Ashneer Grover: Dropout-turned-founders like Nikhil Kamath are exceptionally brilliant

"If anyone's earning profits to the tune of Rs 1, 250 crore, I don't care if he's had an education or not," Ashneer Grover said while commenting on entrepreneurs who built successful businesses after dropping out of schools.

Ashneer Grover called Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath "exceptionally brilliant people" to have founded extremely successful companies after dropping out of schools.

"I think they are exceptionally brilliant people. Their internal drive to educate themselves was themselves was so high that to them the formal education system was a waste of their time," the former Bharat Pe founder said while answering a question on the category of entrepreneurs who have dropped out of schools to pursue successful business careers -- such as Zuckerberg and Kamath.

"They figured that they could educate themselves better and then went ahead to build exceptional businesses," Grover said.

Zerodha's Nikhil Kamath had dropped out of school and had taken up a job at a call center at 17 before deciding to trade stocks, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had dropped out of Harvard to focus on developing Facebook.

"That's a skill that you need to be born with... and I find Nikhil and Nithin (Kamath brothers) to be exceptional people. I mean if anyone's earning profits to the tune of Rs 1, 250 crore, I don't care if he's had an education or not," Ashneer Grover said to a laughing audience.

Read more: How billionaire Nikhil Kamath's journey started with a Rs 8,000 a month call centre job

Speaking about budding entrepreneurs who may not have that level of confidence to give up their education to pursue their dreams, Grover said, "For lesser mortals like us, who don't have that caliber but are still aspirational, we have to go down the beaten path of completing our education first and then rise one step at a time."

Talking about his entrepreneurial journey, the Shark Tank India judge said that he aspired to get to a certain standard in life. "Coming from a middle-class family, my dreams were about getting a bigger house, a car and better comforts, but once I had  it, I felt like my job was suffocating me. I worked in banks for nine years and it was a very bad mistake," he said.

But the experience taught him that becoming an businessman was his calling. "It took me nine years to figure out that I wanted to become an entrepreneur and to be comfortable enough to make that jump. But people who do that right out of college, hats off to them," Grover said.

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