From 2000 Employee Millionaires to $1.5B Revenue: Anand Deshpande on ESOPs, IPOs & the Future of Deep Tech

In this episode, we sit down with Anand Deshpande, Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Persistent Systems, to explore how he built one of India's most successful IT services companies while creating over 2000 employee millionaires through strategic ESOP implementation.

Anand explains how ESOPs became central to Persistent's culture starting in 1999-2000, when employees didn't even understand what they were. He shares the 10-20-30-40% vesting structure designed to retain talent long-term, and why he simply told employees "just keep it, you'll not regret it" — advice that would prove transformative when the company went public in 2008-2010.

The conversation traces Persistent's journey through the dot-com bust, the 2008 financial crisis, and eventual IPO. Anand discusses when a company is truly ready to go public, why rushing into an IPO can backfire, and how quarterly earnings calls force a certain kind of short-term thinking that founders must learn to manage.

A key part of the discussion focuses on CEO traits and selling to leadership. After meeting 150 CEOs in 2008, Anand identified three patterns: CEOs focus on 7-8 priorities and delegate everything else 100%, they care about top-line growth over bottom-line, and they love to network. These insights completely changed how Persistent approached sales and positioned itself in the market.

Anand also shares his hiring framework for senior leadership — looking for excellence in one of three areas: sales, technology domain expertise, or operations. Not okay at all three, but truly exceptional at one.

The episode explores Anand's transition from CEO in 2019 after 30 years, his personal wealth management philosophy across four buckets (expenses, legacy portfolio, growth investments in AIFs, and philanthropy), and his vision for the future centered on three mega-trends: Energy, Biology, and Intelligence.

This is a structured, first-principles conversation on wealth creation, leadership, strategic pivots, and backing the next wave of deep science innovation.

Timestamps:

00:00 Highlights & Introduction

01:17 The Story of ESOPs at Persistent Systems

03:01 Designing an ESOP Policy: Vesting & Strike Price

04:42 When is a Company Truly Ready for an IPO?

06:12 Life After IPO: Quarterly Earnings & Investor Relations

07:06 3 Essential Traits of Every Successful CEO

09:49 How to Recruit and Build Senior Leadership

11:07 When should a Founder step down as CEO?

11:57 Anand Deshpande’s Personal Wealth Philosophy

13:41 Strategic Investing: AIFs, Direct Companies & Philanthropy

15:41 Future Opportunities in India: Energy, Biology & Intelligence

18:22 The Deep Tech Revolution: Engineering Biology

19:18 Time Management Secrets of a Global Leader

20:41 Conclusion & Final Insights

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In this episode, recorded at Product Unconference 2025, Sandeep Jethwani sits down with Vijay Shekhar Sharma to unpack how founders stay relevant across multiple technology cycles.

Vijay explains how technology evolves in waves — from chips to PCs, operating systems to applications, mobile to cloud, data to AI and now agents. Every wave creates winners, and every winner eventually becomes the foundation for the next. Romanticising past success, he says, is the fastest way for companies to lose relevance.

The conversation traces Paytm’s repeated reinventions, from payments to devices and now towards AI-led workflows. Vijay shares why pivots are rarely sudden decisions, how founders shift the centre of gravity of organisations over time, and why not everyone moves together during change.

A key part of the discussion focuses on AI for small merchants. Building on the Soundbox that transformed digital payments, Vijay outlines a vision where AI becomes a thinking partner for kirana stores — helping them decide what sells, what doesn’t, when to stock up, when to push offers, and even when to advertise.

Not AI for demos or dashboards, but AI for everyday business judgement. The episode also touches on leadership inside public companies, ESOP wealth creation, governance, and the parts of the journey that continue to weigh on founders even after scale and success. This is a candid, first-principles conversation on relevance, reinvention, and betting on the next wave, straight from the stage at Product Unconference 2025.

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Yoga Bar didn’t wait for India’s healthy snacking wave, it helped create it.

In this conversation, Suhasini Sampath (Co-founder, Yoga Bar) takes us inside the product decisions and supply-chain discipline that shaped one of India’s most interesting FMCG stories.

This is not the usual “D2C marketing playbook.”

Yoga Bar was built on product first principles- clean labels, FDA-grade formulations, whole-ingredient recipes and vendor systems designed to hold up at scale. At a time when Indian shelves were dominated by palm oil, refined sugar and opaque labels, they chose the harder path: global standards at Indian price points.

Suhasine’s notions on category leadership were something to write home about. She believes that a brand owning a meaningful share of a focused category can create far more long-term value than a larger brand operating in a cluttered, undifferentiated space.

If you care about health, consumer brands, or building anything the hard (right) way, this conversation is worth your time.

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Inside the mind of the man who managed more money than most countries’ GDPs.

And until now, he’s never spoken on a podcast.

For the first time, Dinesh Khara, former Chairman of the State Bank of India, joins Sandeep Jethwani for an unfiltered conversation about what it really takes to run a ₹50 lakh crore institution that touches 54 crore Indians.

From handwritten ledgers in the 1980s to one of the world’s largest digital banking ecosystems today, Mr. Khara led SBI through a transformation few institutions have ever achieved.

He tripled productivity, steered the bank through India’s largest merger, and built YONO — a digital-first platform that brought over 8 crore Indians online long before “fintech” became a buzzword.

Under his leadership, SBI’s annual profit crossed ₹60,000 crore, the highest ever for an Indian bank, and its four-year cumulative profit exceeded the previous six decades combined.

He led 230,000 employees, served 45 crore customers, and turned India’s oldest financial institution into a modern digital ecosystem, all while keeping it relevant to every generation since 1806.

In this rare conversation, he opens up about how decisions are made when a single “yes” can move billions, what it takes to modernise trust at scale, and why he believes India’s banking system is just getting started.

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"It’s a dingy feeling... like you're coming to steal your own stuff.”

That’s how Vijay Arisetty describes the experience of visiting a bank locker.

Indian households own over 25,000 tons of gold, yet have nowhere truly safe or convenient to store it.

Bank lockers have become difficult to get and the inconvenience of operating is high, home safes offer a false sense of security. So, what’s the alternative?

In this episode of the Create Wealth Podcast, Sandeep Jethwani sits down with Vijay Arisetty—an ex-Air Force pilot, ISB alum, and the co-founder of MyGate. After scaling MyGate to 4 million homes, Vijay spotted another massive problem hiding in plain sight: the broken system of storing valuables.

He founded Aurm to fix it, building a network of fully automated, robotic vaults with military-grade security and a world-first insurance policy of up to ₹1 crore.

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“If I wasn’t behind the counter, people wouldn’t buy. That’s when I knew I had to build a brand bigger than myself.” – Shravan Satyani

That realisation gave rise to Tyaani Jewellers —the jewellery house Bollywood celebrities and India’s wealthy swear by. In an industry where marketing budgets don’t guarantee credibility, Shravan built his moat on reputation.

With Karan Johar as its face, Tyaani married a jeweller’s craft with a filmmaker’s eye for detail — coloured stones, seasonal palettes, and even men’s collections now seen on red carpets and big-ticket weddings. From A-listers to affluent families across India, Tyaani turned jewellery into a marker of style and identity across India’s wealthy circles.

In this episode of the Create Wealth Podcast, our Co-founder Sandeep Jethwani sits down with Shravan Satyani to unpack the economics of luxury, the cultural shifts in Indian jewellery, and the lessons in building trust-first brands.

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In the chaos of Partition, the Agarwals lost everything.

No wealth. No business. No safety net.

What followed was a restart from nothing — a single truck in Indore.

Four decades later, that truck had turned into Agarwal Coal Corporation: one of India’s largest importers, moving 15–20 million tonnes of coal every year and generating ₹15,000 crore in revenues.

In this episode of the Create Wealth Podcast, Sandeep Jethwani sits down with Tapan Agarwal, the second-generation leader now modernising the business, diversifying into ₹5,000 crore of Indore real estate projects, and building his own brand with a ₹100 crore car collection showcased on Instagram as Car Crusader.

This is a story about family business reinvention, legacy vs. risk, resilience after partition, and how India’s hidden wealth creators think about building and protecting empires.

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India's wealthiest have a secret: They rent in cities but own ₹50 crore holiday homes!

In this episode, Sandeep Jethwani interviews Nibhrant Shah, the founder behind Isprava, Chapter, Lohono and Solene — brands that are transforming how India’s wealthiest live, vacation, and invest.

From ₹95 crore villas in Goa to doomsday bunkers with underground air supply — Nibhrant has built homes that are as extravagant as they are thoughtful.

In this episode of the Create Wealth podcast, he shares how he created India’s most sought-after luxury real estate brand, why professionals now buy second homes before first homes, and how the country's top founders, investors, and industrialists are thinking about real estate as an asset class.

Whether you're curious about luxury real estate, high-end hospitality, or how India's elite think about lifestyle investments — this episode is packed with insight, scale, and ambition.

🎥 Discover how India's wealth creators approach luxury real estate differently.

#CreateWealth #LuxuryRealEstate #Isprava #Goa #VacationHomes #WealthManagement #India

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