that the second is you need to be a really good listener you need to listen before you can um prefer any solutions and that’s really what I’ve always done I’ve always gone into a conversation in fact even when even today when I do a pitch to uh to a family I don’t go in with a presentation I just go in to say I want to chat I want to understand what you want to do where is it you’re going what has the journey been like so far what are your what are your uh goals what are your objectives for a family office why do you need a family office what is troubling you the fact that you and I are having this conversation means that there’s something on your mind that you want to solve for so I always look at it as one that conversation has to be one which is one where I’m listening the second is one where I am absorbing and learning from that interaction I think if you go into any conversation with these two in mind you’ll come out with a better outcome that’s how in many ways I built um the organization that we have to be good listeners we have to be students for life we have to always learn in those interactions and if you can help and and you can just have the conversation around these two main um main pillars you’ll always come out with a good outcome and I have also believed that the best way to in many of these area ssty is around authenticity is around just being who you are most people go into conversations being something and people who they’re not uh so you don’t need to do that just be yourself enjoy the conversation and clients will automatically feel comfortable and once you have got that connection in terms of the authenticity and the genuiness and the honesty in the conversation everything else flows from there so we’ve had the privilege of working with some incredible families in these last 14 years and I can only say that I have learned as much if not more uh from each of those than the other way around what do you think are the most important psychological traits that these promoter have uh that gives them that edge to have accomplish so much in life are there any in your experience because you’ve interacted with so many I’m sure I you know particularly when it comes to family businesses um and here I’m going to separate family business Visa V founder because I think that two very different kind of uh motivations in the case of a family business I do feel that they do come with a lot of the legacy of the family and I think that I would want that these family businesses tap into the good side of it which is what I call Family Values I think the values of the family is what has perpetuated one generation after the next in terms of really having businesses that last for generations and Beyond and those values and I keep saying this because it’s important that can we keep tapping into those family values and keep reinforcing those Family Values at every generation because that’s what will ensure the perpetuity of the business and we conduct things like a values workshop for families because I feel that you know everyone gets the investment process right you know that’s the easy part you you know you have the discipline of investing but it’s the softer aspects around communication a family councel having you know um a family’s values Workshop where it’s good to be able to say just as you think about corporate values and you have values for your business equally important to have values for the family office and what you see the best family offices do is now you actually see them marrying values with the Investments so they will be very clear that my Investment Portfolio also will reflect the values of the company and that’s a much more evolved state that more families will begin to move towards but certainly for family businesses I do think that tapping into that is the real core of what makes them tick in some ways when I look at Founders it’s completely different they’re very driven they’re very driven with this huge belief that they will create something and they’re driven by um you know driven by uh belief they’re very future oriented so any founder who is going to uh make it big has to have a future orientation they are also natural Risk Takers what you’ll find in family businesses over subsequent Generations is a bit of that risk-taking ability May e a little because they’re always feeling that I have a reputation to look after for the family I have to make sure that nothing blows up I don’t want to be the black sheep in the group which is there so there’s a different Dynamic the founder on the other hand is much more Carefree in that sense um is able to take much Bolder beds uh than perhaps the second or third generation in a family business uh of course what I think is going to be super exciting going forward s is how do next Generation in family businesses really start getting a bit of the hustle of what you see in a Founder to their businesses and creating you know new businesses out of that so it’s like what I would call um uh probably a good way to say business 2.0 of what are these nextg 2.0 going to do which I think is going to be really interesting in the years ahead are you seeing any interesting examples of that right now um actually I do I mean I think there are a couple in the South that I’ve seen uh where they’ve tried to create from their traditional family business um new spaces um so couple of examples for instance you’ve got uh am Sharma Kiva which he’s building traditional families by dinat but he’s got something interesting going there or Manish podar who’s got rare rabbit which is part of the larger podar family in Bangalore I mean these are just examples of what I think are are clearly Next Generation buildings of very interesting businesses in what is a traditional family business setup so um it’s going to be fascinating to see how where that ISS in the next couple of decades truly I think that’ll be really exciting to see and that brings me to my next question over the last few years so many business families I know have started their own family offices and there are also many Tech entrepreneurs who now are putting a lot of capital towards their family offices what is the framework one should think about when setting up one and it would help if you could break it down by the Quantum of capital available to in invest so um normally when we’re advising clients we always think of um one setting up a family office and in that setting up a family office there are normally six things that you need to do uh when you’re thinking of setting it up and this is really just from experience that I’ve had in advising many different families um and just like you have a framework for setting up a family office you also have six things that we look at for a framework when we’re making the Investments so I look at it as two different Frameworks that you need um so when you’re setting up a family office the six things that we look at is first the family office needs to be able to support family governance so that’s the first thing that you need you need to be able to say I need to have the right governance structures in the family office what does that mean what I’m trying to help families establish is do you need a family council do you have do you need a family Constitution do you have an investment policy document do you have an investment committee do you have a committee where the Next Generation can be educated or how will the next Generation come into the family business do you have a committee where you’re actually discussing how you will have Capital calls that are taken when next Generation want to actually invest in new businesses because one of the things that you’re trying to do in governance is to kind of Ensure communication and ensure a fairness which is there in the system and a transparency in the system so that all families understand family members understand this is how the governance structur is going to work so family governance is one thing that the family office needs to do the second thing which all of us know about is really the global investing side but here again we’re looking at public markets private markets real estate Global investing impact Investments passion investing each of these is a different kind of investment that needs to happen so the family office needs to be able to have a good discipline around entry and exit for all of these different asset classes um the third thing that a family office needs to do is around wealth structuring and succession so you’re looking at do I have the right investment vehicles do I have the right um um succession planning tools and Frameworks in place am I looking at tax optimization am I doing the right tax planning and I doing the right estate planning so all of that comes around we transfer and succession is a third big thing that family officers need to do the fourth big thing that they need to look at is how do you run the day-to-day family office so do I have to look at my accounting who is doing my accounting I have to look at cyber security do I have the right technology am I making sure that all the data and information is correctly maintained and managed how am I looking at Property Management because I have a lot of real estate which is sitting in different places so the dayto day then becomes also very important and the family office needs to cater to that and these Solutions many of them could be in-house they could be outsourced but you need to find a solution for each of these the fifth thing that a family office needs to do is managing households because in the past most of the time you figured out that your corporate is doing a bunch of things for you and you have your personal stuff which is earlier being done by the corporate but now has to be done by the family office so how do you manage households and most people will not even talk about that they will talk about everything else more investment related but not realize that if you’re setting up a family office you have to then create a structure and an infrastructure that’s completely independent of the corporation so whether it’s your life lifestyle whether it’s your leisure whether it is uh security Family Security all those are important in terms of managing households and the last is around strategic philanthropy because a lot of people who have made money and made wealth do want to give back to society as well but helping you to think through or helping the family principles think through what should be their giving and Legacy is also an important part of uh the entire framework of what family office does so when you’re setting up a family office my advice to everyone is please think through these six different aspects governance investing succession and wealth transfer your day-to-day managing the household and philanthropy because each of these is going to be part of your family office Journey it may not be that you want to set up everything on day one but you do want to think about this journey and this road map over the next 18 months 24 months 3 years whatever you’re comfortable with because ultimately families are the custodians of wealth in their generation so you have to make sure that you have the right um processes infrastructure platform Frameworks to make sure that that succession happens so that’s on the family office side in the investment side we have again six things that we look at in terms of framework the first is around having very clear objectives for your in Investments so you need to know uh what is it that you’re looking for in terms of expectation on return risk liquidity and those need to be broadly defined the investment policy document will help you do that the investment policy document is important because it adjusts and talks about the risks and the boundaries so that even if something happens to the main family principle the Investments still continue exactly as per what has been agreed and and discussed U the second is really around family values because I think when we talked about it earlier important that the values get reflected in the Investments the third uh important framework is risk pools because we believe that most people jump straight into asset allocation there is a discussion around risk capital and risk pools that needs to be done before you get to asset allocation because every pool of capital needs to have a different outcome there’ll be some part which you will say as a family I do not want it to have any kind of risk because tomorrow a covid like event can happen again a GFC can happen again how is it that I make sure that if these black spawn events happen and more are likely to happen than they have in the past and more frequently how do I make sure that my family wealth is not completely at risk so you create what we call a safety pool which is there for really taking care of the family over an 18 to 24 month period so having risk po pools is important in order to determine what is the kind of expectation that you have each of these risk pools interestingly sishi have to be benchmarked against inflation um the problem is that for most families you’re so excited about you know the kind of returns that you’re making you don’t realize that if inflation is going to eat up into that then your money is not really growing for you so benchmarking those risk pools against inflation against CPI or luxury inflation depending on which benchmarks you choose is extremely important then we come to asset allocation then we come to uh what we call fund manager selection or product selection and the last we look at is the cost of investing because all this has to also be at a sensible cost because you have the cost of what your fund manager is charging you you’ve got brokerage cost You’ got custody costs you got advisory costs there are so many layers that get included so what’s really important is at the end of the day the family should be able to say these are also all the costs which are coming in just to manage my portfolio one of the benchmarks I like to give families is to say think about your costs fully loaded with everything really shouldn’t exceed between 1 to 1.25% of your uh of your of your corus if you’re able to achieve with everything within that you’re in a good place so these are just you know just a couple of decision making Frameworks yeah I think you’ve listed out some of the best Frameworks that any family office can adopt but as someone who has the ringside view to all the evolution of family offices in India how much adherance do you think there is to this kind of a framework because in my experience so far when I’ve interacted with different family officers a lot of them are still in their infancy right where they really haven’t set up structures and processes or even teams uh in place to be able to do that so what has that Evolution being in front of you um I think uh it’s very early days for India I mean I think some of the data that we saw in terms of uh number of family offices in India is something like 300 uh right now I think PWC brought out a report and only about 30 billion is managed um in through formal Indian family officers whereas if you look at the global statistics they’re about close to over 10 ,000 family offices and 6 trillion uh upwards is being managed through family offices so if you look at India where it is Visa the global stage was still very small because the entire family office concept itself is very new to India I can tell you when uh started Waterfield in 2011 I don’t think anybody knew what a family office was even by the time Amit Putney had just started R 24 you know 2012 and then he invested into Waterfield 2014 very very early days so in that sense we are only now seeing s the evolution of family offices in India where they will be playing a much more meaningful role in terms of what they are doing in the private Market as well as the public market space on the investing side I love to give an example of you know General Atlantic I don’t know if you’re familiar with I love General Atlantics U philosophy and you know how they’ve been able to scale Beyond geographies to different regions and scale so rapidly but what’s fascinating about gendle Atlantic is that it was basically the captive investment arm of Atlantic philanthropies uh which chinii had uh had put together had had created and today it’s morphed into this massive private Equity um fund whereas the origins of it was actually a captive investment arm of a family office so when you look at what has got created there and you think about family offices in India whether it is fr G invest or katamaran or um you know what the monal’s uh family office are doing these are all the big investing house houses that are going to get created over the next 15 20 if not Beyond years so that kind of evolution is what we’re going to start seeing in the India context as well which is so exciting because it just means that their ability as successful entrepreneurs themselves to give back that ecosystem is going to be tremendous and going to create this huge e ecosystem uh both in terms of domestic Capital availability which is going to be there for newer entrepreneurs newer entrepreneurs are going to build businesses businesses are going to create jobs I think it’s a wonderful virtual cycle which we’re just at the cusp of seeing so very excited for that yeah absolutely for anyone running a family office I think that’s the dream right to institutionalize it to a certain extent where you can think about you know becoming a large institutional private Equity or Venture Capital fund however you might want to structure it but so many successful family offices have been able to do exactly that from the west but I think in India we still in very nent stages but you highlighted some examples that are getting there we’re increasingly seeing more and more Tech IPOs however most traditional family offices would only allocate 5 to 10% of their in entire portfolio towards the private markets are you seeing a shift in power dynamics in the business world where whole money from traditional businesses is now being poured into new tech-led business models and what do you think private versus public allocations will look like 5 10 years down the line um so the question on technology I think chrisy is that technology is changing everything uh around us today so we we do have to recognize that it is a fantastic enabler across Industries for every every one so the the disruption that we’re seeing in Tech is impacting each and every one of us in different ways and I I don’t necessarily think it’s just family offices I think anybody who’s investing today has to recognize that technology is going to be part of the future and it’s going to have an impact on some part of their some or if not all parts of their Investment Portfolio yeah like if you just look at the US the MA 7 at trillion bigger three times XR economy so you know like the numbers are just huge in terms of tech disruption and mindboggling you know so to to that extent so I would say that um I’m I’m more I’m more keenly looking at the split between public and private markets uh rather than necessarily Tech because I think Tech is just all pervasive uh but when I look at the private and public market split um private markets even from the time Waterfield started in the early days 2012 2013 I probably didn’t see portfolios more than maybe 1 or 2% which were there in private markets very small but if I was to look at waterfield’s own allocations in 2020 we had about maybe 7 and a half% of our overall AUM was in private markets by 2024 that has doubled we’re already sitting at about 15% of our entire AUM that we manage is in private markets today um and that is split between that is split between funds um as well as direct Investments and every family is different some like to go the fund route some like to go the direct investment route there is no right and wrong answer here it really depends on what the family is comfortable with in terms of risk uh but what is fascinating is to see this even in a 4-year Journey itself 7 and 1 half% become almost 15% in terms of private Market allocations where do I see this going if I was to look at the largest uh family offices overseas um their allocations to private markets sits closer to maybe 40 to 50% in private markets because family offices are those that can are looking for very longterm Investments they are not too fussed about liquidity immediately or for a particular need if they have a liquidity requirement they’ve already carved it out and kept it separately so they when they’re creating that risk pool and that for the private markets they’re very clear that this money is really what I don’t need for the next 7 10 years so and I also see for the younger Generations they are looking at having much more exposure to these two private markets than their previous generations and I’m seeing that they are willing to take as much as maybe 30 to 35% today itself in terms of private Market exposure one of the things that I think a lot of families do need to keep in mind is how do you size your private Market portfolio correctly because um in public markets you’re making the investment now in private markets because there’s a draw down over a 5year period you may end up actually underallocation to private markets today because you’re not thinking about the fact that your public markets is also growing yeah and you’re looking at it in the context of just today and then you’re thinking oh my god I’ve got too much exposure to private markets not realizing that the public markets is also going to grow so you need to today in some sense commit to private markets correctly today keeping in mind what the next 5 years the entire portfolio is going to grow to that I think is something that I know we at Waterfield we have a science around it in which how we’re actually working with families very closely to determine what should be their private Market investment today so that it were able to see it 5 years out rather than necessarily trying to say I’m solving only for the problem today that’s a science I don’t think family officers have fully quite figured that out yet and that’s something that I think they need to do so that they don’t figure out that they’re under allocated to private markets in the longer term particularly when we say that the next two decades are going to be India’s decades and private markets are really where all the Innovation the newer opportunities are sitting because unlike in markets like the US where you could have exposure in the listed space just a lot of innovation and a lot of innovative ideas and uh spaces you don’t have that in India today so a lot of the newer stuff is going on in private markets so you need to have an allocation there if you’re going to participate in what is really India’s growth over the next two decades so I’m a big believer in those spaces um I also feel the private Market allocation will also mirror what the families um natural areas of Interest are so if you are a Pharma uh entrepreneur chances are you’re going to have a little bit more bias towards Healthcare in your private markets you want it to be ancillary businesses or opportunities that you may buy tomorrow as well it could be merger and acquisition opportuni so family businesses and family offices look at it slightly differently if you are a tech entrepreneur you’re going to have a clear bias towards more technology oriented opportunities funds or direct Investments so how do you create that portfolio that gives you comfort and yet good risk adjusted returns for the longer term I think that’s really the play but it’s a very exciting space that I see going I love that because you know honestly my vested interest is also in the private side because I’ve been doing private Market investing for now almost a decade but um echoing your point about you know the origins of family office as a concept A lot of venture capital uh industry actually started because of the family off is putting in money towards entrepreneurial risky ideas where other people would not fund those ideas right so it actually goes back to the origins of how Venture Capital as an industry also blossomed because of all the allocations that were going towards these private markets through family offices so it’s very refreshing to hear that uh that in India also this is changing and positively uh and there’s so much that we can see I’m going to give you just one example that you many people may or may not know that the first origins of the family office was the medich family in Italy and uh they supposedly were the first venture capitalist when the piano was invented um so they actually put in money to for someone an inventor to create the piano and are regarded as the original Venture capitalists as a family office to have invested in that so just as the just is something which could and you know what I found really fascinating also that uh this term carry actually comes from from The Wailing industry because the Venture capitalists or family officers at that point would actually fund Expeditions and uh from whenever the carry would come back which is the whale in that case uh the uh profits would be split between the family office and the person who led the expedition so you know it’s such fascinating insights when you go into the history of family offices it is yeah and uh when you think about um uh you know some of the best practices that you were seeing in terms of private Market allocations that some families are thinking about uh because you did mention that it’s a science uh whatever you willing to share publicly what what are some of those softer new answers that one should pay attention to because there is an ultimate an inherent risk of illiquidity uh you don’t know how the companies will Fair 5 10 years down the line so a lot of people are still skeptical of putting a large allocation towards that so how should one think about private markets um so there are many different uh things that you will evaluate uh we do a lot more fund investing so I’ll tell you a little bit more on how we look at funds because I think direct Investments is very specific to um to what a family would want to also get into and different Industries you use different bench marks but certainly when it comes to the fund we’re very uh we look very closely at the team uh that for us is the starting point and has that team really been together um over multiple funds or just multiple um places so it could be a new team that’s created but have they worked together because ultimately that consistency because this is a long-term commitment you are making to a fund you want to make sure that they stay together so for us the team is very important the second which is very important for us is really around the track record in terms of exits because everything around private markets is your ability to exit the investment um till then until you’ve actually exited it’s just a notional number in and you can feel good about what it’s marked up to or hoping mostly not markdowns but markups you would feel good about yourself and saying you know this is where the company is at but unless you actually do the exit um you’re not really going to see any returns so the track record of the partners to demonstrate exits is a big part of the decision that you’re making unfortunately in India we have not had great experiences around funds really exiting and and in that sense giving the confidence to LPS that they can exit positions and you can make money so the problem here is that it’s a little bit of an early it’s an early ecosystem it’s an early industry so it’s just going through that phase where you’re beginning to see the exits you also now have a public markets which through which you can IPO many of the in Investments so you’re beginning to see the exits now but for someone to take very aggressive bets on private markets they will do so when they can actually see the exits getting demonstrated so for for us the team is important the exits to be able to demonstrate the exits is important the third very important thing for us is just the investment thesis and staying true to the investment thesis so for a lot of the funds when they pitching to you they’re going to say a bunch of things that they’re going to do how good are they and how consistent are they in doing what they said they would do because if they are not staying true to what you have signed up for as an LP then you know I do have a problem with that so it’s important that they stick to that thesis they stay true to that thesis and if something is not working right to be able to share with the LPS that look we may be doing a small change we’re thinking about it this way or or otherwise so for us the third big thing for us is around the investment KES as well as the the strategy um the fourth one I think that’s also important um for us is that you’re also looking at deal flow and you’re also looking at their ability to access deal flow how well are they networked in the ecosystem so what I tend to see happening for family offic off sometime and this is the difference between funds and family offices is that today because of the proliferation of funds that are there chances are that most of the companies are going to go to a fund first to seek yeah uh an investment so as a family office you have to be a little careful and this is coming to direct investing is it because they have not been able to raise from a fund that they have come to you and are you then just the stop Gap um and is it just a deal that couldn’t get done by a fund and therefore you have to fund it so in the past maybe about 10 years ago the first sport of call for a lot of Founders was actually family offices so family offices could get their choice of whichever company they want to get into that choice has become a little different now because of the proliferation of funds that you’ve seen so my advice to family offices is that you need to think about that balance between what you’re investing through a fund and what you’re doing direct and being very clear that if you’re doing direct it’s not because this particular company has not been able to raise from a fund and that they’re consciously coming to family offices only for raising capital or otherwise so these are some of the things that try I think is important for families to look at and again when it comes to I think going back maybe I’m jumping a little bit but coming back last to the funds itself is around the fact that when you track Fund performance and you’re looking at irrs and you’re looking looking at DPI and you’re looking at uh mic’s what you will find is that the best funds and the not so good funds there’s a very big difference in terms of their performance so when you as a family office are evaluating to give money to a fund it’s extremely important to see how they are performing and what quartile they’re sitting in b a the others because unlike public markets where it’s a very narrow band in terms of the differential between how let’s say one PMS May perform Visa the other and by narrow band I’m saying it could still be around between you know five uh 500 basis points it’s not likely to be hugely different from that in the case of a fund that differential could be as much as 15 to 20% so you want to make make sure that you are with the best funds in that sector in that stage in that category as opposed to anybody else which is why access then becomes important and having the right diligence around that fund manager becomes key um so these are the big things nothing very different team investment thesis exits um and what is their track record and performance and also making sure that you know you as a family office are not getting the drgs but are in fact actually competing and participating in the best deals that are available today yeah absolutely I think you’ve highlighted some very key points about what to think about when you’re investing in funds or even if you’re doing direct investing what to be careful of uh but uh let’s also talk about some of the performance metrics right because there’s so much scattered data around how fun funds have performed in India in terms of ir a lot of them actually haven’t been able to match Public Market outcomes and that a lot of LPS are jilted because of that because they might have done better in their public markets portfolio compared to their private markets and this I think has happened over the last five six years right so um can you talk a little bit about performance metrics what are what have you seen from the top percentile funds in the country so I I think s what’s important is that um a private Market investment is not a substitute for a public market investment or vice versa yeah when you come to just your basic Investment Portfolio that you create you do create and have different asset classes for a reason and you do that so that they are not highly correlated with each other so if you have a private Market investment and an allocation to private markets and you’ve got something else to public markets you don’t substitute one with the other you know that public markets is having a phenomenal run right now you know that in the last two years if you’ve been getting 35 and 40% in public markets it’s also an aberration but at the same time your private markets were down and based on your allocation it doesn’t mean that private markets was bad uh in fact it was just that cycle in the private Market cycle and because you have a portfolio which has a diversification on asset classes you’re able to weather the storm so in the same way that um public markets has had its day there will come a time when public markets is not going to look as good and today you are at the truff in some ways or maybe just a bit maybe it’s just recovering of the private markets so if I was an investor today I would start taking debts in the private Market space because the valuations are much more moderate uh it is almost contrarian you’re not investing at the peak of the cycle you’re actually investing at the trough or just where the curve is just beginning to move so this is when people should be saying you know I’m getting very good valuations for private Market Investments I should be taking a few more bets here because in the next five years when I look at this vintage for private markets it’s going to be a lot more attractive than any other vintage maybe going forward so the one thing I keep telling families is that it’s about ass allocation it’s also about the fact that you have to be a little contrarian in your investment philosophy if you’re going to make money because you can’t come in at the peak and then say I’m going to make money from there very tough you have to make sure that you’re catching it pretty much at a fair price in order for you to make money in the longer term but in terms of metrics I think what we’re seeing is that you know uh it depends again on the size of the fund it depends on the Vintage of the fund it depends on you do both Venture Capital as well as private Equity right DC as well as PE it differs by vintage but what we’ve seen is that the differential between the top performers and even the next next quartile is very very high and that differential is sitting I can tell you between 15 and 20% clearly in terms of whether it’s PE or VC between the best and the worst or not even the best the worst the best in the next level so choosing the right fund is absolutely critical and key and in the US when you look at some of the fund reports you see that you know funds historically have delivered say 2 to 3x right even the best performing funds the top top coile funds so when you look at the India market is that a fair assumption that that it would be closely mirrored to that or would you say that it should be higher given that you know a challenges are much broader develop mental stage Etc I think it depends on whether it’s VC or PE I think if you’re sitting in the PE space and you’re getting 2 to 3x that’s a great outcome if you’re sitting in Venture what you want is maybe between 3 and 5x and if you’re getting that in the Venture space fabulous I think fantastic but again if you look at just the data in terms of DPI it’s very poor s for India because it’s too nent right now and we need to also give it time I think we’ve also uh unfortunately most family offices are not that patient and I think actually why should I say family offices I think most investors are not that patient and we do need to give it time because you need these are early ideas these are early themes which are playing out this is innovation you know so you’ve got to be allow those companies to be able to fulfill their potential any company even the best of entrepreneurs know that to fulfill your potential it’s not going to happen in 3 years it’s definitely not going to happen in five it will possibly happen in 10 or 15 so you need to give it that length of time uh unfortunately too many investors are too impatient and we as advisers need to try and keep educating clients that you have an asset allocation for a purpose you can get that excitement if you want in public markets private markets will be winners for you in the longer term if you choose why wisely and choosing wisely is important but you also need to recognize that those underlying Investments are companies that are being built out in terms of their potential you have to be patient with those Investments and any thoughts on the new age Tech IPOs that are happening uh or any Venture funded IPOs that are happening because you know there were historically it was sub1 billion in terms of value created in the public markets but this is going to expand uh significantly for Indian markets because there are so many funds pushing their portfolio companies to go towards an IPO route as well now so how do you think this will grow I I think you know I feel that as more and more companies invent on private Equity have to find an exit they will come to uh to the public markets which is a great outcome actually I don’t think it’s a bad one so we will just see more of this uh and I think what’s important is that not to get distracted or Carried Away by the hype in any counter because these businesses are all going to have their like any business cycle they’re going to go through their ups and downs again investing is about shy getting in at the right price and getting out at the right price or at a price it’s it’s it’s a it’s a science it’s not you can’t layer it with too much of your emotions and behavior and feelings it’s about saying have I got an investment at the right price given the prospects that I know of this company or how it’s going to do I also need to have the price at which I will exit and not get too emotionally involved or tangled up with that investment one of the biggest things you know that we’ve seen in family offices when I’ve taken over portfolios they’ve had historical Investments that they’ve made so they’ve gotten at a fabulous price or they’ve gotten at an IPO they just don’t want to sell they just want to hold on to it and I keep telling them that you know one of course there’s concentration risk in the portfolio because you’re sitting with this huge allocation which is just one stock or two stocks so that in itself is a risk but the other is I keep telling them just as you found that investment so many years ago and it’s given you this kind of return let’s start thinking about the things that you can find today which is going to give you that kind of return so that you can then create that Legacy just as maybe your parents created this investment for you you can do that with your next gen so so much of it is mindset but it’s also trying to rationalize the whole discussion around Investments and that it’s not it can’t I mean there’s so much of emotion involved in it how can you try and help those families take a little bit of that emotion out to say that you know it is ultimately what you are doing as a custodian of the wealth in your generation to pass it down to the next one so can that come into the decision making as well yeah I think every investment does run its course over a period of time but I think a lot of people think tend to think about Warren Buffett in that regard right like if I found a consistent compounder just keep holding it for my lifetime uh but there’s a different way to think about it also because I think you know I had hosted Professor Asad Daman also on the show and he spoke about shutting out all the noise and just focusing on the right price which is what I think you were also echoing absolutely and S now we’ve spoken so much about uh the investing Journey but I would love to come back to your personal side as well in personal Journey what was the hardest business decision that you’ve had to make so far can you share a moment when failure or hardship became your greatest teacher um I think the hardest business decision trishy was not to do distribution uh in our business that would have been really lucrative right very lucrative exactly seriously lucrative to have said no to that and completely shut my mind despite so many people saying you’ve got you know you’ve got assets that you’re managing you know do distribution I think the toughest was to stay away from it what it did teach me in in return was patience uh that if you want to build a good business and one that is there for the longer term uh you have to make some of those short-term sacrifices in order to build something which is more lasting and enduring so that was probably the toughest um and we’ve had multiple discussions at our board around this as well and at every stage I’ve said look it’s just I didn’t create Waterfield to become another distribution house I created Waterfield with a very different intent and purpose in mind so that was probably the hardest hardest yeah but if you compare the both models you know people might be sitting on lacks of cores but you also almost there right but in terms of unit economics of the business model uh let’s talk a little bit about that so that people can understand how the industry works you know what are the incentives what are the unit economics margins Etc like uh people then will be able to appreciate what you’ve really said no to yeah so uh distribution you can very easily make anywhere between um maybe 1 to 1.25 1 and a half% in terms of the assets that you manage in advisory uh you’re probably looking more at between 30 to 40 basis points so you’re almost giving up and giving away close to about 60 to 70 basis points to the client so that they are in turn making more money in terms of the Returns on the investment so that’s the that’s the Crux of it yeah but whatever is best for the customer tends to be long-term the best thing suited for an entrepreneur as well and for me shishy it’s about sleeping well at night yeah more than anything else and knowing that you’ve made a difference to the families that you’re working with absolutely and there’s so much power to that as a follow on to the previous question was there a particular moment when you felt the tight turning for the family office revolution in India where water Fields potential became undeniable to you uh as a Founder I’ve always had belief so for me one it was like that was the motivation um and I’ve never ever lost that and never will um I never will but it’s about U you know again coming back to the what I said product Market fit that VCS always talk about you do see the demand that suddenly is there and when people start really valuing your product and solution and service that’s when you know the the tide has turned and I think we felt that uh just postco or just during covid um in 2020 because markets corrected so sharply um there were so many many families out there who then got very concerned about how their money was being managed so it was like that moment is when you realized that I can’t do it myself I do need an advisor and I need somebody who is completely aligned and impartial in terms of the advice they’re giving me so even if they had been a distributor could I believe them I’m not sure I needed somebody who I knew was completely on my side because what was happening was something that I needed a good advisor with the professional Kno how to come in and tell me what should I be doing um so I think that was the moment when things really started changing for us and we’ve never looked and how would you advise someone going through a black swor event like that right like GFC or Co 40% draw Downs in your portfolio can shake up a lot of people and bring out the worst emotions in terms of you know not feeling um Financial stability anymore as well sometimes so how should one think about uh dealing with adversity like that what should the mindset be so when you create your portfolio on the investment framework that I spoke about in terms of risk pools then you will actually see a black spawn event as an opportunity because you know you have that pool of capital that you have kept aside which is there to make sure that nothing ever happens to your lifestyle or the way in which your family is supported and taken care of so that’s one thing that you must do which is why that safety pool is so critical it then allows you to view a covid incident or a GFC as an opportunity rather than as a challenge or with fear so I think that’s one big learning that families must do any client or any investor must uh must absolutely do um so so in in terms of having just that out of the way that’s important the other is that when you look at history and you look at when these black spawn events have happened and as investors you do need to do that you also then need to see what is the time it has taken for markets to recover from such an incident so you then go back to investors families clients with data I mean this is still best guess you know you you can’t still predict what the future may look like but you can still at least have an educated informed discussion with your clients to say these are all the different events that have happened and you can say GFC you can say covid you can say 2001 when there was the bust uh bubble which uh went bust you can look at the Asian crisis and you can go back to each of these different points of time and say this is how long it took for markets to recover and therefore this is the kind of holding period that we need to have if we want to make sure that we stay invested and then the market comes back um of course at that point we will be rational human beings as advisers to try and give that advice we still don’t know what’s going to happen but we can still say in terms of how markets have worked they go up they go down that’s part of life uh when there is a correction it is an opportunity we will say we will hold your hand on a best effort basis we think that this is going to recover and things are going to work out well we don’t know for sure but we are going to say we think that this is the time when you can make the investment and we will stick our neck out to say it I think that is what a lot of times clients are just looking for that reassurance that guidance that confidence that we may have and we do have a certain level of uh confidence in our own ility because we do see I mean fundamentally if it’s a good company which is mispriced you do know that that’s the time to make the investment so a lot of it is then you know it’s not the science it’s actually the the emotion that you need to handhold a family through at that point or a client through at that point that’s why we’re here that’s why we’re here as wealth managers absolutely and uh you know navigating the family Dynamics in a joint family business setup has also been historically very hard to do we’ve seen so many prominent business families suffer and deteriorate over the years how would you advise promoters to have the hard conversations within the family um I always say have the hard conversations when you’re all talking to each other U because communication is the key most time that’s the first thing that starts breaking right yeah so communication so please have these hard conversations when everyone is still talking to each other because if that doesn’t happen then it’s too late uh you’ll not be able to solve the issue so I think that’s one very important part of uh of the discussion the second is rather than you know I I think we’ve been quite fortunate to see some families in India which have been quite large do some very elegant Solutions in terms of family settlements you can more recently we’ve had the grid family that’s done this family settlement maybe a year prior you had the TVs group that had a family settlement rather than looking at the families that didn’t work I’d love for family officers to spend more time on what worked for the family settlements that went well and we’ve got two very good examples in the recent past um which should be actually according to me perhaps case studies for the future on how they went about actually doing these family settlements in a good way from what I have noted from some of this um sitting on the outside a little is that communication was key I think the role of Independence as well in terms of people who were speaking on behalf of both families to both sides of the families to navigate and negotiate certain areas uh was also a big plus so I probably think that these are probably two key elements and and then of course just the role of the family Council who’s on the family Council who are the principales speaking to each other do you have a constitution these governance Frameworks then become key in terms of just being able to help these families navigate uh these um these situations again advice to families that we give is to just make sure that if you see an impending problem do it in your lifetime to solve the problem please do not kick it down the can to your next Generation who will find it even harder to unwind a situation or a conflict so for that a lot of family businesses need to be quite or family Patriarchs and matriarchs need to be quite mature to be able to literally you know um uh take the bull by the horns and say I will get down to s solving this so that it doesn’t become a problem for my next gen yeah that ends up happening very often right like it trickles down the generations which is very unfortunate uh with somia we’ve spoken so much about family businesses Dynamics but as a leader how have you grown personally or evolved during your journey with Waterfield what’s the one piece of advice you would give to the new generation of leaders especially women stepping into the world of finance and Entrepreneurship uh so I think I’ve changed a lot from the time I started Butterfield to where it is now um because as a Founder you’re and uh I’ve said this in a couple of different occasions as well to different people that as a Founder you have to lead by example you’re setting the tone for everything whether it’s the organization the culture the way you conduct yourself it’s viewed watched uh your your by every person in the organization so leading by example is very important being with the troops in the trenches as I say is very important but as the business grows your leadership style has to change between what is needed in startup mode and what is needed in scale up mode uh and these are two very distinct phases of a company’s Journey so in startup it is about leading from the front with the troops setting the culture Vision tone of what’s going on in the company by the time you you come to scale up it’s more about institutionalizing the business having a wonderful team and leaders who you are then um inspiring motivating and you’re creating the next generation of leaders for the organization so the leadership style then changes from being at the front to actually being leading from behind so it’s about being then the shepherd so you have the flock and the flock is there and they are going in their own Parts you’re just making sure that the flock is together but you’re allowing each one of them to develop their own management styles their own ability and their own their own growth and their own entrepreneurial instincts to to build and create so that’s what I’ve seen in my own journey in Waterfield between um leading from the front V Vis now leading from behind advice that I would give to women uh particularly as they start out on any of their Journeys is that do not for a moment think that you’re any less than a man um and I think that’s the first piece of advice because if you do then you’re everything you’re kind of starting two steps behind so the first piece of advice is that you are no different uh from any male counterpart uh or anyone who was born as a man so that is the first thing that has to go out of your head but just to other entrepreneurs I would just say that um you have to be you have to be um authentic you have to communicate really well and you have to be patient in what you’re building and this is whether you’re um a male or a woman founder you these are just traits that you’re going to have to just have belief um uh authenticity genuiness um those are the things that then will inspire others around you um so those would be some of my my few pieces of advice yeah and when you find yourself in challenging situations or you know in very male dominated rooms which is I’m sure true in most of the cases uh what is your selft talk like to pep yourself up I don’t put my gender in at all I just think I’m as good and I won’t say if not better I will just say I am as good as anyone else in the room and I have as much of a reason to be in this room as anybody else because I am competent I know my job and um I will be true to myself and say what I have to say um so that would be the way I approach any such meeting love that and what’s your personal ambition for Waterfield you’ve accomplished so much in such a condensed timeline I would still say what’s the Northstar metric that you’re working towards uh be India’s largest wealth advisory company multif family office but built on the highest ethical standards that’s the norstar do you have a number in mind no number I just want to be you know the largest the most admired the to have done it the right way um no numbers in mind because you know the the sky is the limit yeah absolutely in your view what does true wealth mean Beyond just Financial assets great question what does true wealth mean um I think uh swishy peace of mind and a life without anxiety for me that would be true wealth yeah that’s very profound and I love that because we are on to our last segment of the show today are there any books podcasts or resources that have had a profound impact on your life or career uh two books uh one was Blue Ocean strategy uh which for me was um a book that actually inspired Waterfield because when I thought about starting the company um the entire wealth management industry was distribution LED it is the red ocean an advisory for me was the Blue Ocean and the space that was completely unchartered so that book had a profound impact on even Waterfield starting the second book was execution uh which was by Ram Chan and Larry bid because you can have a great plan but if you don’t execute well then even the best L plans are not going to help or succeed so for me that those two books and I think equally important syy is at what age you read those books um I read both those books in my mid-30s um and at that point I was very um you know I I was very charged up by having read those two and it kind of swed the seeds for the entrepreneur in me um so reading books is important but the age at which you reach read them then has a profound impact on on your life love it because yeah you’re so right about that every decade you read the same books you can take new insights from the same books right absolutely You Come Away with something very different yeah one professional and one personal goal over the next year professional okay uh professional goal is to create a great team at Waterfield so I’m very focused on just having really good people in the company uh personal more me time for sure uh I think I just get so caught up up into so many other things that a little bit more time for myself is what I probably aspire to uh how do you like spending your meat time I love music so uh just listening to music puts me in a great space great Zone um so listening to any kinds of new music is always something I love doing and uh travel I love to travel as well so I’m hoping that this next one year I’ll see some new places because much of this year has been focused only on the company so yeah me time finding that me time is really important I hope you get that which person has had the most formative impact on your life uh my mother for sure uh real Trailblazer in her time but I have a twin sister shishi so the fact that um she felt that she never viewed or she always felt that daughters could do as many things as some could do and never made us feel that we were any less in any way but gave us opportunity um showed us the importance of values Heritage tradition but also um you know uh hard work um and just education that just gave us so much opportunity so my mom real Trailblazer for me she sounds incredible if you were to write a book about your life what would the title be um it would be called in pursuit of purpose um so in in my head I call it I poop someday I’m going to write you know in pursuit of purpose because I just feel that um again been very privileged for the life I have been given and it needs to mean something it it cannot be just a life which is Led without having its impact across different spheres so for me um it has been the pursuit of purpose you knowy I love that because you know so many people struggle to find what their purpose or true calling is but sounds like you discovered it very early in life yeah lucky lucky to have discovered it ear what are you most proud of Waterfield water field creating water field I think having interacted with you and your team I can testify to that it’s incredibly powerful in terms of what you’ve been able to accomplish in such a short span of time and also the team that you’ve been able to build thank you what’s the kindest thing anyone’s everever done for you and this is the last question um kindest thing is um so there was a um group chief executive of standard ched um that was the where I worked before a gentleman called mvin Davis um and uh I met him when I was in my early 30s um I met him for exactly maybe not more than 10 or 15 minutes and in those 10 or 15 minutes he then said would you take your career internationally with the bank um and before I knew it four weeks later I was working out of Singapore in standard chood but the reason I think it was the kindest thing that happened to me is because he never expected anything in return for suggesting something which was career altering to me um it changed my entire Destiny everything that I did from that point on um and maybe people have those moments when somebody comes along and just transforms your life he was one such but I view it as the kindest because there was never anything that he sought in return for it but it had a profound change on the rest of my life so yeah somewhere for me morvin Marvin’s intervention was that’s amazing and what a beautiful note to end the episode with as well I think people betting on other people is the answer that I get the most in this question and that’s not surprising exctly exactly exactly exactly and thank you no it also means that we have to pay it forward s absolutely that’s this is my way of doing it and hopefully today the audience will learn so much from from your insights and experience thank you for taking out the time it’s been an incredible conversation thank you so much Shi it’s been an absolute pleasure um sharing my candid comments with you and thank you for having me