Episode 21: Dhruvish Pujara | The Real Finance Mentor Podcast
He went from failure to qualified Chartered Accountant. Dhruvish then researched and networked obsessively and managed to switch careers to land his dream job as an equity analyst. Along the way, this young man found the right mentor and discovered the surprising mental benefits of long-distance running. Listen to (and learn from) another unique transformational story.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
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Binod Shankar:
This is Binod Shankar and you’re listening to the real finance mentor podcast from the realfinancementor.com. The real finance mentor is your go-to resource for insight and inspiration on careers in finance, CFA and more. Now you might think, why this podcast? Well, my goal is to deliver insight and inspiration for your financial career, by making it, one: relatable. I mean this is not theoretical stuff. We zero-in on the critical, practical issues. Number two: authentic. No bullshit, no side-stepping. The topics, guests and questions are all from that perspective. And number three: insightful. Take a Chartered accountant and a CFA charter holder, add 17-plus years as a corporate warrior, mix in 10-plus years of entrepreneurship, throw in a decade of full time CFA training. Add speaking, mentoring, cycling, mountaineering and other endurance activities, and that’s me! Welcome to The Real Finance Mentor, or as I call it: RFM.
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My next guest is Dhruvish Pujara.
Now Dhruvish isn’t an ex-student of mine but we have been connected via social media for some time now. I’ve been tracking his progress over the years and I’ve been impressed by what he has achieved. More so after I had a long & detailed chat with him recently.
He has a bachelor’s in commerce from Ahmedabad University after which he qualified as a Chartered Accountant. He then worked in Axis bank, a large Indian private bank as a Deputy Manager. Recently he moved into sell side equity research in Mumbai where he specializes in the BFSI (Banking & Financial Services Industry). He is also a marathon runner. But that’s all just the basic facts- there’s a lot more as you will find out!
Welcome to the show Dhruvish.
Q & A:
1. You recently qualified as a CA so congrats. But it was a long and frustrating journey as you suffered a few failures along the way. Failure often triggers introspection, action and success. I have three questions:
Tell me why the failures happened?
Hi Binod, firstly thanks for the opportunity.
So, failures happened mainly due to four reasons:
1. Fear of failure – Back then I was more of an output-oriented person & less process driven. I mean, I would think about the outcome all the time and not trust the process. I would think, what if I fail, what if I don’t clear in the first attempt.
2. Bad time management – Due to my inquisitive nature I ended up wasting a lot of time by going into needless depth in my favorite subjects & thus I would end up covering only 50-60% of syllabus.
3. Took a while to understand the “Game of reps” – I mean the game of repetitions. So, this strategy is highly effective in CA exams. What I mean is reading 1000 pages 2 times does not help as much as much as reading 400 pages 5 times, not to mention the latter takes less time.
4. Giving up before the exams are over – After a bad exam paper, I would take so much pressure that I ended up spoiling my other papers in that attempt.
How did you manage to finally nail it? What changes did you make to ensure success?
So, I took some time not just to understand but also accept my shortcoming. Now most of the time accepting your short comings is not an easy thing to do, at least for a person like me. So mainly my short comings were- Lack of self-belief, bad time management & not performing under pressure. So, I accepted them & then started working on them relentlessly.
Luckily, I took up running after my 2nd failed attempt. Got a lot of self-belief after I ran my first half marathon. It made me believe, there is a light at the end of the tunnel if I do not stop.
For time management I would reach out to friends who had cleared their CA, who were way smarter than me. They guided me on the approach to take exams & the execution part.
And lastly to deal with exam pressure, I gave 10-12 practice exams for each paper at private coaching institutes & ICAI mock tests.
CA can often be a transformational experience. At least it was for me. How did the CA journey change you as a person?
It was certainly transformational. See CA was something which consciously / unconsciously got connected to my identity not just when I joined the course, but back in my 11th grade. It was a story which I had sold myself for years that this is what I am going to do.
So, there is internal pressure to maintain your self- image and behave in a way that is consistent with your self image. So, after some failures when your mother comes to you to assess other career options since CA final was not happening, you somewhere start to question your competency as a person on a fundamental level and trust me that’s not a comfortable place to be in. So, after a lot of self-talk, you take a decision that I am going to get this shit done come what may. And that decision taken in the middle of the night changes you as a person to the very core. You really got to owe it to yourself.
Also, secondly, it’s more of a mind block sometimes, I mean after all 300,000 CAs have done it, so you can do it too. To put some context, you are not out there creating a city on mars, right? I mean its doable with some work.
Also, I understood that in the long run persistence matters more than Intelligence. I mean it’s a 40-year career. You start at 25, retire at 65. It is a marathon and not a sprint. Anyone is capable of changing the game but yes it comes with a lot of work & patience.
Coming to the general stuff, of course it helped me how to think, improved my thought process, helped me come out of a shell, helped me understand what is happening around me etc.
2. It can be quite difficult to switch sectors even if you are young. You are not a CA All India rank holder, or a first attempt pass or an MBA holder from a top school yet you managed to make the important career jump from working in a large bank to sell side equity research. This is unusual and admirable. I am very curious- what was the process you followed?
That’s a good question. Initially when I used to reach out to people working in the industry, they would tell me that without a rank/ first attempt/ big four Articleship / tier 1 MBA/ Level II CFA it is quite unlikely you can get in. I never accepted this statement as I always had that mindset of “what if” I can get in without having all these dispensable tags.
So, in the first 3 months, I talked to 35-40 people working in the industry to understand the industry dynamics. E.g.- when does the hiring happen, how does it happen, what do they expect from the candidate, what do they look for, how is sell side different from buy side, how each side makes money, which is less difficult to enter as a novice, work -life balance etc.
This helped me to get clarity on what I wanted and what was possible given my profile. Then clarity helped me to streamline my efforts since I had limited bandwidth due to my full-time banking job.
The next 3 months, I spent close to 400 hours understanding the sector in which I wanted to work in equity research because domain knowledge was the only thing based on which I could have differentiated myself.
Simultaneously I was trying to connect with all the Lead Analyst of my sector in the top 20 firms of India by messaging/ cold calling them. I would mail them my stock pitch, model, result note, annual report analysis etc. This went on for every single day for 6 straight months and finally, I got one breakthrough.
So, to sum up, Clarity on what I wanted, domain knowledge & crazy networking helped me.
3. You mentioned your mindset as the key factor that helped you a lot while trying to switch careers. Tell us more about these character traits of yours that make up the mindset and what role they played.
So, two-character traits helped me: persistence & stubbornness (Being stubborn about what you want but being flexible about the approach)
They did play a crucial role. To keep hearing a “No” and not losing enthusiasm till you hear a “yes” was something which I learned early on due to failures in CA.
Let’s talk about the bigger picture for a minute by bringing in some statistics. India is a country with 1.37 billion population with 2/3rd of population between the age of 15-64years so getting what you want is always a challenge. It’s very competitive. There are around 300,000 CAs, 50,000 CFA charterholders, 50,000 tier 1/2 MBAs in India. Let’s assume 50% of them want to work in core finance which comes to around 200,000. Now the core finance industry (PE, VC, ER, IB, treasury, corp fin) won’t be of more than 20,000 people (top 100 firms x 25people x 8). Let assume 20% hiring rate (considering industry growth & attrition rate) There are only 4000 openings for 200,000 eligible candidates in a year. So, the odds of winning are just 2%.
With this backdrop, differentiation strategy (setting yourself apart) backed by relentless pursuit of hearing a “No” till you hear a “yes” becomes a pre-requisite even for a well-qualified individual.
So that is what helped me.
4. You worked in credit analysis at Axis Bank for a while. How did that prepare you (if at all) for a career in BFSI equity research?
It did help to a certain extent. I developed decent understanding about the credit underwriting process. The focus is on the borrower’s intent, his repayment capacity, leverage, collateral & some industry dynamics of the borrower. What helped me was understanding the differences in underwriting process amongst different banks by talking to a lot of people. But again, this only helped me to understand the impact on the asset quality of different banks. There were ten different things that I had to learn on my own.
Having said that, BFSI equity research is more about finding out who is doing the business better amongst its peers in that segment and then looking at the valuations. The other part is forecasting the key trends & macro growth drivers of the sector. In a nutshell, banking job was a subset of my current work. But yes, it did give me an edge over someone who was a novice.
5. Many finance graduates aspire to break into equity analysis, but many have little or no idea as to what the role entails in practical terms. Let’s talk details- tell me about a typical day at work for you.
In a sell side Equity research, an associate typically works on updating the financial models of the coverage companies, report writing to some extent, attending quarterly result conference calls & working on client queries. Then you also get to do channel checks by meeting people at the ground level and that’s the best part of the job in my opinion. Then, when you are initiating a new coverage, you get hands-on understanding of that company and the segment in the sector in which the company is operating.
All in all, it’s lot of grunt work with lots of data and excel work with stringent timelines in a high-paced competitive environment.
6. You work in a fairly large team with 30 + analysts, a team that’s a mix of Chartered Accountants, MBAs, CFA candidates, CFA charter holders etc. From what you have seen:
What technical competencies should one have to succeed in equity research?
First would be the love for capital markets in general. Here people love the markets as much as they love their family, if not more. Then, modelling, analytical & reasoning, report writing skills comes later. Ability to distill large amounts of information into specific takeaways into short period of time is essential here. In depth understanding of the sector, you are covering goes without saying. Also, in-built curiosity & questioning mind and then relentlessly searching for those answers is very important to just survive keep aside succeed in the industry.
What behavioural competencies should one have to succeed in equity research?
One needs to be prepared for long hours round the year. It’s not a role for someone who is seeking a 9-5 job. Also Sell side is a Sales job going ahead, you are selling your idea to the buy side guy. Idea is basically in the form of your story & narrative which is backed by numbers. Also, one needs to be able to communicate and pitch the idea well. Delivering under pressure on multiple projects going simultaneously is very much required.
7. You did say that equity research is a deadline driven, intense activity that can burn people out and that partly for this reason many try and move out. What roles do they typically move out to?
So, it is quite difficult to move to buy side, if not impossible. But I have seen people with 2-3 years of sell side work experience move to PMS (Portfolio Management Schemes) and AIFs (Alternative Investment Funds) on the buy side but that requires good understanding of 2-3 sectors. Also, I have seen people with 5-10 year of work experience move to Asset Management Companies/ Mutual funds in the buy side.
Very rarely the transition to PE/VC happens. (from public to private markets)
Some who are okay with long hours move to Investment banking who are fascinated by deal-making.
Some tired with the long hours exit the industry by moving into Investor relations or the corporate strategy department of a company in the sector they covered over the years in the sell side.
8. I believe strongly in the power of mentorship as they help you learn a lot and hence to transition etc. especially if you are new in a job. You told me earlier that you have a mentor at work. So, I have 3 questions:
How did you and the mentor connect?
Found him on LinkedIn when I cold call/ messaged 15-20 people who were working in the industry.
What kind of support do you get?
A lot of insights about the sector & Industry, defining focus area at work, where & how to save time & optimize work, excel shortcuts, how to improve modelling & report writing skills, Recommendation on what to read, discussion on how the macro head winds & tail winds impacts the sector etc.
The approach we follow is that I must pre-read a task which is given and then discussion happens instead of him spoon-feeding the concept to me.
How invaluable has it been?
Its has been like a blessing. Your learning rate becomes 2X. Also, when your is curiosity to learn more is channelized in the right direction, it’s a feeling like no other.
9. Let’s talk about something else that we both have in common. You are a long-distance runner and have run the Mumbai & Delhi marathon (42.2km) & also ran a 50km ultra-marathon. You also completed a 365-day running challenge and were the Pacesetter at two high-profile marathon events in Ahmedabad. You’ve clocked 5000 kms in 3 years. I have two questions:
Why & how did you take up running?
Okay so first I will answer the “How”
So, it started as an activity to reduce stress during CA exam preparations. I started liking it since the release of dopamine in my body due to sweating improved my mood which in turn improved my efficiency to study. Then I ended up registering for a half marathon just a fortnight after my CA exams. With negligible training, I went to the start line with a goal to finish it without walking/ stopping. To my surprise, I could do it, but it took everything out of me. I had never pushed myself to such limits before & I cried at the finish line. That day changed my life forever since the self-belief I got was incomparable. I had a high fever & weakness for 3 days after that but that day I learned if you can really hang in there you can get what you want.
So now I will answer the “why” ( 3 reasons there)
It gives me self-belief that I can do whatever I set my mind to
It’s a thing for which I don’t have to rely on someone else for my happiness. I can do it whenever & wherever I want.
The satisfaction which a hard run gives is unparalleled. I mean its early in the morning before sunrise, you are out there trying a prove a point to yourself by pushing your limits. It really helps me in other aspects of life.
How has long-distance running affected your mindset?
It has made me persistent & patient. It’s a sport in which there are more bad days than good ones. It has taught me no matter how hard you work there is still a good chance you will fail but that’s okay. I mean you simply can’t stop. You just have to keep going!
10. Three career tips for youngsters who are still in college or just entering the workforce?
Clarity is power. Get clarity on what you want to do and more importantly why you want to do it. If you know these two things, sooner or later you will get what you want. Now this is easier said than done. You might not have the clarity on day 1 but one should keep looking for it and eventually in 2-4 years you may end up getting it.
Intelligence is overrated & Persistence is underrated. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room but try to be the grittiest. So, there is this quote by Denzel Washington “If you hang around the barbershop long enough, sooner or later you are gonna get a haircut”. Its one of my favorite quotes & I truly believe in that.
Networking is more important than your degree. I mean even if you are the smartest person out there, you can’t go far, unless 100 people know you & you know them. But having said that, Network with the intent to give & it will come back to you in unexpected ways.
Thank you Dhruvish for being so open.
You know you once asked me why I invited you to this podcast as a guest. You probably thought who would want to listen to you. But I find your story quite captivating.
You’re from a Tier 2 city. You failed academically but you learned from that and nailed the tough CA qualification. You were stuck in a career, but your obsession & persistence & networking skills got you a great mentor and also helped secure your dream job. You were not especially physically active, but you became a super fit endurance athlete. You’ve learnt a lot about life and career. You’ve also become highly self-aware. This podcast is about “ordinary” people who do extraordinary things and I’m keen on transformational stories. Because many people screw up early in life and they need to know that failure is not fatal. And yours is a transformational story.
Thank you once again and I wish you the best in your career.
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Binod:
This podcast is brought to you by the real finance mentor. Thank you so much for listening and I really hope you found it insightful and inspirational. If you did enjoy this episode, please drop us a review and spread the word. You should check out more exclusive content on therealfinancementor.com and my LinkedIn profile which is: Binod Shankar, FCA, CFA. Let’s keep in touch! Just add your name to the mailing list on therealfinancementor.com, and we’ll tell you about new episodes plus book reviews, upcoming events and blogs. Till the next time, onwards and upwards.
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