Zerodha Co-Founder Nikhil Kamath Shares Journey From Call Centre Job to Startup Success
Zerodha Co-Founder Nikhil Kamath Shares Journey From Call Centre Job to Startup Success
Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath has shared details about his very first job, highlighting how modest his beginnings were compared to investor and author Ruchir Sharma’s high-flying start in global finance.
Speaking on the WTF podcast alongside Sharma, Kamath recalled working night shifts at a Bengaluru call centre in the early 2000s, where he earned only $1,000 a year — roughly ₹88,000 today. He described the experience as “modest but formative,” saying it taught him discipline before he stepped into entrepreneurship. “Five years after that I was earning $1,000 a year at a call center in Bangalore called 24 bar 7,” Kamath told Sharma, who appeared surprised at his early career path.
Sharma’s journey began very differently. At just 22, fresh out of college, he joined Morgan Stanley in Mumbai in 1996 with an annual salary of $100,000 — nearly ₹88 lakh in today’s value. “I was planning to pursue a PhD,” Sharma said, “but they asked me, ‘Do you want to study or make money?’ I chose money.” That decision launched him into a fast-moving career in global finance, taking him to New York as a senior strategist, and later to his current role at Rockefeller Capital Management. Along the way, he authored bestselling books such as Breakout Nations.
During the podcast, Sharma expressed surprise at Kamath’s call centre background, while Kamath listened with admiration to Sharma’s meteoric rise. Unlike Sharma, who climbed the corporate ladder of a global bank, Kamath charted his own path by co-founding Zerodha with his brother Nithin Kamath. The brokerage went on to revolutionize India’s trading ecosystem, turning Nikhil into one of the country’s youngest billionaires.
Their conversation later shifted to markets, where Sharma gave his take on the U.S. economy in 2025. He argued that artificial intelligence is the only major factor driving American stocks today. “Beyond the tech boom, most U.S. sectors look overpriced or under pressure. Over the next five to ten years, I think the rest of the world will outperform the U.S.,” Sharma said, crediting current U.S. stock resilience almost entirely to AI-linked companies.
