Young, Single, Stoic

It’s mid-afternoon on a Tuesday and Nikhil Kamath is in his study. At 34, Kamath, recently named India’s youngest billionaire by Forbes India, has been working more from home lately, but not because of the pandemic. In fact, Kamath’s home base of Bangalore has recorded remarkably few infections of late, so life in the city has marched on, more or less, as normal. Kamath, the chief investment officer of two finance companies he started with his older brother Nithin—True Beacon, an asset management firm, and Zerodha, the country’s largest stock brokerage—works at home, alone in his bookshelf-lined office because, well, he prefers it.

“I think I’m better at thinking in silo,” he says. We’re talking on a video call, one of many on his agenda today, packed back-to-back in the six hours between the 3:30pm market close and his daily late-night workout routine—personal training most days and the occasional badminton match—before bed.