Rise of the White Tiger | Life Entrepreneurship and Rise of India & Opportunity ft. Mukul Deora

hello everyone and welcome today I am having a conversation with mukul Diora a modern day renaissance man and serial entrepreneur thank you and today we're going to have a free-flowing conversation about three topics first life it's a very meaty heavy topic and how should you think about your objectives in life second we'll talk about entrepreneurship you have been successful in a lot of different disciplines across you know many different Industries so we'll talk about that and then third the rise of the white tiger and for people who don't know Wilco was a producer on the White Tiger that's how we connected and I think that's the the theme that's tying all of this together in terms of Life entrepreneurship and the third aspect in terms of the rise of the white tiger in Opportunity I'd love to discuss that so just to Jump Right In mukul I thought we could start by talking about life and what does it mean to live a life well

lived and I know you've lived a very interesting life how have you guided your own life or how have you set the objectives for your life sure the double life I mean especially in the context of I guess the white tiger is a good way to start this and as you know the the book in the movie a central conceit is about uh the rooster Coop um for some the rooster group as in a um a cage that that we are trapped in for a lot of people like balram in the movie The Cage is is real it's it's like it's it's solid it's four walls but for for most of us you know we'll be watching this it's it's in our minds actually um so I guess giving that as a context we could say that maybe a life well lived is uh one where you are um it's tempting to say that you've broken

out of your cage but you know as you know that there's so many cages you know and and as the minute you read somewhere you've got to go somewhere else and that's the nature of the human mind so I would say that you're continuously testing the limits and the boundaries of of your cage slash your Consciousness right I think that's what you know maybe is a life well lived I actually think about it kind of from two perspectives I love to get your take on my interpretation of a life well lived but the first way that I think about it is basically in the context of a famous quote from Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs had once said that the most so he was in like I think this was when he was working at next and he was in the lunch break room he's and he asked the people in the lunch break room who is the most powerful person in the world and they're like I don't know he's like it's a Storyteller the Storyteller is

the most powerful person in the world and so from that perspective I kind of think that living a life well lived is living a interesting story right and to some degree it's like facing in in a story typically comes in three acts right and so for if if you are able to experience a life with challenges and overcoming those challenges and having interesting things happen in your life for me that is one way that I interpret living a life well lived in the second way that I think about that is in the context of the white tiger and to your point on the rooster coop I feel like there is an aspect of living your life in which you're able to achieve your full potential right and so I I feel like the ability to do something meaningful and break out of your set of limitations is another way

of thinking about um living a life well lived I mean Steve Jobs is full of great quotes yeah um and I love that you know boblin was one of his idols as he is one of mine and uh so many Quotes come to mind you know like boblin's quote he not busy being born is busy dying is beautiful but um yes storytelling is very important and everyone and Apple has been amazing at telling a story and everybody must have seen Steve Jobs presentation uh you know the one they did it for apple and you know all the different ones the defined ones and all that stuff um but I guess it starts with the story that you um tell yourself every day because we are storytellers to the world but actually the the real story that we have to work on is the one we tell ourselves when we get up every morning and we encamped it in our heads throughout the day and it's a mantra that we don't know about our

subconscious Mantra that that actually shapes the world around us so that would be more of a recipe for change maybe in a way but yeah I think I think that's the starting point of of any life well lived is like what is the story going on in your head due to your circumstances uh uh the way you are brought up your family situation you know your financial situation these are all I think uh massive influences on us as we you know grow grow up and you know embark on what is called a career which often doesn't make any sense uh but when you look back you kind of try to see some thread in it but there may not be any threat yeah so like kind of the way that I think about the rooster Coupe is in two parts so the first is it limits human potential so having access to opportunity being able to

fully realize what a human being is capable of becoming and then the second part is like finding your truth like being able to kind of being limited not just based upon your potential but fully like trying to understand what you actually want from life and in that context I think a lot of people are confused I was confused so I there was a part there was a time in my life where I thought well the objective of my life is just to have kids make money and then die and um and then I actually make sense I I read this essay from Clayton Christensen uh who who wrote this essay how will you measure your life after reading that essay you know one of the things he talks about is you know when you're on your deathbed and looking back on your life you know what will how will you value your life how will you measure that you have lived a good life and in

that context I'm like well I want to actually try to do something meaningful so I think different people have different truths it might be um based upon the career that you want you want to just make a lot of money do you want to live a life of meaning but for different people it could be different things and people have different choices but I'm not sure if if if people have really deeply reflected and know what they want out of their life and are going towards that goal or are they just kind of living life like you're you're on a on a treadmill and you're just like waiting until you die or you're just you're in a race you're I like to think of one of my friends used to go to the races and and bet and he was a bit of a philosopher and we used to talk about it and our discussion was are you riding your own horse are you just a jockey on someone else's horse exactly on a horse that your father or your mother or or what you've seen in the movies that has

created for you um I mean I guess the answer to that is you it sounds very preachy to say but you've just spent a lot of time I mean doing I think is very important for me personally um I learn by doing so yeah um and I think what I've seen is that um keep doing the beauty today because of technology is that you can you can do so much today you know when when I was younger things were very boxed and constrained but today you have you have many options and you can do um smaller versions of things you don't really have to as uh you know bet the farm on it you know you bet the tractor on it and uh try different things if you find something interesting to get an internship there or talk to the people who you think are you know have done something in an area that you that you like very much so I think a large part is Discovery because you don't just uh I think we're all we all especially when I go to college and everything people are like okay now what do I do it's like

this decision yeah that I have to take and and there's this it's kind of linked to this uh I think this illusion of the permanence of some some goal or some place that you have to go I think that's just how we all are we all think that there's somewhere that we have to reach and and that's it doesn't seem to be the right way to think because there isn't the it's it's really the journey not not where you have to reach so how do you keep you know learning along the way by trying different things and doing different things then it's only then that you really know do you like doing something that you thought was amazing or is the goal that you have in your head realistic or not are you good at it or not um is there a Marketplace uh you know I think these three things are very important together there's something that you're passionate about there's something that you're good at doing uh you have to have you know some very solid skills and the third is is someone going to pay you for for that

yeah and and you have no idea of knowing that until you try different things along the way right and maybe to close the loop on this topic in in this area of discussion I want to ask you so Michael you've done a lot of interesting things in your life from music to some business um you know I I'm wearing this hat yes I just noticed I just noticed that nice one I should have won a t-shirt um but I'm good camouflage on so it's kind of there so for you if you were to go through that exercise okay so like you're let's say you're you're at the end of your life looking back what would how would you value your life and I actually think you've done like just producing the movie The White Tiger it's it's provided a lot of value for life for a lot of people thank you there's been um a lot of things that I've had to think about more deeply after watching that movie but so I you know so for me I'm a fan and I think you've done a lot

of great things but for you when you value your life what are the metrics or how do you how would you evaluate your life and to consider that you've lived a life well lived actually it's it's pretty simple if you're ready to meet your debt you know with the quantity and I think that's that's where that's what I would consider that I've lived my life well okay if I'm if I'm if I'm truly at peace dying I think that would mean that the sum of everything of all my experiences has led me to understand that this is it this is my time and you know uh hasta la vista baby yeah and can I is this two persons with this thing there but yeah but can I ask and are you religious or I know I'm not

religious um but I I meditate I try to meditate every day I try to follow some last 20 30 years I've been trying to do some spiritual practice or the other um okay which is where this comes from actually uh because in one of the practices that I follow it's that's what they say that if you if you keep doing it you will you know you'll be at you'll be fine with with your death you won't have a problem with you'll lose you'll reduce your attachment to your physical self I think so I guess that would be a life well lived uh ultimately you know you love your family you love your material possessions you worked hard for them um you worked hard for fame recognition um what else is there you know relationships Fame material possessions Health But ultimately it's all going on you know it's bye bye so if you can accept the true ephemeral nature of

of being and if you've learned to accept that that's really a life well lived because on the other side just to just to be clear if you haven't accepted that then none of this matters on the day of your deathbed which is what you're talking about because you'll be a frightened person probably if you haven't accepted that that I am ephemeral you know and I'm part of something else or whatever you know whatever religion or whatever you follow but if you haven't accepted that then actually nothing matters right whatever your life doesn't matter at that second if you're not at peace with you know your yeah and maybe another way of framing what you're saying is to be at people pretty serious there to be at peace it's almost like not living with regret would you say that yeah I mean definitely that that could help it as well um if you if you have regret then you definitely haven't reached that point for sure because it means you're living

in the past um and you haven't really you know got anywhere if you're living in the past and and most of our problems come from um taking the past and pulling it into the prison and saying what if the past things happened and what are they going to do to me now how could I mean that better as well as looking at the future and bringing that into the present as well and worrying about the future so that's what is the opposite of being present is right but of course and in the light of this conversation as as an entrepreneur you have to study the past and to some level be able to you know look in your crystal ball for the future otherwise how are you gonna build a business and make the Benjamins um so there's there's a there's a business

side and there's a personal side but on a personal side yeah you should really try to live in the present as much as you can you know which is much easier said than done so just kind of Shifting now to entrepreneurship and you know you've been very successful in terms of music you had never produced a movie before and you won I produced one I produced I produced an Hindi language movie um 15 years ago okay so you did that but then you went to Hollywood and produced something with Netflix and you know you were successful in business and now you're in high tech entrepreneurship so so maybe could you talk about uh how you have been successful in some of these different disciplines and it seems like there there's there's some kind of there's something that you're doing in in terms of whether it's some part of your personal character or some skills that you have that has allowed you to be successful in these different disciplines and maybe you can speak about that or speak about your approach

to attacking these different kinds of business okay sure um it's always interesting because I mean it is true I mean when when people ask me what what do you do or what have you done I just I just smoke you know very often and I don't know they probably think I'm not a very nice person but I can't help it because I'm like oh God I have to tell them do I have to tell them everything or do I not have to tell them because that's really that's the truth of the the situation very often I just say oh I produce this movie a year ago and they're like oh that's a real blah blah blah and that's good and then they'll always ask me what's the next thing you're doing I'm like well I'll make any more movies so and then I have to explain to them a little bit more about the whole thing because um yeah well I don't know I mean I just I when I was younger I knew that I wanted uh to be I wanted to be free that was a very important thing for me actually I think that's why the white tiger resonated me so much when I was young

I didn't know what I wanted to do one part of me wanted to make music one part of me like like business and you know entrepreneurship but but I knew that I wanted to be free and money meant freedom for me that was that was very clear in my head that if I if I didn't earn money I would not be free I would not be free to travel around the world and you know do whatever I wanted to do basically um and that was a very big motivating factor for me when I when I was younger um it made me study business management not something I I loved but I I kind of made myself do it um to learn about um so that was a bit of a dreamer as a kid really I used to read I loved reading and and and science as well but I was more of a dreamer so to get into the practicalities of life and money you know as a means to understand as much as we can what is money as a means of you know freedom yeah and and and some kind of there is a

value that it has in in terms of how you live your life on one level so just understanding that uh really required a lot of a lot of hard work for me um and um so I started you know various businesses my my first job was with this company called bertos man in Germany I was uh 22. I was the assistant to the CEO and uh I somehow managed to convince them to to come to India to set up a business uh and uh and I had a joint venture with them so I was like I was 23 I think and and and I had I don't remember 26 joint mental embarrassment to this 20 billion dollar conglomerate with the division of theirs and I brought them to Mumbai and we had a sales office and and I learned a lot about uh manufacturing you know working with them uh and with within Germany as well where the headquarters was I lived there for Europe um and that gave me the impetus to start my own packaging business uh

um which I did um and again it's a mix of being I think an entrepreneur has to be somewhere uh you know he has to be a dreamer he or she has to have to be dreamers or you know foolhardy on some level because if you're only in a cynical and you think you know everything it's tough I mean you have to you have to take that leap somewhere and uh you know you see a gap in some area and you just jump into it and that's what I did um and I I took a loan and I bought this big machine and a bunch of machines and it took a long time for the business to stabilize um and while I was doing that I still had this deep yearning uh to make music as well you know it had to I had to do it I would die if I didn't do it it was really like that I would I used to look out of the window in my office at the Sunset and my heart used to sink and I used to be like I used to say have I sold my soul so cheaply because now now it's firstly there's so many books on

self-help and and you know and and and multiplicity and what you can do as a you can be this and you can be that but when I was young you couldn't do anything you had to do one thing I mean that was nobody thought you can do anything really so in my head I was like I want to be an artist but I have to make money but how do I do it so I had a lot of angst for many years of my life because it was like do I do this do I do that do I do this do I do that and I think that feel my creative process a lot uh with my music and my art um yeah I mean success I mean yeah I did it I'm very happy they did well I I enjoy doing it I I like to get into the details of what I do I think that helps a lot in anything I do even as a film producer I I write scripts as well um I'm I'm you know I'm on set every day I'm involved in every aspect of everything really um so I I think I think that's very important for me at least like anything I do um even with what I'm doing now in Tech uh I like to get into the details of everything and to some level understanding everything that's

happening otherwise uh otherwise I know that I'm not interested in it and and then you're just not geared for success I mean anyway success is so hard but if you're not going to be involved in the nitty-gritty uh if you know you were saying what you like you were asking if I had some you know strategies or mantras I don't have anything like that I don't think but one thing definitely I see so many people who aren't that detail-oriented and I think nothing's gonna happen if you're not detail-oriented because you have to know the nuts and bolts of what you're doing and and the same for for for what we're building right now you know we spend a year and a half you know looking at um web 3 um AR VR um um you know last last year and a half and and and didn't really feel that they were ready yet in any way um and which is where we are right now finding white space in Social love I think I think also for me um Community has always been a very

interesting thing how to connect to people how to bring people together we did that uh in the big in the beginning with with my music stuff with film as well um um even in some of our realistic projects we try to make it Community oriented as much as you can um so I think that that was a theme that that played through for me uh Community uh Network effects how how to use them in the best way possible are and minimizing a big theme in my life is minimizing friction in in everything I do in my everyday life in every minute almost of my life I try to minimize friction make everything efficient and try to do that with the people around me who work with me as well and I think that helps a lot uh to get more things done to be more focused um these are just things that that there's a lot there that you mentioned maybe I could for the purpose of our audience and especially younger folks

who might I rambled a bit well but let me try to but I think there's a lot a lot there that I I think some some people could take take away from so kind of going back you mentioned that you first started by learning specific skills that you thought you needed to be successful so that notion of understanding required skills and putting in hard work and you know I think that was one thing that you mentioned I think another thing you mentioned was um being a dreamer or basically having big Ambitions and just for some people I think in going back to the white tiger that rooster Coupe of limiting people's opportunity or Ambitions where you at 23 were proposing a joint venture with a billion dollar Corporation so I think having that ambition and having like high goals for yourself I think was the second thing that you mentioned another thing you mentioned was the note and just just to add to that because like you said to explain for the younger people yeah um

and now I'm remembering everything and and I unfortunately or fortunately I didn't have any I wasn't blessed to have any great mentors in my life who I knew okay um so it was kind of lonely in a way if I had to look back you know there was me reading and thinking that was that was my life really um which is why I value community so much I think um and why I'm so excited to do this with you as well um and I think what helped me was that you you don't have to find someone it can be books that you read you know read stuff uh for me music was a very big thing you know hearing quotes from different people uh Break On Through The Other Side from the doors I'm just saying uh you know various things like that really put me on my way to be like okay there's more to life than what I've been dealt right uh I can you know I can do whatever I want and it's through all these quotes and mantras if you want from you know sources that I've not made any of

them obviously even from music or film or so find your inspiration from different places I would say because there is inspiration everywhere and really use that to uh you know just to charge you up basically and and make you crazy okay enough to say I'm gonna try this you know I'm gonna I was 22 and I'm gonna go to the this division of bellism and this they're all like 60 year old Germans out there and say hey why don't we do this thing in India and they were like what's wrong with this kid you know I had long hair and you know but yeah sometimes sometimes it works so hard work in acquiring required skills uh second was high ambition and not limiting yourself third was deep thinking and reading research fourth you mentioned just paying attention to all the details that are required for something to be successful and then I think the last thing you had mentioned was more around well the two two other things you mentioned were around building a network and and being

able to talk to folks or something like that and then the sixth thing was trying to minimize distractions and things like that right so to trying to create an efficient uh lifestyle or flow or or work yeah yeah all all works in progress okay and it all works in progress yes now I want to makes me sound like some super efficient genius I also want to bring up something my parents would disagree but yes right so so we we had lunch the other week and one of the things that you mentioned to me which which I held on to because um in the context of when you were telling me about going to Hollywood and talking to Netflix was this quote from George Bernard Shaw which was if correct me if I got it right or wrong but it was something like um the reasonable man adapts to the world adapts himself to his surroundings

yeah okay but the unreasonable men persists adapts his surroundings to himself that's right right and and so changes the world for himself and I I think and therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man right so could you talk about that part and when you went to Hollywood and you said I have this book and how that part of being successful right which is like I'm gonna adapt the world to myself I'm gonna make this freaking movie and I'm just gonna somehow achieve success with it maybe you could speak a little bit about that I mean it's true when you frame it in I I that's interesting all right because this is one of my favorite quotes but somehow till now till now I didn't think of it strained it to the to the white tiger and me running around in America okay but yeah because like when you mentioned it that's what I was thinking oh that's very but it's so true it's it's the quote in action you're right because foreign for a producers who's made one

movie 15 years ago so not even a producer sitting in India right saying that I want to do this thing I want to make a global film I want to get an American or you know Europe you know whatever Global director writer and I want to make a movie for the world kind of unprecedented and insane even when you were the 23 year old kid that's true inventor right that was that was also crazy all right that was also crazy that I don't know if I knew the quote there but that was all you're right that was that was insane um that was a long time I have to think about that but for the white tiger it was just yeah I mean you know uh okay it's a mix of all the things that you so nicely summarize which was that uh the book had sold four million copies worldwide a small part of that was in India it was a Booker prize winning book so I knew that it had a global audience I knew uh also I've always tried to do things which resonate with with human beings in general so I I personally I've never been constrained with a country ever

that's just how I am even with my music I try to make a universal theme in everything I do because that's just how I am rather than specific to any country and I'm one of the same for the white tiger as well and uh again um what I did with the white tiger is I created a mantra for myself in my head which because you know the process from getting the rights of a book to making a movie's years it just takes forever so you you will get lost along the way and there's so many pressures Financial pressures uh it was a big book so you know actors wanted to be a part of it various directors wanted to be you know it costs a lot of money for the ride so there's 50 things going on um and how do you keep what is your North Star in the whole thing so the Mantra that I created for myself was that um the white tiger is a universal story that happens to be set in India right right very important words you know happens to be said in India and that was my my North Star and that helped me because I was like this is not an Indian

story it's a story about Freedom right it's a story that I want anyone in the world to understand that this is a story about freedom and you know the price of freedom for this man uh rather than about a driver from India and blah blah blah blah blah um that that really helped me um you know build up the strength if you want and the insanity to say I I'm just gonna find the best home for it right uh which at the time was Netflix and it took a lot of work I was like the crazy guy running around Hollywood with this book you know like yeah you can imagine um but to find that home to find the right partner again a lot of research came in uh about you know what is the audience for the book um a lot of gut feeling about what the book was about as well uh um a lot of research on whether when when we set it up with Netflix it was I remember five years ago they were very small in India at that point and they were just starting to become massive and directors were working with them now it's a common

thing but five seven years ago every director wasn't working with them right uh but a lot of research showed me that they're a very strong creative process they're very good creative Partners as well B they would uh be taking over distribution in a massive way um which helped me again on a more analytical level make the decision to go with them rather than to go with another Studio which would be a theatrical release model uh also I wanted I wanted uh you know at the time it was just me and this book I didn't have Priyanka Chopra anyone in it it was it's just an idea basically so I was like how do I get this little thing of mine to everyone right and it was Netflix that I saw was the way to do it through the pipes I couldn't imagine the cinema because you know it hadn't taken a life of its own yet so yeah it's a mix of all those things that and then you've just hustle you know and like try to meet people and you know and until you get the right person and um yeah a lot of hustle maybe one thing I can ask you about in in you know this

kind of just a commentary for me as well is that when it comes to younger people one of the things that I see and we talked about being a dreamer right and I think there's there's one kind of dreamer which is like you an unreasonable Dreamer but you have a specific vision and you had all of those attributes from entrepreneurship that allowed you to be successful and persist and then there are dreamers that I meet a lot of young people who are like I want to be the best in the world at X I want to be a billionaire but they don't do any work and they're just like I just want a dream and so like I'm wondering if you can comment a little bit about because I'm I'm worried about some of these younger folks who have these huge dreams but not willing to put in the sacrifice to get there and then maybe the second part that I can ask you about is when you were in Hollywood

it could have been easy you were being unreasonable then how do you persist and then how do you know if you're being a you know kind of like an unreasonable dreamer that can actually achieve success or whether you're just a dreamer and not really that's no that's a that's a very very good question because uh when I wasn't exactly in that process there was various points where I could have got someone else to do it I could have you know compromise on my dream and made it much easier and it was tough at the time you know I was I was running out of money it was a was it was very tough I was very stressed that I make no mistake it was a tough situation and my friends and my family used to ask me you know what are you doing what are you wasting why are you what the hell are you doing basically you know what is wrong with you like how is this gonna happen is it ever gonna happen is it ever going to happen it's gonna happen it's gonna happen it's gonna happen you know oh yeah yeah um and I remember there was one producer who really wanted to do it and he was arm twisting us and this that and and I

just I just went into my car it was like what do you believe in and and I've done that very often for my creative things as well I think when you just go into yourself it's happened to me when I've seen something bad happen to someone on the road I saw some you know a fight you know some religious fight and it was in the middle of coven and I had to jump out of the car and stop it it's just like when you go into your car and you find a universal truth somehow you just find the strength to say no if I if I can't do it this way I mean what's the point kind of thing so I don't know what the answer to it you just have to uh uh it's 10 minutes ages you know what's going to happen but yeah I mean you you have some over time you develop a little bit of uh an instinct an intuition that that it's possible um but yeah at those points I remember it was very touch and go for months and a year or two where it's like well it's not the chances are very slim of it happening

the way I wanted to happen why don't I just compromise and do it in this way I guess I was being very unreasonably right I was being unreasonable um but I did believe in the book I believed we had an unbelievable book um and uh that's what a good producer does a good producer Gets behind the material you know you you have to believe you have to believe in what you're doing you know when I was making music and I had my my packaging business in what I'm doing now you have you have to the Genesis of a project that you take up and as you as time goes on you realize that any project you take up that's that's really worthwhile it's going to take years it's not going to take one year or two it's gonna take five to ten years of your life pretty much nothing happens in less than five years what happens in less than a minute when you in the beginning it's like oh my God five years but when four years up you're like oh it's just happening so you realize that over time that you really have to you know be prepared to put in put in the time and and and and and and that gives you

some perspective in the whole thing that you have to struggle and uh nothing happens unless you really spend time on it basically right so it kind of sounds like while you were being sort of an unreasonable dreamer you had high conviction in the vision of what you were doing and to a lot of things that you talked about about what allowed you to be successful before in entrepreneurship you had that that base that infrastructure of skills details hard work all that stuff that allowed you to succeed so maybe for some of the younger folks in the audience don't be a delusional dreamer with just a dream and nothing underneath it like I I do hope that some people if they're gonna bet their lives on something that they actually do the work and those other things so that they can be successful even if they're being unreasonable yeah yeah you have to be unreasonable on I

think anyone who takes the leap of um entrepreneurship is being unreasonable to some level because you're like I'm not going to get a job I feel that there's a space whether I know it or not whether I've even thought about it in this clear way there's a white space and I see the opportunity not even it may be much more intuitive than that right there's so much space for intuition you know in this whole thing um and it's nice if you can back the art of intuition if you want to call it that with the science of uh regular and numbers so I think it's it's a mix of both and and intuition is mostly built you know you don't really have to get it straight away so you you build it by learning and doing uh making mistakes um you know time is such an interesting thing as well because when you're saying dreamers and you know it's good to be a dreamer you know I mean so my first thing to any young person who happens to be hearing this would be you know don't stop yourself from dreaming

because you have to dream to start so it's good to dream and yeah yeah try to try to balance it with some yeah some some reality all right well just to um get to our third topic and kind of tie this all together I wanted to bring this back to what I would call the rise of the white tiger and what I mean by this oh man um is the future of opportunity of India and you know you had mentioned that for you the white tiger is about freedom and the price of Freedom you know I view it as that but for me it speaks to me a little bit more as a movie about opportunity about how there are potentially self-imposed limits on opportunity and how some people can achieve a lot more with their life like balram has you know really become a math like from from where he started from and to where he

got to was like a massive unlocking of opportunity and I and I think that you know one of the quotes I really love from the movie was something along the lines of you know you were looking for the key for years but the door was always open right and I I think that we live in a world today where there are so many opportunities for people they just need to go out and grab it they just need to seize these opportunities and so so I wanted to ask you in terms of how you view this new world that we live in and also the opportunity for India I mean I you know I'm I'm a guy who had never been to India and I'm like well I want to start a company in India so it's well done and so there's I I think there's a changing of the world of geopolitics things like that like when you think about India and when you think just about opportunities for people in today and in the future how do you think about

it first of all it's amazing what you've done that you were like okay I'm sitting out here in in in the valley and you know I'm gonna do this I'm gonna come doing now we picked our headquarters to be Bangalore I've never been to Bangalore that's where it's gonna and when did that happen this was 201 October of 2020. have you seen the movie or not uh because you know they talk about it later because it's so amazing you have the same Journey because you know they talk about Bangalore all the time right you've seen that in the movie you must go to Bangalore or the future it's a future Bangalore uh so that's there you go you know that's interesting you've come from here and you're doing it yes you know one one of my uh one of my most favorite quotes from from the movie the white tiger in the book is that the future of the world lies with the uh yellow skin man and the brown skin man right and not the white skinned man and uh you know we loved it we used to

use it all the time in our interview process as well because it's so it's very Politically Incorrect right but it's a quote from a book and it's it's paraphrasing this man right you know who's this driver so you know you it kind of keeps it okay but uh and I think that's that's what we're talking about right now which is uh which is what was in the book as well which is uh the the Chinese dragon the Indian tiger economically speaking Yeah and and the West as it were the dominant power in our times and and what does it mean the Brown Skin Man the yellow skin man if you think about um it's us yes that not that's not only us but that also I think represents people who used to have a lack of opportunity yeah and so kind of like the way that I think about opportunity and the rise of the white tiger one of the reasons why I even started this uh our the company that I started in India is

that I believe that we have been living in this Age of Excess and as we shift from an age of access to efficiency that that actually opens up opportunity for the world that too much in the past opportunity belonged to people who owned resources who controlled opportunity and so to some degree they were like Legacy inheritors the landlords landlords and and so they were The Gatekeepers of opportunity but now I think that the way that I think about that quote is that um in a global world with communication that is so easy to access that opportunity will flow to other parts of the world and I do think that when we think about India and I'd love to get your perspective on this because you know while I've been you know kind of staying in India for the past few years you know my sense is

is that there that India will become the next big superpower or or to your point on becoming it's now at this critical juncture where India could become the next United States or it could if if things don't go right it it could not achieve its potential so I know when you think about the opportunity for people in India or opportunity with India and just the general notion of global opportunity what do you think sure well I mean it is the fastest growing economy you know I think this year or in the next five years another China has taken a back seat relatively speaking so that's economic you know fact right um it also has 1.4 billion people and uh so it is an inevitable pretty much just

on I think the only thing that could potentially derail it really is climate change because that's such a massive area uh and uh we'll see what's happening you know everybody reads everything you know um I think that that would be the biggest caveat for me but other than that yeah things seem to be moving along well I mean in terms of opportunity education is still has such a long way to go but it is true like you were saying that today you can uh you know learn so much from from YouTube um I just think uh honestly structurally um you know um there there is still a lot of work to be done um I think malnutrition I think is a big thing which affects your your capabilities you know to you know and you can't it'll be tough to be the white tiger with with malnutrition right but uh that aside on a pure uh entrepreneurial

thing definitely um and it has happened in the last 10 years with a venture capital flowing into India um you know from all over the world and some companies in India as well um that the old gets have been dismantled in massive ways um I love that I love I love the the the the Democratic nature of of of of of the VC and Angel ecosystem uh the fact that um with strings but still compared to 20 30 compared to when I started you know like a long time back I need to take a loan which is a very complicated thing and a very painful thing because the interest rate was 12 or something like that uh and even now it's like nine and a half percent so it's insane like it's murderous basically uh to build something with that so there's no

question about it that the the nature of of capital today um in India and all over the world has a capital along with the access um education the internet is a massive Game Changer along with the payment system the gateways that we have in India as well um 100 it's going to change a lot of things yeah right for sure yeah one quote from the movie that I think a lot about is the quote rich men are born with opportunities they can waste and so I feel like they're like there has never been a greater moment in time with opportunities for so many people I also understand that in order for India to leverage its potential and to tap into that opportunity I do think there does need to be some infrastructural issues that get

addressed with nutrition and things like that right and access to education because while education is you know for the most part free on the internet those people in India need to get access to the internet they need access to education they need somebody to help train them and so with advantage and opportunities after they learn right because you need a degree which is different from what you've learned on the internet and not everyone can be or do you think I get a job you do I mean to be an entrepreneur you don't need a degree for sure you don't need anything um a great quote from the book is that he says your Excellency um half big men are not fully you know mbas go and work for other people but have big men like me become entrepreneurs basically but but that's nice very nice in the book but it's it's hard still but but but you are right it's always been hard but it is easier today for sure so has there been

progress hundred percent and I think it'll continue to to be for sure so I think you're right in saying there's never been a better time maybe in five years it'll be probably a better time than it is today as well but as of today this is the best time there's been to be an entrepreneur in India without a doubt much better than when I was starting my journey for example yeah and we just see such a massive growth in the middle class in India right which is leading to some of these companies really tapping into um massive uh opportunities to commercialize products and you know so me coming from the gaming industry a lot of people don't realize how much money some of these games like pubg and Greener free fire made just out of India in its massive yeah yeah he was saying no I agree with you um I think you just have to find the right way to you know you have to you have to find a need that that people

uh are willing to pay for right and and that's how you unlock it right and I I would hope that one thing that I would love for our audience especially if there's anyone from India watching is that in my opinion like one of the things I've learned over my career is that there are certain certain moments in time that are more valuable or asymmetric in terms of like cost to gain and I think this is a moment in time where India is is um growing so rapidly and opportunities are exploding so quickly that the people who take advantage of the opportunities in India today and it's still a little bit early but this is where it's really starting to gain traction right now we'll have a dramatically greater asymmetric return to the time that they invest now than they will at other moments in time in my opinion

um so I would hope that people don't live with regret in the future like when they think about their lives and when they think about entrepreneurial opportunities that they realize like if you are in India and if you know that audience and you see this huge growth in the middle class and you see huge growth in GDP that this is the time where the next huge companies whether it's the next you know Microsoft or the next Tesla or the next big companies can be coming out of India and that's what I personally hope to see out of out of India given that it is in this kind of early massive growth stage yeah I hope so too um are you skeptical or Microsoft I cannot see anything yeah okay um those those four or five you know mamas made of

um Microsoft alphabet Apple Google Amazon they just have such a massive advantage over everyone else and and and and I think with AI as well it's going to double down yeah we'll have to see uh if the if the value is one is one is the there's two things in this one is that the market size of course it'll grow it's a three trillion dollar economy now it'll go it's gonna grow for sure it'll go to Five it'll yeah it'll it'll be it's number five now we'll go to four three two yeah uh and it'll be the US and China left yeah it'll be you know we're gonna Germany's Next I think so that that will happen in five ten twenty years but the question more what we're saying is how much value will be accreted to Indian companies or not I'm sure a large percentage will be um especially in like infra and in other areas but since we're specifically

talking about tech that's where the question comes in otherwise it's yeah well you know that's that's the really right it's a very narrow area in the whole thing yeah and I I think another another example that I think about is that because I don't think we're there right but yeah exactly and to your point like like China took a long time and then therefore they're the Forefront of making mobile games now as you know right and also if you think back like 10 years ago 20 years ago when we look at the semiconductor industry Intel and AMD dominated the market yeah now what it's going to take is a new class of products or a new wave of innovation but if India could and so just going back to the semiconductor example today who is the biggest semiconductor company out there it's Nvidia they dominate they are like Intel and AMD are nothing the Intel is finished Intel is like Ericsson right so what I'm saying is Nokia going back to the the

new age of the brown skin man and the yellow skin man there is no reason you're right there is no reason for the way that um Korea did it Taiwan did it uh China did it to a later level yes and now there's the brown skin manston it can't do it and the Brown Skin Man better get up uh and and get to work man you know I agree with you there's no reason as education is going up exposure is going up Indians running everything but it is it is in that state of becoming yes yes there's no reason for it not to happen but it's not happened yet yes and it's been happening for a while exactly so which is why I'm a bit like me me me but right yeah you're right it damn well happen yeah okay and and like you said in the gaming space there are companies were innovating really really good stuff in the gaming there's a little company got sold two years ago and the other aspect of that is this notion of excess

I do think if I'm being honest I'm going to get some hate I've already gotten some hate before the West in general don't hate me the West in general has kind of lost a little bit of its Edge right we've lived in a zero interest rate environment it's not like the Chinese are really they're going hard so I think to the extent that if India is able to uh you know make good policies um build great infrastructure to provide opportunities for its people and if if India can get that that same work ethic that pervaded silicon valleys not today things are different in Silicon Valley is not the same today as it was in like the 1990s and early 2000s but if we can build that culture in India then I think that's what makes India the next white tiger of countries yeah it is a it is a yeah I mean ultimately it's

all people people do everything um I I do see in the last 20 years uh more in the last 10 years shifts toward that with and you see it as well I know in the in the the founder VC ecosystem um and there are a lot of hungry people in in India definitely so yeah I it should happen yeah we have to make it happen you and me let's do it that's what we hear from all right so maybe with that thank you very much for your time it was awesome talking to you thank you Joseph and for audience we'll catch you next time thank you