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Mastering Business Management with Pratik Bajaj

14 min 59 sec
[00:03 - 05:00]  

Anushka: Hello and welcome to WiZR Voices, an insightful podcast for learners and career makers. I'm your host, Anushka Chhikara, and today we're talking entrepreneurship with Pratik Bajaj.  

Pratik: Hey, hi.

Anushka: Pratik's career over the last seven years has been in key roles across financial institutions like Bank of America, Niveshaay and Equirus Capital. In the last few years, he's built and scaled his startup, Upsurge.club, which has recently been acquired by Raise Financial Services. In our conversation today, we're going to explore Pratik's entrepreneurial journey, what it takes to build a startup in India, career mistakes to avoid, work culture, and much more. So, let's get started with our conversation. Hey, Pratik, thanks for joining us here in the studio today.  

Pratik: Thanks, Anushka, for inviting me.

Anushka: So, we have a pretty good idea of your impressive resume, right? But I wanted to take it back and understand how you got into financial services and what your journey was in working with companies and then building your business.

Pratik: So, it's a complex answer, Anushka, to be honest. It's a long story. But keeping it brief, I started my career like many of us when I finished my education as a Chartered Accountant back in 2016. Fortunately, I was one among the top-ranking individuals and much after I got an offer from the investment banking division of Equirus Capital.  

I joined there, I was there for a few months, and I quickly moved to Bank of America, and then I became a member of the Merrill Lynch in their corporate banking division. I wanted to have a taste of all financial functions that I could, early on in my career so that I can make a career choice as to where I exactly want to be.  

So, right after investment banking, I jumped to corporate banking. I was there for a couple of years and I also completed my CFA US course while I was at Bank-Am. And much after, I joined a portfolio management company called Niveshaay Investment Advisors. It was run by my long-time mentor; Arvind Kothari and he offered me a partner position early in my career and I was like why not do that while I have already completed my CFA. So, I joined Niveshaay. Here, we were managing around 150 crores portfolio purely in small and mid caps.  

While at Niveshaay and also at Bank-AM, I was struggling to hire individuals. Everyone wanted to make a career in finance. Everyone around me was asking for my guidance in making a career in finance but no one had the right competence or the right calibre or the right skills to make a career in finance and that is where I thought why not do a weekend project of just teaching few individuals on what is valuations, what is financial modelling and portfolio management.

So, Kunal and I, he's my co-founder, we started Valuationary as it was called back then. We were fortunate enough to have the first batch of around 20 individuals. We were holding offline batches there and then but in about one month's time, COVID hit, it was all shut down and we couldn't take the offline batches anymore.  

We thought of how to do this, how to take this forward. We didn't want to return the money because it was for obvious reasons and we thought we don't want to do any wrong with the individuals that have paid. So, we thought why not do this online. Zoom was taking off, were using Zoom for a while for our clients based out of U.S. We thought why not do it for we individuals based out of our country. So, we started using Zoom to teach online over the weekend.  

We scaled it up and while doing that, EdTech become a phenomenon and we made all those courses online available to everyone. In about one year's time, we scaled that project to about 1 lakh users across eight countries and that is where we started to get acquisition offers. EdTech platforms were hotcakes back then, and everyone wanted to have some slice of education platforms. So, about that time we got four acquisition offers, we humbly rejected everyone thinking that we want to scale this up ourselves.

But then, Raise FinTech Ventures, Raise Financial Services, as they are called, they bumped up the offer. Every one of us were making enough money and the position that we wanted to have. We wanted to scale it up with few individuals that have already done this in the past. So those founders were coming in to help us with scaling this up.

And our investors, the early investors were getting at least 5x exit on their money. So, we thought it's the right thing to do. And fortunately, just after we got acquired, a couple of months later, funding winter set in and everyone around the startup space was already struggling with money. So, in hindsight, it looks pretty amazing what we have done with Valuationary.

Anushka: Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, there's a few things to do. One is figuring out the perfect problem to solve when you are in the right place to identify it. Two, as you said, is timing and a little bit of luck.


[05:01 – 10:01]  

But other than that, I want to understand, what at this point in India, what does it take to understand how to build a startup?  

Pratik: So, whether it is a startup or any business for that matter, individuals should only look for first principles. We have been taught early in our career the basic principles of economics, land, labour, capital. If we have got three things right, land, labour, and capital, any startup can flourish. We were based out of Surat back then; the land was pretty much available to us. For the labour, we had a few contacts here and there, and we were able to get more and more potent developers coming in from even US and places around Mumbai, Bangalore to join in. Because COVID made us believe that you can work remotely easily.  

So, land was available, labour was available. And it was all about capital. Very early in our journey, we were fortunate enough to get some institutional money and getting all three things right. Getting that convergence in that Venn diagram is what helped us to scale our venture. Right. It's great to know the first principles of that from you, right?

Anushka: So, speaking of labour, I'm curious to understand, you know, what do you look for when you're hiring people and building teams in your ventures?  

Pratik: It's an interesting question, Anushka. While I was struggling with hiring, I made a framework for hiring individuals. It's called three C's. I call it three C's. Competence, commitment, and culture.

So, competence is easy to quantify, right? If you're hiring someone, you can easily take a test and understand where they stand today. But culture and commitment, those are the two things that I lay more emphasis on. Even if you are (19-20) in your skills, I can pretty much teach. Or I can get that, I can get that work done from someone else.

But the commitment that one has for building that particular venture, whether he feels equally important and motivated to do this is very important for me. And I equally, weigh the culture part, whether he will fit in or she will fit in into the culture that we're building. So, those are the three C's that I look for.

Anushka: Right. And let's zoom into the culture part a bit, right? What's the kind of culture that you're trying to build? And how do you translate that across? The people you work with?

Pratik: For culture, I believe for founders, nothing is more important than building the right culture. Everyone around you, every individual is putting in their blood, sweat, and tears into building this company. What you can do right as a founder is get the right culture.

And to get the right culture, it should be purely based on trust. And trust comes from transparency. So, all the numbers that you have. All the things that you have done. Or all the things that you plan to do. Should be transparent enough to all the individuals in the company. So, we made sure early in our journey to have that dashboard available to everyone.

Even if I was pitching to my investors for that matter, I made sure that if there are individuals around me, I was pretty okay. I used to pitch to my investors pretty much in front of my interns and employees.  

And in fact, our first $100,000 check came from the father of our industry. It was very pleasing and very confident building exercise for us to have our interns and employees believe in us so much so that they are even willing to put in money. So, building that culture of trust and transparency, I believe, should be the code of every founder. Yeah.

Anushka: And I think in your company, if the interns are happy and have so much trust in you, I feel like that pretty much guarantees that everybody else in the company is happy. In my view, at least.

Pratik: Pretty much. Yeah.

Anushka: And the next part that you mentioned is the commitment, right? So, I wanted to ask you, what do you do to keep the people around you inspired and committed to the cause of your company?

Pratik: Commitment for me comes from three things, I guess. Money, praise and passion. You won't tell any individual that I won't give you money, but you do this work. He will not be ready for probably for a month or two. He will be okay. Let's do this. But after some point, he will need money.  

Similarly, praise. If you don't give the right recognition to that individual for a month or two, he will be okay. But somewhere down the line, he looks for that recognition, that praise coming in from horse's mouth, coming from the founder's mouth. He is praising me; he is recognizing me for the effort that I'm putting in.  

And then comes the passion. If you have got that passion to build this, to build that particular venture, it is self-explanatory. That individual is self-inspired. That individual is self-driven to build this. So, commitment will come naturally to him. You don't have to invigorate him or get any external push to get things done. Commitment will come naturally to him. Okay, cool.


[10:02 – 15:00]  

Anushka: So, given the context of your startup having boomed early in the COVID time where a lot of things went online and now, we're in a space in a kind of post-COVID world, right? I'm wondering what's your opinion on what the opportunities are with remote working in India?  

Pratik: Anushka, to be honest, I'm a strong proponent of working out of office. But at the same time, I believe people work with constraints and people work with their own set of limitations. And even the businesses and startups want people to come into their space, diversify as much as possible in terms of making that environment inclusive.

So, remote working certainly helps there. Getting the right people in. And then who have a few constraints to not come physically.  

Anushka: Okay. But you prefer the vibe that comes with a physical working space.  

Pratik: Yes. I believe that the energies that one brings to the table physically is much more synergistic as compared to just working remotely.  

Anushka: Okay, sure. So, Pratik, for people who find your career journey inspiring, right, and are trying to figure out their own way in their entrepreneurial journey, what's one piece of advice that you would give them to grow their career?  

Pratik: Anushka, I think. I strongly believe that everyone's career is very unique. And everything that we say here should be taken with a pinch of salt because it may or may not be a direct reflection of their experiences. So, while we have experienced something and I go out and say, do this, do that. But it comes with my own set of biases.

Having said that, one thing that remains constant as an individual or as a career builder is compounding ourselves. We cannot be safe. We cannot be the same as we were yesterday. We need to compound ourselves.

And compounding can only come from upskilling. So that education or the upskilling may be coming from the same facility that you were in, or maybe it could be new things that you want to develop.

So, compounding oneself is, I believe, should be everyone's job.  

Anushka: Okay. So, we're kind of at the end of our interview now, right? And I wanted to do a quick sort of lightning round questions with you.

So, the first one is, if you could travel back in time and give your younger self one chance, what would it be? If you could give one piece of advice when you were just starting out your career, what would that be?  

Pratik: Anushka, I will be very happy if I could travel back in time. But if I could give one piece of advice, I will definitely say be bold, take more risks. Opportunities, if they're knocking at your door, you should certainly be there to grab them. If you can start up early, you should start up early. The worst thing that can happen to you is probably you will end up becoming the best employer in the world.  

Anushka: Okay. And the second one, which we've touched upon a little bit, but what is one mistake you would tell people to avoid in their entrepreneurial careers?

Pratik: If you're an entrepreneur or if you're starting up. We talked about a confluence of land, labour, capital. If you want to have the right set of people, you need to make sure that they feel belong to the place. And I believe that has come up really well with me.

Because I believe in one philosophy of praising in public and appraising in private. If you have some feedback, if you have anything to criticize on, make sure that individual is talking just to you. One-on-one conversation is much more preferred.

But if you're praising someone, they will feel happier. They will feel much more belonging to the place if you praise them in public.  

Anushka: Right. So, bringing people up with you as you go up in your journey as well.  

Pratik: Absolutely. Yeah.

Anushka: So, my last question is, what is one book, video, or piece of advice that you would give to people? What is one piece of media that you would highly recommend to whoever is watching this right now?

Pratik: I believe there are a lot of books and material available out there which people can refer and probably learn from. But one particular book or one particular individual that has had a lot of impact on my career is Morgan Housel.

He's an investment manager but writes much more on philosophy on life and with very simple language. He has written two books. One is Psychology of Money and the second one has just come out, Same as Ever. I believe everyone should read that.  

Anushka: Okay, great. So that's the end of our episode. Thanks a lot, Pratik, for joining us today. I'm sure all of us are going to keep an eye on what the rest of your entrepreneurial journey will be like. So yeah, thanks a lot for lending us your time today.  

Pratik: Thanks, Anushka.  

Anushka: And thank you for watching this episode of WiZR Voices. We'll catch you in the next episode so you can grow WiZR every day.

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