I'm Viram Shah, Co-Founder & CEO at Vested Finance. Ask me anything!

@salt Ah on 1, the answer really depends on a lot of factors, for e.g. what is the craft exactly or at what age or what kind of environments does the person like living in. Now if one is say a sommelier, I would say definitely can look at moving to the US because the opportunities in India are super limited. But, if you are looking for opportunities in technology or manufacturing then the next couple of decades in India will also bring a lot of opportunities so its not as straightforward an answer.

Other aspects to consider are - as a person do you want to be close to family and friends or do you like a more community-driven society (India) vs. a more individual-centric one (US). Are you ok letting go of the convenience in India for a higher quality of city life in the US.

For me personally, I always wanted to contribute to the India growth story and be close to family and friends. Hence the decision of moving back post the MBA. Because of Vested though I do get to stay in touch with developments in the US, which I like because no matter what is happening in the country, there is a lot to learn from it.

2. So, the US stock market unlike in India follows a custodian model wherein there's no NSDL/CDSL but instead a custodian that holds the shares in name of the broker (called 'in street name'). In our case the custodian is Citibank who holds trillions of $$. Drivewealth who is our clearing broker i.e. our interface with the custodian is regulated by FINRA. We as Vested are also an introducing broker registered with FINRA. So you are essentially interfacing only with regulated entities throughout. If everything in the chain fails, each account is insured by SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation) up to $500,000. So that's the fallback in the worst case scenario. Hope that helps!

So stocks are held with Drivewealth or CitiBank ?
Sorry I am noob, but if Drivewealth files bankruptcy, my stocks are still safe and I can sell them ?

@ClassicNail Didn't know there would be so many regulations when we started...Kidding. In abiding by regulation and still creating value lies the opportunity to build something unique :)

@championswimmer Arnav! Good to see you here as well. We are internally testing an overhaul of the UX, will reach out to add you to the beta. Would be great to get feedback. The overhaul is bringing back the portfolio graph too!

@CuriousSaucy Hmm, our core business is providing Indians access to global assets and because of that there are some differences like we are directly regulated by US regulators, offer a less cluttered experience, customer service trained in depth on international investing, pre-built portfolios via Vests, OTC stocks, etc. You will also see more global asset classes on Vested very soon that will allow investors to build a more robust global portfolio

@OutlandishHope Ah excellent question. I actually think about this a lot. Just recently was reading Carnegie's letter on wealth and reading this book called The Billionaire Who Wasn't (both very interesting reads!)

For me, wealth will help accomplish three things:

1. Control over time (freedom that you mentioned above): This is the most important. It doesn't mean retiring and not working, its just knowing that you can not work tomorrow and you and your family at your current lifestyle will be ok. That satisfaction is important

2. Live a life of decent comfort: What 'decent comfort' means can vary from person to person but the way I like to draw the line is that when someone becomes known for an extravagant lifestyle within their network means its beyond decent

3. Build ladders to help others achieve 1 and 2: Once you have wealth beyond your and your family's requirements, just spreading it out amongst folks who need it may lead to harmful habits being developed instead providing ladders for others to achieve the same can be beneficial. The ladders that I'd love to work on are education, developing control over the mind, healthcare and sports

Curious - what others think too!

@VimalDevgan I think behind the meme coin hype, there are a lot of interesting things happening in the overall blockchain and web3 space! The ability to create networks that are owned by the participants of the network themselves can be very powerful.

In super simplistic terms - today most of the monetary value of a network goes to investors and the management team, the participants themselves don't really get anything until the company IPOs and by then most of the value is captured already.

Blockchain technology allows participants to also become owners and that changes the incentives of the network completely. Cryptocurrencies are one way in which participation incentives can be distributed to keep everyone aligned. Beyond the SHIB and DOGEs of the world, there are some cool projects that one can participate in.

Wasn't intending to go on this tangent but had to put it out there haha. There's a very interesting book called Read Write Own on this topic.

In terms of Vested, unfortunately we operate in a regulated space and work with banks and under RBI regulations so until the regulations become clear in India on direct crypto access, unlikely that we will be able to offer it. But the BTC and ETH ETFs on the US markets are an avenue to get crypto exposure on Vested today (not meant as investment advice at all).

Thanks for the question!

@MassiveEyelash No comments on this one...

@KeyInjury7 So glad to hear someone congratulating on not raising too much money!! This is really needed in mainstream media..

Its a combination of very tight cost control and a focus on efficient growth. Need to know your unit economics really well.

I've realised during the journey that startup funding is very similar to Parkinson's law, the more money that is available, the more the expenses will expand to fill it up.

Companies can be built without a lot of money just that you really need to understand who your customer is so that you can get to them in a cost-effective way and be willing to be in it for the long-run!

@WetSausage I think INDmoney has already gone down that route. For us, we want to become the best experience for anyone in India looking to diversify into global assets or alternatives. Want to go deep into these spaces than try to go wide

@RundownGarden One of the things that people don't realise is that through the US exchanges, one can get global exposure easily. So there are ADRs of European (Adidas, Louis-Vitton), Japanese (Toyota), Chinese (Alibaba), even Indian companies (Makemytrip, Reliance) listed on US exchanges. One can also invest in global ETFs that provide exposure to multiple countries globally.

In terms of which global markets, I personally like Vietnam and Brazil. Both have interesting tailwinds in terms of the anti-China beneficiary for Vietnam and the emerging market growth opportunity in Brazil.

Again, not providing investment advice pls.