Dear Friends,
Recently, I was listening to a podcast of GV Keshav Reddy (Raw Talks with VK - www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ52JaOnBp4). This is a bit lengthy but interesting. Keshav is the grandson of GV Krishna Reddy, founder of GVK Industries Limited. It is a conglomerate, including infrastructure projects (e.g., Mumbai Airport). Keshav is the founder of EQUAL (India's largest data-sharing platform). They are also building Equal AI. It will be an AI assistant for you. If you are in a meeting and get a call, it answers on your behalf and thinks like you because it has been trained over time.
The most interesting part of the conversation is about the future of AI and frugality. Interestingly, Keshav does not have a cabin in his office and sits along with other employees. I appreciate his open-mindedness.
He also spoke about how Elon Musk sits in his office. It seems he got an opportunity to travel along with Nikhil Kamath (Zerodha founder), who did a podcast with Elon Musk. Elon Musk worked the whole day on various functions, made his kids sleep at night, came to the podcast at 10:45 PM, and did a continuous podcast till 2:30 AM, non-stop, without any fatigue. Keshav heard from Nikhil that Elon Musk does not have a separate cabin and instead sits in the factory among the machines to supervise the entire operation. This is amazing! I read somewhere how the world’s richest man, with a net worth of $778 billion, lives frugally. He lives in a humble $50,000 ranch-style house in Texas and has sold all his houses in California.
When I joined Wipro, I used to wonder what Premji usually drives. One day, I had the opportunity to observe him as he came out of the lift. No security, no office staff, no signs of any officers, simply walking alone towards his Ford car and checking in. That day, I realized that a car is no longer a status symbol.
I still remember—maybe people from my age group in the 1980s/90s will echo with me. In those days, we used to press the toothpaste tube hard to push out the last bit of Colgate. Prior to this, it was Dabur Red Tooth Powder - Dabur Lal Dant Manjan. Oh my God! It used to be spicy! However, my father insisted on using that. Travel meant going to the nearest city within 60 km. Once in 5 years, we would travel beyond 500 km on a few occasions.
The other day, I was at the airport. Kids were bargaining with parents for an international trip. Parents were negotiating as a return gift for good exam marks. This is a wrong precedent. In fact, the "third-generation curse" was discussed in the above podcast. The third-generation curse recognizes that very few family businesses survive beyond the third generation. There is a statistic frequently cited in wealth management: nearly 90% of family wealth is lost by the third generation. If parents give their children this extravagant taste, the grandchildren suffer.
Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877 as one of the richest men in America. By 1973, among his 120 descendants, none were millionaires. Research shows that heirs inherit money but not the mindset.
Hitarth Dholakia, the youngest son of Ghanshyam Dholakia, one of the founders of Rs 6,000 crore Hare Krishna Diamond Exports, stayed in Hyderabad for a month to understand the pain and struggles of common people. This is a common practice in their family so that they inherit the mindset. This is the real solution before offering wealth. He had to live without the Dholakia tag and without a mobile phone. His father gave him Rs 500 and an envelope with a flight ticket. He did not know where he would land.
What are you doing to avoid a third-generation curse in your family?
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