He dropped out of school. Nikhil Kamath then co-founded the brokerage Zerodha with his brother Nithin, and later built asset-management and venture businesses on top of it, which makes him one of India's most prominent young financiers and one of the least conventionally credentialed.
The approach to markets is self-taught and stubbornly first-principles. It also travels well — through candid interviews and a widely listened-to podcast, he has become a voice people actually follow on investing, entrepreneurship and the economy.
He argues the point of building a fortune is what you choose to do with it — publicly, and early.
Signing the Giving Pledge made him one of the youngest Indians to commit to giving away most of his wealth. More usefully, it forced a conversation about philanthropy among a generation of newly rich founders who had not been having one.
Talking openly about money, giving and failure is not standard behaviour for Indian business figures. That openness, paired with the commercial record, is what makes him a different sort of presence — as interested in interrogating wealth as in acquiring it.