The Exchanges

Q Do you think that's a good idea? Having co-CEOs? I'm just like.

A It's very odd. It's odd that it doesn't, because it doesn't work in many, there's a lot of stories where you can look back and, um, there were, uh, three co-Roman emperors that didn't go very well. Uh, But if you look back at the track record of the co-CEOs and it's spotty, uh, but I think where it really works well here is we do two very distinctly different things. We manage two different, distinctly different cultures inside the business with tech culture and entertainment culture. We're even physically in two different places in California. Um, and it enables us to be, to bring out the best in ourselves in the, in the things that we do. Provide technical guidance and inspiration for people in an area that we're not Where we have our sea legs. Um, and I think it helps for recruiting. Uh, people want to work for people that know what they're, you know, what they're doing in the area that you're coming to work for us on. Um, so, and, and, and I think it doesn't, it may not work at every company that does what we do even, because I feel like the company is inherently free of politics. Um, all the things in the culture deck that we're not, Greg and I wouldn't backstab each other in the back for this job. Um, we both want this thing to work forever. Uh, the same way I didn't want Reed to leave. Yeah. So, um, so I really think that it'll be, uh, it uniquely works at Netflix and it…

AI assessment note: “I think where it really works well here is we do two very distinctly different things.”

Q Why do you want to compete with them? Why not just co-opt them?

A The problem is, while we distribute on them, we never know, we don't get to touch Are subscribers in a way. We don't know their names. We don't know their email IDs. We don't know their phone numbers. We don't know who they are. What is working? What is not working? Uh, like take your example, a movie producer who's independent will never have access to the kind of data Netflix has access to. You might know tomorrow with cameras on television sets or mobile phones that You could probably gauge when the pupils of a certain person dilate when they're watching a certain character do a certain thing in a particular movie. So if you don't control the medium, you don't access the data. In turn, you can't, it's like trying to compete with 100, the data that someone else has. Tomorrow YouTube will make their own content, like Netflix makes their own. It happens in every industry, right? You look at a food delivery platform.

AI assessment note: “So if you don't control the medium, you don't access the data.”

Q So if I were to make the assumption that Trump utilized content creators better in the previous election, does the platform that houses most of the content creators get to sway What should be heard, since you control the narrative? Not the narrative, but who watches which narrative?

A Yeah, I really don't look at it that way at all. In fact, um, I really think that it goes back to what I was saying, which is YouTube really is a reflection of, of what is happening in the world. And precisely, it's actually meant to be a reflection of what's interesting to you in the moment. When you open up the YouTube app, It really should be a reflection of Nikhil's interests of the moment over some period of time. Uh, doesn't mean that it's just that. There's obviously, we endeavor to show a diversity of content, but it's generally oriented around what we know to be of your personal interest based on your viewing habits, et cetera. So you, as the user, really are in the driver's seat in terms of what type of content you're looking for, what you're looking to view, and it's the job of The content creators to be true to who they are, but then to use the YouTube platform to build an audience. And I say that, you know, YouTube in many ways is the, the, the, the most efficient way of connecting a creator like yourself with their audience wherever they are in the world. But it's, it's really just that. You are the one responsible for actually producing the content that's interesting to people. And I, as a fan of yours, Um, I'm only gonna watch it to the extent that I'm interested. And so that's fundamentally what happens on YouTube. And your question about what happened in the r…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I really don't look at it that way at all.”

Q I know it's tough to put YouTube in a box, but if you were to try and define what YouTube is today, what would you say it is?

A Um, um, that's a great question. I would say, um, I, I think we are, we are really our own thing, and what I, what I mean by that is, our ambition is to be a, a, a streaming service where you can Watch, create, and share video. Regardless of where you are in the world, who you are. Um, and that's our goal, that's our mission. And what I like about that is it really encapsulates everything from living room screens to television screens to, um, you know, your phone in your pocket, uh, to, you know, car radio, all that sort of stuff. We're not social media. We're not a place where you go To connect or share with your friends. You're primarily there to watch video. Um, and we're not sort of linear, traditional television either. Um, we're sort of our own thing because of the nature of the content that's created on our platform being a creator-led content generation platform.

AI assessment note: “a streaming service where you can Watch, create, and share video”

Q And if I were to go back to the fact that I'm speaking to entrepreneurs who want to use this platform to grow a business, can you give me five non-obvious insights about the world of content that I might not be able to find online?

A Yeah, uh, let me say a few things. First is, um, and I don't know if this is obvious or not, but I'll just, I'll say sort of the things that I, I, I think an up and coming entrepreneur would want to think about. One is, you know, places like YouTube, but other platforms also, um, have really eliminated the need or the, like, the fact of a barrier between you and your, Audience, or your customer, or however you think about it. Like, you are in the driver's seat, you get to control what that conversation looks like, and you get the feedback immediately. That's the second thing. It's like, as opposed to feedback that would happen in the traditional way, whether you were an entrepreneur and getting the feedback from the market six months down the road, or from your investors a year down the road, feedback on a place like YouTube is instantaneously. You literally see it in the comments within minutes of you. Seconds, minutes within you posting the video. So that's a world, ah, that you really, really have to be ready for. The third we talked about, um, which is true, ah, truly global, right? Like, so, um, you can have local, regional, national sort of ambitions, but, you know, content tends to be global. Storylines do translate. There are specifics, obviously, and Obviously culture matters a lot, um, but that's, that's kind of the, the, the, the third thing that I would say. One thi…

AI assessment note: “I'll say sort of the things that I think an up and coming entrepreneur would want”

Q for me throughout. I've known them from, you know, like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, whatever. Whenever they go to the government at the central level, like some go to ED, some go to CBI, some go to like SFI, I don't know, different, different places. A lot of them tell me that our representation, Kannadiga's representation in government is so low. Like, what are your thoughts on that?

A For various reasons, not just because nobody speaks for us. Officers from Karnataka corridor do not like to go to the centre. Forget about us insiders, even the outsiders who have come here, like from other states, like generally it is, ah, out of every four posts, three positions will be held by the outsiders, and one position is given to the insiders, that is the home state persons. Mainly because the cadre is such that it is a very good cadre, cadre management is very good. The differentiation between the outside officers and inside officers is not much. The political witch hunting which happens in other states is not here. And, uh, Bangalore city offers a good comfortable, uh, uh, place to stay for education, for health, and so many other aspects. It's a comfortable place. So, people do not prefer to go out.

AI assessment note: “Officers from Karnataka corridor do not like to go to the centre.”

Q And you started marketing like mad at this point, right?

A No. So then we, then we sat and said, okay, what is it that we want to do and how we want to do? Because, uh, there could be a lot of distractions. So, and we were still learning at that stage. It's not that we perfected. We were still learning. So one day I saw my cook using three SIM cards. This is, uh, the time when all the new operators got license and everybody was selling new schemes every day. UniNor and other new guys came. So I said, why are you using three SIM cards? He said, sir, one for local college, local calling. I said, fine. I said second SIM card. He said to call my native village. I said third SIM card. He said incoming is free. So I'm not throwing it away.

AI assessment note: “No. So then we, then we sat and said, okay, what is it”

Q So you finished college and what did you do first? When did you finish college?

A I finished college in 2004. And I got placed in the manufacturing setup, uh, or in craft, if you would know based out of Godegaon. So this, there's one of the, uh, one of the largest export house out of India. I thought I would not get a better job than this. So I stayed there and I worked for three and a half years there. Uh, it was typically merchandising and two years I did merchandising. I found it very boring. And I thought of leaving the job that time, because if you would know, merchandising is bias, say you something, and then you copy paste, do it. I used to work for and Taylor Gap, all those brands. And then I started giving interviews actually everywhere outside. I went to barista. Can I do a job in marketing? Coffee day was big. There was a back. I went to Airdekin for an interview to apply for marketing because I was fed up of my career at that time.

AI assessment note: “I finished college in 2004. And I got placed in the manufacturing setup”

Q How did this begin? Would you like to start by telling us like a little bit of little bit about your journey, how it was from where you began in Chennai to where you are today?

A Yeah. Um, Well, I was just like any other, um, student in Chennai, um, just, just studying. People in Chennai study a lot. I think that's one thing I've known. Um, I think I was pretty interested in, um, all sorts of statistical things, um, mainly coming from following cricket a lot is people generally like try to analyze the stats and run rate and like, How many fifties or hundreds? And I, I got an intuitive sense for numbers pretty early on. I was pretty good at math. Um, and I also like early on picked up programming towards the end of my, um, I think leaven standard. So that's, that was how it began. And obviously my mom wanted me to get into IITs. Uh, every time like we would go on a bus And pass by the IIT Madras campus. Uh, my mom would point to the campus and say, this is where you're going to study. It's not even like you should study. This is where you're going to study. So that was the expectation. I definitely grew up thinking that, okay, um, I do want to like compete and win against the best people. Uh, and, um, it was, the JE exams are pretty competitive, as you know, and so we, we had a pretty, uh, good rivalry among, like, fellow students, and I obviously didn't do as well as I wanted in the JE, but, um, I got into IIT, got into electrical engineering, and inside the, inside the campus, Again, like, a lot of our friends got into competitive programming, so I, I …

AI assessment note: “I was just like any other, um, student in Chennai, um, just, just studying.”

Q is this easy, and if I were to train a computer model to do it, it would require so much energy, compute, and it seems like, you know, you'll have to probably build an arm and figure out how the fingers move and all of that. So the job of a waiter picking up a glass in a restaurant is likely not going to be taken over by a computer?

A Not anytime soon. Which is funny because that's not paid as much as, uh, someone gets paid to write code today, right? So it's a, it's like, it happens in the reverse way. Like everybody wants to think what they do is the one that's the one that's going to be taken by an AI, uh, the last. So, but, but let's go back to your question. So a lot of things happen, uh, in the human brain, uh, in a, in a split second, that's pretty amazing. Uh, so the way computers work right now is they would have to watch, uh, YouTube videos of people picking up cups, uh, and then they would have to have, like, a physics simulation environment where they train a robot with a suction grouper or, like, maybe a five finger, four or five finger dexterous hand, uh, attempt to pick the cup, like, thousands of times or tens of thousands of times. And then, like, learn what its success and failure based on whether the cup was actually picked up or not. And then do this in several different, uh, gravity environments so that it generalizes to new settings. Uh, do this on several different visual settings, and still it might fail. If there is a new material that's dropped, like a new glass, it still might fail. So I, I think that's where Generalization across different physics settings is still like pretty bad. It's not like training on the internet. There's not enough data. So you actually have to build somet…

AI assessment note: “Not anytime soon.”

Q They're able to raise a million dollars cause AI is hot right now. Then?

A Well, it's pretty hard to do something meaningful with a million dollars, but certainly doable. Um, the way I would do it is I would build a product that's pretty interesting and new, um, get users, raise more money, um, get more users and raise one little more money. And then start to build your own models. Uh, start with post-training on top of open source models, then start to, like, look into pre-training too. And, um, then get into data centers. Like, it's a multi-stage process. That's what I would do if I could start small. But if you're already established, if you're not like this twenty-five-year-old young person, if you're already somewhat established, you have a presence, you have a name in the field, Or, or, or unable to attract investments of higher magnitude, then I think you can go for the more ambitious targets right away.

AI assessment note: “the way I would do it is I would build a product that's pretty interesting”

Q people think that the incumbent AI players are, are trying to use it as a moat almost and capture the regulatory thing. Like, do you have any view on this? Like how should regulation, let's say the government of India is listening or watching this show. What would be the right way for them to regulate AI? And then B, what is the right way for America to regulate AI?

A Um, I mean, I, I think like regulating models is not necessarily a great idea. Uh, and it's not gonna work in practice either. Uh, people are still gonna be able to download a model and use it. Uh, I, I think the best way is to regulate applications. Like, uh, personally what I feel is pretty, um, concerning at this point is probably, People using chatbots when they're kids, and developing, like, relationships with them, um, and, like, feeling suicidal when, when they don't get to, like, enjoy the chatbots anymore, or they don't respond in the way they want to, and, um, kind of, like, taking your loneliness out on, like, an AI chatbot. All that stuff is pretty, I, I find it concerning. Like maybe some people don't and they don't care and they just think this is not any different from how the internet used to be. But I think it is different. So thinking about that application and like, how do we make sure AI usage by kids is done on apps that, you know, are productive and useful and knowledge enhancing. Rather than feeling too companionship-like is worth thinking about. Um, I don't think, like, other stuff is worth regulating as much today. Um, and, uh, we're kind of still, like, very early in AI that Moving slows is going to cost us a lot long term, and lot means like hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars. So it's best to keep accelerating right now. And be mindful of li…

AI assessment note: “I think the best way is to regulate applications”

Q Does it make a difference to you guys?

A It does, because I mean, both of our brands, I, I get what Matt's saying in terms of there's some, like, absorption that we can do when it comes to the per cup cost, but as soon as you start getting into, let's say, the cost of a canned coffee, right, a ready to drink beverage, or a box of beans that you want to freshly brew at home, or, um, a two kilo sack you want to sell, sell institutionally, then suddenly your margins are, Are getting shrunk. So I think from that, from that point of view, the supply chain shock really can impact the business in a, in a major way. Um, but if you're, you know, fortunately, Matt has this incredible array of cafes across the country and with, with that kind of distribution model for him, I mean, yeah, I guess it's less impactful.

AI assessment note: “It does, because I mean, both of our brands”

Q So when you say it, what is it?

A The algorithm. So like if, if the objective is don't die, Then it's just a systematic process of what inflicts damage upon the body. And then how do you mitigate that damage? Like how do you block it or, you know, how do you mitigate it? And so in that regard, it, uh, it, the process predetermines what foods you eat. If you'll drink out of plastic water bottles or not, whether you prefer a glass, if you filter your water, if you wear a mask or not, uh, if you go out and exercise like this morning in the hotel this morning, um, We, we took this air purifier and went to the gym. They had this beautiful gym and I wanted to work out, but we measured the air qualities in the gym are really, really bad. And so it has this filtration. So the air from outside is getting in. So people are in there doing this really high exertion, deep breathing, and they're breathing in all these pollutants. They have no idea. The thing is indoors. So like it, uh, it just really helps streamline decision-making across every aspect.

AI assessment note: “The algorithm. So like if, if the objective is don't die”

Q Closest to your grandfather and then your father?

A Uh, difficult to say, actually, Nikhil. Very different equations with all of them. Um, My great grandfather at that time, when I was growing up, I spent a couple of hours every Sunday with him. So for me, he was just my best friend. I'd drag him for a movie, and, um, he'd take me to the aquarium. That was pretty much the only thing you could do in Bombay at the time. Uh, my grandfather was doting. He just loved me immensely, uh, you know, just an ocean of love. Both of them. My father was, uh, Tough task master. So when I started going to work, I saw an avatar of him that I really hadn't experienced before, um, which was different. Um, you know, I think when in our company, people come to me and complain about being under a tough boss, I'm thinking in my mind, you know, they have no idea what a tough boss can be all about.

AI assessment note: “difficult to say, actually, Nikhil. Very different equations with all of them.”

Q And when you say dreamer, what did you dream of doing? What does the alternate life look like?

A Nothing. I had no other plan. I always wanted to join him at work. Um, I didn't have an alternative to be honest, but luckily for me, I had no other, you know, sort of burning desire to do something else or some great talent. Uh, this was something that I'd grown up seeing around me. I always been fascinated by. And, uh, so it was pretty much taken for granted. Uh, and that's what I actually wanted to do as well. I just found that the conversations, uh, that the three of them had quite, uh, interesting always. Uh, you know, the way they spoke about a business situation, setting up a new business about Their people, they also had their own teams, all three of them, and their teams were also quite different from each other. In some way, the reflection of, you know, the leader, the three of them. Uh, so business always fascinated me, you know, so I, I don't think I had, there was no issue there about, I want to do this, but they want me to do that. Or, you know, I have a great talent, which I'm not able to pursue because I have to join the family, um, In business. That, that phase luckily didn't happen with me at all.

AI assessment note: “Nothing. I had no other plan. I always wanted to join him at work.”

Q Okay, so we were at You started interning, uh, you go back there, and then what happened next? Uh, we're in the year, 86, 87, something like that.

A Yeah, I think, yeah, so I'm working with my father, um, complete my graduation and my CA, um, Uh, you know, it's, it's, it's a lot of work. Um, but good work. I mean, it's good. You get wrapped on the knuckles once in a way, but you learn to sort of accept that as a way of life. Also, you know, the intent, uh, is right. I also started looking at some of the units independently, and I feel a great sense of almost like gratitude because All my friends, I mean, their fathers treated them like they were nothing on earth. Um, and if I got, uh, the opportunity to have independent charge of fertilizer unit and a cement unit, uh, that really meant a lot. That was huge learning. Um, different time. I mean, my father and I would sit at the end of every month and He would analyze or want me to analyze all the breakdowns that happened in the three, four cement plants that we had. It was quite painful, but it was relevant because at that time you sold what you made, right? There wasn't anything, any other variable that was important, but, uh, it just be very boring and nice to think to myself, you know, I want to have so many kilns that Baba Khan asked me to be doing this every month. It was just such a boring thing to do. Um, but yeah, it was, I, like I said, steep learning curve. Um, I got married in 89. Um, went off to my MBA after that at, at London Business School, which was, uh, Again…

AI assessment note: “I'm working with my father, um, complete my graduation and my CA”

Q Not the mask. What do you actually woke about deeply?

A What do I really care about? I feel like a lot of successful people like yourself, Would have thought a certain thing at a certain point of time in life and voiced it. It might be your family legacy. It might be the tenants of the Birla family. And, uh, with time, we buy into this philosophy so deeply that we lose all ability to tweak, nudge, change it. Uh, if people were allowed To change their minds more often without judgment is something I think will help humans evolve faster. If I believed in something five years ago, and I changed my mind about it drastically today, the term society would give it is hypocrisy. The real term that should be attached to it, I think is evolution. And, uh, we should be all more welcoming of people changing their viewpoints and where they stand in society about different things. I think it just speeds up the rate of evolution of society.

AI assessment note: “if people were allowed To change their minds more often without judgment”

Q When somebody says godfather of AI, the term, How does it make you feel? What do you think about it?

A Uh, I mean, I don't particularly like this term. You know, I, I live in New Jersey. Godfather in New Jersey means you are, you belong to the mafia, right? I mean, science is never a sort of individual, uh, pursuit. You, you, You make progress by, by the collision of ideas from multiple people, and you, you, you make, you do make hypothesis, and then you try to show that your hypothesis is correct by demonstrating that the idea you have, the mental model of what should work, um, is correct by demonstrating that, uh, that it works, um, or doing some theory and things like that. Um, and Um, it, it's not an isolated, uh, activity. So, there's always a lot of people who have contributed to, uh, to progress. But then, Because of the nature of how the world works, we only remember just a few people. Um, uh, I think a lot of the credit should go to a lot more people. It's just that we don't have a good, you know, memory for attributing credit to, to a lot of people.

AI assessment note: “I don't particularly like this term. You know, I, I live in New Jersey.”

Q So what happens to intelligence in society with all of this changing? What becomes, forget computers and AI for a second, for humans, what is intelligence in that world?

A So people's intelligence will be moving to different set of tasks than the one we are trying to do today. Um, because a lot of what we're trying to do today will be done by AI systems. And so we will focus on other tasks. So things like Not doing things, but deciding what to do or figuring out what to do. Okay. Those are two different things. Like think about the difference between a low level employee in a company that is told what to do and just does it. And then, you know, a high level manager in the company that has to figure out like strategy and think about like what to do and then tell people below what to do. Okay. We're going to, we're all going to be a boss. We're all going to be like those, uh, high level managers. We're going to tell our AI systems what to do. But we're not going to have to do it ourselves necessarily. Okay, so.

AI assessment note: “people's intelligence will be moving to different set of tasks”

Q So why did you think of starting a real estate company from?

A Quirk of fate, destiny. This happened in the year, 1980, 81. We sold a family property. So I was maybe as old as Karan here. My parents, my dad, and my two uncles wanted to sell that. They put me and said, you know, you do the entire transaction. So that was way back in 80. So they said some Bombay developer wanted to buy it. In fact, there were several people, somebody from Delhi, somebody from Bombay. Finally, we chose someone. And then that entire process of doing the agreement of sale, getting the entire money out from the developer, and then again, the reinvestment. The reinvestment, that was what made it all very attractive, you see. Once the money came in, of course, my two uncles took their share, and we had to reinvest for ourselves and did something, and that in that quest of selling and buying, we got this Little bit of taste of real estate where, you know, we, we did some quick profits in some flipping over.

AI assessment note: “in that quest of selling and buying, we got this Little bit of taste”

Q And this is the industry, right? Buying FSI and selling it.

A All that is in Mumbai. It's a big industry. Not only TDR, it's, it's, it's, it's also the, the, the, the municipality gets huge. This is what I was trying to tell our authorities here. You do this premium. What happens is you're not doing it for yourself. You're doing it for the city because when you're selling premium FSI, what happens is the, the local body gets a whole lot of money. Today, the Mumbai municipality is the richest. They get tens of thousands of rupees as fees, and that is plowed back into the infrastructure. Today, if you've got a, uh, see a C-Link road or the, uh, the, the other Expressways, and everything else, and that so many X amount of flyovers. It's not that they've gone, okay, they may be having a certain proportion of loans, but the rest of it is all coming from the, the money that is generated from all these approvals. Here they have not learned the game. This is a golden opportunity for you. You make it viable. You will get crores of rupees as money for your municipal body, local body. Then you don't have to go with the begging bowl, and you do apply that money sincerely onto Infra. So it becomes a win-win.

AI assessment note: “All that is in Mumbai. It's a big industry.”

Q rich, Because you're always in this position where people look at you like you're entitled, but in your own head, you have the psychology that for me to find my own validation and respect, because everything you're born with is the status quo, right? That's not going to make you happy. If happiness is each time there is change, a positive change, it's harder for you guys to get it.

A No, so I think that's a valid statement. I think I, we can talk about our journeys, but I definitely went through that a bit of that when I first came into the business, because I was like, okay, my dad's known, he had a bit of a rags to riches story. And, you know, he's known as a visionary, very high acumen, can't find faults with a guy. And I was like, how am I going to fill in those shoes? Right? So it took me a while. And like I said, for me, it was a journey to be very comfortable, secure, confident, In this role, like it was a journey for me. I've been in the business now for 15 years, and it was a journey, and I realized I can't try to even, like my role should not be to fill in his shoes. It'll take an army to fill in his shoes. I need to just fill in my own shoes and add something different, you know, that maybe he doesn't do. And to the previous question you were asking, what the company needs to grow from A to B is different from maybe what it needs from B to C. And so for me, it was, what do I need to do or what do I need to do to help grow the company from B to C or C to D? It can't be what my dad did. There's no way in hell. I'm not in competition with him. I'm not trying to be better than him. I need to find what makes me me.

AI assessment note: “I definitely went through that a bit of that when I first came into”

Q What are the things you, you guys are going to hear something for the first time ever. Being such large companies, what do you outsource?

A Quite a few things. I feel like the role of a builder is to be like a project manager. So we're just managing everything, but we subcontracting the laborers, um, while we have architects to oversee the whole design development, you're outsourcing the actual, uh, drawings, et cetera, to other architects, interior designers and lawyers. We have in-house lawyers, but you outsource like title opinion and all the Legwork to external lawyers. So everything I feel is you have marketing guys to monitor other marketing agencies. So I feel like our role as a, uh, builder is to like project manage all these various entities. So everything is actually outsourced. We just have people to manage these different, uh, sections and entities.

AI assessment note: “we subcontracting the laborers, um, while we have architects to oversee the whole design”

Q I agree there is demand. I'm trying to predict The curve, the future curve of the demand. Are we looking forward five years and seeing this demand? Are we looking forward 50 and seeing this demand?

A I mean, I think the volumes of the demographic is so high that it's multi decades, right? It's, I don't think it's like a five year situation. If we were, let's say in a much smaller country where you were talking about, I don't know, a 1,000,002 1,000,005 million people being the population. I think it's a different discussion when we're talking about one point, whatever, seven billion and such as You know, only a small percentage at the upper pyramid, and such a huge volume, like this tidal wave that's moving upwards, and you know, our aspiration will want a better life, are moving to bigger cities. It's not physically possible to even just build, you know, that type of capacity where you would, where supply would outpace the demand. So the time it takes to just put up an apartment or like get the approvals and all that is like, you know, five, seven years when you talk about buying the land, getting all the approvals, then three years to build it, and then finally sell it and you know, all of that. It's, it's such a long period that it would be impossible for the supply to.

AI assessment note: “I think the volumes of the demographic is so high that it's multi decades”

Q that real estate will become about services as a play. What do you guys think about that? Like it'll be, okay, there is KFT. It won't be about the four walls that I live under, but it will be about, do you add a mall which is attached to this? It'll become about the movie theater, which is down. It'll become about the badminton cohort, about Maybe, uh, the facilities.

A I, I mean, I would say that Where we are, as we work, and like what we are seeing has in some way, shape or form already happened in commercial real estate, where commercial real estate is very different from residential. It's basically just plain floors, ok? Residential, you still have, you know, design and people have designed homes and things like that differently, but office is largely commoditized at, at the, that grade A-ish level where Most assets are similar. There might be change of flow plan and things like that. Companies or people today are so focused on the human experience that they're having in the space, um, that we see like operators and service, you know, a service lay, hospitality lay on top of it is becoming like a driving factor. And we're doing it even on the traditional side, you know, within our parks to Have community engagement events, to have F&B spaces, to, you know, we do our own property management also, so that adds that service layer. So I think it's definitely, you know, something where if I'm coming and experiencing that space or I need to live in that location for so long, I want an experience also on top of it. Um, and which is why maybe for the previous question also, you know, like, Talk about an operating company or like a service layer on top of real estate, because I think that's finally where the pyramid is going, right? It is across co…

AI assessment note: “a service lay, hospitality lay on top of it is becoming like a driving factor.”

Q So which school you pick makes a big difference?

A Um, yes. Yes, I think. Like the more cricket you play, I think it's for every other art. The more you do something, the better you get at it. The more you're challenged, the more you, um, you know, win and lose. When the more you see all of that, then you're, Your development as a, as a person is, is better. Well, I came from a school that didn't play cricket at all, but you know, my academy played cricket, so I'd play academy cricket, but I'd get probably 10 games in a year, whereas someone who has a school team will get 30 games in a year. So there is a difference between that and someone who's played, there's nothing to say that just because I played 10 matches, I can't be better than someone who's played 30 games, but If given an option, I'd want to have played 30, 30 or more games, ah, which will help me, you know, realize what are my mistakes, realize where I need to get better, ah, just challenge myself against different oppositions and teams. Yeah, which helps.

AI assessment note: “Um, yes. Yes, I think. Like the more cricket you play”

Q If you had to do it all over again, would you?

A A hundred percent. The kind of, um, see, I was kind of stagnating and hitting a saturation point in my career. I was called the next superstar for a very long time. And I, I'm not saying I'm a superstar today, unless you don't have that continuous, uh, uh, blockbuster films, you can't be called a superstar. Uh, but I think Animal, what it did is, it was the correct film at the right time. Uh, To kind of just at least take another step up. Otherwise, I've been kind of flatlined in the same status. So that was very important for me, for my confidence. It was very important for me to kind of change, you know, shift from a boy to a man in some ways.

AI assessment note: “A hundred percent. The kind of, um, see, I was kind of stagnating”

Q What does it mean to be a superstar? Like what, when you go somewhere and you see the reaction that you get, What does it do? Not the superficial thought, but deep, deep down, what does it do for you? And what will happen if it goes away?

A Of course, it's the greatest feeling in the world, you know, and you get love. You're receiving love. You're receiving love from people who you don't know. You know, they look at you, and they smile at you, and their eyes light up, and that feeling is amazing, but I can't get too attached to it, and this, of course, I've realized very early on, because I grew up in a film family, and I've seen so much of successful people, but at the same time, I've seen so many failures. My family has generations of Successful actors and failed actors. So I know why the people failed. I studied it, you know, from a very young age. I was noticing everything. I was noticing my father that he didn't like getting bothered. And if a fan came to ask him for an autograph or a picture, he very rudely turned to them and said, no, I'm not interested in doing that. And I always sitting on the other side of the table looked at that fan's face and that fans used to look at my father with so much of disdain and disappointment. That I was like, listen, I, I don't, I don't think I have the ability to say no to somebody. If somebody wants to take a picture with me or take an autograph, I'll be more than happy to do it. So I don't take this job for granted. I know what success is. I know what failure is. I'm very balanced about it. I've, anyways, the person I am, the person I am, I've never felt an extreme high…

AI assessment note: “it's the greatest feeling in the world, you know, and you get love.”

Q Is there a starting point though? Let's assume I have no capital at hand, and I'm 22, Starting off in Bangalore. How do I, how do I go about attempting to be a part of the energy transition solution?

A The ideal is actually to find a philanthropist. Breakthrough Energy has a fellows program where we look for people with really, ah, good early stage ideas, and we do that as a grant. Uh, with a little bit of, of options, but you don't need a business plan. Then if you get past that stage, either on your own or with a, uh, fellows type grant, then there are venture capital groups that really specialize in finding climate technologies, and they're willing to fund very risky stuff. Um, and I know all of them, including Breakthrough Energy are like, gosh, are we missing some in India? And so, You know, there's a network, you know, if you have a good idea, you know, if you pass it to me, if Nandan pass it to me, there's a bunch of U.S. venture capitals, and hopefully some who would also come in domestically. Uh, so for risk capital, uh, this is a very good time if you have something that looks attractive, could have a significant impact.

AI assessment note: “The ideal is actually to find a philanthropist. Breakthrough Energy has a fellows program”