Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath in an interview with The Print shared his thoughts on being a school dropout. He also noted the social stigma associated with low-barrier jobs regardless of monetary success.
When asked how the reactions were after his passing, Kamath said his parents took the news better than expected. “My parents gave up on me. It felt like they lost hope,” he joked, adding that his extended family values higher education.
Family Expectations
“Coming from a South Indian family with highly educated relatives, the pressure was to follow a certain path of achievement. I believe my parents handled the situation better than expected, they showed shame and faith in me,” he said.
Regarding his school friends, Kamath said nothing has changed because of his decisions, adding that he became “insecure” at one point, but the circumstances made him aware of social stigmas surrounding certain professions.
“I feel the psychology behind it is very interesting. So my first job at a call center in Bengaluru when I was 17 used to pay me. ₹8,000-9,000. I felt really good about myself because I had a paycheck, I had access to more money than my friends had access to at the time, and I was wildly hungry for financial Independence. You feel good from 17 to 22, while your friends are at university,” he began.
Adding: “You start to feel anxious when your friends graduate university and get their first job because there is a social stigma around a job that doesn’t have a barrier to entry. It could be any job. A call center job didn’t require a degree it didn’t have. it requires expertise or know-how of a certain kind, so social stigma is there. You can be in a call center earning ₹1 lakh per month but a doctor earns ₹25,000 per month gets more social acceptance. So from 22-23 when my classmates graduated and they started to become doctors and engineers then you start to feel a little self-aware.”
However, he added that at some point in life “you compare yourself to your peer group no matter how the peer group was created”. Kamath added that this did not “damage him psychologically in the way it might have hurt many others because the circumstances were favorable”, but acknowledged that if he had reacted today “it would have been different”.
Notably, Kamath is today among India’s youngest billionaires.
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Published: 25 Mar 2024, 13:24 IST
(tagsTo Translate)business