[00:00:02 – 00:00:11] Nitin Bajaj

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj, and joining me today is Shekar Narasimhan. Shekar, welcome on the show.

[00:00:11 – 00:00:13] Shekar Narasimhan

Thank you, Nitin. Nice to see you again.

[00:00:14 – 00:00:18] Nitin Bajaj

Likewise. Great to have you here. Let’s start with the big question. Who is Shekar?

[00:00:20 – 00:00:34] Shekar Narasimhan

Always a very complex answer, but someone who likes to believe that he’s gonna leave the world a better place to live in when I’m gone. Wow. That’s deep. So it

[00:00:34 – 00:01:00] Nitin Bajaj

you know, as we expand on that philosophy a little more, I’d love to share with our audience a little bit about what you do and why you do it, which is what I’m always curious about. So tell us a little bit about Beekman Advisors. What is it? Why did you start it and how? And, a little bit on the size and scale and more importantly the impact of what you and your team have been able to create.

[00:01:01 – 00:01:15] Shekar Narasimhan

Terrific. Then I’ll take a couple more minutes on that one. Sure. I have had essentially three different careers if you define things in career terms. The first was really nonprofits

[00:01:15 – 00:01:15] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:01:16 – 00:04:44] Shekar Narasimhan

Where I focused when I was very young on doing good, not making money Mhmm. And it was really around affordable housing in The United States. The second career was in building a company, in the commercial real estate finance space, and then ultimately taking it public and exiting it, and doing it in a way that fair and actually did good even in affordable housing, which goes back to where your roots are, you always carry with you. And the third career really has been in advising, consulting, investing, philanthropy. So I think of these all has interconnected. I don’t believe we ever leave an experience behind or a memory behind. I think you sometimes exaggerate them. So in these three boxes, Beekman Advisors is kind of the fulfillment of it. I wanted autonomy and independence. I didn’t wanna work for a company with hundreds of employees and thousands of responsibilities every day. I was spending my time 30% of my time communicating and organizing and managing and not doing anything. And my view was, boy, if I just had all my time to think, write, organize, help others, scale, that would be the best of all outcomes. So for twenty one years, we’ve advised over a hundred clients from very small to very large, and we’ve helped them in many ways. Many of the most importantly, it has often been about trying to think beyond the edge of the, of the year. So what next? What it isn’t about trying to predict, for example, blockchain or AI or the next big technology. It’s asking the fundamental question of, if you had your dreams come true, what would they look like a year or two or three from now? And therefore, what is the fulfillment plan? Mhmm. Because if you don’t have a dream, I just don’t think you have any ambition. And if you don’t have a plan, you don’t have any execution. So it has been about taking clients who had a sometimes they came to us with fully baked ideas, and we, generally speaking, margin moderated them. More often than not, they said, it’s a changing uncertain world. We have built something of value. We’d like it to be more valuable, but we want it to sustain. How would you help us do that? Within this framework, there has also been venture capital investing both overseas as well as in The United States, and that has been very heavily focused on how can we have a double, triple bottom line measurably where we can show sustainable business opportunities, social enterprise, and we can show, profitability in in the business itself. And then there’s also been now an element of philanthropy thrown in, which you and I were part of, which is around, can we create a big idea in the private markets through philanthropy and then scale it potentially into the public sector rather than the public sector imagining that they actually have the answers to our social problems? So that’s where I am right now in my life is all these baskets have converged, and there’s some opportunities that I can’t even describe how big and how great they are.

[00:04:45 – 00:05:39] Nitin Bajaj

This is phenomenal. And, you know, I always think about once someone makes a certain threshold of money, you have the option to do whatever you want with your life. And this is what you have chosen to do, Kind of bring that trifecta and then bring your experience, your passion. And I love how you say this. You know, it has to be about the ambition and then the execution, and they have to come together because that’s when ideas scale. That’s when things actually materialize. So I’m really glad that, you have been able to do that for several different organizations and at scale. Give us a sense for the impact, if you will, and I would love to see how you measure it because you you said, you know, you’re looking at the triple bottom line. So I would love for our audience to understand a little more of that.

[00:05:41 – 00:07:30] Shekar Narasimhan

Sure. So let’s take housing as an example. Everybody agrees housing, shelter, basic human need. It’s a launching pad for so many things, including education and opportunity and everything. Everywhere in the world, everybody agrees. Small piece of land, just a little bit of dirt, just a roof over your head makes a fundamental difference to your life. No question. Question to me is, okay. Good. Now that if we know how to build it Mhmm. And build it and keep it affordable. Affordable is about maintenance cost and budgeting and responsibility, and it isn’t just about ownership. Ownership is only valuable if there’s appreciation, but ownership is control and responsibility. Mhmm. If we can figure out the cost equations to deliver it and then what makes it sustainable long term, we have done something that’s measurably good long term. Because the idea of giving someone a house that they default in doesn’t make sense. The idea of giving them a house, and then it turns out that it is cannot be maintained, or it’s in the wrong neighborhood, where there’s no opportunity for their kids to go to a good school, for them to get jobs, or transportation doesn’t make sense. So one of the things that I really focused on in all the work I’ve done in advocacy is what’s the total cost of living? Think about a homeowner or a owner having a budget just like any other place, a business. And what are the components of that? And how much of your life savings should go towards all these different aspects of it? As an example, what it has led me to in the last since COVID is a deep exploration of why it is that we have less women in the workforce.

[00:07:31 – 00:07:31] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:07:32 – 00:07:42] Shekar Narasimhan

Not whether women are getting the same pay as men or with jobs there, just why there are less women. And the biggest single barrier, interestingly, is childcare.

[00:07:43 – 00:07:43] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:07:44 – 00:09:36] Shekar Narasimhan

Okay. Now it sounds really obvious. Why aren’t if women stay at home, they are providing childcare. Correct? But once you tell a woman that she needs to go out and become financially either independent or supportive, she has to find childcare. Mhmm. In India, in the old traditional societies, we had childcare. It was already baked into the ecosystem. It was free. Yes. And when you got home, somebody had already cooked the meal. Well, what if that doesn’t exist anymore? Mhmm. So the same problems that occur in more developed economies tend to flow and show up in other places. Mhmm. So why can’t we forecast them? In India, childcare is a huge problem. It will hold women back in the workforce. It will reduce the GDP of the nation, blah, blah, blah. So let we know that problem is coming because it’s here. So I started focusing it on The United States, finding out that the average cost to childcare in The US for a one child is $24,000 a year. Wow. Cost of childcare per child. So now we begin to trace back demography and why there are less children being born in developed countries. Probably the number one or number two reason is the cost of childcare. You can’t afford it. Yes. If I give you the total cost of having a child in The United States between childcare, education, college, blah, blah, blah, you would start off by saying, I need a million dollars, I can’t afford it. I just can’t afford to have a child. So you have less children. Now what does that do to a society in the long haul? So a bottom line is the idea that housing started for me as the centerpiece, and then it’s gravitated into these other venues. When I start to think, isn’t there a business to be built around childcare?

[00:09:37 – 00:09:37] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:09:37 – 00:11:14] Shekar Narasimhan

Where I can train workers, including people who have skills and and instincts and empathy, but also skills on top of that for Montessori or otherwise. Could I provide it in ways and places with less and less less regulation, but still oversight? Could it be provided cheaper? Wouldn’t that enable something good to come to broadly the workforce business, and then ultimately society. Example, in one of the new plants created in Nebraska, the company, which is 60 miles away from Omaha, had to build a childcare facility next door because they couldn’t get any workers. So they built their own childcare, and they are hiring workers to come and work there because otherwise, they can’t get any women to work, and without women, they can’t make the workforce operate. Interesting. I started to ask corporations, do you see this as a problem? Do you see this as an opportunity? I’m not asking you to simply write a check and subsidize it. I’m saying, is there a business to be done? And if so, I’d love to be part of it. I’d love to think of what a nonprofit childcare system is and a for profit one and role of government. So that’s how my life has intersected in business and philanthropy and investing. It keeps intersecting around these global large issues, which to my mind also connect The US and India. The problems of The US will become the problems of India and vice versa. So why can’t we forecast them and why can’t we protect ourselves and manage them better than we do today?

[00:11:15 – 00:11:50] Nitin Bajaj

This is so fascinating. I would love to live vicariously through you that I can only imagine the kind of conversations, the kind of people you get involved into these conversations and making them pause and think. It’s just fascinating. Now I would love for you to share with us what is the one big challenge you’re facing because these are all challenges. These are all opportunities, and I would love to get your take on the one big challenge. And then after that, the one exciting opportunity that, you’re most, excited about.

[00:11:50 – 00:11:55] Shekar Narasimhan

So the challenge to me, in today’s world is uncertainty.

[00:11:55 – 00:11:55] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:11:57 – 00:13:57] Shekar Narasimhan

And whether you like what’s going on or don’t like what’s going on politically or policy wise, it doesn’t matter. There is we are living in a world of great uncertainty, great change, which always has flip side. It’s two sides of a coin. But in that, the most vulnerable suffer the most because they always get left behind. They’re not part of the conversation. So when we talk about AI and everybody loves to talk about AI for good, well, I don’t see, the people we’re trying to serve sitting in the room. You know? So the issue, to me on on challenges, and all our clients have this, is just in this uncertain environment, what does planning mean? Do I do a five year strategic plan, or do I actually just do a day to day plan? What’s my planning cycle? What’s my, thinking? And in terms of opportunity, the biggest single opportunity is in front of us, and that is that we have, in three countries or four countries of the world today, some of the youngest workforces that we’ve ever had. They are, different. They are more purpose driven in this net generation. I see them. I talk to them. They are very different than, the baby boomers. If we actually harness that purpose, not just in public good circumstance, but in the way that businesses are built, I’ll give you a tiny example. Is there a way to build a business today that’s more like Novo Nordisk? Where you have, empathy and mission at the core and yet a highly developed for profit business that’s, you know, built on ethical standards. I keep asking myself the question, where in the world do existing, corporate interests lie Mhmm. Which aren’t megalomaniac Right. But are more people maniac.

[00:13:57 – 00:13:57] Nitin Bajaj

Yes.

[00:13:58 – 00:14:32] Shekar Narasimhan

And I am very interested in taking on the challenge of building an ecosystem which supports the organizations that are people maniac and the corporations and and large companies, especially, that think of that as the way that they will be the more successful. And I do think there are people out there thinking along those lines. I want that to become a core mantra as we go forward, as opposed to the power hungry, gotta grow, become multibillionaires, and what and what? And what did you leave behind?

[00:14:33 – 00:15:07] Nitin Bajaj

Huge opportunity there, and I can’t think of anybody better than you to take that on. So really rooting for yes. Now as we look forward, I would love to pause and reflect and talk about two moments from your personal or professional life where in one case, things did not work out as you’d expected. There was failure, maybe lessons that came out of that, and another instance where things exceeded your own expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

[00:15:10 – 00:18:10] Shekar Narasimhan

I the the first is easy in my business life. The one moment that I will remember more than any other is being in a phone booth in Santa Monica in October 1997 when the Russian ruble became rubble and having a billion dollars in hedges, go sideways and having a capital call for hundreds of millions of dollars and trying to figure out how was I going to save my company at that moment, and who could I trust and who could I not trust. And, and we did, and it was hard and it was painful, and I probably didn’t sleep for three weeks, but, we got through it and came out on the other side. And you learn from that very simply, not just the simplistic, who your friends are and dah dah dah, but you actually learn a lot about yourself. Yes. And what I learned, my my son, who was very young at that time, was in the hotel room when I came back from this phone call, which, by the way, we didn’t have cell phones, that were able to work for an hour and a half. And so I was literally at a phone booth, and he said to me, you wanna give up, don’t you? Something like that. And I don’t he doesn’t remember it, but it was very profound because I looked at him and said, I’ve thought about it. And he says, how can you? You’ve got hundreds and thousands of people depending on you. Wow. And that was enough. So, little, you know, children have a way of sort of getting to the crux of things rather fast with especially with their parents. In terms of good moments, I’ve had many, Nitin. So it’s just, god knows. I can’t tell you being a grandparent is probably the best title of your life. But I think in business again, and for the entrepreneurs out there, it wasn’t the success of the business or the IPO. Mhmm. It was seeing people around me just flourish. Yeah. And when I look back and I think of those moments when people sort of just stepped up onto the stage and took over for me and did it. And I could literally just go and slowly recede into the front seat and sit quietly and watch them and go, holy mackerel. It works. When you delegate, you give responsibility, and you allow people to flourish, it actually bloody works. And and that to me was just I’ve had those moments, I gotta admit, because of, you know, a guard and, my family. I’ve had it many, many times, so I will say that’s my, number one thing. If an entrepreneur believes truly that success is driven solely by financials, they’re absolutely wrong. If they believe it is solely driven by how much product they enabled, no. If they grew, other people like them and could step back at some point and watch them flourish, that success magnified a hundred times.

[00:18:11 – 00:18:37] Nitin Bajaj

So well said. So beautiful. And that’s, I think, a very well put holistic experience, and I’m glad you’ve had it many times over. Now I I would love to change gears a little bit. And, you obviously enjoy what you do. Mhmm. But what do you do to just kind of step back, de stress, and not think about work?

[00:18:39 – 00:19:13] Shekar Narasimhan

I mean, just as an example, took two weeks and took my three grandsons, seven, five, and two, and we went to India, and we went to Tirupati, and we all got a head shave and, had a incredible experience together. I just, I didn’t have much time to work. I did work a few hours, I have to admit, late at night in India, but it was reading. I mean, if you read Abraham Verghese as an example, you realize that reading is a is a art and not a science.

[00:19:13 – 00:19:13] Nitin Bajaj

Yes.

[00:19:14 – 00:20:41] Shekar Narasimhan

It’s hard to read 700 pages together, but you can read it in ways that are extraordinary and connected still. I love, probably the most fascinating thing to me is watching sports, and watching sports not so much alone, but with people who really care about outcome. And when you have passionate people caring about outcome, boy, the emotions that come out watching sports from people are the most uninhibited and authentic. So I that to me, you know, is something I try to do as much as possible and go watch sports with people who care about the teams that are playing, even if I don’t. Yes. I just care about the the the the sport itself and how it is played, but they care about the outcome. And you you ask yourself, then why is somebody so passionate about Auburn after having graduated there forty years ago? I don’t know. It’s some, you know, nostalgic something, but they are. Why do people still care about India if, like me, you left fifty years ago? Mhmm. So we we are all human in that very simple sense, and therefore, we carry memory. And, while we carry loathing as well, we most often carry good memories, and we try to forget the other. And so the the anything that gives me the opportunity to interact with people who are passionate about something is what I would, call my best, repulse.

[00:20:43 – 00:21:21] Nitin Bajaj

I love the you know, I’m not much into watching sports. I would rather play. But I do agree with you that it’s that emotion. It’s just kinda seeing the two sides. And my favorite is Super Bowl when, you know, people don’t really care about the teams, what they do because that’s why we are there. And immediately, there are two sides. And that whole engagement, that whole interaction between the two sides and, you know, we here typically haven’t been, much involved in the finals, but it’s just amazing to see how people get all excited and bring that emotion and make that into a special thing.

[00:21:22 – 00:21:24] Shekar Narasimhan

So Exactly. Yep.

[00:21:25 – 00:21:37] Nitin Bajaj

Now in terms of, we talked about, books and reading. Is there a book or a podcast that, is a favorite or you would like to recommend?

[00:21:38 – 00:22:29] Shekar Narasimhan

Well, I will tell you that in terms of social media, I I concentrate in LinkedIn and Substack because they both keep me, awake and intelligent, and connected. I think in terms of reading, I mean, to me, right now, my favorite book is still The Covenant of Water Mhmm. By Abraham Verghese. But, you know, I I thought that, you know, Atlas Shrugged was iconic when I read it many moons ago. I’ve since then, graduated to believing that the matrix is possible, so I do watch it, and I feel like it actually has lessons for entrepreneurs baked into it in a in a quite a curious and interesting way. And I do think that some of the biggest geniuses of the world have yet to be born.

[00:22:29 – 00:22:29] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:22:29 – 00:22:45] Shekar Narasimhan

So I still think that, you know, Isaac Asimov thought of the world in a very different way than most humans, and because of that, you should continue to read him. Anything that’s asymmetric is possible in this world, and, he seemed to predict it well.

[00:22:46 – 00:22:56] Nitin Bajaj

I agree. Now on to my favorite part of the show Sure. Which we call the one line life lessons. Shekar, we would love to hear your one line life lessons.

[00:22:57 – 00:24:58] Shekar Narasimhan

Director matters, and it trumps everything. I don’t believe that, the transactional nature of a lot of our life, is what really people remember well. They identify with it for a moment, and then they move on. I’ve had to struggle with how do I explain what character is, what good character is, because you do have to talk to your children and your grandchildren about that. And we used to do it in terms of honesty and integrity and blah blah blah, but I now think there’s something deeper about character. Just, it is amazing to me that even today, people I’ve known for a long, long time in business, twenty five, thirty, thirty five years, will remember incidents that we were part of. Mhmm. And how I usually find out that they’re talking about me is I happen to be on a call where they’re introducing others, and then they turn to me and then they introduce me even though I couldn’t introduce myself. And they say something about, you know, I met him twenty years ago, and he said this to me. And I don’t recall saying any of that, of course, but they do. Mhmm. And so the idea that you can be authentic most of the time, you can’t all the time, of course. I understand that. And that if you exhibit good character, which means your word is something that means something, that your behavior tends to be, normal, whatever that is culturally or or, otherwise, I think will play out and you will win long term because of those things. So I keep telling people, exercise self control over yourself. Be of good character. It will pay off. And, of course, you gotta do all the other things. You gotta bust your butt and be lucky and everything else.

[00:25:00 – 00:25:03] Nitin Bajaj

Well, thank you for sharing that. Do you have any other life lessons?

[00:25:06 – 00:25:11] Shekar Narasimhan

I think the one thing I will say is that, you know, I loved, Ted Lasso.

[00:25:11 – 00:25:12] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:25:12 – 00:26:28] Shekar Narasimhan

A, the show on on Apple TV. Yeah. Because they they they managed in one word to say everything that an entrepreneur needs to be successful. And if you recall, it was that torn white piece of glass with a red ink on it above the door, which they tapped as they always walked filed out of the locker room. And the word was believe. Yes. No exclamation. Just believe. Yeah. And what did does that word mean to a someone who is in business? What does that word mean? Does it mean believe in yourself? Of course, it could mean that. Does it mean believe in others? Sure. Believe in the market, but I think it actually just means bluntly, believe if you’ve thought it through, you have a vision and you have a plan. Believe in it and go do it to the fullest, even if you fail. And so having that, word as your mantra is a very good thing to have, and I would steal it from that show every day if I could. But I say get out there, get in the fray, and make it happen. And you can do good, and you can leave a legacy.

[00:26:29 – 00:26:51] Nitin Bajaj

Shekar, thank you so much for all you do, but also for sharing your journey and story with us. We really appreciate it. And congratulations and kudos. And the very best wishes for taking more things to scale and getting more bottom lines up and improving many, many more lives. Really appreciate it.

[00:26:51 – 00:26:54] Shekar Narasimhan

Thank you, Nitin. Appreciate it. Keep up the good work.

[00:26:54 – 00:26:55] Nitin Bajaj

Thank you.

[00:26:55 – 00:26:56] Shekar Narasimhan

Take care.