New Delhi: People today have developed a tendency to take things personally when someone does not agree with their point of view, Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha, True Beacon and Gruhas, has said while emphasising the importance of discourse in any society.
Speaking to ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta during an Off The Cuff interaction in Bengaluru, Kamath added that he thinks the need for journalism is bigger today than it ever was. However, in the world of ‘number of views’ and ‘negative feedback loop’; that is, wherein saying something negative about someone gets more clicks, the way journalism is being practised is not resonating with the audience.
“For some reason, we have developed this tendency to take personally anyone who does not agree with our opinion of a certain thing… George Orwell…talks about doublethink. There is no reason that if I believe in a certain thing, I can’t believe in another thing while believing in something which is contrarian to it,” Kamath said, while replying to an audience question related to whether society is losing the art of debating.
“…imagine two people who are practising doublethink at the same time were to sit. You can go around and discourse all day long, but at the end of that if nobody is getting offended, I feel like the underlying thought is more evolved than where you began and that should be encouraged in society,” he added.
Kamath, a school dropout whose first job was at a call centre, also spoke about societal stigma around jobs that do not have an entry barrier. “Call-centre jobs did not require a degree, it did not require expertise or proficiency of a certain kind…societal stigma is there. You can be in a call centre earning Rs 1 lakh a month, but if your son is a doctor earning Rs 25,000 a month, the doctor gets more societal acceptance.”
Asked why India does not have big tech stars like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, Kamath reasoned that the amount of money spent on research and innovation in India is far less than in the West. “…I have a thesis around this. I feel like too much IP concentration is happening in America. Geopolitically, it will start worrying the world at some point in the future.”
He hazarded a guess that in the future, world economies will become more fragmented and may create their own submarkets. They could go the China way by creating their own Facebook or Google or Instagram, he said.
During the conversation, pointing out that India really doesn’t have a “true blue Indian brand” that sells outside India, Kamath said that is something he is currently spending his time on.
“One thing I feel really passionate about… We don’t have an Indian brand, truly, that sells outside of India. It could be in fashion or in vehicles. We might have bought something but I’m talking about a true blue Indian brand. I want to be part of a story which is able to do that. It could even be coffee. It could be anything, but that’s something I’m spending time on.”
