How to 10x Your Value in the A.I. Era | ft. Kunal Shah

Samidha Sharma 0:03 [upbeat music] Thank you everybody for, uh, coming today. The markets don't really-- it, it didn't give me the confidence that I'm gonna see so many people here. But, um, we have with us Kunal Shah, and, uh, we're discussing wealth creation in the age of AI, who wins and who doesn't. Um, just a little brief, you know, I, I, I've always felt that Kunal is somebody who has very sharp understanding and takes on, uh, mostly everything that concerns any of us. So super looking forward to this chat, Kunal. I wanna just start, you know, there-- I'm assuming most of the people here are already in the workforce or are prepping to be, or are mid-career professionals. I think this is a super relevant topic, right? And it sort of just ties back to the entire discussion on jobs and AI. Eventually, your jobs, you know, take you to creating wealth. So I wanna j-jump right in, ask you, where are you at when it comes to jobs and AI? I mean, there are two schools of thought. One which says it's sort of,

Samidha Sharma 1:26 uh, you know, this entire AI apocalypse is all fantasy, and then we see what we are seeing with all of these big companies cutting jobs. So address the elephant in the room. Where are you at?

Kunal Shah 1:39 Yeah. Uh, thank you so much. Uh, first of all, how many of you use, uh, any of the apps like ChatGPT or Gemini every day? Awesome. And how many of you have, uh, built one agent of your own so far? Okay, that's good. Uh, how many of you are concerned that you're gonna lose your job to AI? Okay, got it.

Samidha Sharma 2:04 Not, not too many, no?

Kunal Shah 2:05 Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good. Um, how many of you think that your colleagues are gonna lose their job to AI?

Samidha Sharma 2:11 [laughs]

Kunal Shah 2:14 Awesome. Awesome. Uh, I think this is a better, uh, understanding of what's really happening. So first of all, uh, let's break down what is really happening. Uh, uh, I mean, I'm old enough to tell you that I've lived a time where internet was not there in most of the workplaces, or computers were not there. And-

Samidha Sharma 2:32 What are you saying? You can't be.

Kunal Shah 2:34 Yeah, yeah.

Samidha Sharma 2:35 No, no, no.

Kunal Shah 2:35 I'm, I'm, I'm turning forty-seven in a few weeks, so I've been around.

Samidha Sharma 2:37 No, we, we-- I mean, I'm a few years younger, but I mean, come on.

Kunal Shah 2:42 Uh, yeah. When, when, when I went to my first job, there were no computers.

Samidha Sharma 2:44 We had Gmail all the while, Kunal.

Kunal Shah 2:46 No, not really.

Samidha Sharma 2:47 Okay.

Kunal Shah 2:47 You'll be surprised how long Gmail has been. Um-

Samidha Sharma 2:49 Then you're much older.

Kunal Shah 2:50 Yeah.

Samidha Sharma 2:50 But anyway.

Kunal Shah 2:51 So the thing is that if we are looking at that time, uh, internet made information accessible in the air, right? Like, now you could just search anything and get anything. AI has made intelligence accessible in the air, right? And this is a very hard to understand concept 'cause intelligence was a unique trait that we attributed to humans as species, and now you can just plug it up in the air and just suck it in and, and you can actually accelerate materially. The second thing is that we forget that the largest employer of the world is actually inefficiency.

Samidha Sharma 3:27 Correct.

Kunal Shah 3:27 It's, it's-- And, and what is happening is that the-- at the pace inefficiency is going away, right, the current jobs

Kunal Shah 3:35 are getting displaced or changed materially, right? Now, for example, uh, a lot of people worry about job layoffs. I think the thing we have to worry about is per capita income not growing, right? Because there are enough people in India who are still doing lift man job and ATM guard job, and they all have jobs, right? There are, there are, there are rickshaw drivers who are, are currently operating without maps and still on the street. They make less money than the people who have apps on the phone, but they exist. The thing is that the income delta between people who use technology and use AI and versus people who don't use AI is gonna be wide. The, the, the world has interesting ways to kind of keep people employed, but the, the real question we have to worry about is the per capita income growth. Uh, now coming to other topics is that a, a lot of us are waiting for our companies to teach us AI or some workshops to teach us AI or show up at this event and hopefully learn something about things. The truth is, everything is up there. If you are really keen to learn, you will figure out everything on your own. And I think the problem is there is a huge shortage of self-motivation, self-discipline to get things done because now every single thing is transparently available. You can build anything, you can create anything, you can research anything. The question is, how many people are actually using anything of these tools for better stuff? For example, a bulk of people are still using AI for frivolous use cases and, and not for what it is truly capable of. It's like-

Samidha Sharma 4:58 What, what do you mean frivolous use cases?

Kunal Shah 5:00 Well, I don't know. We are just still editing pictures and videos and, and, uh, uh, um, I don't know, talking to ChatGPT like a friend and, and, uh, getting rid of our real friends. Uh, uh, the thing is that this is real. How many of you talk to ChatGPT as a friend? Yeah, already. Uh, how many of you have friends who have talking to ChatGPT as a friend? Yeah, already quite a lot. Many of you are gonna be shy to talk about it, but it's quite a big phenomena. How many have done astrology on ChatGPT? Okay, good.

Samidha Sharma 5:33 Yeah.

Kunal Shah 5:33 How many of you have done therapy on ChatGPT? Okay, good. Uh-

Samidha Sharma 5:37 So a-are you saying that that's not a great use case and people should not be using?

Kunal Shah 5:43 Uh, so first of all, if we are talking about wealth, the most valuable wealth you have is time, and what you do with time becomes even more important than it was before. What I worry about is that, I don't know if you know this, Samidha, you, you must be tracking this data. India is now at 35GB per capita Per GB, sorry, 35GB usage per capita per month right now in India, right? That's much more than

Kunal Shah 6:10 any other country in the world, right? And 35GB usage requires a lot of time to be wasted.

Samidha Sharma 6:15 Correct.

Kunal Shah 6:16 Right? Uh, uh, uh, short videos and time pass and all of that stuff. The thing is that, that, uh, no matter who we are, right, Elon Musk, uh, Samidha, Kunal, everybody has only 24 hours. What we do with that time is becoming even more important for wealth to happen, right? And I think it has become extremely easy to also waste time in the world we live in right now. We have the same device that can make us super intelligent or super dumb very, very fast. Within, within weeks you can actually see yourself going opposite directions. So my worry right now is productivity as a concept. By, by the way, the word efficiency and productivity does not exist in most Indian languages. That vocabulary is not in our core DNA. We don't value time as much, and I think that is what's causing-

Samidha Sharma 6:57 You say that literally, like there is no word.

Kunal Shah 6:58 Yeah, there is no word for efficiency and productivity in, in, in any Indian language.

Samidha Sharma 7:03 Wow.

Kunal Shah 7:03 Yeah. Most of you can ChatGPT and find the answer, but you'll find that it's actually surrogate words, not actual word for it, because productivity and efficiency words came from indus- Industrial Revolution where time became valuable, and we are still to realize that. Uh, for example, most jobs in Western world are hourly jobs. Uh, we have never been paid an hourly basis, so our brain doesn't work in hourly mode.

Samidha Sharma 7:24 So what does all of this mean, uh, Kunal, when, you know, you look at the world right now and, I mean, we are watching it very closely. Uh, people in the tech world are super clued in. My observation is that it's literally 1% of the population which is really aware about how stark, you know, the, the chasm is between what we know and 99% people across the world are aware in terms of what AI is gonna do to their jobs, and wealth creation was ob- obviously a consequence of that. How do we fix

Samidha Sharma 8:04 this? And I know you and I were chatting about this and you said, "When has it ever been an eq- equal world in terms of, you know, wealth, et cetera?" But this is really stark, and it's in your face. Like, you know, there is this one constituency which is in Silicon Valley, just like how the gold rush happened in California, and they are so aware. They are the ones who are, uh, you know, beneficiaries of everything that's happening around AI, and then there is rest of the world. How do we keep up and sort of even get to partake in that wealth creation, which is definitely happening and will happen-

Kunal Shah 8:44 Yeah

Samidha Sharma 8:44 ... with AI?

Kunal Shah 8:45 Uh, I,

Kunal Shah 8:46 I would say China is not too far away. Uh-

Samidha Sharma 8:48 China is not, yeah

Kunal Shah 8:48 ... uh, and I think, uh, the, the gap is getting wider and wider in terms of just the sheer awareness. Uh, uh, uh, almost it's become hard to even keep up on a weekly basis what's happening to the world. Uh, and, and I think the gap is quite wide. In fact, when I meet people socially, like what they talk about AI seems so ancient because it was something from last year and, and, and last year feels like an ancient time now, right? Uh, so I think, uh, first is, uh, everything comes from intrinsic motivation, right? Uh, I, I, like I said, do we feel that paranoia? I, I think India has a very unique tendency when it comes to these situations, right? If you see, remember COVID, we had only two modes, apathy and panic. There was nothing in the middle, right? We didn't give a damn, and then we panicked like crazy, right? I think I feel we are going to go through the same phase with AI. Right now we are in a phase of apathy because it doesn't seem to be impacting us. We, we seem to be hearing that this is happening in some other markets here and there, but I think as soon as it gets started getting close, and, and there are some second, third order effect of that. For example, let's say... Let's, let's take an example of a bank. Banks today or financial services form 30 to 40% of India's market cap, give or take, right? In a bank, uh, a lot of stability comes from lending, and from lending it comes from IT, BPO jobs-

Samidha Sharma 10:05 Right. Yeah

Kunal Shah 10:05 ... uh, would form 30 to 40% of bank's book, right? Now, even if 10 to 15 to 20% jobs get impacted, the most safest part of the book starts getting impacted, which means the bank's book starts getting negatively impacted, which means 30, 40% of India's market cap gets impacted.

Samidha Sharma 10:22 I don't think anyone's talking about that yet.

Kunal Shah 10:24 Yeah, but the thing is that we don't think in... We don't discuss second order effects, right? We, we, we tend to just kind of stay at the surface level and, and, and our curiosity ends at, I don't know, maybe reading something quickly on a tweet and, and, and the depth of thinking of second order effect is missing. So let's say something like India, right? A lot of the jobs that were outsourced to India are actually significantly more likely to get impacted versus the jobs that were not outsourced to India, right? Because their complexities were different, and therefore you choose to delegate work. And, and Samidha talk, like talk about journalism right now, right? There are kind of things that now you can do, let's say, uh, what, what you would assign a junior person to do now can be done through a ChatGPT or an OpenAI or, or any of the tools right now, and therefore the gap is getting wider. So, for example, to be eligible to be... for a job, like the college graduates are gonna have even bigger struggle than they did before and, and you'll wonder that how many years you have to keep studying to keep being eligible for a job because now, uh, uh, there are these tools that can do things that are basic task-oriented, and that's where the judgment comes in, right? So but by design-

Samidha Sharma 11:29 It's super scary, right? I mean, that entry-level trap, um, how do you fix that? Because what you're saying is what all industries are talking about. It's just that not too many people have actioned it yet. But I mean, I'm assuming between the ages of 20 and 25 is actually when you hone skills to become a middle manager, then, you know, you rise up the ranks. If you don't get those people into the workforce, how do they even

Samidha Sharma 11:58 get to the second and third stage?

Kunal Shah 12:00 Yeah. Uh, and, and, and Samidha, we are talking about this today In May 2026 when AI is evolving exponentially every month. So by the time we talk about this in a year's time from now, the issue may get even more stark, and I think the, the, the issue is who's supposed to fix it? Uh, we have gotten addicted to somebody else solving this for us, that government will come and solve this for us, or my company will come and solve this for us, or my parents will come solve this for us, right? Uh, and, and, and I mean, it's funny, but a large majority of Indians are still doing arranged marriage, right? Uh, the point is that this is the real issue that we are in a time where everybody's on their own and they need to operate with very high agency, solve for themselves, become very, very good at things because now the time you need to become good at something has completely shrank through all of these tools. It's just that are you doing something about your time or not? And I think it's also the time you can waste your time the most. So the reason I worry about India specifically is that when you have such large data usage, when you have a large young population, right, when you have jobs that can potentially get impacted through any of these tools that are coming in right now at entry level, we, we are looking at the, the impact to kind of get more severe unless we kind of create a mission-oriented mindset saying that we need to ride this wave.

Samidha Sharma 13:23 But w- what is that, uh, that, you know, what is that space that we'll have to create? Because for the longest time, the services industry had the cost advantage in India. Uh, you know, and the ID and, you know, BPO industry is that. If that goes away, where, where are you-- where are we putting our graduates?

Kunal Shah 13:42 It's a good question.

Samidha Sharma 13:43 Where are we putting them?

Kunal Shah 13:44 You know, there's a line-- I, I used to run a BPO company before, uh, uh, which was a large outsourcing setup out of India for US companies. And I remember this line that all the American companies used to say that, uh, "Do what you do the best and outsource the rest." The thing is that the word outsource was not outsource to a country, it was outsource.

Samidha Sharma 14:04 Correct.

Kunal Shah 14:05 The thing is that the word outsource will get replaced to agents, outsource will get replaced to AI, outsource will get replaced to robots, and so on and so forth, right? And people will keep doing the best stuff themselves, right? Now, the question is that have we built resilient industries and capabilities that can survive? And, and the thing is that we, we have multiple issues to start with, right? For example, the, the female per capita growth, like, is not happening right now. Our per capita income is kind of lagging because female participation of labor is not to the level that the world is expecting us to have at, right? Uh, and, and we can say that it's improving, but the data is gonna show unless

Kunal Shah 14:42 say bank accounts or, or what percentage of women take a loan? What percentage of women-- Sorry, what percent of loan takers are women? What percentage of, uh-

Samidha Sharma 14:50 What, what number do you see?

Kunal Shah 14:51 I would be-- I would say my guess would be sub ten percent right now. Uh, uh, would be sub 20% for credit cards. Uh, uh, for AUM, uh, uh, across wealth would be even similar smaller numbers. So the thing is, how do you expect the country to get richer with one gender working, right? And it's never happened. Unless you find oil, uh, which will magically make all of us rich, but it's unlikely to happen. So we, we have to figure out a way to-- that every country has grown.

Samidha Sharma 15:17 What do you think are three actionable things at this point, uh, that one can look to do? I know you spoke about taking things in your hands. You should be building things. You should be using AI to kind of do things which are more productive. But, um, what should a 24-year-old be doing right now?

Kunal Shah 15:37 Yeah. I think, first of all, they have to accept that, uh, they cannot say, "I'm not very good with tech." There is not a single human being that can afford to say, "I'm not very good with tech," because every job-

Samidha Sharma 15:51 But Kunal, uh, Kunal-

Kunal Shah 15:51 ... is gonna get impacted

Samidha Sharma 15:52 ... it's also, you know, India is so diverse, it's also about the opportunities that come your way, right? It's, it's not so equal, and, and the access to tech, et cetera, is also-

Kunal Shah 16:03 I, I disagree with that completely. We have the highest smartphone penetration. We have the cheapest data. Uh, uh, if you can use something to waste your time on short videos, you can also spend some time to learn some tutorials on the internet. So that's a bullshit argument. Uh, uh, and, and we've gotten used to the excuses all the time. Like, everything is excuse. How about a person-

Samidha Sharma 16:20 I'm just saying devils a-advocate.

Kunal Shah 16:21 I, I know. But, uh, there are no-- I mean, unfortunately, devil is AI or not us anymore. Uh, uh, the-- it is also the opportunity that can accelerate us. Um, my, my s- other thing I would say is that we have to truly understand and become significantly

Kunal Shah 16:36 more ambitious than we are, right? I think the other issue is that we are looking for shortcuts to get wealthy versus really building substance in ourselves to become wealthy, right? And, and I worry about this for the country that if everybody thinks there is a lottery out there, and, and I'm speaking at a Groww event, uh, it sounds wrong when I say this, but, uh, uh-

Samidha Sharma 16:54 [laughs]

Kunal Shah 16:55 ... uh, uh, it, it is-- i-if you're expecting that some of these apps and investing will kind of get you wealthy, the answer is no. The mathematical odds of that are absolutely against you. You have to build substance in yourself, right? And the worry I have is that all of us have built a little bit more gyan before we build substance, right? We don't understand things deeply, but we have opinions about everything. Uh, a-and, and it's become-- it's, it's extremely easy to have opinions about things right now, right? It's very hard to build substance because substance requires you to have sacrifice. Uh, and I think sacrifice has become a harder problem for us. Like, we've become-- For example, uh, uh, it's controversial, I, I know that Narayana Murthy got a lot of flack for saying that we're not working hard enough. But how can a poor nation afford to work five days a week? I don't know. We have it. We even-- At CRED, we have five days a week, but I'm asking a question that how can we afford-

Samidha Sharma 17:45 Why have you not been able to implement six days?

Kunal Shah 17:47 No, no, I'm just saying that we don't need to. Uh, uh, as a company, we have found a way to otherwise build productivity and hire certain type of people. What I'm saying is that how do we accept to, uh, uh, that we want to get significantly wealthy, but we want to-- And, and by the way, here's the funny part. Uh, we compare ourselves to the Western world and say, we need to have five days a week, but we also have 25 holidays, which Western world doesn't have. The question is that we, we live in this convenient reality, but the thing is that the world is moving much faster, people's incomes are growing faster, their per capita income growth is happening. And, and my worry is that as a collective society, if we don't take the things in our hands, the, the worry is that every time the question is asked, what should we do? We should stop worrying about what we should do. People should be doing what they need to do, right? We are expecting some government scheme to come up or some, uh, program to come up or... Like, you, you think, like, startups can happen by creating a government scheme.

Samidha Sharma 18:40 No. Uh, so are you, are you saying that, you know, more people should sort of do their own companies and, uh, you know, start their own-

Kunal Shah 18:48 Whatever it takes. Become significantly more ambitious, become significantly more skillful, become significantly better at understanding things. Not look for shortcuts to get rich, not look for shortcuts to know something, and constantly be willing to create sacrifice, because without sacrifice, nothing of value is created.

Samidha Sharma 19:08 But do you think... I mean, and you have a lot of viewpoints on how society kind of influences all your choices, right? Um, do you think it's just got to do with the way people are brought up, the way, you know-- I mean, we have what? 1.5 million engineers who pass out every year. Now, they are, uh, conditioned to go to an engineering college. Most of them are unemployable. I mean, that's sort of a conclusion which has been drawn long back. How do you kind of suddenly change the way they think? Um, and, and if they-

Kunal Shah 19:46 Yeah. If I, if I point out at instances of your life where something m-major thing, it did not come from pleasant places. Something that did not work in your favor and that changed your trajectory, right?

Samidha Sharma 19:58 Yeah.

Kunal Shah 19:58 All of us have been through the exact same journey-

Samidha Sharma 20:00 Yeah. Yeah, yeah

Kunal Shah 20:00 ... and, and we can't pinpoint

Kunal Shah 20:02 exactly, but there were these very important events.

Samidha Sharma 20:03 But do you think it's now, like, the, the, the shock-

Kunal Shah 20:06 I, I think we, I think we are going to definitely have to let people go through that pain, and that's when any country evolves, right? Uh, if you saw, uh, when Japan took off, it after a major setback, right?

Samidha Sharma 20:19 Right.

Kunal Shah 20:19 So I think, uh, constantly protecting people from setbacks and reality, uh, has stopped the progress for the country. I believe that. And, and that's true for, uh, why, why do people who are successful, like, struggle to have kids who can be successful?

Samidha Sharma 20:37 Mm.

Kunal Shah 20:37 Because they take away the exact same thing that made them successful, which is struggle.

Samidha Sharma 20:42 Yeah.

Kunal Shah 20:42 Right? And that's exactly what we're doing to more and more people, that we'll, we'll find a way to, like, create protection. We'll create this. And, and, and now some of these things are important. For example, uh, uh, a 60%, 70% of population is already in some protection that we give and some, some kind of a support. And, and that's not a choice. We have to do that, right? But the truth is that for the rest of the 20%, 30%, especially the educated, uh, cohort, especially people who have access to all of these tools and the privilege, they need to take a lot more risk, right? And I think when I say the risk, it's, it's about actually building something with substance. And it doesn't have to be I'm saying that, "Oh, everybody starts to become entrepreneur." It doesn't work. But-

Samidha Sharma 21:20 Yeah

Kunal Shah 21:20 ... but the thing is that sometimes that experience makes you better at job if you fail at doing something, right? So I think we are-- I, I think what I would say is that we are living in a time where we need to take this mission as a personal mission, and don't wait for some India tagline to show up, and we'll show up under-- wearing their flag. This is a personal event. And by the way, I also believe AI is a time where we will truly, truly, truly become 10x. I think every single person over here has the opportunity to increase their income by 10 times. It was never possible before. This is real- really true now. It's just that, how do you apply? How do you meet such people? And another thing you talked about, uh, we, we, we are the average of five people we spend time with, right? India has another unique problem that we find it very hard to let go of people who are not growing, right? And we continue because-

Samidha Sharma 22:15 Are you, are you talking about from the corporate and the company side?

Kunal Shah 22:19 Generally, life. Uh, so we are, we are a very social, uh, society where it is considered to be a bad thing that we move on for better choices in terms of who we spend time with, right? But the truth is, you will be average of five people you spend time with. So the question is that if you feel bad about leaving the five people you spend time with to grow, then that's going to be limiting your own growth and, and nobody can be blamed for that except you.

Samidha Sharma 22:44 You know, I want you to talk a bit about-- I, I know you said you should not be waiting right now for government to be doing something, for your company to be doing something. But how prepared are companies at this point? Because, I mean, we are seeing a lot of news coming out of the US, 10%, 50. I mean, actually, the biggest tech companies which are deploying crazy amounts of capital in AI are also shedding workforce.

Kunal Shah 23:11 And very profitable companies.

Samidha Sharma 23:12 Very, very profitable companies like, you know, Alphabet, Meta. I mean, and, and then there's a long tail there. Where do you see India is? I mean, obviously you've, you've seen the debate where, uh, and, and this is relevant for a crowd like this, which is investing in the markets, that, you know, the FII outflows have been record high. And one of the theories is that there is no AI play for India for any of these investors to stay on. So in a country where there is no really big lab or a foundation lab like, you know, OpenAI or Anthropic, uh, there is very little, uh, you know, on, on any of these stacks that is playing out. How does the workforce suddenly independently become very AI native?

Kunal Shah 24:02 Yeah. It's a very good question. So I think some of that

Kunal Shah 24:05 what's going to happen is this is a little bit like game theory problem, right? Uh, let's take an example of banks because it's an easy topic for us to discuss, right? Let's say one bank decides to really accelerate on AI, the real metric that will move is revenue per employee will go through the roof, right? Today, if you look at across banks, the revenue per employee is very similar across all banks. Doesn't matter what their business is. As soon as AI becomes at important, the leverage or revenue per employee will shoot up. Now, what happens is if bank A's revenue per employee becomes two X, suddenly they will dislodge all the market shares on everything else because they figured out a way to become hyper-efficient, and suddenly every other bank will be forced. That's exactly what happened when, uh, computerization came or, uh, internet banking came. It just one bank took the leap, and suddenly everybody else-

Samidha Sharma 24:56 But, but Kunal, I just feel that took very long to play out. This is just happening at some crazy speed.

Kunal Shah 25:02 So, so Samidha that's a point. India, uh, if you look at what percentage of India's market cap is protected-- Sorry, what percent of India's public market profit pools are protected by some regulation, some license or public government companies? The answer is a very large chunk of it. So the impact may not be felt as quickly in the sectors that are protected through these categories, right? But the thing is that we will not be globally competitive anymore in many of these categories unless we are only dependent on local market. So in an international market, for example, if your manufacturing is not moving at the same level of AI, then people will stop outsourcing to India on manufacturing. Same for IT outsourcing, same for many other categories. So when it comes to global maxima, AI will matter. When it comes to local maxima, it will not matter as long as there is some protection through regulation, right? So you may take a while for it to play out over here because we are in, uh, this-- But the thing is, like I told you, if one sector gets impacted on jobs-

Samidha Sharma 26:00 But that's already happening in IT, right? I mean, you-

Kunal Shah 26:03 It's still early.

Samidha Sharma 26:03 It, it's sort of a global thing with what's happening with software and which is playing out here. But yeah, I mean, no India-specific sector you and I can discuss right now, which is, uh, where you, you can actually see impact of AI very evidently as of now.

Kunal Shah 26:21 Yeah. I would say the only place I see some evidence is I would say the tech startups and tech unicorns I see impact right now. Uh, and, and all of us-

Samidha Sharma 26:30 When, when you say impact, as in they are the ones who are, uh, Meesho said recently-

Kunal Shah 26:34 No, for example, let's say ninety percent of code at CRED-

Samidha Sharma 26:36 Code, yeah

Kunal Shah 26:36 ... is written by-

Samidha Sharma 26:37 Correct

Kunal Shah 26:37 ... AI and CRED now.

Samidha Sharma 26:38 Correct. Yeah.

Kunal Shah 26:38 Right? Now, this number would have been maybe five percent a year ago.

Samidha Sharma 26:42 Correct. Yeah.

Kunal Shah 26:42 Right? Now, five to ninety percent in a year's time is an absolutely crazy jump to make. But the thing is that we are still exploring building agentically and, and, and what you'll notice, Samidha, is very specific thing is happening. Ten percent of every tech startup's employees are becoming a completely different species to the ninety percent.

Samidha Sharma 27:02 Absolutely.

Kunal Shah 27:03 Because their productivity is now at this exponential scale, and, and they are actually finding every single person around them and every other process to be slow, right? So what you have to start doing is that if you to build an org around those people, number one, or you'll be disrupted by people who are built by only those people, right? So I think we're, we're entering a time where recognizing these people... And, and we used to make these jokes about what is a 10x engineer and what is 100x engineer. Now you see it all the time, right? So I think we, we are entering a time where-- And, and very s- very fascinating thing, when I speak to these

Kunal Shah 27:39 10x people right now and ask them, "What can I do to make your life better?" They're saying, "Can you remove my meetings?"

Samidha Sharma 27:45 Wow.

Kunal Shah 27:46 "Can I stop dealing with those other people in my team? Can I stop having people report to me? I'll do this work myself. I don't want people reporting to me. Uh, can I not talk to my manager? Can I, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, just work for five days nonstop and not work for five days? I'll get 3x more work done." These are, these are conversations I've not heard before. These are all real conversations right now.

Samidha Sharma 28:07 Could you, uh-- You know, I'm, I'm just curious how much of this is also translating into the output being better? Because again, this is also a conversation which everyone's talking about that, you know, if you look at the adoption, it's very high, but there are companies which are still not sure if, you know, the output is as good as the kind of monies that they're putting, you know, to have Anthropic or-

Kunal Shah 28:37 It's a little bit like the India traffic situation, right? Um, if you only make ten percent of the cars capable of running at thousand kilometers per hour, but they are kept in the same traffic where every other car is operating at ten kilometers per hour, then you will say traffic has not moved fast. And therefore, companies that are only hiring thousand kilometers per hour cars are moving much faster. If you keep very high displacement people with low displacement people or low displacement processes, you will not see the impact, and that's what you will see in large companies. In fact, large companies are at massive disadvantage right now because they're exactly like the India traffic situation right now.

Samidha Sharma 29:18 What an analogy. But, you know, just to kind of wrap things up here, Kunal, if you were, say, a twenty-four, twenty-five-year-old at a time like this, how would you do things, you know, differently, um, looking at the job situation, looking at what AI is doing to industries across the board? How would you plan your future in a way that you can build wealth? Um, I know it's sort of such an uncertain world. We, we don't know what's gonna happen in six months. But if there were, you know, there were a few things you could tell this audience.

Kunal Shah 29:57 Yeah. I think, uh, few things that I advise people, uh, who are in my social circle who are this age, I, I tell them that this is the best time to become extraordinary at learning anything in a very short period of time. If anybody tells you, "I'll take three years to learn something," they are anyways not gonna make it. You have to assume that any topic Any complex topic now you should be able to learn in days and weeks. Uh, and I'm not saying you'll become a doctor in two weeks. I'm, I'm very specifically talking about very specific skills you can learn. Number two, uh, who are you surrounded by? You- your average of five is a real thing. And, and if you're not surrounded by people

Kunal Shah 30:38 who are compounding... Think of, think of people around you as also stocks, and they have a growth rate. If their XIRR is not high, your XIRR will not be high as well. Just remember that. All, all of you understand that language, so I'll speak in that language, right? Uh, third is you have to think of yourself as a stock as well, right? What is your growth rate, right? And nobody's coming to solve your growth rate. You have to solve it for yourself, right? As an investor, do you go and help the companies that you have invested in? No, you don't. Same way, nobody's coming to help you, right? So increase your own growth rate. Uh, few other things. Uh, think of yourself as an app, right? If you have bugs, fix it. If you have features, enhance it, but keep releasing more often. Keep evolving. If you're going to stay the same, uh, the world is not gonna be waiting for you. The world is changing much faster. Um, another thing I would say, you are better off learning from younger people than older people when it comes to technology. You are better off learning from older people than younger people when it comes to values. So use these things correctly. Don't go in the wrong places for wrong things, right? Uh, when it comes to, uh, making choices on career, this, that, just remember, uh, be extraordinarily okay to adapt, right? I, I'll pa- end with one analogy. Uh, I was researching on, uh, AI tools that which species survived for hundred million plus years without changing too much. Like, what, what was a common thing in them? And the answer was crocodiles, sharks, and some crab. Uh, and the com-- three common things was the following: ability to change metabolism at will. They can be at this much, uh, energy or this much energy at will. They can choose to do that. Second was very high strike rate, which means when they go to attempt for a food, they get very high conversion. They have the deadliest bites, right? But they are mostly chilling otherwise, right? And the third was extreme adaptation. They can survive ice age, this, that, climatic catastrophes. So I think you have to think of these. If you want to be apex predator, this is the exact same things you have to follow and understand that the exact same thing will keep you there. If you struggle with any of these three things, you will struggle. For example, metabolism in this world means, "Oh, my kharcha is only this much." You have to be able to accept it, "Oh, I'll have one tenth of the kharcha and still survive and actually crush it." Second is that you will have very high conversion rate or, or things you attempt. When you choose to attempt something, you will absolutely grab this opportunity. So my, my... Another thing is, like, don't waste time at events. It's a bakwaas, right? Like, like, there's no time left, guys.

Samidha Sharma 33:16 Thanks, uh, Kunal. I, I think if, uh, people out here can even do a couple of those, they will hopefully come out shining. Thanks so much. Thank you, guys.

Kunal Shah 33:28 Awesome. Thank you.

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