'For 40 years, India valued only technical skills. IITs, coding -- that became everything.'
'Soft skills were sidelined. But those are the skills that will keep you employable now, not technical skills.'
Give a man a problem, and if that man is Shankar Sharma, he will find a solution. "I've never been short of solutions," he tells us as we hop across time, between yesterday and today, and then to what tomorrow might look like.
He doesn't say it pompously. Rather, the belief comes from how he has dealt with life's blows, starting from when his father suddenly died in 1981. "He went to sleep and never woke up. I was just 17 or 18," says Sharma.
We're sitting at The Imperial's 1911 restaurant in New Delhi, overlooking a rainwashed lawn. The hotel, with its colonial art and heritage, is fitting for a man who moves fluidly between the past and the future.
The Dubai-based stock market investor in town for work, has ordered 'Indian breakfast' -- scrambled eggs, potato patties, toasted bread -- and pork sausages, besides cappuccino with almond and soya milk. We ask for a platter of artisanal sausages, and hot chocolate.
He was the only son, with three sisters, and the family wasn't sitting on great wealth. "My father worked in Coal India. And while he was in a senior position, he wasn't paid anything fancy. We had a good lifestyle, but money-wise, not much."
Yet, even in the immediate aftermath, Sharma's mind went into solution mode. He went to the State Bank of India, where the family's savings were kept, and asked the manager for advice. "He told me, 'Son, I think you should move the money into gold'." He did, but that trade didn't work out very well.
He also didn't allow the tragedy to derail his studies. "My college exams were four days later. Everybody said, 'Stay with your mother, you're the only son'."
But he decided that dropping a year wasn't an option. "For all my life, I'd have to explain why I lost a year. Nobody really cares for your personal losses."
That resilience, he says, has served him well in investing. "In investing, you can have a crisis, you can lose a lot of money."
People, he says, fret about what they've lost, "but that's not the way my mind works. It's immediately thinking: 'Okay, now what? What's the plan?'"
His first brush with the stock market came soon after when he invested in Asian Hotels' IPO. "I had no idea what I was doing, but it worked out, and I made a lot of money."
He wasn't alone in his early adventures. "A good friend of mine and I invested a couple of thousand rupees each. The funniest thing was after we got our shares, we'd go to the hotel and tell the waiters that we were part owners." He bursts out laughing.
"We genuinely believed it! We'd go there in slippers, telling people, 'We are owners.' And they'd wonder who the hell we were."
Yet that naivete sparked a lifelong fascination. "That really kicked off this journey of understanding that there’s a way -- not to get rich quick, but a fascinating way to make money."
Our sausages arrive. The platter looks so delicious that everyone at the table exclaims. We quickly share it and sit down to savour the juicy sausages. A round of garlic toast is ordered.
Sharma's curiosity was nurtured early. Born in the industrial town of Dhanbad, then in Bihar (now in Jharkhand), he grew up in an unconventional household.
His father, originally an engineer, anticipated that mining would be India's growth industry and went to England to study mining engineering since no such course existed here.
His mother was equally ahead of her time. From his parents, he learned to think independently, and that: "You have to live life on your own terms."
School further expanded his horizons. "I went to a fantastic Jesuit school. Even in Dhanbad, we were recording school plays on CCTV back in 1972 or 1973. And there was an excursion to Expo 70 in Japan. Imagine that, from Dhanbad."
Every day, on returning from school, he would head straight to his workshop, "my cave", which his father had built him, and would spend hours welding machines, building model airplanes or steam engines.
That spirit of innovation has driven him through life, most starkly during one of his deepest crises.
"When my daughter was born 20 years ago, the doctor told us she didn't have enough oxygen at birth -- that parts of her brain had been damaged, that she wasn't going to be able to see."
Sharma did what he's always done: Look for solutions. Thanks to technology and relentless effort, his daughter can now see up to about 20 feet. "From where we started, that's fantastic."
He has also turned to robotics to help her exercise her arm. "Children are born with hypoxia all the time," he says. "You don't hear about it unless it happens to you."
He is also a big believer in luck and timing. "I was lucky to have entered the business post-liberalisation, when India became more merit-driven."
After MBA, he had joined Citibank's investment banking arm, but was restless. "I didn't want to just watch the action. I wanted to be in the ring."
Rajiv Gandhi's arrival in politics gave him confidence. "Suddenly, politicians were talking about computers, telecom, Maruti cars, instead of just garibi hatao and socialism. I thought, 'Man, this is what we want'."
So he made a bold decision. He quit Citibank. 'When I resigned, the country head said, 'Are you mad? Who leaves Citibank?' He even told me to keep my PF account open because I'd have to come back," he laughs. "I said, 'Boss, I'm not coming back. My job life is over'."
Sharma was all of 26. "I told my boss I'm going to trade on the stock exchange floor, build my own brokerage, my own investment bank. He thought I was nuts."
So began First Global. "I had just ₹6,500 or ₹8,000 in my PF account, which I withdrew."
Even the HR head advised him not to take it out. But Sharma was clear. "My threshold was simple: Could I earn at least my salary outside on the street? I felt I could."
And then the Gulf War started. "India was on the verge of bankruptcy. I thought: Terrible timing. I've started a business and now India's going bankrupt."
He credits MC Bhandari, a corporate law expert, with a piece of advice that shaped his future: "He told me, 'Your future lies in dealing with foreign clients'."
At the time, India was still closed. But by 1991, reforms began. "Our generation was lucky -- we entered our prime as the country's boat was being lifted."
Where does India stand today? Are we on the cusp of another boom, or facing headwinds? Sharma sees both opportunity and warning signs.
"For 40 years, India valued only technical skills. IITs, coding -- that became everything. Soft skills were sidelined. But those are the skills that will keep you employable now, not technical skills."
AI is rewriting the rules. A lot of technical work will be done by it, "but AI cannot stand in front of 500 people and persuade them. It won't brainstorm the way a smart human can." The future, he believes, belongs to brilliant thinkers and communicators.
His advice to the young: "Start building that edge today. Others are still stuck in the computer science mindset of 25 years ago. That trade is over. The next trade is soft skills'."
Otherwise, he warns, the job crisis will deepen. "Look at TCS numbers, layoffs at Microsoft and Google. It's already happening."
Investing has changed, too. What used to need 40 or 50 analysts can be done by two or three people now, he says. "But those two or three have to be exceptional. The average worker will get killed.'
At this point, we hop back to the past -- to the early days of trading. It was a sceptical market. "People preferred gold or FDs. I used to call it a 'two-square-mile bull market' -- covering just Nariman Point. Nobody thought of equities elsewhere."
He recalls how traders in Bombay would watch for monsoon rains. "If it poured on Dalal Street, the market rallied. They thought: The monsoon is normal across India. I'd say, 'It's just raining here -- not even in the suburbs!'" He laughs remembering.
Foreign investors changed the game. "They wanted research and analysis. We were educated, analytical, and writing good reports. Indian investors didn't value that, but global ones did." Bhandari's prophecy came true. "I was dealing with foreign clients."
While money followed, the real reward was knowledge, he says. "No other business gives you this breadth, so much so that sometimes you understand a company's future better than the company itself."
Sharma views wealth through a unique lens: "Think of yourself as a company. Your return on equity (ROE) comes from using your time, money, and mind productively."
He warns against chasing endless deals. That's a low-ROE life, he says. "A high-ROE life means making your assets -- yourself -- sweat."
This thinking also fuels his work in neuroscience. "My daughter's challenges got me here. I'm using what I've learned to help others. It's still early, but this is my calling."
Legacy doesn't drive him. "I don't belong to the Warren Buffett camp of money after money. I'm hungry, but not starving. The next deal matters, but solving real problems matters more."
During the pandemic, many rushed into equities, but Sharma remains cautious. The US drove global growth for 80 years after World War II.
"Now that engine's faltering. The world will slow over the next 12 to 24 months," he warns, bluntly adding that when the world slows, equities don't do well.
That said, India, he insists, is a small-cap market. "Headline indices may stay muted, but smaller companies hold great promise."
He gives a cricket analogy: "When the pitch is tricky, leave many balls. Wait for the loose one -- and score."
Among other things, Sharma, now in his 60s, is serious about longevity, and did his telomere testing recently.
"My results match a 20 to 30 year old's," he beams. Health is critical to him -- "not just for me; I have to stay healthy for my daughter."
And yes, he travels often. "That, too, is about increasing life's ROE. I try to take a week off every month."
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff