I am very opinionated and sometimes a very irritating character but, I have learnt that the quest to learn is a journey, not a destination.

One thing which keeps me apart is that I have got guts. I may have Rs 1,000 in my bank but if I think the deal is worth a crore - I will do it.

It is not that Covid is going to impede the progress of humanity. It is not as much a changing event as it was being predicted, according to me.

Insurance, pension reforms are going to be extremely important for the stock market because the kind of money we'll get from that is unbelievable.

My father was also interested in stocks. When I was a young child, he and his friends would drink in the evening and discuss about the stock market.

Success should not make you think you are God's gift to mankind. You should never forget that you are what you are because God chose you to be there.

Ultimately savings have to go somewhere and I think they will find their home in financial markets and within financial markets, a large part in equity.

In India, one has to have faith in equity. What are the alternatives - real estate, debt? If debt can give you 6 percent, equity can give you 15 percent.

You know, a balance-sheet is like a bikini, it shows more but it hides what is vital. I learnt to read a balance sheet and then I got fascinated by stocks.

When people talk to you in such glowing terms, that is the time to be very, very alert because the worst of the mistakes are made in the best of the times.

I think when markets go up and there is no manipulation in markets and people question the market going up and it keeps going up, that is a true bull market.

I want to work in water resources, as I think creating a string of check dams and utilizing water better is far more cost-effective than large stand-alone dams.

My father was always not concerned about the wealth I have, but every year he would ask me, how much have you given in charity? And how much taxes have you paid?

People will laugh at me, but when they ask me to make a wish for the next life, I will say I want the same parents, same brother and sister, same wife, same friends.

I don't understand the business models of Flipkart and Uber. See no logic in people saying business models like that of Flipkart will flourish but that of D-Mart will not.

I reflected a lot, I thought a lot on my 50th birthday. It has been one of the most important birthdays in my life, not in terms of celebration but in terms of retrospect.

The typical conditions for the birth of a bull market are here: you have a changed country, you have a deep fall in growth and everybody is perplexed by the rise of stocks.

You can never predict how market will react. You can model it. You may try to predict it, but weather and markets and risk, only God knows because only he has seen tomorrow.

My personal opinion is that when the economy does well, anybody who has a deposit franchise will survive and grow because how can you lend if you do not have a deposit franchise?

Alternatives to oil are coming up. In the long run, it is not going to be as bleak as people are predicting but surely consumption of fuel by automobile sector is going to go down.

The journey to limit crony capitalism: It's a journey, it's not a destination. Slowly but surely, in India, crony capitalism has died and governance is what brings about real growth.

These dire predictions of COVID are behind us. Covid is getting milder and people are learning to treat it better. The percentage of deaths is coming down. We are learning to live with it.

I am interested in government spend quality, as it accounts for the biggest chunk of the social spending pie. Hundreds of foundations put together cannot equal what the government can spend.

You can't make money on borrowed knowledge. If following Rakesh Jhunjhunwala was all it took to make money, a lot more people would be rich. It requires patience and you learn from mistakes.

I am not afraid of making mistakes. But my mistakes were those that I could afford. That's very important: mistakes will happen but you must ensure that you keep them within limits you can afford.

There has to be a period of consolidation in the IT industry. Similarly in pharma, I think India is going to be a world power. We have the lowest cost, good technology, Indian companies are gaining size.

Apart from being motivation for themselves, I think big givers should also talk about their philanthropy so that their work and their success stories prove inspirational enough for many others to follow.

You cannot artificially curb gold imports beyond a point. But I am hopeful it will happen because the rupee depreciation should by itself lead to a large growth in exports and some compression of imports.

I don't want to lecture anybody, I would only say this to my fellow people would be to give, however small. Give what your pocket permits. I don't think a person who is giving Rs 10, is giving less than me.

If you have a company called x and today you feel the price is very high. Next year it could perform very well but the price may not perform. So in the stock market what happens is buy on the rumor, sell on the news.

If the NDA doesn't get a majority, that will not upset the market so much... but a situation where the BJP and NDA are not able to form the government that will be very troublesome for the market. But I think that is not likely.

If I have a fever, I take a Crocin but my wife calls a doctor, my mother calls a doctor. Similarly, investing is not something which a doctor or a lawyer or Internet specialist can really understand. Take professional advice, plan.

In my 25-30 years of experience in the markets, just as you cannot have a good relationship with a woman by bullying her, you cannot have a good relationship with the market by trying to bully it or say that you are the king. Market is king.

Draw a balance between the present and the future and one advice I give to every young Indian - the most difficult thing in India, urban India, is housing. So first thing that you do is try and buy house as that gives a great sense of security.

Children malnourished at age 5 tend to suffer permanent physical and mental damage. So if I can save a child from malnutrition, I find it has an extremely favorable risk-reward ratio - the cost I incur versus the overall benefit that I can bring to society.

We never extrapolate: In 1988, my net worth was Rs 1 crore and 1993, it was Rs 200 crore, this does not mean that in 2000, it is going to be Rs 800 crore. In 2002 also, my net worth was Rs 250 crore. We cannot extrapolate things. You take success with paranoia and it is always transient and temporary.

My father was a person who always allowed me to do what I wanted but he told me you want to go to a stock market, first get yourself qualified. So, I qualified myself as a chartered accountant and my dad said what do you want to do? I said I want to go to the stock market. He asked what will you do? I said I invest.

I told my father I wanted to go to the stock market. My father reacted by telling me not to ask him or any of his friends for money. He, however, told me that I could live in the house in Mumbai and that if I did not do well in the market I could always earn my livelihood as chartered accountant. This sense of security really drove me in life.

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