Nikhil Kamath was 17 when he got his first job at a call centre. With a salary of Rs 8,00 per month, he started trading in stocks and it wasn't until a year later that he took up trading seriously and now, Kamath, a billionaire, is leading the country's most successful stock brokerage firm.
The Zerodha co-founder opened up about his journey to Humans of Bombay and said that he began stock trading properly when his father gave him some of his savings and told him to "manage it".
"He just had blind faith," Nikhil Kamath said.
After that, he even convinced his manager at the call center to do the same. "It worked for him, he told others. Eventually, I didn’t go to work at all, but I was marked present because I was managing the entire team’s money," Kamath added. "And then I quit to start Kamath Associates with my brother and in 2010 we launched Zerodha!"
Read more: Nikhil Kamath on how high cost of borrowing in US is likely to impact startups in India
But did Kamath, who dropped out of school, always plan on opening a stock brokerage firm? The answer isn't a simple "yes" or "no".
"My only plan once I dropped out was to make money. I come from a typical, middle-class family–my cousins are the MBA kind, so questions like, ‘What’s he going to do with his life?’ were asked," he said.
But his parents had faith in him. "All my parents said was, ‘Don’t do something that embarrasses us too much!’ They had this misconception that I was smart–I was good at math. They just had stupid faith in me!" Kamath said.
Speaking about the lessons he had learned from his experience so far, the Zerodha co-founder said, "From being a school dropout, to working at a call center, to Zerodha and True Beacon, I’ve figured out the two-three things I do well, and stuck with them. Becoming a billionaire doesn’t change that–I still work 85 per cent of the day and live with the insecurity of, ‘What if it’s taken from me?’"
"So my only advice is to not sweat about this stuff–five years later, the things you’re worrying about now, won’t matter–so why not do what you have to today & have ‘stupid faith’ that it’ll work out…somehow?” Kamath added.
Read more: Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath's 'better trader' praise for co-founder brother Nikhil
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