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Ekmmeet Singh
Simplifying Stable Wealth Creation for India | Founder & CEO at Per Annum & Lendbox
Ekmmeet Singh, a seasoned professional with a diverse background, has excelled in fintech, real estate investments, and development.
With an MBA from IE Business School, Spain, Ekmmeet co-founded Lendbox in 2015 and Per Annum in 2021, showcasing his expertise in the field.
His focus on establishing Peer-to-Peer lending as a credible asset class in India has led to substantial success for his ventures, aiming for stable wealth creation for investors.
Lendbox/Per Annum, under Ekmmeet's leadership, commands over 40% market share in P2P lending, with a customer base exceeding 5 lakhs and an impressive 92% repeat investor rate, cementing its reputation for providing stable returns.
Ekmmeet's educational background includes an MBA in Finance & Strategy from IE Business School and a Bachelor's in Computer Science from the Institute Of Technology And Management.
His extensive professional experience encompasses roles such as Co-founder and CEO at Per Annum and Lendbox, Board Observer at several startups, Entrepreneur in Residence at GSF India, Advisor at multiple startups, General Management at Ashton International, and Consultant at Accenture.
Highlights
IQ, Good Looks, Talent, Physical Health are not the biggest predictors of achieving success
Then what is?
I have always personally believed in my entrepreneurial journey that GRIT is by far the most important characteristic needed to be successful.
However, I had no validation for this claim until recently.
I came across Angela Duckworth’s research, which concluded that out of all characteristics, GRIT is the most important one.
She has been studying this particular trait for over a decade across both kids and adults.
Now, why GRIT?
To understand the importance of GRIT as a predictor of success, keep on reading.
9 years ago we started Lendbox. A fintech startup meant for wealth creation but was bootstrapped.
You also had to build a robust loan book and at the same time you also had to cater to your investors.
Doing this bootstrapped for initial years is a nightmare for most people
As Founders we didn’t draw any salary for three years. We faced three massive obstacles to see the light of the day.
- Regulation Uncertainty Around P2P
The RBI introduced a draft consultation paper for P2P lending in 2017, but the final master document was still awaited.
We didn't know for a very long time if P2P lending in India would have a future or not, but we still had to keep building without any promised outcome.
The RBI came up with the regulation after nearly 18 months, but imagine the daily anxiety of knowing that all your efforts could go in vain if the RBI decided otherwise.
- Raising the First Round
A big sigh of relief came once the RBI regulated P2P lending, but the RBI had placed a condition that an NBFC-P2P must have a net owned fund of Rs. 2 crores in order to seek registration with the RBI.
We had been running our shop for three years, bootstrapped, and now arranging 2 crores was another big challenge. Again, it was a do-or-die situation for us.
We eventually raised capital, but those who have raised funds know how tough it is to pull off your first round under such conditions.
- China’s P2P Debacle
China went through a massive P2P ban due to 16,000 companies operating without any regulatory oversight. Citing the same examples, the Indian P2P industry was also challenged, leading to unprecedented negativity.
Although the Indian P2P market was already regulated, we still had to keep delivering results to prove that Indian P2P is not the same as in China.
Today, we have more than 5 lakh Indians as our active investors, who have generated annual returns of more than 11% p.a. We have delivered expected returns in 100% of the situations.
It was exactly like running a marathon & for running a marathon what you need is massive Stamina.
GRIT is exactly that.
It’s your psychological stamina needed in the journey of achieving a long-term goal. Follow me for more such stories.
100 Crores is Easy if You Figure Out Your First 1 Crore
This might sound superficial at first, but hear me out!
Building a wealth of 100 crores is not that hard if you can just save that first 1 Crore and invest that money systematically.
There’s something magical that happens after reaching that 1 Crore
Of course, the magic of compounding will do this, but let’s delve into the entire mathematics of it.
Once you have seen it or you have a roadmap, you are able to visualize better. More importantly, you can believe that it can happen.
Now, before I do that, there’s an assumption for the entire journey:
You have saved up 1 Cr by the age of 33 and every year you are able to compound your money at 15% p.a.
We can divide this into three major milestones:
Milestone 1: 1 Cr (already achieved, being an assumption here) Milestone 2: 10 Cr Milestone 3: 100 Cr
📌 Journey to 10 Cr
Now, why 15% p.a.?
Let’s understand this with an example:
A 15% rate of return grows to 32% in 2 years, 52.08% in 3 years, & 74.9% in 4 years.
This typically means that your wealth will grow to approximately 10 TIMES the initial principal over the next 17 years.
So, in 17 years you have reached your next milestone of 10 Crores. At age 50.
📌 Journey to 100 Cr
Now here's what happens once you have achieved a 10 Cr corpus:
You get the leverage of Scale of Capital.
Now that we have established that at 15% p.a., you roughly 10x your money every 17 years:
By age 67 or 68, you would have reached 100 Crores.
You have roughly added 90 Crores in the last 17 years vs. 9 crores between the ages of 33-50.
Compounding and the scale of capital working together can do wonders for you, provided you make well-thought-out and strategic investments.
Access to a big corpus in your life can give you far greater freedom with your investment choices as you get to build a highly diversified portfolio with no restrictions on ticket sizes.
Now you see, 100 Crores didn’t seem so easy, but you know what the HARDEST part is?
📌 How to Save or Make That First 1 Crore?
I have two pieces of advice that have worked for me:
👉 Get the best at what you do as that becomes your biggest differentiator in the market, and you get to command more premium than others.
👉 Learn about savings and disciplined investing as soon as you start earning money.
You may start small today, but small wins over time become huge.
Follow me for learning more about wealth creation, alternative investments, & entrepreneurship.
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
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