May 2018 – Mar 2020 · 1 yr 10 mos · Bangalore, India

• I joined smallcase in May 2018 when the team was <20 people, and my initial role was to head business growth. I was responsible for driving 0-1 conversions as smallcase went from 1L users to 25L users. I spearheaded the launch strategy & growth campaigns for smallcase's partnerships with Zerodha, AxisDirect, Edelweiss, HDFC securities, and Kotak Securities.
• After this, my next role evolved to be how smallcase is perceived by everyone - business partners, industry folks, and of course users. In a way, I became Head of all things Content at smallcase, including the blog, newsletters, marketing campaigns, PR efforts, YouTube videos, social media, community engagements, etc. I also conceptualised & directed "The smallcases Show" on BloombergQuint, as well as the "Learn How to Build Different Portfolios" course on LearnApp.
• Thanks to my education + experience, I could be the bridge between the research team and all these different aspects of the business. And it helped that I truly believe everyone should invest in equities - not necessarily via smallcases, but definitely in equities. That's the way to wealth creation. It's exposing your money to perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of the modern financial system - corporations.
• This was by far the best professional experience I'd had. I was hired because I was an investments guy, but I learnt so much about building a product & understanding users. About design, content, brand/marketing campaigns, and teaching/simplifying. About the brokerage industry. About how people think about money & the real decisions they take.

Sep 2015 – Sep 2017 · 2 yrs · London, United Kingdom

• After graduating from the University of Oxford, I joined the Investments team at Willis Towers Watson in London. My role focused on evaluating new strategies & investment opportunities within Alternative Credit, including leverage loans, high yield, MBS, structured credit, etc.
• Apart from researching niche/rewarding investment opportunities, I was also responsible for negotiating fees/terms, designing vehicle structure, presenting the thesis to the Investment Committee, etc. For example, a colleague and I designed & launched a $250 million fund investing in Interest-Only strips (IOs) of Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM), which was the only such investment product available in the world at the time.
• Two things that were amazing about my time at Willis Towers Watson:
• 1. Since WTW advises on $1+ trillion worth of assets, I had great access to very senior fund/portfolio managers at leading hedge funds, asset management companies, private equity, etc. A lot of my learning came from asking all kinds of questions to CIOs, Founders, CEOs, and PMs of the largest & most successful funds in the world + analyzing their internal data. Being in between the asset owners & the asset managers ultimately provided amazing insights into how the institutional investors of the world think.
• 2. Thanks to my colleagues at WTW who decided to start an internal investing competition on Investopedia, my interest in personally investing my own money was reignited in mid-2016. Over the years since, being an equity investor has helped me in multiple ways. Building an understanding of the financial system (or at least delegating someone to use it to your advantage) is one thing I advocate to everyone - because whether we like it or not, we're part of it.

May 2011 – Feb 2013 · 1 yr 9 mos · Hyderabad, Telangana, India

• As a member of the Financial Research team in Hyderabad, my primary role was to support the global team of traders focusing primarily on the US, European, and Japanese markets.
• About 50% of my time went towards "data cleaning" tasks, the basic goal of which was to ensure that correct data is inputted in the firm's proprietary trading algorithms, so that right long/short trades are made. These strategies arbitraged based on events like rebalancing of indices like S&P500, corporate actions (events like rights issues, share splits, stock/cash dividends, etc.), class action lawsuits.
• The remaining time was dedicated towards more interesting research work, where 1-2 of us would work with a particular trader and help (in)validate the investment thesis s/he may have. Such projects varied across domains & asset classes - a PE investment in Alibaba, analysing the Indian telecom industry, Brazilian equities, green energy opportunities in the U.S., etc.
• I was also the first member of the FinRes team who was selected by the country-head and Global MD for the India focused brokerage business. This was a JV between D.E. Shaw & Co. and Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, though ultimately it didn't work out.
• Interestingly, the best thing I took from my time here was a group of friends who have now seen each other grow, evolve, mature - and remained tight since 2011 :)

Jun 2010 – Dec 2010 · 6 mos · Bangalore

• I was lucky enough to get my first full-time job at what was then my dream company. While I thought this would kickstart my career in investment banking, very soon I realised that my role was in supporting back-office functions. And mine was especially far-away from the world of investment banking, within Global Control Operations.
• I was part of a team that was responsible for reconciling all general-ledger transactions between the thousands of GS entities across the world. Very process driven, very mechanical. And ultimately, very boring. Once I realised there was practically no scope of crossing over to the more challenging + exciting divisions of Goldman, the ones which had initially attracted me, I decided to move on.

Sep 2007 – Oct 2007 · 1 mo · Kolkata Area, India

• I interned in the Private Banking team of Deutsche Bank in Calcutta. The main objective of the team was to meet revenue targets by selling/advising various mutual funds & insurance products to HNI clients. This was back in a time when "Direct" funds were non-existent, MF fees & distributor commissions were well hidden, and investor education/awareness was very, very limited.
• As a 19-year old, this exposure was very valuable. I learned the functionings of the MF industry - from how funds are sold, the relation between AMCs and distributors (e.g. private banks or your RMs), to the backend work provided by RTAs like CAMS and Karvy. I also made my first ever investment during this time - in the DSP BlackRock T.I.G.E.R. Fund - although, in hindsight it was a bad decision (just before 2008 crisis) that was made solely on trusting someone whose incentives weren't aligned with my goals.
• Ultimately, the biggest takeaway for me was that I realised what I didn't want to do, and the importance of understanding the incentives of anyone selling me anything.