We have been very lucky and fortunate to be associated with Ratan Tata. He (Tata) was a great listener. We met him around February 2015. He was very active on start-ups. His advice to us was very straightforward -- As Tata, I have access to most incredible wealth advisors around the world. They manage my money and my company’s money. What I want you to do is look to democratise this access and provide same level of honest wealth advisory to the masses through mobile phone.

His advice to us always was that don’t look at how much money you have been making. Make sure you are helping the common man. Do more for common man’s wealth and investing, money will come. That basically is what we have been working on from then. Every time I spoke with him, his advice was corporate governance, doing the right thing. If you do the right thing, money will follow, nation building first—he had then advised us.

He put money into Upstox when nobody else was prepared to invest in us. Since then, we met him many times, going back just three-four months back. I went to his (Tata) house four months ago. I play piano and he had a piano in his house. I had a chance to play piano for him. That was a very personal kind of highlight for me. 

Another thing I vividly remember is that when I came to India from the US fifteen years ago. One day I was driving in Marine Drive and I see this car called “Ferrari California” which had just come out. It was supposed to be sold only in California. In almost within one month of it launching, I see it being driven in Marine Drive. It was Ratan Tata who was driving the car and somebody was sitting next to him. There was no security, no motorcade and no pilot vehicle. He just drove a car that he liked.

I have met him about six times and mostly at his home. He (Tata) was the first person we met after Covid-19. He wanted a meeting and we were so scared. Tata even said why don’t we take a picture together. I didn’t want him to take off his mask and he happily took it off to take a picture with us. Very good memories for me. We are very fortunate to recently give him return on his investment. He only sold 5 per cent of his shareholding in us. He basically put in a ₹1 crore of his personal money and the investment value today in Upstox is ₹230 crore. He only sold 5 per cent and we gave him back only ₹ 13 crore. The remaining ₹ 215 crore is unrealised gains in his name.

(As told to K.R.Srivats)

Related Topics