Most first-time founders walk into a VC pitch with one of two mental models: either “I explain my idea, they write a cheque,” or a quieter fear that the idea itself is the valuable part, and someone might simply take it. Neither is close to how venture capital actually works…
BEGINNERS VAULT
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₹50,000 a Month: How Should You Actually Divide Your Salary?
very budgeting rule you’ll find online was written by someone who never had to explain to a landlord why the rent is late because a cousin’s wedding came up. ₹50,000 a month is a genuinely common Indian income — and it deserves a budget built for how that income actually…
BOARDROOM
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What does an Investment Banker do ?
Every placement season, a handful of students at India’s top campuses disappear into a world everyone talks about and almost nobody outside it can actually describe. The package gets discussed in detail. The actual job almost never does. 13 MIN READ THE LEDGER — BOARDROOM WRITTEN FOR: THE CAMPUS PLACEMENT…
MARKETS
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Stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and index funds: a beginner’s map
Open a demat account in India today and you’ll be offered four things that all sound like “the stock market” — stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, and index funds — with almost no explanation of how they relate to each other. They’re not four competing options. They’re four different layers of…
BOARDROOM
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The difference between investment banking and commercial banking
Your salary account, your father’s fixed deposit, and the ₹20,000 crore IPO in the news last week were all handled by institutions called “banks.” Almost nothing else about them is the same. 13 MIN READ THE LEDGER — BOARDROOM WRITTEN FOR: THE SAVINGS ACCOUNT HOLDER → THE M&A ANALYST Say…
FOUNDER'S OFFICE
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How to build a business with ₹10 lakh
Ten lakh rupees sounds like a fortune to someone who’s never started a business, and laughably small to anyone who has. Both reactions are wrong. It’s not enough money to build a company. It’s exactly enough to find out whether you should. 9 MIN READ THE LEDGER — FOUNDER’S OFFICE…
INDIA SERIES
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What is financial freedom in India? And how much money do you actually need?
Somewhere between a Twitter thread about retiring at 35 and a WhatsApp forward about crorepatis, “financial freedom” became a number everyone quotes and almost nobody has actually calculated for their own life. Here’s what the number really depends on — and why the popular figure floating around probably isn’t yours….
MARKETS
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SIP vs mutual fund: why are these two always confused?
“I’ve invested in a SIP” is one of the most common sentences in Indian personal finance — and one of the most technically incorrect. You can’t invest in a SIP. You invest in a mutual fund, and a SIP is simply how the money gets there. 6 MIN READ MARKETS…
BEGINNERS VAULT
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Your salary is not your wealth: what actually determines financial health?
“What’s your package?” is the first financial question most Indians are ever asked — and often the last one they think to answer for themselves. Salary is a single input. Financial health is built from at least four others that nobody asks about at family functions. 7 MIN READ BEGINNERS…
MARKETS
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What is an Index?
Every news bulletin in India ends with the same two numbers — Sensex up, Nifty down — delivered with total confidence, to an audience that mostly has no idea what either number actually measures. 6 MIN READ MARKETS / बाज़ार WRITTEN FOR: THE FIRST DEMAT ACCOUNT → THE FIRST INDEX…