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Although his acting career has always been turbulent, marked by massive ups and downs, actor Vivek Oberoi has established himself as a successful entrepreneur over the years with investments in real estate, ed-tech, jewellery, alcohol, agri-tech, fintech and other industries. With a net worth of Rs 1,200 crore, he ranks among the richest Bollywood celebrities. During a recent interview, Vivek discussed what guides him in business and how he managed to build an expansive and opulent empire over the years.
“When I realised I knew how to make money, I kept repeating it. There was a high in it. There was a kick in it. But then I wanted to understand how to invest it, and I was studying economics,” he told NDTV Profit during a recent conversation. In an effort to understand if economic concepts applied in real life, Vivek said he approached a paanwaala outside his college to learn firsthand about stock management, financing, and creating mutually beneficial deals — a process he described as a “dolphin version” of microfinancing, which was collaborative rather than cutthroat. “It became almost like a partnership and I was making returns of 6-7 per cent on my money monthly, which was fantastic,” he pointed out.
Mentioning that there were also months when he incurred losses, Vivek said that his mindset, nonetheless, was to recoup the money in subsequent months without allowing his spirit to be crushed. “Eventually, I was microfinancing the whole line of dosa, chai, and paan-bidi vendors there,” he stated. With an ambition to grow further, Vivek said he apprenticed at the stock market and learned about trading and the various facets of the market from a broker while still a teenager. He pointed out, however, that once he transitioned to acting, his business skills became a bit rusty, as he made money simply by “cutting ribbons and attending weddings.”
Stating that he has never faced a dearth of money, as he has always been careful with his investments, the actor also shared the one time he jumped the gun and ended up losing everything he had amassed over a period of two years. “When I was 17-18, I came across something that I felt would go very big. I went all in without doing my method, calculations, understanding or reading. But I ended up losing about 60-70 per cent of my portfolio, which I’d built over 2 to 2.5 years in one single deal.” That turned out to be a significant learning experience for him, as he never made hasty decisions afterwards.
Pointing out that the environment in the film industry wasn’t conducive and fertile for talent to grow beyond the drama that surrounded it, Vivek said that, although the world of business also has similarities, the older one gets and the more experience one earns, the better one learns how to deal with such things. “I think an intelligent person learns from his failures more than he enjoys his success,” he added.
When asked what prompted him to shift his focus entirely to business at one point, the actor said, “I was a bit frustrated as I wanted to do so much in life, but I was being pulled down a lot. Whenever I tried to move forward two steps, I was being pulled back four steps. I had two choices: one was to live in victimhood, and the other was to try to understand how to script victory out of the victimhood. ‘How do I change the game, the paradigm? If I can’t win in this particular dimension, how do I flip the dimension itself?’ So that’s what I did… Instead of trying to jump forward, I began jumping sideways.”
Talking about his investment strategy, Vivek said, “I am not a one-night stand guy, I believe in marriages”. He said he cares about creating wealth, not making money.
“If it’s real estate, I went directly into consolidating land at the grassroots level, sitting with farmers on the floors of their homes in the villages, understanding the land and getting down to the basic, granular fundamentals of it all. That’s why it positioned me in a way where I could succeed more steadily,” the Kesari Veer star stated.
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