A CEO's counsel for 21-year-olds

References to popular movies and a conversational writing style make this book an easy read

During placement interviews at the end of her course at the University of Pennsylvania, the author was rejected by seven consultancy firms. These serial rejections left her so distraught that she contemplated jumping out of the window of her dorm on the 19th floor.

In the eighth interview, which was with McKinsey, she hit it off with the interviewer over their shared love for bridge. The interviewer was a champion bridge player and Radhika Gupta had been playing the game since the age of 13. Such are the quirks of fate. Life dealt her a few bad hands and then showered upon her an unexpected dose of luck. 

Chief executive officers (CEOs) of mutual funds enjoy rockstar-like following within the financial community. Ms Gupta’s fame extends well beyond it. That is chiefly owing to a talk she gave three years ago called “The girl with a broken neck”. This video has garnered more than 100,000 views on YouTube. Delivered in a self-deprecating style, it is a heartwarming and inspirational account of her struggles against the odds to reach the position she occupies today as CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund.

Ever since she delivered the talk, she has been receiving letters from youngsters across the country struggling with issues like failure during placement interviews, career stagnation, and even physical shortcomings. It’s these letters that led her to pen this book. It is not an autobiography. It deals primarily with the myriad challenges ambitious youngsters are likely to face. But the author draws deeply upon her experiences — as a student and fund manager in the United States, her struggles while setting up an asset management firm (Forefront Capital Management) in Mumbai, and then the trials and tribulations of heading a fund house at 34. Her book, she says, contains the advice she would have given to her 21-year-old self who thought the world had come to an end after seven rejections.  

The points she makes should resonate strongly with young readers. At the outset, she discusses failure. Her take: Where ambition is involved, failure is inevitable. It’s a question of when and not whether. At some point, each one of us will face rejection of one kind or the other. Handling failure, she says, is an essential skill all of us need to master.

Her panacea: Put failure in perspective. Think of it as being akin to a correction in the Sensex. Big corrections make scary front-page headlines. But a decade later they appear as mere blips in the index’s onward and upward journey.    

The candour in Ms Gupta’s writing is breathtaking. Most CEOs of large financial firms try to project an aura of power, invincibility, and perfection. She, on the other hand, lays bare the highs and lows of her life — especially the lows. Take one instance. Discussing a physical disability takes immense guts. Ms Gupta does so at considerable length: How being questioned about her neck affected her confidence earlier, how she has come to terms with the issue, and how she manages to handle queries about it with a smile now.

There is a chapter on handling feedback—the brutal, candid, but well-meant type. A boss at Edelweiss told her she lacked emotional maturity. An expert on public speaking pointed out the flaws in her voice, body language, and even dress during her initial forays. Instead of treating such feedback as an attack, she says, we should listen with humility to what these well-meaning people are trying to tell us, and undertake the course correction they are suggesting.

Youngsters will find the chapter on finding one’s true calling in life especially instructive. The advice she offers goes against popular wisdom. Don’t fixate on that one company or one career option, she says. If you don’t get option A, go with option B or C. They may work out just as well. In her case, while she studied computer science (and finance), she realised coding was not for her. After working with a consulting firm, she realised she wanted to get her hands dirty handling a real business. When she started Forefront, she did everything—getting documents notarised in Matunga, handling the pantry, interacting with distributors, networking with journalists, and dealing with the regulator. All these diverse tasks she undertook on her way to creating a Rs 200 crore business qualified her to run the Rs 79,285.4 crore business she does today. The lesson: There is no shame in trying your hand at something, then moving on if you are not satisfied, until you find something that feels intuitively right.

The advice in this book, while practical and based on hard-won experience, is doled out with a light touch. References to popular movies and a conversational writing style make it an easy read. Hopefully, many youngsters will buy it and draw the right lessons from the author’s own hero’s journey.