Vikrant Bhargava. From $8.5B IPO to True Purpose
Episode - 4
Vikrant Bhargava. From $8.5B IPO to True Purpose
My today's guest, Vikrant Bhargava, is a masterful businessman and an inspiring human being. Vikraint took his company public with an initial evaluation of $8.5B, which skyrocketed to $12B within just one month. Since then he's been applying his business acumen to tackle the world's biggest and nastiest problems. In our conversation, we'll delve into how and why he is pursuing this path, what brings him joy and fulfillment, and what fuels his boundless energy, curiosity, and compassion. Today is Vikrant's first public interview since the IPO 18 years ago and his first podcast interview ever.
What We Discussed:
00:00:00: Introduction and starting point
00:06:08: Importance of education and its relevance for children of exited founders
00:15:51: Transition from a student to a start-up founder
00:22:44: Vikrant's financial journey and perspective on "paper money"
00:23:26: Going public and financial stability
00:24:46: First public interview and going public
00:25:18: Being publicly recognized
00:26:03: Preparing for going public
00:26:22: Company's valuation and public impression
00:27:48: The moment of financial settlement
00:28:20: The impact of financial success
00:29:06: The luxury of time and money, dealing with boredom
00:30:57: Exit from business
00:31:41: Sense of Identity with financial stability
00:34:29: Post exit stagnation
00:35:21: Moving from Gibraltar to London
00:37:10: Transition in thought process about wealth
00:38:30: Managing wealth
00:41:17: Cultivating a culture of giving in India
00:43:52: Impact of philanthropic activities
00:44:01: Balance between investment and giving
00:45:02: Impact beyond material possessions
00:45:57: Discussing Old Money vs New Money
00:47:10: Learning to Say No after Wealth
00:48:06: No Loans, Only Gifts
00:49:22: Missing Running a Business Day-to-Day
00:50:17: Missing the Creativity in Business
00:52:27: Business and Philanthropy
00:53:52: Founder's Pledge and Giving Better
00:58:45: The Purpose and Meaning of Wealth
01:02:06: Concerns and Worries
01:02:38: How to be Remembered
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Vikrant Bhargava: [00:00:00 - 00:00:08]
I wanted to have money, so I still remember when I had the first million dollars in the bank. That was a big deal.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:09 - 00:00:10]
How did that feel?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:00:10 - 00:00:11]
It's hugely liberating.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:11 - 00:00:14]
Did you finally feel you arrived financially?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:00:14 - 00:00:19]
I have never counted paper money as money. The billion plus whatever didn't really mean anything.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:20 - 00:00:22]
What makes your life fulfilling?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:00:23 - 00:00:24]
That's a good question.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:25 - 00:00:39]
Welcome to the Exit Paradox podcast. Here we meet remarkable exited founders to uncover what comes next after selling a business. Did they sustain success and find fulfillment? Let's learn together. Please subscribe to join our community.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:45 - 00:01:45]
Today's guest, Vikrant Bhargava, is a masterful businessman and an inspiring human being. Vikrant took his company public with an initial valuation of $8.5 billion, which skyrocketed to 12 billion within just one month. Since then, he's been applying his business acumen to tackle the world's biggest and nastiest problems. In our conversation, we'll delve into how and why he is pursuing this path. What brings him joy and fulfillment and what fuels his boundless energy, curiosity and compassion.
Today is Vikran's first public interview since the IPO 18 years ago and his first podcast interview ever. So, Vikrant, thank you so much for joining me today. To me, you are a truly exceptional man. It's like you've cracked the code of a fulfilling life without the need to spend years sitting on the mountaintop alone. I think your energy is off the charts.
Whenever I spend time with you, I feel energized and elevated afterwards.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:01:50 - 00:02:05]
So, firstly, I'd like to thank you for having me here. It's an absolute pleasure and privilege to be here. I'm not sure everybody thinks that my energy is that high, but yes, I can be a bit restless.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:05 - 00:02:28]
So today I really hope to figure out how you got to this state of clarity about what's important in life and how you mastered your energy. How do you channel it towards the most important goals for you? So if you don't mind, I want to start from the beginning. I want to know what your parents expected from you.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:02:30 - 00:03:27]
I don't think my parents had any set expectations. My childhood was pretty relaxed. I don't remember my parents ever telling me to do something. I think they also had it easy with me. I was an easy child where they didn't have to tell me to do stuff.
On the contrary, at times they'd have to tell me not to read, not to do certain things. I had very poor eyesight, so I wasn't allowed to read after sunset. But expectations were just to be a good person. I grew up in an environment where there weren't any career aspirations and so on.
I was raised in a regular middle class family in India. In the 70s and 80s the middle class in India was, I would say, by UK standards, very poor. But there was no pressure ever put.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:28 - 00:03:32]
Did you feel poor at the time?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:03:33 - 00:03:52]
I don't think I knew what rich meant and therefore I didn't feel poor. However, I could see the difference when I first met somebody who had toys that had been brought in from the US, I realized that he had something which there was no way I could afford.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:52 - 00:03:55]
What was your family's view on education?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:03:56 - 00:04:30]
Education was important. So I come from a family where my mother had done her masters before she turned 20. My dad, yeah. So my. My dad had gone to one of the best engineering schools in India.
Middle class India. Education was the only way out of being middle class, so therefore education was important. Nothing else really mattered. So while education was hugely important, I don't think my parents had to ever tell me to study.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:04:30 - 00:04:34]
What about your children now? How do you view their education?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:04:36 - 00:06:07]
Think times have changed. We live in a different environment. So my children have all grown up in the western world, where they've been in the western world, but in an indian family where both the parents and my wife are far more educated than I am. She holds a number of degrees.
She's a double doctor and a lawyer. The kids have always been aware that we consider education important, so they realize that. But often I think they have had the feeling where there is no stress of the education does not lead to any stress. When I was studying in India in my last two years of school, education was. It was stressful because I had to get to clear certain exams to get to a particular university that I wanted to get to.
I do not think the children here have had that sort of stress, except very brief periods, sort of applying for university admissions and so on. But the amount of effort they put in has been a lot less. I think it's also because they're smarter, they manage to do a lot more with a lot less effort. I think in general, kids here end up doing a lot more within a shorter period of time. Whereas when I see my sons who are one's 18, the other one's 21, my daughter's still nine, the amount of effort they have to put in is a lot.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:06:08 - 00:06:31]
The reason I'm asking is because, as you know, in our community of exited founders, people often debate the value of formal education and question whether it's worth it for their children to go and get formal education, especially those who never quite got it themselves. So in your case, looking back on your life, do you think it was important that you got your education?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:06:33 - 00:06:57]
For me it was absolutely important that I got my education. So the badges I got by going through the schools that I went to played a huge role in where I am. So it's the places I attended which were far more important than what I actually learned. So I think if we separate those out, was the education important? Attending those educational institutions was hugely important.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:06:58 - 00:06:59]
Socially or why?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:07:00 - 00:08:16]
I think it gave me credibility. And when you are competing with 1.3 billion people, that just makes you stand out. If you've been to places which you're in the top 2-3 hundred of the country, that helps you sort of just stand out. I think it's much less relevant for kids today. So with my 18 year old for example, school is good for social development for sure, overall development.
But when it comes to university, I think the relevance of university to teach him skills which would be important for him to let's say get a job or work in any career I think would be limited. And I think for exited founders the kids are privileged enough to not have to be at university pure because their downside is a lot higher than the downside for most of the people you've been talking to. So my downside, if I'd not been to the universities I went to would have been very very different to what my kids have. So they have a lot more opportunities to pursue things, to fail initially and be successful at stuff that they care about, that they enjoy, that they can excel in. I don't think I had the luxury of doing that when I was growing up.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:17 - 00:08:33]
I really want you to elaborate on that. So you think children of existed founders are in this particular situation because they have the financial means or because they have mentorship from their parents who had this unique experience of building and selling a business.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:08:33 - 00:09:52]
I think it's a combination of both. In my case when I was growing up we did not have the financial stability for me to have had the luxury of saying I'm going to take a year to figure out what I want to do, and my education costs my parents nothing, practically nothing. So my entire education till B school costs less than one month's private school fees in the western world for my kids today, my kids for example, they don't have that stress. So if they wish to pursue starting a business, learning about something before they can start a business, they can afford to take that time, that pressure is not there for them to start delivering immediately. They can learn and they've got access to the parents and the parents community, so friends around.
So in any area that they want to explore further, I'm sure a few calls will get them in front of somebody who can mentor them. I did not have that. I grew up where we were growing up, in cement factories. So the colonies. If I wanted to do something, learn more about cement manufacturing, yes, but nothing beyond that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:09:53 - 00:10:17]
How interesting, given that obviously you've spent so much energy and time and money supporting education for underprivileged kids. So to me you're an expert in education. You have three children of your own, but then you've seen so many other children go through the education system. So your opinion is an expert opinion for me, and it's fascinating.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:10:17 - 00:10:55]
So I think it's different for different people. So I still think for the ultra poor in places like India, in countries like India, education is hugely important, but I think we should differentiate between just getting a degree and education. So a lot of people end up collecting degrees which are not going to help them find jobs. I don't think of that as education. I think education should be something that helps one do something productive with their lives.
And if it's not teaching skills which can be used later, there is absolutely no point in wasting time trying to collect those degrees.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:10:56 - 00:11:00]
What can we do as parents to avoid raising spoiled kids?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:11:00 - 00:11:15]
Get kids to learn the value of money is one. If they are growing up, as most of our kids would be, in a privileged environment, they have to feel comfortable with money. Unless you say that you're not going to give them anything when they grow.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:11:15 - 00:11:17]
Up.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:11:18 - 00:12:08]
They know that they are comfortable. They have grown up very privileged. But I don't think my kids are spoiled at all. I'd like to believe they're not. And I think it's more of be comfortable with what you have, don't be arrogant, be conscious of what others don't have as well, so you don't rub anyone the wrong way and respect people.
So often when we say spoiled, a lot of it actually comes down to how people behave with other people. And I think there, if they see parents being respectful of others and that respect shouldn't come from money, it shouldn't come from economic status, it should just come in your interpersonal dealings. I think kids will learn that on their own.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:12:09 - 00:12:14]
So you're thinking leading by example is the general approach?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:12:14 - 00:13:31]
Yeah. So kids learn a lot from the families, from the environments they grow up in. There is a bit of hardwiring. All kids are different, but they learn a lot. The environment plays a big role.
So it's not one of those where you say you deprive them of money or sort of do anything fancy. It should just be one of those. It's not that money is an important factor in many of the things. They should realize that they can't be spending more than they should or what would be inappropriate for them. And my son's got a hobby of a rich kid.
He flies. He's got a private pilot's license. I asked him to make a budget for the whole year when he was going to university, which he was allowed to keep a budget for flying. He has a budget for his flying as well, which most of the other kids won't have. And that's a fair amount of money, but it's actually not as expensive as many people think it is.
But still, he makes the budget. I sent him his entire year's budgetary spend, and I did not nickel and dime him on his budget, so I sent him his entire amount. But I sent one wire transfer to him and he's been responsible for the living within his own budget, so he knows he's not going to get more.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:13:32 - 00:13:33]
How is he doing so far?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:13:33 - 00:13:34]
He's done okay.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:13:35 - 00:13:40]
When did you start this process of training him and your other kids to manage money?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:13:40 - 00:14:21]
Completely? Staying within their own budget was more a recent one at university, but they have never, ever spent more money than I guess that would be seen to be normal. So I would often hear complaints from them that their friends are getting laptops and games and so on that I would say no. And they would have to sort of spend more time pleading, requesting, cajoling, threatening before they would get stuff, even though we could afford them. So they couldn't just have whatever they wanted.
They got whatever they needed, not whatever they wanted.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:14:22 - 00:14:28]
So I want to explore how your motivation changed over time. So you went to university. What happens next?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:14:28 - 00:15:06]
The pressure that I would say not just me, but many of my classmates had been through to get there was intense. So it was almost like a fuse, sort of the gasket had blown off a pressure cooker. You get there and you feel you've made it in life, only to realize that you may have been the smartest in school, wherever you were. And you'd get to this place. And then the target almost became to be average, because average was actually good enough.
So I wouldn't say I was a motivated student while I was at university, my target was to be in the upper half of the class and I managed that in an extremely efficient manner.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:15:07 - 00:15:10]
So what was your dream at that time?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:15:12 - 00:15:47]
It's a good one. Good question. I would often grapple with what do I really want to be doing? Because there was a side of me that wanted to do something good for India and I wouldn't call myself an irrational patriot. It would have been nice to do something there, but I wanted to have money.
So it was a tricky one. So I took the easier option which was to go to business school in India and look for a company which potentially would post me overseas over time. So I joined Bank of America as my first job after business school.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:15:48 - 00:15:51]
So at that time your motivation was financial?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:15:51 - 00:16:22]
It was financial. So I wanted a better life than I think we had had it was okay, but I had seen what people could do if they had money. I hadn't seen too many people with money, but it was one of those where I would say by the time I got to university I was a bit more aware. There were students there who were from wealthy backgrounds.
Not too many. Most people were regular middle class, but there were a few. So money had become a motivator then.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:16:23 - 00:16:28]
So how did you go from there to building a business?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:16:28 - 00:18:10]
So my first salary was higher than my dad's salary, who had been working for 27 years. He was a plant manager of a big cement company. So in that sense I was relatively well off for a 23 year old. 22, 23 year old. However, I think my salary was 1500 pounds a year at today's exchange rate.
Did I feel like I had arrived in life? No, definitely not. Around the same time was the Internet boom was taking place in the US. So while I did not know what salaries and so on, my friends were earning, many of them were millionaires on paper because I had stock of companies that were doing, that was doing phenomenally well. So for me one of the things that then I had in my mind was to try and join a startup, which is what most of my friends had done.
They had joined startups and they had shares in a bunch of companies which had made them ridiculously wealthy. So it was more of how to join a startup. So I took again an easier option, but a more achievable option was to join a large company which was a startup in India. So I was the 7th professional to join British Gas in India that had just set up its operations. My salary more than doubled from where I was at Bank of America.
So the pay was also good and I thought I had the optionality of being part of an early member of a team which was going to do lots of stuff in a large country, with the comfort knowing that they wouldn't run out of money because it was part of a big company.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:18:11 - 00:18:13]
Sounds very well thought through.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:18:13 - 00:19:53]
So I took that. My philosophy in life is always if the worst case option is not too bad, I'm happy to take those chances. I was still keen on joining a startup, which then, by then it had become clear to me, had to be in the US. But I couldn't get as an Indian passport holder living in India, there was no way I could get to the US on an employment visa. It was just not a possibility.
So I started to look for jobs outside the country to figure out a way to eventually get to the US. And two months later, after having found a way to get a visa to get to the Dominican Republic, I found myself in the Dominican Republic, having joined this startup, which was 20 people working out of a free zone in Santo Domingo with three business verticals, and the three verticals being e commerce, payment processing, and online gaming, gambling. And all three were sort of on the cards at that point in time. So I was there running the operation in the Dominican Republic. But it was a small group, it was a small startup.
I was 27. I think there were a couple of people in the team who were slightly older, sort of early, thirty s. The rest were all, as I called them, overgrown babies. They were part time college students, not particularly professional. So it was an interesting setup that I moved to, but that was how I got to my startup.
That startup ended up becoming a large company with a bunch of things that we did.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:54 - 00:19:57]
Just five years later. Right?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:19:57 - 00:19:58]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:58 - 00:19:59]
How did that happen?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:20:00 - 00:22:08]
We had software that we would sell to other people wanting to get into online casinos. We also had a couple of our own sites. Now this is me having moved from India, never having set foot in a casino, never having. I'd played cards as kids, as a child, but I never enjoyed playing cards till date. I don't know the basic hand rankings of poker.
I couldn't play a game of poker to save my life, but I found myself in this business where the one line of business with promise was software for online casinos. And so we tried figuring out the business and very quickly realized that people were betting against the house where we had a month before I had moved to the Dominican Republic, had a person, a customer, who had exploited a bug. So I think he had cashed out over a million dollars. And given that it was our fault in our software, we ended up paying him. But it was one of those things which for me was just a high risk thing, which we shouldn't have been in.
And somebody happened to show me a poker site, which looked like a risk free way of doing business or building a business. When I first saw this poker site, hey, I said, this is interesting. This is like an exchange where you get people to come in, they play with each other, they transact with each other, you're facilitating transactions, and as long as there are enough people, you're just collecting a commission. Which, after the loss that the company had seemed like a very sensible way forward. So we ended up launching a poker site, which was developed by programmers sitting in India, none of whom knew how to play poker.
They'd have books on shelves with rules of poker. Yeah, it sounds funny, and I think it was funny and shocking for people.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:22:09 - 00:22:10]
I love the simplicity.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:22:10 - 00:22:35]
So that was our inspiration to get in. By the time we launched our poker software, there would have been 10-15 other sites that had already launched. And I think most people had been inspired by paradise poker. I think it was a number of things that happened to go our way that actually led us to becoming the largest poker site in the world.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:22:36 - 00:22:44]
According to public records, at the time the company went public, your personal net worth was $1.6 billion.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:22:44 - 00:23:00]
No, so that's incorrect, because in the public records, it's easy to calculate. It was not 1.6. After we went public and the stock hit a high, it had gone up to somewhere over one, I think less than 1.6, but somewhere over one.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:00 - 00:23:02]
How did that feel?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:23:02 - 00:23:25]
I have never counted paper money as money. The billion plus whatever didn't really mean anything. I would say I had more money by the time we went public. That going public did not really change the way we lived. It was purely being rich before to being publicly rich.
I think that was a big change.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:26 - 00:23:29]
Did you finally feel you arrived financially?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:23:29 - 00:24:29]
So I still remember when I had the first million dollars in the bank. So that was a big deal. And if we go back just a few years before that, I tell my wife and half in chest, I said, if I have sort of Rs30-40 million, I'd build a hospital. You work, I will sit and play video games. So that was a very modest ambition.
We ran through the sort of Rs10 million to a million dollars to then many tens of millions of dollars. And at that point in time, I was so busy that the money did not really change how we lived, except that I ended up buying two, three apartments when we just moved to Gibraltar because I knew I could just afford it. I bought properties without looking, so the money gave me the ability to buy properties. And I'm not a property lover.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:30 - 00:24:34]
So your definition of financial success was linked to properties you could buy?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:24:35 - 00:24:46]
I think that was a change that happened with financial success. Financial success was knowing that I had the freedom and the ability to buy properties.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:46 - 00:25:18]
So, Vikrant, you are notoriously private. In fact, you told me that this is your first podcast interview, and I'm very grateful, very flattered that you chose this one to be your first one. So when party gaming went public, it was a very loud IPO. It was the largest Internet company that went public ever by that time on London Stock Exchange. How did that affect your relationship with other people?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:25:18 - 00:25:38]
So I would say I'm not notoriously private. I'm very open in person. But I think I was scarred by the publicity we got. 32 years old, two young kids at that point in time, one literally a newborn, three months old. We had paparazzi type, we had photographers with long lenses.
One chap who had parked outside our apartment building in Gibraltar and I had been very much in the public domain before that. So I had done interviews with a bunch of newspapers, even pre IPO and post IPO. But I think it was that one sort of long lens photographer in Gibraltar who pressed on the buzzer. We didn't want the person coming. It sort of freaked me out and I said, enough.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:26:03 - 00:26:20]
I don't want to be in the press at all. My friends had been warned by me, or had prepped them in the months leading up to the IPO that we were going to go public and it was going to be big. But I don't think anybody really understood how big.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:26:20 - 00:26:22]
What was the company's valuation at the time?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:26:22 - 00:26:26]
When we went public, it was 4 billion pounds, $8 billion. The exchange rate was two to one then.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:26:26 - 00:26:30]
So, yeah, that's a huge number. I'm sure it affects people.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:26:30 - 00:27:02]
Close to a billion dollar top line, close to a half a billion dollar bottom line business when we ipoed. So it wasn't sort of huge pe multiples and so on. So it was a big IPO. So getting my friends ready was something I had started to do pre IPO. The rest of the people didn't really matter.
I've moved around so many places over the years that I don't have too much contact with many of the people pre, except my friends. And my friends know me to be the same person.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:27:03 - 00:27:05]
But prepping them worked.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:27:05 - 00:27:44]
Prepping them worked, but there is still a difference between prepping a person and seeing the effects of the money or what that money can buy. So till date, I'm conscious when people come to my house, when I've invited friends who've not been to my place before, to be ready for the fact that I live in a big house and I don't want photos posted on any social media. Outside of my surroundings, my house, I'm still pretty much a similar person. Yes, it's not the same. I can afford to spend money on many things that many of my friends, close friends from university, for example, can't.
But they've all done well. Most of them have done reasonably well, so it's fine.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:27:48 - 00:27:54]
So what was that moment when you felt, okay financially, I'm set for life.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:27:54 - 00:28:16]
So I'd say pre IPO. I felt very comfortable, set for life, and my net worth multiplied. Net worth, bank balances multiplied, post IPO, but they were already meaningful enough pre IPO for me to have felt comfortable for life.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:16 - 00:28:20]
How did that change the way you thought about what you wanted?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:28:20 - 00:28:58]
I don't think it changed anything at all at that point in time because I was too busy working. So it was only in 2005, post IPO, that we had the luxury of some time and a much larger bank balance to even start to enjoy the money, even slightly, but still not sort of think about what I wanted to do with the money. I started to deeply think about post 2006, where I had exited the business. And that was, I think it was a start of a long journey, which still continues.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:58 - 00:29:05]
When you suddenly had the luxury of both time and money, how did that feel?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:29:06 - 00:30:56]
Honestly? At that point in time, it was miserable because I had the money. The money hadn't changed. I didn't know what to do with the time, and I had suddenly come into possession of a lot of time. I was not used to time.
I was used to a very large team and working crazy hours and spending whatever little time I had with the kids. But also, that wasn't much, while I still tried to make the maximum I could for the kids. But when I stepped down, it was a rough separation, and I went from being super busy to all of a sudden feeling like I had lost control of my child because the company had been and I'd spent more time on the business than on my children till then, I that point in time felt like, you take a child that's been taken care of properly, who's being given to somebody who's likely to abuse it. So for me, it was more of I stepped down and I shut myself completely from the business to the point when people ask me today as to how the business is, where the company is, I don't know if it's public or private.
I don't know who owns it. Literally, when I stepped down, there were no Google alerts set for the. That was. I didn't want to know anything that was happening. I was probably protecting myself by not wanting to know what was happening.
And I did say, I don't want to see my child being abused. I don't even want to know. I would see people. But I was very clear that I did not want to talk about the company. I didn't want to know anything about what was going on in the business.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:30:57 - 00:31:00]
That was quite a lot of years ago. Is it still the case?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:31:02 - 00:31:40]
Many. Most of the old guard have left. So still friends with my people. I had a disagreement with one of my business partners at that point in time. She and I are very good friends now.
So that was one rough year. So that separation when I had the luxury of time and the financial stability. Yes, financial stability, nothing had changed. But that time was not welcome time. It wasn't time that I had planned for or was looking forward to when it happened.
It happened because of circumstances, so it wasn't fun.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:31:41 - 00:31:46]
How was your sense of identity affected by that exit?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:31:47 - 00:31:53]
That's a good question. Was my sense of identity affected at all?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:31:53 - 00:31:54]
Okay.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:31:56 - 00:32:59]
I think I went from being a person who had been built a very successful business. We had outsmarted all our competitors and outgrown all our competitors to become larger than the rest put together. There was a period where I shut all advertising because we couldn't handle the customers. We were driving onto the platform. It felt nice.
So that gave, especially then. So now when I think about it, it's many, many years ago, but at that point in time, it gave a particular kick. However, I'm not sure I take my identity from that. So as an individual, I don't think I really change too much. I'm sure some people will disagree, but at my core, I think I'm very much the person I was when I was 20 years old.
Yeah, I do have a lot of money. I totally appreciate that. I understand that. And it gives me a lot of freedom to do a whole bunch of things. And the fact that I have no stress whatsoever on the Money side, it's hugely liberating.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:33:00 - 00:33:07]
What about the loss of structure? You said you had hundreds of employees and then you had nobody around you. How did that feel at that point.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:33:07 - 00:34:23]
In time, I didn't know the word. Today, I would say it was depressing. So probably if I had gotten myself checked, then I would have been depressed at that point in time. So I went from having a very large number, a team of people that dependent, that was dependent on me, that I ran. So I shouldn't say the team was dependent on me, but that I oversaw to suddenly just having one person reported to me, and that was somebody who's worked with me now for many, many years, my executive assistant from an office to not having an office, working from home.
And I say working, I wasn't really working, so it wasn't working from home. It was more of being responsible for a lot of money that had come into my bank accounts, which was at that point in time, being run by various bankers. So it was more an obligation to just sort of oversee how that was deployed as opposed to making interesting decisions on an operating business to me. So that's far more interesting than looking at a portfolio which was deployed into a bunch of funds.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:34:24 - 00:34:29]
Would you say you were bored on top of being miserable and depressed?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:34:29 - 00:34:30]
Yes, it was quite boring.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:34:31 - 00:34:34]
So did you regret exiting the business?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:34:35 - 00:35:20]
If I had to go back in time, would we go through the process again? I'd advise people to go through it, but be better prepared for it, because, as I said, being publicly rich is not that easy. It's easier to be privately rich, but it was a good experience, so I would highly recommend going through it if it's meaningful. My exit from the business happened later, which was when I stepped down from the business. So where I mentally and sort of operationally exited the business, that was not as I could have lived with.
I could have stayed on in the business and be super stressed. Then I would have had a heart attack in two more years. So do I regret that? Not at all. So it was absolutely the right thing I did at that point in time.
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:35:21 - 00:35:24]
How long that miserable period in your life lasted?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:35:24 - 00:37:09]
So I think it lasted a few years longer than it should have. We were living in a small place, Gibraltar. If one's in a big city, you can get intellectual stimulation by meeting a lot of interesting people, doing interesting stuff. That, unfortunately, was not the case in Gibraltar. If you had moved out Sona, that would have helped.
Even while I was in Gibraltar, I would fly to London every other week just to have some interesting meetings. But building that network took some time. So after we moved from Gibraltar in 2008, we moved to London. It took me another couple of years by the time I took an office, and that was more to get into the discipline of going to a place to work, to look at interesting business ideas, get involved with things, as opposed to going down to your study in your pajamas, which I realized I was not setting a good example for my kids because for them, they probably thought that was work, which was not real work. So I ended up getting an office, I think, 2009, 2010, and that's when I started to get operationally involved with a few things.
So I incubated three startups in India. I started work, on a serious note, on a tech platform to help charities raise money in India. I got a lot more active with investments in the UK, so I'd say it took me four years. I only got back to sort of proper work and a proper routine around 2010.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:37:10 - 00:37:17]
So how is your exit from party gaming changed the way you think about wealth?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:37:18 - 00:38:29]
So party gaming, we were still in wealth creation. Post exit, I switched into the wealth preservation mode. Such a pretty early on, I realized I'd made way more money than I ever thought I would. And the hunger, the desire to sort of run after more money was not really there. It was more of pretty comfortable with what we have.
What that meant was I was not shooting for hefty returns, it was more of just make sure that we get inflation, recover inflation, and we're okay. So it was diversification. I say that, but we didn't eventually end up diversifying a lot, but it was more of manage risk, don't do anything crazy, don't invest in things that look obviously risky. So it was a portfolio of what I would consider as very conservative for most people, especially most entrepreneurs. People tend to sort of go for racy returns, and I don't think I ever did.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:30 - 00:38:32]
Who is managing your money?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:38:33 - 00:40:10]
I went through a phase. So post art, post liquidity, it was entirely given out to banks on a discretionary basis. So I had a number of banks who had discretionary mandates. I did some of what you would expect people to do with time and money. I seeded a fund.
I seeded a fund of funds which was doing sort of resource investments in Africa. Not because I was looking for supernormal returns, but I thought it seemed like a good idea at the point in time. So, having met a few managers, being very impressed by some, but not impressed by a few, I thought I'd bring sort of, I became the anchor investor. I brought a bunch of those investments into one team where I said, long term, if you're in equities, you do well, so equities. So just get your exposure to the markets through the equity markets, but then have a diversified portfolio of stocks and that's liquid.
I didn't want to lock myself into ten year private equity funds. So it's gone from a longshot manager to today being a combination of some managed by a few people who, for whom I am their big investor and the backer, but it's sort of like a family office. They don't have third party capital, but they've got capital from me. So it's a diversified portfolio.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:11 - 00:40:14]
Do you actively manage any of your portfolios yourself?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:40:15 - 00:41:00]
So I actively try to understand what's going on. I have never felt myself to be capable is the wrong word, but disciplined, I think, is disciplined enough to actually manage my portfolio. So I play an active brainstorming role which may help the people who are actually making the investment decisions on a day to day basis. So, yes, I am active, but a lot less active. So I'm not the one placing trades.
I am part of that process, I am involved. If I have a very strong view, my view would be taken into consideration, but I tend to respect the views of the other people who are more involved, more experienced than I am in the process.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:01 - 00:41:17]
So you mentioned before when you were a student, you went through a lot of introspection. So I assume during that period of several years after you exit, you probably did quite a bit of introspection as well. How did that go for you? What did you do? What did you think?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:41:17 - 00:42:07]
One of the things I did sort of early on was to start to think of what I could now do to actually have an impact at scale in India. And that had, let's say two different arms. One that if we can help retail donors do something, and then what I call the wholesale funders, if we do things at a large scale. I'd been inspired by just giving. Once I moved to the UK, I'd receive emails on a regular basis from people asking me for money for various causes.
Why just giving? So that was the inspiration to set up let's change, which now is the tech platform for Give India, which is India's largest fundraising platform, from retail donors for charities, for NGOs in India.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:42:08 - 00:42:10]
Do you run it as a business?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:42:10 - 00:42:10]
No.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:42:10 - 00:42:11]
Or as a charity?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:42:11 - 00:43:08]
It was run as a business, but set up as a charity team that ran it. They were paid not NGO wages, they were paid tech startup wages. The environment in there was that of a tech startup. So we brought in good people where they were all very driven to make a success of it, except that they knew that they wouldn't get rich. If it became successful, they would just do a lot of good.
We never charged anybody, so none of the donors ever paid a penny for any donations that they made to NGOs on the platform. The idea was to make it absolutely frictionless. At that point in time, I didn't feel India had a culture of giving. For people to give to an organization that they were giving online for a beneficiary, where the impact is going to take place, where they weren't seeing the person was a cultural shift.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:09 - 00:43:13]
So you feel your platform actually caused that cultural shift?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:43:13 - 00:43:42]
Yes. So I think there has been a big shift now, and this shift massively accelerated during the pandemic where you're helping people. You could see that there was a need across the country, so people came out in large numbers to help. But that also raised the awareness of these platforms. So today, the platform which I funded with two, two and a half million dollars between 2010 and 14, it raises over $100 million a year from retail donors.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:42 - 00:43:42]
Incredible.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:43:42 - 00:43:46]
In terms of leverage on my investment of time and money, that's massive.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:46 - 00:43:47]
Massive.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:43:47 - 00:43:52]
Now, not all the organizations that raise money on it are highly effective.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:52 - 00:44:00]
How else it affects you? How else it affected you at the time when you just realized that your philanthropy actually has such a huge impact.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:44:01 - 00:44:26]
So I probably spend as much time on the giving side as opposed as I do on the investment side. The success of that platform was nice to see, but I was pretty convinced that we would be successful. So I used to tell the team, I said, if we fail, it'll only be because of us, not because what we were doing. People, by and large, are good. People like to do good stuff.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:44:27 - 00:45:01]
If you appeal to the person's good side and the person's convinced that what you are raising the money for is going to be useful, there is a reasonable chance you'll get money from a few people, and there are quite a few people in India. So I was convinced that we would end up being successful. When I look back, is that the only effective thing I've done? No, not really. So therefore it's one very visible impact of high leverage on my sort of philanthropic dollars that has been there.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:45:02 - 00:45:35]
I'd like to believe that some of the other things we are doing are also pretty high leverage.
Anastasia Koroleva:
So I've never seen you in a flashy car. You came here by bike. I never saw you wearing anything particularly expensive. Is it because you consciously want to not be obviously wealthy?
Vikrant Bhargava:
No, it's not. Conscious material possessions don't give me any pleasure. So there is no reason for me, I've got a simple watch. Yes. It's not the material possessions that give me any sort of special.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:45:35 - 00:45:43]
So it's basically you not craving material possessions or showing off, rather than your concerns about security, for example.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:45:43 - 00:45:55]
Yeah, I had a Bentley. That was the flashiest car I've had. I had a Bentley where I could drive it fast in Spain. I bought one here. I sold it in less than a year because there was no fun in driving a car here.
So I don't have a flashy car.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:45:57 - 00:46:10]
So you and I had this fascinating conversation about new money versus old money and why people actually want to show off their wealth. And I'd love you to talk about it in front of the camera because I thought it was very valuable and interesting.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:46:12 - 00:47:09]
So I think it goes to. Yeah, we discussed old money versus new money. Is it cultural? Is it not? I think a lot of it comes down to people getting comfortable with their money, where they made their money, I guess, makes a difference.
If money has come very easy, if you've put a hole in the ground and your grandfather did that, but then you've just always just seen money come out and you've had no, particularly, no aims in life and so on, you can afford to just splurge and do nothing else because you've never been told to do anything else more valuable. So I think it's partly cultural, partly how long you've had the money with you. So spending money is a waste of money which could be used elsewhere more positively.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:47:10 - 00:47:16]
Do you feel that you had to say no much more after you've become publicly wealthy?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:47:19 - 00:48:06]
Once you're wealthy, there will be a lot of people who come asking for money. Yes. So you have to say no on a regular basis. It's taken me time to get better at saying no. I would say in the early days, I have said yes to the wrong things and to the wrong people as well.
So I've made mistakes, have had some write offs because of making those mistakes. There have been some relationships fractured because of making those mistakes or not large amounts of money, even those small amounts of money. But people ask, and I think it takes some practice and experience to learn to say no. So today, I wouldn't want to be giving a loan to a friend, for example. I just wouldn't.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:48:06 - 00:48:23]
If somebody needs it, I don't mind giving a gift. Depending on who it is, a gift is easier to handle it than a loan, because with a loan, when people will, there are loads of people who will come asking for loans, and now it's very easy. I have no problem saying no.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:48:23 - 00:48:30]
How do you explain it if, say it's a friend or a relative, somebody you don't want to destroy the relationship with?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:48:31 - 00:49:21]
I think you can just talk about the relationships that have been destroyed to say that, hey, if you really need the help, I'm happy to help you. This is what I would do. It's not a loan, and one should know whether it's a loan or not. So if the person claims it's a loan, then the person should be able to borrow from some other source. If nobody else is willing to lend, that tells you that it's not a proper loan, and therefore it's better considered a gift.
If the person at some point in time is able to repay some or part of it, I'm happy to get them to just write a check to a charity as opposed to it coming back to me because I don't want to have the expectation that the money is going to come back. Because if I have that expectation, I will ask for it as well. I will not be embarrassed to ask for it. And if I ask for it and the answer is no, that could lead to the relationship getting spoiled.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:49:22 - 00:49:25]
So do you ever miss running a business day to day?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:49:26 - 00:49:55]
I do. That was the most fun I had in my life. I have gotten myself busy with so many things now that I'm not sure I can actually go back to running a business on a day to day basis. But as the kids are growing up, I'm actually starting to think more about what sort of a business I could be more actively involved with. That said, till sort of six years ago, I went through a year where I was pretty actively involved with an operating business.
But since 2018, I've not been operationally involved with the business.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:49:58 - 00:50:02]
Because you didn't want to be.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:50:02 - 00:50:17]
So it all worked out fine where I wasn't operationally involved when the pandemic hit that took sort of two and a half years out. Now that the kids are slightly older, there is time. And I think about potentially getting involved with something.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:50:17 - 00:50:28]
Because you just love the game because it's about your creativity. Is it the social aspect of it that you miss most?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:50:28 - 00:51:32]
So when I look at myself, I'm not an expert in any industry. I think what I'm good at is actually solving problems which, whether it's a business or a charity or a person, I can look at a problem objectively. So I pride myself on my being rational and objective, making decisions based on numbers and facts and logic, as opposed to being an expert in any sector. So that helps me as an investor, that helps me be able to evaluate and look at multiple different business opportunities or investments across sectors. In an operating business, you get a lot more chances of solving your hands on problem solving, and you can see the results of the solutions that you put in.
To me, it's that. So you call it creativity, maybe, but it is the excitement that comes with actually seeing your solutions being put into practice.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:32 - 00:51:38]
So it doesn't have to be a philanthropic cause. It could just be the business for the sake of the business solving a problem.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:51:38 - 00:52:27]
That's right. So even on the philanthropic side, I enjoy the debate on are we solve, what is this organization trying to do? Is it doing it in the most efficient manner? Is it effective in what it's doing, how it's doing, are we getting massive leverage on what we're doing? And so on.
So I think even there, it's the logical solving of a problem at scale, which is interesting and fulfilling, as opposed to me being passionately involved with the sector. So when I'm looking at a business and getting operationally involved, I'm looking at it purely as a business. It doesn't have to do anything to do with blend in with the philanthropic side at all. Business, it'll do well, it'll make money. And that money can get deployed again in the most efficient manner, separately.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:52:27 - 00:52:35]
So for you, there is no conflict between a desire to earn money and the need to do philanthropy.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:52:35 - 00:52:49]
And none whatsoever. I think one should pay for the other, but I think some people try to mix the two. I feel if you're mixing the two, often, you could end up having suboptimal outcomes on both.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:52:49 - 00:53:09]
So it sounds like at the moment, you basically invest passively, except that you get some intellectual stimulation from brainstorming ideas. But generally, it's a passive investment. But then you channel some of that money into philanthropical causes, which you control, right?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:53:10 - 00:53:52]
Not really. I wouldn't say we control even on the philanthropic side. Yes. On the investing side, it is passive, because if you're investing in a public company, not running the company, you're a passive shareholder.
It may be an active process to make the investment, but it's a passive investment. On the philanthropic side, I wear a few different hats, a few different roles. There are things where we are active, where we do stuff directly. So, as I say, we, the foundation, we could be a grant making a funding organization to an organization that also does its own stuff. So we are mostly a grant.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:53:52 - 00:56:26]
We write grants. So we are a funder. So I think a founder's pledge is a particularly interesting and highly effective organization. So just to explain what founders pledge does, founders Pledge gets people to founders of companies to pledge a portion of their exit proceeds to giving to good causes. Founders pledge runs a Daf.
So when people realize they have an exit exit proceeds, the money can go into a Daf. Founders pledge doesn't charge a fee as yet on the funds that sit in the DAF. More important, what it then does is founders Pledge has a high quality advisory team which advises the members on giving better. So there's a huge difference between giving to, I'd call an average organization, or what many people may think of a good organization. And people will typically look at good as what are the overheads, what are the fundraising costs?
Is the money being used for what people say it's being used, et cetera. And many organizations will spend 20-30% of their annual budget on fundraising overheads, et cetera, et cetera. Many people will say if it's less than 15%, it's a good organization. That doesn't necessarily make an organization good. Right.
Founders pledge will look for the most effective ways or look for organizations that are highly effective in solving the problems that they claim to be solving or are attempting to solve, especially for your listeners. I would say we're all business people, people who have done well building businesses where people are numbers focused. ROI is important. If you're building a tech business, you have to have your eyes on lifetime value, cost of acquiring a customer, and so on. And my view there is, when anybody giving any money, you have to have a heart to give.
But people often end up not using their heads in terms of their philanthropic giving, including the smartest of people leave the brains outside the rooms and they're making the decisions on the giving, where it's all driven by the heart. So having that right balance. And I think founders pledge helps people find organizations which if they were to apply their brains, because founders pledge research team applies its brains, they highlight those organizations which can solve organizations that are addressing those problems in the most effective manner.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:56:27 - 00:56:33]
You also mentioned to me before that founders pledge helps people give earlier.
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:56:34 - 00:57:39]
So I think two huge benefits to what founders pledge does. When you're writing a binding commitment to give on exit proceeds, typically people will have their exits in their thirty's, forty's, right? So earlier on in life than people would often on their own, start to give. I don't think founders pledge necessarily gets people to give a lot more than what they would have given over their lifetimes, because you either give or you don't give, you fall into one of those categories. But founders pledge, because of the fact that people have signed a pledge to give at exit proceeds, you actually bring that giving, that giving forward, and there's a huge time value of money there.
So if the giving happens 15-20 years before it otherwise would have counterfactual, then there is massive value to that giving. So founders pledge brings that giving forward, I think by many, many years, by a couple of decades or more. And it helps people give a lot better.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:40 - 00:57:43]
So what makes your life fulfilling today?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:57:43 - 00:58:42]
My kids, who I spend a lot of time with, a lot. So I actually think I've been a good dad. I spend more than normal. So when I look at my friends and so on, I think I spend a lot more time with my kids than they do. So that makes me particularly happy, especially given that with the oldest one, I was very, very busy.
So with my oldest son, who's 21, the first few years of his life, I didn't get to spend that much time with him. I would, but I had very little time. So that's hugely important to me. Outside of that, I guess the work we do through the foundation, I'm very pleased with how it is evolving and how it is shaping up. So I do feel we'll end up achieving a lot of impact.
Time will tell. We've done a lot of good already, but time will tell what we end up doing. And I feel pretty pleased with where things are on that front.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:42 - 00:58:45]
How do you think about meaning and purpose?
Vikrant Bhargava: [00:58:45 - 01:00:57]
I've been privileged to be in the position where I am, where I made money at a very early age. What can I do with it? What's the best I can do with it and leave a mark on the world would be, would be nice. So that drives me and I spend a lot of time thinking about it now. I feel a lot more confident when I say that if you're able to help shape policy, improve governance, get leverage on your money by helping bureaucrats frame better policy, which then impacts a very large number of people, that's good use of money.
So purpose is to use the money sensibly that I've been fortunate to have made at a very early stage, have kids that grow up to continue to be sensible, good human beings, good people. And yeah, I feel fortunate enough to feel that it seems to be working to plan.
Anastasia Koroleva:
Would it be correct to say that the meaning of wealth for you is one creating stability and peace of mind? You mentioned that at some point it clearly buys you time so you can spend it with your children and then things you like doing. And it's a leverage for your philanthropic causes that you care a lot about. Is there anything else, any other role that wealth plays in your life?
Vikrant Bhargava:
No, I think you've covered it. So, for me, wealth was important to get me stability and get me freedom. So it did buy me freedom to not have to worry about certain things and have the freedom to do what I felt like doing. It brought a whole bunch of responsibilities and some burden as well, where for many years, I would say I didn't feel free because I was bogged down trying to manage money. I think it's taken me time to get comfortable with that and ensure that the management side works.
Vikrant Bhargava: [01:00:58 - 01:01:42]
It's gotten to a stage where I enjoy the management side, and it's not a burden. Two, using the money to leverage to do what I care about. So I think I'm now at that point where I recently turned 50. So that's also a time when most people end up sort of reflecting on where they are and what they're doing. So, yes, it's blessed to be in a place which is good.
It's a good place to be able to now consciously, properly, and at scale, leverage what I have had now for a few years, which gives me the freedom to leverage it to do what I would really like to do.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:43 - 01:01:47]
Whom do you want to become in the future when you grow up?
Vikrant Bhargava: [01:01:48 - 01:02:06]
When I look at on the philanthropic side, Bill Gates has done an awesome job in actually being very thoughtful in his giving. But I wouldn't say there is a particular individual who I just sort of aspire to be. Be your own individual.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:06 - 01:02:08]
What keeps you up at night?
Vikrant Bhargava: [01:02:08 - 01:02:34]
The only thing that really bothers me, my stress historically, would be if there's a problem with the family. So it's not financial stuff. Even global things will bother me during the day, but they won't keep me up at night. What will keep me up at night is if there is a problem with the family. So I think it's only the family that I actually consider important enough to mess with my sleep, which I consider important.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:34 - 01:02:38]
My last question. How do you want to be remembered?
Vikrant Bhargava: [01:02:38 - 01:02:43]
As a good person who uses brains and his wealth in a sensible manner?
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:43 - 01:02:45]
Thank you so much, Vikrant.
Vikrant Bhargava: [01:02:45 - 01:02:47]
An absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me to.
