The SECRET Of Creating Wealth ft. UNICORN Startup Cred's Founder Kunal Shah - FO 1 | Raj Shamani
43m 50s
In this podcast, Kunal Shah, founder of FreeCharge and CRED, shares insights on wealth creation, human behavior, and entrepreneurship. He argues that success comes from understanding human motivation—what people truly need and are willing to pay for—rather than chasing fame, which is a zero-sum game. Shah distinguishes between "boring transactions," where people seek efficiency (e.g., refueling cars), and "interesting transactions," where they enjoy spending time and money (e.g., planning events). He advises becoming a producer of things you consume, solving real problems, and observing how people allocate their time and money to find opportunities. Shah critiques the Indian education system for promoting rote learning and shallow understanding, contrasting it with the deep, applied knowledge needed for wealth creation. He explains that his companies use incentives to encourage good financial habits, such as paying credit card bills on time. Shah also notes that social media platforms function like stages, where users trade effort for likes while platforms profit from attention. Ultimately, he emphasizes that wealth creation is non-zero-sum, with unlimited potential for those who focus on skill, depth, and solving meaningful problems.
But the last question is, you talked a lot about early rates like we should know about that early value. If you were to become someone's assistant, what would be your early? That's a good question. I would want to become. Hi, I am Rajshamani and welcome to Figuring Out. I started this because since childhood we have been asked what's next? What's the plan? Will you be able to do it again? I don't know. I'm still figuring out. I have big dreams, but I don't know how to achieve them. And there are a lot of people just like me who want to make it big in the world, but don't know what's next. In this podcast, we get entrepreneurs, artists, creators and everyone who has made it big in their life, but are still figuring out. And today's guest is someone who's a pure hustler, who has done it all. From selling CDs, men, they go on staging computer science and neighborhood children and running a cyber cafe to building billion dollars start up like free charge and cred. And has invested in more than 150 start-ups, Kunal Shah. In this podcast, we have talked about how to get rich, how to build billion-dollar companies, how to understand Indian customers and his thought provoking ideas on how Indians can create wealth. And why is it rewarding people to just build good financial habits? Also, we took Kunal Shah's job interview, so make sure you don't miss out on that one. Well, enjoy this episode and watch it till the end because this one podcast has taught me more than I've ever learnt in any business class. One-sided thing, so keep it fun. Okay, perfect. How are you now? I'm very. Very. I mean, I've never been in good numbers. You've been at 21 degrees, so did he stay at school? No, no, I am, I am, it's completely okay. Chill. I think. You've been talking about it all the day. Yes. Since like, it's a couple of days we have been talking about it. No, just chill. Are you excited to do it with you? So probably because you're so excited? It's just chill. Let's make it fun. And be in your natural version. Because you don't want this to become boring for anybody to listen to. Yeah. Imagine people have to suffer this. Oh, no. Not at all. I want them to suffer. So don't lose your edge. Yeah. Stay fun. All of us are the same people in different levels of our journey. So you are super young and you've achieved so much. I wish I had all the skillsets that you have for your age. Wow. So you're all. You're like hyping me up like for an ice and ice. And I'm like, "Yes, a little, a little." No, I genuinely believe so. I wish more people could keep doing what they do and building skills and learning from that and have the. Humility to know they're all imperfect in some ways and they're all figuring it out on the way. That's a good platform for guys. By the way, you know, I just want to keep it raw. I just want to kick in. Let's do it exactly that way. Let's not make it like no uncle feeling should come. No, no uncle feeling is done. That's it. That's it. Perfect. In fact, let's talk about similarities that now that you've talked about it, right? You are the one who dropped out of the college. I'm the one who never went to college. But I went to college. Never attended or gave exams. That's most of India, but sure. So why did you drop out? What was the reason? I dropped out of MBA because two reasons. One, I felt like this guy in three idiots who wanted to learn but not really go for the exams. I was happy to just skip the exams and just learn. I don't think the Indian education format likes that too much. I was very happy doing the presentations and not be writing the written exams. I have a massive phobia with writing long form. That's why I tweet, but I never write long form. I hate it. I can't memorize anything. But I think the education system expected you to be this way. I like to understand things but not write long forms because it doesn't make any sense. And thankfully the world is moved to short video formats. Who wants to watch this one or the podcast anyway? So the point is that I realized that all I wanted is to learn. I was doing well in life. I was already running a business by that time. But that format did not allow that. Our education format is more designed to this and I just realized that it was not so much fun because I rather learn through YouTube University and books and other things and constantly be on quest to know versus learn. And I think very few people are genuinely interested in knowing how does the spot casting business work or how does cred work or whatever. But everybody seems to have an opinion but not understanding of it. And I think that's a very interesting point of you ask anybody who is a gold medal and everybody will tell you exactly what an opinion is but there is no substance in anybody's research. There is no interest in research. We have all our life. We have copied each other's projects and tried to pass exams. When that was the opportunity to really learn something and go deeper into anything. So we are like all these, we are a generation of shallow people and shallow people have opinions they don't understand anything. But do you think we can do something and change it? That's a reality. Everybody agrees to it. Yeah. How will we change it? We will only change it when people truly see there is a benefit of doing this. But if you see somebody on Instagram by making this cool content gets millions of followers and then there is this boring thing of like learning something for years and years and eventually make some money. So the thing is that the curse of fame is exciting. If you ask every young person they want to be YouTube celebrity but they are not built for it. Only some people are built for it. And you can use the words like over nepotism, this that problem is that only few people are designed to be extraordinary and they will continuously win. By design can there be 1 million successful influencers? Probably not. But can there be 1 million sorry 10 million millionaires? Answer is yes. So to be 10 million millionaires you should not chase fame, you should change chase skill and knowledge and depth and understanding versus fame. But fame is super exciting right now. Because it gives you so much credibility. You get a blue tick and people are like I get so many DMs and I'm sure you do like how do you get a blue tick. I'm like why do you want to get blue tick? Why do you care? And nobody is really interested in what your journey is, what you've been. They just want to see your end state. Like there are people who have seen influencers who just have super cars and they are people are just following them because they have super cars. And I'm like but do they have substance? Because people who truly have substance don't feel the need to show it off. That's cute. But do you think okay I you said like few people are designed to do certain things but I feel the opposite way that you need to learn to become anything. Sure. So you're not designed to do anything. But you have to you have to like eventually do something keep trying it and then you were designed for XYZ. Yes. There is a small nuanced talk. Can there be 4000 winners for throwing javelin in the Olympics. But can there be 5000 millionaires in the month of July 2021. And that's where the difference comes is that some businesses by design do not have the space for more people to exist. Why do you want to fight for that? When there is unlimited ways to create wealth, very few places. For example, let's say I'm on Instagram, I can watch anybody's content. But I only have 24 hours. So you're competing with every single person who's releasing their podcast. Whereas when you're making money, everybody can make money. A lot of money. And that thing about our country is still not understood. People are still stuck on not understanding what is zero sum. What is not zero sum. And I think that's going to be a maybe few generation before we get there. Okay. What about unlimited ways to create wealth. Let's say what are those ways. Somebody keeps talking about, oh you know what, you should not do something where there's a lot of competition. How can somebody find some spaces where there's not competition and actually learn to become someone like that. By design, it comes from understanding of human behavior. All of us will not succeed if we don't understand human behavior. You will, you know by design, right now the podcast is going on. You know which clip is going to get what views. It's in your head. You know what is the edit that you need to make, right? We're all wired to do certain things and make certain things work. My view is that all of us are wired to do certain things and get their expertise over a period of time, multiple iterations, right? When we are understanding this human behavior, we understand what is the human motivation behind it. Some people are naturally added. Most people are not. According to me, not having a dating culture is a big reason we are all terrible at human motivation, right?
Because if you have never really convinced anybody to do anything for you, you've never really understood what do they want. It's about what I want. What person is the country still in arranged marriage? Probably 90%. Somebody else is going to sell you as a product, to an opposite family and both of them are like, "Okay, good product, let's get the married." But when you get in the rating world, you are actually testing yourself, is there a product market fit? Does anybody want me? And how will I learn that? Now, I'm giving an example of how to learn human motivation. There are multiple ways to learn that. Once you understand human motivation, you will realize what will people pay for? And that skill set can be learned by trying constantly different things. We all know people in college who made money. All of us know. Khoizarokhsaka notes based on that. Somebody used to do something else. Somebody organized some trips. One guy took you to, "Oh, I'll take you to this college event." All of that stuff. And if you go distilled, you'll find out that the core human needs are understood by those people. And they can create wealth. Human motivation is a non-going river. Right? Now that everybody's Instagram, everyone who wants to look good, we all want fancy shoes now. Right? Because can we wear the same clothes? On Instagram again, no, we want to appear differently, nicely. That's a motivation to understand what will people want. Right? I'm giving an example. But let's say we get to the next stage. We are, everybody wants to build videos, but we don't know and understand how to make good editing tools. What if somebody made extraordinary editing tools to make good content? Made it very easy for millions of people to make high quality edits this the way you do it. What if that was made? That'll be a unicorn. What if people like me could edit videos like you? Through a simple tool. So the thing is that human motivation is constantly shifting. Let's get another example. What if you could create? I talked about how as a kid, I used to be terrible at memorizing anything and not do well in exams because Indian education system was not about understanding. Funny enough, I used to school full marks in all vivas and practicals. And barely survive written exams. Right? I'm sure there'll be more kids like me. Now, what if you could create a product which made it easy for people like me to memorize? Using video and tools and techniques that you learn from your podcasting skills which made it easy for kids to remember their education. Can you make a lot of money? Answer is yes. So the thing is that the crux of creating wealth is about solving problems of people that are currently not solved well and people have deep desire to solve that problem by paying money for it. And that can only be done when you understand what people need. Yeah. And deeply be interested in people and their motivations. I always say this thing right? Because you pointed out that you need to create, let's say, editing tools or anything of that sort. I always say you need to be on the producer side of something which you're consuming the most. And that's how you can achieve wealth. That's a good framework. We are consumers of so many things if you become producers of that, we'll all create wealth. It's a big sell out of sense that framework. So it's like anything which you're like, let's say if I am, for example, I play pop GD old day, just giving example. If I play pop GD old day, is it of just consuming that? What if I can figure out to create content around that? I would add one more story framework of yours. What do I spend time on? What do I spend money on? These are two currencies that you're wasting or spending. You can have a lot of wealth. You could potentially spend a crore a month. Let's say somebody super rich Jeff Bezos could spend 10 crores a day. But you may Jeff, everybody has 24 hours a day. Which means if you understand how people spend their time and their money and became producer of that, you can create wealth. And it's important to understand the nuance. Everybody has different amounts of money to spend. Everybody has the same amount of time to spend. And therefore people who control time actually become more well the area of a period of time as long as they can get the right people's time. Let's say an interesting point of view now. There are two types of transactions in human life. Boring transaction, interesting transactions. Let's define what is boring transaction. Fuelling your car. Nobody has ever been excited. Who? Today's petrol will be in the car. But we are very excited to watch that funny clip. And that new show that everybody is talking about. And that movie that seems to be being discussed in the office. Assalam kowd ek thai. So if you look at human life's framework, all of us are trying to reduce time and money spent on all boring things. And invest in all the transactions that are interesting. Planning application. Nobody is like, "Yar nani, Pash will be decided." People love the process of planning. They start, "Yeh karengi, wo karengi." Imagine Indian households planning weddings. Nobody wants efficiency over there. He said, "Website here, Mandeewalak order karengi, katham." No, they want to call this person and that person and call that person on Instagram and suffer because they get joy out of it. So what I'm trying to say is that if you're making a business that will remove the time and money spent on people, things that people hate doing. Imagine when you create a product where nobody needs to charge their phone. It's always charged. Really in front. I want to buy it. Exactly. So the point is that it will happen one day. It will happen charging me happen through air and who knows that it might be happening in our lifetime. And that'll be amazing. What if nobody has to fuel their car or charge their car? Just parking is enough. And I'm saying that it'll all likely to happen in our lifetimes because nobody has enjoyed this. And by the way, let me put an example. Do petrol pump here. One guy gets two rupees cheaper. People will just go there. Nobody has any joy. Right? But if you create a shoe store and this is expensive, you actually want that. What's this that? What's the problem? So it's like the boring things people just want to, they want to A, they want to hate, they want to avoid doing it. B, they want to save cost on it. They don't want to spend time on it. They don't want to spend money on it. And interesting, they want to spend both the things. The opportunities in just this one answer, I tell you like this is just there. It's a massive mind shift. Like if people can understand that and start observing day to day life, I think in next one month, they can be filled with a lot of ideas just by observing other people. Yeah. Talking about ideas and talking about production. Like becoming the producer of what you do. Every day you have cover with the startup. That's free charge. So, best of that. Okay. All of that and revolve around revolts. Free money. Yeah. Why is that? Is that because consumers tend to love that more? Why do you have this kind of? See, whenever we are trying to change behavior, we have to always put incentive to change the behavior. Right? Let's take an example of parents trying to get people hooked on to temple. Is the kid interested in God? You know, what do they go to temple for? I go there for that. Prasad. Have you ever seen any temple with Kadwa Prasad? Will they be successful? So, I'm not inventing anything. It's always been there. What I'm trying to say is that if you are trying to incentivize somebody to do a good behavior, we all have become better humans, beings by incentive systems. Your parents would have told you, okay, if you do this good behavior, there is some incentive for you. If you do some bad behavior, there is punishment for you. I'm not in the business of giving any punishment. I can only give incentive for good behavior. So, what we say that credit is very simple. If you pay your credit card bills on time, will incentivize this behavior. So, that you feel good about it. You feel good about improving your credit score. You feel good about paying your bills on time. Because if you don't pay on time, there's crazy amount of interest to be paid. There is lot of financial losses that you might have.
a suffer if you don't do this in time. So all of our thinking has been around incentivizing good behavior because eventually you'll benefit from it. You don't need the incentives anymore. You'll just appreciate it. And that's how I think we have learned anything in everything. And everywhere. There is either validation in terms of doing something good. Or there's like a monetary review. Yeah. So either you give me likes or you cash. Yeah. Actually just pause for a second. Think about so many people who create content on social media. Only few make money. But everybody gets likes. And they're making content day in and out thinking about it. What should I say funny? Which dance steps should I do? So people like me. And the funny thing is social media platforms use the or need of likes to give you the audience and then sell ads on it. It's fascinating. Really good business. Yeah. Imagine this in the offline world is basically I create up. Let's say I created this society. T make big ground with stages. And allow performers to perform on that stage. People will come for that. And I'll just set up shops around it. That technically happens also. It does. I'm saying it's just become more efficient. Instagram is nothing but stages given to people. Every now and then I shift audience to your stage. They are applause and go to the next stage for every 10 seconds. And that's such a brilliant model because people who don't have money put all their efforts and money to put all their efforts in time to get those applause. Yeah. We have money. They spend money to get those applause. Yeah. It's like a brilliant win-win model. It is. And here's the interesting part now. You become popular. Right? You can monetize that through cash. Lot of popular people get into politics. You will see singers have become politicians, actors have become politicians, comedians have become politicians, artists, cricketers. How many times you've seen politicians become cricketer, artists, comedians, any of that? Rarely never, probably. Because there is one bladder of status that you climb to ultimately get the highest amount of status and power. And it's one way street. And if you make money, multiple people can exist. Parla men were so it needs seats. Is there a guideline in the country that you can only have 250 millionaires? Nothing more than that. Or 11 member cricket team versus we can have only 10 billionaires. We have to remove all of them. Never like that. Actually this gets me to a good question that a lot of new unicorns and starters in India are also coming. Like now people say that India, let's bet on India, India, Pratima, all of that is going on. And a lot of these people are coming from two or two, two or three cities as well. Do you think just like West we are going to see a lot of billionaires in India or are we far away from those people? By design we will have a few. To be doing it consistently requires fundamental changes. For example, you cannot create billionaires if the countries per capita income is not changing. 65 to 68% of the countries income is still dependent on agriculture. Can you guess what percentage of US income is dependent on agriculture? How many people in US are dependent on agriculture for making an income? It's like a wild guess. Less than 1%. Because you don't need that many people farmers. You can do automation. Today most farming can be done without a human being. They have to move to higher skills. We don't have those skills. Second thing is women participation of labor. Less than 6% of urban Indian women have any financial income. In China, 96% probably have financial income in urban China. That's how they got prosperous. When two genders work, they create more jobs. Think about your family member who are both the genders are working. Right? Or both the partners are working. Then they will say, "Nani Rakhleta, or we'll have two drivers. And then we do more things and we'll buy this and we'll buy this table also. It creates more and more jobs. Imagine only one gender works. Or one partner works. Which is happening in my house. And it's so too. Now that more people in my house are working more genders and more working. We have employed a new driver." But now here's the thing. We are so delusional. We don't realize, for example, Bangladesh, which is our neighboring nation. The urban female participation of labor is 68%. And therefore they have crosses on per capita income. Most people don't know about this. We are like, "Oh, Bangladesh, you're coming to our country? No, they're not going to come to our country. Very soon they'll put restrictions on our people going there. Because they're per capita income has taken off. Because both the genders are working. Pakistan has more female participation of labor than India. Why is that? Why do you feel that's the reason and what can we do to change it? Well, talk about it first of all. Most people have no clue about it. Everybody says this thing. We ask, "Has aah, hage, hage, hage, hage, women karm karte yadini, ho to, bachhe hoge to, they're like busy with that." M.B. School pradai kete, "Now, they are taking care of kids. Are we okay with it? Are we culturally okay with it?" And I think, and I'm not saying one is right or one is wrong. I'm just saying we cannot dream to be having billionaires when the per capita income is not changing. That's so true. Right? Every buddy is happy to get free subsidies. For example, the classic thing I find the funniest thing about Indians is they keep talking about petrol prices going up. So I tell them that if you compare 20 years ago, petrol price, how much was it? And 20 years ago, the inflation on that is much higher. How come nobody's complaining about the temporary? Because we don't understand inflation. Right? We have no clue what inflation means. But we can fight on one topic. And therefore keep past the country only has x percentage of people using cars or any vehicles. We need to increase the income. Not try to expect things to become cheaper. Now that you talked about, this is too much to take into the web on this. Now, this is making sense and it makes more sense. And actually this is sad because if you see culturally, even the top people who know who are really doing well, they are okay with all of this. And they are the ones like, I know a lot of people who are multi-multi-multi-milliners, even they're talking about like old traditional business, they're talking about, they're talking about the price to over each other. People who are doing stuff, they're talking about. Now, talking about all of this, I want to understand, where can people learn all of this? How do we start? What do we do? Let's make it simple for everybody who's listening to this. What are these 1, 2, 3, 4 steps? With somebody who can take learn about inflation or learn about capitalism because we love to talk about it. I think the simplest method is take one word that you got interested in, inflation. Spend one hour on YouTube finding everything about it. While you watch that video, you'll learn one more word. Spend one more hour finding about that word. Then you will discover one more word. Find more about that word. Over two years time, you will be smartest in all the people in your classroom or anybody in your family or all the people in your family. What's up group? That's very simple. You would have to do it. Because of that cool content, when will you watch it? That very trend of dance will be seen. You cannot make it cool. It will only happen when people get interested in becoming rich versus famous. But right now, every. What's it become? No, they want to become famous. They're not going to be rich. There's no interest in becoming rich. They want the goods you get by becoming rich, which allows you to show off. Nobody wants to be rich. Wow. Now, let's say I want to ask you this because I think content is going to shape culture. Content will. I am who I am because of the content. I've consumed. So, how can content creators make it cool? I think the good thing that I'm seeing a lot of content creators are doing, like someone like you, is just asking questions on people's behalf. Which is creating new vocabulary in people's head. And I really hope that they don't take this video as knowledge and make this as. Let's say if it's from this, can we learn two, three words to go curious about? And really understand it. I think the biggest thing that needs to be done is to be able to do it.
کم کول is that do you really understand something or you are just superficial guy. Upa upaar says, "I know everything." Do we want to really become good at something? The deep need to be really good at something is the only way we will change as a country. And the need for excellence, the need for a gum perfect karna. Kirtna loga me. For our own sake not because somebody else is selling us to do something perfect. Hamni employees create really good presentations for their own good not because the boss is asked them to make it. We avoid work. This is a very important thing to do. Let me go chill with my friends. That's fine. Then you will get that in your life. You will stay chilling with your friends. And the friend who will likely stay chilling with you will also stay with you. They will also not grow in life. The point is that why don't you do it? Want to make a perfect presentation because you are proud of it. Not because anybody else liked it or not. You are absolutely proud of it. It doesn't happen because I feel one of the reasons is because since we were kids we have been taught to get validated. So when we were kids I remember when you were 4 or 5 years old mom was preparing them. And then ask that kid to see how you see your dad's job. Correct. From that age we have been perfectly taught to get validation from someone else. I don't remember how you felt about someone else's job. It's a good point. We live our life through somebody else's lens and some of this word comes from the call collective societies. And you should look up what is collective society and find interesting stuff about it. Collective societies constantly stay in control by making the center of important somebody else. So it stays subdued in some ways because you are always trying to look good in other people's eyes. But actually let's do an imaginary story. Imagine there is a kid in the village who is not liked by everybody. Road type guy, things is very smart whatever. And this is ancient times. And nobody really talks to that kid. Nobody likes to be with that kid whatever. But the kid was very smart. So the kid invented a bucket. And that bucket solved the problem of carrying water from the water stream back to the village. And suddenly everybody is happy because they can store water. And suddenly this kid became rich. And everybody wants to get their daughter married to this kid. All the guys who did not like this kid before. And all the guys are like, "Hey, I know him from school." So he came to my house to eat food. We played cricket together. Just because that kid became rich. So what I am trying to say is that there are alternate methods of getting validation also. Because ultimately you will notice one thing that as soon as somebody becomes successful, people will say, "Hey, there is a concept in psychology called as basking in reflected lorry." As soon as some success happens, we attribute it to ourselves. Oh, all the CEOs of global companies are Indians. But boss, they don't have Indian passport anymore. They just have Indian origins. But we love to attribute it to ourselves. Look at Google CEOs also. Indian Microsoft CEO also Indian. But I am like boss, they are not in India. They don't have Indian passport. So the point is that we love to attribute everybody else's success to us. Oh, you are also Gujarati. You are also from Indore. You also like wearing the shoes. We find similarities to attribute their success to us. Like we always wanted to do that. I don't know who did this but by default we all do this. Everybody does this. Before we end this, I want to have the fun section of it. I have a last question because you talked about behavior or you talked about Vila Klaatri. I was reading about you. You were given fire rupees when you were in fifth class. You had to go to positive banks. And that. For doing a job, you were 3 minutes. So you were given everything? No, I had to work in my family's shop and my salary was 5 rupees a day to go deposit in the bank. Do you think that's a major reason why you got interested in finance or making money? I think some families in India who are business families, they are naturally interested in money. Because they discuss money under a table. They talk about taka and percentage is a lot more. Many families are talking about money is considered shameful. Like a lower being if you discuss money. And therefore our relationship with money is messed up. Whereas we all live in this university through money. Our relationship with money is like don't discuss it. Don't talk about it. Don't talk about it. People don't talk about it. Having loans. It's awkward to borrow money. Lend money. Like we just launched launching a product tomorrow or day after which is called Credment. Where Cred members can invest in other Cred members who are all Creditwadi Trust for the individuals. And it's our first community product where they get up to 9% on investing in Cred members. And they can borrow. Cred members can borrow from that same pool. Because we realize that this is a perfect thing. Like everybody's Creditwadi Trust for the people who should come together and invest in this. But we are fairly certain that it's still not going to be talked about. People will be quietly doing this behavior of taking loans. Like we are the leading FinTech lender in India. But you will never see a tweet about taking loans from Creditwadi because it's a private behavior. And it's going to be very powerful for us to create a high trust for the community, to build on top of that. But at the core of it we are trying to improve relationship with money. We don't want people to not talk about it. And it's always considered like that. In my family also, we talk about money openly even with the kids. But the moment we talk about it, we don't even know. Correct. You are in the. that you talk about making people wealthy. Correct. And you read about financial gurus family's Credits. As a first of all, are they really wealthy? Is my question. Every wealthy person has become wealthy by taking a lot of loans. You think, "Amani's don't take loan? Tata's don't take loan? All of them have taken loans. The you think, "Amazon does not take loan? Apple does not take loan? And have they not taken loan to get where they are today?" So answer is, "Everybody has." But the question is that because we are terrible at managing money, we say, "Aar Neemarkar." See, I'll tell you what happened. Emotional societies operate from apathy to panic. Okay, let me explain. Look at our behaviour with COVID. Complete panic. Complete apathy. Rekhu Shne. Shalav. Same way, in matters of loan, we do the same thing. No. No, it's okay. There's no middle stance. I so often make this joke that in India, nobody does App Store, two star, three star, four star rating. It's either one star or five star. We operate from love and hate only. That's true. That's like my Uber beer. Which is exactly what I'm talking about. So the thing is that credit cards are not bad. It's like saying, "Knife is bad." Yeah, if you hold it from the wrong side, yes, you will get hurt. But knife has made human life better. Can you say, "What's up is bad?" We blame WhatsApp if somebody sells a problematic content to somebody. Does WhatsApp make it bad? Or people make it bad? So the question is that every time you introduce new technology, the first reaction. You go back in history and study all the PR that came when cars were invented. For decade, it was hated. Yeah. Now, we don't even think about this. So every time you do something that is new and different and because we do not understand, it turns into fear and hatred. That's such a. It's so much. I am like, "Master Glass 101 Raj, everything you think about is shattered right now. Now go think about something new." Really insightful. Now, on a reason, like, I don't want to take much of your time, I want to quickly go to the last segment of. Sure. I want to leave people with that thought that there are a few things we talk about. One was, start talking about it. Second is, improve your relationship with the things that you want to do. Third was, if you are interesting in anything, pick up one word, learn, spend one hour, pick up another word, spend another hour. Then,
Apart from all of that, think about why you do certain things, why people do certain things, and why you always are operating from just to different extreme point of view, like love or fear. And if people can just think about these things, I think a lot of people will start seeing their day to day differently, because it's not to think about it. But now you did not say it powerfully, like point number one is point number two, point number three. Why didn't you do that? That's your style, man. So the last segment was, it's only like in from the session, because I want to tell people that you are normal, everybody is normal. So imagine you were about to get hired to rent and you're giving it to them. I'm going to ask you the five most basic, popular questions. Okay. And you have to instantly answer them. Cool. I hope I get hired. That people are not talking about you. So this is your job interview. Number one, the most basic question, cliche. I want to work at this topic. We're talking about credit. I realize that I want to work with people better than me, and seems like credit is a place where most people are better than me. So I'm only here to improve myself, and I think this will be a best place to work for that. Lovely. What is your weakness? Being, not being able to stay focused on one thing, because I'm interested in everything. That's a good strength, I'll be right back. Now tell me who Konal Shah is outside your CV, or let's say outside of the world, people know about it. Somebody who is eternally seeking truth, sometimes by learning, sometimes by building companies, sometimes by sharing, sometimes by meeting smart people. And hopefully, I will never find it before I die, and that will make my life permanently interesting. That's a very small kind of thing. What do you do after you leave office? I try to think about my day. I am trying to get into habit of playing some version of sport, because I realize that I need to be away from my phone, and I need some force conditions for that. And I'm trying to get into habit of watching some content. I struggle with time. And you can follow Ratsamani. Sure. I do follow. But the last question is, you talk a lot about early rates, like people should know about that early value. If you were to become someone's assistant, what would be your early rate? I would want to become assistant to many, many people who are generally much better than me. And because I'm going to learn so much from them, I'll make it free. Because the value that I'll get per hour from being around them is going to be so much more valuable than charging the money. That's so good. You're like, "Why is this so different?" So that's what I think. "Oh my gosh, what are you talking about?" "What's voting for the value rate?" I'm getting into badminton. I'm not very good at it. But I only play with people who are better than me. Wow. I need to prepare for a year and then come down. Sure. You want to be fun? It'll be definitely fun. Thank you so much for doing this. It was pleasure having you. We got a lot of answers. We didn't stick to any framework. Cool. I hope that's okay. Perfect. Any question which I. I'm glad we did that way because it's boring otherwise. Thank you. See you.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Kunal Shah emphasizes understanding human motivation and behavior as key to creating wealth and successful businesses.
He distinguishes between "boring transactions" (e.g., fueling a car) where people want to save time/money, and "interesting transactions" (e.g., planning weddings) where they willingly spend both.
Shah advocates becoming a producer of what you consume, focusing on solving real problems people are willing to pay for, rather than chasing fame.
He notes that fame is a zero-sum game (limited spots), while wealth creation is non-zero-sum (unlimited opportunities).
Shah’s businesses (FreeCharge, CRED) incentivize good financial behavior, using rewards to change habits.
He critiques the education system for promoting shallow learning and memorization over deep understanding and skill-building.
Shah suggests observing how people spend time and money to identify business opportunities, especially in areas where current solutions are poor.
He highlights social media platforms as "stages" where users trade effort for likes, while platforms monetize attention.
Summary:
In this podcast, Kunal Shah, founder of FreeCharge and CRED, shares insights on wealth creation, human behavior, and entrepreneurship. He argues that success comes from understanding human motivation—what people truly need and are willing to pay for—rather than chasing fame, which is a zero-sum game. , planning events).
He advises becoming a producer of things you consume, solving real problems, and observing how people allocate their time and money to find opportunities. Shah critiques the Indian education system for promoting rote learning and shallow understanding, contrasting it with the deep, applied knowledge needed for wealth creation. He explains that his companies use incentives to encourage good financial habits, such as paying credit card bills on time.
Shah also notes that social media platforms function like stages, where users trade effort for likes while platforms profit from attention. Ultimately, he emphasizes that wealth creation is non-zero-sum, with unlimited potential for those who focus on skill, depth, and solving meaningful problems.
FAQs
It's a podcast where host Rajshamani talks with entrepreneurs, artists, and creators who have achieved success but are still figuring out their journey, aiming to inspire others with big dreams.
He dropped out because he hated writing long-form exams and preferred learning through understanding and practical experience, like running his business, rather than the Indian education system's format.
He believes wealth comes from understanding human motivation and solving problems people deeply want solved, focusing on being a producer of things others consume, especially where people spend time or money.
Boring transactions, like fueling a car, are things people want to minimize time and money on. Interesting transactions, like planning a wedding or watching a show, are where people willingly spend both time and money.
Cred incentivizes good behavior, like paying credit card bills on time, with rewards. This helps people build better financial habits, as incentives are effective for changing behavior.
He says social media gives people a 'stage' to perform for likes (applause), and platforms sell ads around that attention. It's like a society with a performance ground where shops benefit from the crowd.
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