Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath and investor-author Ruchir Sharma recently spoke about the very different beginnings of their professional lives, recalling their first salaries and early choices.
Kamath said that in the early 2000s he was employed at a call centre in Bengaluru, earning around $1,000 a year, which translated to about Rs 88,000 at that time. He admitted the amount was modest, especially when compared with what Sharma had received just a few years earlier.
Sharma described how, in 1996 at the age of 22, he was hired by Morgan Stanley for its India office on a package of $100,000 annually — nearly Rs 88 lakh today. At that point, he had been considering further academic study, including a PhD, but decided instead to accept the Wall Street bank’s offer. “I was given the choice between continuing with academia or stepping into corporate life, and I chose the latter,” he said, calling it the decision that set the direction for his career.
The conversation highlighted the striking difference between their early paths: Kamath beginning with night shifts in outsourcing, while Sharma was starting out with one of the largest global investment firms.
Sharma studied at Delhi University’s Shri Ram College of Commerce, where he also wrote for financial newspapers. His ability to analyse economic trends attracted attention from Morgan Stanley, which offered him a position in Mumbai in 1996.
He relocated to New York in 2002, and within a year became co-head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. In 2006 he was promoted to lead the team, and a decade later was named Chief Global Strategist, a role he continued until leaving the company in 2021. He is now president of Rockefeller Capital Management’s international business.
Alongside his corporate work, Sharma established himself as a writer. His book Breakout Nations (2012) won the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award and became a bestseller. The Rise and Fall of Nations followed in 2016, and his latest, What Went Wrong with Capitalism, was recognised by the Wall Street Journal among its books of the year. His commentary has appeared in outlets including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and Bloomberg.
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