Kunal Shah on Startups, Indian Billionaires and Credit Cards | #FiguringOut with Raj Shamani

but the last question is you talk a lot about hourly rates like people should know about the rally value if you were to become someone's assistant what would be your leader that's a good question uh i would want to become hi i am rajamani and welcome to figuring out i started this because since childhood we have been asked what's next what's the plan i don't know i'm still figuring out i have big dreams but i don't know how to achieve them and there are a lot of people just like me who want to make it big in the world but don't know what's next in this podcast here we get entrepreneurs artists creators and everyone who has made it big in their life but are still figuring out and today's guest is someone who's a pure hustler who's done it all from selling cds mandy cones teaching computer science to neighborhood children and running a cyber cafe to building billion dollar startups like free charge and cred and has invested in more than 150 startups kunal shah in this podcast we have talked about how to get rich how to build billion dollar companies how to understand indian customers and his thought-provoking ideas on how indians can create wealth and why is it rewarding people to just build good financial habits also this podcast is brought to you by coin switch kuber coin switch kuber is india's simplest digital exchange and trading platform for cryptocurrencies where you can start trading from only rupees 100 a simple fast safe and secure platform which allows you to start your crypto journey in the most user-friendly way also we took kunal shah's job interview so make sure you don't miss out on that one well enjoy this episode and watch it till the end because this one podcast has taught me more than i've ever learned in any business class [Music] [Laughter] i mean i've never been nervous so that he stays cool no no i am i am it's completely okay i think we've been talking about this yes since like like six couple of days we have been talking about just chill i was really excited to do it with you so probably because i was so excited it's just chill let's make it fun uh and and be in your natural version because you don't want this to like come become boring for anybody to listen to imagine people have to suffer with this oh no not at all i want them to lose so don't lose your edge yeah stay fun all of us are the same people in different levels of our journey so you are super young and you've achieved so much uh i wish i had all the skill sets that you have for your age wow so we are all you're like hyping me up like foreign could keep doing what they do and building skills and learning from that and have the uh uh humility to know they're all imperfect in some ways and they're all figuring it out all the way that's a good love exactly that way let's not make it like no uncle feeling should come no no no that's it that's it perfect in fact let's talk about similarities that now that you've talked about it right you're the one who dropped out of the college okay i'm the one who never went but i went to college never like attended or gave exactly that's most of india but sure so why did you drop out like what was the reason uh i dropped out of mba because uh two reasons one i i felt like this guy in three idiots who wanted to learn but not really go for the exams i was happy to just skip the exams and just learn i don't think the indian education format likes that too much i was very happy doing representations and not be writing the written exams i have a massive phobia with writing long form that's why i tweet but i never write long form i hate it i can't memorize anything but i think the education system expected you to be this way i like to understand things but not like write long forms because i'm like it doesn't make any sense and thankfully the world is moved to short video formats who wants to watch this on our podcast anyways right so uh so the point is that i i realized that uh i all i wanted is to learn i was doing well in life i was already running a business by that time but that format did not allow that right our education format is more designed to this and i just realized that it was not so much fun because i rather learn through a youtube university uh uh and and books and other things and constantly be on quest to know versus learn and i think very few people are genuinely interested in knowing okay how does this podcasting business work or how does cred work or whatever but everybody seems to have an opinion but not understanding of it and i think that's a very interesting point of view ask anybody will tell you exactly opinion wise care but there is no substance in anybody's research there is no interest in research we have all our life we have copied each other's projects and tried to pass exams when that was the opportunity to really learn something and go deeper into anything so we are like all these we are a generation of shallow people and and shallow people have opinions they don't understand anything but do you think we should like we can do something to change it because that's a reality that's i everybody agrees to it yeah how will we change it we'll only change it when people truly see the benefit of doing this right but if you see somebody on instagram by making this cool content gets millions of followers and then there is this boring thing of like learning something for years and years and eventually make some money right so the thing is that the curse of fame is is exciting if you ask every young person they want to be youtube celebrity but you are not built for it only some people are built for it right and and you you can use the words like oh nepotism this that problem is that only few people are designed to be extraordinary and they will continuously win by design can there be one million successful uh influencers probably not but can there be one million sorry 10 million millionaires answer is yes so to be 10 million millionaires you should not chase fame you should change skill and knowledge and depth and understanding versus fame but fame is super exciting right now exactly because it gives you so much credibility you get a blue tick and people are like i get so many dms and i'm sure you do like how do you get a blue tick i'm like why do you want to get blue tick why do you care and nobody's really interested in what your journey is what you've been they just want to see your end state like there are there are people have seen influence who just have super cars and there are people are just following them because they have super cars and i'm like but do they have substance because people who truly have substance don't feel the need to show it off that's true but don't you think okay i you said like few people are designed to do certain things but i feel the opposite way that you need to learn to become anything sure right so you're not designed to do anything sure you have to you have to like eventually do something keep trying it and then you are designed for xyz yes there is a small nuance though can there be 4 000 winners for throwing javelin in the olympics but can there be 5 000 millionaires in the month of july 2021 and that's where the difference comes is that some businesses by design do not have the space for more people to exist why do you want to fight for that when there is unlimited ways to create wealth very few places for example let's say i'm on instagram i can watch anybody's content but i only have 24 hours so you're competing with every single person who's releasing their podcast whereas when you're making money everybody can make money a lot of money and that thing about our country is still not understood people are still stuck on not understanding what is zero sum what is not zero sum and i think that's going to be a maybe a few generations before we get there okay you talked about unlimited ways to create wealth let's say what are those ways everybody keeps talking about oh you know what you should not do something where there's a lot of competition how can somebody find some spaces where there's not competition and actually perfect learn to become someone like that that's a that's a good question by design it comes from understanding of human behavior right all of us will not succeed if we don't understand human behavior you will you know by design right now the podcast is going on you know which clip is going to get what views it's in your head you know what is the edit that you need to make right we're all wired to do certain things and make certain things work my view is that all of us are wired to do certain things and and get their expertise over a period of time multiple iterations right when we are uh understanding this human behavior we understand what is the human motivation behind it some people are natural adult most people are not according to me not having a dating culture is a big reason we are all terrible at human motivation right because if you have never really convinced anybody to do anything for you you've never really understood what do they want it's about what i want what person is the country still in arranged marriage probably 90 percent somebody else is going to sell you as a product to our opposite family and something like okay good product let's get them married but when you get in the dating world you are actually testing yourself at is there a product market fit does anybody want me and how will i learn that now i'm giving an example of how to learn human motivation there are multiple ways to learn that once you understand human motivation you will realize what will people pay for yeah and that skill set can be learned by trying constantly different things we all know people in college who made money all of us know kois somebody should do something else somebody organized some trips one guy took you to oh i'll take you to this college event all of that stuff and if you go distill it you'll find out that the core human needs are understood by those people and they can create wealth human motivation is a non-going river right now that everybody's instagram everybody wants to look good we all want fancy shoes now right because can we wear the same clothes uh uh on instagram again no we want to appear differently nicely that's the motivation to understand what will people want right i'm giving an example but let's say we get to the next stage yeah uh everybody wants to build videos but we do not understand how to make good editing tools what if somebody made extraordinary editing tools to make good content made it very easy for millions of people to make high quality edits just the way you do it whatever that was made that would be a unicorn what if people like me could edit videos like you through a simple tool so the thing is that human motivation is constantly shifting let's get another example uh what if you could create i i talked about how as a kid i used to be terrible at memorizing anything and and not do well in exams because indian education system was not about understanding funny enough i used to scroll full marks in all vaiwars and practicals and barely survive written exams right i'm sure there'll be more kids like me now what if you could create a product which made it easy for people like me to memorize using video and tools and techniques that you learn from your podcasting skills which made it easy for kids to remember their education can you make a lot of money answer is yes so the thing is that the crux of creating wealth is about solving problems of people that are currently not solved well and people have deep desire to solve that problem by paying money for it and that can be only done when you understand what people need yeah and deeply be interested in people and their motivations true i always say this thing right like because you pointed out that you need to create let's say editing tools or anything of that sort always say you need to be on the producer side of something which you're consuming the most and that's how you can achieve health that's a good framework we are consumers of so many things if you become producers of that we'll all create wealth it makes a lot of sense that framework so it's like anything which are like let's say if i am for example i play pubg the old day just give me an example like if i play pubg the whole day instead of just consuming that what if i can figure out to create content around that i would add one nuance to this framework of yours what do i spend time on what do i spend money on there are two currencies that you're wasting or spending uh you can have a lot of wealth you could potentially spend a crore a month uh let's say somebody is super rich jeff bezos could spend 10 crores a day but you me jeff everybody has 24 hours a day which means if you understand how people spend their time and their money and become producer of that you can create wealth and it's important to understand the nuance uh everybody has different amounts of money to spend everybody has the same amount of time to spend and therefore people who control time actually become more wealthier over a period of time as long as it gets the right people's time let's take an interesting point of view now there are two types of transactions in human life boring transaction interesting transactions let's define what is boring transaction fueling your car nobody has ever been excited correct but we are very excited to watch that funny clip and that new show that everybody's talking about and that movie that seems to be being discussed in the office so if you look at human life's framework all of us are trying to reduce time and money spent on all boring things and invest in all the transactions that are interesting planning a vacation nobody is like yeah besides people love the process of planning this like imagine indian households planning weddings yeah nobody wants efficiency over there okay they want to call this person and that person and call that person on instagram and suffer true because they get joy out of it so what i'm trying to say is that if you're making a business that will remove the time and money spent on people things that people hate doing imagine you create a product where nobody needs to charge their phone it's always charged brilliant product i want to buy it exactly so the point is that it will happen one day it will happen charging may happen through air and who knows that it might be happening in our lifetime and that'll be amazing what if we nobody has to fuel their car or charge their car just parking is enough and i'm saying that it'll all likely to happen in our lifetimes because nobody has enjoyed this and by the way let me put an example do petrol pump one guy gets two rupees cheaper people will just go there nobody has any joy right but if you create a show a shoe store and this is expensive you actually want that versus that so it's like the boring things people just wanna they wanna a they want to hate that they want to avoid doing it b they want to save cost on it they don't want to spend time on it they don't spend money on it and interesting they want to spend both the things they'll live for opportunities in just this one answer i tell you like this is just there it's a massive mind shift like if people can understand that and start observing day-to-day life i think in next one month they can be filled with lot of ideas just by observing other people yeah we're talking about ideas and talking about production okay like becoming the producer of what you do every time you have come up with a startup that's free charge okay credit all of them revolve around rewards yeah free money yeah why is that like is that because consumers tend to love that more or why that why do you have this kind of mindset see whenever we are trying to change behavior we have to always put incentive to change the behavior right let's take an example of parents trying to get people hooked on to temple is the kid interested in god no what do they call temple for jesus prasad have you ever seen any temple with kadwa prasad will they be successful no so i'm not inventing anything it's always been there what i'm trying to say is that if you're trying to incentivize somebody to do a good behavior we all have become better humans beings by incentive systems your parents would have told you okay if you do this good behavior there is some incentive for you if you do some bad behavior there is punishment for you i am not in the business of giving any punishment i can only give incentive for good behavior so what we say that credit is very simple if you pay your credit card bills on time will incentivize this behavior so that you feel good about it you feel good about improving your credit score you feel good about paying your bills on time because if you don't pay on time there's crazy amount of interest to be paid there is a lot of financial losses that you may suffer if you don't do this in time so all of our thinking has been around incentivizing good behavior because eventually you'll benefit from it you don't need the incentives anymore you'll just appreciate it and that's how i think we have learned anything and everything and everywhere like there is either validation in terms of doing something good correct or there's like a monetary review yeah so either you give me likes or give me cash yeah but actually just pause for a second think about so many people who create content on social media only if you make money but everybody gets likes and they're making content day in and out thinking about it video clicker what should i say funny which dance steps should i do some people like me and the funny thing is social media platforms use your need of likes to give you the audience and then sell ads on it it's fascinating really good business yeah imagine this in the offline world is basically i create up let's say i've created this society make big ground which stages and allow performance to perform in that stage people will come for that and i'll just set up shops around it that technically happens also it does i'm saying it's just become more efficient instagram is nothing but stages given to people every now and then i shift audience to your stage they applause and go to the next stage for every 10 seconds and that's such a brilliant model because people who don't have money put all their efforts and money to put all their efforts and time to get those applause yeah who have money they spend money to get those applause it's like a brilliant win-win it is and here's the interesting part now you become popular right you can monetize it through cash a lot of popular people get into politics uh you will see singers have become politicians actors have become politicians comedians have become politicians uh artists cricketers how many times you've seen politicians become cricketer artists comedians any of that rarely never probably because there is one ladder of status that you climb to ultimately get the highest amount of status in power and it's one-way street but if you make money multiple people can exist parliament with whitney seed sir is there a guideline by the country only we can have 250 millionaires nothing more than that or 11 member cricket team versus oh we can have only 10 billionaires never like that actually this this gets me to a good question that a lot of new unicorns and startups in india also coming like now people say that india let's bet on india india all of that is going on and a lot of these people are coming from two to tier three cities as well do you think just like west we're gonna see a lot of billionaires in india are we far away from those people um by design we will have a few to be doing it consistently requires fundamental changes for example you cannot create billionaires if the country's per capita income is not changing 65 to 68 percent of the country's income is still dependent on agriculture can you guess what percentage of u.s income is dependent on agriculture how many people in u.s are dependent on agriculture for making an income you take a wild guess less than one percent right because you don't need that many people farmers you can do automation today most farming can be done without a human being they have to move to higher skills thing we don't have those skills right second thing is women participation of labor less than six percent of urban indian women have any financial income in china 96 probably have financial income in urban and china that's how they got prosperous when two genders work they create more jobs think about your family member who both the genders are working right or both the partners are working then they'll say we'll have two drivers and then we do more things and we'll buy this and we'll buy this table also which creates more and more jobs imagine only one general works or one partner works which is happening in my house and it's so true like because now that more people in my house are working more genders in my house working that is we have employed right like we have a new driver but now here's the thing we don't we are so delusional we don't realize for example bangladesh which is our neighboring nation the urban female participation of labor is 68 percent and therefore they have crosses on per capita income most people don't know clue about this we are like are you are coming to our country no they're not going to come to our country very soon they'll put restrictions on our people going there because their capital income has taken off because both the genders are working pakistan has more female participation of liver than india why is that why do you feel that that's the reason and what can we do to change it well talk about it first of all most people have no clue about it everybody says this thing they they are taking care of kids are we okay with it are we culturally okay with it and i think and i'm not saying one is right or one is wrong i'm just saying we cannot dream to be having billionaires when the per capita income is not changing that's so true right everybody is happy to get free subsidies for example the classic thing i find the funniest thing about indians is they keep talking about patrol prices going up so i tell them that if you compare 20 years ago petrol price kitna grothwa and 20 years ago the inflation on that is much higher how come nobody is complaining about valpuri because we don't understand inflation right we have no clue what inflation means but we can fight on one topic and and therefore keep past the country only has x percentage of people using cars or any vehicles we need to increase the income not try to expect things to become cheaper now you talk about like this is too much to take in to be very honest because you know it all this is making sense and it makes more sense and actually this is sad because if you see culturally even the top people who i know like who are really doing well they're okay with all of this and they are the ones like i know a lot of people who have multi multi millionaires even they are talking about like old traditional business they're talking about yeah they're called petroleum like people who are doing stuff now talking about all of this i want to understand where can people learn all of this like how do we start what do we do let's make it simple for everybody who's listening to this like what are these one two three four steps which somebody can take learn about insulation learn about capitalism because you love to talk about it i think the simplest method is take one word that you got interested in inflation spend one hour on youtube finding everything about it while you watch that video you'll learn one more word spend one more hour finding about that word then you will discover one more word find more about that word over two years time you will be smartest in all the people in your classroom or anybody in your family or all the people in your family whatsapp group it's very simple people don't want to do it because what you cannot make it cool it will only happen when people get interested in becoming rich versus famous but right now everybody wants to become rich like no they want to become famous they're not according to be rich there's no interest in becoming rich they want the goods you get by becoming rich which allows you to show off nobody wants to really be rich wow now how do i let's say i want to ask you this because i think content is going to shape culture like okay content will con i so how can content creators make it cool i think the good thing that i'm seeing a lot of content creators are doing like someone like you is just asking questions on people's behalf which is creating new vocabulary in people's head and i really hope that they don't take this video as knowledge and make this as let's say from this can we learn two three words to go curious about and really understand it i think the biggest thing that needs to become cool is that do you really understand something or you are the superficial guy right do we want to really become good at something right the deep need to be really good at something is the only way we'll change as a country right and the need for excellence the need for a perfect corner for our own sake not because somebody else is telling us to do something perfect how many employees create really good presentations for their own good not because the bosses ask them to make it we avoid work at their position yeah let me go chill with my friends that's fine then you'll get that in your life yeah you'll stay chilling with your friends and and the friend who will likely stay chilling with you will also stay with you they'll also not grow in life the point is that why don't you do it want to make a perfect presentation because you are proud of it not because anybody else liked it or not you are absolutely proud of it it doesn't happen because i feel one of the reasons is because since we were kids we have been taught to get validated so like when we were kids i remember when like four or five year olds and then ask that kid kids uh we live our life through somebody else's lens and some of this work comes from those it's called collectivist societies and and you should look up what is collected society you'll find interesting stuff about it right collective societies constantly stay in control by making valid center of importance somebody else so it stays subdued in some ways because you're always trying to look good in other people's eyes right but actually let's take it let's do an imaginary story right um imagine there's a kid in the village who's not liked by everybody road type guy thinks he's very smart whatever this is ancient times and nobody really talks to that kid nobody likes to be with that kid whatever but but the kid was very smart so the kid invented a bucket and that bucket solved the problem of carrying water from the water stream back to the village and suddenly everybody's happy because they can store water and suddenly this kid became rich and everybody wants to get their daughter married to this kid all the guys who did not like this kid before and all the guys are like just because that kid became rich so what i'm trying to say is that there are alternate with methods of getting validation also because ultimately you will notice one thing that as soon as somebody becomes successful people will say and there is a concept in psychology called as basking and reflected glory which means as soon as some success happens we attribute it to ourselves oh all the ceos of global companies are indians but boss they don't have indian passport anymore like they just have indian origins but we love to attribute it to ourselves okay they could google ceos also and then microsoft c is also indian but i'm like boss they're not in india they don't have indian passport so so the point is that we love to attribute everybody else's success to us right uh oh you are also gujarati oh you are also from indoor oh you also like wearing these shoes oh like we find similarities to attribute their success to us yeah like we always want to do that and we i don't know who did this but by default we all do this and everybody does this okay now before before we end this and i want to have like before we go to the fun section of it sure last question because you talked about behavior or you talked about we love to attribute i i was reading about you and you were given five rupees when you were in fifth class yeah and that for doing a job free minimal rather okay so i thought you were given everything no i had to work in my family shop and my salary was five rupees a day all right to go deposit in the bank do you think that's a major reason why you got interested in finance or making money or do you think i think some families in india who are business families they are naturally interested in money yeah because they discuss money on dinner table they talk about taka and percentage is a lot more in many families talking about money is considered to be shameful like here you are like a lower being if you discuss money and therefore our relationship with money is messed up whereas we all live in this universe created through money but our relationship with money is like don't discuss it don't talk about it like dinner table like people don't talk about them having loans it's awkward to borrow money lend money like we just launched launching a product tomorrow or day after which is uh called crediment where credit members can invest in other credit members who are all credit worthy trust for the individuals and it's our first community product where they get up get up to nine percent on investing in credit members and they can credit members can borrow from that same pool uh because we realize that this is a perfect thing like everybody's credit worthy trust for they should be able to come together and invest in this but we are fairly certain it's still not going to be talked about people will be quietly doing this behavior of taking loans uh like we are the like leading fintech lender in india but you'll never see a tweet about taking loans from credit because it's a private behavior and it's going to be very very powerful for us to create a high trustworthy community to build on top of that but what at the core of it we're trying to improve relationship with money we don't want people to like not talk about it and it's always considered like that right alone in my family also like we talk about money openly yeah but the moment you talk about donating credit card correct perfect and you are in the that you talk about making people wealthy like correction correct correct and you read about financial gurus families first of all are they really wealthy is my question uh every wealthy person has become wealthy by taking a lot of loans you think are monies don't take loan tatas don't take loan all of them have taken loan do you think amazon does not take loan apple does not take loan and have they not taken loan to get where they are today the answer is everybody has but the question is that because we are terrible at managing money we say our name see i'll tell you what happened emotional societies operate from apathy to panic okay explain let me explain look at our behavior with covet complete panic complete apathy requesting cello same way in matters of loan we do the same thing nay nay tikka there's no middle stance i so often make this joke that india may nobody does app store 2-star 3-star 4-star rating it's either 1-star or 5-star we operate from love and hate only yeah that's true that's like my uber behavior which is exactly what i'm talking about so the thing is that credit cards are not bad it's like saying knife is bad yeah if you hold it from the wrong side yes you will get hurt but knife has made human life better can you say whatsapp is bad or we blame whatsapp if somebody sells a problematic content to somebody does whatsapp make it bad or people make it bad so the question is that every time you introduce new technology the first reaction you go back in history and study all the pr that came when cars were invented for a decade it was hated yeah now we don't even think about this so every time you do something that is new and different and because we do not understand it turns into fear and hatred everything you think about it's shattered right now now go think about something it's really insightful now i want to read like i don't want to take much much of your time i want to quickly go to the last segment sure i want to leave people with us with that thought that there are few things we talked about one was start talking about it second is improve your relationship with the things that you want to do third was if you're interested in anything pick up one word learn spend one hour pick up another word spend another hour then apart from all of that think about why you do certain things why people do certain things and why you always are operating from just to different like extreme point of views like love or fear correct and if people can just think about these things i think a lot of people will start seeing their day-to-day life differently because it's a lot to think about but now you did not say it powerfully like point number one number two point number three why didn't you do that that's your style man wait before we get down to the most fun part of our podcast this segment is where we ask our guests to answer freely where they don't have to think about anything and answer in a bay figure mentality which is exactly what coin switch kuber believes in if you want to start trading in crypto currencies coin switch believes that start your journey without worrying about anything trade car basically with coin switch compare so the last segment was it's only like impromptu session sure because i want to tell people that you are normal everybody is normal sure so imagine you were about to get hired and you're giving it interview i'm gonna ask you the five most basic popular questions in their interviews okay and you have to like instantly answer them cool okay i i hope i get hired [Laughter] so this is your job interview number one the most basic question cliche i realized that i want to work with people better than me and seems like credit is a place where most people are better than me so i'm only here to improve myself and i think this will be a best place to work for that lovely what is your weakness uh being uh not being able to stay focused on one thing because i'm excited and i'm interested in everything that's a good strength actually now tell me who kunal shah is outside your cv or let's say outside of the world people know about somebody who's eternally seeking truth sometimes by learning sometimes by building companies sometimes by sharing sometimes by meeting smart people and and hopefully i will never find it before i die and that will make my life permanently interesting that's that's a very mom what do you do after you leave office i i try to [Music] think about my day i am trying to get into a habit of playing some version of sport because i realize that i need to be away from my phone and i need some force conditions for that and i'm trying to get into a habit of watching some content i am i struggle with time and you can follow that money sure i do follow i do follow but the last question is you talk a lot about hourly rates like people should know about the rally value if you were to become someone's assistant what would be your leader that's a good question uh i would want to become assistant to many many people who are generally much better than me and because i'm going to learn so much from them i'll make it free because uh the value that i'll get per hour from being around them is going to be so much more valuable than charging them any money wow that's so good yeah i'm getting into badminton i i am not very good at it but i only play with people who are better than me wow i need to like prepare for in for a year and then come down surely one day it'll be fun it'll be definitely fun thank you so much for doing this it was pleasure having you we got a lot of answers we didn't stick to any framework cool i hope that's okay perfect any question i'm glad we did that way because it's boring otherwise yeah thank you so much for doing this thank you see you

Channel: Raj Shamani

Views: 236,614

Rating: 4.951859 out of 5

Keywords: raj shamani, shamani industries, figuring out with raj, inspirational, india 2021, india, vlogs, figuring out with raj shamani, indian starups, cred, kunal shah, kunal shah cred, raj shamani podcast, indian startups, cred india unicorn, raj shamani whatsapp status, raj shamani status

Id: sU0f5GLJMHE

Length: 44min 31sec (2671 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021