Ep #5 | EdTech What’s Broken, What’s Next? With Nikhil, Ronnie Screwvala , Gaurav Munjal & Jay Kotak

Gaurav Munjal 0:00 top three percent of kids get into these good colleges. What about the ninety-seven percent?

Nikhil Kamath 0:04 If education was online, can that compete at or compare with real-life education?

Ronnie Screwvala 0:10 I think I've been blessed by not being, uh, spoiled with a lot of fundraising. [upbeat music]

Nikhil Kamath 0:21 Do you think balance is an important part of being a successful entrepreneur?

Gaurav Munjal 0:25 No. I hate balance. [chuckles]

Ronnie Screwvala 0:27 I think balance is a very important part of anything.

Jay Kotak 0:29 The opportunity and the way this country is changing-

Ronnie Screwvala 0:32 Yeah

Jay Kotak 0:32 - is a once in a-

Ronnie Screwvala 0:34 Century

Jay Kotak 0:34 - century or more.

Ronnie Screwvala 0:35 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 0:35 Uh, Bill Gates has started this, uh, Windows that has made him a billionaire, and I want to start Doors.

Nikhil Kamath 0:41 It's kind of cool. [chuckles] [upbeat music] So thank you guys for coming. I think most of you here do not need an introduction, but maybe a good way to start this is, A, how do we all know each other? And, B, maybe talk about ourself for a minute or two, so we just get to know each other a bit more.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07 Would you like to go first?

Gaurav Munjal 1:09 Um, [clears throat] I'm, I'm the only non-billionaire on this panel. Um, um, I know Ronnie because he runs UpGrad, and, um, uh, I run this company called Unacademy. And, uh, I, I, I don't know, how, how do I know you? How do we ended up-

Nikhil Kamath 1:26 Bangalore.

Gaurav Munjal 1:26 I think you have this, uh... Yeah, you were doing a party one day.

Nikhil Kamath 1:30 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:30 I got a message, and, uh, Jay, I'm meeting for the first time.

Nikhil Kamath 1:34 Maybe you can tell us a more creative version of introducing yourself. So don't say what you would say in a job interview, in a college interview, or a TV interview, but tell us what you would tell your friends. Who is Gaurav?

Gaurav Munjal 1:53 Okay, let me phrase my thoughts.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:56 Have you had a job interview?

Gaurav Munjal 1:57 Yeah, once. Uh-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58 Ah, okay.

Gaurav Munjal 1:59 Well-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59 It's a good start.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00 So all of you are like mega brains, okay? Which college did you go to?

Gaurav Munjal 2:04 So I, I'll, I'll start from the beginning.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05 Yeah. Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 2:05 So, um, I, I was born Bikaner.

Nikhil Kamath 2:08 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 2:09 Uh, and then, uh, father's a doctor. Grew up in Jaipur, uh, middle-class family. Um, but, uh, I think at the age of twelve, I went to my dad and said: "You know, I saw in Dainik Bhaskar newspaper, uh, Bill Gates has started this, uh, Windows that has made him a billionaire, and I want to start Doors." And I was coding at that point- [chuckles] ... so. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 2:32 It's kind of cool. [chuckles]

Gaurav Munjal 2:33 At some way, I was- I could have been the poster boy of WhiteHat Jr. because I was, uh... But, but we'll get to WhiteHat Jr. at some point. Um, when I was eleven or twelve, I was aggressively coding. Um, you know, like, like you were interested in elocution, et cetera. I never, um, uh, was into sports. I was into computers, gaming, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 2:56 Were you a bright child, good marks in school?

Gaurav Munjal 2:58 Uh, like, I would study just before the exam, and I would get eighty, eighty-five percent.

Ronnie Screwvala 3:02 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 3:03 Uh, and some of the teachers... But every parents-teacher meeting, I would get reprimanded at home because I would, um, I was, I, I, I think I had this rebellious nature-

Nikhil Kamath 3:14 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 3:14 ... which I still do.

Nikhil Kamath 3:15 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 3:15 Where I just had to, uh, uh, take my teachers to a breaking point.

Nikhil Kamath 3:20 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 3:20 Like I, I had to say something in the class or something like that. But, [sniffs] uh, but then this coding thing, uh, I was fifteen years old when I, uh, started eXrays. So we had a school magazine called X-Rays, and I could not get selected in it. Uh, so I went to the principal, who was, uh, Father Jose Jacob, and I told him, "I'll start this eXrays." And, uh, I got to build a new team, and, you know, it was launched in school, et cetera. So I think that was the first taste where I realized that, uh, maybe I'm... I mean, I, I, I could study physics, chemistry, maths when I could, but I was never excited about it. I always loved building products. Um, I remember, uh, uh, you know, I built this bot in college called Pingu. You know, it was, it was like a much basic version of what bots we are seeing today, but you could, you could say that I'm getting bored, and it would give you that. So I think... And at some point, the coding and the tech part got merged with content. So, um, I used to run these blogs in college and ended up making two, three thousand dollars a month, which used to be a lot because-

Nikhil Kamath 4:29 College where?

Gaurav Munjal 4:31 NMIMS, Mumbai. And, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 4:33 What were you studying?

Gaurav Munjal 4:34 Uh, Computer Engineering. Um, but more than that, um, um, would spend a lot of time creating these blogs. They used to get a million likes. Quora, I started writing a lot after college.

Gaurav Munjal 4:46 Roman, my co-founder, and I are in... At, at some point became the top twenty most followed people on Quora, just because we were writing. So at some point we found this, and Unacademy, in fact, started as a YouTube channel when I was-

Nikhil Kamath 4:58 You should say a bit about your co-founder. He's like some academically, like, a, an anomaly of sorts.

Gaurav Munjal 5:02 Yeah. I, I'm, I'm getting there. So we started creating-

Nikhil Kamath 5:05 [chuckles]

Gaurav Munjal 5:06 ... videos. Um, I started creating computer science videos, but, uh, they didn't get-

Nikhil Kamath 5:12 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 5:12 ... uh, a lot of views, but they got, like, fifty thousand, sixty thousand views. And then, um, I met... Roman and I know each other from school, where we used to go to chemistry tuitions together. And at some point, he was in AIIMS. Uh, he had just become a doctor. He was the youngest doctor. And then somehow he ended up cracking... He was just about to crack the UPSC exam, but the results were not out. And the day he cracked, I called him up. I thought, "This is a great opportunity. I mean, he has cracked the examination. He has three months before he has to go to Labasa. Why not? I should get some free videos out of him." So it was done as a content project, but those videos kind of became-

Nikhil Kamath 5:50 What were these videos about? What did you talk about?

Gaurav Munjal 5:51 UPSC preparation.

Nikhil Kamath 5:52 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 5:53 Because I was making computer science videos, they used to get fifty thousand to one lakh views. But when his video came-... we got a million views. The channel became one of the biggest channels, et cetera. So-

Nikhil Kamath 6:03 YouTube channel?

Gaurav Munjal 6:04 Yeah. Um, YouTube channel, Unacademy. And then next one, one and a half years, uh, Himesh and I, my other co-founder, we had started this company called FlatChat. It was like Tinder, but for finding roommates. This I had started when I was in college in NMIMS. Uh, I'd raised my first angel invest-- I, I, in fact, got a first angel investment offer when I was in fourth year of college, but then I got this software engineering job, which was the first job. Um, pretty good job. So for me to come from a middle-class background and say no to that kind of offer, I think it was sixteen lakhs per annum back in two thousand and twelve. Um, I mean, it was too good to refuse. And then one year I stayed there, I paid off my education loans. I had taken an education loan to study in college. Um, and then at some point, like you said, that I realized I cannot work for somebody else's vision. I mean, I was too much of a rebel to, uh, work for somebody else. So then FlatChat was started, which CommonFloor bought in twenty fourteen. That's how I came to Bangalore. Uh, and then I was with CommonFloor for one, one and a half years. Uh, learnt how to scale a company. FlatChat was small. It was sold in ten months, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 7:17 So did Unacademy start like that? Was it a video channel which became a business?

Gaurav Munjal 7:22 Yes. Yes.

Nikhil Kamath 7:23 So you started monetizing this channel?

Gaurav Munjal 7:25 Yes. We started monetizing it, but when Roman went to Labasna, he was not, uh, um... I mean, he was not allowed to make money-

Nikhil Kamath 7:33 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 7:33 -so we stopped monetization. So-

Nikhil Kamath 7:35 The educational anomaly I was talking about is he became a doctor and then?

Gaurav Munjal 7:39 Uh, IAS officer.

Nikhil Kamath 7:40 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 7:40 Wow!

Nikhil Kamath 7:40 So he did both together.

Gaurav Munjal 7:42 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 7:42 That's, that's lovely.

Gaurav Munjal 7:43 And then, and then, you know, there was this one, one and a half years of convincing. We would talk every night. It was clear that both of us would talk, figure out a way to convince his parents on how, uh, he should leave IAS, et cetera.

Nikhil Kamath 7:56 And when did Unacademy become all that it is in terms of scale? The same question I asked him. When did you realize Unacademy is big?

Gaurav Munjal 8:06 No, so we had that, uh, intrinsic optimism-

Nikhil Kamath 8:11 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 8:11 -that we have to make this big.

Nikhil Kamath 8:12 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 8:13 I mean, one guy is, he, he was the assistant collector of Jabalpur. I mean, he's leaving that.

Nikhil Kamath 8:19 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 8:19 Uh, and then, um, you know, we, we, we knew that this is all... We are going all in-

Nikhil Kamath 8:24 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 8:24 -like working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. We, we had to go all in, and we had to make it big.

Nikhil Kamath 8:30 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 8:30 The question wasn't... So, see, people don't realize a lot of times, we went through at least ten pivots-

Nikhil Kamath 8:37 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 8:37 ... before we realized our business model in twenty nineteen.

Nikhil Kamath 8:39 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 8:40 So twenty fifteen is when we started the company, when Roman quit, when Himesh quit, when I quit. Both of Himesh and I quit CommonFloor, Roman quit IAS. Four years, it took us ten plus pivots to realize what's our business model. But once we cracked the business model, this is-- I remember twenty nineteen, uh, we were on a founder's retreat, um, and we, we start seeing revenue numbers that we are doing thirty lakhs a day, forty lakhs a day. And this is the first time we had seen revenue PMF. We had seen views PMF. We were creating content. So we, we had seen that journey that our videos were doing hundred million views a month.

Nikhil Kamath 9:14 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 9:14 So that journey we had already seen. But when we started seeing revenue PM- PMF, that's when we knew we had hit something. But it took us at le- four years plus ten pivots to get there.

Nikhil Kamath 9:25 Would you like to go next? [chuckles]

Ronnie Screwvala 9:26 Yeah, sure.

Nikhil Kamath 9:27 [chuckles]

Ronnie Screwvala 9:28 Uh, proud of me having a very low middle-class upbringing, uh, keeps your feet on the ground.

Nikhil Kamath 9:33 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 9:33 And I think I'm around because I've kept my feet on the ground most of my life. That's why I'm, I'm still walking around the place. I think it's very important. Um, I had a great first innings and a lot of fun, um, by seeking out and being an entrepreneur, but in a way in which-

Nikhil Kamath 9:49 So Ronnie, we don't know how you started off. Where did you grow up?

Ronnie Screwvala 9:54 Grew up in Mumbai, in Grant Road.

Nikhil Kamath 9:57 Where did you go to school?

Ronnie Screwvala 9:58 [coughs] Sorry.

Nikhil Kamath 9:58 Where did you go to school?

Ronnie Screwvala 9:58 I went to school in a place called Dun's Institute.

Nikhil Kamath 10:01 Okay.

Ronnie Screwvala 10:01 Okay.

Nikhil Kamath 10:02 What did your parents do?

Ronnie Screwvala 10:04 Uh, my dad has been a professional. He worked with the Tata Group for a long time.

Nikhil Kamath 10:07 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 10:08 And I think before he retired, he spent about ten years with a, a UK company called J. L. Morrison, that make Nivea cream.

Nikhil Kamath 10:14 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 10:14 And my dad's-- and my brother's [coughs] got a PhD in HR. And then, I don't know, at my young age, figured out that I may not be that good implementing somebody else's vision.

Nikhil Kamath 10:26 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 10:26 So felt, [coughs] I needed to start off and do something on my own.

Nikhil Kamath 10:31 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 10:32 Um, and that was when I had to decide whether I wanted to do an MBA.

Nikhil Kamath 10:36 How old were you?

Ronnie Screwvala 10:36 Um, uh, nineteen, twenty.

Nikhil Kamath 10:39 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 10:40 And I think at that stage-

Nikhil Kamath 10:41 And what year was this?

Ronnie Screwvala 10:43 Hmm, good question. Fifty... It's about seventy-eight. [coughs] Nineteen seventy-eight. Okay, so I don't know whether that's got a validity stamp today. [laughing] In relevance to everyone's, because everywhere I had a lot of, uh, raised eyebrows here. But, um, yeah, I was at excellent crossroad, two very clear learning lessons for me at that early stage. [coughs] One is when my dad said, "Okay, I don't really figure out what you want to do, but why don't you do your MBA, do your charter accountancy, and then if you want to still-

Nikhil Kamath 11:15 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 11:15 ... run something on your own, start that way."

Nikhil Kamath 11:17 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 11:18 And I was quite clear that if I had a plan B in my life, then plan A wouldn't work out.

Nikhil Kamath 11:23 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 11:23 Because I think that's half the s- situation, right? When you want to start something and you feel you have a optionality, you're going to run aground definitely ten times. And I think the other thing that both my parents told me is, "Look, if you're going to do that, we don't have the wherewithal to bail you out. So we- you'll have all our love and all our affection, but we're not going to bail you out."

Nikhil Kamath 11:42 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 11:42 So I think that's a good, good segue to start off-

Nikhil Kamath 11:46 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 11:46 ... at a time when there was no angel or VC funding.

Nikhil Kamath 11:49 So what did you start

Nikhil Kamath 11:50 first?

Ronnie Screwvala 11:52 [lips smack] Um, I started a cable TV company-

Nikhil Kamath 11:55 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 11:56 ... that started wiring up all of Mumbai-

Nikhil Kamath 11:59 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 11:59 ... and most of the five-star hotels.

Nikhil Kamath 12:01 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 12:02 That was a time when, uh, the TV sets didn't have a remote control....So not only did we have to start selling the concept to people, but we also had to sell concepts to the TV manufacturers to start making multi-channel TV sets at that particular point in time. So that was my, I think, first sojourn into starting something.

Nikhil Kamath 12:22 And then? When was the big moment where-

Ronnie Screwvala 12:26 There's never been a big moment. I think big moments are-

Nikhil Kamath 12:28 Oh

Ronnie Screwvala 12:29 ... overplayed in life.

Nikhil Kamath 12:30 Okay, when did Ronnie Screwvala become Ronnie Screwvala to people who don't know you? Who didn't know you personally. When did you become a figure, per se?

Ronnie Screwvala 12:41 Yeah, so I don't know what that criterion, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Nikhil Kamath 12:44 [chuckles]

Ronnie Screwvala 12:44 So I don't think any one person-

Nikhil Kamath 12:46 [chuckles]

Ronnie Screwvala 12:46 - de- defines where the other one is. But I think media-

Nikhil Kamath 12:48 But so you wear the mask.

Ronnie Screwvala 12:49 But media is a profile-

Nikhil Kamath 12:51 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 12:51 ... that gets you somewhere. So I think early media days-

Nikhil Kamath 12:54 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 12:54 - then later media days, and then I think when we morphed to be a-

Nikhil Kamath 12:57 Okay, you started cable?

Ronnie Screwvala 12:58 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 12:59 Did very well in cable.

Ronnie Screwvala 13:00 Five years, then sold it.

Nikhil Kamath 13:02 How much do you sell it for?

Ronnie Screwvala 13:05 Literally nothing. It ... I think at that's the stage where it was getting quite messy.

Nikhil Kamath 13:09 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 13:09 There were a lot of copyright issues.

Nikhil Kamath 13:10 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 13:10 And I just felt that was not my DNA-

Nikhil Kamath 13:12 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 13:12 ... to build a business that would have so many challenges at that very early stage in life.

Nikhil Kamath 13:17 Okay.

Ronnie Screwvala 13:17 So it was a chance when my, s- the, the COO that I'd appointed-

Nikhil Kamath 13:22 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 13:23 ... came in and resigned and said, "I'm gonna go to a South Indian party who wants to start cable TV."

Nikhil Kamath 13:27 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 13:28 So I said, "Well, will you check with them whether they wanna buy this? Because then you can buy it, run it, and go forward." That's pretty much how it took place.

Nikhil Kamath 13:34 So did you use the corpus from selling the cable business

Nikhil Kamath 13:37 to start the media stuff?

Ronnie Screwvala 13:39 So media, I think, again, is serendipity-

Nikhil Kamath 13:41 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 13:41 ... in many ways, right? Because, um, as coming from the lower middle-class home, I think I- since I hadn't studied, for me, learning soft skills was an important element. So instead of doing boxing and football in school, I did elocution, debates, dramatics, theatre-

Nikhil Kamath 13:59 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 14:00 ... and front-of-camera hosting at that particular point in time.

Nikhil Kamath 14:03 And what did you do in media first?

Ronnie Screwvala 14:06 So literally, that, it was pretty much that. And I think the first thing that happened is there was an advertising agency called Lintas Lowe.

Nikhil Kamath 14:13 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 14:13 And Alec Padamsee, who used to-

Nikhil Kamath 14:15 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 14:15 ... do a lot of theatre with, I used to do a lot of theatre with. So he came in one fine day and said, "You know, Hindustan Lever wants to do India's first sponsored program."

Nikhil Kamath 14:23 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 14:24 And that's pretty much how the company was born. And he said, "We've got to make 13 episodes of a TV show. Do you want to make it?" And I said: "Well, why are you coming to me?" He says, "You just look like the guy who's gonna be able to put it all together."

Nikhil Kamath 14:36 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 14:37 And I think that's how the media part started.

Nikhil Kamath 14:39 And that led to movies and UTV.

Ronnie Screwvala 14:41 Movies, much later.

Nikhil Kamath 14:42 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 14:42 I think, didn't have funding for almost six, seven years.

Nikhil Kamath 14:45 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 14:46 So when you don't have funding, you build a B2B model.

Nikhil Kamath 14:48 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 14:48 So we were a cost-plus model for everything else. We started making TV content-

Nikhil Kamath 14:52 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 14:52 ... and doing lots of stuff.

Nikhil Kamath 14:54 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 14:54 And that's when I realized, for the first time, to get in private equity, get external investors.

Nikhil Kamath 15:00 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 15:00 And then media started getting defined-

Nikhil Kamath 15:02 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 15:03 ... almost 10 years later into the business.

Nikhil Kamath 15:05 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 15:05 So I'd say we, it was good fun being in the formative part of it, and I think that's what I thrive on.

Nikhil Kamath 15:10 Right. And how did media lead to movies, lead to UpGrad, startup investments, and all the other things that you do?

Ronnie Screwvala 15:21 So media stayed as media. I think the day I realized that if I want to build something at scale-

Nikhil Kamath 15:25 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 15:26 ... and build a brand, then you needed to be in the B2C part of the business.

Nikhil Kamath 15:30 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 15:30 So I think over a period of two years, I remember one investor call because we had just gone public.

Nikhil Kamath 15:36 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 15:36 And predictability and margins came into the picture, and I said, "Actually, I'm not so much in control of what I'm doing because I'm a B2B model."

Nikhil Kamath 15:45 Mm. Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 15:45 So we morphed, and we started being a broadcaster of about 10 channels, and then started a movie studio. The first five movies we made were disasters in every sense of the word, and most people would say, "Why are you ever in that-

Nikhil Kamath 15:57 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 15:57 ... business?" kind of situation.

Nikhil Kamath 15:59 Why are you in that business?

Ronnie Screwvala 16:00 Because I needed to build a B2C brand.

Nikhil Kamath 16:02 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 16:02 And you can't build a B2C brand in media-

Nikhil Kamath 16:05 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 16:05 ... if you're not in the big screen part of it.

Nikhil Kamath 16:07 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 16:07 And-

Nikhil Kamath 16:07 And what was the need to build the brand? Uh, like...

Ronnie Screwvala 16:11 Just for me, I think I was starting to get obsessed with scale.

Nikhil Kamath 16:13 Okay, scale.

Ronnie Screwvala 16:14 And I think value. Like, if you see, there are about 30, 40 companies in media that have got-

Nikhil Kamath 16:17 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 16:17 ... listed since the time we did that.

Nikhil Kamath 16:19 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 16:20 And I think if you look at their market cap for the last 20, 25 years, they haven't moved more than 10% cumulatively in the last 25 years.

Nikhil Kamath 16:28 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 16:28 So my realization to unlock and create value-

Nikhil Kamath 16:30 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 16:31 ... was to build a integrated model versus being a pure play. And at that stage, I think for six, seven years, I got slaughtered by everyone saying, "Where's your focus?"

Nikhil Kamath 16:40 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 16:40 "Why are you not only into one single aspect?"

Nikhil Kamath 16:43 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 16:43 Then you get competitor reviews from different people. Uh, but I think normally when you're going against the grain and you know it, means when a lot of people think they've not understood your model, I've found that that's normally where 10X, 10X, or 20X value gets created.

Nikhil Kamath 17:00 So do you think these still hold true, like B2C is where value can really be created, even today?

Ronnie Screwvala 17:07 A B2C business today, you're saying in, in media specifically?

Nikhil Kamath 17:10 Not, not in media, in anything.

Ronnie Screwvala 17:12 Yeah, it's a tougher one. So I think when one got into education-

Nikhil Kamath 17:15 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 17:16 ... and one got into learning-

Nikhil Kamath 17:17 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 17:18 ... the first crossroad was whether we should start B2B.

Nikhil Kamath 17:21 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 17:21 Because it's a tricky business, right?

Nikhil Kamath 17:23 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 17:23 In a sense, it's... Education is a very formatted, formal world in every sense of the word. Everyone's very predictable. Um, it's calendar event in your life-

Nikhil Kamath 17:32 Mm-hmm

Ronnie Screwvala 17:32 ... so to speak. And to break that up and say, "I want to build something," we could have easily started the B2B way, but I was quite clear we should start B2C. And that was a tougher, tougher model to go.

Nikhil Kamath 17:42 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 17:42 But I think no regrets in the last six years.

Nikhil Kamath 17:45 And the second thing, do you often make more money by being counter-trend?

Ronnie Screwvala 17:50 I think I, I'll answer that maybe two ways. I think, um, my s- ratio of eight failures to two successes is something that I've hold on to quite well.

Nikhil Kamath 18:02 Mm. Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 18:02 It's not that I go out to do it in that, it's not a formula, but I think when you're... When you fail as often as you do-

Nikhil Kamath 18:09 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 18:09 ... it's a minus one X every time. It could be a big minus one X. It could be a minus one X-

Nikhil Kamath 18:14 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 18:14 - ten million dollars, hundred million dollars, a bad hire, a bad decision-

Nikhil Kamath 18:18 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 18:18 - pulling the plug on a business, sticking with a business, whatever else, but it's a minus one X.

Nikhil Kamath 18:22 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 18:23 But because you've done that, when you do get a success, it's thirty X, forty X.

Nikhil Kamath 18:30 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 18:30 And I think that if you don't have that law of averages working, the chances of you having success will be two X, three X, four X, which is still fantastic. But that thirty X, forty X doesn't come about unless there's a lot that you've done, which is-

Nikhil Kamath 18:43 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 18:44 ... where your mind has allowed your instinct and your gut to really get a little bit more polished, to just feel confident. Because at the end of the day, it's not about gut, right? It's a lot to do with your own self-conviction-

Nikhil Kamath 18:57 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 18:58 ... when everything else fails.

Nikhil Kamath 18:59 Explain. Self-confliction being?

Ronnie Screwvala 19:01 Self-conviction.

Nikhil Kamath 19:02 Conviction being?

Ronnie Screwvala 19:03 Yeah, I think that at the end of the day, if I have to say-

Nikhil Kamath 19:06 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 19:06 ... what do I have as the reservoir? It's the self-conviction, right?

Nikhil Kamath 19:09 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 19:09 Because how do you get out of failure? Self-conviction.

Nikhil Kamath 19:13 Is that conviction in yourself or conviction in the cyclical nature of a sector that you're betting on?

Ronnie Screwvala 19:19 Has to be in yourself. Has to be in yourself. Yeah, I don't think anyone can have such conviction in a cyclical part of a business-

Nikhil Kamath 19:26 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 19:27 ... or even in a sector.

Nikhil Kamath 19:28 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 19:29 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 19:30 And how does Ronnie spend time today? Like, how much time does which business take up?

Ronnie Screwvala 19:35 So I'm not a, I'm not very big at breaking up-

Nikhil Kamath 19:38 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 19:39 ... time. I think the elasticity-

Nikhil Kamath 19:41 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 19:41 I think I've been blessed with, uh, keeping my feet on the ground most of the time.

Nikhil Kamath 19:46 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 19:46 I think I've been blessed by not being, uh, spoiled with a lot of fundraising-

Nikhil Kamath 19:51 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 19:51 ... from time to time, which I think really corrupts-

Nikhil Kamath 19:54 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 19:54 ... people-

Nikhil Kamath 19:55 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 19:55 ... and corrupts minds, and corrupts businesses-

Nikhil Kamath 19:56 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 19:56 ... and corrupts many other things. But I've also been most blessed that I enjoy everything that I've done.

Nikhil Kamath 20:01 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 20:01 So I think my media part, to do that-

Nikhil Kamath 20:05 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 20:05 ... uh, and the level at which you do it, and I think what I'm doing right now, whether it's our not-for-profit-

Nikhil Kamath 20:10 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 20:10 ... foundation-

Nikhil Kamath 20:11 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 20:11 ... or whether it's going back and doing a little bit of storytelling in the movies, mostly with the skilling and workforce development and learning platform-

Nikhil Kamath 20:20 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 20:21 ... uh, that we're trying to build globally.

Nikhil Kamath 20:24 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 20:24 And a little bit having

Ronnie Screwvala 20:25 fun with, um, sports teams like the Kabaddi one where-

Nikhil Kamath 20:28 You both have a sports team, right? In the same league.

Jay Kotak 20:30 We both have two, uh, sports teams, technically-

Ronnie Screwvala 20:33 Yeah

Jay Kotak 20:34 ... because we also own-

Nikhil Kamath 20:34 Kabaddi?

Jay Kotak 20:35 - table tennis.

Nikhil Kamath 20:36 Table tennis?

Jay Kotak 20:36 It's a small-

Nikhil Kamath 20:37 Yeah

Jay Kotak 20:37 ... that's a smaller property, but still fun.

Nikhil Kamath 20:39 Yeah?

Jay Kotak 20:39 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 20:40 Do you guys ever like... I mean, I know you don't play Kabaddi. I'm hoping the answer is that. Like, but table tennis, you must enjoy it?

Jay Kotak 20:46 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 20:47 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 20:48 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 20:48 Have you tried Kabaddi?

Ronnie Screwvala 20:49 Uh, Kabaddi for me-

Nikhil Kamath 20:50 Yeah [chuckles]

Ronnie Screwvala 20:50 ... would go back a long time, right?

Nikhil Kamath 20:52 Jay is young. Jay can still-

Jay Kotak 20:53 I mean, unfortunately, not young enough.

Nikhil Kamath 20:55 [laughing]

Jay Kotak 20:55 Uh, I've played a little bit.

Nikhil Kamath 20:58 Right.

Jay Kotak 20:59 But that's more just after the team happened and then trying to-

Nikhil Kamath 21:03 Mm

Jay Kotak 21:03 ... you know, see what it is.

Nikhil Kamath 21:04 Are they, are they nice to you and don't really go hard on you because you're their boss in a way?

Jay Kotak 21:08 They, tha- thankfully, yes. [chuckles] Because, uh, it is a rough sport.

Nikhil Kamath 21:13 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 21:13 And, and I don't think I appreciate h- how rough it is-

Nikhil Kamath 21:16 Yeah

Jay Kotak 21:17 ... till, you know, we started-

Ronnie Screwvala 21:18 Till you get out there on the ground. [chuckles]

Jay Kotak 21:19 Till you get out there, and you realize it's, [coughs] it's an incredible game.

Ronnie Screwvala 21:22 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 21:23 I think we both have really bonded and spent lots of time together.

Nikhil Kamath 21:26 Would you-

Ronnie Screwvala 21:26 But, but that's a good example of what you just asked, of how do you take and build a brand on something, right?

Jay Kotak 21:31 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 21:31 Because if you take that game, it's, it's always been a great game-

Nikhil Kamath 21:34 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 21:34 ... especially from an Indian sport point of view.

Nikhil Kamath 21:36 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 21:36 But to take it out of the sort of matty and put it on a mat-

Nikhil Kamath 21:39 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 21:39 ... and put some lights on them.

Nikhil Kamath 21:41 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 21:41 And then just one or two tweaks to the rules of the game-

Jay Kotak 21:44 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 21:44 ... where every third time you have to score-

Nikhil Kamath 21:46 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 21:46 ... versus you can just come in and go out and not score-

Nikhil Kamath 21:49 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 21:49 ... has changed the entire perception. Just those two factors have taken popularity of a sport from X to-

Nikhil Kamath 21:56 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 21:56 ... ten X, twenty X.

Nikhil Kamath 21:57 No, I'm intrigued. The last time Jay was in town,

Nikhil Kamath 22:00 he had come for a Kabaddi game.

Ronnie Screwvala 22:01 Yep.

Nikhil Kamath 22:01 So we were talking about it, and it seems like the learning curve or, or the amount of money you need to set up a Kabaddi game is not as high as many other sports.

Ronnie Screwvala 22:14 Yep.

Nikhil Kamath 22:14 You don't need a stadium like cricket and football.

Ronnie Screwvala 22:16 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 22:16 And if you're close to the action, it, it does... I, I see the appeal at some level.

Ronnie Screwvala 22:22 Yeah. I mean, in India, sports is quite different.

Nikhil Kamath 22:25 Uh.

Ronnie Screwvala 22:25 There, if you're in the US, you need to own a stadium, you need to own the infrastructure. Here, you don't need-

Nikhil Kamath 22:30 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 22:30 ... necessarily, even in cricket, to necessarily own the venue.

Nikhil Kamath 22:33 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 22:33 And they're normally quite segregated. But yeah, I think the Kabaddi-

Nikhil Kamath 22:37 Have these teams become profit-making now?

Jay Kotak 22:40 Yes. But it depends on how you account for it in terms of allocated cost and how much non-discretionary spend you are doing, in terms of are you building a youth program? Are you doing scouting? Are you investing in building any physical infrastructure?

Nikhil Kamath 22:54 Mm.

Jay Kotak 22:55 So maybe, uh, also, Ronnie is in, uh, Mumbai, I'm in Pune. His fixed cost tends to be a little higher.

Ronnie Screwvala 23:01 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 23:01 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 23:02 Yeah. But right now, I think we are all having more fun-

Nikhil Kamath 23:07 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 23:07 ... than the monetary gains from it, I would say.

Jay Kotak 23:09 Yeah, I agree.

Nikhil Kamath 23:10 Would you like to go next, Jay?

Jay Kotak 23:11 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 23:11 Tell us about yourself.

Jay Kotak 23:13 Yeah, sure. So first, uh, fun to learn, Ronnie, about you before I knew you, because I only knew you from two thousand and fourteen. I only know the later stage of, uh, Ronnie, and I echo a lot of the things that he said, like resonated with me. Uh, middle-class values, feeling older. Uh, now I'm meeting and interviewing people born in two thousand and one.

Nikhil Kamath 23:38 Mm.

Jay Kotak 23:38 And-

Nikhil Kamath 23:39 How old are you now, Jay?

Jay Kotak 23:40 I'm eighty-nine, so I'm thirty-three.

Nikhil Kamath 23:42 So you're the youngest one.

Jay Kotak 23:42 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 23:42 How old are you, Gaurav?

Gaurav Munjal 23:44 Uh, I'm ninety born.

Nikhil Kamath 23:46 Oh, wow!

Jay Kotak 23:46 Also...

Nikhil Kamath 23:47 I'm older than both of you then.

Jay Kotak 23:49 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 23:49 Okay, go on. [chuckles]

Ronnie Screwvala 23:50 [chuckles] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Um, I'll have to just act young. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 23:53 [laughing]

Gaurav Munjal 23:54 But we-

Nikhil Kamath 23:54 But-

Gaurav Munjal 23:55 ... we both were born on the same date.

Nikhil Kamath 23:56 But considering you went to MBA or whatever, around seventy-eight, you don't look your age.

Ronnie Screwvala 24:03 Right.

Gaurav Munjal 24:04 No.

Ronnie Screwvala 24:04 Or didn't do my MBA, but yeah.

Jay Kotak 24:05 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 24:05 No.

Jay Kotak 24:06 I agree. I would've-

Nikhil Kamath 24:07 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 24:07 I thought you were younger.

Nikhil Kamath 24:08 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 24:10 Um, yeah. I grew up in Mumbai.... middle-class values, uh, quite sheltered. And Dad, uh, founded Kotak, and I've been, you know, privileged to watch him and, uh, the business grow, and that's been a great learning experience for me. I went to the US for my studies, and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with my life professionally, where I wanted to go.

Nikhil Kamath 24:40 When did Kotak become big in your own journey?

Jay Kotak 24:43 Uh, [sighs]

Nikhil Kamath 24:45 Were you in school?

Jay Kotak 24:46 I-- It depends on big in terms of the size of the business or our perception of it from-

Nikhil Kamath 24:54 Not your perception of it, but our perception of it.

Jay Kotak 24:56 Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 24:56 When did that happen?

Jay Kotak 24:59 I think we became a large capital markets and non-bank franchise in the early two thousands.

Nikhil Kamath 25:06 So about twenty years ago?

Jay Kotak 25:07 Yes, I would say, and the bank came later. Kotak was founded in the late eighties, and the bank, uh, happened in the early two thousands, around two thousand and one, two thousand and two. So the capital markets business, the securities business, investment banking, was much more mature. But we only became a big B2C brand where people, normal people, had debit cards, credit cards, bank accounts, uh, in the late two thousands. But I did not perceive or understand-

Nikhil Kamath 25:34 Mm.

Jay Kotak 25:35 -how large the business had become, really, till I came back from undergrad in the US in two thousand and twelve. Two thousand and eleven, two thousand and twelve. Even then, I never actually worked at Kotak till I came back from my MBA, and I wasn't really sure that, you know, this was my calling. But, um,

Jay Kotak 25:55 when I was taking that decision, you know, three weeks before I was going to graduate, I was evaluating, "Hey, do I want to stay in the US?" It's a pretty comfortable life. Work at a private equity fund or an investment bank or a tech company there, or do I want to come back? And my father actually called me, and rare that he would do something like this.

Nikhil Kamath 26:14 Mm.

Jay Kotak 26:14 And he said: "I really do think, uh, you should come back for India, not as much necessarily for Kotak, because the opportunity and the way this country is changing-

Nikhil Kamath 26:24 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 26:24 -is a once in a...

Nikhil Kamath 26:27 Century.

Jay Kotak 26:28 Century or more.

Nikhil Kamath 26:29 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 26:29 If you think over the last five or six centuries, this has only happened six or seven times.

Nikhil Kamath 26:34 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 26:35 And, um, that-- I kind of took that plunge, and I'm, I'm, I'm glad I did.

Nikhil Kamath 26:40 Where did you go to college?

Jay Kotak 26:42 I went to undergrad at-

Nikhil Kamath 26:43 Like him, like, tell us where you went to school, when you went out.

Jay Kotak 26:46 Sure. I went to school at, uh, Cathedral and John Conan School in Mumbai, and then went to college to Columbia-

Nikhil Kamath 26:54 Mm.

Jay Kotak 26:54 -in New York. Came back, worked for a few years, mostly, uh, consulting, investment banking, not at Kotak, and then went to business school. I did my MBA at Harvard in Boston. I graduated two thousand and seventeen, and since then I've been in India. And I actually, after MBA, joined Kotak, spent a couple of years doing capital markets, which was the original kind of, uh, strength and, you know, original business-

Nikhil Kamath 27:23 Mm.

Jay Kotak 27:23 -of the Kotak group. And then I moved into consumer and B2C ever since.

Nikhil Kamath 27:29 I remember meeting him-

Jay Kotak 27:30 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 27:30 -meeting up with you in Boston, your last two, three months of your Harvard, this thing. And I remember having that breakfast conversation with you, and you were still debating on India or not India.

Jay Kotak 27:41 Yeah, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 27:41 And glad your dad convinced you, or?

Jay Kotak 27:44 We were on the same page.

Nikhil Kamath 27:45 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 27:45 You were on the same page. I'm glad. It's best, best decision, not just for, for me, but for anybody in my generation. And I'm seeing a lot of-

Nikhil Kamath 27:52 People coming back.

Jay Kotak 27:53 Lot of people coming back.

Nikhil Kamath 27:55 It's a very interesting train

Nikhil Kamath 27:56 of thought, right? Like, go back in time. Is patriotism defined by arbitrary boundaries drawn at one point of time? I would, I would also like, you know, put a cave- caveat in here and say some countries are more patriotic than us. Like, I feel like America does an amazing job of selling patriotism.

Jay Kotak 28:19 No, wait, wait. So that's a soft power approach.

Nikhil Kamath 28:21 Mm.

Jay Kotak 28:21 We should not mix that up.

Nikhil Kamath 28:22 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 28:22 And I'm glad you brought that up there-

Nikhil Kamath 28:24 Mm

Jay Kotak 28:24 ... Right? Because obviously, that's a soft power approach-

Nikhil Kamath 28:27 Mm

Jay Kotak 28:27 -where it's only the view from one particular side and point of view.

Nikhil Kamath 28:31 Mm.

Jay Kotak 28:31 So yeah, they've done a remarkable one-sided job-

Nikhil Kamath 28:34 Mm

Jay Kotak 28:34 -on soft power.

Nikhil Kamath 28:35 Mm.

Jay Kotak 28:36 Okay? Where you can make a movie about an assassin that-

Nikhil Kamath 28:39 Mm

Jay Kotak 28:39 -shot one hundred and twenty-three, uh, people-

Nikhil Kamath 28:43 Mm

Jay Kotak 28:43 -in a country they went and occupied.

Nikhil Kamath 28:45 Mm.

Jay Kotak 28:45 But if the other person had done it from the other side-

Nikhil Kamath 28:47 Mm

Jay Kotak 28:47 -you're not going to see a Hollywood movie on that, right? So whether you can call it Sniper or you can call it XYZ, uh, but they've done a great job.

Nikhil Kamath 28:56 Is there a, is there a correlation between how many patriotic movies are made-

Jay Kotak 29:02 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 29:02 ... to the underlying patriotism in the country?

Jay Kotak 29:04 Soft power for America in every sense of the word. I mean, there's your Silicon Valley, and there's your technology-

Nikhil Kamath 29:08 Mm. Mm

Jay Kotak 29:08 -and then there's Hollywood, and yeah. I think, I think... I would say cricket and Bollywood for India are very internal-

Nikhil Kamath 29:18 Mm

Jay Kotak 29:18 -insulated-

Nikhil Kamath 29:19 Mm

Jay Kotak 29:19 -soft powers.

Nikhil Kamath 29:20 Mm.

Jay Kotak 29:20 The problem is, the soft power is how you get perceived from the outside, right?

Nikhil Kamath 29:23 Mm-hmm.

Jay Kotak 29:23 And here, now everyone stop playing cricket. Ninety percent of the revenues come from cricket in India-

Nikhil Kamath 29:28 Mm

Jay Kotak 29:28 -because nobody else is playing cricket. All the Commonwealth countries are playing more football.

Nikhil Kamath 29:31 Mm.

Jay Kotak 29:31 They do play cricket-

Nikhil Kamath 29:32 Mm

Jay Kotak 29:32 -but not to that level. And I think the same applies to storytelling. I think out of-- we missed that bus on being a global ambassador from storytelling.

Nikhil Kamath 29:41 Mm.

Jay Kotak 29:41 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 29:41 Do you think, because you both have a bird's-eye view on kabaddi, do you see cricket losing the kind of viewership with the newer generations than it did in maybe, for maybe people in their thirties and forties?

Jay Kotak 29:55 I-

Nikhil Kamath 29:55 What about the youngsters?

Jay Kotak 29:57 I don't think so. I think there is enough space in India-

Nikhil Kamath 30:01 Mm

Jay Kotak 30:01 ... for multiple sports to coexist, and I think cricket is around to stay. You can never say forever. If you look at a sport like baseball, for example, in the US, it is on a steady kind of declining trend, but the US still has four major sports.

Nikhil Kamath 30:16 Mm.

Jay Kotak 30:16 And they are-- for me, it's more about-

Gaurav Munjal 30:18 ... the fact that they emphasize different elements of human skill.

Ronnie Screwvala 30:21 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 30:22 You think about a baseball that's a little more like cricket.

Ronnie Screwvala 30:24 Mm-hmm.

Gaurav Munjal 30:25 A basketball that is about a height-

Ronnie Screwvala 30:28 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 30:28 ... reflexes, you know, uh, endurance, intensity.

Ronnie Screwvala 30:32 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 30:32 American football, you'll often see some of those footballers are fat, you know? Uh, and there's a whole host of, uh, different skill sets on a, a football field. The act of going to a football game is like an all-day event, two hours from the city, as opposed to a basketball game, which is like going to a movie. I see the same kind of thing manifesting itself, uh-

Ronnie Screwvala 30:53 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 30:53 ... in India. Same thing in the UK with rugby, cricket-

Ronnie Screwvala 30:56 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 30:56 ... football. Kabaddi is very different from cricket-

Ronnie Screwvala 31:00 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 31:00 ... in the kind of elements of human skill that it emphasizes, and it's a very different viewership proposition. It's a shorter game, it's a 40-minute game. It's a very high-intensity, 30-second, uh, piece, and I think that's what makes it exciting. And you can go for a kabaddi game as a family-

Ronnie Screwvala 31:16 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 31:16 ... like you would for a movie in the evening-

Ronnie Screwvala 31:18 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 31:18 ... see it and come back.

Ronnie Screwvala 31:19 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 31:20 Can I ask you guys a very interesting question? Digress a little bit. Like, when all three of you spoke about your life, your journeys, uh, you brought up the middle-class upbringing, the middle-class values. I'm also from a middle-class family, right? Uh, do you think we do this subconsciously to signal the perception of us we want to be known- we want others to know us for?

Ronnie Screwvala 31:48 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 31:48 Because we have a little bit of imposter complex.

Ronnie Screwvala 31:50 Yeah, it's important.

Gaurav Munjal 31:51 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 31:51 It... Yeah, we do. I, I would say yes, but it's an important part of the narrative, right? Because your, your-

Nikhil Kamath 31:56 But is it the, is it a truly important part of the narrative of why the three of you are successful, or is it an important part of justifying the narrative?

Ronnie Screwvala 32:07 Well, two parts to that. One is, it's important to be part of the narrative because you asked the question, because we're sitting here having a conversation-

Nikhil Kamath 32:13 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 32:13 ... which we're assuming other people will want a gleam out of-

Nikhil Kamath 32:16 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 32:16 ... and therefore, the context is important. And second, yes, I do genuinely believe that the grounding-

Nikhil Kamath 32:22 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 32:22 ... that one got, and I think when I listen to what-

Nikhil Kamath 32:25 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 32:25 ... Jay said-

Nikhil Kamath 32:26 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 32:26 ... that there's a, there's a grounding that you get. So I think it's important to refer to that. And you're not saying it-

Nikhil Kamath 32:31 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 32:31 ... so that you can say, "Look, once upon a time, I was here, and now I'm here." I don't think that's the context.

Nikhil Kamath 32:36 But can I also ask you a question? Who does not want to imbibe middle-class values on their kids? Like, I would think most wealthy people in the world are trying to teach their kids middle-class vam- values in one way or another. So how are we unique, or how is that unique in each of your own journeys? Because that-

Ronnie Screwvala 32:57 Well, I'd pivot it out the other way-

Nikhil Kamath 32:59 Uh

Ronnie Screwvala 32:59 ... because who doesn't is a very small minority of who doesn't.

Nikhil Kamath 33:02 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 33:02 Because you're talking about it with the top-angle view.

Nikhil Kamath 33:04 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 33:04 I think we're all looking in from the bottom-angle view.

Gaurav Munjal 33:06 Bottoms up, yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 33:07 And in the bottom-angle view-

Nikhil Kamath 33:08 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 33:08 ... it's aspirational.

Nikhil Kamath 33:09 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 33:10 The top-angle view of who doesn't is a thin minority. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 33:12 What is, what is aspirational, though? Having middle-class values or being successful?

Ronnie Screwvala 33:17 No, the f- the journey.

Gaurav Munjal 33:18 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 33:18 The journey is the success.

Nikhil Kamath 33:19 No, and, and-

Ronnie Screwvala 33:19 The story works

Gaurav Munjal 33:21 ... and, and more than the perception, I think it's also about the fact that, I think a lot of initial drive comes from-

Nikhil Kamath 33:27 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 33:27 ... the fact that, like, like, from the fact that you see other people having so much-

Nikhil Kamath 33:33 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 33:34 ... and you want that.

Nikhil Kamath 33:35 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 33:35 Now, I was reading this book called Hard Drive, which is Bill Gates' biography, and now he, he was born into money, not-

Nikhil Kamath 33:42 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 33:42 ... like the kind of money he eventually got, but he still had that passion for one thing.

Nikhil Kamath 33:46 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 33:46 But, you know, it is... You know, I used to see, let's say, uh, my father's friends-

Nikhil Kamath 33:52 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 33:52 ... who were other doctors-

Nikhil Kamath 33:53 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 33:53 ... and the kind of cars they would have or the kind of-

Nikhil Kamath 33:55 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 33:56 ... you know, parties they would have, et cetera. And see, it's, it's not perception, like-

Nikhil Kamath 34:01 So is that the innate emotion which made you as hungry and ambitious in life?

Gaurav Munjal 34:06 Initially. Two innate emotions: one, this, and second, all my friends-

Nikhil Kamath 34:10 'Cause that is a very raw, true emotion, right? Somebody else has more than you.

Gaurav Munjal 34:14 Yeah, I mean-

Nikhil Kamath 34:14 Humans were never altruistic.

Gaurav Munjal 34:15 I mean, my father had a Maruti 800, and my chachu had a Zen.

Nikhil Kamath 34:19 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 34:19 And it followed-

Nikhil Kamath 34:21 So following that journey, where are you now? Like, you have X, what do you compare yourself to and what-

Gaurav Munjal 34:25 No, now I don't. See-

Nikhil Kamath 34:26 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 34:27 ... at some point, it's, uh... Now, see, drive is not black or white.

Nikhil Kamath 34:31 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 34:31 It's not like because I wanted a better car, I, I work 16 hours a day. I could have... If I wanted to make money, I could have chosen another profession-

Nikhil Kamath 34:38 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 34:38 ... where I would work eight hours a day and have a much more work-life balance, but I don't have that. So I think, I think initial drive, or for example, when I was in school, all of my friends... I went to Xavier's Jaipur, which is one of the best schools in Jaipur, but all of my friends got into IITs. I didn't. So, then, during college, that was the second part of the drive that I had, was that, you know, there was this hunger to prove that, you know... And every time, at that time, it was this Gmail group, and, you know, you had Gtalk or something like that, and we would discuss-

Nikhil Kamath 35:11 Gchat.

Gaurav Munjal 35:11 Gchat, sorry. Um, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 35:14 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 35:14 It's very surprising. They should have been the one to build WhatsApp.

Ronnie Screwvala 35:17 Break out and done.

Gaurav Munjal 35:18 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 35:18 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 35:19 Do you think balance is an important part of being a successful entrepreneur?

Gaurav Munjal 35:24 No. I hate balance. I think you have to be-

Ronnie Screwvala 35:28 Yeah, of course. I think balance is a very important part of anything.

Nikhil Kamath 35:31 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 35:31 Balance, tolerance, little bit, you know-

Nikhil Kamath 35:33 Balance, tolerance, completely different. Balance being-

Ronnie Screwvala 35:35 Yeah, of course, they're different. I'm, I was adding to that, this thing-

Gaurav Munjal 35:37 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 35:37 ... but, yeah, balance is very important.

Gaurav Munjal 35:39 What do you mean by balance?

Ronnie Screwvala 35:40 Balance is very important.

Gaurav Munjal 35:40 Do you mean balance in temperament? Do you mean balance in skill set?

Nikhil Kamath 35:43 No, neither. I mean balance in the repetitive nature of life. Let's say he has a family. Let's say you have a family. Do you allocate 10 hours to work, one day a weekend? Do you do- do you have a hobby? Do you go to the gym? Do you take care of your health? I mean balance in that way.

Ronnie Screwvala 36:03 Hmm.

Gaurav Munjal 36:04 So I, I'll, I'll go first. I, I have always lived a life to a point, now I'm focusing on health, but I have been a fan of this notion that, uh, if you have to be truly, truly big, and if you have to create something that impacts, creates a huge impact, I hate balance. Um-

Nikhil Kamath 36:22 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 36:22 I mean, I believe that-

Jay Kotak 36:24 ... you do enough so that it's utility.

Nikhil Kamath 36:27 Mm.

Jay Kotak 36:27 Um, you, you figure out a way to balance family, health, et cetera, but you have to go all in. If, if you have to create something truly, truly, truly big-

Nikhil Kamath 36:38 Mm.

Jay Kotak 36:38 -um, if you have to create something very good, it's fine. I think balance is fine. See-

Ronnie Screwvala 36:43 Maybe that's the generation gap-

Nikhil Kamath 36:44 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 36:44 -I would necessarily feel here.

Jay Kotak 36:46 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 36:46 And I might-

Nikhil Kamath 36:47 You agree with him?

Ronnie Screwvala 36:47 -not at all.

Nikhil Kamath 36:48 No, I, I, I, I think if I look at eighty years of life-

Jay Kotak 36:52 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 36:53 ... I want balance-

Jay Kotak 36:54 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 36:54 -in that eighty-year journey. And I very much agree with you on, on that piece. I agree with you, Gaurav, that say, for a two, three, five-year period, it may not be consecutive here and there, if you feel something about a certain way, if you feel like you're creating something, you're having an exciting time, whether it be professionally, personally, anything, then go all in on that. But the sine curve has to kind of...

Nikhil Kamath 37:20 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 37:20 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 37:20 Which phase, which cycle are you in right now?

Jay Kotak 37:22 I'm right now in the... Actually, I'm in the middle of cycles. I would say the last three years has been a lot of, uh, drill-down work-

Nikhil Kamath 37:31 Mm

Jay Kotak 37:31 ... and all work-related. But now, uh, I'm getting married this year, so I think that is going to necessitate some-

Nikhil Kamath 37:39 Mm

Jay Kotak 37:39 ... changes in balance.

Nikhil Kamath 37:40 Tell, tell them the story about your-

Jay Kotak 37:42 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 37:42 Okay, let me do, like, half of it, and you can do the-

Jay Kotak 37:46 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 37:46 ... finishing part of it.

Jay Kotak 37:47 Nikhil's been waiting to set this up. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 37:50 [laughing] No, I'm happy it worked out the way it did. So one day, me and Jay go out for a meal in Bombay. We go for dinner. Where did we go?

Jay Kotak 37:59 Uh, I met you at Mekong, at Lanzen.

Nikhil Kamath 38:03 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 38:04 I think-

Nikhil Kamath 38:04 Not Mekong.

Jay Kotak 38:04 Not Mekong. What is it?

Nikhil Kamath 38:05 We were sitting on that, uh, lobby place.

Jay Kotak 38:07 Huh. But, but, but I saw you at Me- at, at, at the... There's a, there's a Chinese restaurant-

Nikhil Kamath 38:12 Correct

Jay Kotak 38:12 ... at Lanzen.

Nikhil Kamath 38:13 Correct.

Jay Kotak 38:13 And then we-

Nikhil Kamath 38:13 Japanese or Chinese.

Jay Kotak 38:14 And then we had coffee-

Nikhil Kamath 38:15 Yeah

Jay Kotak 38:16 ... uh, at the-

Nikhil Kamath 38:17 Yeah

Jay Kotak 38:18 ... uh, like, cafeteria-

Nikhil Kamath 38:20 Yeah

Jay Kotak 38:20 ... bistro.

Ronnie Screwvala 38:21 It's ironic, by the way, the food plays a very important part in all our lives-

Nikhil Kamath 38:23 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 38:23 ... when we look at-

Nikhil Kamath 38:24 Yeah, but the food there is really good, huh?

Jay Kotak 38:25 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 38:26 Like, really good food.

Jay Kotak 38:27 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 38:27 So we went from there. We met one or two other friends of mine.

Jay Kotak 38:30 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 38:30 We went to some place near BKC... No, near, uh, Kamala Mills.

Jay Kotak 38:34 It was a lot- We went to a couple of places, then we went... You tell the story.

Nikhil Kamath 38:38 Okay.

Jay Kotak 38:38 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 38:38 We went to a couple of places.

Jay Kotak 38:40 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 38:40 We were basically going from one place to another.

Jay Kotak 38:42 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 38:42 Random weekend.

Ronnie Screwvala 38:42 We're moving from food now to love, so [laughing]

Jay Kotak 38:45 Yeah. Yes.

Nikhil Kamath 38:45 So random weekend in Bombay. The last place we went to is a friend of mine, his house, and, uh, so me and Jay, uh, Jay went there, and we were sitting, uh, and we were chatting and stuff like that.

Jay Kotak 39:00 We were playing chess.

Nikhil Kamath 39:01 We were playing chess. We were playing chess, and there happened to be a girl in my friend's house.

Jay Kotak 39:07 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 39:07 Okay? Cut to, like, Jay meets her there.

Jay Kotak 39:11 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 39:11 They talk for five minutes. In front of me, they don't even exchange numbers.

Jay Kotak 39:14 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 39:15 Uh, cut to, like, a few months later, Jay's in Bangalore, and, uh, we're having dinner at home, and he's like: "Bro, I started dating that girl."

Jay Kotak 39:25 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 39:25 And that is the girl he's getting married to now in November.

Jay Kotak 39:29 Yeah, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 39:30 So I feel like, you know, they should name their g- [laughing] child after-

Ronnie Screwvala 39:33 No surprises there, but, but phenomenal. I love it. That's great.

Jay Kotak 39:36 Uh, her name is Aditi.

Ronnie Screwvala 39:37 Super story.

Jay Kotak 39:37 And it was a butterfly effect.

Nikhil Kamath 39:42 Mm-hmm.

Jay Kotak 39:43 In... You know, I was tired that day. I had finished... A very close friend of mine got married, so we had his baraat, his, uh, wedding. It was an early wedding. We finished by around six thirty, seven, and Nikhil was in town that day. And somewhere or the other, I said, "You know, okay, I'll spend half an hour with Nikhil, and, uh, then go home and sleep because I'm tired." And we had fun, and it just became five hours, and a- as you rightly said, at the end of that night, I must have spent two minutes with Aditi, and the only thing we got out of that conversation was, "Hey, I did my MBA in the US," and she was saying, "I'm applying right now for my MBA in the US." So I will for... You know, I rarely thank my Harvard MBA-

Nikhil Kamath 40:27 [chuckles]

Jay Kotak 40:27 ... but I will, uh, do it, do it in this case, because that was something that, uh, is always a good thing to say.

Ronnie Screwvala 40:33 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 40:34 Uh, and then we just kept in touch on Instagram.

Nikhil Kamath 40:38 Really?

Jay Kotak 40:38 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 40:38 Who messaged who first?

Jay Kotak 40:40 Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 40:41 She's going to watch this, and I'll like-

Jay Kotak 40:42 So I know.

Nikhil Kamath 40:43 [laughing]

Jay Kotak 40:43 She's gonna, she's gonna kill me. [laughing] Uh, I follow requested her.

Nikhil Kamath 40:49 Mm.

Jay Kotak 40:50 She accepted my follow request and followed me back.

Nikhil Kamath 40:53 Mm.

Jay Kotak 40:54 And she has many more followers than me, so, uh, I will... I felt like, okay, you know, she probably gets hundreds or not thousands of, uh-

Ronnie Screwvala 41:04 You were still on the MBA-

Jay Kotak 41:05 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 41:05 ... uh, wavelength at that time.

Jay Kotak 41:07 Yes. [chuckles] Uh, well-

Nikhil Kamath 41:08 How long has it been now?

Jay Kotak 41:09 It's been, uh, January two thousand and twenty-one.

Nikhil Kamath 41:16 So a little over two years.

Jay Kotak 41:18 And, uh, it just went from-

Nikhil Kamath 41:20 Mm

Jay Kotak 41:21 ... chatting on Instagram to, "Hey, when are you in Mumbai next?" You know, "Let's meet."

Nikhil Kamath 41:27 Very interesting.

Jay Kotak 41:28 And-

Nikhil Kamath 41:28 Congratulations on the wedding in November. So-

Jay Kotak 41:31 Thank you

Nikhil Kamath 41:31 ... I thought this group would be very interesting. Uh, we have one very savvy investor-cum-entrepreneur, cum has done everything in life, from producing movies to media, uh-

Ronnie Screwvala 41:44 And how do you define savviness? Because I think savviness is a, it's a, it-

Nikhil Kamath 41:47 In-

Ronnie Screwvala 41:47 ... you get a, it's a nomenclature that you get into sometimes.

Nikhil Kamath 41:50 In the world that we live in today, my benchmark, my metric, is capitalism, and through those lens, historically, looking at your track record, you're very savvy. Fair?

Ronnie Screwvala 42:03 Uh, beauty is in the eye of the beholder-

Nikhil Kamath 42:05 [laughing]

Jay Kotak 42:05 [chuckles]

Ronnie Screwvala 42:05 ... so I'll accept it from that point of view, for sure.

Nikhil Kamath 42:07 Capitalism kind of removes the beauty in the eye of the beholder argument, 'cause we're all viewing from similar lens.

Ronnie Screwvala 42:14 Yeah, but just to complete that off, and to what maybe Gaurav said earlier-

Jay Kotak 42:17 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 42:17 ... I can't visualize ever when I was getting turned on over who drove what car.

Jay Kotak 42:21 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 42:21 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 42:21 I think for me-

Nikhil Kamath 42:22 Are you bad at taking compliments generally in life?

Ronnie Screwvala 42:24 I just... Sorry?

Nikhil Kamath 42:25 Like, are you bad at taking compliments in life generally?

Ronnie Screwvala 42:28 Yeah, maybe I am.

Nikhil Kamath 42:29 Because that's subconsciously-

Ronnie Screwvala 42:30 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 42:30 ... a trigger to something else. Why do you think that is?

Ronnie Screwvala 42:34 ... my own self-conviction maybe-

Nikhil Kamath 42:36 That's a good question.

Ronnie Screwvala 42:36 I, I mean, I don't know. I don't-

Nikhil Kamath 42:37 Self-conviction would help you take a compliment.

Ronnie Screwvala 42:41 I was trying to f- I think my ... I think you're very right and very intuitive on that. Maybe I'll, I'll take it one level forward, that I was trying to fine-tune it even more further-

Nikhil Kamath 42:50 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 42:51 -by actually going to the fact that to me, enjoying myself-

Nikhil Kamath 42:54 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 42:54 ... has been, has been one of the higher paths of it.

Nikhil Kamath 42:57 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 42:57 Because actually, I'm quite a loner in many ways. I, I, I work ... Most of the, the, uh, work of the companies that one has built has been very interactive with people-

Nikhil Kamath 43:07 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 43:07 -but still in that sense. But I think for me, the benchmark of really just enjoying what you do has been very, very critical and important, and I think my journey has been a little bit of that.

Nikhil Kamath 43:18 Okay.

Ronnie Screwvala 43:18 When you do that, you feel blessed. When you feel blessed, you get recharged. When you get recharged, you do a lot more.

Nikhil Kamath 43:23 Mm. So in a way, you're saying contradiction in your mind is lesser because you have found something you love?

Ronnie Screwvala 43:32 Yeah. I mean, contradiction on a day-to-day basis-

Nikhil Kamath 43:35 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 43:35 -and balance, I understand where Gaurav was talking about where, where you need to ... I think what he's saying is you need to be rebellious, you need to be out of your box, you need to be out of your way.

Nikhil Kamath 43:42 With Gaurav, what I also feel is it feels like he is so ambitious, like he thinks it's good to be capitalistic, but somewhere he also feels it's a good thing to be poor.

Gaurav Munjal 43:54 No, but I-

Ronnie Screwvala 43:54 It's a good thing to be?

Nikhil Kamath 43:55 Poor.

Ronnie Screwvala 43:56 Why?

Nikhil Kamath 43:57 Because that's your gut, you know? Like, s- see, when you're talking about a smaller unit, right? We grow up in families with four people, five people, six people. Families are always socialistic in nature, where everything is shared. When you go out in the world and things become capitalism, and inequality increases disproportionately, some part of our subconscious, I believe, because so much of what we are today is a, is a factor of our upbringing, our influences. I think some part of each of us believe, not directly, but subconsciously, that it is good to be poor. And I think the more you win in capitalism, the more you feel like that at a subconscious level.

Gaurav Munjal 44:41 No, no.

Nikhil Kamath 44:41 I might be wrong.

Gaurav Munjal 44:42 No, no. That was ... See, that was, at the end of the day, one of the initial drives. That has not been my drive in a long time.

Nikhil Kamath 44:48 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 44:49 I don't ... Today, I wouldn't compare that he has this or she has this or something like that. That was just an initial part of the drive. Eventually, you know, whether it's product or content, I found that thing which motivated me, and I think, um, I, I read this book-

Ronnie Screwvala 45:04 But I think you're addicted to being rebellious.

Gaurav Munjal 45:07 [chuckles] Maybe.

Nikhil Kamath 45:09 I know you for, like, whatever, 30 minutes, and I definitely see some spunk.

Gaurav Munjal 45:13 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 45:14 Ah.

Nikhil Kamath 45:14 Which is a good thing.

Ronnie Screwvala 45:15 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in a nice manner, but it ... You're addicted to that. I mean, you know, half the times I would say, "Oh," I mean, and now maybe a little bit I follow you because we've met couple of times, and I'm saying, "Now, why does he have to shoot his mouth, mouth off again?" But I think you enjoy it, and that's, that defines the character.

Gaurav Munjal 45:33 So, so, so, so for us, I mean, for us it was the fact that who has made it big in the venture capital game, and, and to be tagged as a unicorn. I mean, when we were 25 years old, me, Roman, and Himesh, one of the goals was that, you know, if we can make a unicorn before 30, that would be awesome. And it did happen.

Ronnie Screwvala 45:49 Meaning convince four or five people to give you a lot of money at a higher value.

Gaurav Munjal 45:53 But-

Ronnie Screwvala 45:53 That was- that's what it would mean, right?

Gaurav Munjal 45:55 But unlike some other companies, our company has also created value. So yeah, but-

Ronnie Screwvala 46:00 Yeah

Gaurav Munjal 46:00 ... essentially that. Essentially.

Ronnie Screwvala 46:01 I'm, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just curious about that. I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not ... I'm, I'm, I'm very happy with my announce Gaurav, but I'm, I'm trying to ... Because I think it's the messaging that we all do in a conversation is very important.

Gaurav Munjal 46:13 No, no, so I get it. I mean, if I were to look back-

Ronnie Screwvala 46:16 And I'm half-javing you, so don't get me wrong. [laughing]

Gaurav Munjal 46:18 [chuckles] If, if I were to look back, should I have chased valuation the way I did? Probably not. But it did teach me a lot of things, and at some point, you know, Unacademy in the last 12 months, the way we have focused on EBITDA, uh, I think very few venture-funded companies have. And this month will be the first month where we are cash flow positive. So I think that journey wasn't easy, but, uh-

Ronnie Screwvala 46:40 That's a hardcore capitalistic talk now.

Nikhil Kamath 46:42 But, uh, one thing I have to add in Gaurav's defense is what he's saying, that valuation game, he was not the only one playing it.

Gaurav Munjal 46:50 Oh, no.

Nikhil Kamath 46:50 There were, like, millions of people who wanted to achieve what he achieved. So regardless of market cycles, and when money-

Gaurav Munjal 46:59 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 46:59 ... drains out and interest rates go up, I think a lot of credit goes to him for having been able to get that money, scale Unacademy in the manner that he did, and I think he should take pride in that, and-

Ronnie Screwvala 47:13 Always.

Nikhil Kamath 47:14 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 47:15 No, I, I would, I would be a little humble here and say that, um, there was only one feedback that Shailendra and Dipendra and Bhavin, these three people are- have been good mentors, and they've built companies, they have helped build companies. They kept saying that, "Don't let your ego come in between."

Nikhil Kamath 47:32 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 47:32 So I just, I was just... I accepted the reality, but there were 10 people who told me what to do. So i- I just didn't let it get into my head that, oh, just because I, like, I could convince five people to value me at a certain valuation doesn't ... And, and by the way, this happens with a lot of other founders. Um, rest, how to execute or, you know, how to do that, et cetera, I think that was the easy part. But listening and having that acceptance that you [censored] up or you over-hired people, um, and the journey of letting go of, of people would be a tough one. So I think, uh, doing that acceptance was the major part. Uh, once you accept that, "Hey, I did... I [censored] up," there are 10 people who will tell you, "You have to reduce your fixed cost, you have to reduce your S&M, you have to reduce your G&A."

Nikhil Kamath 48:23 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 48:23 And then, um, and, and then we probably did.

Nikhil Kamath 48:26 Yeah. But that's all that matters, bro. As long as you guys have course-corrected in a direction that will make you-... bigger, better, stronger in the future. I mean, see, at the end of the day, we all wish each other the best,

Nikhil Kamath 48:40 right?

Ronnie Screwvala 48:40 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 48:41 And, yeah, yeah. So where I was at before this conversation is we have one very, very savvy person because he's done so many things. We have a very articulate friend of mine, Jay, who has gone to the best colleges in the world and gotten great marks and-

Jay Kotak 48:57 Not really.

Nikhil Kamath 48:57 How much did you get?

Jay Kotak 48:59 I was always- [laughing]

Ronnie Screwvala 49:00 Not-

Nikhil Kamath 49:00 How did you, how did you get into Harvard?

Jay Kotak 49:02 I, I was a good student.

Nikhil Kamath 49:03 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 49:03 Uh, I was a very good student-

Nikhil Kamath 49:04 Mm.

Jay Kotak 49:04 -but I was not, uh, I wasn't always in the top ten percent, not in the top one percent, in all of my classes, all through.

Ronnie Screwvala 49:11 See, that's the benchmark that you come up with, not in the top ten percent, but, uh, yeah.

Jay Kotak 49:14 No, but in... Typically, you know, there is this kind of culture in India that, like, you have to have ninety-nine or ninety-eight.

Nikhil Kamath 49:21 Mm.

Jay Kotak 49:22 And I was always eighty-nine, ninety, uh, k- kind of.

Nikhil Kamath 49:28 Which is good. And then we have another engineer who has done so well, and you have me, who has not gone to college, is fairly illiterate from the traditional lens. So putting four people like us together, right? Like, one who doesn't have any education, one Harvard, one like, so much experience and so many other things-

Ronnie Screwvala 49:47 But also with-

Nikhil Kamath 49:47 Also-

Ronnie Screwvala 49:47 -very little education.

Nikhil Kamath 49:49 But you went to college, you said.

Ronnie Screwvala 49:50 I did my B.Com, and that was it.

Nikhil Kamath 49:52 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 49:53 So you're saying that's, that qualifies bigger time, right?

Nikhil Kamath 49:54 That's four, that's four years more than I did. [chuckles] And I thought if we all come together and we talk about education overall-

Ronnie Screwvala 50:02 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 50:02 -not just for everybody looking to build a product, a company in education, uh, any kind of a business ancillary to education. I thought four diverse views like this should help an entrepreneur starting off today. So that's the intent of today, and, uh, it's not about our individual companies-

Ronnie Screwvala 50:24 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 50:24 ... it's not about how well Unacademy is doing, or UpGrad is doing, or Kotak Bank is doing. Uh, Kotak Bank is-

Ronnie Screwvala 50:32 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 50:32 ... is in another level where I don't think-

Jay Kotak 50:33 Completely. I, I, I agree.

Nikhil Kamath 50:34 I don't think

Nikhil Kamath 50:35 we should-

Jay Kotak 50:35 No, no

Nikhil Kamath 50:35 ... be commenting about it.

Ronnie Screwvala 50:37 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 50:37 Kotak Bank is not... So I can't take a remote credit for that. I'll only take credit for a little bit of Kotak811 inside Kotak Bank. Kotak Bank is not-

Nikhil Kamath 50:45 Could, will you elaborate on that a little bit? Because we'd like to know what Jay is doing at 811.

Jay Kotak 50:50 Hmm. Uh, okay.

Ronnie Screwvala 50:51 What, what is 811?

Jay Kotak 50:53 Uh, [exhales] 811 stands for, interestingly, given the news that happened yesterday, 8th of November, uh, which was the date of demonetization, where we, as a traditional slash legacy bank, uh, started a immediate online account opening, which was never allowed before that. Along with demonetization, uh, a set of new interesting and very progressive regulation came that allowed bank accounts to be opened for the first time without a wet signature. So Kotak started a product called Kotak811 that basically allowed that to happen, and, and it saw extremely high uptake because it turns out that a lot of India was, and to a lesser extent still is, not banked or underbanked, and that has been a journey. And recently we've-- seeing the scale of that opportunity, we've, uh, in a management segregation, not a legal entity segregation, very important because regulatory businesses have to be, uh, carved it out, uh, as a bank in bank management segregation. And we think of ourselves a little more as a digital bank slash fintech, but, you know, fully regulated, um, business.

Ronnie Screwvala 52:12 That's nice, and you took that eight... I mean, it's eight-eleven, but you call it eight-one-one.

Jay Kotak 52:16 We call it, uh, uh-

Ronnie Screwvala 52:17 Yeah

Jay Kotak 52:17 ... so it's Kotak811.

Ronnie Screwvala 52:18 And nine-eleven, they couldn't have called it nine-one-one-

Jay Kotak 52:20 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 52:20 ... otherwise it would have been the emergency number-

Jay Kotak 52:22 Exactly

Ronnie Screwvala 52:22 ... in, in America, right? So I think-

Jay Kotak 52:23 It turns out that most people in India have no i- no concept of what nine-one-one is.

Nikhil Kamath 52:27 Tell us, tell us what 811 does broadly-

Jay Kotak 52:29 Uh

Nikhil Kamath 52:29 ... like if you had to categorize it in a bucket.

Jay Kotak 52:32 You can open a bank account in three minutes-

Nikhil Kamath 52:34 Mm

Jay Kotak 52:34 ... sitting in your living room on your phone. It's a partial KYC account, and you get a virtual debit card. You can start transacting immediately. So element one of the proposition is that it's, uh, fully, you know, straight through. We do around, uh, six lakh accounts a month, so give or take twenty thousand o- order day, which is considerable. So 811 now contributes seventy, seventy to seventy-five percent of the total accounts that Kotak opens. Uh, and that's just the, the power of digital and why I'm in Bangalore so much. The second element of the value proposition is that we are an unbundled offering. Think of it like how IndiGo disrupted Jet Airways. We have zero balance. We are the only large bank in India to offer a bank account with zero minimum balance, which is very compelling for most of India that does not have ten thousand rupees to put.

Nikhil Kamath 53:21 So would you, like, summarize and say it is banking focused on the young in a fast, efficient, near zero cost manner?

Jay Kotak 53:31 Yes. I guess that's a good, good way to summarize it.

Nikhil Kamath 53:34 The one thing I have to add, like, you know-

Ronnie Screwvala 53:36 Especially for a very underbanked nation.

Nikhil Kamath 53:38 Yeah, yeah. The one thing I have to add

Nikhil Kamath 53:40 about Jay is, before the story about him meeting his now to be wife and all of that, the very first time I met Jay is when I had gone to the Kotak Bank office, where Jay was sitting, and pitched their family a product which would-- a product of ours, which would manage a part of their money. And this was a few years before that. And, uh, I will say this about Jay, right? A lot of people look at people who are popular personalities, kids, and make up preconceived notions in their mind. Uh, but Jay was refreshingly different. He is not somebody's son alone, but Jay, on his own, is extremely impressive. Uh, like-... for the, for the first, I don't know how many times we met, he would never even, like, mention his dad once or, you know, that he's the son of this person, he owns this bank, and all of that. And I hope personally, because we have a relationship and, you know, whatever, I hope that one day when that opportunity comes, uh, I hope that opportunity comes to lead Kotak Bank, but I can't think of somebody who has more, you know, natural ability. He's so calm, stable, uh, has so many facets which would serve well in leading an institution of that size.

Ronnie Screwvala 55:16 Yep, couldn't agree with you more.

Jay Kotak 55:17 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 55:17 I appreciate that, but- [chuckles]

Jay Kotak 55:19 Yeah. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 55:19 Uh, Kotak-

Ronnie Screwvala 55:21 Now he's gonna-

Jay Kotak 55:22 Humility as well.

Nikhil Kamath 55:23 I miss that.

Ronnie Screwvala 55:24 No, I think he's gonna pull the regulator and the regulation on-

Jay Kotak 55:26 No, no, it's not, it's not just about regulation. It's, it's, it's a large business.

Nikhil Kamath 55:29 Mm.

Jay Kotak 55:29 We are twenty-six percent shareholder.

Nikhil Kamath 55:31 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 55:31 There are seventy-four other, and, uh, leadership and future has to be decided in the context of what is best for all. I am committed in what I'm doing right now, and of course, by virtue of being, uh, the largest shareholder, we are aligned with the future of the business. But for me, I don't see that as a necessary-

Ronnie Screwvala 55:53 So do you think he's not taking compliments well either, like you asked me? [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 55:56 No! No, I, I, I think this is... He's taking it better than you, I must say.

Jay Kotak 56:01 Okay.

Nikhil Kamath 56:01 Because you have, like, this aversion where you reject it blanket, but he's trying to like, you know, incorporate another facet.

Ronnie Screwvala 56:07 He's adding to it.

Jay Kotak 56:08 No, I don't agree with a lot of your compliments, because I do think that-

Nikhil Kamath 56:11 Uh

Jay Kotak 56:13 ... uh-

Nikhil Kamath 56:13 This is the best compliment of them all.

Jay Kotak 56:15 No, no, no.

Nikhil Kamath 56:15 The fact that you're not agreeing with my compliment.

Jay Kotak 56:16 It's having a head start-

Nikhil Kamath 56:19 Mm

Jay Kotak 56:19 ... from being born in what was, when I was much younger, I was, you know, we were not very affluent, but still, you know, privileged, uh, parents that value your education, being able to send you to an American school-

Nikhil Kamath 56:32 Mm

Jay Kotak 56:32 ... and not have to worry about-

Nikhil Kamath 56:33 Mm

Jay Kotak 56:34 ... scholarship. Uh, you know, not having to worry about paying education loans, and that kind of sets off a, a positive-

Ronnie Screwvala 56:42 Yeah

Jay Kotak 56:43 ... cycle.

Nikhil Kamath 56:43 Right.

Jay Kotak 56:44 That definitely kind of, uh, is a, is an unfair advantage-

Nikhil Kamath 56:48 Mm

Jay Kotak 56:48 ... so to speak, that I've had.

Nikhil Kamath 56:50 That's a good way to come back to this. They say that, what was the number? Somebody was telling me forty to fifty percent of school-going children in India go to private schools. Uh, if government schools, in their form today, don't function, do you think that is a testament to how they don't function, as to how they have to change? The very fact that fifty percent of India, and we are talking about India, where, you know, like maybe three, four percent of our country pays tax, so that fifty percent is not affluent, which is taking the additional hassle of paying school fees and the expenses and all of that, sending their children to private schools. Does that talk about public schools in a-

Ronnie Screwvala 57:39 It, it-

Nikhil Kamath 57:39 I wouldn't say derogatory.

Ronnie Screwvala 57:41 Is that number, is that number true? I'm not sure about the number, but I'd just say it in two parts.

Nikhil Kamath 57:45 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 57:45 Firstly, I think the US, by the way, the school, the schooling is not so great.

Jay Kotak 57:48 I was going to say exactly that.

Nikhil Kamath 57:50 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 57:50 There's enough people who come back from the US-

Jay Kotak 57:52 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 57:52 ... in the fifth standard-

Nikhil Kamath 57:53 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 57:53 ... and here will have to go in the third standard.

Nikhil Kamath 57:55 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 57:55 So that should give you a pretty quick benchmark on that.

Nikhil Kamath 57:59 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 57:59 And look, we work with about twelve hundred schools in rural India-

Nikhil Kamath 58:02 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:02 ... and I can tell you, since you're bringing that-

Nikhil Kamath 58:04 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:04 ... when those are zilla parishads-

Nikhil Kamath 58:05 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:05 ... and those are what you would call the-

Nikhil Kamath 58:07 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:07 ... the schools. But I think there is a sense of infrastructure that also pulls it down. It's not just that-

Nikhil Kamath 58:13 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:13 ... it's the faculties, the teaching, and whatever else you go there.

Nikhil Kamath 58:16 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 58:16 But I can tell you, when we started opening a library-

Nikhil Kamath 58:19 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:19 ... in each of the rural schools-

Nikhil Kamath 58:21 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:21 ... magic happened.

Nikhil Kamath 58:21 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 58:22 The attendance went from sixty percent-

Nikhil Kamath 58:23 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:24 ... to ninety-five percent.

Nikhil Kamath 58:25 Mm. That's super interesting.

Ronnie Screwvala 58:26 Just with that one single situation-

Nikhil Kamath 58:28 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:28 ... of opening a library.

Nikhil Kamath 58:29 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 58:29 Because for most people, a library was a locked cupboard behind the principal's door with a key-

Nikhil Kamath 58:35 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:35 ... which nobody had access to, and you couldn't take away a book home.

Nikhil Kamath 58:38 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 58:39 So if you look at the singular parts of what are the triggers of what people do-

Nikhil Kamath 58:42 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 58:42 ... because at the end of the day, it's about aspiration, right?

Nikhil Kamath 58:44 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 58:44 I mean, education is about growing aspiration.

Nikhil Kamath 58:47 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 58:47 What do you think... Is tomorrow going to be brighter and better than yesterday?

Nikhil Kamath 58:51 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 58:51 And I think we spoke a little bit earlier about, uh, patriotism in India.

Nikhil Kamath 58:56 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 58:56 I mean, I can best say that today people are thinking very genuinely that tomorrow is better than yesterday.

Jay Kotak 59:01 Yeah, yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 59:01 And I think the soft power that America went through was exactly that.

Nikhil Kamath 59:05 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 59:05 That soft power gave you the sense that tomorrow is going to be better than yesterday. And I think today the United States is reviewing-

Nikhil Kamath 59:11 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 59:12 ... They may not want to admit it, but they're [chuckles] reviewing whether tomorrow is better than yesterday for them.

Nikhil Kamath 59:16 Right. Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 59:16 And if you just look at that as one, and I know I'm straying from your specific-

Nikhil Kamath 59:19 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 59:19 ... question on that-

Nikhil Kamath 59:20 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 59:20 ... but I think you have to look at education now or anything to do with learning with that little bit broader perspective-

Nikhil Kamath 59:27 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 59:28 ... than just attendance-

Nikhil Kamath 59:29 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 59:29 ... just learning, just grading-

Nikhil Kamath 59:31 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 59:31 ... private versus public.

Nikhil Kamath 59:33 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 59:33 And I think it's all about teachers-

Nikhil Kamath 59:35 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 59:35 ... in many senses of the word, right.

Nikhil Kamath 59:37 Is that the opportunity the two of you saw? The quality of education in government or private in... or some private institutions as well?

Ronnie Screwvala 59:47 So specifically, as far as UpGrad was concerned, I think we are in higher education, so I didn't think- we didn't look at the K-twelve market for, for a multiple of reasons.

Nikhil Kamath 59:53 Can you also give

Nikhil Kamath 59:55 us, like, thirty seconds on what UpGrad does, and I'll come to you next. Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 59:59 Yeah. So if I were to sort of define it, I think education is a very calendared event-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:03 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:03 ... and it's a very preconceived notion where-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:05 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:05 ... you go through a certain portion of your life, and it's over.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:08 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:08 And I think we want to disrupt that space in today's... For us, the definition of what we want to build-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:14 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:14 ... is a sort of what I would call a learning, skilling, and a workforce development company.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:18 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:18 And-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:19 Do you also skill people who are already working?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:21 Yes. In fact, most of the people we skill-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:24 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:25 ... have to be in some sense of a job and working, and the earliest we do is college learners or the last year of college people.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:31 You take people in when they're eighteen, nineteen, that kind of age group?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:34 We don't take, but they come to us. But yeah. [chuckles] Uh, because I think take-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:39 Do you reject?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:41 ... No. See, the beauty about technology and online is it's a much more inclu-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:45 You say take because you don't do a pull, you don't do marketing, advertising as much. Is that why?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:49 No, no, for two reasons.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:49 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:49 One is, it's a option at that stage, you know?

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:52 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:53 That's why the calendar event, it's not an option.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:55 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:55 It's programmed in your life. You have to go to school, or you have to go to college-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:57 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:57 ... or you're going to be called a dropout-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:59 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:00:59 ... or you're less privileged.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:00 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:01:01 But here, the optionality of life starts, and therefore, I think it was more to be, we're talking about the fact that optionality starts there-

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:08 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 1:01:08 ... because that's the time when you need to carry on and take it forward.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:11 Right. How is Unacademy different?

Gaurav Munjal 1:01:13 So Unacademy is ... I, I don't- internally also, we don't think we are in the education business, we think we are in the tournament business. So what happens is, today, whether it's 60 million people give, uh, these competitive examinations.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:28 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:01:28 You have your UPSC, you have your NEET, you have JEE. And [lips smack] for a huge, like for almost everyone who comes to 11th standard or 10th standard-

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:38 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:01:39 ... the only way to change their socioeconomic status-

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:42 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:01:43 ... is by getting selected into these examinations.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:45 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:01:45 Because I, I like to think that, uh, and, and this is what's similar to, um, what UpGrad also does, is it helps people get better jobs-

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:54 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:01:55 ... makes them better skilled.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:56 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:01:57 So I think that's, that-

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:58 Are you both at the same price point in a way?

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:00 No, but, but we are in different markets.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:02:01 Very different mar- very different segments.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:02 But similar price points?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:02:04 Uh, no.

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:05 No, no.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:06 Which would be higher and lower?

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:08 No, no. So, so, you know, we'd cater for the SSC examination-

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:11 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:11 ... where a annual subscription would cost 5,000 rupees.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:14 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:15 But we have a JEE examination, where an annual subscription would cost 1.2 lakhs.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:19 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:19 So we are sort of in that tournament business, where, let's say, if people get selected and they go into an IIT, their life will change. The life of their-

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:29 Because IIT is like a lottery, you say tournament, because so few get in?

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:32 Yes.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:02:33 Is it fair to call it a lottery, though?

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:34 No, I'm not calling it a lottery.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:35 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:36 I'm calling it a tournament.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:02:37 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:37 Like we do in India, game of skill, no?

Gaurav Munjal 1:02:40 No, no, no, but it's not a ... I mean, you- I mean, the kind of people who end up qualifying and the kind of, uh, questions that come in these examinations, I mean, we can debate that, is this the right way to measure, et cetera, but we have to all agree to some way of measuring a person's ability. And if, uh, hard work is ... And by the way, I couldn't clear any of those examinations. If people don't know, but I got rejected by a coaching center.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:04 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:03:05 In Jaipur, there was this coaching center called Resonance, where there, there was this teacher, Ashish Arora, who eventually joined Unacademy, uh, two years ago. But I've-- my father takes me to the coaching center-

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:17 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:03:18 ... and they rejected me, because, uh, to get into that teacher's batch-

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:24 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:03:24 ... you had to clear a test, which I couldn't clear.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:26 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:03:26 So one of the things that Unacademy now does is, and some of our teachers are paid a million dollars, million US dollars, we got the best quota in Jaipur teachers, and they would start teaching, and 10,000 or 20,000 people would attend.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:38 Your teachers are paid a million dollars?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:03:40 That's why he started by saying venture capital. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:42 Oh, wow! Is that the differentiation?

Gaurav Munjal 1:03:44 No, no, no. No, no, by the way, [chuckles] I, I think we-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:03:46 Without venture capital, nobody gets paid a million dollars-

Gaurav Munjal 1:03:49 These teachers-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:03:49 ... because there are no merits to that

Gaurav Munjal 1:03:50 ... these teachers were getting-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:03:51 They're phenomenal. I'm, I'm, I'm not-

Gaurav Munjal 1:03:52 No, but they were getting paid similar amounts by offline coaching centers who collectively were doing 20,000 crores in revenue. So between Chaitanya, between Allen, between Aakash, and between Narayana, and I don't want this to become the Rameshwaram Cafe type [chuckles] short, but between these four coaching centers, these do 20,000 crores in revenue. And there are, let's say, some of these coaching centers would have at least 40, 50 teachers who get paid more than 2 crores per annum.

Gaurav Munjal 1:04:22 And some of them-

Nikhil Kamath 1:04:23 Can, can I interject once? Is that the differentiation why one EdTech platform works over another, quality of teachers? Is it syllabus, is it teachers?

Gaurav Munjal 1:04:33 But again, see, you need to realize-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:04:34 In this segment, it would be different. I mean, for me, uh, and for the overall working professional, it's a lot of plus, plus, plus.

Gaurav Munjal 1:04:41 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:04:41 It's not necessarily teachers and faculty, which is the epicenter of it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:04:45 Is it the syllabus? Like, if you had to pick one at UpGrad, would you say syllabus have more weightage or do teachers do?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:04:52 No, I think learning experience and the whole process of learning, because it's online, is the most important part of it, and connecting. Otherwise, I mean, just a lecture today is not gonna move the needle from all points of view.

Gaurav Munjal 1:05:03 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:05:03 And if you have- just have a TED Talk, that's not how you're gonna learn for the next level of what you want-

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:07 Yeah. Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:05:07 ... to necessarily do, right? So I think that is the pivotal part. So for us, learning experience. Right now, to me, what I think is gonna revolutionize learning-

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:15 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:05:16 ... is peer-to-peer learning.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:17 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:05:17 So while we are talking about teachers and faculty, I can see that trend in the next five years, the power of everything that's gonna go to the next level. And maybe not in school, because you do need that basic element.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:28 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:05:28 You can't suddenly have peer-to-peer.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:30 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:05:30 It's peer-to-peer learning, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:31 I actually wanted to ask Jay that question, 'cause-

Jay Kotak 1:05:34 I agree with this.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:35 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 1:05:35 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:35 Did you go to Harvard because the teachers were good?

Jay Kotak 1:05:39 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:40 And after you went to Harvard, did you learn more from your teachers or your classmates?

Jay Kotak 1:05:44 So Harvard is actually a ve- Harvard Business School is a very interesting kind of education model because it is a combination of teacher to, to student and peer to peer. Because every class is almost like a conductor with an or- to an orchestra, where the conductor is only kind of, which is the professor, he gives you a case. Everybody has to read it before the class. You assume everybody's read it. It's usually a very interesting-

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:08 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:06:09 ... case on a topic based on what the class is, and they have, you know, millions of cases. And then, the professor has a roadmap of what he or she wants to get out of that discussion, but he pushes different members of the class. And because it's a very diverse class, like, for example, on a case where you're talking about Disney, the media company, there was a girl who was a child actress, who became a very successful child actress and then a media executive, and then came to Harvard Business School and had an interesting perspective to share-... with the rest of the class, and likewise on other topics. And that's, to me, m- I learned a lot more from my co-

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:47 But what was most valuable? Was it the network, the classmates, and what you learned of them, or was it the teaching staff and-

Gaurav Munjal 1:06:55 No, but, like, for him, it would be different than for what it would be for a normal person.

Jay Kotak 1:07:03 No, I, I disagree.

Gaurav Munjal 1:07:05 No, no, but because the normal person is going there for an intent to eventually get a very high-paying job.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:10 In Harvard? I don't think so.

Jay Kotak 1:07:11 I don't think so.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:07:12 No.

Jay Kotak 1:07:12 I don't think so.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:07:13 No, that wouldn't-

Jay Kotak 1:07:14 I don't think so

Ronnie Screwvala 1:07:14 ... necessarily be the case.

Jay Kotak 1:07:15 I think that, uh-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:07:16 That's normally a given by the time you are going there.

Jay Kotak 1:07:18 Yeah, I think that for most people, they already have some form of reasonable paying job before they come for an MBA. Because in the US, unlike in India, you don't do an MBA right after your undergrad. It's usually anywhere from three to six years of work experience. And because the school is so selective, these folks tend to have gone to IITs or, you know, very good schools to have begun with.

Gaurav Munjal 1:07:42 Mm-hmm. Then, then what's the intent?

Jay Kotak 1:07:43 So the intent is to go to up-level yourself into being a business leader and to being, uh, a more well-rounded professional and person.

Gaurav Munjal 1:07:55 But... So what I had heard-

Jay Kotak 1:07:57 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:07:58 ... and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, uh, the most sought-after jobs after H- after somebody completes HBS-

Jay Kotak 1:08:05 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:08:05 ... are private equity firms, hedge funds, uh, venture capital firms.

Jay Kotak 1:08:08 That's changing very quickly.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:09 You're 10 years behind in the time.

Jay Kotak 1:08:10 Yeah, you're 10 years behind.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:11 And you are the youngest of the lot-

Jay Kotak 1:08:12 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:12 ... but you're 10 years behind the time.

Jay Kotak 1:08:13 You're 10 years behind. I would say I graduated six years ago-

Gaurav Munjal 1:08:16 Yeah

Jay Kotak 1:08:16 ... and it had already started to change.

Gaurav Munjal 1:08:17 So what is it?

Jay Kotak 1:08:18 Entrepreneurship, uh, software product management.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:23 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 1:08:23 Uh-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:23 You're, you're, you're hanging around too much-

Jay Kotak 1:08:24 You know

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:24 ... with investment bankers and merchants.

Jay Kotak 1:08:26 Management. Of course, there is a, a large cohort of people that are going into private equity, that are going into investment banking. There is always... You know, those are important pillars of-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:35 But even there, it's with an entrepreneurial mindset.

Jay Kotak 1:08:37 Yeah. Yes.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:37 Even there, it's with an entrepreneurial mindset.

Jay Kotak 1:08:38 Most people do that as a, "Hey, okay"-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:39 And not about that career mindset.

Gaurav Munjal 1:08:40 No, but so, so you are essentially saying that people are going into HBS to become entrepreneurs. But if you see the people who are, like-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:08:49 I don't think we should single it out in an HBS manner.

Jay Kotak 1:08:51 I, I think it's all of these kind of, uh-

Gaurav Munjal 1:08:53 Yeah

Jay Kotak 1:08:53 ... fulfilling-

Gaurav Munjal 1:08:53 No, but Ronnie, like you and Nikhil mentioned, I mean, you became entrepreneurs because of who you were and not because of the education you got.

Jay Kotak 1:09:00 No, no.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:00 No, no, not at all.

Jay Kotak 1:09:01 Not at all.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:01 Not at all.

Jay Kotak 1:09:01 It was the same human emotions: greed-

Gaurav Munjal 1:09:04 Yeah

Jay Kotak 1:09:04 ... anger, insecurity-

Gaurav Munjal 1:09:06 Exactly

Jay Kotak 1:09:06 ... all of that.

Gaurav Munjal 1:09:06 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:07 Exactly.

Jay Kotak 1:09:07 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:07 And not because of a college education.

Jay Kotak 1:09:09 No, no, the c- the, it's, it's not an education as much as, as that it an, it's an immersion into a, a pool of very interesting people, and you go as a sponge, and you come out.

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:18 That's actually the question I was asking you.

Jay Kotak 1:09:20 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:20 Is that your biggest takeaway from there?

Jay Kotak 1:09:22 Yes, that, uh, hands down, I would say.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:23 See, as a leader, you need to be a great catalyst.

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:25 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:25 And I think what you just defined is-

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:27 The networking, in a way

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:28 ... just being a phenomenal catalyst-

Jay Kotak 1:09:29 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:29 ... you know, the ability to-

Jay Kotak 1:09:30 And, you know, coming back to, we were talking about Kotak being a, a, a, a, a large company.

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:35 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:09:35 And we're very small if we compare to truly large companies-

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:40 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:09:40 ... uh, you know, a- around the world. And one of the things I see, looking at that and looking at us and larger companies, is that the skill sets you need is so much more about people-

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:51 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:09:52 ... managing people, leadership, motivation, uh, co- culture.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:56 And I can say that just from the outside-

Jay Kotak 1:09:57 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:57 ... and I've interacted with many people in Kotak-

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:59 Mm-hmm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:09:59 ... but I've interacted with them for 10 and 15 years.

Jay Kotak 1:10:01 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:01 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:10:02 And that continuity of that culture that is there-

Jay Kotak 1:10:05 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:10:05 ... comes from somebody being a phenomenal catalyst-

Gaurav Munjal 1:10:09 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:10:09 ... that has therefore sprouted enough owners within an organization.

Jay Kotak 1:10:13 Yes.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:13 So there's an interesting question-

Jay Kotak 1:10:14 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:14 ... for the two of you. If the biggest USP of colleges, Ivy... I- let's not pick on Harvard.

Jay Kotak 1:10:21 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:21 Let's say Ivy colleges in the US, for example, Ivy League colleges, is the network, the connections, all of that occur there. Can EdTech, where you learn through a medium, without human interaction with your peers in a way, ever truly compete with that?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:10:42 The vision for us is to be inclusive. The vision there is to be exclusive. So they're two different tracks-

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:48 I, I get it

Ronnie Screwvala 1:10:49 ... and two different parameters.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:50 It's a, it's a much larger experience-

Gaurav Munjal 1:10:51 You know, see-

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:52 ... for a larger set of people. But do you think-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:10:54 Much larger. I mean, much larger.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:55 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:10:55 I mean, like-

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:56 But do you think this can compete with that?

Gaurav Munjal 1:10:58 So let me, let me just give you an example. So we have products for people ranging from 17-year-olds to 29, 30-year-olds.

Jay Kotak 1:11:06 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:11:07 There is this examination people prepare for called NEET PG.

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:09 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:11:10 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:11:10 You became a doctor, and you want to do your post graduate- post-graduation, um, and get your MD, et cetera. You give this NEET PG examination. Now, the younger you are, you need more coaching, you need more intervention, you need somebody to call you and tell you, "Please study, you need more discipline." But NEET PG, where let's say we own 24% market share, the problem there is people say, "We don't need offline coaching centers." And even if you give them great content, but boring content-

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:39 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:11:40 ... they will open the app, because the intent is still so high, they will study it without even building social interactions.

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:47 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:11:48 So if your question is on whether this can be done, that you don't need, let's say, without a network, et cetera, can you build that? That depends on how much intent and-

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:59 But what are you building?

Gaurav Munjal 1:12:01 At this point, the government of India has, or even some private institutions, have these tournaments. If you crack these tournaments, um, your life changes. We are coaches of that tournament. Now, and, and-

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:16 No, I'm, I'm totally with you up until here.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:18 But to your question of whether you, you need to compete, I think it... And that was your real question there.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:24 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:24 Firstly, I'm saying-

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:25 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:25 ... the-

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:25 Let's say, let's say education is a priority-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:29 Mm-hmm

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:29 ... is a precursor to having a certain kind of individual, a certain kind of 30-year-old man, for example.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:36 Which is also changing.

Jay Kotak 1:12:37 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:37 But that's also changing.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:38 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:12:39 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:39 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:39 There's no longer-

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:40 Can-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:40 ... that formal context has not got the same weightage that it had before.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:43 Yeah, I agree.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:45 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:45 Part of that is experience.

Gaurav Munjal 1:12:45 You mean, the formal context, you mean the degrees, et cetera?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:48 Yep.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:48 Yeah, part of that is experience, part of that is-... for the lack of a better word, somebody's motivation to learn on their own? Many things.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:55 No, I think the skill sets today to be job-ready-

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:58 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:12:58 ... are very different.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:59 Yeah. But do you think a person who takes this medium-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:13:04 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:05 I'm talking about using UpGrad, using Unacademy, clearing a certain exam. Uh, if education was online, if the distribution of education, they're not going to a college eventually, they're consuming all of the education online through a medium, through a device, can that compete at or compare with real-life education?

Gaurav Munjal 1:13:26 Nikhil, I want to-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:13:26 So if I'm competing in terms of outcomes-

Gaurav Munjal 1:13:28 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:13:28 ... then I just want to say that what am I competing on? If I'm co- competing in terms of final outcome-

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:32 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:13:32 ... report card being outcome, absolutely.

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:35 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:13:35 Absolutely, because you're visualizing a brick-and-mortar space-

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:38 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:13:39 ... and, and I'm visualizing a, a, a surreal space.

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:42 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:13:42 And if I... And people operate in all spaces today.

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:45 Yeah. I think the outcome I'm looking for is not necessarily marks card.

Gaurav Munjal 1:13:48 Do you, do you... Have you-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:13:49 Is not necessarily?

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:50 Marks card.

Gaurav Munjal 1:13:51 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:51 [chuckles]

Gaurav Munjal 1:13:51 It's success in life.

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:53 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:13:53 Absolutely. Absolutely.

Gaurav Munjal 1:13:54 And, and if

Gaurav Munjal 1:13:55 your question is more about online, do you know about Roblox? So there is an app called Roblox. In US, every kid between 6 to 16, like, one in every three kids spend more than two hours on the app. So it's a metaverse, gaming metaverse, where you can play games with your friends, et cetera. That is now replacing some of the offline experiences. So you can go to an amusement park with your friends, and it's a mobile app, it's not a VR headset. You can go to an amusement park with five of your friends, have social interactions, and then there are these game developers which are building experiences. So my belief is that if you have built that or what Minecraft has done, if you have built those kind of experiences, and you are seeing kids addicted to those experiences, and they are doing experiences online-

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:48 This is actually interesting.

Gaurav Munjal 1:14:49 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:49 I saw this on a Elon Musk interview.

Gaurav Munjal 1:14:51 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:51 He said it's easy to get kids to play video games. The question is, can you tweak the video games just enough to make the-

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:00 To make the next learning experience?

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:02 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:02 And they are already there. So, so there, uh... By the way, there is a chemistry lab experience on Roblox.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:06 But when you tweak that, and I'm coming back to the peer-to-peer-

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:09 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:09 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:09 ... the reason why that's a great learning medium is you don't need an intermediary.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:13 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:13 You don't need that one pontiff.

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:15 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:15 You don't need somebody on the pulpit.

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:17 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:17 Right.

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:17 And then Roblox is exactly peer-to-peer.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:19 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:20 A game developer developed a chemistry lab experience that if you mix these two things, a reaction will happen.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:25 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:26 You go there with five of your friends, and you are doing experiences. You can also click virtual selfies, et cetera, and you're posting there. So I think, like, that will happen, and if you have to crack online education, you won't say that I will have boring content.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:39 Is that the next big thing in online education, peer-to-peer?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:42 You have to make it big. There is no big things in life-

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:44 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:44 ... you have to make them big. So-

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:45 But the next thing?

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:46 This is a good- [chuckles]

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:47 It's there.

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:47 I mean, this is- [laughing]

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:48 It's absolutely there.

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:49 Ronnie is consistent.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:50 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:50 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:51 This is-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:51 I, I'm telling you that-

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:52 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:53 ... it's not about whether its time has arrived, you've to make its time arrive-

Gaurav Munjal 1:15:56 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:15:56 ... from that perspective, and it's absolutely ready to be there.

Nikhil Kamath 1:15:59 Mm. So if I'm a-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:16:00 So the only thing about thing is acceptance or open-mindedness-

Gaurav Munjal 1:16:03 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:16:03 ... when you look at these two things, and I think... Yes.

Gaurav Munjal 1:16:06 And, and, and my belief is that you have to make some... You know, I wrote this blog post long back about good addiction products. Like, how some of the best minds of the world are working on GTA or FIFA or, you know, making every experience or Instagram so addictive.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:16:23 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:16:24 But some of the best minds are not working on education being super addictive. So once we start-

Nikhil Kamath 1:16:29 Why is, why is GTA, FIFA, et cetera, addictive?

Gaurav Munjal 1:16:33 And by the way, that's recorded content. So if you can make recorded content multiplayer so addictive, you can do that with education as well.

Nikhil Kamath 1:16:39 Why, why is it addictive? And why is education not? What needs to change?

Gaurav Munjal 1:16:43 Gamification. Like, like, if you... Uh, you know, there is this game called Jailbreak on Roblox. Simple game, super simple graphics, but one is the social aspect element of it, the second is the gamification element of it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:16:56 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:16:56 Um, if you read this book called Actionable Gamification, it breaks down every single aspect of why you get addicted to a game.

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:03 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:17:05 You- people play games that they win.

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:07 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:17:08 So today, if they are sitting in a coaching center where you don't even get entry to a best teacher's class-

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:15 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:17:15 ... because they say you are number 100.

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:17 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:17:18 That won't work. But if there is an AI app that says that... So the AI app can actually say that, "Nikhil, you want to learn this?" It can real time generate a lesson for you.

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:28 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:17:29 By the way, this is not happening, but we have to make it happen. And can start giving you questions.

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:34 So basically-

Gaurav Munjal 1:17:35 And, and, and they have to give you some positive reinforcement, because if you start playing... If FIFA only had world-class mode and didn't have a amateur mode, you would never play FIFA.

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:45 Oh, that's quite interesting.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:17:45 Sure, addictive is a sharp, sharp word-

Gaurav Munjal 1:17:47 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:17:47 ... but I think if you look at... I mean, I come from a media background-

Gaurav Munjal 1:17:50 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:17:50 ... so I think storytelling-

Gaurav Munjal 1:17:51 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:17:51 ... is a very important aspect-

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:52 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:17:53 ... of what hooks you on, right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:17:54 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:17:55 And I think, I mean, the very fact that that same narrative is coming there is because there's a storytelling element to that context. If J-

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:01 And, and that's why, that's why some of our top educators work.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:04 Absolutely.

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:04 If you, if you see their class-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:05 Yeah, that's the ability

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:06 ... If you see their classes-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:07 Yeah

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:07 ... um.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:09 And I think when Jay gave the example of this young girl who came in, she was a child artist-

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:12 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:12 ... and whatever else, if you look at that-

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:15 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:15 ... you know, and it stuck with him.

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:16 Yeah, yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:16 It stuck with him in that element of a storytelling. And I think if you can bring that element to your learning-

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:22 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:23 ... and hold on to people's attention-

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:25 So I'm thinking like-

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:26 And, and, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:26 ... I'm thinking in the manner that a 24-year-old starting a business in ed- edtech would think today.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:32 Mm-hmm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:33 So I need to incorporate peer-to-peer-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:35 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:35 ... gamify the experience in some manner, and storytelling has to be a more integral part of it. Is that the summary of what you said?

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:41 No, no, but if you pick one of those-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:43 But I think outcome is a very important part, because all of this, if you don't figure out-

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:46 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:46 ... therefore, what's the end thing? Because-

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:47 What do you think the outcome should be?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:49 See, because in school, there's a defined outcome.

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:50 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:51 Either it's in marks-

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:51 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:51 ... or you move from one standard to the other.

Gaurav Munjal 1:18:53 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:53 So there's a calendared event that's done there.

Nikhil Kamath 1:18:55 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:18:55 Here-... you have to set your own benchmarks for that, and it is road to s- to some sense of success, entrepreneurship, or job enablement, to move forward in your career. It's as simple as that.

Gaurav Munjal 1:19:07 Yeah,

Gaurav Munjal 1:19:08 that I fully agree.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:19:09 It's simple.

Gaurav Munjal 1:19:09 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19:10 Do you think our current benchmarks are not well-placed to cope with the changes that are happening? Like, education makes, in my view ... I'll give you my experience of education, right? Went to a terrible school. I hated my school, hated my teachers, grew up being scared of things I should not have been scared of. I was probably scared of my class, class teacher, this teacher, that teacher. Stopped going to school. Beyond the 10th, I didn't go. I started working and stuff like that. But what I remember of school is it taught me to be conformist in a manner where their idea of what I should be, their idea of what I should learn, their idea of what is required to get the outcome we just spoke about, being job success, entrepreneurship, whatever, that was met. But that idea seems to be changing very quickly in the world. I don't think you become successful 10 years from now-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:20:15 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:16 ... by being conformist anymore.

Gaurav Munjal 1:20:18 So my, my, my view on that is that the definition of school is also changing. For example, if you ask an 11th or 12th year, 12th standard student, especially if they are not preparing for test prep or if they are because of their parents said so, if you truly ask them what they want to be, being a YouTuber would be a ... Like, a lot of people would say they want to be a YouTuber now.

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:40 Really?

Gaurav Munjal 1:20:40 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:20:40 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:20:40 And, and, and why do- why does that work?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:20:42 Or a, or a social media celebrity of some kind.

Gaurav Munjal 1:20:44 And, and-

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:45 But I think that cycle is turning.

Gaurav Munjal 1:20:46 No, no, but why that works is you need to realize, YouTube is sort of like a school-

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:50 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:20:50 -with instant gratification.

Nikhil Kamath 1:20:52 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:20:52 And which is nonlinear.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:20:54 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:20:54 At school, you could get X marks. On YouTube, if you crack something, you can get, like, 500,000 marks in a way.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:01 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:01 You know, th- that those are the kind of views that we get.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:03 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:03 So that's why I also start thinking that if people eventually want to play nonlinear games-

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:10 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:10 ... these platforms that have opened up, there, there are 15-year-old kids who are making games on Roblox.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:16 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:17 There are, there, there is a kid ... One of the most, a YouTuber who earns- fifth largest YouTuber in the world who earns the most money is a kid who reviews toys.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:26 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:27 And he makes, like, $30 million dollars.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:28 So what are you saying about education? So we are saying school-

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:31 No, what I'm saying is-

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:32 -teaches you to be too conformist. So what-

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:34 What I'm saying is that YouTube, in a way, has become sort of like a parallel school.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:40 Right.

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:41 People might not start when they are in school, but-

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:42 Do you think that's the future? More democratized, peer-to-peer education.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:21:46 I don't think, I don't think schooling, we should be-

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:48 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:21:48 We, we, in our lifetimes also-

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:49 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:21:49 ... forget mine, [chuckles] it's not gonna get disrupted-

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:53 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 1:21:53 ... to that level.

Nikhil Kamath 1:21:53 Why?

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:54 And I'm, and I'm

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:55 not saying that will be disrupted.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:21:56 If it does, it'll be at that very top 1% level.

Gaurav Munjal 1:21:58 I, I agree with you.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:21:59 It's not gonna get disrupted.

Gaurav Munjal 1:22:00 I think-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:22:00 And actually, in some ways, it shouldn't.

Nikhil Kamath 1:22:02 Mm. I agree with that, too.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:22:03 That it needs to be ...

Gaurav Munjal 1:22:05 Mm. Why?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:22:05 Because you need to layer.

Gaurav Munjal 1:22:07 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:22:07 You need to build on situation.

Gaurav Munjal 1:22:09 One of the reasons where I reached where I reached was because I found YouTube.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:22:14 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:22:14 I didn't crack any examinations.

Nikhil Kamath 1:22:16 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:22:16 So if you, if you see what are these tournaments, one tournament is that in a traditional sense, if you become good at physics, chemistry, maths-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:22:25 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:22:25 ... and you crack that examination, I think that's powerful. But I couldn't. I went to a college which had too much fees, where the best job you could get was in one of these IT services companies, three and a half lakhs, and there was no way I wanted to, to get that job. Not saying that's a bad job, but that's not-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:22:43 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:22:43 ... that was not for me. So in a way, and, and, and this is why I think upGrad and higher ed needs to change is, "... " agar mere ko life mein woh thappa lag gaya ki aapne JEE, NEET crack nahi kara, how do you change that?

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:00 No, okay.

Gaurav Munjal 1:23:00 If you, if you didn't go to a good college, how do you change that? And I think YouTube is one way. upGrad mein, if I can get a good degree, and that gives me exposure, that's one way. So what I'm saying is that, think of a kid who didn't crack ... Let's say top three, top 3% of kids get into these good colleges. What about the 97%? They go into these engineering colleges in, let's say, tier two, tier three cities. Their job placement rate is 2%, 5%, 10%. Ab unka kya hoga? So they- their capability is there, but they don't get the exposure. But-

Nikhil Kamath 1:23:38 Is that a problem that there are not enough jobs, or is that a problem that they are not well enough educated?

Gaurav Munjal 1:23:44 Both. See, education doesn't solve for exposure. Ab mere ko LinkedIn pe agar ... You know why people prepare for UPSC examinations? There is a friend of mine, she gave the UPSC examinations four to five times. Extremely smart friend. I'm like: "You gave the examination five times. Why?" "Because of the predictability. Okay, once I crack it, I will get this wealth, or this status, or this credibility, or my father would give me validation." [lips smack] So at the end of the day, you know, it take- I mean, it takes a lot of years for you to come out of the shell that was created for you, et cetera, and you are always seeking that validation. But ... And this, this is my question to all of you. Think of a kid, and this is huge chunk of our population. The kid does not crack a good examination. The kid goes to a average college. The college does not give ... get the kid a job. What does he or she do?

Nikhil Kamath 1:24:41 But that's changing. In many ways, I feel like-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:24:44 We want to throw one more light-

Nikhil Kamath 1:24:45 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:24:45 ... because I think we want to look at a broad topic like we are about-

Nikhil Kamath 1:24:47 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:24:47 ... changing a job. It's quite universal.

Nikhil Kamath 1:24:50 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:24:50 And we won't draw the best examples and inspiration for the people who, who are kind of listening to this-

Gaurav Munjal 1:24:55 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:24:55 ... unless we take a little bit more of a global perspective-

Gaurav Munjal 1:24:57 Correct

Ronnie Screwvala 1:24:57 ... without being just completely global.

Nikhil Kamath 1:24:59 Exactly. Correct, correct.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:24:59 And global does not mean the US-

Gaurav Munjal 1:25:01 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:25:01 ... because Africa-

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:03 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:25:03 ... Vietnam-

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:04 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:25:04 ... some other markets like that,

Jay Kotak 1:25:06 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:25:06 very, very, very unique and different. But if you take the cluster of all of that together-

Jay Kotak 1:25:10 Mm. Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:25:10 -you'll actually find some very clear parallels-

Jay Kotak 1:25:14 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:25:14 -that actually can make you give you... So I think I just wanted to put that into perspective-

Jay Kotak 1:25:18 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:25:18 ... that some of the challenges on a country-wide basis is not gonna be able to solve.

Jay Kotak 1:25:22 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:25:23 But if you put a lot of those perspectives, you can have a bigger solution-

Jay Kotak 1:25:26 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 1:25:26 ... and then it'll start applying to a lot of stuff.

Jay Kotak 1:25:27 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:28 I'm gonna keep everything a little more concise,

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:30 mindful of time. But I would like to s- you know, maybe add here that today, companies like Facebook, Google, Tesla, even us here in India, we don't care about educational qualification in the manner that once we once did.

Jay Kotak 1:25:46 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:46 Like, we don't ask for people to tell us what qualification they have. I've not hired anybody ever looking at their degree and their marks.

Jay Kotak 1:25:53 No, but, Nikhil, I think that's a sliver-

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:54 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:25:54 ... at the top in more evolved parts of-

Nikhil Kamath 1:25:57 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:25:57 -our job ecosystem. I think the moment you go one level down, you being an IAS officer or being an IIT grad absolutely matters. But I have a separate question: If the system was good, and the test was meritocratic in the right set of ways, and everybody had equal opportunity, what's wrong with the test or a way that kind of tells folks who are looking to hire that from this pool, this is the most capable? I agree it's not where it is right now, and that's where, you know, a lot of that solve has to happen.

Gaurav Munjal 1:26:30 No, but I, I think the test is good. I'm talking about folks.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:26:34 Yeah, but capable is the key word.

Jay Kotak 1:26:35 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:26:35 So I think, you know, today, more and more, we are c- now hard, hard driving those ones.

Jay Kotak 1:26:41 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:26:41 What is capability?

Jay Kotak 1:26:42 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:26:42 What is readiness? What is whatever else-

Jay Kotak 1:26:45 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:26:45 ... what are you at the cusp of? So I think that all those are changing-

Jay Kotak 1:26:49 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:26:49 ... which is why I still believe there are some fundamental things that need to be built on. But-

Jay Kotak 1:26:54 Yeah, I agree.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:26:55 Disrupt just for the sake of disrupt-

Jay Kotak 1:26:56 No, but-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:26:56 ... actually creates a little bit more chaos.

Nikhil Kamath 1:26:58 What skill set do you need to ace these tests? And is that relevant to you doing the job you get after the test well?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:06 I mean, when you say soft skills, for us here, it's a very sophisticated word.

Jay Kotak 1:27:08 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:08 I mean, I call them super skills now.

Jay Kotak 1:27:09 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:09 I don't even call them soft skills.

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:11 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:27:11 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:11 Because I just realized, as a marketing person-

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:13 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:14 ... that as soon as you add Shaktiman to something-

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:16 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:16 ... then there's a little bit more attention, right?

Jay Kotak 1:27:18 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:18 So if you say super skills versus soft skills, soft skills sounds-

Jay Kotak 1:27:20 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:20 ... very soft.

Jay Kotak 1:27:21 Yeah, yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:21 Super sounds I've already like a punchy situation.

Jay Kotak 1:27:24 They're more important.

Gaurav Munjal 1:27:24 It's the, the soft skills-

Jay Kotak 1:27:26 Yeah

Gaurav Munjal 1:27:26 ... the higher up you go in terms of metaphorically, the success ladder, which is a crude way of putting it, soft skills becomes more important, indeed, super skills.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:35 But you are a product of soft skills.

Jay Kotak 1:27:36 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:37 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:37 I'm a product-

Jay Kotak 1:27:38 Exactly

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:38 ... of soft skills.

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:38 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:27:38 What does that mean?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:39 Be- otherwise, after tenth standard, if you haven't done it, what else would g- have got you through life?

Jay Kotak 1:27:44 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:44 It is your-

Nikhil Kamath 1:27:45 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:27:45 It is those soft skills. It is that super skills that you managed to build on to that, stayed with it, whatever else, through a background, through a financial, whatever else, and you built on it.

Gaurav Munjal 1:27:54 No, but, but don't you think that's trivializing it, trivializing the issue to... Like for, for example-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:00 Or shining the light on it.

Gaurav Munjal 1:28:01 Okay.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:02 I mean, yes, I mean, trivializing it by saying, "Is it so simple?" Yeah, we are. But I think when you really find big solutions, when you simplify it, not when you complicate it.

Jay Kotak 1:28:11 I agree. Things like empathy, things like leadership are... And the ability to kind of be with seven people that have different backgrounds and lead that team or, you know, figure out what motivates who, is a very different skill than-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:25 Yeah

Jay Kotak 1:28:26 ... solving an extremely-

Gaurav Munjal 1:28:27 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:28:27 ... complicated alphanumeric equation.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:29 Five years back, if I was looking f- to back a founder or hire somebody, which is at a, as a partner with me-

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:34 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:34 ... I would say problem-solving skills is important.

Jay Kotak 1:28:36 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:36 Today, I'm saying spot the problem before you can solve it, because I'm not-

Jay Kotak 1:28:39 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:39 ... looking for problem solvers anymore.

Jay Kotak 1:28:41 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:41 I'm looking for problem spotters.

Jay Kotak 1:28:43 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:43 I'm looking for the guy who looks around the bend-

Jay Kotak 1:28:44 Yes

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:44 ... and sees, "Is the train gonna hit me, or the truck gonna hit me?"

Jay Kotak 1:28:47 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:47 And not somebody who's gonna solve it, because even that time-

Nikhil Kamath 1:28:50 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:50 ... and density-

Jay Kotak 1:28:51 Right

Ronnie Screwvala 1:28:51 ... we don't have.

Jay Kotak 1:28:52 Right. Makes sense.

Gaurav Munjal 1:28:53 See, if I take a-

Jay Kotak 1:28:53 You-

Gaurav Munjal 1:28:53 ... simplistic view,

Gaurav Munjal 1:28:55 my belief is that everyone is collecting these badges and these credentials, which is what education is about. Now, if somebody takes an online degree from UpGrad, great degree, that's a badge, because some... Like, like I was talking to a SVP of mine, and his wife had taken an UpGrad course. I asked him, "Why did she take that?" Uh, she said, uh, he said that for her, the moment she put that on her LinkedIn profile, suddenly she started getting more requests. So in a way, what test prep is also doing is, you are collecting these badges. "Meine exam crack kar liya. I have this degree. I went to this college, or I have so many subscribers." So, "Or I built this game, which was played by so many people." In a way, I like to think that that's what education is becoming about, on how... And, and then you can say that our system currently is limited. Ke abhi ye che badges hi available hai. But, uh, what online can solve for is, ke say, you know, you can do these three things also. This is what some-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:30:09 Online is not that different.

Jay Kotak 1:30:10 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:30:10 It is an inclusive medium-

Gaurav Munjal 1:30:11 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:30:11 ... because exclusive is a problem.

Gaurav Munjal 1:30:14 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:30:14 Here, I have to get a test prep to get into IIT.

Jay Kotak 1:30:17 Mm, exactly.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:30:18 Perfectly fine.

Gaurav Munjal 1:30:18 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:30:19 Phenomenal world out there, but hello-

Gaurav Munjal 1:30:21 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:30:21 ... we're ten billion people in the world right now. Eight billion going to ten billion people, right?

Gaurav Munjal 1:30:26 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:30:26 So obviously, that opportunity of being very democratic on what we wanna do is gonna have-

Gaurav Munjal 1:30:30 Mm-hmm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:30:30 ... it's gonna have to change quite radically.

Jay Kotak 1:30:32 I think education has to solve for... So one part of it is the badge gets you into the room with the recruiter and the HR, and then, you know, the job. The far bigger challenge is, once you're in the job, how are you good at it? Are you good at it? Because there's only so much that you can-

Gaurav Munjal 1:30:48 No, I think-

Jay Kotak 1:30:48 Uh

Gaurav Munjal 1:30:48 ... I think, I think the opposite is true. I think today, getting into the room is a bigger challenge. People are still, there are- like if, if, like for example, Nikhil said that they don't look at the IIT tag. If you don't look at that tag, there are still great people.

Jay Kotak 1:31:02 A bigger challenge for who and when? Sure, for twen- for eighteen to twenty-three year olds, probably, and yes, it is a challenge because there are not that many jobs, which is a sep- separate problem to solve. But being good at-

Nikhil Kamath 1:31:14 ... something, anything is very important, and education should be solving for how to make people passionate about things that they're there good for.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:31:23 Yeah, without using the word education-

Nikhil Kamath 1:31:24 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:31:25 ... because, again, you get back into-

Nikhil Kamath 1:31:26 Yes

Ronnie Screwvala 1:31:26 -a little bit of a structured environment.

Gaurav Munjal 1:31:27 But

Ronnie Screwvala 1:31:27 Yeah, it's very unstructured.

Gaurav Munjal 1:31:29 Mera usmein problem hai, that's not a education issue, that's a motivation issue. Agar aap kisi ko bol doge ki yeh crack karke yeh milega-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:31:37 Hmm

Gaurav Munjal 1:31:37 -they will work more extra hard for that.

Nikhil Kamath 1:31:40 I, I don't agree with that.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:31:40 No, no, that, that might be a little too simplifying it-

Nikhil Kamath 1:31:43 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:31:43 ... because-

Gaurav Munjal 1:31:44 No

Ronnie Screwvala 1:31:44 ... you, you do need, you do need that prompter. You need that prompt sheet. You need that prompt sheet, you need that hack, you need that element of it.

Gaurav Munjal 1:31:51 No, no, mera, my belief is, and we, we can agree to disagree, here, instead of bottoms-up, the top-down approach works, and that's, that's how people think. For example, for that, um, person who bought that UpGrad course, it was like, "I want a job, and this particular product helps me get more exposure." So I think it starts from the fact ki mujhe bara lakh ka job chahiye, mujhe athara lakh ka job chahiye. That's why I want to crack an IIT examination, and that's why if you... I, I, I was on a flight, and I was seeing, you know, Indigo or Vistara magazine. Every single college ad now had placements with amount of packages people were getting.

Nikhil Kamath 1:32:32 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:32:32 Because I think jab woh pata chal jata hai ki achcha is college mein average package kitna jata hai aur is college mein... Because I, I like to believe that it's not oversimplification, but it's the reality, ki if you say that you will get X after doing Y, then people are more motivated. So I don't think it's a education issue, I think it's a motivation issue.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:32:55 Yeah, and it's not... Maybe it's not an either/or.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:32:57 So I don't think it's about us disagreeing or agreeing in that context, 'cause it's such a, it's such a massive challenge and such a massive opportunity, frankly. Um-

Gaurav Munjal 1:33:05 Hmm. But, but do you think that would anybody learn anything for the sake of learning? For example-

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:09 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:33:10 Yes. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:10 Everything I do-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:33:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:11 ... that's for the sake of learning.

Jay Kotak 1:33:12 That's myopic, I think maybe-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:33:13 Absolutely

Jay Kotak 1:33:14 ... our, our society has kind of conditioned us into that, but-

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:17 Can I tell you, like, personal example? My initial phase of learning was based out of insecurity. I didn't go to school, I didn't go to 11th standard, 12th standard. All my classmates did. That insecurity drove me to learn.

Gaurav Munjal 1:33:32 But there's selection bias bhi hai. See, we-

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:34 Hmm

Gaurav Munjal 1:33:34 ... there is also a lot of selection bias-

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:36 I think there are plenty of unlimited people in the world

Gaurav Munjal 1:33:38 ... if we talk about, we talk about any product that has made success-

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:40 No, not selection bias. But where I'm getting to today is, I've stopped reading the kind of stuff that I read back then, which would help me be better at a job.

Jay Kotak 1:33:49 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:49 And today I keep reading about history, and psychology, and-

Jay Kotak 1:33:52 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:33:52 ... philosophy. And these things I do not for a job, this is just because I find them-

Jay Kotak 1:33:58 But I think that stuff does-

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:00 Hmm

Jay Kotak 1:34:00 ... help you be better-

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:01 Yeah

Jay Kotak 1:34:01 ... in life, and job is part of life-

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:03 Yeah

Jay Kotak 1:34:04 ... in terms of identifying patterns of-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:05 You just want to be more rounded-

Jay Kotak 1:34:06 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:06 ... every single day of your life.

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:09 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 1:34:09 To simplify it, I read it because I enjoy it.

Gaurav Munjal 1:34:11 But, but again, I would say that's like a very, very, very small subset of the population.

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:18 But I think more, more of the population has to-

Jay Kotak 1:34:20 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:20 ... move there, and I hope organically-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:22 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:34:23 That, that I agree.

Jay Kotak 1:34:24 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:34:24 That I agree.

Nikhil Kamath 1:34:24 Okay.

Gaurav Munjal 1:34:24 That I agree-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:24 Yeah

Gaurav Munjal 1:34:25 ... but how do we-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:26 Because otherwise we'll get stuck-

Gaurav Munjal 1:34:27 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:27 ... at the entry gate.

Jay Kotak 1:34:28 Yes.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:28 And we're not at the gate of heaven.

Jay Kotak 1:34:29 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:30 We're, we're going to try and experience the whole thing.

Gaurav Munjal 1:34:31 Hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:31 So all I would say is, you're right at the entry gate, but there's much more than the entry gate.

Gaurav Munjal 1:34:36 Hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:36 And I think we, we might be all saying the same thing-

Gaurav Munjal 1:34:38 Hmm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:34:39 ... but at different positions in what we say.

Jay Kotak 1:34:40 The root of this is at some level, something you said maybe five minutes earlier, when you said education and exposure are different. To me, I think if I think about education as a lifelong process, exposure is an integral part of education that becomes a larger piece of that pie. It just depends on what the context of education is. If we're talking about education in the context of companies solving for a piece of the value chain to make profit, then it's probably a different education than a, you know, more abstract idea.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:35:10 Yeah. I mean, this conversation we're having-

Gaurav Munjal 1:35:12 Hmm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:35:12 ... is a, is a learning curve of some way. I mean, I'm, I j- I keep being not wanting to use the word education because it... the, the perception comes back into a little bit of-

Jay Kotak 1:35:20 Exactly

Ronnie Screwvala 1:35:20 ... a formal structure part.

Jay Kotak 1:35:22 Exactly.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:35:22 Yeah.

Gaurav Munjal 1:35:23 And, and, and I-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:35:23 I mean-

Gaurav Munjal 1:35:23 And I, and I get-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:35:24 In two hours, if I can pick up three nuggets and go away-

Jay Kotak 1:35:26 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:35:26 ... I'm not going to remember the whole two hours of the conversation. I can remember nuggets.

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:28 I can throw, like, another-

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:30 like, digress this conversation into another place altogether. Let's say, the world evolves. Tomorrow, a lot of the jobs get replaced by computers, and so on and so forth.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:35:43 Hmm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:35:44 There are not enough jobs in the world. Two, immaterial of how skilled the person applying for the job is, let's say that equilibrium is not met. World transforms into some kind of socialism, but by-choice capitalism.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:36:02 Hmm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:02 Right?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:36:03 Hmm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:03 Like Thomas Piketty spoke about donut economics-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:36:06 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:06 ... where we're in equanimity with nature in a way. Growth for the sake of growth is not good. Let's say-

Gaurav Munjal 1:36:11 Universal, universal basic income is there.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:13 Yeah. UBI is there.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:36:14 Hmm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:14 People are getting paid. Peop- do not then have-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:36:17 I think global warming will come in sooner-

Jay Kotak 1:36:19 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:36:20 ... than that one, if you ask me, here.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:21 I, I personally, uh, like, I know a lot of people are very critical of global warming. Like, we have a big fund, Rainmatter Climate. We do a lot of, uh, work around climate change. I tend to be more sanguine about it. In many ways, when I look at the world today, I feel we are the luckiest. We have the best version of the world any of our ancestors ever did. We live for forty years longer than we lived hundred years ago.

Jay Kotak 1:36:50 Yep.

Nikhil Kamath 1:36:51 We didn't have to see world wars, we didn't have to see racism, we didn't have to see, uh, disease, malnutrition, all of this in the manner that our predecessors had to. Uh, so sure, global warming is a problem. We have to work on it. We have to, like, you know, work on negating the effects of climate change. But notwithstanding that, I think in the future, if UBI were to come in-... I feel the kind of learning that we are talking about will become the only kind of learning, where people choose to learn a certain thing because they want to learn it.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:28 Absolutely.

Guest 1:37:29 I agree.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:29 Yeah.

Guest 1:37:29 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:29 And to get on with what-

Guest 1:37:30 I agree

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:30 ... they want to do in life, absolutely. And that, that to me is the, is the fun part of it. It's a limitless-

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:36 And this is how life used to be

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:37 ... it's a limitless world.

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:38 Like, if you go back 2,000 years ago, philosophy was not something-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:43 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:43 ... people spent, like, a ancillary subject.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:46 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:46 Like, the Greek way of living was-

Guest 1:37:47 It's the philosopher king of basically.

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:48 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:49 Today, it's turning inwards-

Guest 1:37:50 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:50 ... it's giving you a much different depth, and that's why I'm saying, therefore, let's not tinker with the opening part-

Nikhil Kamath 1:37:55 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:37:55 ... of what we keep saying, that all of this can only happen if you go back to the foundation.

Guest 1:38:00 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:00 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:00 Sure, yes, of course, we can teach sex education better in school. We can teach entrepreneurship-

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:06 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:06 We can teach competitiveness.

Guest 1:38:07 By virtue of where the world is going, maybe sex education-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:10 Yeah

Guest 1:38:10 ... suddenly has become a very meta thing. We need people to have more kids all over again, so-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:15 Yeah. Yeah, we do

Guest 1:38:16 ... we're being pragmatic [chuckles] again.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:18 But-

Guest 1:38:18 Maybe sex education should not be taught.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:20 And that's what I'm saying, willy-nilly, look at that, that context where you're moving-

Guest 1:38:23 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:23 ... in because of your other exposures in life.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:25 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:25 And that's why I was saying, there's a certain cost to an event-

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:28 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:28 ... let that be there-

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:30 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:30 ... because it's evolving in itself.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:31 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:32 But I think the important part that we brought up here also was, are there going to be that many jobs, and therefore what's everyone doing in this entire space to be able to do that?

Guest 1:38:40 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:40 And water does find its level. Of course, it goes through troughs in many ways, but water does find its own level in many ways.

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:47 Mm. Hopefully... I wouldn't say hopefully, that's the wrong word for it. Likely, there will also be lesser people in the future. I think this-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:55 But if I had everything formal-

Nikhil Kamath 1:38:57 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:38:57 ... I wouldn't be able to survive and create opportunities. But because I'm gonna have this informal approach to a situation-

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:03 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:03 ... there are more likelihood I'm gonna succeed in an environment-

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:06 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:06 ... which is fragile-

Guest 1:39:08 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:08 ... and unpredictable.

Guest 1:39:09 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:09 Because actually, today, what I think the next hundred years are gonna face is much more fragility-

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:14 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:14 ... much more uncertainty.

Guest 1:39:16 I'm not sure. As a student of history, um, I think that there's enough historical parables to say that this is indeed what is happening. But I, my personal instinct is, I believe in capitalism. I believe in our ability to solve problems in the context that I actually don't think either we're going to run out of jobs.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:34 Yeah.

Guest 1:39:34 Because I think that for every job that gets taken away-

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:36 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:36 For sure

Guest 1:39:37 ... new jobs are coming, and it's been happening for the past 150 years.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:39 My context was more that extremes of... extreme negative, extreme positives may become a little bit more. Polarization may happen to a, uh, a larger extent.

Guest 1:39:48 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:48 But I fully agree, I'm not a pessimist-

Guest 1:39:50 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:50 ... on the fact that we're gonna run out of jobs.

Guest 1:39:52 Also, on climate change-

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:53 Yeah

Guest 1:39:53 ... which is the one that maybe we disagree.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:39:55 Yeah.

Guest 1:39:55 I think, yes, there will, there will be an impact.

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:57 Mm. Mm.

Guest 1:39:58 We, I think we all agree on-

Nikhil Kamath 1:39:59 Mm

Guest 1:39:59 ... science and all of that, but we will solve when it becomes-

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:03 Mm

Guest 1:40:04 ... uh, acute.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:04 And there, there is precedent for that, right? Like, we solved the ozone layer issue.

Guest 1:40:08 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:08 The world together did.

Guest 1:40:09 Did we? I don't-

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Guest 1:40:10 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:11 You remember, like, 10 years ago-

Guest 1:40:12 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:12 ... everybody was like, "Ozone, ozone-"

Guest 1:40:14 Yeah, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:14 " ... ozone layer, hole in the ozone layer." Nobody talks about it now.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:40:16 Slightly more in our control-

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:18 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:40:18 ... because we were creating it, and therefore we could control it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:20 Couldn't you also argue climate change we're creating?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:40:22 Yeah, it, it can.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:24 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:40:24 It could, it could, but it's a little bit in that space where-

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:27 But I think what will happen before this climate change inevitability that a lot of people prophesize, is, I think, geoengineering will become such a big field in itself.

Guest 1:40:39 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:40 Like, if we were to, like, very simply talk about climate change, right? Sun hits Earth, each surface-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:40:45 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:45 ... reflects a certain kind of heat back.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:40:47 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:48 It gets trapped in the atmosphere, albedo effect. Based on what gases are in the atmosphere, that much heat does not go out.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:40:54 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:55 But things like adding sulfur-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:40:58 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:40:58 ... into the stratosphere, technology around covering the ice caps with some form of limestone.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:04 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:05 Geoengineering in itself, like everything else, like, if we've been resilient as humans for hundreds of thousands of years-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:12 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:12 ... I don't see why, in that minute 60, 70 years that we are around, will the world collapse in front of my eyes.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:20 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:21 Mathematically, the odds of that, to me, are minuscule.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:24 Collapse, maybe not. Deteriorate, could be-

Guest 1:41:26 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:26 ... another way.

Guest 1:41:27 Deteriorate.

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:27 But the world's always changing.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:28 Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Guest 1:41:29 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:30 I agree.

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:31 Like, deteriorate is a very relative word. Like, if you talk about relative to the previous hundred years, we should be happy with where we are now.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:38 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:38 And hopefully, 100 years down the line, we are there. And I'm-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:41 But coming back to our topic that we were talking here-

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:43 Yeah, yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:43 ... I'm saying, therefore, in that environment-

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:46 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:46 ... it's even more that you need that flexibility versus the formality-

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:49 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:49 ...

Ronnie Screwvala 1:41:50 of it.

Guest 1:41:50 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:41:50 Yeah. So what we are saying, to summarize the last bit of our conversation, what needs to change about education or what people looking to build around education need to bear in mind, is the near future could be a time of increased gamification.

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:12 Changing, not replacing the bricks of education, if we were to consider it a wall, but a lot of tweaking of the bricks to make it less conformist in the manner where your ability to regurgitate information is not as valuable as it was 20 years ago. That change will likely happen, and people need to bear that in mind. And another point you brought up, is peer-to-peer will become increasingly relevant. Like Jay also said, going to Harvard is as much about the other people who went with him-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:42:48 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:48 ... to Harvard, than it is about syllabus, teachers, teaching stuff.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:42:54 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:42:55 In the interest of time, moving on, you brought up BYJU'S for a second. Would you like to... Because it's all over the news, if you guys have an opinion, like, would love to hear it, since you're both in this space.

Guest 1:43:06 No, I think I don't have a particular opinion on BYJU'S-

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:09 Mm

Guest 1:43:09 ... but I will make a more generic statement.

Nikhil Kamath 1:43:12 Mm.

Guest 1:43:13 I think what has happened is that any new employee I'm interviewing, any new investor who comes and talks to me, there is this sort of negativity about EdTech. And the people who are in EdTech know that it's a phenomenal sector.

Gaurav Munjal 1:43:27 ... I mean, the kind of pools, revenue pools that it has, whether it's in higher education or in test prep or in K-12, it's amazing. I mean, I was giving you the example that the top 10 offline coaching centers of the country do 20,000 crores in revenue annually. But if you don't even go top 10, if you go localized, in Madhya Pradesh, there is an exam called MPPSC. There is a coaching center, six or seven institutes, that helps people prepare for that examination. Does 150 crores a year, and there are hundreds of such examples. So that revenue pool exists offline. You can bring that online. Similarly, in higher education, whether any kind of college that helps people getting- get better skilled or get a better job, there is a huge opportunity to disrupt.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:16 Don't take this from a perspective where somebody's comparing one company with another.

Gaurav Munjal 1:44:23 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:23 It is not about Unacademy. It is not even really about-

Gaurav Munjal 1:44:26 No, but the sector-

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:27 Byju's.

Gaurav Munjal 1:44:27 I'm talking about sector, that the sector is-

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:29 Where do you, where do you think as a cycle? Every stock, every sector has cycles. So if you were to paint the cycle like this, where do you think EdTech is at right now? Very simple, concise answer.

Gaurav Munjal 1:44:41 I think in COVID we were at the peak.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:43 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:44:44 And then, uh, last year, I think at least for us, we would say that we were going through a lot of tough times.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:50 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:44:51 Now we are climbing back up.

Nikhil Kamath 1:44:52 Right.

Gaurav Munjal 1:44:53 Uh, and, and that's more Unacademy, and I can't say for others, but that's what we are.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:44:58 Yeah. Uh, look, there is no this at all-

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:01 No?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:01 ... to be honest, because the opportunity and what the need is-

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:04 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:05 ... is absolutely massive.

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:06 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:07 The- there's a revolution going on in reskilling today.

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:09 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:09 There's a dire need for it.

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:10 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:10 It's like a clarion call-

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:12 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:12 ... in many ways.

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:13 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:14 So there's no opportunity for anything to go up and down here.

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:17 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:17 When we look at this up and down, we only categorize it in terms of, uh, investment bankers or valuation, which are so irrelevant. Capital is not gonna change learning, skilling, and reskilling.

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:29 And, and, and see-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:29 And 10 times more capital coming-

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:31 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:31 ... is not gonna give you 10 times faster result.

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:33 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:33 In fact, it's gonna slow the process

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:35 down.

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:35 Why is that?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:36 Because you don't need capital to make the changes that you need to make. Not everything is about capital.

Gaurav Munjal 1:45:40 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:40 So I think-

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:40 Doesn't capital afford you larger distribution in a manner-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:46 No

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:46 ... where you can reach more people?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:47 No, no, I think-

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:49 Like, if you could make-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:49 I'm not talking about zero capital-

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:50 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:50 ... but I'm not talking about the capital that everyone thinks that-

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:53 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:53 ... that capital if you throw at-

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:54 Mm, mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:55 This is a b- this is an overall se-

Nikhil Kamath 1:45:56 Have you ever raised money at UpGrad?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:45:58 Yes, we have raised money. Yeah, but I'm saying the capi- capital for most people sounds like... If you're looking at such a large sector-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:05 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:06 ... and since you're talking about your core group that would want to listen to this, want to go there-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:09 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:10 ... one of the things I would say is, you don't need to re- have that kind of capital to make the change in this sector.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:16 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:16 And that's gonna be the fun part of it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:17 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:17 Because then it'll be longer lasting-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:19 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:19 ... it'll be a lot more permanent.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:22 Right.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:22 And I think the foundation will be even stronger.

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:24 What about PhysicsWallah guy? Like, what is he doing which is so different? I hear so much about PhysicsWallah. Have you heard of him? So there is this guy who is not spending money in the same amount and extent as other EdTech players, but is able to gather an audience, a paying audience-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:46 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:46 ... based on his popularity, based on some say, the quality of his teaching in physics or whatever. Like...

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:54 The other way to look at that is-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:55 Uh

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:55 ... he built a business very frugally-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:57 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:57 ... accepted that you don't need money on it-

Nikhil Kamath 1:46:59 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:46:59 ... and it's taken a fair bit of time to come to where he is.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:01 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:02 And I think that's where the credit comes-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:04 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:04 ... versus anything else, because you-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:05 So you like him then?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:06 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:07 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:07 I like everybody who's an entrepreneur and founder-

Gaurav Munjal 1:47:08 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:08 ... because it's so bloody difficult-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:10 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:10 ... to do anything in life.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:11 Yeah, yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:11 So everyone needs-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:13 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:13 ... incredible amount of respect. And at the point in which you are, obviously, as you rightly said, there'll be-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:18 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:18 ... ups and downs.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:19 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:19 But my question here is, what he did right is not put capital epicenter.

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:25 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:25 Took a long-term view-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:27 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:27 ... and the result you're seeing right now-

Gaurav Munjal 1:47:29 Mm, yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:29 ... if you go back for the last eight years and analyze that, and you see that report card-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:33 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:33 ... and you see somebody else's report card-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:35 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:47:35 ... of a chest-thumping moment or raising a billion dollars, the answer is right there.

Gaurav Munjal 1:47:39 Yeah. This thematically is true across-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:42 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:47:42 ... you know, mature companies, newer companies. Folks that don't talk as much-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:47 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:47:48 ... sometimes can quietly build something, and when they come out, it feels like-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:52 It just happened

Gaurav Munjal 1:47:53 ... oh, it just happened. And another part to link to something we said much earlier, not fundraising-

Nikhil Kamath 1:47:58 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:47:59 ... immediately puts you outside of that, uh, you know, media spotlight and this spotlight of, "Oh, wow-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:07 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:48:07 ... I am a unicorn because I fundraised at a certain valuation, and you know, now I'm emotionally at that value, you know, valuation."

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:14 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:48:14 There's a lot of companies in India and, and around the world that are quiet.

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:18 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:20 And just to put this in the sector that-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:21 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:21 ... um, Jay is in, I mean, you've seen that. I mean, you don't need to go into the startup world to do that. You've seen banks have a different situation-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:29 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:29 ... how-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:29 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:29 ... levels of corruption, access-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:32 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:32 ... transparency have come in there just based on-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:35 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:35 ... in funding. So it's not-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:36 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:36 ... an ecosystem here. It's mature ecosystems-

Gaurav Munjal 1:48:39 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:39 ... like banking, where you can have that-

Gaurav Munjal 1:48:41 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:41 ... highly regulated system where you can.

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:42 Ah, just remembered something since you're here.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:48:44 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:44 What do you think of

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:45 the new TCS on LRS?

Gaurav Munjal 1:48:49 I think it's complicated, because-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:51 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:48:52 ... at one level, if we want the rupee to be-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:56 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:48:57 ... competitor to the dollar-

Nikhil Kamath 1:48:58 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:48:59 ... to the yuan, we want to be free float-

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:03 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:49:03 ... as much as possible, and we want to-

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:05 You want to be capital account convertible.

Gaurav Munjal 1:49:05 Yeah, you want to be completely convertible.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:08 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:49:08 But it's very easy to say that.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:10 Mm. Can I ask you to prophesize if India were to become truly convertible-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:49:16 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:16 ... capital account convertible? Let's say LRS, the money going out of the country is maybe $22 billion. Let's make-

Gaurav Munjal 1:49:23 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:23 ... our assumption. It's somewhere around that this year.

Gaurav Munjal 1:49:25 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:26 Do you think more money would go out or more money would come in?

Gaurav Munjal 1:49:29 So-

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:29 I ask you this, while I pre-phase-... that every international bank and investor I meet today-

Jay Kotak 1:49:36 Wants to come to India.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:37 Wants to come to India.

Jay Kotak 1:49:37 I think right now, money would come in. Money is coming in. India is doing very well.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:41 I actually agree with you.

Jay Kotak 1:49:42 And to, on, on the, uh, LRS TCS point, there is the real fact that this was a loophole.

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:49 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:49:50 The fact that, um-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:49:51 Yeah, that's what I'm saying. In that context, we look at it in that loophole element there-

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:54 But is the question, did they-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:49:55 It's just been clarified in some form

Nikhil Kamath 1:49:56 ... is the question, did they plug the loophole, or did they make it significantly harder for people?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:50:02 I think they did it in three doses, which then got-

Jay Kotak 1:50:04 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:50:04 ... into an element of miscommunication-

Jay Kotak 1:50:05 Yes

Ronnie Screwvala 1:50:05 ... if you ask me. But at the end of-

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:06 But beyond the third dose, you still have to pay 20% TCS when you spend your LRS limit again.

Jay Kotak 1:50:12 But you can, you can claim it back. Yes, it's... I would say that, is it the most elegant solution?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:50:17 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 1:50:17 One could argue not.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:18 Is, is the onus going to be on you guys as a bank?

Jay Kotak 1:50:21 Uh, my understanding is that banks, anybody, uh, uh, if somebody spends on, on a bank's credit card, the bank is accountable to implement regulation, and that's part of being a regulated entity.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:31 And that's a significantly unnecessary cost for you guys.

Jay Kotak 1:50:36 No, I don't think-

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:36 No?

Jay Kotak 1:50:37 ... that's the case at all. There is lots of regulation. We also, uh, the word bank comes with a lot of trust.

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:45 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:50:46 And that trust-

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:47 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:50:47 ... while is a good thing in terms of attracting customers-

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:50 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:50:50 ... attracting deposit, comes-

Nikhil Kamath 1:50:52 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:50:52 ... with responsibility. Great power comes great, great responsibility. That is, the regulators can make a change that they see fit for, for policy, and I think this one-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:01 Yeah, sometimes we get irritated because of the communication level.

Jay Kotak 1:51:03 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:03 And when you do it in three doses-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:05 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:05 -and then-

Jay Kotak 1:51:05 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:05 ... everyone thinks now this is just enough.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:07 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:07 Like, why do you want to get there? But at the end of the day, the report card is quite clear.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:11 If, if you are spending-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:13 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:13 ... $250,000 a year-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:14 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:15 ... which means you should be a high tax paying bracket-

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:16 Yeah, yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:17 ... or a sufficient good tax paying bracket.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:19 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:19 In which case, you'll be cash neutral at the end of the year.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:22 Yeah.

Jay Kotak 1:51:22 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:22 My, my point here is, I actually truly believe, right? This is not for the sake of euphemizing some other thought of mine, but every international investor I talk to today is really critical, especially in America, in the West, and Europe. They're, they're really critical about their own economy, but I would say 80, 90% are sanguine about the prospect of India and wanting, wanting some form of participation here.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:48 But I think we're a very good gradual tax country. We're, we're one-

Jay Kotak 1:51:50 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:50 ... we're not one of the higher tax country anymore.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:51 Not, not based on tax ex- taxation, but if we open up, I truly believe more money will come in.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:51:56 But I don't think this has got to do with open up.

Nikhil Kamath 1:51:58 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:51:58 It's not about... It's... Sure, sure. Sorry, carry on, I'll go after you.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:52:01 Yeah, no, because I think this, if there was a reverse GST on it, and for every 250, you are gone with... You know, this is not that. It is just about saying, "We don't know whether you've necessarily paid your tax-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:12 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:52:12 ... and therefore, take it at the end of the year."

Jay Kotak 1:52:14 If you open up completely-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:16 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:52:17 ... you also become mercy even more-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:20 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:52:20 ... to something the Fed may do-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:22 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:52:22 ... that is really silly, that causes-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:23 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:52:24 ... violent capital flight that was nothing to do with you. And we've seen-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:27 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:52:27 ... over the past 30, 40 years, financial crisis-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:29 You mean foreign capital flight?

Jay Kotak 1:52:31 Because of nothing that we-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:33 But that can happen with the norms, 'cause they are not subject to-

Jay Kotak 1:52:36 But less has come in.

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:37 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:52:38 I- and, and it's also less hot.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:52:39 There are three phases in which we've survived well because of that.

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:41 You're saying because less is coming-

Jay Kotak 1:52:42 And how... [tsking] if you open a floodgate very quickly-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:45 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:52:45 ... and this would be an, I would, I would say how policymakers-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:48 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:52:48 ... would argue it. Are you bringing in stable, long-term capital that's looking-

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:53 Mm

Jay Kotak 1:52:53 ... at investing in the country?

Nikhil Kamath 1:52:55 Mm-hmm. Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:52:56 Or are you bringing in short-term, you know, quick profit-seeking

Jay Kotak 1:53:00 capital? So it's difficult.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:02 So but I think we've, we've, we've ridden the storm quite well-

Jay Kotak 1:53:05 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:05 ... through three of these ones, because I think we've been-

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:07 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:07 ... a little bit more prudent.

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:08 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:09 Right?

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:09 Do you think this funnel of money which came into India, EdTech, many other sectors in the last decade, when, say, the cost of borrowing in the West was a fraction of what it wa- what it is now?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:22 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:22 Maybe it was 1%, now it's maybe 5.5%. How long do you think this winter will continue for? And when you look at large numbers of companies like SoftBank and, uh, uh, Temasek, and all these big guys, Tiger Global, they all seem to be down so much. What do you think will incentivize the fresh risk-chasing money to come into India, and in turn, into EdTech?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:51 So I think a lot of that money came in, actually-

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:53 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:53 ... came in from the East Coast-

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:54 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:54 ... but went to the West Coast guys.

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:55 Mm, mm.

Jay Kotak 1:53:55 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:55 Because most of the money got spent-

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:57 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:57 ... on advertising, and, and-

Jay Kotak 1:53:58 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:53:58 ... spending out of the West Coast guys-

Nikhil Kamath 1:53:59 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:00 ... in America.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:00 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:00 So actually, some sense of in and out happened there.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:03 Mm-hmm.

Jay Kotak 1:54:04 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:04 I wouldn't put Temasek, and SoftBank, and Tiger all in the same bracket.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:06 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:06 One is a sovereign fund-

Jay Kotak 1:54:07 Yeah, I would say the same thing

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:08 ... one is a lot more individually run.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:10 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:10 One is, uh, got a great track record.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:12 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:12 No stan- sense of judgment on any of them.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:13 Actually, not Temasek. I'm talking about Tiger and SoftBank.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:16 Yeah, Tiger, SoftBank, whatever else. See, I think it's a little bit like if I'm-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:20 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:20 ... if I gave you this example, if I wanna do eight risks, because the two that I wanna win, I win at 40X.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:25 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:26 That's a point of view, and if you wanna play that, you will have good years and you'll have bad years. You may have good five years, and 10 bad years.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:33 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:33 But in- eventually, if you're looking at that 20X, 30X, 40X, they may want to do exactly what they want to do.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:39 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:40 And today, a lot of these people are burnt in the public markets-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:44 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:45 ... not in the private markets.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:46 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:46 But the question of yours was a lot more in the private market-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:48 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:48 ... than the public market.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:49 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:50 So we have to keep that in mind also.

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:51 There's nothing listed really, right, in India, in the EdTech sector?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:54 No, no, no. But the, the, the-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:56 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:56 ... the mindset of these-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:58 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:58 ... and the winter has set in-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54:59 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:54:59 ... because in the public markets, they've lost more money, much less than they've lost in the private market.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:04 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:04 And that has created this perceived gap in knowledge.

Jay Kotak 1:55:07 But this is not just about EdTech, this is about-

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:09 Yeah

Jay Kotak 1:55:09 ... tech in general.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:10 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 1:55:10 I think what will also happen is that, um, even, even when the winter is over-

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:16 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:55:16 ... the, the-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:17 January

Gaurav Munjal 1:55:17 ... disciplined ways, the disciplined ways of building companies will come back-

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:22 Mm

Gaurav Munjal 1:55:22 ... and people will start building higher valued companies, which m- with much less capital. Well-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:28 But why do we classify winter with the inflow versus... The winter will be if-... the market is closed down.

Jay Kotak 1:55:35 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:36 The prospects of consumer spending-

Jay Kotak 1:55:37 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:37 -has slowed down.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:38 That would be a snowstorm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:39 Sorry?

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:40 That would be like a snowstorm.

Jay Kotak 1:55:41 No, but Ronnie-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:41 That would be everything.

Jay Kotak 1:55:43 But, but the thing is, for a lot of young people-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:45 So I don't know why at the starting gate, everyone's calling it the winter just because-

Jay Kotak 1:55:48 It's really not.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:49 Some people are giving them-

Jay Kotak 1:55:50 No, no, but the situation in Bangalore is quite bad in the startup ecosystem.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:55 No, no, but what you guys are not understanding is-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:55:56 Maybe in the skyscraper.

Jay Kotak 1:55:57 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:55:58 No, no.

Jay Kotak 1:55:58 No, uh, no, it is, it is, but it also-

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:01 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:56:01 Compare it to two thousand and nineteen-

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:03 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:56:04 It's probably not nearly as bad. It's just compared to '21.

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:07 Mm. No, see, a lot of people who want to start up, the first check that they get is ... will be from, like, an angel fund or an institutional fund.

Jay Kotak 1:56:17 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:56:17 Or not.

Jay Kotak 1:56:18 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:56:19 The nine out of ten people that we're talking about don't get a check to start, but that doesn't mean they don't start.

Jay Kotak 1:56:25 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:56:25 And I think we should be just a little bit-

Jay Kotak 1:56:27 Yeah

Ronnie Screwvala 1:56:27 ... realistic about that thought process.

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:29 So you are saying that it is possible to build a fairly large tech company without raising capital?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:56:35 I think in media, one did it for eight years without raising one rupee.

Jay Kotak 1:56:40 Mm. And, and, and we have-

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:41 Zerodha, Zerodha as an example.

Jay Kotak 1:56:43 We're sitting with Zerodha.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:56:44 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:44 But, but it-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:56:45 What, what... Yeah, exactly. What-

Nikhil Kamath 1:56:46 But ninety percent of the large tech companies, and especially I'm talking about tech, where you have to have some sort of an advantage to scale fast, to speed fast, I think venture capital plays a huge role.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:56:58 What is fast? What is fast? It's a subjective definition created by philosophy-- velocity set by some other people around.

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:05 But ours is not fast. I've been doing the same-

Jay Kotak 1:57:07 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:07 ... job I do today for nineteen years, full-time trading, investing.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:57:11 And people are losing the thing, that it takes time.

Jay Kotak 1:57:14 Yeah, it takes time.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:57:14 It takes time.

Jay Kotak 1:57:15 It takes time.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:57:15 You lose the value of it takes time, you're in trouble.

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:18 Like, exact same job, same schedule, same routine, everything, same for nineteen years.

Jay Kotak 1:57:24 Even big tech took time.

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:25 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:57:25 And you know, one of the things I look at big tech, I look at Google or Facebook, the founders still own large shares.

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:30 Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Kotak 1:57:30 Because they didn't dilute the way current founders are diluting.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:57:34 It's crazy!

Jay Kotak 1:57:35 It's not-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:57:35 Who are you working for?

Jay Kotak 1:57:36 You know, where at Series E, you're at nine percent.

Nikhil Kamath 1:57:39 Mm.

Jay Kotak 1:57:39 Okay,

Jay Kotak 1:57:40 guys, again, mindful of eight minutes or whatever we have left, maybe take the last couple of minutes each to say what have you learnt that you wish you knew before starting UpGrad, before starting Unacademy, before everything Jay has done in the realm of education, something for people starting off today to watch out for. And if you had two choices to change about education overall, what would they be?

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:11 So I think, um, I've said this before, and I'll say it again: we don't have the liberty for hindsight.

Jay Kotak 1:58:19 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:19 And I think anyone starting up needs to understand that, that if the formula is one about hindsight-

Jay Kotak 1:58:23 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:23 ... it doesn't happen that way.

Jay Kotak 1:58:25 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:25 If in nineteen ninety-five-

Jay Kotak 1:58:26 Mm, mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:26 ... I did this, this, and this, I would have been a ten X value of my media company.

Jay Kotak 1:58:30 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:30 Doesn't-- I could have been bankrupt-

Jay Kotak 1:58:31 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:31 ... because five other things would have happened there.

Jay Kotak 1:58:34 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:34 So to me, it is a learning process.

Jay Kotak 1:58:36 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:36 It's an iterative process.

Jay Kotak 1:58:38 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:38 And if you look at it always fast-forward and forward-

Jay Kotak 1:58:41 Mm, mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:41 ... versus hindsight, you're going to be able to actually better your odds of success.

Jay Kotak 1:58:47 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:47 So for anyone who's looking for what would I do in the rearview mirror-

Jay Kotak 1:58:51 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:51 ... the, the, the possibility is that you'll do a lot more wrong if you keep looking in the rearview mirror.

Jay Kotak 1:58:56 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:58:56 Because what-

Nikhil Kamath 1:58:56 One thing I gather from you a lot is you take a certain amount of pride in the wrong that you have done, and you speak about it.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:05 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:06 I think ha- So in a way, what you're also saying is not having a ego about the mistakes you have made is very important.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:13 But we don't talk about it that often-

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:15 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:15 ... and we should talk about it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:16 Yeah.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:16 I'm not saying we need to bang the table about it, but we do need to talk about it. And I think part of what we are thawing the icebergs here-

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:23 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:23 ... of the ne- not the next thousand entrepreneurs, but the next million entrepreneurs are going to come if you thaw the iceberg.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:28 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:29 Not throw in a couple of ice cubes.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:31 Mm. Nice. Nice. And two things you would like to change about education overall? Two specific things. What needs to change? What will likely change? Okay, give me one that needs to change, one that-

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:41 I think there is a certain level of, of structure in the formal education space-

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:45 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:45 ... which we need to respect.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:47 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:47 Because if we go disrupting that-

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:49 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:49 ... it's not going to be there. We need to layer it, we need to augment it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:53 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:53 We need to have a much more rounded element to that-

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:55 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:55 ... that thought process.

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:56 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:56 That will make a world of a difference-

Nikhil Kamath 1:59:58 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 1:59:58 ... because it'll get people at a much younger age to be a lot more aware.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:02 Mm-hmm.

Ronnie Screwvala 2:00:03 And second, I think in education, whether we like it or not, there is the haves and the have-not.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:06 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 2:00:07 And I emotionally-

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:09 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 2:00:10 ... and passionately believe that if you fix the have-nots a little bit more dis- proportionately-

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:15 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 2:00:15 ... we'll all be in a different marketplace. So for me, at this stage in my life, market making-

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:20 Mm

Ronnie Screwvala 2:00:20 ... and opening up at scale is quite an obsession.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:23 Mm.

Ronnie Screwvala 2:00:23 So I think those are two macro points for me.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:26 Jay?

Jay Kotak 2:00:27 So for me, two themes: one is theme at a system level, and one is at an individual level. At a system level, I think I agree with Ronnie, don't break parts of what is traditional.

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:41 Mm.

Jay Kotak 2:00:41 Simply widen the number of people that can access what is traditional. For me, a far bigger problem is not necessarily the quality of the education. I'm coming from outside the EdTech sec- sector, so it's easier for me to say that-

Nikhil Kamath 2:00:58 Mm

Jay Kotak 2:00:58 ... because I'm, uh, not, you know, biased towards, uh, necessarily thinking the opposite way, maybe I'm wrong. And widen, just giving everybody more, making it meritocratic, and then allowing merit-

Nikhil Kamath 2:01:12 Mm

Jay Kotak 2:01:13 ... to take course. The challenge right now is that most people struggle to get access to basics that make even access to education and then the brand name kind of spiral. So that, for me, is the individual side, uh, at the system side. At an individual side, it's much more, again, the theme we've touched on, learning from people, not learning from courses and learning, uh, from books. I think learning from people is... it's-... harder to surround yourself, but at some level, we make decisions-

Nikhil Kamath 2:01:43 Mm.

Jay Kotak 2:01:44 -of who we surround ourselves with.

Nikhil Kamath 2:01:46 Mm.

Jay Kotak 2:01:46 And those are semi-conscious, at least. I know some people have less of a choice in that.

Nikhil Kamath 2:01:50 Mm-hmm.

Jay Kotak 2:01:51 And I think that that, to me, is lifelong learning after the age of, at the latest, thirty, but for most people, twenty-three or twenty-four, is learning from people.

Nikhil Kamath 2:02:01 Yeah. Gaurav?

Gaurav Munjal 2:02:03 Can you repeat the question once?

Nikhil Kamath 2:02:05 One thing you've learned in your journey, in the journey around education, that you would like to share so the new budding entrepreneurs can keep that in mind. Second part of the question: If you could change arbitrarily, one, one very fundamental first principles kind of thing about education, what would you change?

Gaurav Munjal 2:02:27 So I'll start with the second one first.

Nikhil Kamath 2:02:29 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 2:02:29 What I would like to change is that even today, I think, um, everybody ... There is a lot more focus on content and education, et cetera. Uh, I like to believe that technologists are not coming in the sector. I like to believe that the way, uh, a Duolingo has solved a problem, where it's a completely, um, computer-generated program or a game teaching people, and obviously there is human intervention that has gone into it. Um, or there is Roblox, where every, um, third kid is using in US, like, uh, uh, or playing a game on Roblox.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:06 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 2:03:07 I think people are not building enough technology stuff. So one thing I would like to change is that I would request entrepreneurs that education is a big sector. Uh, don't just be stuck in fintech. Um, look beyond fintech. Every other founder I meet is: "I'm doing fintech this, I'm doing fintech that." Yes, fintech is a big market.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:26 And fintech is fun.

Gaurav Munjal 2:03:27 Yeah. Yes. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:28 [chuckles]

Gaurav Munjal 2:03:28 Yes, fintech is a big market, but, um, there are other sectors also where, um, a large part of, uh ... large companies will be created. The ... And, and, and, and, and second thing, which I have a huge problem with, is that, uh ... Uh, and this is nothing to do with EdTech. This is more, uh... I, I think the ambition of founders in India is very low.

Nikhil Kamath 2:03:51 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 2:03:52 I think, uh, I see some co-founders exiting after taking some minor secondary. I see, uh, people getting satisfied very less. But let's say if you, if you, if you look at, uh, Deepinder of Zomato or Bhavish of Ola, and the kind of aspirations they have for their act two, amazing aspirations. So what, what we also ... Like, we want super-duper ambitious people and technology people to, uh, also come to EdTech and, uh, be ambitious in general. So, um, and, and, and more than education, see, I believe that, yes, peer-to-peer learning and people- learning from people is good, uh, but my view is, which is completely different, I, I don't think that's practical. I don't think that's what will scale. Duolingo now has sixty million MAUs. There is no other person on the app. Um, there are eight million paid users. This is from their last earnings report. Stock is trading at fifteen next revenue, six billion dollar company. No human is involved, no social experience. There is gamification and a computer teaching you. And I think lifelong learning, though theoretically sounds good, I don't think anybody wants to ... L- You have to solve for motivation. In an ideal scenario, I ... Yes, people should do lifelong l- learning, but they don't. So how do we solve for motivation that, you know, you study psychology for learning and not because you want to crack this examination? So I think these are the few, uh, thoughts that I have. But ... And one last prediction I would like to make is that we don't realize that how much AI will change education.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:35 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 2:05:35 I think every ... Most of the stuff that we discussed today would look irrelevant twenty year from now. And we don't realize that five years from now, every household will have a robot.

Nikhil Kamath 2:05:45 Mm.

Gaurav Munjal 2:05:45 Like personal computers changed everything. If you look at the latest product that Ring has introduced, the doorbell cam. Now, Ring has a drone which can, while you are away, access your entire home, and what Tesla Bot is doing. I think we are maybe three or four or five years away, where every household in the world, especially starting with the, uh, uh, people who can afford it, will have a robot. So I think that will also change a lot of things.

Nikhil Kamath 2:06:11 Superb. My thing, I can paint a optimistic pic- picture or a very dystopian one. I'm going to pick the latter. Uh, I feel like the modern construct of a family: husband, wife, child, school-

Jay Kotak 2:06:28 Or non, or non-child.

Nikhil Kamath 2:06:29 Or non-child, is not, is not the best to fester education in the manner that I would dream for it to be. I think if you go back in time before organized religion and many other things, each kid learned from the community, and he fixated upon what skill set he might like in the community, what he would like to inculcate. I feel the modern notion of a family, we tell our kids what religion to follow, we tell our kids what it is okay to study, maybe not consciously, but subconsciously. Uh, I don't know how this will work, but going back to a world where the mimetic influences of the world are lesser on the child, and the child is allowed an environment to be more organic about the learning choices he makes, is something that should change about education. Make sense?

Jay Kotak 2:07:33 Yeah. Well put.

Nikhil Kamath 2:07:34 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 2:07:35 Done. So thank you, everyone.

Jay Kotak 2:07:37 Thank you.

Nikhil Kamath 2:07:37 And, uh, look forward to seeing you guys next time. Thank you, guys, for coming.

Jay Kotak 2:07:41 Thank you.

Gaurav Munjal 2:07:43 Thank you. [clapping]

Nikhil Kamath 2:07:43 Hi, I'm Nikhil Kamath. I'd love to know what you thought of the episode. Uh, comment, like, and subscribe, and thank you for watching.