E87: Mukesh Kalra (CEO, ET Money)

The Desi VC: Indian Venture Capital | Angel Investors | Startups | VC

Mukesh Kalra is the CEO of ET Money, one of India's fastest growing investment and wealth management platform with a total of over $3B worth of investments under management. Mukesh has over 15 years of experience in building businesses and products from scratch in the consumer internet and mobile advertising space. Prior to heading ET Money, he was one of the core members at InMobi and helped build it from concept into the world’s largest independent mobile ad network. He then launched his own fintech firm, Moneysights, which was later acquired by Times Internet, and Times Group.

In less than 5 years, ET Money has built a solid customer base of over 10 million users across 1400 cities. The platform has been a pioneer in building industry-first technical solutions like paperless video KYC for MF investments, and the country’s first Aadhar-based SIP payment feature, amongst others.

ET Money is simplifying the financial journey of new-age Indians by offering easy investment for different needs like Mutual Funds, National Pension System, and safer avenues like Fixed Deposits.

In this episode we will cover:

1. India: A macroeconomic outlook (3:38)

2. Why has India fared better than any other markets affected by the global financial slowdown? (10:20)

3. Lessons learned from black swan events (15:50)

4. What did Mukesh excel at during black swan periods? (25:12)

5. Thoughts on market manipulation in the context of content creators (42:06)

6. Why must a founder constantly evolve their mental models (54:03)

7. The vision for Indian fintech in the coming years (1:05:28)

. . .

Social links:

Mukesh Kalra on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kalramukesh

Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedesi_vc

Akash Bhat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatvakash

Podcast on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thedesivc

Akash Bhat on Instagram: https://instagram.com/bhatvakash