1949

The worst way to scale your career is to keep improving your technical skills and thinking your career will automatically grow. Distribution trumps skills in careers. Most young people in the finance and startup world pay overt attention to technical skills and completely neglect how they bring themselves in front of the right employers. The normal career counselling goes: get a couple of degrees, do a few courses on the side, and power it by continuously reading news and reports. The massive lie is that technical skills are enough to get you everywhere. You don't need to market yourself. You don't need to build relationships outside your 5 stock market people. You can be in your armchair and keep reading. This is a deeply wrong notion in today's attention-scarce world. Distribution is a fundamental part of career goal-seeking and should be planned from the beginning. If anything, marketing yourself is harder than building skills. The best of the best technical people need strategies to reach their target employers. You don’t have to become a content creator or build a massive community, but you do need to find ways to position yourself in front of the right people. Start by helping those who are few years ahead of you in their careers - offer to solve small problems, share valuable resources, assist with side projects, or make thoughtful introductions. If you’re aiming for a role at a specific company, engage with their content and people, share insights on their challenges, or even volunteer for initiatives they support. This positions you as someone who understands their world and is already contributing to it. Visibility is a form of optionality. If you’re not seen, you don’t exist in the minds of others.

How are middle office jobs taking away your future salary from yourself? What is a middle office job? It's a role that doesn't allow you to face the customer directly. If the customer stops using your company's product or service, you will not be remotely responsible for the outcome. Now, for a lot of people, this feels great. You are paid above-average salaries to join. You do your fixed set of work. You don't have to be in front of the customer; they won't bother you outside your time. Two years into your job, you have never dealt with a customer and have no clue of how to meet their needs. You do standard problem sets leaving you without the skills to tackle problems outside your niche work area. Your work requires minimum collaboration making the job highly lonely. Most people who join these jobs assumed that an above-average salary indicates a better job and brighter future. However, that initial paycheck locks you in - makes it harder to switch careers. The brand security doesn't let you take unconventional career paths. Top roles of the future require a mix of sales, technical expertise, people management and core problem-solving. You need a strong real-world feedback loop to understand the impact of your work and stay attuned to market dynamics. These are the real goods and badges to carry in the job market. True progress only happens when you’re in the thick of things, where every choice has a consequence. If you are not in the arena, you are not playing.

Early business career advice (3 Steps): Step 1. Intern or work for 1-3 years at a big brand or a consulting shop working with big brands. Step 2. Join a high-quality early-stage startup (seed to series B stage). Check portfolio companies of the Top VC funds or fast-growing companies. Step 3. Repeat step 2 or start your own company.

Why did I start a talent & executive search business after doing a core finance job for 5+ years? Warren Buffett has this famous mantra of always operating in your circle of competence to pursue areas where you have the most expertise and match your existing skill set. There are 2 distinct problems in going solely by your existing competence. First, you define your talent by your degree and what you can do with it. Second, most people choose their field driven by circumstances during high school than actual interests. I chose CA because it was the only viable path if you were a commerce student in a Tier-3 city and you didn't secure admission to SRCC. Most people would say a CA should be in audit or tax, or even when they cross the lane - maybe go into hardcore finance of i-banking and investing. Going beyond that should be banished. But my primal instincts told me otherwise. I was drawn to investing - not by industries, but by the individuals behind the businesses. I had a knack of understanding incentives driving people more than assumptions running my excel model. When the opportunity presented in front of me, I didn't look at my degree and ask for permission. Finding talent was always an urge more than a compulsion. This week, we placed the head of a global consumer giant with another Indian conglomerate. I would not have foreseen this outcome if I had estimated what I could do from what degrees I have in my resume. The next big leap often comes when you stop asking what you're qualified for and start asking where you can create the most value.

Why did I choose to join a new startup (as the first employee) after a stint in JP investment banking and a rank in CA finals? Before you have a brand in your resume, most people outside your world think you are less capable than you actually are. Once you have a brand in your resume. It changes everything. They associate your value with the brand's intangible value. They start overvaluing you. All brands earn trust because of the reliability of the services they provide. And any reliable provider has standard protocols to not allow human errors. So, if you actually work for a brand, you have very limited say in how to do things. You are bound by processes that the brand follows. You learn to execute them. But you don't learn the art of creating new things. The longer you stay at the brand, the better you get at running the process internally, but worse at solving every other problem outside the company. Many people continue longer at these brands than required, primarily because they are afraid of a sudden dip in the outside perception of their work as soon as they lose the brand. This is a circular loop: the more time you stick with a brand, the more out of sync you get. The real value of a brand, be it an MNC or a Top college, is not to give you steady cashflows for your life but to provide you with a safety net to take extraordinary risks. Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.

Basil has been mandated by a new age Consumer Brand to hire a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) for their Mumbai Office. Criteria: - 8 to 12 years of relevant experience - Tier 1 Educational Qualifications (preferably engineering/CA background) Please reach out to me at tushar@basil-search.com with the subject 'Consumer Brand - CRO Role' along with your CV for a confidential discussion. PS: The role is with one of the fastest growing consumer brands in the country backed by marquee investors.

Hi everyone; looking to hire a smart generalist to work as a research analyst alongside me at Basil. ideally someone who is highly entrepreneurial and is passionate about finance & startups. Criteria: The person will be involved in everything including strategy, research, launching & executing new initiatives, stakeholder management (PE/VC clients). Role will provide exposure to top talent and is great for folks looking to start fresh or a career transition. I am open to hiring interns/fellows who can be converted into full-time role later. If you are starting fresh - send me a para note on a company you love. I am happy to groom young and smart people :) DM your enthusiasm to me here: superdm.me/2sharkk

As a kid, many of my weekends had one thing in common- my parents taking me to the Big Bazaar in Palladium, Mumbai for our shopping. From those days to being felicitated by the incredible Kishore Biyani sir, life’s covered some distance! From walking through the aisles of Big Bazaar to standing next to him, it felt surreal as I received the 1949 Member of the Year award. (1949 is a community for CAs in investing, consulting and startups) Hardwork and persistence don’t go unnoticed. Definitely, a core memory🔒

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of moderating a session with the OG venture capitalist & thought leader Aviral Bhatnagar and ace start-up founder & operator Sibabrata (Shibam) Das, at the Annual Summit of 1949. Two highly talented IITians, addressing an audience of Chartered Accountants – there was bound to be loads of learning on both sides. Right from tit-bits about their personal lives to their views on modern India, we discussed subjects spanning start-up learnings, leadership, scaling businesses, sectoral trends and moving into the future. Personally, I enjoyed the humour, honesty and humility that both the speakers demonstrated. Sitting there, holding the mike, I felt truly honoured to be able to interview the two self-made personalities, replete with experiences to learn from. A big shout out to Tushar, Arnim and the entire team at 1949 for making this possible! #1949 #moderating #venturecapital #startups

1949 celebrated its first-ever Annual Day with 150+ CAs in investing, consulting & startups featuring Mr Kishore Biyani, Aviral Bhatnagar & Shibam Das. Aviral and (Shibam) shared insights on navigating the startup ecosystem - covering lessons from investing, operating, college journeys, and emerging opportunities for founders. Kishore Sir enriched the evening with life lessons from over two decades in modern retail and the emergence of a new world order. Fast forward through 25+ events and thousands of meaningful connections, we’ve grown into the largest community of CAs in finance and startups. Our mission? To build the strongest alumni network for CAs. A heartfelt thanks to The Financialist, led by Priyank Shah and Vatsal Majithia, for their generous sponsorship, and to our drink partners at Rio for keeping spirits high. None of this would’ve been possible without the incredible efforts of Arnim Dhakad, Disha Veera, Harsh Goyal, Shivani Raichura, Shobhit Bafna, Shubhangi Khandelwal, and Yash Mhatre. We’re excited to re-open the waitlist for our next series of exclusive mixers, designed for CAs in investing (PE/VC), consulting, investment banking, and startups. Plus, we’re gearing up for a lineup of fun activities starting next year! Join us: https://lu.ma/yqm43o1q