Nikhil Kamath on letting your instincs drive learning in the world around you

- What have you learned through your failures? - I think I've learned everything I have learned only through failures. I don't think success teaches much. - Welcome to The Path. Today my guest is Nikhil Kamath, who went from being a 16-year-old high school dropout to co-founding one of India's largest traded platforms. Nikhil is a self-made billionaire who achieves success by digging into his drive and making it his mission to help people. His career has been a rule-breaking journey through India's financial world, where to this day he challenges traditional norms and empowers everyday individuals to take control. Here's how Nikhil Kamath paved his path. (energetic theme music) I want to go way, way back to a young Nikhil as a boy and when you can remember it all, what you maybe wanted to be when you grew up. - Really stupid aspirations as a child. I remember them being as generic as, y'know, you want to be a pilot or an astronaut or all of those things that I might have vocalized back then. I don't think there was any real ambition. I said what I thought other people around me wanted. - What did school mean to you as a young kid? Was it important? Did you like it? Did you go? - I hated school, always did. I was that one rebellious child who wanted to do the opposite of everything somebody told him to do. So I didn't really enjoy school much. I went till I was about 15, 16, and after that I did not go. - [Ryan] Nikhil started his journey young. It was around ninth grade when he got his hands on a cell phone and sold it. That one sale quickly turned into a side hustle, using the profit to buy more phones and keep selling. Things were going great until his mom found out and flushed the phones down the toilet. That early hustle was just the beginning. Not long after dropping out of school, he started working night shifts at a call center, all while teaching himself how to trade on the stock market. His boss saw his success and gave him some money to manage, and then another coworker did the same, and then another! Soon enough, Nikhil was managing investments for his entire team, making more money from his side gig than his actual job. - I was a fairly insecure young boy because my classmates of the time were in college. They were learning to be engineers and doctors and architects. But I think to overcompensate for that insecurity, I would read whatever I could get my hands on, and I spent many years reading whatever I could get on economics and behavioral finance. That became my little niche, in a way. I always focused more on the stock market-related side of things. For the last 21 years, if the stock market is on, I have my terminals, I'm sitting and staring at the screen. I would probably have missed in this entirety six or seven days, when I was in a hospital, but I've not missed another day. If I'm traveling, I don't go to weddings, I miss all these functions, so if the market is on, I'm doing that. So that is, I don't know, as much as an addiction as it might be a passion. - At 19, the Nikhil and his brother founded Kamath & Associates, an investment management company for high net worth individuals. A couple years later, they set out to make stock trading accessible for the everyday person in India with the launch of Zerodha. With a low-fee model, Zerodha became more than a platform. It was a gateway for millions to take control of their financial futures. It quickly became a disruptive force in the brokerage industry. Today they have almost 8 million users. Did you feel a lot of pressure in those early days of starting the company? - So Ryan, I feel like everybody goes through that phase. It feels like it's tough while you're in it, but it's also the most fun when you've outgrown it or moved beyond it. I still today enjoy this element of starting something new. It's like something that is so addictive and it gives you such a high that I'm constantly holding onto it. Even today, I start something new every, like, y'know, now and then, and you want to, like, test yourself. - What have you learned through your failures? - I think I've learned everything I have learned only through failures. I don't think success teaches much outside of creating an ecosystem where it is easier for you to get complacent. Sometimes you feel like you really know what you're doing because you've done it once, twice, or thrice, and that ability to pessimistically contradict your own ego I think is very important. - After Zerodha's success, Nikhil's vision grew. In 2020, he co-founded True Beacon, an investment management firm with a zero-fee model, only profiting when clients do. Then in 2021, he co-founded Gruhas, a venture capital firm focused on supporting startups in sectors like AI, climate, and media. What drives you to not only keep doing it, but to keep trying new things constantly as well? What is that? - This notion of paying forward what you are bestowed with I think is alluring. It's fun. You do new things with new people and you create new enterprises. India as a country, I think, has done spectacularly well, especially in the last decade. Today we are this very attractive destination, where people who might be bearish about their own geographies in the West are very sanguine when it comes to talking about India. India seems to be like this new toy everybody wants to play with. I hope that continues, and if all of these things come together, I think the ecosystem in 10 years will be so much bigger, so much better, so much more robust in India that I would love to have played some little role in that. And today that gives me some amount of motivation to want to attempt it. - His newest venture is a bit of a pivot. He launched a podcast called "WTF Is?", where he dives into big financial topics with entrepreneurs and experts. With over a million subscribers, "WTF Is?" has become another way he's opening up finance and supporting India's next wave of entrepreneurs. What motivated you to start it? What are you trying to accomplish with it? - So the long term dream from that is to truly democratize the kind of learning required for any wannabe entrepreneur in India. I think we are still in the very beginning, but going forward, we would want to get to a point where everything an entrepreneur in India needs to start a company, they should be able to get it from us. We want to have that whole spectrum. Very early days, but it looks like it's going in the right direction, and it's a lot of fun, I enjoy it. - I didn't drop out as early as you did, but I have a huge passion in being able to use the knowledge that I've learned to help train others as well or to help share that knowledge. Do you think a lot of the passion you have around this podcast and what you just said, which is a pretty cool longer term vision for what you're trying to accomplish, stems from the fact that you found yourself to be so successful, not needing to take the traditional educational route? - This is a fairly unpopular opinion, but I don't think traditional education works today. College is everywhere. It's on your phone. It's in a book. It's with the people that you speak to. I would argue that if I had five years to invest, I'm not saying, y'know, don't go to college and sit and watch TV and play games at home, you probably don't grow like that, but if you're somebody who's remotely self-motivated, that five years can be spent in a manner where what you walk out with today, because the world is so open and free and not as fragmented as it once was, you can be a lot more knowledgeable than you might if you were to have just gone to college and pursued a traditional degree. That, I think, is also the path forward. When education gets truly democratized, everybody has equal opportunity at learning and acquiring knowledge, and the most knowledgeable people do better, even in a capitalistic society. - Your career far has been truly amazing and absolutely non-linear. When someone asks you what they should do with their career or what's your best career advice, what do you tell them? - I tell people today that don't go to the previous generation to figure out what you should be doing 20 years from now. Go look at what the kids are doing. Go look at what a 16-year-old boy is doing. Look at what he might want in 10 years. 'Cause a lot of the advice you might get from somebody who's 50 or 60 and in positions of power, y'know, I'll be there myself soon, I'll be less relevant in 10 years than I am today because I would've lost touch with that youth, which kind of, like, defines culture going forward. So I would be look forward, look younger for inspiration, not old. - [Ryan] So here's my takeaway. A lot in Nikhil's success comes down to two things, being an outsider and a relentless drive to rewrite the rules. Dropping out of high school at a young age pulled him off the conventional path and set him on a journey where his instincts became his strongest skill. This outsider's perspective helped him see where the system fell short and how he could build something better around it. He redefined what it means to manage wealth, breaking down barriers for everyday people across India, while also creating tools for high net worth individuals. But although instinct is his superpower, he stays open to learning from those around him and from what the world has to offer. So in your path, remember sometimes the greatest advantage is standing outside the norm. Trust yourself to see what others can't and build the future only you envision. (upbeat dance music)