Hello, listeners, and welcome back to First Principles, Episode 48, or the 7th episode of season 3. 

The host, Rohin Dharmakumar, first crossed paths with Deepak Abbot back in April 2015, even before The Ken had been founded. Rohin was chasing down an insightful breakdown of the tech ecosystem’s huge user numbers during the Free Basics debate, and Deepak, a veteran operator and former product head at Paytm, was the go-to source for his data-filled, analytical posts.

That same data-driven curiosity is what led Deepak to walk away from corporate life in 2019. He was clear: he didn’t want to just manage; he had years left to actively “build products, you know, with my own hands”. What he built was Indiagold, targeting the massive opportunity of gold in a market VCs often dismissed as an ‘old economy product’.

In this episode, Rohin sat down with Deepak Abbot, co-founder of Indiagold, to discuss how they are transforming India’s massive $1.5 trillion gold reserve—an asset often locked away and doing nothing—into a productive force. Deepak calls this gold a “dead asset” and explains that Indiagold’s mission is to change the mindset around it. They are not just giving gold loans; they are monetising a secured asset for the 250 million Indians who are excluded from formal credit due to thin or non-existent credit scores. By enabling customers to safely leverage their gold reserve, the company helps jumpstart a formal credit history and provides essential working capital.

Listen in as Deepak charts his operator-to-founder journey, shares how he navigated initial VC skepticism, and details the strategy behind turning a seemingly archaic commodity into a modern fintech solution for one of India’s most fundamental credit problems. Plus, a fascinating look inside a unique company culture, including why Indiagold operates without a CEO.

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This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.

Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.

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Full transcript:

(The transcript is auto-generated and there may be occasional errors. Please cross-check)

Rohin Dharmakumar: [00:00:00] April 2015 was the last, the most earliest email exchange that I could find with my guest today. I’d written to him. I hadn’t started The Ken back then. And India was in the throes of the campaign against zero rating and Free Basics. And I had written to Deepak Abbot trying to understand how do you make sense of all these large numbers that are coming out from Facebook and Google about the number of active users they have, how to calculate ARPU, how do you value the ecosystem?

[00:00:38] Because Deepak used to do these elaborate posts filled with data on all the tech ecosystems and explain insightfully what they really meant. That was April 2015. The next set of email exchanges that we had was after he’d started IndiaGold. It was in May 2022. I think I and a colleague had reached out to him for a story that we were planning around gold as an asset and he very kindly clarified saying that look, we are not in the business of looking at gold as an investment opportunity. In fact, we are, we give trade credit line against gold. In fact, we call gold a dead asset.

[00:01:21] And then most recently, July 2025, I had written to Deepak saying, Deepak, we need to meet and chat for First Principles. And I said I missed his data driven post and he wrote back saying even I missed my data driven posts. And after a smiley he said startup consumes you is an understatement. And here we are on 2nd November 2025. I’m in Delhi. It’s a Sunday. This is post Diwali Delhi. The AQI in the morning when I checked was 364. It’s what it is.

[00:01:53] Welcome Deepak Abbot to First Principles with The Ken.

Deepak Abbot: [00:01:54] Thanks Rohin. So lovely to have you.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [00:01:56] Yeah.

Deepak Abbot: [00:01:56] you know it’s sounds like a different era when we were interacting about free basics. I think 2015 is when most of the things that we see today, the evolution of AI and tech and social media and micro content back then, the life now feels simpler. We’re fighting about things which, you know, I think no one will realize today that what we fought about back then.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [00:02:19] Yeah.

Deepak Abbot: [00:02:20] So yeah, it’s..

Rohin Dharmakumar: [00:02:21] 2016 I think February was when India banned zero rating.

Deepak Abbot: [00:02:26] Right. So that felt like a personal victory back then.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [00:02:29] Very much, very much. I know it’s slightly off topic, but let’s say India didn’t ban zero rating. Do you think the Indian internet would look dramatically different today?

Deepak Abbot: [00:02:41] Oh, yes. We’ll be very, so I think we are still, unfortunately, we are still dominated by a lot of American tech companies controlling our data indirectly. If we would have continued with Free Basics, I think we would have given them direct access and a lot of new Indian startups, a lot of unicorns that took birth in India, I think some of them wouldn’t have come about. I think that’s one change that we saw that most of the big startups that you see today, they all took birth after 2015, 16. So I would attribute some part of it to, you know, getting control of our own internet, letting users decide what they want to see, browse, or, you know, use their phone for. But like I said, even though all large tech products we’re still consuming are American, but at least, you know, we’ve kept some of the core fundamentals of internet with us. So that’s like I would say a partial victory for,

Rohin Dharmakumar: [03:41] I fully agree and for those of you who are wondering, zero rating was an attempt to get Telcos, or it was an attempt where Telcos could allow some apps and services to consume zero data for you in return for, obviously, those products and services paying Telcos to do so. So the very real fear back then in 2015 was that let’s say, if you’re using Facebook, your phone wouldn’t consume any data at all, whereas if you’re using a rival to Facebook, it would. So therefore you would, all of India would end up preferring zero rated services. Thank God India actually banned zero rating. But this podcast is not about zero rating and it’s about leadership, entrepreneurship, mental models and IndiaGold. So, cut the chase back to 2019 September.

Deepak Abbot: [04:35] Right.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [04:36] That’s when you and Nitin Mishra who were both at Paytm, quit Paytm. And you spent the next what, roughly nine months before you launched IndiaGold?

Deepak Abbot: [04:48] Yeah, we started IndiaGold in March 2020. So, yeah about seven months.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [04:51] All right. So why did you quit back then and at that point, did you guys have an inkling of what you would do or that you even wanted to do something new on your own?

Deepak Abbot: [05:04] So I quit because I wanted to do a startup. I was very clear that, you know, I want to build something where it’s while I was part of Paytm and it was kind, I was kind of an intrapreneur there like Vijay gave you a lot of freedom and I was building the product the way, you know, we felt that we should be building it. There was, there’s so much happening back then and Paytm was and is definitely one of the biggest payments product that came out of India. So it was a great feeling working at Paytm, but then, you know, I was getting, there were a lot of people working under me and I was not getting hands on experience of which, you know, I always wanted to build few things and at Paytm, I realized that it’s getting out of my hand in sense that I’m becoming more of a management. And I thought, you know, I still have seven, eight years left in me to build products, build, you know, with my own hands. And I thought okay, let’s, you know, let’s try our hands at a startup because, you know,

Rohin Dharmakumar: [06:01] If I may, why do you say seven, eight years left in me? How old were you back in 2019?

Deepak Abbot: [06:03] I was 43 back then. Yeah, 42, 43. Right? And you know, mentally you you would think that by 50 you wouldn’t be, you know, doing things which would require you to maybe work 16, 17 hours and code or, you know, build wire frames or write PRDs. So that was my mental target that by 50, at least I shouldn’t be doing that. But till 50, I should be actively, you know, exploring new things, building things. And that’s when I thought okay, let’s, let’s try our hands at a startup and Paytm anyways is, you know, it’s like a, you know, my own family, I can come back anytime if I want and I told Vijay that, you know, I want to build something on my own and

Rohin Dharmakumar: [06:39] And you’d done that. You’d worked at Paytm in two stints.

Deepak Abbot: [06:42] Yes.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [06:43] We’ll come back to that later.

Deepak Abbot: [06:44] Yeah. So, yeah, so and then we spent next 6-7 months understanding, you know, what we can build, obviously, you know, because fintech was the only thing that you know, I knew because I had spent last 8-9 years building products around fintech. And obviously, fintech is a very large broad category and we are thinking that what we can do, should we get into payments because, you know, payments was still evolving while PhonePe, Paytm, Google Pay, they’re all doing pretty good on UPI and wallet. Then we realized that, you know, that would require

Rohin Dharmakumar: [07:16] Alternative credit scoring also was one of the things that you were considering.

Deepak Abbot: [07:19] Yes, alternative credit score and then we also, you know, looked at retail market, can we do something on the quick commerce, not quick, we didn’t call it quick commerce back then, but, you know, local commerce and can we, you know, build some software for the retail industry. So, a lot of, a lot of…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [07:37] So, a lot of these, the the directions that you were going, were these all largely top down market potential driven?

Deepak Abbot: [07:44] Yes, we were looking at a large. See, working at Paytm taught you one thing that look at a very, very large problem, right? And then you can figure out your vertical within that and go deep. But at least look at a market which is pretty big. So that at least when you, you know, if you are able to make a product which can, you know, have some impact, you’ll be able to see the real impact of it, right? So, so that’s why I think retail, which was a 20, 30 billion dollar market and of course, payments we all knew was a big market and then uh alternate, alternate score for credit because credit anyways is has always been a big market. It’s still a very, uh you know, huge potential left. So, so we explored all that and then, you know, we zeroed in on lending as a as a core product, but we realized that, uh you know, back then, six years back, a lot of fintechs, a lot of NBFCs, a lot of startups which were doing B2C lending. And that to mostly unsecured. I thought, you know, we can build yet another uh, yet another company and make it more efficient. Maybe, you know, look at, you know, the white spaces within lending. And that’s when we realized that in unsecured because of a lot of infrastructure that was readily available, because of, you know, account aggregator and, you know, all the tools that uh public APIs that were available, we thought, you know, we can, we didn’t feel that we can build something innovative there. And that was…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [09:06] There wasn’t enough space or there was enough inefficiency that you could capture.

Deepak Abbot: [09:11] I mean, no, in unsecured, we felt that there are less inefficiencies, it’s only maybe, you know, you can optimize on maybe credit underwriting, maybe you can, you know, build a better distribution. But real innovation we felt back then was not really possible as far as my thinking was involved. And that’s when we, you know, stumbled upon this opportunity about gold and gold anyways back then was not very, very big in terms of people talking about it, right? There were only large NBFCs and incumbents who were doing gold loans.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [09:42] Or at least the the classic tech startups or VC funded startups talking about…

Deepak Abbot: [09:46] There was hardly any VC funded, there was only one VC funded startup back then. So and also VCs back then, you know, didn’t really understand gold as a category, right? They always thought that gold is dying. Uh for first three years of our startup, every VC used to say that, you know, why are you getting into a product which is, you know, no one is going to buy gold anymore. Uh who buys gold? You know…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [10:07] Didn’t many of them say crypto is the future?

Deepak Abbot: [10:09] Yeah, everyone used to say that, right? And a lot of VCs used to say that my family has not bought gold in last seven, eight years and I don’t see anyone buying gold. We used to get that very often.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [10:18] Isn’t that isn’t that the classic trap? I’m surprised VCs are making it. Whenever someone says that I don’t do something, therefore the market does not exist for that. Isn’t that the worst trap to fall into?

Deepak Abbot: [10:28] In fact, before before this, when we were pitching our retail uh solutions to some of the VCs and one VC we met and it was about uh delivering groceries, um local commerce and that VC said uh, you know, and the idea was to promote the local retailer. VC said, but BigBasket has taken over the market. I mean, 100% of the deliveries in Bangalore, at least are happening through BigBasket. What why are you working for these uh grocery retailers? You know, they are anyways dead. I said, you know, they’ve just captured 0.5% of the market. Even when today when we have Zepto, Blinkit and Swiggy doing that, only about 11, 12% of the grocery market has been captured, right? I mean 88% or maybe 85% is still offline. But back then they thought that, you know, 100% of the market has moved online. So they live in that bubble and, you know, they think that whatever happening in Indiranagar or Koramangala, that’s where, you know, the world is heading. I mean, it’s true in some categories that, you know, all the innovations come from those two hubs. So I wouldn’t deny that. But that doesn’t mean that, you know, everything that is happening there is being replicated all over India. So yeah, we used to hear that a lot and you know, gold was not a favorite of VCs and in fact, I remember, you know, a lot of VCs dissuading me saying, you know, why are you wasting your time building something that’s like a very old economy product? And that’s when we realized that we’re not looking at gold as a category or a product where, you know, we give plain simple gold loans. We are looking at monetizing the gold that exist in India. It’s a different way of thinking. While the go to market is still giving loans to the customer, but we want to see that how this asset, which is like 1 trillion dollar…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [12:13] I want to make that point because I was just before this episode, I was trying to figure out what are India’s gold reserves. So India’s most recent gold reserves are 880 tons.

Deepak Abbot: [12:25] That’s just RBI.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [12:26] That’s that’s the RBI. That’s India as a country. As in the Indian government and the Indian tax payer, who we’re going to call it, has 880 tons. But, I don’t know how accurate this is, Indians, which is basically all Indians put together have about 25,000 to 27,000 tons of gold.

Deepak Abbot: [12:44] That’s fairly accurate.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [12:46] Which is about $1.5 trillion dollars. So it’s like orders of magnitude higher than what the Indian government has.

Deepak Abbot: [12:55] Yeah. And I think the interesting part is that IIMA Center for Gold Management, they have done this study that it’s fairly well distributed. So it’s not that top 1% has all the gold. In fact, we used to hear that a lot that, you know, only rich people have gold. But in India, literally about 280 to 300 households, they have some form of gold with them. So it’s quite well distributed. Yes, the quantity, the average quantity may be about 20, 22 grams, which in today’s value is a lot. But, uh you know, this is not an asset which is only, you know, with handful of…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [13:28] Would you agree with my characterization that one of the things that you folks seem to be doing at IndiaGold is to try and build a Fort Knox for the Indian family?

Deepak Abbot: [13:39] Yeah, that’s a very good way to look at it. Uh yes, I think a lot of Indian families, you know, they they, so where do we keep our gold, right? We generally keep it in a locker at home and it’s kind of and I used to call it a dead asset because…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [13:52] Or a bank locker, if you can manage to get one.

Deepak Abbot: [13:54] Or a bank locker if you can afford one or if you get one even if you can afford it, you must be able to get one. Yes. Uh very few customers in a bank can get a locker because of space constraints. So even if it is lying in bank locker or in your own Godrej almira, it’s still a dead asset. It’s doing nothing for you, right? For example, let’s say if you buy a villa in Goa and you go there twice a year for 15 days, and then lock the house. It’s not sensible, right? I mean, you would look at monetizing it, you would look at renting it out. I mean, that’s very, that’s seen as a sensible move. Why not apply the same logic for your gold? India needs credit and 88% of Indians are self-employed. Most of them are not eligible for formal credit. You have an asset which is lying in your locker. You just need to shift the locker. It’s a mindset, right? It’s lying in locker A, you need to put it in locker B and against that you get a working capital, right? And that working capital is going to help you in your business. It’s the same thing, you know, renting your house out if it is empty. So we we’re trying to, you know, uh uh change that perspective that it’s not no longer that last resort, no longer that stigma that comes with gold loan that okay, you know, that Bollywood used to project that, uh you know, I’ve tried everything and I’m a failure. So hence, you know, I would give my mother’s jewelry…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [15:15] Right, like the entire thing of jewelry girvi rakh di and like, you know, the…

Deepak Abbot: [15:19] Exactly. I mean and I think Bollywood has done a lot to create that stigma. But I think in the last six years we’ve seen or five years we’ve seen that changing drastically. Dramatically in fact. Uh I remember the first two years when we used to go to banks for partnerships, banks were not interested in gold loans because banks thought that, you know, that’s one product that they don’t need to do because of a lot of operational hassles. Uh NBFCs were killing it. Muthoot, Manappuram, IIFL, you know, they were making it big, but banks including big banks like HDFC, ICICI, they’re saying, yeah, we’ll do it to meet our PSL, which is priority sector lending quota. And that is, that is it. I mean for us that’s not…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [16:01] It’s like a checkbox activity there.

Deepak Abbot: [16:02] That’s not a product. And PSL will give them benefits on their, you know, cash rates from RBI. So they were not really excited about this, this asset class. And then came 2023, 22 when you tightening on unsecured happened, RBI was very, very worried about the way unsecured was growing. It was growing at the rate of about 35, 40%. And that makes RBI RBI really nervous. And banks were also seeing, you know, some stress because they see they they were getting early signals. And that’s when they woke up to gold loans saying okay, they need to balance their portfolio. The way we need to balance our portfolio by having, you know, multiple instruments, they realize that, you know, gold loan is something that could be a good leveler. And 2023 is when everyone including SBI, HDFC, ICICI and all big banks, South banks were anyways doing gold loans. Banks based in North and West, they realized the importance of it and today from 12% market share that banks had of gold loan back in 2022, it’s close to about 37, 38%. So they are, you know, accelerating.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [17:09] Who are they eating this from? From smaller players? Is the pie growing? What’s happening?

Deepak Abbot: [17:13] The pie is growing for sure and yes…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [17:15] Between Manappuram and um,

Deepak Abbot: [17:17] Muthoot.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [17:18] Muthoot, I think they have what like 50, 60% of the overall market for gold loans.

Deepak Abbot: [17:22] So Manappuram, Muthoot would have about 30% of the market. Manappuram another 12, 13%, IIFL another 5%. And then there are a lot of smaller players. So while they are getting some uh some from NBFCs but the unorganized market is twice the size of organized. So every player including NBFCs and banks, they are attracting a lot from unorganized. That’s one source and of course people are moving from…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [17:47] That’s getting formalized and consolidated.

Deepak Abbot: [17:48] And people are moving from NBFCs which are slightly expensive uh for some of the customers to banks. And since banks are actively pushing it, people are also realizing that, oh, banks also do offer gold loans and there are a lot of people who are new to credit or new to product are first going to banks because they anyways used to walk into bank branch and, you know, when they now see a banner outside most of the branches, then they realize, okay, you know, banks can also do that because earlier they thought that they had to go to Muthoot and Manappuram which, you know, most people were not comfortable going. So you it’s a combination of both, new to product, new to market, uh people moving from NBFC to banks, unorganized moving to organized. So all this led to this growth that we’ve seen in the last two years.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [18:28] Interesting. The the, to just to go back, the reason I said that IndiaGold reminds me of, it’s trying to create like a Fort Knox for the average Indian family was because Fort Knox is of course, where a significant part of the US gold reserve is stored and not just the US gold reserve, but from various countries around the world where the gold reserve is. It’s called the gold reserve, interestingly because gold should ideally be, I was trying to compare an an Indian, average Indian family to a government. Let’s say a Germany or a US. These governments also have gold, but their gold is not a dead asset because that gold reserve is used to guarantee their debt. So it’s actually a productive asset for countries. So the reason why I called you guys or at least what you’re trying to do, the Fort Knox is because you’re also in some senses saying, hey, you also have this gold and instead of just having it in your Godrej almira, treat it like a gold reserve…

Deepak Abbot: [19:30] Or build your own credit score. So for example, if in if you look at…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [19:33] Which is what happens by the way with countries also, countries have scores based on what their forex reserves are, how much of gold reserves they have, et cetera. But sorry, please complete your point.

Deepak Abbot: [19:42] If you look at, if you look at Indian working age population is about roughly 6, 700 million, right? 500 million would be having some sort of a bureau score. I mean, either a thin file or no file, but at least they’ll be part of bureau score. But only about 250 million are actually eligible for some form of credit. Because most of them are not eligible because either they do not have regular incomes, their credit scores are very low, or, you know, they’ve done some defaults in the past where, you know, banks and some big NBFCs are not able to give them credit. So they go to unsecured. So it’s not that they’re not taking credit, it’s just that they’re going to unsecured because their credit score today doesn’t allow them to go to a formal institution. Now, one way to look at gold is, uh instead of looking at like, okay, take my gold and give me loan, uh you keep your gold at a place where, you know, it is certified, it is valued and it is fed into a system, something like account aggregator where every credit institution has access to that. And when I know that Rohin has 30 grams of gold, while your credit score may be 500, very poor. I will not give you loan. But, you know, if I know that you have gold and it’s lying in some reserve, and it’s secured, I can give you credit against it while your gold is still lying there. Gold is not moving. It’s not you’re not physically taking your gold and giving to another institution. It adds to your credit score. So it gives more confidence to the lending institution that okay, this person has some asset, this person is…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [21:09] And that jumpstarts the credit score itself.

Deepak Abbot: [21:11] Exactly and then that starts the new cycle and of course, you know, models can be built where, you know, a lean can be, a virtual lean can be, you know, put on that gold while it is still lying in the bank locker, and you get credit the way you’ll get unsecured credit and then, you know, obviously you build your credit history on top of it. So that’s one way of doing it. A second was what government tried, which was called GMS or GDS, Gold Monetization Scheme.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [21:34] Which failed.

Deepak Abbot: [21:35] Which failed and there’s a reason why it failed. But the principal was same that you have gold, if you’re not using it, why don’t you lend it to us and we’ll, you know, because India imports 80, 70, 80 tons of gold every year. And that adds to the, you know, deficit that India has. It’s a second biggest item after fuel, crude oil. So the idea was that, you know, you lend this gold to us, we’ll lend it back to the jewelers. So instead of importing it, it goes back into the economy and we’ll, you know, issue you a certificate and you still have the same value. It appreciates the way the real gold will appreciate and you get some yearly marginal interest and the jewelers also get some, you know, gold from the banks. It was a wise plan on paper, the way it was executed was very poor. I mean, they’re very, first of all, no one knows about it. And then, uh it required minimum 100 grams of jewelry. not not many people have 100 grams, right? I mean you anyways eliminating about 85, 90% of the population. Uh and second is very poorly…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [22:39] I’m guessing that once you eliminate 90% of the population, the 10% may be like…

Deepak Abbot: [22:45] You’re anyways people who actually need credit, right?

Rohin Dharmakumar: [22:46] That those people will be the richer people will be like, why should I even participate in this?

Deepak Abbot: [22:49] And even if I’m slightly richer and I don’t need the jewelry and I can I can, you know, use that for creating just a just gold in my portfolio. I, there were very few few centers where I could go and actually do that. No one knew where to go. Because you have to physically take your gold somewhere. So in a city like Delhi, for example, there are just two centers, in a city like Bangalore there’s only one center. So why would someone travel two hours to see that, you know, how much their gold is worth. And then of course, you know, and especially when the need is inverted. It’s the government that needs something from the citizens and not the citizens.

Deepak Abbot: [23:23] Because the way it was projected, right? It was not shown as that, you know, today, for example, if it is launched, it would make more sense because today everyone realizes that gold has to be an integral part of your portfolio. Now you have to project it that okay, jewelry is still not something that you can consider as part of your portfolio. Yes, it can eventually help you in your uh you know, need of credit, but, you know, if you convert that into a document, think of it like SGB that RBI launched. Now, instead of, you know, taking RBI’s SGB, you convert your own physical gold into a sovereign gold bonds.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [23:59] Sovereign gold bonds.

Deepak Abbot: [24:00] So you convert your own physical gold into a gold bond. So it is appreciating the way, you know, anyways gold is appreciating, it is also, you know, because you don’t have the burden of carrying the physical gold, it’s a lot more secure and plus, you know, you can count that it’s kind of a liquid asset now because that certificate is now as good as, you know, your physical bond which or a cash bond which you can go to bank and encash anytime or you can encash part of it. The…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [24:26] But there’s another reason which is missing, right? Like in this thing. It’s a cultural reason.

Deepak Abbot: [24:31] Cultural reason, I think the biggest was people were not comfortable melting their gold, right? Uh so that was one, but today, if you look at some of the some of the younger population who inherited gold or who don’t have this emotional connect with the gold, but they understand the importance of having gold in their portfolio. That’s the TG one can still cater and like I said, it’s such a huge market that even if you find three, four, 5% people interested in it, that would still create a bigger pie for GMS or a GDS as a scheme.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [25:06] Got it. Let me switch now to IndiaGold, the company. How do you make money?

Deepak Abbot: [25:13] Uh there are two, three models. Uh one is that we help banks to quickly launch gold loans. So banks which do not have any infra in the sense, they don’t have the operational uh wherewith all to do gold loans because there’s a physical asset involved. They don’t have the software, the LMS, the LOS.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [25:32] What are these LMS, LOS?

Deepak Abbot: [25:33] Loan management system, loan origination system or customer acquisition uh capabilities they don’t have. Uh we help them to quickly launch and scale gold loans. So for example, today, we partner with a small finance bank, we acquire customers for them, we onboard customers for them, we do the gold assaying, we do the entire customer life cycle in the sense, you know, through IndiaGold app, they can manage their gold, they can do loan renewal, they can do a loan closure, they can get top up amount and then of course, you know, uh we deliver the gold back to them. Uh all this is done uh through IndiaGold’s platform. IndiaGold, we call it a glass which is gold loan as a service platform. And that’s how we help and banks have literally uh you know, zero opex involved. They the only role today banks play can if they partner with us to is to store the gold. Rest everything is done by us, right? And there was a time we used to also do this storage of gold. uh because banks which do not have the storage infra as well, you know, we used to help them store gold on their behalf, which later on with RBI guidelines it changed and which required banks to physically hold the gold as well. But that’s a like I said, you know, most banks have, you know, that basic infra today to store gold. So the last leg of taking gold to them and they just store it is what they were only doing and rest everything was done by us. So that’s one model.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [26:59] So in this model, you get a commission from banks for the loans I assume they give to these people.

Deepak Abbot: [27:06] Yes, for every origination. Yeah. And the second model is very plain, simple marketplace model where I have customers, I have distribution and they want loan from HDFC or ICICI or RBL Bank or Unity Bank. So I would, you know, just like policy…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [27:21] I saw that. I, I it’s good that you brought up Policybazaar because I was on your website yesterday and I could see that there are these various banks listed with the pros and cons on the interest rate.

Deepak Abbot: [27:31] Yes, where we just direct the customers to the nearest branch. Obviously we handhold them, we guide them where to go and we also do soft evaluation of their gold. But eventually it’s uh lead gen for for banks where we, you know, obviously try and convert the customer if they are, you know, on the border line about taking the gold loan or what are the schemes or how how gold loan works. Like a lot of people actually even today do not know how gold loan works, right? So we do that part and then customer moves to the branch and then everything is done by the branch and we again get some commission on top of that. So that’s a model number two. And then model number three, which we will be launching soon, we’ll be building our own book through our own license.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [28:10] Got it. So you’ll have an NBFC license and then you will lend directly.

Deepak Abbot: [28:13] Correct.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [28:14] Got it. You used to also have digital gold. Do you still have that? Do you still sell digital gold?

Deepak Abbot: [28:19] We do sell but that’s not something that we actively promote on our app. That’s uh that’s a product which, you know, I would say uh in hindsight, you know, we should have done much better on that, but uh that’s just a top of the funnel customer acquisition product and not not necessarily a business line in itself.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [28:40] Got it. All right. Um how much venture capital have you raised till date?

Deepak Abbot: [28:46] We raised uh we’ve done series A of about 22 million dollars and we raised a seed of about 1.8. So roughly about 23.8 million dollars.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [28:53] Got it. How big is the company in terms of people?

Deepak Abbot: [28:56] We’re about 250 people now. We’re disbursing close to 160 crores a month. Uh we’re fully profitable, no asterisks, no condition supply, no uh, you know, hidden costs. So we’re fully profitable. So and we turned profitable about four months back and we intend to stay profitable. So that’s one uh you know, achievement we’re very proud of that with just series A we could reach a stage where we are not dependent on external capital. Yes, we will, obviously raise new capital because like I said for the third line of business which is our own NBFC, we’ll require capital. And we have plans to, you know, build a large AUM. So we will be seeking that external capital again, but as of today, we are, you know…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [29:41] How many cities do you operate in?

Deepak Abbot: [29:43] Eight cities. We’re all, okay, we are a tier one uh player. We don’t have any presence in tier three, tier four yet.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [29:49] And these eight cities are also as I understand mostly in North India or North to Central India or have you expanded to South India?

Deepak Abbot: [29:56] 60% of our business comes from South India, just two cities, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [30:00] Did this change because…

Deepak Abbot: [30:02] Yes. So we started in Delhi. Uh it was mostly to, you know, it was a proof of concept because Delhi is where we are based and it’s easier to uh, you know, monitor, but then we realized that the real market is in South of India. It’s less difficult…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [30:19] Even though it’s more competitive and it has all the giants like Manappuram and stuff.

Deepak Abbot: [30:22] But but I think one thing we realized that the three factors that, you know, were very important that it’s, first of all, you don’t need to explain what gold loan is. Second is easier to sell because, you know, they have either are existing to product or, you know, in their circle someone has taken a gold loan and they are less, there’s less stigma attached to it versus North, which is very influenced by Bollywood, North and West. So these three factors uh really, you know, pushed us to really look deeply into uh southern cities. So Hyderabad and Chennai is where we get most of our business. And we continue to expand there. While north, we have five cities. We have Delhi, we have Lucknow, we have Indore, we have uh uh Meerut. Uh and Delhi when I say Delhi, it’s Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, you know, Noida and all that. Uh and in West, we have Bombay and Pune. Uh so Bombay is also coming up really well. Bombay, Pune are pretty pretty decent. So north is where I think while we started, but now internally if you look at us, we feel that we are more aligned to West and South. Because uh multiple reason, it’s very difficult to do business in north, especially something like this, which requires, you know, a lot of on-field operations, which requires a lot of trust to be built. In in North India, I think uh it’s tougher when it comes to managing frauds or collision…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [31:42] I was about to ask, like, is this also must be a significant security risk because you’re…

Deepak Abbot: [31:46] Not security risk. Uh I think there is people risk, there’s a lot of collusion, there’s a lot of uh and I’m talking about customers who are trying to, you know, bring spurious gold and trying to get loan against it.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [31:56] That’s the bane of any at-scale business in India that you’ll have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to curb fraud, right?

Deepak Abbot: [32:03] Exactly and that happens mostly in, so for all the fraud attempts that have happened, I think 90% were from Delhi NCR. But the reason why we are able to, you know, manage our portfolio so nicely where 0% credit losses because all the learnings, all the wrong things that could have happened, happened to us in Delhi.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [32:27] So stress test, you stress test your product.

Deepak Abbot: [32:28] Yes, so let’s say in hindsight if we had launched in Hyderabad or Chennai or Bangalore, which are much safer cities, we would have made a lot of mistakes in those regions because, you know, we may not be fully prepared, but with Delhi, one and a half years when we only did Delhi, you know, at least 10 or 12 different uh instances where, you know, it caught us off guard. And that’s when the learning went back into the technology platform, we built all the loopholes and that’s when we went to South and, you know, the reason why…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [32:58] It’s very interesting because what you’re telling me is like the in some senses the mirror image of what Tarun Mehta of Ather had told me that because when Ather started selling its, um put up its own experience centers and started selling its scooters and obviously did it in Bangalore. And like his point was that look, I mean, Bangalore is such a great market for selling any kind of tech products, et cetera that you just think that wow, I’ve cracked this market and then when you take it outside to the rest of India, you figure out that most of those assumptions just don’t scale.

Deepak Abbot: [33:29] Exactly.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [33:30] So what you’re essentially saying is the mirror image of that, which is which is what you just said, right? That if you do it in a much tougher market and then go to South India, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, et cetera, you’re actually have a much better chance of success.

Deepak Abbot: [33:43] Exactly. Yeah. Because the, uh the underwriting engine that we built is built keeping in mind the frauds and collision and uh the kind of customers that North India has. Now, no offense to, you know, North Indians, I’m also North Indian, so, I mean, they are hustlers. So they figure out, they try and find new ways to, you know, make money.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [34:05] Also I suppose it goes back to the point that you mentioned earlier that if culturally in South India, people have been used to gold loans for a while…

Deepak Abbot: [34:14] They just accept it as a regular product.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [34:15] And here if it’s newer, the first set of users that you’re getting are probably trying to figure out how to game the system.

Deepak Abbot: [34:21] Yeah and exactly. I think uh here we realized that there are two sets of people. One, people get agitated when you say gold loans saying why are you pushing gold loans to me? I mean, I don’t want gold loan. I’m not that desperate. And second is, you saying okay, a company is reaching out to me, okay, let me see how I can, you know, uh defraud them. So there’s a lot of spurious gold that does its round in Delhi. I mean it comes from Jaipur and Rajasthan and, you know, it looks like pure gold, it looks like 22 carat, uh and we’ve seen that, you know, a lot in Delhi. So and another reason why we prefer South is that in Delhi, even if it is genuine gold, let’s say 20 carat, 21 carat, a lot of, it’s very ornamental. Delhi people love, you know, there are either stones on it or some kind of diamonds on it. They like that kind of jewelry. It’s very difficult to evaluate that. And in their mindset because they’ve spent money on kundan and stones and diamonds, they think their jewelry is much more, why are you giving less loan to them. Whereas in south, it’s mostly, it’s pure, it’s mostly gold. If you see, you know, they wear thick chains or any…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [35:27] I’m a Keralite, so I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Deepak Abbot: [35:28] You know, the jewelry which is, you know, not that studded, right? It’s pure gold. It’s easier to evaluate and they also get good value out of it. So, so that…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [35:36] For the so many interesting things that are like, you know, flowing into these cultural differences between north and south.

Deepak Abbot: [35:43] That’s what I’m saying, you know, everyone says India, India is not a one country. I mean, in this so many Indias in it and you have to, you have to have local team who understands the, you know, the local demographics, local culture, the behavior of the customer. Sitting in Delhi, you know, we couldn’t have done Hyderabad and Chennai. We just have great teams on ground there who are from that region, who are experienced in running gold loans and they are the ones who are, you know, responsible for building, you know, a successful business there. So it’s important to, you know, when you build for a large country like India, uh consider each region as an independent subsidiary, you know, hire a kind of a head of city and then build team, let that person to build their own team because that’s how, you know, you will be able to get people who are who are, you know, more closer to the ground.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [36:30] And in many ways wasn’t that how for instance, an Uber or a Zomato or a Swiggy or…

Deepak Abbot: [36:35] We we actually followed the Uber, you know, rollout cycle. We used to go to city and then find…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [36:39] The concept of a city CEO, sort of.

Deepak Abbot: [36:41] Exactly. Find one person there and then build the team under and then, you know, take it from there. So that that is one playbook for India for sure. And anyone who thinks that sitting in Bangalore, sitting in Delhi, they can build an all India company very difficult. Like for example at Paytm we’ve seen that, you know, we it took us a lot of time to crack Bangalore. Similarly for PhonePe, it took them a lot of time to crack Delhi because, you know, if you’re base in one region, you don’t understand the nuances of how merchants or how customers would react to your product. And plus, you know, if you’re physically there, founder, founder is there, management team is there, you know, they push their local teams a lot. Uh but we realized that, you know, that’s not how gold loans would work. I mean, we we don’t see ourselves building a North India centric company and anyways, I think, you know, like I said, if 65% of the market is in south, fundamentally we have to go where the market is.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [37:33] Yeah. So, that’s I think from day one, we had that clarity that, you know, if we go in any region, it has to be an independent region backed by the strong team and that team is running it like a mini subsidiary.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [37:47] Got it. How many co-founders are there? It’s you and Nitin Mishra.

Deepak Abbot: [37:49] Yeah, me and Nitin. Yeah.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [37:50] Both of you, me and Nitin also I know. Okay, great. All right. Um now let’s kind of, I want to understand we we spoke a bunch about the sector as well. Uh help me understand what are some of the lesser known or counterintuitive things that you’ve learned about gold and gold loans recently by just talking to your customers?

Deepak Abbot: [38:15] I think one thing that, okay, so I was, earlier I touched upon it that uh while the gold market is huge, the gold reserves are humongous with 2 trillion dollars. Right? Uh one thing we realized that not everyone looks at gold the same way. Right? While we spoke about stigma, we spoke about, you know, north versus south, but forget the regions, forget stigma, forget, you know, everything else that I spoke about the ornamental part of jewelry and pure gold, 20 carat gold. Uh there’s a category of users in India who are, you know, when we talk about self-employed, who are always in need of credit, who are always in need of working capital. Right? Now working capital is something that you ask any shopkeeper, any factory guy, anyone who’s trading, uh you give them any amount of money, they will take it. And most of them are…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [39:12] Because they can use it to turn around and grow faster.

Deepak Abbot: [39:14] Yeah because they have that maths in their mind that okay, every extra amount of money, they can turn around 10% a month, right? And that’s how they think about, think about more money. So if they want to increase their business, they want more cash. That’s how they turn around. And they are over leveraged. They have taken personal loans, they have taken business loans, they have taken all kind of OD credit that they could. And I’m talking about these are people who are, you know, around the GST threshold, doing about 50, 60, 70, 80 lakhs of turnover. But their take home is very less because, you know, most of the money is being rotated. They may be taking home about 10, 12 lakhs a year which is, you know, at their scale is not very big. So, so they are the ones who look at, who are now looking at gold very differently. For them, now gold is like a working capital. You know, they know that in their family, there’ll be three or four functions in a year and you know, that’s when they would actually need the jewelry. When they don’t need the jewelry, you know, the product that I spoke about earlier, they keep it in a locker and they take credit line against it. For them, this is working capital and then they are taking, they are securing their gold because they’re getting insurance against it. And this working capital is and the way gold loans are structured, working capital is actually helping them to generate more money. For example, for a personal loan, you end up paying EMI, which is your principal plus interest every month. Now, it doesn’t suit most of the self-employed because their billing cycles are very long, 90 days or sometimes 120 days. But in gold loan, you don’t pay principal every month. So if you’ve taken a gold loan of about 5 lakh rupees, you only instead of paying maybe, you know, 60, 70,000 a month, you just pay 5,000 rupees a month. That’s it. You only pay the interest part. And that’s easy for these guys to pay because they know that after…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [41:02] The tenure gets extended in that.

Deepak Abbot: [41:03] No, no, no. So here, because you don’t need to pay principal every month. Right? You only pay principal at the end. So when their billing cycle is over, after 120 days, they will get the cash. They will then take their gold back. Or sometimes they said, okay, you keep the gold with you and create a new cycle.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [41:17] Create a new cycle.

Deepak Abbot: [41:18] And when I need, let’s say I have a function in the family and if I have 10 items with you, I may only need two or three. So we have this concept of part release, which is…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [41:28] I mean it’s thinking the most similar analogy that comes to my mind is the auto sweep facility that operates in a bank, right? Exactly. Where if… [Muted]

Rohin Dharmakumar: [41:51] So it’s very interesting because the point that you mentioned about gold just reminds me of the auto sweep facility that banks have introduced now for a while, where if money is lying in your bank account and if you’re not using it, it gets swept into a fixed deposit. And if you write a cheque or if you want to transfer, it automatically comes back. So that’s what you’re saying is similar to…

Deepak Abbot: [42:14] Yeah I think yeah, so we need to look at gold also in a similar way, right? You know, it’s lying in your locker or bank’s locker, you have a credit against it and tomorrow you’ve given that money back. Now this gold is free for you to use and once you have a function in the family, you use it and then return it back to the locker and then again the credit line goes up, right? So if you look at gold loan from that lens, then we don’t, you know, consider it as, oh, you know, this is the last resort and, you know, I use my family jewels to take money against it. I mean, that’s where we need to take most of the thinking uh towards because today if and like I said, you know, things are changing. I mean, a lot of people are now looking at gold like I said, a non-emotional asset, while it is your family uh asset, but not like, okay, you know, I’m a failure if I am, you know, in fact, it’s considered smart because it’s one of the cheapest form of credit that you get today. Like for example, SBI would give you gold loan at about 10% a year, which is the lowest one can get. I mean…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [43:16] What are home loans right now at…

Deepak Abbot: [43:21] 7 and a half percent.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [43:21] Yeah, so it’s like very pretty much close to that.

Deepak Abbot: [43:24] Yeah, it’s the second cheapest after home loan, right? I mean, that’s because the asset is secured and banks, you know, they’re balancing their portfolio. So they don’t mind giving loan about 10%. Obviously, that’s an outlier because, you know, banks really give loan to, they have a lot of conditions which they have to meet. For example, you know, they have very stricter KYC norms. Uh they give very low LTV. So RBI has this rule that for every…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [43:50] That’s loan to value.

Deepak Abbot: [43:51] Loan to value, that for 100 rupee of gold, only about 75 rupees of loan can be given. With the new guidelines, they’ve taken it to 85 rupees only for loan less than 2 and a half lakhs. But loan higher than two and a half lakhs, you can only give 75 rupees. But most of the banks…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [44:06] Similar concepts exist around home loans also where like typically you never get 100%.

Deepak Abbot: [44:10] Yeah home loans, you know, some banks can go up to 85% as well. You never get 100% for any secured asset. So, you know, but most of the banks, all be it private bank or public sector banks, they give about 55%. So if your gold is worth 100 bucks today, you’ll get 55 rupees of loan. But if you look from a trader point of view or a self-employed point of view, they don’t want to leave that money on the table. So that’s why they go to uh NBFCs or banks which can give higher LTV. So for example, uh with our partner bank, we used to give very close to 75% LTV, which is much, much higher than let’s say State Bank or HDFC would give. And that’s the reason we were able to attract customers because, you know, like I said, they want more money, you know, any money that they can get access to and plus, you know, they’ve taken all the effort of bringing gold to us, they’ve taken all the effort of doing the KYC onboarding. Now for 100 rupee of gold, if they’re getting 55 versus 75, you know the the choices that, you know, they’ll go for 75, even if the ROI is higher because for them, incremental increase in ROI doesn’t really matter because that 20% extra that they’re getting, you know, they’ll be able to rotate eight or nine times and they’ll be able to make a lot more money. So, so that’s how uh most of the self-employed traders are thinking about it and we are only catering to that segment at IndiaGold. Because we realized that IndiaGold is not a brand or we we cannot hire Shahrukh Khan or Amitabh Bachchan or Mohanlal like Muthoot does and tell people gold loan acche hai. You know, they do this campaign gold loan acche hai. While it’s good for them to do it because they’re expanding the market. But we realized that with the kind of money that we’ve raised and the kind of frugality that we have in our company, we we can’t run those brand campaigns. So we have to cater to people who understand gold loans uh and within that the segment which has the uh you know, which is easier to sell and which where we can make maximum amount of money, right? where my uh cost of acquisition is low and LTV is much higher. So that’s why we figured out that okay, we’ll only be catering to a segment which is using gold loan as a working capital. So we built a niche there and that is thanks to the large market which I spoke earlier that the market has to be so huge that even if you build a niche in that large market, that is still big enough. So that’s where I think IndiaGold is trying to focus on and all our product and tech, all our back end, all our underwriting, all our customer acquisition is built around giving working capital loans against gold. So we call it a business gold loan. And we’ve been doing that for last four years and in July 2025 just three months ago, RBI for the first time in their guidelines came up with this word called income generating gold loans. So they recognized that, you know, there is a segment which would use gold loans to generate income. So obviously, there’s a different sort of KYC, you also need to, you know, ascertain the credit worthiness of of the person who’s taking income generating gold loan versus a consumption gold loan. So consumption gold loan, you know, your credit score could be as low as 500. But for income generating gold loan, we need to see, you know, some sort of credit rating, where do you stay? What kind of business you do, your GST filing, some bit of credit under writing, but it it can unlock a lot more cash for you. And we’ve been doing that for four years, it’s just that it’s being formalized now by RBI.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [47:22] Got it. So, I have a slightly orthogonal thought to this. Now, the the thread of everything that you’ve been saying till now is that India has this tremendous amount of gold, whatever 25,000 plus tons, 1.5 trillion dollars which is lying in individual homes and lockers and almirahs, right? And you have to think of it as an asset that doesn’t merely appreciate in value over time, but has the ability to generate cash flows over time as well. It’s like buying a house. To use your example, when you buy a home, the home may appreciate in capital value over the next five years, but that doesn’t mean you try can’t try and capture rental value in that time as well, right? So what you’re now, I mean, the thread that I’m latching on to is that gold as an asset is moving from an asset that just lies and, you know, never gets used, right? and appreciates in value over time, well, at least judging by past history, though no one should expect it would always be true, but it can also have yield value. Now, in that, I want to go deeper because most of the examples that we’ve been speaking to till now are always about people who have gold and want loan because they want to do something with that loan in their business or in their lives, et cetera. But do you foresee scenarios where people who don’t want a working capital loan but have gold try to figure out does this have income generating opportunity. To use another analogy, let’s say from the stock market, if you can lend your stock to someone else and they just pay you x percentage or like, you know, money in return for holding that stock because they use it for something else productive. Similarly…

Deepak Abbot: [49:14] Which is the private version of GMS, you know, I would lend my gold to a jeweler. Obviously gold needs to be melted. So I need to be less emotional about my gold. Right? Uh I just need to realize the asset potential of that gold but not emotional about the form factor. If I’m not, yes, this model can be unlocked where, you know, I would lend my gold to a jeweler who would pay me three, three and a half percent, 4% because that’s the margin they can afford and then of course the gold appreciate because there’s a certificate. The reason why, you know, government also tried something like that was, obviously their objective was to reduce the the import of gold. But from an individual, like I said, government looked at it from their own point of view, but from an individual point of view, you know, this is where, you know, I make money uh every year of an asset which is anyways appreciating.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [50:00] Got it.

Deepak Abbot: [50:01] Yeah. So, but yeah, like I said, it it needs to be uh done in while, you know, I would look at it like a where UPI was done where, you know, there’s one entity which is uh while it may look like a semi-government entity, but has a support of government. And then obviously, you know, educate people on board lot of merchants, on board lot of banks, on board lot of centers whocan do that and then democratize it and make it easier for people to understand that you know something like this works, there will be enough enough population.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [50:35] Because this looks like a trend now. I mean, everything that you’ve been saying, it looks if you take a long view of it, it just looks like India and Indians are gradually and maybe at different rates based on whether they’re in South India or North India, inevitably coming to the conclusion that gold can be used productively.

Deepak Abbot: [50:55] Especially last one year when gold has appreciated 50% or 60%, people are suddenly realizing oh, I also have gold, what can I do with it? At least that question is coming in their mind that oh what can I do something with my gold that I have. What is something that obviously, you know, like I said, as a small player or a big player or government they have to educate them, but yes, there are opportunities like for example, even if there’s no direct way to monetize it, can I build my credit score using my gold? Right? And then using that credit score, get a better home loan rates or get a get a personal loan or get a credit card. At least you know, products that I’m desirous of like credit card is again one product which most people don’t get because they don’t have the credit history.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [51:35] Is that something you folks were planning to launch as well? A gold backed credit card?

Deepak Abbot: [51:37] We’ve done that with with you know uh… What is that a gold back credit card?

Rohin Dharmakumar: [51:41] Again, is it like a…

Deepak Abbot: [51:41] Gold backed credit card. So you keep your gold with us and you against that you get a credit card of the amount that you have uh gold worth 75% of it is given as a credit limit. So yeah, I mean, these these are for people, it’s again same as FD backed credit card, right? People who can’t get credit card directly, you know, that’s one way of taking credit, like that’s OD against gold or credit card against gold. These are alternate products which people are anyways desirous of. So these this is the, you know, this is the wave that we’ll see where people are now exploring that, okay, gold is something that they own and you know, it has appreciated now certainly, you know, they have one asset with them which uh which can enable couple of products that they never thought were possible.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [52:21] Got it. All right, I want to switch to you and how you came about to being an entrepreneur. What’s your, I mean, where do you grow up? What do you study? Where are you from?

Deepak Abbot: [52:36] I…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [52:37] We know each other for like, you know, over 10 years but like you said, it’s the first time that we’re meeting in person today.

Deepak Abbot: [52:43] Yeah and not many people know about my uh, you know, history that as such because I haven’t spoken about it, but I grew up in Ludhiana, Punjab and was a small town boy and then still very much Punjabi at heart. But then, you know, I moved to Delhi for my graduation. I was doing uh BCom from uh Delhi University and that’s when I was because I was doing BCom, the only other option was to uh do chartered accountancy because I was good at maths. I was, you know, I generally good with numbers. So I thought, you know, let me try out CA because there’s no other career opportunity, either you can be an engineer or a doctor or…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [53:18] This is the late 90s?

Deepak Abbot: [53:20] This was 97 yeah.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [53:21] Yeah.

Deepak Abbot: [53:22] You know, so I thought okay, let me do CA and, you know, I was doing pretty okay there. I was clearing all my exams one by one. I started with CA foundation. I didn’t wait for my graduation. So I was doing while I was getting graduated, cleared Inter 1, Inter 2, you know, I was clearing exams, but then the computer bug bit me. I, you know, my mother she used to work in a bank and in their bank, they had a scheme where they would give 0% loan to employees for buying computers. And she just casually mentioned, yeah, let’s, let’s buy one. So in 90, 97, I bought or 96, I bought my first computer and that is the time when uh VSNL launched home internet in India. It was called a shell account. And I said okay, let me try what this internet is. So I applied and, you know, I was they were only giving 15,000 connections and, you know, I got it. And then I started using internet in 1996 and that’s when I realized that, you know, why am I wasting time studying the CA? There’s a lot more that can be done. And I started building websites and started doing some bit of coding and totally lost interest in studies. Somehow, I did my graduation, I did pretty okay there. And CA in final 2, I just dropped. I said okay, I’ll do it later. Let me first figure out if I can, you know, build something in computers and I used to play a lot of games and I used to build a lot of websites. And that’s when I got my first job. I was even though I didn’t apply for it, but I was, you know, there’s a market in Delhi called Nehru place which used to sell pirated games.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [54:54] Yes, I have gone and like bought uh PCs from there and yeah…

Deepak Abbot: [54:58] Yeah, so I went to a market, I was buying few games and I was, you know, negotiating with the guy, I was trying to, you know, bring the price down and there’s a guy who was standing next to me. He said, you look like, you know, you are too much into gaming, you’ve been buying 10 games, you know, what kind of games do you play? Do you recommend, can you recommend me some good games? So we just, you know, were chatting and said okay, what do you do? I said, you know, I’m right now just about to finish my graduation, I’m doing CA. He said why don’t you come and meet me in my office, you know, I we do something around gaming. I said okay, I’ll come and meet you. So I went there and they used to import CD CD ROMs because that was the only way India was, you know, playing game. The CD ROM was the only way of playing. There was no internet to download games. I mean…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [55:39] CD ROM for listeners is a read only media. So it was a CD where which comes pre exactly, recorded with something and then you can’t like rewrite on it again.

Deepak Abbot: [55:50] So they said we are importing games and we want someone who can uh, you know, do game testing for us in that sense that okay, these are the good games to import or these are good, not just games, but CDs and encyclopedias and all sort of CDs and…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [56:01] Okay.

Deepak Abbot: [56:02] So I said okay, this sounds interesting. So I got my first job there. They were paying me 2700 bucks. And I thought that’s a very good pocket money while I do my CA and you know, stuff like that. But then more I started going to office daily, I realized that okay, this is where I belong, you know, and there’s so much happening, uh you know, this is gives you…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [56:21] I remember that era. The magazines, the internet…

Deepak Abbot: [56:24] Yeah, you know, yeah, I used to read computer at home, I used to read PC Quest, Data Quest…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [56:28] Yes and you would get CDs inside those.

Deepak Abbot: [56:30] CDs and that world was crazy. I mean, I…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [56:33] It was magical.

Deepak Abbot: [56:33] Yeah, it was magical, right? I mean that used to look forward to those CDs and I said okay, I want to, you know, continue doing this and I didn’t tell my father anyone at home that I’m dropping out of CA because my father really want, he was a banker and he wanted…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [56:46] So you both your mom and dad are bankers.

Deepak Abbot: [56:47] Yes. They obviously wanted me to either join a bank or become a CA because that’s the only thing that they could think of. Uh so I, you know, that was the starting point and then there was no looking back from there. I got another job and then started doing uh full-time web designing for Times Internet, Times India times.com, it was the, you know, Yahoo of India back then. India times and Rediff were the only internet companies. So I was really excited to join them in 1998 or 99 maybe. 98, yeah. Yeah, and there was no looking back. Then I stayed in tech, stayed in technology, internet and yeah, mostly done gaming and uh consumer products.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [57:32] Very interesting. So you were at Times Internet for about four years, then I think you were a briefly a user experience consultant at Satyam.

Deepak Abbot: [57:38] I went to Satyam. Yeah, this was pre Satyam, you know, went into that scam or fraud. Right.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [57:43] Two and a half years. Then you were at Zapak which was a gaming…

Deepak Abbot: [57:46] Yeah, it was a Reliance entertainment’s venture, the Anil Ambani’s Reliance and yeah for seven years, we built games and this was obviously…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [57:54] It was the longest you were in an organization.

Deepak Abbot: [57:57] Yes, because see gaming has, okay, I was, you know, gaming was very, very close to my heart. In fact, even today it’s close to my heart. It’s just that I, you know, don’t have the time.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [58:06] Yeah, I mean, I don’t get the time. Plus…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [58:08] All right. If you had the time, what game would you love to play?

Deepak Abbot: [58:13] Uh I love sports games. So I like NBA, I like baseball, I like cricket, you know, those kind of games. I’m not much into action game. Even though back then I used to play all action games, but today, you know, I if I have to play a game, I would rather play a sports game which is much easier on my mental health. So uh seven years, but it was like I think we were far ahead of the time. We were trying to launch MMOGs which required, you know, a lot of data, good data connection and that was not the time when we had broadbands at home and uh 3G didn’t exist, 2G was also patchy, internet was very expensive. So we tried launching game plexes where people could come and play games. uh and again, the game distribution was uh controlled by Telcos. The only way you could actually make people play game was through Telco portals which also means that 60% of the revenue was used to go to Telcos. In some cases as high as 80%. So they were like the gatekeepers, kind of, you know…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [59:14] Similar to free basics, right? I mean they…

Deepak Abbot: [59:15] They would decide which game to push.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [59:18] It was also the VAS era in mobile.

Deepak Abbot: [59:19] It was the VAS era in mobile and that was the era where, you know, Telcos really exploited…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [59:24] Even Paytm came up from that era itself.

Deepak Abbot: [59:25] Exactly like you know…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [59:27] I mean 197 used to do that, right?

Deepak Abbot: [59:28] That’s right. But very similar to what free basic was trying to do, right? I mean Telcos were the gatekeepers, they were controlling which games you know, based on what how much money they were making from a game, right? So the the full creative potential of uh building games was not coming through and, you know, we tried for seven years and we started building games for international market, which was much easier. Uh but then after doing games for seven years where, you know, the market was not growing, the internet was still very, very patchy, I got an opportunity to join Paytm. Again, very early days. Paytm was just Vijay had just coined the term Paytm. They were experimenting with mobile recharges. And that’s when I joined and, you know, the good part was when I joined, we decided that we’ll build an app. There were hardly any Androids in India, like literally I would say less than a lakh phones. And Vijay being a visionary said, you know, let’s invest in the app today. Let’s see how it works. While it sounds fancy, only have international apps, but you know, let’s see, you know, how it goes while we’ll continue to focus on mobile web and web, but, you know, let’s see. And, you know, I was very excited because, you know, I got to do something that I had never thought yet and build apps because I had only built games for Telcos through Java J2ME, which was very boring. I mean, boring in the sense the way you would target, there was no way to go to end customers. Here it was, you know, product, first time I was building a B2C product where you had access to customers. And the good part was because Paytm was the first uh big app that came from India, uh everyone supported it from Google to, you know, Google through Play Store and, you know, when we started advertising in Facebook, we’re getting installs for about 2 rupees, one and a half rupees CPI.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:01:13] What is it right now?

Deepak Abbot: [01:01:14] It would be close to 120 rupees, maybe 100 rupees easily right.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:01:19] Per install.

Deepak Abbot: [01:01:20] Yeah, that time it was one, one and a half rupees, right? And because everyone who would see the ad and if they had the phone, obviously they only see the ad if they had the phone, they say, oh Paytm, what is this? Let me install the app, you know and that’s where, you know…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:01:32] It’s also a different era where people would install the app because there were…

Deepak Abbot: [01:01:35] Because there were hardly any apps, right? I mean they were like saying, okay, one more app, let me try and download this. So while it was easier to acquire customers, uh we used it as a testing ground. We learned a lot how, you know, the behavior in app is different from mobile web or desktop web and I think those two years were like a bigger than any MBA or any other learning that I would I would have ever done so far in my career. Very accelerated learning and very thankful to the opportunity that I had back then. So yeah, early days but very, very and that’s when I started writing as well because I was so excited about doing newer things. I thought okay, let me share this with people, you know, let me see uh the kind of feedback that I get because, you know, I thought because that was again the era where information was not easily available. So I used blogs to interact with people, I used to, you know, share my blogs with people and…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:02:28] This is also pre everything getting closed up in like, you know, the walled gardens of Facebook, et cetera and all that where people would still blog in the open and like leave comments.

Deepak Abbot: [01:02:37] Exactly. Yeah and yeah, I think yeah, and then 2014, I thought okay, let me I I met Satyan at Times Internet. He said, you know, why don’t you we want to incubate something interesting, some product around uh again B2C product, would you be keen to build? So it was kind of a semi-entrepreneurship kind of an opportunity where they said, okay, we’ll, you know, give you some fixed funding. Uh it’ll be incubated 100% by Times Internet, but it’ll be completely independent. And that’s when I built this new app called Smart app. The idea back then was again, this is 2014 when Jio was not…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:03:16] Pre Jio.

Deepak Abbot: [01:03:16] Pre Jio. And Airtel had almost 200 prepaid plans, Vodafone had 300, every everyone had a lot of prepaid plans. No one understood how the prepaid plans would work. Some would had data, some would had SMS, some would had talk time, some data top up and people were always confused. They were buying multiple packs, they were buying data packs, they were buying voice packs, SMS packs and so on and so forth. We said we’ll make it easier for you. You don’t need to decide which pack you need to buy. We’ll evaluate based on how many calls you make, what kind of website you access, what kind of data you access, how many SMS you send, we’ll bundle two or three packs and give you one single pack. You just spend 299 and we’ll bundle the packs for you. It worked really well. I mean it was like a like I said a instant success, you know, we got millions of installs in about six months and that’s when I realized that, oh, you know, this data gathering from the mobile, you know, who do you talk to, what kind of apps you use, people are really keen to know more about it. So instead of just recommending packs to them, we started also sharing this information with them. And that’s when we took the app global as well where, you know, we just share simple things like, oh, you’ve consumed X MB of internet today, you are on roaming and your data plan, you’re running out of data plan and these are the websites that you see and you know, this is where you, you know, like the equivalent of iOS screen time that you have today. So we had back then and, you know, that app became very, very successful in even countries like China and Japan, you know, we were number one app in almost 10, 15 countries clocking about 10,000 dollars revenue a day. And that then again, you know, Jio happened. And they said, okay, just 299, you get everything. So the utility of the app, the core fundamental, why bother tracking, disappeared. And in about six to seven months, that app started seeing a decline and that’s when I thought okay, let me go back to Paytm. And I met Vijay, I said, arey wapas aaja, kuch, you know, we are on a different journey now, a different scale so you’ll enjoy. And this was pre demonetization. I didn’t know that what’s about to come. So I joined two weeks before the demonetization happened. And then yeah, like I said, rest is history. I mean, demonetization happened and then everything just took off.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:05:25] Got it. Uh to come back to entrepreneurship and IndiaGold, you and Nitin, right? You’re both co-founders.

Deepak Abbot: [01:05:33] Yes.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:05:34] Right, great. Uh now this is tricky, right? Because I mean, of course, all co-founder relationships are tricky, but when there are two co-founders with no titles running, both of you need an enormous amount of trust and belief and respect in each other to make things work. Right? Because no one from the outside will know what are the amount of stress that co-founders go through, right? How do you guys, you know, what is the unsaid and the said and the de-risking part in this that when you decided to come together and said, I mean, I’m sure at some point it must have been a discussion saying that no titles. We’ll both be co-founders. This is what I’ll do, this is what you’ll do. This is how we’ll make sure that we don’t like end up fighting. What is that in in, you know, in whatever form you can tell us?

Deepak Abbot: [01:06:17] So I think when we initially used to tell our VCs when they invested, they’ll ask, who’s the CEO? Who’s the CPO, COO? He said, we don’t have any CXOs. And we will never, and I’m repeating it again, we will never take that title. Both of us will never be either the CEO, CPO, COO because we want our teams to have some aspiration that they can become CXOs. So we will never take that title. So we were very sure that, okay, that’s not the reason why we are building IndiaGold. The reason we are building IndiaGold is want to, you know, see the this huge opportunity that we have in front of us, can we actually execute that in a way where it becomes a meaningful outcome and title anyways wouldn’t matter. If this is successful, we’ll get our due share, right? And if it is not successful, I, you know, don’t want to use the title CEO on LinkedIn and get another job after this. So for us, you know, it’s not that, you know, I’m looking at, you know, another stint after this that I need to have some sort of a designation or some sort of a title. And the second part was that both of us have our own uh core competencies. He’s pretty good at uh you know, managing external operations. He’s good at managing people. Uh I’m good at, you know, doing my own thing, building stuff, you know, exploring new technologies and working with product people. uh kind of an introvert. He’s also an introvert, but, you know, he’s more outgoing. He he you know, he…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:07:39] At least he hides it well.

Deepak Abbot: [01:07:40] He rallies the team really well. And he understands operational nitty-gritties really well. He’ll enjoys that part. I hate that part. So it happened organically, you know, things that he enjoy, he continues doing that. He doesn’t like to get into product. He is full of ideas, but he doesn’t like to, okay, let me write the PRD. He’s not that kind of a guy. He said, this is the idea, just two line idea, please build the PRD, let’s take this product live, but broadly this is what I want. So we’re very clear and, you know, that really helped because we are not getting into each other’s territory and we’re only getting into each other’s territory to give an outside in view which both of us appreciate, right? Sometimes you’re building stuff and, you know, doing thing and you don’t really, you know, get the real feedback. But since, you know, we didn’t unlike most of the employees, you know, they feel sometimes feel uncomfortable sharing the hard truth or bad news. Uh we said, okay, the one thing that we’ll do openly is to share bad news with each other openly. When I say bad news, anything that goes wrong, let’s be very open about it. And that’s the principle that, you know, kept us together. In fact, I think we are very, very good friends. You know, we socially also connect, you know, very close to each other’s family. So that also helps. And we’ve gone through some tough times, you know, and that really brings you together. And in fact, we never really had a moment where we disagreed with each other on a broader topic. Somehow we always aligned to the same vision, same way of execution, same broader thought. Yes, on a day-to-day basis, you might have different path, but, you know, we’ve aligned to each other’s thinking in last uh now we’re working for like 10 years together. Right? including the time at Paytm.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:09:19] Got it. Okay, you and Nitin came together. How do you find your first 10 colleagues?

Deepak Abbot: [01:09:26] Yeah, I think I was lucky, like I said, you know, since I was working at Paytm, you know, plus I was writing my own blog and I was having decent followers followship on Twitter. Uh you know, I was able to attract uh couple of guys who were, you know, interested to work with me and Nitin. So first team happened through my interactions with people on Twitter. And mostly interns. In fact, the most interesting part is that the first intern that we had for product, he went on to become the CPO of our company. In about five years from intern, 10,000 rupees a month internship to the highest paid employee in the company and who owns about one and a half percent of the company. That’s how that person grew. And you know, nothing makes me happier than, you know, seeing like because that’s the vision me and Nitin had that how can we see our team members grow to a level where they become CXOs instead of we grabbing those titles and not letting people grow.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:10:24] So why is that so important to both of you?

Deepak Abbot: [01:10:26] I think it gives the team something to look for. They have the aspiration that, you know, can I be the CEO? Can I be the CXO? They can execute.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:10:36] Why do you care so much for that?

Deepak Abbot: [01:10:38] Because, you know, you want people who, you know, work with you for a long term. You don’t want people who come and go and, you know, the attrition is high.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:10:45] So what is your long term vision for both of you?

Deepak Abbot: [01:10:48] I think we’ll continue the way we are right now, no titles and we continue to take IndiaGold to a place where uh you know, everyone creates value, employees through ESOPs, our investors, we obviously, you know, also should get some meaningful outcome out of it. But that’s like a for next four to five years vision, but we have a lot to, you know, do right now. Like I said, we’re getting into building our own book. That will require a lot of, it’s like day zero for us on the third business line and that’s where I think we are now again starting from scratch.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:11:20] This is a question that I’ve asked most guests in the past that there’s a saying that we are the average of five people that we spend the most amount of time with. Who are these five people for you?

Deepak Abbot: [01:11:29] Right now?

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:11:30] Yeah, in generally in life.

Deepak Abbot: [01:11:32] Yeah I think…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:11:32] I mean right now, maybe the last year.

Deepak Abbot: [01:11:34] Yeah, obviously Nitin obviously I spend a lot of time with him. Then I have, you know, couple of friends who are not from the startup world. They don’t understand VC industry. And, you know, the kind of outside in view I get from them, uh they keep me grounded because, you know, we get in that bubble of VC world and Twitter, you know, you talk about valuation and OpenAI. You know, they are from different era. I mean, when I say different era, you know, they while they might be using chat GPT, for them that’s not their life. That they don’t, they are not enamored by the next shiny AI product. So, they talk about things that are, you know, day to day, how, you know, the consumer behave, what people around them are thinking and that’s the reason why we are able to build products which are more relatable to the people around us. So yeah, that’s that’s the balance that we maintain and then I, you know, have a couple of colleagues at work who who are the opposite of that. They are the savvy kind. They, you know, they get attracted by every shiny thing, they want to build newer stuff, they get bored easily. uh you know, they get enamored by, you know, something happening at Silicon valley and, you know, things like that and you know, they keep sharing, you know, okay, can we do this? Can we do that? So that, you know, gives us a balanced perspective of on one side, you know, always on top of what’s happening because, you know, people around you are excited about building those things. And then the realistic world outside saying, okay, technology is not everything, right? Technology is just an enabler. Uh you you see how you’re actually solving the problem for them. Uh do you even understand your TG? What are their actual issues? You know, what do they actually do in their daily life versus, you know, asking chat GPT about some data, you know. So that’s the balance that, you know, those four or five people around me uh help us maintain.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:13:18] Got it. You’ve of course, you’ve worked in a lot of different companies and roles and you’ve been fairly outspoken about many of your views. Uh one of the things that I think you keep saying is that the importance of curiosity. And I’m switching now to trying to figure out if you’re building an organization for the long run, probably the most important thing that you do on a day to day basis is find people who will be part of that journey, right? And once they’re in, figure out how to motivate them and give them more and more things to do and basically get out of their way. Right? So that they can do things, right? This requires, first, spotting talent. What are your, you know, what’s your hacks or mental models or uh tips about spotting great talent?

Deepak Abbot: [01:14:11] I think we look for two skills, uh besides technical skills. That’s just to filter the basic on the resume side. Uh two skills that are very important to us. One is ownership mindset and second is, I know it’s difficult to judge when you are interviewing them or talking to them on a, you know, casual basis. And second is ability to grasp or learn newer things. Because we are very clear that we are not hiring anyone from the industry because they all everyone comes with a, you know, pre-conceived mindset of how gold loan works. So today, the first 100 people that we had, I think 90 were not from the gold loan industry. So and we hired them basis the different things that, you know, they had done uh in their previous stint or, you know, what they used to do on weekends or how do they upskill themselves or what are the things that would excite them outside of their work? Right? Like for example, if I look at my own own journey, I, you know, I was, I would, you know, I have done gaming and I have done, you know, user interface, I’ve done web designing, I’ve done product, I’ve done coding and I, you know, also used to blog. I think that, you know, people who do such multiple things, you know, they uh engage themselves in their creative pursuits, their ability to learn is much higher. So, you know, my hack to hire such people is to see, you know, what they do outside of their work. Uh you know, because work when you interview them, if they are really smart, they are good, they’ll answer all the questions. But, you know, are they into something which, you know, most people, like 0.1% or 1% of the population is engaged. Like for example, I have, you know, a lot of respect for people who take care of their health. You know, are into fitness. Because now that I’m into my fitness journey, I realize that, you know, how much dedication it takes and learning it takes to improve your fitness. That’s right. You know, and you know, I have a lot of respect for people who have some creative pursuits. They paint or they write or they read a lot or, you know, they do things which, you know, takes them off their day to day stress and hassle because you need that when they come to office on Monday, you know, they’ve chased their creative pursuit and they are fresh and they’re looking forward to, you know, working on Monday. So that kind of and there’s no exact science behind it, right? I mean, I won’t say that 100 people we had, all 100 were like that. As long as you get 30, 35% of your people falling in that category where they have high ownership, you give them something, they’re independent contributors and they’ll end up doing it. And they learn if they don’t know. I think you will be able to build a good team. So as long as 65% people are just showing to work, they have the right OKRs and KRAs and they’re executing what they are asked to do. And these 35% people are highly motivated, very focused on their work and, you know, learning new things every day, you’ll actually eventually build a good good team.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:17:06] You also said that product management is a mindset, not a role. What does that mean? What does it mean that it’s a mindset? I mean, can you give me any examples of where it’s a mindset?

Deepak Abbot: [01:17:17] I think uh when you build product, see, building product means you’re trying to solve some problem, right? You’re building product for that someone uses it and that means you need to get into the shoe of the person who’s going to use it. So it’s like understanding the consumer behavior, just being open about keep looking around you, how do people, you know, consume different things, consume different products. How do they interact with their phone, how do they interact with a certain apps. Uh just talk to them the way you will talk to your friends. Uh versus, oh, I’m going to write a PRD, let me see what kind of data that exists, what kind of funnel that I can create, you know, what kind of wire frames, let me do AB testing with the wire frames. Now that’s a very technical skill that is needed. I’m not saying not needed, but if you are uh you know, observing people, if you are, you know, thinking for first principle, uh trying to understand the problem versus building a solution. Uh you know, it’s that’s why I call it a mindset because you cannot learn that, that comes naturally to you. You know, if you are not good at talking to customers, if you’re not even if you’re introvert, you know, you can still pick up a phone and talk to 20 customers. Uh you your observation power has to be really good. You need to observe things, you know, are these sofas placed okay and this mic is, you know, coming in my way, is it can it be placed better? uh you know, this light is right now affecting me maybe the studio the way we are sitting is not right. So those things as long as you’re observing around you and then seeing okay, how can I fix it, you know, it’ll come in with the mindset of a product person.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:18:57] This connects also back to curiosity, which is one of the other values that you keep talking about.

Deepak Abbot: [01:19:01] See, curiosity is the must, right? That’s…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:19:02] Observation and curiosity…

Deepak Abbot: [01:19:04] Because see, the world has changed so much in last 26 years since I’ve started working, 27 years. If I was not curious, I wouldn’t have adapted every time the real shift in technology happened. You know, I have seen when there was no internet where there’s dial up, uh you know, there was no landlines in fact, to today when, you know, we everyone is using AI to improve efficiency in their day to day functions. You know, and I’ve kept myself relevant uh because you know, I was curious to see how things work. How everything is, you know, going to help me, how can this new thing, you know, work in my favor. So that’s the reason why I think if you want to stay relevant, the curiosity has to be always high.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:19:47] Got it. How do you run your typical week? Do you calendar it? Do you have an approach to it or is it just whatever?

Deepak Abbot: [01:19:53] No I’m very unorganized that way. Very unorganized. I mean, I of course, you know, there is…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:19:58] Is Nitin also like that?

Deepak Abbot: [01:20:00] No, Nitin is very organized. He takes notes of everything. He in fact, you know, pushes me a lot to keep taking notes. So, he, he, if you ask him in October 2022 in our quarterly review, what was discussed and things that we’ve not done today, he would have that somewhere in his notes. He’s that structured. So, but I try to store everything in my mind. Uh I try to, you know, because I have kind of, I wouldn’t call it attention disorder, I I like to do things really fast and I jump context really quickly. So I don’t leave anything pending when I leave. You know, it’s in my mind that I have to finish otherwise I won’t be able to sleep. So that helps me stay kind of organized without really making an effort because I don’t leave anything pending. For me, the work has to finish, uh so I, you know, naturally don’t relax when, you know, something is there in my mind even though I’ve not written it down, but I know somewhere that, okay, something is pending.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:20:58] So so your calendar in any typical week, it’ll look very different from…

Deepak Abbot: [01:21:03] Yeah, it’ll look very open. Anyone can request a meeting because, you know, they’ll find slots.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:21:08] What about the time when you want to spend something that you’ve been looking forward to kind of work on or do deep work?

Deepak Abbot: [01:21:14] I block my own calendar then. So when I’m like for example, you know, on a Saturday afternoon when I, you know, don’t want anyone to disturb me for three hours, four hours when I want to watch Netflix or, you know, uh these days I’m addicted to building stuff on Bubble. When I’m doing wipe coding, I don’t want…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:21:34] What have you most recently built?

Deepak Abbot: [01:21:36] I have built some 25, 30 products, random things uh which are maybe useful to me for for example, things like tracking…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:21:45] So they are not, you’re they’re not just building for building sake, you’re actually building and using them?

Deepak Abbot: [01:21:49] Just for my own, yeah, like even though I can release it, they can go, I mean people can use it. Like for example, you know, things like you can track, if you have courier coming in from 10 different companies, you can track it, just put your tracking number, it’ll automatically detect which courier company is where it is. It’ll send push notification to your WhatsApp, you know, so I block my calendar when I’m doing something like that. And then of course, when I’m into so I run a lot, uh long runs on Sundays. I don’t take my phone. If there’s no phone, obviously, and I don’t have SIM on my in my watch. So there’s I’m disconnected. That’s one form of disconnection and and when I take my flights, I’m very, very happy that, you know, the flight doesn’t have Wi-Fi. I hate when flights have Wi-Fi because you end up connecting and then, you know, get back into the same world. So I love when I’m flying because, you know, again you are disconnected. So there I find my moments to disconnect.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:22:43] What do you do when when you’re disconnected on a flight?

Deepak Abbot: [01:22:46] I do nothing. For my flight, I do nothing. I just keep my mind calm. Because internet, you are either looking at reels or checking Slack or doing WhatsApp. There’s so many things you in one minute I can switch between four apps. Even though I hate it, you know, it’s not healthy, but I, you know, can’t stop myself.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:23:07] All right. Um why do you do what is it that you do? What what’s it that truly drives you? 27 years and next so many, many years, like, you know, what’s driving you?

Deepak Abbot: [01:23:22] I think as long as I’m excited about building things, I’ll it’ll continue to drive me. Uh as long as I’m not bored and I think there are, you know, opportunities and problems that I am yet to solve and of course, you know, in the course, I can make some money, you know, that, I mean, money of course is a great uh target to have. I’m not saying that I want to be an ultra rich or want to make so much money that, you know, I go for world tour and all that. I mean, you know, I like to be, you know, I’m a materialistic person. I like to buy things. I like to buy a lot of shoes for my running and, you know, spend, like to spend money, right?

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:24:01] What’s the most latest shoe that you bought?

Deepak Abbot: [01:24:03] Yeah, I just bought bought Asics super blast. Uh and…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:24:07] Are you also on running fan? No? The those the Swiss ones, the…

Deepak Abbot: [01:24:12] I have not bought on because uh, you know, I like to research a lot when I buy and I think that’s not for me. I don’t like very cushiony shoes.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:24:19] Thick. Yeah yeah.

Deepak Abbot: [01:24:20] Yeah so, yeah, but I would like I said, you know, like I said, I would like to try. So I would buy one day. So I I want, you know, these are the things I what I like to chase, you know, if I if I’m going out and can I buy two pair of shoes without even looking at my credit card statement? So it’s not about making money that I can buy a Ferrari. No, no, that’s not the kind of money I want to make or I desire of making. But as long as I’m happy in my life, uh you know, able to fulfill my materialistic needs and I am excited about going to office on Monday and there’s a happy environment and, you know, every quarter when we look back and say, okay, at least we’ve, you know, when we do our quarterly board meetings and when I’m, so I still even today I build my own deck for that quarterly meeting with with our board. And when I’m building the deck and I say, oh yeah, you know, when you in day to day you don’t realize when you’re building, oh realize, oh we’ve done this, we’ve done that, we’ve reached here, we’ve achieved so much and that feels good. As long as that feeling good is there every every quarter, I think I’m set.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:25:21] That’s actually very true, right? Because in the thick of things, you’re always doing things and you always feel like there’s so much left to be done, but it’s only when you do a review, then you realize that wow, we actually did so much.

Deepak Abbot: [01:25:34] Yeah. And then when our board tells that, oh, you know, you could have done this, you didn’t do that and I thought okay, next quarter, you know…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:25:42] All right. Um what what gets you up when you’re down and out and when you take a knock. I’m sure through your career and even at IndiaGold, there’ve been many times when things haven’t gone your way. So what what kind of makes you get up again?

Deepak Abbot: [01:25:56] I think the team, uh when we look at the 250 people that we’ve hired, you know, they work so hard for us, for us in the sense for IndiaGold. Uh you know, and you know, when I, you know, walk into the office and see, you know, everyone is trying to give in their best, putting in their work, it motivates you to keep building or keep solving for an issue so that, you know, they also continue to grow and we are very, very proud of the fact that in five years, we’ve never had done any layoff, never asked anyone to leave, uh you know, we built and we’ve got very, very less attrition. Uh and that is the reason, you know, we are very, very you know, particular about, you know, how we want to uh what kind of company we want to build for our employees.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:26:48] Great. Since we’re talking about people now and like, you know, you’re talking, what is it that you changed your mind when it comes to managing people? Something that you believed in before is the right way to manage people, but now…

Deepak Abbot: [01:27:01] I think earlier it was fear. Like for example, I mean, I don’t know if I should be saying that or not. Vijay is a very hard person to work with, right? And at Paytm, I was the head of product and, you know, I would create Vijay’s fear that, you know, Vijay wants this, Vijay wants that, we have to do it, otherwise, you know, you will be taken out of the team or you’ll be moved to this, you know, I’ll take out take this product from you and it worked for me when I was the employee, right? I mean using founder’s name. Here, you know, obviously if I create unnecessary fear, it’s going to hurt us back. So here you have to, you know, take them along and tell them why if you’re even if I’m taking an irrational decision, they need to know why. Like for example, uh you know, Vijay used to tell us that you don’t know that 20 things that, you know, when I say something in a meeting room, uh you only are looking at me and you’re saying, oh this, why is he asking this is irrational, you know, why is he saying this? But there are 20 other things that I’ve gone through, there’s so much context that I have. I’m talking to investors, I’m talking to external people, I’m talking to, you know, a lot of customers, you don’t have that context. But when I say something, you think, you know, you are not, you know, preview of that that conversation that I have had. So please, you know, when I say something, try to understand that and this is the learning that I took here. I said okay, I need to explain people when I when we ask something, it may sound irrational to them, it may sound illogical to them sometimes or very hard to them. But there’s a reason why we now do that. So as long as they understand the reason, and that’s the change that I’ve done. Earlier, I never used to explain the reason reason when I was head of product. Vijay ne bola toh karna hai. But here you can’t say this ki maine bola toh karna hai. You have to tell them why you want to why we’re doing this. As long as they understand the context, I think we end up getting most of the work done in a very efficient way.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:28:49] Got it. What is your span of control? How many people report to you?

Deepak Abbot: [01:28:53] I think four or five.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:28:54] Got it.

Deepak Abbot: [01:28:55] Yeah.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:28:56] All right. Um what’s the best way or best time for people to give feedback to you?

Deepak Abbot: [01:29:03] Oh, that’s a good question. I don’t remember that if, you know, at least in my team, you know, I’m getting any feedback, maybe something I need to do to change…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:29:17] That is of a founder problem because, you know, it needs to be…

Deepak Abbot: [01:29:21] Yeah, that’s something that I think I need to work on. Be more receptive to people.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:29:26] Both of you as well, so…

Deepak Abbot: [01:29:33] Yeah, I mean I, you know, like I said, you know, obviously there must be some, lot of scope to improvement, but I don’t get that often from my team members. So maybe something I need to…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:29:42] I’m assuming you and Nitin give each other feedback.

Deepak Abbot: [01:29:45] Oh yeah yeah, a lot. Right. Oh yeah. That’s, that…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:29:46] That’s one of your…

Deepak Abbot: [01:29:47] You’re both co-founders. Yeah.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:29:48] Right.

Deepak Abbot: [01:29:48] But then again, you know, getting feedback from Nitin versus let’s say from your product or engineering team would be different.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:29:56] Are there any phrases that you’re like pet phrases that you’re known for at work like in meetings or in like when good things, bad things, anything like that? No.

Deepak Abbot: [01:30:06] No.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:30:06] Is there any line that your team dreads hearing from you?

Deepak Abbot: [01:30:10] From me, I think my team doesn’t dread, forget hearing anything about me. I think I’m a very, very…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:30:18] Do you guys, do you and Nitin have a good guy, good cop, bad cop?

Deepak Abbot: [01:30:20] Oh yeah yeah. Nitin is, so so so we’ve and we’ve discussed that. You know, I am the happy go lucky kind of a guy and Nitin is the tough guy and he has to assume that role. He’s not a tough guy, but he, you know, brings that personality and when, you know, and he sometimes in meetings, you know, you have to show the other side when targets are not met or you know, something goes wrong. So he takes that part very effortlessly. I can’t do that. So that’s why, you know, I’m a good person in the company and people dread Nitin.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:30:54] What does a productive day for you look like at the end of a day where you feel look back and say, wow, that was a really great day?

Deepak Abbot: [01:31:01] I think when I finish all my work, whatever I, whatever is there in my mind because I don’t…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:31:06] No I don’t write notes.

Deepak Abbot: [01:31:07] But in my mind, you know, there is always this, you know, uncanny, there’s a threat, there’s something pending.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:31:15] No, but, but okay. Let me equalize that. Let’s say there are two different days. On both days, you did very different types of work, but at the end of both days, you completed whatever you thought you would do. Are you saying they are always the same for you? So my question was more in terms of what kind of work…

Deepak Abbot: [01:31:29] No okay. So when I do anything hands on, I feel really, really good about it. When I’m only doing thinking and doing strategizing or when I, you know, trying to firefight, you know, those are the days I don’t really enjoy much.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:31:45] So when I say hands on…

Deepak Abbot: [01:31:46] you know, I am reviewing the new uh app workflow, I’m building a new dashboard where, you know, reviewing the PRD or writing the PRD myself or, you know, looking at, you know, solving a particular server issue that we had because of some outage that we had or, you know, payments are getting stuck and we are trying to, you know, resolve that. Those are things, you know, hands-on things which uh really makes me feel happier. So, so that’s versus, you know, you know, trying to solve some employee issues or admin issues or, you know, trying to think about, you know, how are we going to uh, you know, do next one year or next six months or or or, you know, uh talking to your partners and saying, okay, how can, you know, we, you know, maybe, you know, do more business together, sales kind of calls or sales kind of discussions. I don’t enjoy that much. I have to do it, that’s part of my job, but those are the those are the tasks which, you know, end of the day if I only, if I’m only doing that, I feel I’ve not accomplished something.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:32:49] I think I’d read somewhere that you’d said that experiments doing rapid and constant experiments is the way to iterate in a company because nobody can predict what will happen over the next four, five years. I fully agree with that. But forget four, five years, if someone were to say, can you predict what will happen in the next two years, anyone who says they know is just lying, right? So help me understand what does that mean when you say that you got to build, I mean, as either as a professional or as a company, the the only way around that is to constantly be experimenting.

Deepak Abbot: [01:33:26] I still believe in that because, like I said, IndiaGold is a prime example because we’ve had a tough ride when it comes to compliance and regulations. Um we were before our NBFC license, we were like a fintech and uh fintech while, you know, most of the tech world would understand but banks and RBI and most of the, you know, old world economy people, they wouldn’t understand what fintech is. For them fintech is either a, you know, some sort of a IT services or a technology platform or just customer acquisition tool for them. Uh and that is the reason why, you know, uh it was always difficult for us to continue scaling because at every, you know, at every six months juncture, something would come up which would impact our business drastically. So we’ve seen near death four or five near death experiences. So as a result, we thought, okay, you know…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:34:25] In the space of six years.

Deepak Abbot: [01:34:26] In the space of six years. Uh and again, mostly related to compliance and mostly related to, you know, banks not able to understand how we work, right? And of course, we’re also not able to understand how they expect…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:34:38] How they expect you to work.

Deepak Abbot: [01:34:39] They expect us to work, right? And that’s when we we thought, okay, we’ll, you know, instead of going grand and, you know, trying to change things, we’ll go slow, we’ll be very practical about, you know, what we need to build, take small steps, and if there are three paths to the same problem, we’ll take the most compliant path which, you know, is difficult for most fintech to take because that’s the slowest path. And that’s where I think the nature of, okay, you know, trying out things, okay which, you know, if I take path A or path B, the resistance I’ll get on path A versus path B and, you know, the least resistance obviously is the most lucrative. The most resistance is where, you know, will give us better long term returns. So we kept doing that, we kept recording it and we realized that, okay, to be in this space, being more compliant actually gives you far better chances of being a much bigger company. And as a result of last three to four years of such small experiments that we kept doing, the way we used to approach the problems, the way bank would change their policies and we have to adapt to that, uh we’ve now come to the conclusion that it’s better to be regulated. I know it’s very counterintuitive to how fintechs, you know, when they look at exploiting uh regulatory arbitrage. So no, we don’t want to be that company. We want to be highly compliant and still figure out a way to grow rapidly. And that has happened because of our, you know, experimental culture of uh trying things in a way which most fintechs won’t.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:36:12] How do you, how do you inculcate or how do you incentivize such a culture within the organization and a culture of experimentation?

Deepak Abbot: [01:36:22] Uh I think uh since we are all focused on two things, the growth obviously, but non-disruption in our day to day business because we’ve seen so many disruptions because of one mistake that we do and then we have to go all the way back and fix it. Uh which we obviously call, you know, the there’s a error rate every month. As long as we are reducing the error rate when it comes to meeting compliance, uh and everyone has, everyone is well aware of those two or three key metrics, besides the company metrics, we have these, you know, uh compliance metrics that everyone, you know, we feel should be following and we transparently share everything about the company every week. We don’t wait for some town hall or a quarterly meeting or an annual get together. So everyone knows that what we did last week, how it resulted in certain numbers today. It could be the top line growth or the bottom line or uh you know, why did our expenses go up or why didn’t, you know, our uh revenue go down? So team gets more lot more confident that, okay, these are the 10 things that we did that resulted in either a positive outcome or a negative outcome. It gave them more confidence to, you know, keep coming to us and saying, okay, you know, how can we now achieve this now since this week’s target is XYZ, uh can we try four, five things because because they were very excited about knowing what how it will impact the next week or next month’s number. Because we all always have, in fact, all our decks, all our Excel sheets, all our PNL is literally known to 50, 60 people in the company. Uh and we’ve done that deliberately because we want them to feel confident about things that they do and how is it reflecting. Most of our engineers, you know, initially used to complain that, you know, they keep building features, they don’t know how it is impacting the company and we built a dashboard that, you know, in Jira, these were the 10 tasks and these tasks resulted in, you know, change in this metric. So that gives them a lot more confidence to, you know, experiment with few things. Okay, if this is what company’s chasing this week, let me try and build this.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:38:41] That’s very interesting. So if someone improved a particular screen on the onboarding this thing, you’ll link it back to that.

Deepak Abbot: [01:38:46] Everything is tracked in a dashboard against every Jira task. So everything that engineers do, they know that it how it impacted and uh failed experiment, the successful experiment, all those are recorded. Even today I can go back two years back, we tried few things, it didn’t work. Everyone has access to that. So we in fact, you know, keep reminding people that, you know, when let’s say a new team member joins.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:39:08] So there’s a constant reminder like every week, you remind people that these are experiments, this is how they’re performing. So after a time, it gets ingrained in people’s minds that it’s okay to do experiments in your company.

Deepak Abbot: [01:39:18] And we are, yeah we are, you know, we’ve me and Nitin have told the team openly that you want to try out few things, as long as, you know, it is not going to bring the company down. Not going against compliance, you’re free to do anything.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:39:33] Got it. So I want to loop back to something that you said earlier on in this answer, which is really at some point after all these near death experiences, you decided that look, doing things the right way and the compliant way is is great because a, it keeps you alive and it’s better in the long run.

Deepak Abbot: [01:39:51] It’s better in the long run.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:39:52] I’m sure that’s been, you know, I mean in six years, have you come, typically when when founders start out in the first stage, in the first year or in the first two years, it’s like you want to do the most ambitious things. We don’t want to look at those two years.

Deepak Abbot: [01:40:07] We’ve made so many mistakes. Right? Like…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:40:08] It’s also what VCs tell uh their investee companies, right? Go big or go home…

Deepak Abbot: [01:40:13] This was our first startup. And we used to uh used to, you know, get influenced by other startups, other founders and VCs. You know, like go big or go home or growth at any cost and that costed us a lot. Because the VC model is that even out of 10 people, if eight take big shots and fail, two will succeed. Nobody talks about the eight that fail, right?

Deepak Abbot: [01:40:36] So we made those mistakes. And then, you know, later on we we said, okay, while, you know, the investors who invested in us, obviously, all thanks to their money that we were able to build this. But, you know, they are not the ones who are going to take uh any hit when this company goes down. I mean, for them, like you said…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:40:56] They just have to write it off.

Deepak Abbot: [01:40:57] 80%, they’ll write it off. So it’s easy for them to write it off. But this is it for us. I mean, this is the only thing that we have. So let’s build it our own way. Growth will come. Yes, of course, I’m not saying we’ll compromise on growth. But growth at any cost is the wrong, especially in financial services, I don’t know about any other category, but I mean, because I’ve never worked in that, but in financial services growth at any cost does not work, especially in lending because in lending we all know distributing money is very easy. Today I can today I do 160 crore, I can do 360 crore next month. It’s the money coming back. Collections is the lending business is all about collections, right? So, you know, growth at any cost means, you know, I can I can just distribute money and then hope people will pay. I was interviewing someone from a very big uh lending company, very big. And they said for first three weeks, you know, they do all right things, they have a credit policy, uh you know, they would approve 11, 12% of the cases. And when they are unable to meet their target or when, you know, those three weeks, their targets are nowhere close to what they had planned, last week they’ll open up everything. They are okay to have a separate credit policy for last month where they just distribute money so that their targets are met. Right? I mean that’s again because VC driven…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:42:15] So that cohort must operate very differently. The first three weeks must be very great cohort and that fourth week cohort must be a terrible…

Deepak Abbot: [01:42:21] 11, 12% NPA versus 1.1, 1.2. Got it. Right? So, so if they if they that last week, what they do, if they, you know, do it all month, the company’s top line will be crazy, right? I mean, they’ll be doing some 10,000 crores of disbursement every month. Right? But if that 1,000 crore doesn’t come back, the company will die in about six months. So, like I said, in lending, you know, growth at any cost does not work irrespective of what kind of company you build and banks, the reason why Indian banking system is so robust and stable and RBI keeps a hawkeye on that, uh that culture of growth at any cost does not exist. It is systematically not encouraged.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:43:04] Got it. I want to switch to you and you did mention earlier on about you have a lot of respect for people who keep health and fitness in mind and you’ve gone through a long term fitness journey with many stages in it as well. Like what’s been that journey and where are you right now?

Deepak Abbot: [01:43:23] So I was at my peak about 110 kilos. And never realized that, you know, I’m fat or I am overweight. Uh but then, you know, something, something you know, happened in the family where I thought no, you know, health is something that I need to really prioritize. And I started really working on it. Uh but it was more about uh diet management. I brought the weight down from 110 to about 75. So that 35 kilos was like I said, you know, took a lot of burden off me literally and metaphorically. Uh try to maintain that, but then, you know, I was never an active person. You know, diet could only be, you know, diet could only take you so far. And I was fundamentally a lazy person, you know, I would rather get up and play a game uh versus stepping out. And then I had my ACL surgery and my, I got another excuse that, you know, I don’t need to work out…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:44:35] What happened?

Deepak Abbot: [01:44:36] I twisted my leg. I was in a gym, you know, once in blue moon I would go and I fell and then, you know, twisted my leg and I was bedridden for five five months. Uh and that gave me another excuse that, you know, I don’t need to work out because my leg is weak. But three and a half years ago, when I again started putting on weight and I was out of shape and that’s when I realized no, you know, and startup was IndiaGold was, you know, at its peak in the sense, you know, we were right in the middle of raising funds and growing and, you know, doing experiments and there was a lot of stress. To take some stress off, I said okay, I’ll start cycling and running and then I got addicted to it. And it’s been three years. Uh I’ve reduced another 10 kilos. Now I’m at my leanest about 65 kilos which I feel is the right weight for me. And when I go out for my runs or cycling, I don’t take my phone. It gives me that, you know, uh you know, space which I need to…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:45:35] What do they call it? Joy of missing out?

Deepak Abbot: [01:45:37] Oh, yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it when I don’t have my phone with me. I don’t take my phone to my gyms as well. And yeah, I mean but I love my Apple watch because I like to track a lot of data.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:45:50] Oh yeah, inherently you still remain a data driven person.

Deepak Abbot: [01:45:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I and my, so I’ve changed my body into, so I have so much data about my body. So much data. And chat GPT didn’t help, of course, you know, when I say didn’t help, I mean, I’m saying you know nice way that, you know, gave me a lot more information about my body than I ever knew. And I got obsessed with how the body would work. Last seven to eight months, I have really studied a lot about my own body. Uh how uh sleep would impact or how, you know, workout would impact or how a particular kind of run would impact my you know, day and…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:46:29] Energy levels and…

Deepak Abbot: [01:46:31] Yeah and, you know, was very focused on my uh vitals. So yeah, I think that, I mean, I know it’s slightly over obsessive. I would not recommend anyone being so obsessive. But, you know, at least that gave me, you know, one more, you know, outlet to think beyond IndiaGold. It can’t be just thinking about work all the time. So, you know, that couple of hours every Sunday, Saturday I reassess my weekly data about my own body and gives me, you know, good kick about…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:47:04] Have you have you built an app uh that…

Deepak Abbot: [01:47:06] I have, I have, I have built an app to, uh I feed in all my data, all my Apple health data and it gives me a very good overview of things that I want to track. You know, I have very specific goals that I now have. Now that I’ve achieved my maximum possible weight, minimum possible weight, uh but I still few things that I’m trying to improve about my vitals, that app gives me progress bar, where I am in terms of my journey.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:47:37] Very interesting. So I was going to ask you, what are weekends and Sundays like for you when you switch off from work? It’s…

Deepak Abbot: [01:47:44] It’s mostly health related, fitness, cycling, running, playing games. uh and long walks. I love walks. I can walk for 14, 15 kilometers for three hours, two and a half hours and I don’t feel anything in my legs. I can just walk…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:48:02] Do you listen to music while you’re walking?

Deepak Abbot: [01:48:04] I used to, I have ditched everything now. I don’t listen to music, I don’t wear any, you know, heavy stuff. I don’t carry like I said, I don’t carry my phone, don’t wear caps, no goggles. I earlier I used to go like a proper fully dressed warrior. I’ll have cap, I’ll have goggles, I’ll have headphones, I’ll have belt and, you know, all the fancy gears. I just now wear any shoe and just go and walk.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:48:27] What’s going through your mind when you’re walking like whatever 8, 10 kilometers, et cetera? What are you doing? Is it just…

Deepak Abbot: [01:48:32] Random thoughts. I’m observing…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:48:33] Random thoughts.

Deepak Abbot: [01:48:33] You know, so I have, I play this silly game of calculating the number plate and, you know, making the total to zero or one. I keep playing those stupid games and I keep looking at vehicles. I keep thinking about, you know, few things that I, you know, would want to do in my life. So all random thoughts. There’s no structure to my thoughts during those two hours.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:48:53] Is there a particular time when you found that you tend to get the most creative and insightful thoughts?

Deepak Abbot: [01:49:02] Uh when I get up, around 7 to 9 is my peak window when I, you know, just try to think out of the box. I mean because once you reach office, you know, you have to stay in line, you have to, you know, think inside a structure…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:49:19] Your calendar and time doesn’t really belong to you.

Deepak Abbot: [01:49:21] 7 to 9 is when, you know, so I come back from my run or walk around 6:30. I leave at 5, come back by 6:30 and then have my tea and then 7 to 9 is where I, you know, take my laptop and I, you know, do things which I would not normally do in office, browse stuff, write, that is the only time I write now. But that’s for me. I earlier I used to write for the world. I now write for myself. And yeah, I mean…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:49:50] What does that mean? It’s a journal?

Deepak Abbot: [01:49:51] It’s a journal. It’s, you know, thoughts that, you know, might have come to my mind while walking, running or, you know, things that we should be building or things that, you know, excite me outside of IndiaGold. So…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:50:04] So on a daily…

Deepak Abbot: [01:50:04] I would rather publish that one day maybe not now, but because those are very unstructured thoughts right now. But yeah, that I do that between 7 to 8:30.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:50:15] Got it. So that’s your spiky creativity and…

Deepak Abbot: [01:50:18] Yes.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:50:18] Interesting. Uh do you have favorite foods? Or…

Deepak Abbot: [01:50:24] No I’m not very fussy about food. I can, it just needs to be healthier. So as long as it’s healthier, I…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:50:34] Do you read books?

Deepak Abbot: [01:50:35] No, I don’t.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:50:36] Lack of time?

Deepak Abbot: [01:50:37] No, I have never been a good reader. I start many books. I mean, I have read…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:50:42] No, but you don’t read books, surely you read a lot of other stuff because I remember your blogs.

Deepak Abbot: [01:50:46] Yes of course my, see my attention span is low. So I as long as I can finish something within 30, 40 minutes, books I can’t of course. You know in those 30, 40 minutes I can’t read a book and then, you know, if I’m not able to complete it, that gets, you know, that is lying on my bedside and I can never get across it. But otherwise, yeah, I read a lot, random stuff and, you know, like I said, with chat GPT, you’re, you know, going into the rabbit hole and discovering new things and things that I never thought I would be reading about. I’m even going into those topics as well.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:51:19] Got it. On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you with your life?

Deepak Abbot: [01:51:24] Mujhe toh lagta hai I’m quite happy, 9 toh hunga shayad.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:51:28] Got it. Uh which morning of the week do you look forward to the most?

Deepak Abbot: [01:51:34] Every morning. Every morning, especially Sunday mornings. I love Sunday mornings. I have my long runs, I have my gym, I have my cycling. Sunday mornings are reserved for my very long workouts. So and then I go for my coffee after that, you know, and I have, I’m not part of any groups, so I do my solo runs.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:51:55] Coffee is interesting because the parent company behind IndiaGold is called Flat White.

Deepak Abbot: [01:51:58] Yes.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:51:59] Where did that come from? It came at…

Deepak Abbot: [01:52:00] It came at sitting at Blue Tokai. We are, you know, we had given, submitted 7, 8 names. There was a company secretary firm that we had. Every name was getting rejected. We were thinking of very generic names.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:52:15] Yes, what is the logic there? I mean there is like there’s really no logic because even I remember when we were sending…

Deepak Abbot: [01:52:20] People have taken all the names, right? It’s like domain names. You know, they have taken all these simple simpler sounding names. This finance management, this finance limited, everything. We’ve taken star finance, this finance, uh home finance. So we thought okay, you know, we’ll…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:52:33] But there’s also the counter, sometime when you submit something which is non obvious, that will also get rejected by the ROC because they’ll say what does this mean? And so it’s like it’s one game.

Deepak Abbot: [01:52:42] Yeah, but obviously I don’t think so they realize it’s a name of a coffee and we were actually having flat white. I said, let’s try, let’s give flat white capital. And they said, yeah, they approved it. I said okay, fine, let’s continue with this name. In fact, you know, lot of people even today don’t know that flat white is a name of a coffee. So they still think that some white capital, some white money, something to do with capital.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:53:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah because there is a lot of these apps like white gold and all that kind of stuff, right?

Deepak Abbot: [01:53:09] So yeah, that’s fine. I mean, that’s why I think uh the name works for us because we know it was kept as a, you know…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:53:17] Inside joke kind of.

Deepak Abbot: [01:53:18] Inside joke but not joke, but yeah, I mean…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:53:20] No but inside reference.

Deepak Abbot: [01:53:22] Yeah, but it works.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:53:24] All right. Let me end this conversation on with this last question. Right? If you have the chance to go back in time and give advice to 25 year old Deepak Abbot about his life, not just his career, but just life, which encapsulates career, what would you tell him?

Deepak Abbot: [01:53:44] Uh not 25, I would say 20.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:53:46] All right, 20.

Deepak Abbot: [01:53:47] I would finish my studies. I was intelligent. I, you know, can say that. I used to love studies. I used to be very enthusiastic about, you know, achieving the number one position in the class or getting high marks. I could have easily done, you know, all the top institute that India had, a degree from there. I could have easily finished my CA. I won’t say it’s a regret, but I, you know, maybe it would have helped in my career getting higher salary or maybe, you know, taken more seriously. I mean, today it won’t won’t have helped, but first 10, 12 years, I think would have helped. I think so. So I should have finished my studies because that’s one thing I was really good at it and I never took it seriously.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:54:39] Got it. I mean, I I just want to go slightly deeper on that. Let’s take the first 10 years. Now, one of the realities that’s happened over the last maybe like, you know, five years and especially with the arrival of AI is that careers are getting disrupted and especially early stage careers and of course one can argue mid stage careers and late stage careers also in their own way. But the first five to 10 years. So what would be your advice for someone today who’s graduating from any stream or college that how should they think about the first 10 years of their career?

Deepak Abbot: [01:55:14] I think uh first 10 years, don’t optimize for salary or money. The mistakes most of these youngsters are doing. 20% increment they would jump. Yeah, jumping is fine…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:55:25] What should you optimize for?

Deepak Abbot: [01:55:26] Jumping is fine. You can switch to a new company as long as you’re genuinely doing something different and new. Like first four jobs, I had totally different roles. I was doing game testing, then I was doing web designing, then I was doing UX and then I, you know, went into product management. As long as you’re doing a different role and you’re trying to learn newer things, but just to increase your salary if you’re shifting, uh I would highly dissuade youngsters from doing that. Like seven, eight years, you should not…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:55:50] Can you turn that into a, you know, into slightly different answer in the sense that I get that don’t optimize for salary. Can you give me the positive version of that, which is what should you optimize for?

Deepak Abbot: [01:56:01] Optimize for doing uh elevating your career in the sense you learn something that will give you a much long, so you need to have a long term perspective of what really you want, where you want to reach in your career, right? So for example…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:56:13] Do people, do 20 somethings have that? I mean I know when I was 20…

Deepak Abbot: [01:56:17] No no one has that. But I’m saying…

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:56:19] So then how do you?

Deepak Abbot: [01:56:19] Let’s say I’m 20 and I’m doing, for example, I’m doing some sort of coding, right? Now, at least this clarity this person should have that should I be doing, you know, doing Java all my life or should I be, you know, just coding all my life and working under an engineer or can I, you know, use my coding skills to actually build something that I like or maybe, you know, shape the product or can I be into product and, you know, use my coding knowledge and engineering knowledge and, you know, mix it with consumer understanding and become a product person or a product person is saying, okay, can I, you know, understand how PNL works so that, you know, tomorrow when I’m talking about product, I understand that, you know, when I’m building something, how it is impacting the bottom line or top line, you know, these are the things that one should know that one extra skill that I need so that I become a better engineer or a better product manager because there are millions of product managers, can I be slightly better? Can I understand PNL better? Can I understand how actually business works, you know, instead of launching features, uh isn’t it better to kill features and save cost if it helps the company? You know, if you’re thinking in that direction, I think um you become better in your field and that’s what one should aspire for.

Rohin Dharmakumar: [01:57:56] I’m going to take away learn new things and try to become better in your field because you ended with that, you started with that, which essentially kind of encapsulates a lot of what you said as well. Thank you so much for your time, Deepak. It was so lovely chatting with you.

Deepak Abbot: [01:58:09] Thanks Rohin. Lovely chatting with you.