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Ep 112: Risk, Reward, and Reinvention: Viraj Joshi on Law, Policy, and Startups
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In this episode of The Abstract, host Tyler Finn sits down with Viraj Joshi, VP: Legal & Regulatory at Zerodha , India’s largest bootstrapped brokerage firm. Viraj shares his unconventional career journey—from big law to public policy, and finally to building cross-functional impact at Zerodha. He reflects on lessons from working across law, finance, and government, the role of community in shaping careers, and Zerodha’s growth philosophy. The conversation also dives into his work with Rainmatter, Zerodha’s long-term investment arm focused on fintech, health, and climate startups, and the cultural values that have fueled Zerodha’s success.
Read a detailed transcript: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-112
Topics
Introducing Viraj Joshi – 00:00
Viraj’s Early Career in Big Law - 01:47
Shift from Law to Policy & Finance - 03:44
Applying legal training beyond traditional legal careers - 09:41
Building Community: Lawyers Not Lawyering - 11:05
Changing Job Market Dynamics - 14:40
Joining Zerodha & Its Growth - 16:51Viraj’s Current Role & Regulatory Work - 19:19
Rainmatter Investments: Mission, Long-Term Philosophy, and Focus on Fintech, Health, and Climate - 26:08
Opportunities Beyond Big Cities - 29:44
Adapting to Investing Through Small Checks and Building Conviction Over Time - 31:45
Leadership & Culture at Zerodha - 33:10
Legal Tech & Contracting Challenges - 38:57
Rapid Fire Questions - 45:05
Connect with us:
Viraj Joshi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/viraj-joshi/?originalSubdomain=in
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues. Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
Embracing Career Evolution
00:00:00
Speaker
yeah I think it's about following your curiosities if you ask me. um I don't know, a lot of people just because they have a law degree think they have to do law for the rest of their lives in that conventional part.
00:00:12
Speaker
or Similarly when you are in a big law firm you tend to think in a certain way. um Why should you be bound by a decision you made at the age of 18 or 22? Human beings evolve, your interests evolve, yeah as your interests evolve you sort of want to do new things.
00:00:29
Speaker
um People tend to sort of you know let go of their curiosities and get stuck up on you know decisions that they made in the past. um I've been lucky enough to follow my curiosities wherever they lead me.
00:00:45
Speaker
And I think that's something that everyone should sort of do.
Meet Viraj Joshi: Lawyer to Policy Leader
00:00:56
Speaker
Welcome to a special episode of The Abstract, recording in Bangalore, India. Today on the podcast, I am joined by Viraj Joshi, a lawyer turned policy operator and now a key strategic leader at Zerodha, India's bootstrapped unicorn brokerage firm.
00:01:17
Speaker
Viraj works very closely with the founder CEO, managing cross-functional strategic initiatives, overseeing regulatory and compliance matters across the business.
00:01:28
Speaker
And he also, which we're going to talk about, works on investments for RainMatter, which is the corporate VC arm of Zerodha. Viraj, welcome to this episode of The Abstract.
00:01:40
Speaker
Thanks Tyler for having me, great to be here. ah I'm really excited for this this conversation. like you know, I like to start with some of my guests in the in the early years. You trained as a lawyer, like a lot of folks, you spent some time in in the US we call big law at least, you know, corporate law.
Unplanned Entry into Big Law
00:02:00
Speaker
ah What made big law the right starting point for you? so I graduated from National Law School. um Big law happened sort of by accident, to be honest, not that I planned for it.
00:02:13
Speaker
Most of my you know law school life was around extracurriculars. I was part of the sports committee. I was sort of running a music festival, um you know, whatever the cool kids did at the time, really. um I had not thought deeply about what after law school, right, I was sort of in the flow.
00:02:30
Speaker
Now, you know, around the time law school ended, you know, everybody was sort of preparing for big law, that's that you know, that's what most people wanted to do. So I went with the flow, I wouldn't say that I really knew what big law meant, um the pay seemed great.
00:02:46
Speaker
as a 22 year old, um you know, fine the idea of financial freedom seemed great and that's really what the motivation was. had not thought it through to be really honest but I went with the flow, everybody else applied, it I went along with it, I was lucky enough to get a job at Khaitan which was you know one of the big law firms in India and that's really how big law happened for me. I mean, there's I'd be lying if I said there was some grand plan behind it really.
00:03:15
Speaker
um Even when I went in there, ah what attracted me to Khaitan specifically was back then they were running this rotation sort of program, which meant you could work with different teams for six months each before you sort of picked, you know, what you wanted to do going forward.
00:03:30
Speaker
So for someone like me who had not thought through this deeply, um that firm in particular made a lot of sense. So i got to explore my curiosities, just figure my way around. And I mean, that's really how Khaitan happened for me.
00:03:44
Speaker
That might have been the last sort of conventional move you made in your career, I
From Law to Policy and Finance
00:03:50
Speaker
think. yeah You ended up moving into doing some financial policy work, policy research, different parts of the Indian government. um What was the single biggest reason you decided to leave big law and the more conventional path behind? and at least in the early sort of policy work as you were describing it to me, you were almost like a little bit of a policy entrepreneur having to go and like find projects yourself and and that sort of thing.
00:04:17
Speaker
So again, now one of the courses that I really liked in law school was this course called it Law and Public Policy. um That's the only course in law school that I actually talked. That's the only one that i did while I was in, right? So that was always something at the back of my mind that, you know, this is something that I seem to like.
00:04:34
Speaker
um At the same time when I was in the law firm job, um I sort of went down this rabbit hole of figuring out how to invest, how to save, all of that, right? um Because I had all this money coming in, I knew that it wasn't sustainable for me to continue in a big large job for you know, really long. So, i mean, I had to find a way in which you know, that corpus keeps me afloat while I pursue my curiosities.
00:04:57
Speaker
So I went down the rabbit hole. That's when I you know discovered Zerodha in fact. um That's the funny thing. I've been a customer for Zerodha for like five years earlier than I became an employee. So it's the opposite journey to what most people have. yeah um No, but so I went down the rabbit hole. I taught myself a lot of finance and there came a point where I was feeling that, you know, maybe I should discover something in finance.
00:05:21
Speaker
um But back then there was no real way in which someone with a law degree could just get up and do finance, especially in India. So I mean, I wrote hundreds of cold emails, I would get maybe one or two responses. There was this standard set of questions around, you know, what do you really know about this world? And I had no answers. now um There, like, you know, again, I sort of got lucky. There was this side gig where, you know, the governments of Orissa and Punjab in India at the time wanted to do these municipal law, ah municipal tax reforms, essentially property tax reforms. okay Now they had a budget constraint, but at the same time, what this required was the a little bit of knowledge of law, little bit of knowledge of finance, and a little bit of knowledge of policy, right? So I was uniquely sort of positioned to do those things because yeah someone who's an expert on any of these would not have sort of taken this up on that budget. yeah um I was young.
00:06:19
Speaker
I was curious about each of these things. And I mean, there I just got lucky. I found something that suited my interests to um sort of go down that path. So I did that. I left my law firm job. I was doing this for about three, four months.
00:06:35
Speaker
Now that ended up being a wedge to sort of get a full time job, but um you know, in the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, which is a research arm of the Ministry of Finance in India.
00:06:46
Speaker
So that side gig, side project that I did really helped with that. Plus, the idea for me in the long run was just sort of figure my way around the finance world. But at the same time, you know, how do I do that? I need some wedge where I can say that, you know, I have this demonstrable experience, which will help me um get there.
00:07:05
Speaker
So that was the idea. Again, I'll be lying if I said that I had this all planned out. It was just, ah you know, like an opportunity presented itself. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
00:07:17
Speaker
And that's how that happened. So, the I mean, that really expanded my horizons and sort of helped me, you know, take that first footstep into the policy world and the finance world, both of which I'm sort of closely involved with even today.
Skills Gained in Government Work
00:07:32
Speaker
You mentioned to me that when you were at the Ministry of Finance doing this sort of work, you ended up having to or having the opportunity to work with a whole bunch of different stakeholders. Like it's a very cross-functional environment in a different way than a corporate setting, but still very cross-functional.
00:07:48
Speaker
um what What were the sort of skills that you picked up working in an environment like that as opposed to at a sort of more traditional law firm? Well, it was completely different, right? In a law firm, were working with a bunch of other lawyers, everybody speaks the same lingo.
00:08:06
Speaker
I had a bit of a culture shock when I you know went across the aisle really. I was suddenly in a team where was the only lawyer working with you know an economist, a data scientist, ah someone with you know experience in urban policy so on. So all of these people spoke a completely different language.
00:08:25
Speaker
um That's one. The second thing really was I had to be accountable for what I was saying which really matters when you're the only lawyer in a team because people are going to take you at face value and you have to sort of be sure about what you're saying. um You don't have someone else who's going to correct you if your understanding is you know not quite there.
00:08:43
Speaker
um So that was a great sort of confidence booster in the long run if you ask me because you know i had to be accountable for what I said I couldn't expect that someone else to correct the work that I did.
00:08:54
Speaker
um In terms of so that really expanded my horizons if you ask me for one thing one sort of skill set I think it's a data oriented way of thinking right. um All of these people had that data oriented way of thinking which is completely alien coming from a law firm context.
00:09:11
Speaker
um Lawyers are good with words, lawyers are not necessarily good with data. And you know, like there would there would be these questions where someone would ask me, why do you think this way?
00:09:23
Speaker
Like, huh, this is how it works. But like the you know the idea that you have to go back, give some data, you know, sort of position it that way was alien. That has also really helped. You know I think that's something that most lawyers should sort of pick up over time. It really helps um just express yourself better, I think.
00:09:41
Speaker
Did this sort of experience working with, you know, folks who are experts on economic models, really good at working with data, policy experts who may have a slightly different lens than than a lawyer brings to the table.
00:09:56
Speaker
mean, did this start to expand your view of what a law adjacent career might look like, maybe in retrospect, like very helpful for taking on and more ambiguous role than just Zerodha's lawyer?
00:10:10
Speaker
Absolutely.
The Versatility of a Law Degree
00:10:11
Speaker
um See, what I realized around that time is that, you know, ultimately, a law degree is just a structured way of risk reward thinking. right And I mean, that has application pretty much everywhere, even in business, the business is thinking about risk versus reward. It's um you know and in government policy, everybody's thinking of risk versus reward.
00:10:33
Speaker
That's just something that law school gives to you on a platter. Now, um the ecosystem had not evolved back then for you to sort of do something outside of a litigation job or a big law firm job. But that risk reward thinking I really picked up over time as, you know, something that drives the world in general. And that's the one skill.
00:10:55
Speaker
So I keep saying this, most places need lawyers. They just don't need, need you know, they don't know it yet. Yeah, I think that's true. um And you know, you had an inflection point in in your career um where you ended up, you know, finding your way to Zerodha and being the lawyer that they needed. ah You moved back to Bangalore around the time that that COVID A new type of sort of community started forming here. You actually met our CEO, Shashank,
00:11:26
Speaker
in 2019 on WhatsApp. Can you tell us about that?
Finding Support in Non-Traditional Legal Paths
00:11:30
Speaker
Can you tell us about how you started to like reintegrate yourself into the Bangalore community? That was, i mean, it's a really interesting story. So yeah there was this WhatsApp group that came up around the same time, which is called Lawyers Not Lawyering.
00:11:43
Speaker
Okay. Now, as the name says, it's essentially, you know, a bunch of people with law degrees who wanted to do something outside the traditional litigation or law firm paths. hu um As I said, back then, it wasn't so easy, right? So this was, this started off as, say, a support group of you know Because everybody had expected what I was talking about around say, you know, cold emailing people but not getting responses. This was a common theme.
00:12:09
Speaker
Everybody on that group had sort of experienced that where you have to fight against the grain just to sort of prove that you know, you're equal to somebody else working in this space. So Shashank back then had just started, you know, I think you guys are like a couple of years in. um All of us were kind of in the same boat where you know people would just look at us with a little bit of suspicion. Yeah. um You know ki like what are you guys bringing through to the table type. So this was a I'd say it was a lot more than a WhatsApp group. It was actually we did a bunch of events. We'd all come together. We talked to each other just you know um help each other out. So let's say some of the younger folks like me who wanted to say break into some space there'd be people who are older who'd
00:12:53
Speaker
yeah you know like tell us how to go about it what are the sort of things that you bring to the table who do you need to contact all of that it was a like a very um nice support system for a bunch of people out there now interestingly that's where i met som and that's how zero that happened for me eventually yeah so i mean that that community really went a long way back then What were the sort of like questions or conversations that people were having that made it really feel like a community or or made it different or made you feel like, you know, you could lean into the fact that you had a slightly different background or wanted to have a slightly different career?
00:13:32
Speaker
I think that's because everybody there sort of knew what everybody else was facing, right? So, I mean, people were really involved. I could get on a call with someone I had never met before and they'd be willing to give me 30-40 minutes of time just to explain how something worked. so this was in that time where I was trying to figure you know what next so I must have spoken to five or seven people on that community people were kind enough to give time kind enough to sort of you know so I spoke to a bunch of people working in say the fund space at the time a couple of entrepreneurs
00:14:06
Speaker
um They tell you what the pros and cons were honestly, unfiltered, which is really hard, you know, in general, because otherwise people either tend to be on their guard or they're generally, i mean, they're not very helpful. That community was very different back then.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah. um Even now, so like earlier this year, I was able to get into touch with a really senior person at SEBI, which is India's securities regulator, because he also happened to be on that group five years ago.
00:14:34
Speaker
So even today, like, you know, six, seven years down the line, it continues to sort of help out in its own way. Do you feel like things have changed or evolved since then over the past five years or so, where maybe slightly non-traditional path is is more accepted than it once was?
00:14:53
Speaker
I think so. I think five, six years ago, the world, but the job market rather was still a lot more credential based, right? um The skills were secondary. Today, especially after AI, I think and skills have become primary. When we are hiring, we are looking for, you know, what do you bring to the table? What problem are you solving for the business?
00:15:15
Speaker
um Back then, the question was, what degree do you have? um It's... I mean I don't like the word but it's democratized things quite a bit. yeah um Your skills matter. Now I'll just give you an example. At Zayarwada, today ah we have a, you know, what we call recovering lawyers.
00:15:32
Speaker
um The guy who writes our daily, you know, our daily newsletter is an ex-lawyer. the guy who leads our climate investments at the fund, he is an ex-lawyer.
00:15:45
Speaker
um All of these guys have benefited today from the fact that it's democratized a little bit, but it was a lot harder say five, seven years ago. I think it's also, this is just my opinion, I think it's also great to hire people who come from slightly different backgrounds because they've seen things from different perspectives, right? Absolutely. you have someone who comes in who was a lawyer, who now is an investor, that person is going to have a great lens on risk.
00:16:12
Speaker
presumably they've gotten really good at also seeing opportunity if they're able to be a really good investor, right? um So you get people who end up, I think, being slightly more well-rounded or able to see things from different perspectives.
00:16:25
Speaker
Absolutely. So this it happened, in fact. So in India, the regulations around bamboo changed very recently. Right. And this person, because he had that background, was able to spot that the regulations have changed. And then we invested in a company that has really capitalized on that in the last couple of years.
00:16:43
Speaker
So, yeah, these things happen. I mean, it's quite phenomenal to see. a little bit of regulatory arbitrage.
Joining Zerodha: A Community Connection
00:16:51
Speaker
Tell us about how you how you found your way to Zorodha through this community, through this group.
00:16:59
Speaker
yeah it was So I was in touch with Som who used to work with Nitin, the CEO and the management team. okay um He was one of those five people was talking about what given me time back then.
00:17:11
Speaker
Now, around the time the pandemic happened, I think is when Zerodha's business really shot up. um Capital markets became cool. Yeah. Right now more people were needed. i just happened to be, you know, i'd I'd been speaking to the right guy for a while. ahha So it was quite natural that I made my way there really. So my job description, see back then Zarvada was much smaller than it is now.
00:17:37
Speaker
So my job description back then was, you know, just work with these, like work with Nitin, the CEO and the management team and do whatever it takes, right. There was no like set job description per se. um It's like formalized quite a bit since then. But I mean, that again allowed me to explore my curiosities, do you know bunch of random stuff, some things stuck, other things I let go of, just so on but that flexibility was really great.
00:18:08
Speaker
I've heard, and maybe this is just for my benefit as an American, I've heard Zerota described as like the Robin Hood India. Can you give us a sense for how much the business has grown um over the past five or six years or during your tenure from when you started to to how big this sort of business is today?
Zerodha's Bootstrap Success
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, um so it's grown about 10x since I joined. um Revenues wise, I'd say when I joined and was around in US dollars about 50 million.
00:18:44
Speaker
Now it's about 500 million. Wow. um So completely bootstrapped. um Yeah, I mean, it just with the business as you know, as Nitin keeps saying it was right place, right time. The Indian capital markets had this boom phase that happened around the time COVID happened.
00:19:01
Speaker
And Aroda was just, you know, like there already when that happened. So right place, right time. um But it's grown 10x. We have about 10 million customers today.
00:19:12
Speaker
um About 500 million odd in revenue annually. Mm-hmm. Let's dive into your your current role.
Viraj's Role at Zerodha
00:19:21
Speaker
um Share with our audience like where you're at now, what's taking up most of your time, you had to think about a few buckets that that the work might fit into, what those would be.
00:19:34
Speaker
So I'm working with the, again I'm working with the management and the Nitin and the CEO Nitin. um Broadly if I were to categorize in terms of buckets today I'd put it in three different buckets. So I manage the legal team at Zeroda.
00:19:50
Speaker
ah um That involves contracts, that involves in litigation all of that. So we have a legal team and we do whatever it takes to, so from a legal perspective.
00:20:00
Speaker
The other thing that I do is around the regulatory and policy work, which again ties back to what I did earlier on in life. right yeah um In India now, there's over the last couple of years, there's been a focus on um you know, instead of having top down regulation, um regulators are now, you know, adopting a more consultative sort of process. um So they set up a bunch of working groups or say industry standard forums, where the idea is that everybody gets together, all the stakeholders, you discuss the pros and cons.
00:20:32
Speaker
Ultimately, the call is still the regulators, but they're still giving you the platform where you know, you can sort of present your views. Now, this has come out in a big way. Now, SEBI, India's securities regulator, has said that any new regulation has to go through this consultation process. So there are multiple levels to that consultation process.
00:20:51
Speaker
um There are high level committees where, you know, like where Nitin is the, you know, Nitin's on those committees. Those are the sort of, you know, CEOs of the market institutions, the exchanges, the regulator and so on. So I help him out on those.
00:21:08
Speaker
Then there are, say, not so important committees um where I get to be on the committee and sort of, you know, yeah drive the work there. um So that broadly, there's that. that So if I were to give you an example, over the last couple of years, I've been on like four or five of these committees.
00:21:27
Speaker
I'll talk about the ones that I am on because you know that's that's more personal. So there was this one committee where you know the idea was that say brokers or financial institutions in general need to be disclosing a lot more things.
00:21:44
Speaker
So the committee's job was to figure out what the things are that a retail customer should know about their broker right. so anything from network to say regulatory action to you know like number of arbitration whatever whatever information is required for you as a customer to figure out you know that this is the right broker and this is not so there was this committee that did this for a couple of years there's another committee where the idea was to standardize all the data that flows between various intermediaries sure so before the committee started there were about
00:22:19
Speaker
80 odd files that were uploaded from various places by you know different people in that market ecosystem. Over two years we have brought that down to 12. Wow. um It simplified it quite a bit.
00:22:32
Speaker
um That's helped us also in our back-end processes. So for example at the end of the day when we gave you your trade file as a you know customer um which shows you know these are the transactions you've taken that used to take about 40 minutes to generate it earlier.
00:22:46
Speaker
Now it takes less than one minute. Wow. It's simplified a lot of things for, you know, everyone in the ecosystem. So things like that. I mean, these are all non-controversial things that are good for the ecosystem. Sure. Just needed a bunch of people to come together and work on it dedicatedly. So three or there was another committee where I was sort of helping out with standardization of bonds nomenclature in India, um so on and so forth. um i mean Random stuff, but fun stuff. Yeah.
00:23:17
Speaker
I would imagine that you have to really be in lockstep with like your product team and and work very closely with them as you think about this sort of standards making. um One, if you were surfacing disclosures in a different way, I mean, that's one piece, right? But if you're talking about being able to to generate new information for users in a different way than you did before, or you have to service it to a clearinghouse in a different way than you did before.
00:23:46
Speaker
Talk to us a little bit about how you build those relationships and and how you make sure your team works really well with product. See, that wasn't hard in my case, at least because all the product leaders were, you know, the same age around the same time we were working, you know back in 2020 when I joined, they were the friends that I would like spend time with on a daily basis. Yeah. Now, everyone has their own teams, everyone has their own structures, but ultimately, I mean, I'm talking to my friends.
00:24:16
Speaker
So depending on, um you know, like, depending on what the use cases we're able to bring in the relevant product teams, you know, as and when required. um I don't know if that's scalable.
00:24:28
Speaker
That's a little bit of luck also where, you know, all of us were in the same place working together on a day-to-day basis. We'll have to see how that scales as the organization grows. But personally, I have not faced that problem.
00:24:42
Speaker
um I used to do some standards making similar to this, not in the financial space at all, but more in, well, first in like, you know, aviation and then in um advertising technology.
00:24:55
Speaker
We worked with a lot of outside consultants or industry organizations lobbyists others who who had a real lens on who all the different players were were able to advise us is it a similar sort of model for you or are you doing most of this work in-house just with the team that you have and the relationships that you've built I think it's a mix of both.
00:25:19
Speaker
yeah um There are a lot of things that we don't have in-house expertise on. There's no point trying to sort of force fit that. yeah um If there is a need for external help, we'll bring them on board.
00:25:33
Speaker
there are a lot of things where we do have internal expertise where we sort of you know let the internal team drive it really depends on context hard to generalize this but you're right Tyler I mean there are a lot of things where you do need external people to come in and give their insight so just on this standardization thing for example we had Swift come in give their inputs because like you know ISO standards and Swift are sort of the pinnacle of this piece, right? So you need people who have done it before to sort of give you your inputs.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's that's how it is. I want to ask you about maybe a a third bucket beyond legal, beyond policy and regulatory.
Rain Matter: Zerodha's Investment Strategy
00:26:15
Speaker
You do a bit of investing work through Rain Matter.
00:26:19
Speaker
um Tell us what Rain Matter is first, because I think it's corporate VC maybe, but i don't know if that's the most elegant term for it. Tell us a little bit about what the mission is and and what you're doing there.
00:26:31
Speaker
So, Rain Matter is the investing arm of Zerodha. The way it started was, you know, like Zerodha as a financial services business could not do everything, right? they Say insurance or um say wealth advisory are things that were not core to you know the team internally.
00:26:48
Speaker
And the idea was you want to partner with somebody. and you know sort of invest in them and integrate them into the platform that's how it started um when it started it was just balance sheet investments into things that were adjacent to the core business itself um now from there it's grown quite a bit now you know like there was lucky enough that profits were sort of compounding over time there was money being generated which could be deployed for other users so From there it's now grown to a you know like a fund structure where you know we are investing in fintech in health and climate. These are the broad buckets that we invest in.
00:27:30
Speaker
um The idea if you ask me is you know how do we help Indians do better with their money? How do we help Indians do better with their health? And all of that doesn't mean anything if we don't, um you know, if the earth is not a viable place to live in, right? So sure broadly, these three buckets, um we choose to be sector focused because, you know, that's what the team identifies with, really, you know, that's that's what we value as people.
00:27:55
Speaker
um the idea is to be a long-term partner to people so most traditional venture capitalists today have this five to seven year fund cycle right so sure they have pressure to exit within a certain number of years which sometimes forces them to sort of you know force founders to behave a certain way um The insight that we had was it's valuable if the founder can build in the long run. right um Partners like that are few and far between. Now, given that you know this is we don't have external LPs to answer to, this is a yeah um this is something that we can sort of choose to do. A luxurious position. Yes, absolutely.
00:28:38
Speaker
um But still need to use it the right way. Yes. So yeah, I mean, from with that philosophy, we have about 130 odd investments at this point. Wow. Even split to between the three sectors. um The idea is to be a long term partner because another insight that we have with the experience with Zerodha,
00:28:59
Speaker
Nitin keeps saying this is it you can't really build a business in five to seven years in India. It can take a lot longer. Most successful businesses take, you know, 10 to 12 years, if not more.
00:29:10
Speaker
So the idea is to be around for that, you know, for that journey for the founder. um So yeah, we have no like, you know, like you need to grow 5x in whatever amount of time and so on. We leave that flexibility to the founder and that really helps the, like you know, that really helps in terms of our um standing in the market as well. The idea is to be nicer people, longer term partners, support people in their journeys and, you know, hopefully the outcomes will show.
00:29:40
Speaker
So even the fund term is 15 years, for example. Oh, wow. ah What are you noticing in where these startups are coming from? Is it a lot of Bangalore, Mumbai?
00:29:51
Speaker
Is there a lot of geographic diversity? Where are good ideas coming from in India today? i think good ideas are everywhere. um People in Bangalore, in HSR where we are for example, tend to get supported.
00:30:06
Speaker
But someone in a tier 3, tier 4 city um does not get the support that you know they need. They don't get the money, they don't have the network, they don't have any of that.
00:30:17
Speaker
So if you ask me, the best ideas are coming out of there. um It needs some amount of effort to you know go out and find them. um You can't sit in your AC office in the south of Bangalore and you know hope to find a great investment.
00:30:31
Speaker
um Ideas are everywhere, opportunities are everywhere, more so in tier 3, tier 4 cities. um And I'd say the best opportunities today are beyond just software, right? That's that's what Bangalore is famous for. but um There's so much happening on the ground, you know, working in say manufacturing in which just does not get the you know support that it deserves and which can really change outcome. Like say, just as an example, in this whole climate thing, I don't think another dashboard is going to solve the problem.
00:31:05
Speaker
Sure. um But say someone working at the manufacturing level, working with industry to know change their process in some way. um That's where the real value add is. It's just that that's not say it that's not a cool or sexy place to be in. yeah um It takes work.
00:31:22
Speaker
ah This is also a realization we've had over the last couple of years or so. So, you know, spent a lot of time over the last couple of years going to these tier three, tier four cities, just figuring how things work. here um But yeah, I mean, I think opportunities are everywhere and the next set of opportunities are in these...
00:31:39
Speaker
outside the big cities in these not so popular sectors. That's that's where we want to be. What was the learning curve for you like? ah You know, you're taking over legal, you're stepping into Zerota, you're also sort of learning how to be an investor. Maybe you've done some of this in public markets on your own.
00:31:59
Speaker
um But what was that learning curve for you like? And how do you feel like you you got up to speed and figured out what might make a good investment for Rain Matter? Honestly, I think I'm still learning.
00:32:11
Speaker
You learn on the job. I don't think, you know, there are so many things that I still don't understand about this. um It's been all about learning on the job, right? And also, like, see, when you're not sure or you want to get into something new, you can always choose to position size a certain way. So the early checks back from that time were, you know, much smaller checks because we really didn't know what we were talking about.
00:32:35
Speaker
We thought that, you know, maybe this has potential. Let's get a seat at the table by doing a small check. And we can always double down, you know, once we build conviction.
00:32:45
Speaker
Sure. um that was the That was the broad idea. So we have a lot of investments back from 2021, 2022, which we're doubling on daling down on now. I see. yeah But it's been about learning on the job.
00:32:58
Speaker
um There are the new things that I'm still learning every day. I don't think I'm quite there yet, maybe in another five years. But yeah broadly, that's the way I see it.
00:33:10
Speaker
ah You work inside a founder-led company. with a sort of very strong founder presence. um he said He's a public figure here in India.
00:33:21
Speaker
um what's that What's that like? ah how How do you feel like the executive team supports him and and his vision? think Nitin is phenomenal.
00:33:32
Speaker
I mean, honestly, if you ask me, I didn't really believe in the idea of like a role model or a mentor before I met Nitin. Yeah. um But you know, everything he says, he walks the talk. He believes in it. He's not saying anything that he doesn't truly believe in.
00:33:46
Speaker
um You know, all this I was talking about Rain Matter being long term and so on. That that is how Nitin thinks. He's... Like, you know, just to give you an example inside the team, none of us have say sales targets or you know, short term growth targets, none of that.
00:34:01
Speaker
um Whatever, let's say new accounts are open at Zerwada, all that money gets distributed to everybody on the team with the implicit understanding being that it's not just sales guys who are, you know, bringing in business. Everybody needs to do their job for business to grow.
00:34:19
Speaker
yes um He has this focus on like, you know, do right for the customer and the customer will do right for you in the long run. Don't pressurize, you know, your employees, your customers to sort of do things in the short term. Don't optimize. Do the right thing and in the long run, things will work out, right? So there's this whole philosophy that goes inside the team.
00:34:43
Speaker
which helps all of us in a way avoid any potential conflict of interest. um We sleep soundly is is what I can really say. um But yeah, I mean, just phenomenal what the management team has done. you know um Learned a lot, continue to learn every single day.
00:35:05
Speaker
more importantly, like resonate with the philosophies and resonate with the, you know, values that they have. um The respect is one thing where if you can't sort of, you know, if it it doesn't resonate with you, there's no real point.
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah. How do you as ah you know as a leader on the the executive team, um but also sort of a manager, how do you take that sort of vision or clarity that you might be hearing or seeing from the founder and the the leader and help translate that for the rest of the organization or for the teams that you're running?
00:35:40
Speaker
um So what the management team and Nitin do is they set guardrails for us essentially. You know that these are the things that are core to the organization. So you know the same things i was talking about.
00:35:52
Speaker
Think long term, don't optimize in the short term, do right for the customer, don't try to make a quick buck from them. um As long as those guardrails are in place, um we have complete flexibility to sort of experiment in whatever way we want. Right. So we keep like, nobody's going to stop me tomorrow if I say I want to do this ABC thing, which has nothing to do with whatever my experiences.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah. So the idea is it's sort of we're all entrepreneurs in residence in a way. Right. We we do keep doing our own experiments. We have the flexibility to do that.
00:36:29
Speaker
as long as the business values are not compromised, um there's nothing written there's no bureaucracy that's stopping us really. So we keep doing that, you know, every two, three months, there's something new that comes up.
00:36:42
Speaker
Try it out. If it works, it works. If it doesn't work, that's okay. That's not a, you know, that that's not a failure on my part that the business is going to consider. So it's okay to fail also.
00:36:53
Speaker
that's That's one of the things that people don't talk about. Yeah, you know, in general, a lot of people are scared to do things because how will it look on me later on? um It's okay to fail. And I think that's that's something that really sort of helps us function on a day to day basis.
00:37:11
Speaker
Maybe that's the answer. do you think there are there are core lessons that other startups or other businesses can learn from the success that Zeroda has had, both from a growth and revenue perspective, but also from ah a sort of culture perspective?
00:37:28
Speaker
I think culture in general for Zeroda has been a moot. Yeah. Right? um I don't know how scalable that is or you know how replicable that is across businesses because see in finance ah the idea was you have to be a long-term customer like you know long-term partner for your customer because trust is everything you can't really yeah advertise and get more customers customers come when they want to come when they have money to invest um
00:37:59
Speaker
So all that our advertising, marketing doesn't really work. What works is word of mouth. You are going to invest when your friend or your parent or you know your sibling tells you that you know these guys are really good, why don't you open an account with them? um So trust is everything. That's what the understanding from day one has been. ad zeroro there And we sort of ah tried to optimize for that.
00:38:21
Speaker
um The assumption being that if you do the right thing, like revenue, profits, it all all take care of themselves. Now, I don't know how replicable that is in, say, consumer, right? right Because, like, you have to put your product out there.
00:38:36
Speaker
um I don't know how replicable that is in a bunch of other industries. So, it's worked for us. It's this thing. But generally, if you ask me, I'd say just do the right thing. Hopefully, results take care of themselves. There's no point trying to you know there's no point trying to make a quick buck that doesn't work especially in india one of the things that i'm asking all of my guests about is a ah recent report that we did our 2025 contracting efficiency benchmarking report you know we've talked a lot about cross-functional work today
00:39:12
Speaker
um In our survey of legal teams, we found that like 15% or so of folks say that they're they really feel like they're just being reactive. They're not able to be proactive even though they want to automate, they want to leverage technology.
00:39:30
Speaker
um How do you think that legal technology enables teams to work better cross-functionally and improve sort of contract turnaround times? I think it's much needed. If you ask me, in general, legal teams tend to be at the very end of any tech adoption. code yeah um Lawyers are taught to be risk averse. Lawyers don't want to change their processes.
00:39:57
Speaker
Once everybody else is sort of shifted, um that's when legal teams tend to shift. um There is a cultural aspect to it. I think That is one.
00:40:08
Speaker
The other thing that I've always thought about um is just that legal teams are cost centers. Businesses are not like, you know, often not willing to invest in cost centers. If you if you had say a similar product for a sales team, if you see the revenue going up, the incentives are there for the you know sort of business to sort of allocate to that.
00:40:31
Speaker
Legal teams, lot of leaders see them as cost centers. um They don't see the benefit of, you know, like, what if this function got better or faster?
00:40:42
Speaker
And that, I think, is a big gap. I don't know how to bridge that gap. But I've always thought of it that way. You know, there's always a, like a bit of a bigger push needed, if you ask me to sort of get any tech changes enabled for legal teams. It's just always there.
00:41:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, maybe legal is not a cost center if it's able to really drive and accelerate revenue, sustainable revenue. With that in mind, one of the things that we found was that legal teams, at like two thirds of them, are spending more than a week on closing their standard contracts. So not like complicated third party paper that's being negotiated.
00:41:24
Speaker
ah you feel like Given your experience, this is a process problem. is it a technology problem? ah How do you accelerate those sorts of turnaround times?
00:41:38
Speaker
I think it's both. It is a process problem and it is a technology problem. I'll take the technology problem first. um A lot of these documentation is not standardized, right? We still continue to see these agreements in those old, you know, photograph, not machine readable PDFs.
00:41:57
Speaker
What do you even do with that? Someone's going to sit and, you know, like, it it did there is a data problem with a lot of the older agreements um with the culture problem i think it's um as i said lawyers sort of see themselves as gatekeepers as this you know like final approval layer before something goes out um i've also often found that legal teams just get stuck up on unnecessary things that don't necessarily matter right Like I keep seeing this because yeah yeah because i have I'm lucky enough to see both the business and legal end of things.
00:42:33
Speaker
I often find legal teams or counterparties who get stuck up on unnecessary points, which don't solve the business objectives of their own businesses. But, you know, that's that's what the legal team sees as sort of adding value.
00:42:48
Speaker
Mm-hmm. adding value to whatever the transaction is. Sure. um That's a cultural problem. I think it just needs businesses and legal teams to sort of work more closely with one another to sort of understand, you know, what are the things that we can sort of speed up? What are the things that, you know, we can let go of? What are the things that we need to really sort of double down on? um that's That's the way I see it.
00:43:11
Speaker
um One last thing, I think in terms of technology solving this problem, I think a risk-based assessment can really help. There are so many small value, repetitive agreements that legal teams are doing today, right? Like, I don't know if an NDA really needs a legal team to be reviewing every single clause. Sure. or say, a you know, generic services agreement of some kind. These are things that can be automated fairly straightforward. yes
00:43:41
Speaker
um At the same time, there are, say, complex agreements which do need input. So, yeah, tech solutions like SpotDraft can really help in solving the first part of that problem, which will free up legal teams to sort of focus on the high-risk, high-value, customized agreements that really matter, right? um That risk-based framework doesn't exist in most organizations today.
00:44:04
Speaker
um It's okay if you standardize a lot of the low value recurring stuff, I feel. So we have been trying to do that internally at Zeroda. To free up people's time to focus on the things that really matter. That's broadly my view on how we are thinking about it. On legal tech.
00:44:24
Speaker
Has Rain Matter invested in any legal tech companies? Not yet, no. maybe Maybe someday. I think there's a question of being too close to the problem there, you ask me. Because, i don't know, were being trained as a lawyer, yeah um I'm somehow, like, you know, naturally looking at the problems with each thing instead of seeing the opportunity. Right. um Which is probably not the right way to look at it.
00:44:51
Speaker
ah it like We've talked about this internally about, you know, how there are a bunch of lawyers on the team, but we don't have a legal tech investment. And I think that's the problem. It's about being too close to the problem.
00:45:03
Speaker
That's funny. Okay, Viraj, I've got some some closing questions for you that I like to ask all of my guests. The first one is if there was a piece of advice ah that helped really change your career um or a mentor that changed changed your career that you'd want to tell us about.
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's about following your curiosities, if you ask me. um I don't know, a lot of people just because they have a law degree think they have to do law for the rest of their lives in that conventional path.
00:45:37
Speaker
Or similarly when you're in a big law firm you tend to think in a certain way. um Why should you be bound by a decision you made at the age of 18 or 22?
00:45:48
Speaker
Human beings evolve, your interests evolve. yeah As your interests evolve you sort of want to do new things. um People tend to sort of, you know, let go of their curiosities and get stuck up on, you know, decisions that they made in the past.
00:46:04
Speaker
um I've been lucky enough to follow my curiosities wherever they led me. um And I think that's something that everyone should sort of do. you know don't I have a lot of friends who are still in that big law path who don't enjoy their day to day life for whatever reason.
00:46:20
Speaker
But They're stuck up on the decision that they made, you know, 10, 15 years ago. That I think, especially with AI, given that you can pick up skills really quickly, um I think that's something that everyone should do.
00:46:35
Speaker
That's a great answer. ah What's your favorite part of your day-to-day work? I think the investments at Rain Matter. um Now we have a full-fledged team who's doing this, right? I still continue to do it in small part.
00:46:50
Speaker
The reason for this, again, is you have the smartest people in the country who are coming and telling you about their business. There is no better way to learn. yeah ah than to learn it from the horse's mouth. um So it's it's really cool that way.
00:47:06
Speaker
um That's the part that I enjoy. That's not really core to my work day to day, if you ask me. It's not something I'm willing to let go either. Yeah. and Maybe someday you'll be a full-time investor. You never know.
00:47:21
Speaker
ah I think this is kind of a funny question. Do you have a professional pet peeve? i I talked about this. yeah Legal teams in general getting caught up on unnecessary clauses that don't matter.
00:47:36
Speaker
um As long as the business objective is being achieved, the legal team's job is to cover for the risk while speeding up the process, right?
00:47:47
Speaker
There are so many times where things get you know stuck up in unnecessary back and forth on clauses which are I mean, they're not going to change anything if you ask me.
00:47:58
Speaker
ah This is something that I generally have felt about, um you know, lawyers in general, you need a more like, you know, you need to be talking to the business more, understand it better, and you know, not get stuck up on unnecessary things.
00:48:13
Speaker
that's That's something that irritates me fairly regularly. Is there a book that you would recommend to our listeners? And this could be something that's been important to your career, or it could just be something fun that you've read recently that you think others would enjoy.
00:48:31
Speaker
I think the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. Yeah, I haven't listened. I've listened to podcasts about that. I haven't read the book. Yeah. um I mean, and i don't know about career, but just as a way of thinking, right?
00:48:46
Speaker
It's something that really resonates with me where you sort of do what you have to do, do the best while you're doing it. And don't worry too much about the outcomes. If you're doing a good job, the outcomes will take care of themselves.
00:48:59
Speaker
um That's something I keep sort of, you know, trying to tell myself on a regular basis. um But yeah, that's something that resonates with me. i It's a, see, stoicism in general can be a philosophy that's gets caught up in unnecessary like detail, right? um What Ryan has done in the book is really simplified it to one lesson a day.
00:49:23
Speaker
You read one page in a day, you have something to sort of think about, mull about, which helps you internalize the thought process in the long run. um That's something that like I, anytime I'm like, know, stressed or not not feeling great about myself, I'll just go open the book, flip through a bunch of pages, that helps me personally.
00:49:46
Speaker
I like that. I might have to try that. ah Last question for you, Viraj. I like to ask this of all of my guests. It's if you could look back on your days as a young lawyer, maybe at the firm, just getting started.
00:50:02
Speaker
One thing that you know now that you wish that you'd known back then?
00:50:09
Speaker
I think the fact that everything would turn out okay. um Back then, because I was going against that conventional path, um people around me would sort of, you know, like keep asking me, are you sure? do you know what you're doing?
00:50:25
Speaker
um Parents, friends, everyone, right? You have like a great job which pays you really well. um Are you sure you want to leave it?
00:50:36
Speaker
um There's a lot of uncertainty. And, you know, in retrospect, if I sort of knew that things would be okay in the long run, I would maybe stress about it a little lesser, um put lesser pressure on myself.
00:50:52
Speaker
and like in general but led a better quality of life if that had happened so I think just that in retrospect knowing that things would be okay something that would be very valuable this has been a really great and interesting interview Viraj thank you so much for joining me thanks Tyler for having me was great speaking with you and to all of our listeners thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of The Abstract and we hope to see you next time