The Exchanges

Q deal, but the reason why you're not the gift city stuff and all is that because, uh, unless you have greater capital account convertibility, it's very hard for any gift city thing to really prosper, right? For example, what's going on? I mean, I know, uh, uh, today directly, which is that for a family office, if they want to take money out of this country, it's extremely difficult today.

A I'll tell you what's happening. The government came up with a structure called FIF. Family investment fund. So what ODI restricts you, ODI allows for a company to take out four times their net worth and invest outside. ODI does not allow you to invest in public market equity, nor does it allow you to invest in real estate. The government came up with a structure called FIF, which was meant to allow both of these. Not in the structure of a joint venture, because nobody can buy five percent of Apple or 10% of Apple, but do minority investments. I think the problem today is GIFT is regulated by IFSC, and there is RBI. For somebody to transfer money, say from Bangalore or Bombay into GIFT, they have to go via the RBI, because it's like a different geography, and I don't, I think somewhere those two bodies are not Meeting eye to eye.

AI assessment note: “I think somewhere those two bodies are not Meeting eye to eye.”

Q Okay. Why, why do you feel that? It's a bubble or what?

A It feels a bit like The internet bubble. I'm not saying AI will not have a use case, but again, this is a very like immature understanding of somebody who does not, who's not an expert at the science. I'm not an engineer or in that domain. But I feel like all of these models will get to a point where they're very similar to each other. Either by copying or reverse engineering or whatever, there will come a point Where these models become so similar to each other that more countries will go the China way where I think the world was getting globalized. The next phase is the world gets fragmented. India will have its own copy of the model. Another country will have its own copy. The tokens, the energy, all of that will sit domestically within our country. It might not be the, at the cutting edge, but it'll do the job. If the world goes in that direction, I don't see the reason to pay the multiples that these private companies have today.

AI assessment note: “It feels a bit like The internet bubble... I don't see the reason to pay the multiples”

Q What are some, what are some other skills you think we should?

A Other skills? You will, as founders of companies, have to negotiate a lot. Cap tables, fund raises, contracts, to become better negotiators is probably useful. Uh, this is again something I learned Or I think I learned through experience, but people don't often disagree with ideas, they disagree with people. So when you guys are here today, you came with the preconceived notion that either you like me or you dislike me, you're going to agree with me or disagree with me. To figure out who wants to agree with you and who disagrees with you before you negotiate with them is important. Because if you're dealing with somebody who wants to say your business is shit, You should project circumspection when you're talking about your business.

AI assessment note: “You will, as founders of companies, have to negotiate a lot.”

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 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 Oh, you met Bill Gates, right? Dude, how was that?

A So, I met him for dinner on Friday, and breakfast was Saturday, and breakfast was alone, and, ah, he sat. So, I always have questions. So, I had a bunch of questions for him. Some very interesting answers. The one thing, ah, There are many things, but one of the things that we were talking about is everybody has been talking about climate change for as long as we have. Uh, we all estimated world peak population at one point to be fifteen billion, and another point to be twelve billion. I think we are getting to that point where World population will quickly start to decline. So I was asking him, do you think with this trend, and these trends generally get exaggerated very quickly, do you think it makes sense to focus on mitigating climate change today as much as it did a few years ago? Because of the demographic change in the world, and, uh, He personally has, like, a bunch of tiers in which he puts in his money. Health, I think, is foremost for him. Then he has breakthrough energy. So then I was asking him the exact same question I'm asking you guys. I said, if you were to start over in life and you had a hundred million dollars, what energy would you personally invest in? Which energy company would you personally invest in? Would you go renewables? Would you go solar? Would you go wind? Would you go fission, fusion? Uh, so he said, out of the, 16 fission companies, nuclear. H…

AI assessment note: “the incredible thing about, um, him is his, eclectic, the eclectic nature of his knowledge.”

Q So, uh, you're talking about trust in government or trust in what exactly?

A Uh, when I read books about how political systems have been formed, it feels to me like most people Are almost socialist when it comes to their family, when there are three or four people. They are, they open up a bit more when it goes from their family to their community. And when you talk about a country with millions and millions, in some cases, billions of people, There is no interaction. There is no majlis. There is no seeing the ruler of the country, of whichever country. In, even in democratic countries, there are many pockets of power, but there is rarely interaction between somebody living there with the people in a position of power in their geography. So how do you keep this trust? Not for a country with a million citizens, but with a billion.

AI assessment note: “In, even in democratic countries, there are many pockets of power”

Q And speaking of QuickCom. Who would you invest in?

A At the end of the day, as an investor, I look at companies as a multiple of the EBITDA or net cash that they're throwing out. In today's equation, I find them expensive. Hence, I have not invested. I'm more a conservative investor. So no, but I do question It's always going to come at a premium, right? Like if I buy a swami bottle, At 50 rupees. And if I get it delivered from one of the quick commerce guys, there is a cost of labor, the 30 minutes, the rider who's going to ride from their dark store to my house, then leave from here, go back, pick up another delivery from the dark store, the cost of fuel. Uh, inflation will drive a lot of this cost up. His salary, for example, how much he makes per hour. If you were to extrapolate and say he has to make a minimum of a hundred bucks an hour, if he works 2022 days, that's like a salary of 22,000 rupees a month. At some point, I will question for small deliveries, like if I want a bottle of Swami, will I pay that premium? Right now, it might be discounted by capital coming in from elsewhere. Beyond a point of time in India, if I'm using quick commerce five times a day and paying 50 rupees each time or 30 rupees each time, Maybe not for me, but for a vast majority of India, that one 50 rupees a day, the 5000 rupees, at some point we'll get to the point where, you know, an apartment complex hires three guys or four guys, or you hire…

AI assessment note: “In today's equation, I find them expensive. Hence, I have not invested.”

Q something, Nikhil? Like, since you were in Switzerland and having these conversations, how do you feel like the sort of rapid advancement in large language models is going to impact consumer? I mean, in a very generalistic sense, but I'm very curious about how you see that, because the algos are about to go all over the place. I mean, what's it going to mean? How does marketing get impacted?

A It's a very complicated question to answer. I, I, I did that podcast with Jan Lakoon, who is the chief scientist at Meta. Me and the perplexity guy are doing something. When it comes to AI specifically, I don't know how to view it really. I feel like till today, the amount of money that has been spent on infra around AI to the revenues that it is generating today justify the multiples that the people who have spent the money are getting? Likely not. How will it change tomorrow and what will happen? Very, very tough to say. I feel like Creativity. What you guys have will get a significant premium than it has in the last generation. Uh, because every model that we talk about can Probably predict or say what the likely scenario will be. By creativity, I mean the very contrarian nature of creativity. I believe something is creative when you do something that is not following the trend. I feel like any model will eventually either predict random or trend, not necessarily counter trend. And most innovation generally comes from counter trend thinking. So creative people will likely become a lot more valuable.

AI assessment note: “So creative people will likely become a lot more valuable.”

Q So do you feel it's better to do universal basic resources rather than universal basic income? Because UBI, if you just hand out checks to everybody, it's probably going to be inflation. So your department.

A Yeah. So I feel like the world should take care. Like, you know, there have been many experiments around this, right? One could argue Nordic, Scandinavian countries have experimented the most by taking taxation to 50% plus level and giving free education, hospitalization, housing, all of that. It hasn't worked for them in a capitalistic world. So if you look at like a Sweden, for example, financially, they've done bad over the last decade or two, and people are blaming it on this. But this is something the world will have to do together, in my opinion. The rate of UBI not necessarily being the same, but the thinking of the world has to go in this direction together, because if country A remains Overtly capitalistic and competitive, where company, country B goes to the UBI way, it'll cross discrepancies in the world.

AI assessment note: “Nordic, Scandinavian countries have experimented the most by taking taxation to 50% plus”

Q you want to see that world, and you have limited time, you know that, right? And then, once, like, that understanding fades away, and it becomes difficult, and, I mean, you've seen, like, a lot of entrepreneurs successfully getting divorced, Stuff like that. So do you think like it's tricky? Like if, like also being said, like if both of you are not growing on or say not that ambitious?

A I think not just for entrepreneurs, but the concept of relationship is also very transient. Uh, our notion of marriage is very much programmed by the media we consumed as children and what we saw around us. And the way Bollywood and Hollywood has depicted the idealistic version of romance, I mean, it might be attainable in the short term, but I don't know how sustainable it is. So that kick of whatever dopamine, oxytocin kind of like fades with a certain amount of time. And you're left questioning, why is it not like it was in the movie? I think all of this will change. I don't go by, I am no buddy to give a prophecy about this. I have not successfully manifested any of this, but I would say make these decisions which feel right to you and not what other people think are right for you.

AI assessment note: “not just for entrepreneurs, but the concept of relationship is also very transient.”

Q But also they've come into fairly nascent spaces, right? Like they came into retail, created the first retail REIT, came into office, created the first office REIT, and they've monetized now, of course, getting into industrial. They've been able to monetize In spaces which were not monetizable before.

A Hmm. I have this friend. His name is Marcel Arsenault. I don't know if you guys have heard of him. He's like this prolific real estate investor who is 70 plus. He's on my Gates pledge thing. He's a philanthropist as well. I was in the U.S. recently, and he sat me down one day. We were having dinner. Uh, we were in Ojai, which is like a hundred kilometers from California, let's say. And he made this case for why he is shorting commercial real estate across the world. Uh, he was not shorting India per se, because he hadn't done enough research, but definitely parts of America, parts of China. And he said culture has changed in a manner that, uh, people pricing properties have not taken cognizance of. What do you guys think of that? Culture around work from home, people don't want to spend one, two hours in traffic every day. Uh, interest rates in the US for mortgages went from two, three percent to six, seven percent. Uh, lots of delinquencies in commercial properties in the US. We had this full pre-AI, we had this bust in The Valley real estate, commercial real estate. You see signs of that in different parts of America today. He had a bunch of reasons. He had like a proper two hour presentation that he made. And he, he's somebody who's always been right. Think in his 50, 60 year investment journey, he's been bang on. He was right, uh, pre the subprime crisis.

AI assessment note: “he made this case for why he is shorting commercial real estate across the world”

Q Do you, do you think same for talent as well? Like, uh, is the nature and nurture attribute or it's the naturally someone born with talent?

A I don't think there is, there is something to be said about passion. Uh, whatever you think you're really passionate about, say, AI girlfriend, for example. I'm just saying it while you're sitting next to me. I feel like there is some unanswered question in your mind. About the concept of love, relationship, girlfriend, all of that. That's why you still have a passion towards it. When you truly understand a particular subject, it becomes hard to be passionate about it. I don't think talent is innate. Uh, let me put it this way. If I had a child, which I do not, and There was a football coaching camp where kids go when they were five years old. If all the kids are five and I send my child into that coaching camp when the child is seven or seven and a half, by virtue of his physicality, he will start to be better than his peer group from the very beginning. It will start to believe that he's talented at football and probably grow up to be a talented footballer. Um, but is there something to be said for physical attributes? Probably, yeah. Like, some Nigerians have long femur bones, so they run marathons better. There is stuff like that. But I don't need too much of talent, intelligence. I think a lot of this is gathered, collected, inculcated. I don't think anybody's born, not anybody, but most people are not born spectacularly gifted at something. So we got to your life, but you…

AI assessment note: “I don't think talent is innate.”

Q That's domestic consumption. But in this new world order, right, where supply chains are for resilience, for whatever other reasons are getting diversified. I think the next huge opportunity For Indian entrepreneurs used to take the export market from 700 or eight hundred billion that it is today to one, one and a half trillion, right?

A Another question here. Let's assume most countries which have done well in manufacturing, not just now, but historically have done it by virtue of closing their market off for a short period of time from outside competition and letting homegrown stuff Improve in, uh, quality scale to a certain point. Like there's a lot of precedent for this, right? Like, uh, industrial revolution, which happened in Birmingham many, many years ago. The environment was for that was created by the UK shutting down and not allowing foreign goods in. One can also agree that China did the same and they didn't allow Western goods in, shut the economy off to foreign produce, and then the domestic economy thrived. Do you think India should go down that direction where to get better at solar cells, for example, we should stop importing cells or impose significantly higher duty To make Indian product more artificially more competitive. Is that the way to increase manufacturing profits?

AI assessment note: “Another question here. Let's assume most countries which have done well in manufacturing”

Q Did you tell this to Bill Gates when you, when you met him?

A Things like estate taxes and inheritance tax, right? It's, it, there's so much precedent. Like if you go to US, if you're dying, you're giving your money to your kid, you pay 30 35%. You go to UK, it's the same. You go to South Korea, you pay much more. But Similar things happen in India in the richest folk in our country. They don't give anything. And I don't think I think entrepreneurship has to be encouraged, right? Like, you're trying to make money, you're trying to, like, scale a company, you're trying to work, all of that is fine. But if somebody you're competing with has predicated inherited, inherited wealth from 10 generations, that competition is not even. So I think across generations, these taxes should exist.

AI assessment note: “Things like estate taxes and inheritance tax, right? It's, it, there's so much precedent.”

Q What, what, what, what is climate tech? What's the definition?

A Carbon capture. The thesis behind the statement is someday soon. I mean, it could be carbon credit trading. If there were one large event where say, 10,000 people die, say there's a flood in Miami, the water levels keep rising. Suddenly, everybody will go back to climate and start taking it very seriously. Climate tech could even be software. Like I was at this, I'm part of this group called the Gates pledge, where I think your colleagues, a couple of them are there, one of them is there. And there was this professor this year who was showing a model that he had built. Where the base case is world's temperature will rise by 1.6 degrees by 2100. And what can you tweak in the software that changes it? Is it a carbon tax? Is it lesser amount of coal? Is it more allocation to nuclear? Uh, there are funds like Breakthrough Energy, which are working on this. So all of this somehow comes into climate tech.

AI assessment note: “Carbon capture... Climate tech could even be software... So all of this somehow comes into climate tech.”

Q How do we discover that fatal flaw for us?

A All psychology says this, like, if you go through Jung, Freud, Adler, like, much after Shakespeare's time, obviously, but We're all flawed, right? We're all insecure. We're all, uh, not altruistic, like we might like to believe at some level or we might like to portray. There is one true us. There is one persona of us, which we have created in our own mind, which we believe is not flawed. That persona. And we spend so much time and effort defending that persona and denying our flaw that it makes Life more complicated, even for us and for people around us. So different people call it different thing. I think people like Jung and Adler call it our shadow. Uh, it is driven by many things like your childhood has such a big impact on it. Like what you did between ages three, four to eight, nine will have so much to do with what your shadow is today. The financial condition of your parents, the relationship between your mother and father, Your relationship with your siblings, and also innately how you're born as a person. So every psychology book kind of tells you that recognize your flaws. They in fact help you out by doing some categorization. They say this could be a certain kind of person that could be a certain kind of person.

AI assessment note: “every psychology book kind of tells you that recognize your flaws”

Q simple philosophy of life that music has seven, there are five primary colors, and there are nine recorded emotions of human beings. Life is not so complex. So if you look at the flaws of entrepreneurs, I think it can be defined very well. And there are people like me, or many people like us, who have made a lot of mistakes, and how can it be recorded and taught?

A Especially for entrepreneurs, our other problem is that Uh, we all have gotten lucky in the cycle of life. See, we're all sitting here outside of because we've gotten very lucky, right? I mean, Vidit is brilliant, Sujeet is brilliant, you're brilliant, but at some level, luck has played a disproportionate part of how we arrived to be where we are today. But the problem, especially in startup crowds is because somebody goes from A to Z in two years, in three years, in five years, in six years, You don't start to take yourself so seriously, but the scale of everything you're saying and doing is so much bigger, that what you were saying and doing five years ago, today will be looked at through a completely different lens. So even for that reason, I think what he said is so true that we need to like, you know, introspecting is the hardest thing in life, maybe.

AI assessment note: “Especially for entrepreneurs, our other problem is that Uh, we all have gotten lucky”

Q I have one follow-up question I wanted to ask. You were talking about being narcissistic. I want to ask, is Uh, according to you, ok? Is being narcissistic really bad? I want to ask.

A So, narcissism is a deeper concept than that. I think it's a symptom of a disease. We are not born narcissistic per se. Do you think narcissists are usually self aware that you know you're aware? No, I don't think so. Rarely. See, there are two schools of psychology. One believes that you can't change who you are. Everything is about figuring out why you are who you are. I think everyone from Freud, Jung, they all fall in that school. There is another school that it's not just about figuring out who you are, but how to change your tomorrow. I don't know if I'm right, but I think Adler, a bunch of psychologists are in that school of thought. I don't know where I sit. I enjoy reading both schools of thought. I feel like you have to go through the former school and first understand why you became who you became before you can reach the latter school. I don't think I'm even at that point. I'm like, before the starting line.

AI assessment note: “So, narcissism is a deeper concept than that. I think it's a symptom”

Q And in the incentive side, do you have a take of how, like how you change the incentives to get people to post the organic side?

A Uh, I think we are thinking of a very, like, Very tight funnel on the top where we control who enters the app , like incumbent social media probably has bots engaging with you and trolls engaging with you. And I don't know how much of it is organic and how much of it is not, but the idea is to have a place where real people can connect with real people, speak about real things without I don't think anybody can take out bias altogether, but with significantly lower bias and a place which is safe to have discourse. You know, I, I might agree with you on something. I might disagree with you on something, but I don't think there is a place or an ecosystem today where you can have that conversation. So we hope to kind of create it, but I'd love, uh, you know, advice from you. Broad thoughts on what should a new social media have. Also, how voice plays a part in whatever the newer version of social media is.

AI assessment note: “we are thinking of a very, like, Very tight funnel on the top”

Q I have that emotional connect with my company where I still, I'll be like, I will figure this out. But if I'm, And for which I also end up being vulnerable in front of my leadership team, being open about what's happening and trying to figure it out altogether because I can't do it alone. If I don't have that, I feel that how, how do you look at it?

A Actually very interesting nuance. I feel like I get stoic about things that are not working because I feel like in life, 10 things are not working at the same time. So I take that thing which is not working and my avoidant type puts it in a compartment and I come back to it after I fix three, four of the 10 things. But for that second, what works for me is compartmentalizing. It's very like a stoic nihilistic in its origin. That seems to be a common trait as well. And what made it even more interesting is one is bootstrapped, one is a public company, and one is a largely funded company. So we covered broad spectrum, what we think are the prerequisites to be successful in a startup. I think Manish had something else. Story, very, very important, almost as important as a product. Weave your story, even if it is embellished in the very beginning in a manner that is most appealing to the audience you're trying to cater to. Pay attention to detail. Every little detail. Perfume, music. What else did you say? The tiny details, the horizontal stitch.

AI assessment note: “what works for me is compartmentalizing. It's very like a stoic nihilistic in its origin.”

Q Would you ask, would you tell that person, okay, you should go to college or not?

A Even if I might think otherwise I will get, Casterized for saying it here, so let me not. I think innately people who seek knowledge only truly ever get knowledge. I don't think you can Push someone into a position where you can beat a hammer down his head and, you know, ingrain knowledge. I think school is important. I think interpersonal skills, learning how to work in a group, learning how to deal with people is extremely relevant. Forget education, forget college, forget all of that. Say Tara is a plumber, say, uh, Adit is a carpenter. I am a banker and Navya is something else. If we all had a kid in the society, one of us had a kid, if either of them had a kid, All of us would spend time with the kid and he would look at each of us for the skills that he's interested in and learn from that. That way the kid is not ingrained with You know, mimetic beliefs of his parents. Why should my child want to do what I think is right for him to do? I think that room, that freedom, that democratic sense of picking what he wants will only be allowed. That inculcation will only happen in a society, which is not conformist, which is not today, but in a very utopian scenario, like if I had to paint it, I would paint a world like that.

AI assessment note: “Even if I might think otherwise I will get, Casterized for saying it here, so let me not.”