{"id":186091,"date":"2023-11-22T04:27:15","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T04:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indiansapidnews.com\/?p=186091"},"modified":"2023-11-22T04:27:15","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T04:27:15","slug":"entrepreneurship-needs-a-lot-of-resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indiansapidnews.com\/celebrity\/entrepreneurship-needs-a-lot-of-resilience\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Entrepreneurship needs a lot of resilience’"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘We all face challenges in life. It’s our approach towards them that absolutely decides what you become.’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Radhika Gupta<\/strong>, the CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, who returned to India from the US in 2009 and has since then never looked back, despite all the odds, tells Prasanna D Zore\/Rediff.com<\/em><\/strong> about how she coped with challenges that life threw at her, how she handled failure and rejections, and what values helped her be the person that she is.<\/p>\n

Calling herself ‘the girl with a broken neck’, Radhika, who was born in Pakistan — her father was a diplomat and always on the move — had the misfortune of being placed wrongly in the incubator by a nurse that led to a permanent tilt in her neck.<\/p>\n

While she admits to being irritated initially by people asking her about her ‘broken neck’ and having gone through a phase where she didn’t like the way she looked, Radhika found solace in academics and never let her disability hinder her growth as a human being and as a career professional.<\/p>\n

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How has been your journey since 2010? Has the decision to move to India paid rich dividends for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In retrospect, it is the finest decision I made.<\/p>\n

What about the ups and downs you faced since 2010, the challenges, and how you overcame those challenges?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s been a really long journey since then, but it’s flown by as a breeze. I came back to India in 2009, turned entrepreneur, spent four or five years as an entrepreneur. It was a very rewarding experience, but it wasn’t a very glamorous one.<\/p>\n

To be an entrepreneur was not easy, as you remember. It was a tiny little office and we hardly had a team, so we were doing everything on own.<\/p>\n

But we managed to bootstrap and build that business worth Rs 200-odd-crore, sold that business to Edelweiss in 2014 and joined the Edelweiss Group, became the CEO of the mutual fund in 2017, and then again started the journey of building the business, but this time a business that catered to retail investors all over the country, which is a journey in itself.<\/p>\n

Looking back, was it a difficult — some would even call it foolish decision — to quit Wall Street and move to India to start up? How do you look back at those times and what do you tell yourself now about those?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I tell myself I was so brave. I wish I had such bravery now.<\/p>\n

Why would you say that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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It was a very brave decision to give up a life that you had built so painstakingly, as a middle-class kid who had just made it, to come back to such an uncertain future in India. I think it was incredibly brave.<\/p>\n

Being 23-24 and having that madness of youth enabled that kind of decision. But I tell myself it was brave. I’m an investment professional. I always say it’s the best investment decision I made in my life to go long on India in 2009.<\/p>\n

You’ve been a TEDX speaker as well, and you have given a TEDX talk about ‘the girl with a broken neck’. Was this title given to you by somebody or was it you yourself who decided to call yourself ‘the girl with a broken neck’? What kind of emotions do you go through when someone points out your physical disability?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember being very irritated about it as a child. At airports when these security ladies ask you, I remember just being like, ‘Mind your own business. Why are you asking me and why are you pointing this out?’<\/p>\n

Obviously, when the talk came, I was just debating what to title it, and this title kind of struck my head: ‘The Girl With A Broken Neck.’ And I felt it was right here. I just felt it was organically right. And I said, maybe it’s time to just embrace all this.<\/p>\n

Since then, I think my feelings about the neck are very different.<\/p>\n

So when people would talk about the broken neck, what kind of emotions would you go through? Would you feel pity on the people or would you pity yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was just irritated. I was like, why do you have to point this out to me? Why do you have to make such a big deal about this? Why do you have to ask me this question? Before the talk, I think those were the emotions I used to go through.<\/p>\n

There was a point in time in your life when you were contemplating even suicide. Could you tell our readers how did you cope with your failures, rejections and depression?<\/strong><\/p>\n