One good thing about being in the Equities business for long is you meet only those people who have created wealth for themselves! So you do meet people who have personal net-worth ranging from Rs. 2-3 crores to people who are in the Rs. 1000 crore + net-worth.

Many of them are now in their 50s, 60s, 70s…and even in their 80s.

Some common characteristics:

– the foundation of prosperity comes from personal character. Most of these people will play the game by its rules.

-if the rules are bad, they will go to a place where the rules are more suitable.

-among the people I know, lots of wealth has been created by doing business in the Gulf – the taxation rate being zero.

– paying lesser taxes is kind of accepted so much by their psyche that it does not sound like cheating at all to them. However most of them pay a lot of taxes these days (comparatively) because dividends are tax free.

– most of them show tremendous self control and have cultivated virtue.

– largely these are people of integrity, trust, and good character.

– many of them live a lifestyle which is far, far below what their incomes or wealth will actually allow.

– none of them feels ‘deprived’ because they spend less – it is just them!

-most of them have a definite purpose of life even in their non business activities.

– many of them have gone an extra mile for their customers, and if need be given up customers whose requirements they could not appreciate.

– Remember Latin phrases we learnt in school? In excellentia lucrum – in excellence is profit.

– almost all of them, repeat all of them, understand risk, can play with risk, and are not afraid of losing everything! They have tremendous confidence that they can rebuild wealth!