Prajwal Choudhary

Curious

[Gurmeet Chadha @connectgurmeet]

One thing we should teach our kids is being always grateful..

My Daarjee used to say- Puttar hamesha ‘Shukr” vich raho… jo vi hai twade kol- oh best hai…-maa peo, parivar , dost, sehat, 2 waqt da parshada… saaryan nu nahi milda ( not everyone gets it)

Have a Shukrana Day 🤗

[Prajwal Choudhary @TweetPrajwall]

@kirubaakaran next read suggestion: The Little Prince

[Kunal Shah @kunalb11]

It’s been a minute.

2015–2018
- Exited FreeCharge. Spent time learning and investing.
- Pondered about: Why can't trust be rewarded? Started with $1M of personal capital.
- Launched CRED to reward people for paying credit card bills on time.

2019–2025
- Built a system run by a team that values ownership, judgment, and craft.
- Grew from 0 to 17M members by aligning incentives with behaviour.
- Built several products during COVID lockdowns.
- Raised $900M+ from global investors. Did 4 ESOP buybacks.
- Made Indiranagar and IPL ads slightly more interesting.
- Received a full stack of regulatory licences.
- Lost 35 kilos.
- Scaled from 0 to ~$325M ( ~₹3,200 crore) in annual revenue across payments, lending, insurance, commerce, wealth, and credit cards.
2026
- First profitable quarter (yet occasionally asked what our business model is)
- Raised another $900M from Meta in primary and secondary capital.
- Announcing our 5th ESOP buyback.

Today

CRED is ready for its next phase. I am stepping back and @miten steps in as interim CEO, partnered with an incredibly talented team. He has been heading strategy and finance and suffering me since 2020. I’m stepping away from the operating role and will continue as a shareholder. My commitment doesn’t change. Just the role.

Extremely grateful to our members, partners, regulators, and investors who made this possible. And to our board, Shailendra, Micky, Saurabh for their extraordinary conviction.

Team CRED, I’ll still expect you to be a 10x version of yourselves.

As for me, I’ll be joining Meta to lead WhatsApp globally.

Meta comes in as a minority investor in CRED. No access to member data.

While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey. Will, thank you for scaling something the world relies on quietly, and for making this transition smooth.

Onwards.

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

India has been consistently warming up. Decade after decade, temperatures have been rising, and this is a one-way journey unless humanity makes a dramatic course correction.

All the heatwave deaths that are in the news are the result of this relentless warming. You will see a lot of numbers floating around, especially the recent viral study that a single day of extreme heat causes roughly 3,400 excess deaths across India, and a five-day heatwave nearly 30,000. But the truth is, we still don’t have good statistics on how many Indians are losing their lives because of heatwaves.

What we do know is this: a vast majority of Indian employment is still informal. The number of people employed in agriculture, construction, gig work, and other outdoor work remains disproportionately high. We have come a long way, but this is still the reality for a very large number of Indians.

For many Indians, staying indoors when temperatures rise is simply not a luxury they can afford. There is also a deep inequality in access to cooling. Yes, the fact that almost all of India has been electrified is a genuine achievement. But access to air coolers, let alone air conditioners, is still low and mostly concentrated among people with higher incomes. Fans only do so much when the heat is this brutal.

This is the inequality of heat. People with good incomes can afford coolers and ACs. They can work from home and can avoid the worst hours of the day. But this is a small subset of India.

Remember, more than 40% of Indians are still employed in agriculture, even though agriculture’s share of India’s GDP has consistently declined. These are the real Indians who will be most affected by rising temperatures. Many of the regions most exposed to climatic shocks like El Niño and heatwaves are also among the poorer regions of northern India.

So the people who will be hit the hardest by rising temperatures are the poorest Indians, across regions that are yet to see real prosperity.

Sadly, this is a systemic crisis. Individual actions help, but they are not enough. We need collective action, not just at a country level, but at a global level. Climate change is not an Indian problem but a global problem.

That said, there are still some low-hanging fruits that can start making a difference.

There is a lot of debate and controversy over India’s forest cover and whether it has increased or decreased. But when it comes to cities, we can see the loss of green cover firsthand. Trees are cut to make way for roads, houses, flyovers, and buildings. Whatever few trees remain are often trapped under pavements and concrete. This weakens them. This is one reason why trees often fall even after moderate rains.

If you have space, you can plant native species like neem, moringa, jamun, amla, and curry leaves. These trees have deep roots and can survive better. People often avoid planting trees because they worry that the roots will damage the foundations of their homes. But in many cases, this fear is overstated.

These are small things which help.

But as depressing as it sounds, this problem ultimately needs systemic, collective action at a global level. And judging by the way the world is heading, it is very hard to have hope.

Rising temperatures are a serious challenge. They don’t have easy explanations, and they definitely don’t have easy solutions.

[Dilip Kumar @kmr_dilip]

Bro to bro: Start thinking of your future very seriously. Be overly curious, accept you know very little, be selfish to learn new stuff & don’t get into stupid office politics. The world is very cruel to people who are not doing new things everyday. You will become irrelevant.

[Dilip Kumar @kmr_dilip]

Rainmatter has invested in a number of companies building sports and fitness events in India - Hyrox, Ironman (Yoska), Devil Circuit, Yodha Race (Spectacom), Navy Half Marathon, Bajaj Pune Marathon ( Fitpage) and a few more. Collectively, we’ve invested 100Cr+ in this category because we want more Indians to move, play and stay active.

Btw, this is not just a thesis but also of our culture at Zerodha and Rainmatter. So sharing a few thoughts from our lens as investors and also active enthusiast and supporters of the ecosystem.

Twenty years ago, cricket in India was largely limited to Tests and ODIs. Then we got T20 and IPL. And since then cricket evolved at the intersection of performance and entertainment. It has expanded the audience, brought in more capital, and created a platform for talent discovery. It’s a cultural product than just sports today with memes, video content & podcasts all playing a role in making it what it is today. There were many involved to make this happen and they did a stellar work.

The noise around Hyrox this week i feel is a signal that means fitness is starting to behave like cricket did in 2008. People are forming opinions and that's how a culture gets built. If fitness and other sports have to become mainstream in India, we need to build them into daily culture and not just occasional or only do when your doctor asks you do stay active.

Cricket has set a high benchmark both as a spectator and participatory sport. But there has never been a better time than now to attempt doing the same for other sports and fitness activities. Whether it’s paying 9K for Hyrox or 2K for running a marathon, we need all kinds of products across price points and formats. Each will serve a different audience just like X, LinkedIn, and Instagram have their own native behaviors. Fitness and sports in India i think will also fragment into multiple formats and communities. We will need global products like Hyrox and Ironman and also homegrown formats like Devil Circuit and many more experiments. India is at an early but real inflection point in this space.

We’re committed to doing our bit beyond just investing. So, we started a new initiative- Peakst8. More on this later. But yes, we will continue to partner, build, and contribute to this ecosystem where staying active becomes a culture in India.

[Dilip Kumar @kmr_dilip]

Do whatever it takes to get your kids physically active. There is a multi billion dollar industry whose entire existence depends on your child never getting bored. Children are moving less and sitting infront of screens more. Look up any study and there is a strong evidence of physical inactivity amongst school going children in India. WHO says 74% of Indian children do not meet physical activity recommendations and approx 20% are overweight. School going kids are being diagnosed for clinical depression and anxiety. We’re getting obsessed to solve for safety, comfort, and convenience. Take kids out and make movement non negotiable. Get them to play any sport. Don’t turn your kid into a junkyard of reels and stupid videos. If you don’t design their childhood, someone else will.

[Vijay Kedia @VijayKedia1]

Nature gifted oil to the Gulf, and they built prosperity from it.
Nature gifted sunlight to India, yet we never fully harnessed it through solar power.
Maybe this is the wake up call.
Sunlight could become India’s greatest strategic resource. 🌞 🇮🇳 ✌️

[Mangalam Maloo @blitzkreigm]

I come back to this video every time, had shared it when he said it first too.

Sachin Tendulkar is a gift that keeps giving!

No one, there’s just no one like him!

[Dilip Kumar @kmr_dilip]

The most important quality of an entrepreneur is to never take themselves too seriously. Being wrong and being rejected is the basic ingredient of entrepreneurship. The founder who can laugh at themselves stays calm. The founder who stays calm thinks clearly. The founder who thinks clearly survives. No one cares about your feelings. And no one cares about your title. Reality doesn’t negotiate with pride.

[Dilip Kumar @kmr_dilip]

25yo Trisha, founder of Reginald builds a bootstrapped company that sells grooming products for men. Starts the company two years after graduation and makes 70cr+ in revenue with profits. Company is 3 years old and gets acquired for 195cr by Mamaearth. What a win for a young founder. I'm telling this again, there are tons of opportunities in India to build a profitable business without VC money. It doesn't matter what your age or background is. Build with fundamentals, patience, and customers who pay. Everything else is a noise.

[Nic Cruz Patane @niccruzpatane]

Elon Musk on philanthropy:

“I think we should. I mean, I agree with the love of humanity, and we should definitely try to do things that help our fellow human beings. But it’s very hard.

If you care about the reality of goodness rather than simply the perception of it, it’s extremely difficult to give away money well.

I have a large foundation, but I don’t put my name on it. In fact, I’ve said I don’t want my name on anything. The biggest challenge I find with the foundation is trying to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people.

It’s very easy to give money away in a way that creates the appearance of goodness. It is very difficult—extremely difficult—to give money away for the reality of goodness.”

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Elon Musk on where people should invest:

"I don't really buy stocks. I don't look for things to invest in. I just try to build things and then there happens to be stock of the company that I built, but I don't have like a portfolio or anything; Google is gonna be pretty valuable in the future. They've laid the ground work for an immense amount of value creation from an AI standpoint. Nvidia is obvious at this point. There's an argument that companies that do AI and robotics, and maybe spaceflight, are going to be overwhelmingly almost all of the value."

[Motilal Oswal @MrMotilalOswal]

“A man who can control his only 3 body parts ie mind, tongue and stomach has solved 99% of his problems.”

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

For years, there’s been something about Zomato that made me uneasy.

We made eating out and ordering in easier than ever, but we never really helped people truly eat better. Yes, you could find a salad or a smoothie bowl, but the truth is, if you wanted to eat genuinely nourishing food, Zomato didn’t make it easy.

That weighed on me, because when we say our mission is “better food for more people”, the “better” has to mean something deeper.

Today, we’ve taken one of the biggest steps in fixing that blind spot. We’re launching Healthy Mode on Zomato.

Every dish in this mode now comes with a Healthy Score—from Low to Super—based on what really counts for your health: protein, complex carbs, fibre, and micronutrients, and not just calories. Behind the scenes it’s AI and restaurant data doing the heavy lifting, but what you’ll see is simple: a clear explanation of what makes a dish healthy, and why.

This is not your run of the mill “healthy mode” for beginners. We have kept the bar very high, that professional athletes can rely on healthy mode to find food that works for them.

This is personal for me. I’ve carried the guilt that Zomato made it easy to eat whatever you craved, but not easy to eat what your body needed. Healthy Mode is our first real step in putting that right.

It’s live in Gurgaon, and we’ll expand fast. Try it, tear it apart, tell us where it fails. Because this is just the beginning—and for the first time, I feel we’re moving meaningfully closer to truly living up to our mission: better food for more people.

[Equity Insights Elite @EquityInsightss]

Golden rules of investing:

Best opportunities come in times of pessimism

Big money is not in the buying & selling, but in waiting

Know what you own, and why you own it

Selling your winners & holding your losers is like cutting the flowers & watering the weeds

Position sizing is as important as stock selection
It’s not whether you are right or wrong, but how much money you make when you’re right & how much you lose when you’re wrong

If you don’t sell at the right time, you get an exit in the next cycle

If your conviction is based on someone else’s opinion, you’re likely to sell in a panic amid volatility

Avoid leverage, it’s a double edged sword that amplifies risks & can wipe out years of compounding

When facts change, I change my mind. Markets reward adaptability

Compounding is the 8th wonder of the world

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

Someone on Reddit asked what does Zerodha do differently, how are we profitable, why don't IPO etc. This is what I replied:

Hmmm... so you forget that we have spent 15 years getting here. And maybe another 10 years, before Zerodha, I was involved in the markets in some form. So, 25 years in all. Things in business compound over time, especially if you like or love what you are doing and if you are lucky to be in the right place and time.

When we started Zerodha, we started off as a partnership firm because the exchange deposit requirement was lower, Rs 90 lks compared to Rs 1.5 cr. The start was mainly enabled thanks to the NSE Now trading platform, which came free of cost if you were an NSE broker. For the backoffice piece, sending contract notes, maintaining ledgers, etc., we signed up with a vendor who basically gave it at almost 0 cost. This was provided that we tested out his platform.

So the money we have spent on Zerodha is maybe ~Rs 10lks, and that is all the money that has gone into the business till date. Rs 2.5 lks for our website, Rs 5lks for our office interiors (we had an office before), and Rs 2.5 lks for miscellaneous. So, we came from an extremely middle-class background and had no rich uncles. 😀 Dad was a bank manager, and Mom taught Veena.

Our rise coincides with India's rise. We were present at the right place and time with the right products and initiatives. Any gyan any founder gives, eventually comes down to getting timing right, and this has got everything to do with luck. 😀 I was just reading about Jensen Huang from Nvidia, he survived in the business for 30 years until he hit the right place and time. For a long time, people might have questioned what he was doing until very recently. 😀

Now that there is no pressure to give any exit to any investor, we can continue doing what is right for the customer, sometimes even at the cost of the business. For example, our no spam or no tracking policy. I believe that the philosophy with which we run Zerodha will be our real moat as a business. It is very tough to stick to it as a public company.

[Equity Insights Elite @EquityInsightss]

INVESTING ~ FARMING