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Inspire Someone Today
Inspire Someone Today
E125 | The Pragmatic Banker P2 | Luis Miranda
Curious about how to build a team that not only excels but also brings diverse perspectives to the table? Join us as we sit down with Luis Miranda, a visionary who champions the power of inclusion for everyone, not just persons with disabilities. Discover his insights on how diverse teams foster innovation, avoid echo chambers, and drive business success. We also touch on the key elements of effective leadership, where passion and commitment often outweigh high salaries, and how a strong vision paired with the right team can achieve remarkable outcomes.
Shifting gears, Luis opens up about the transformative role of public policy in shaping economic growth and reducing poverty. Drawing from his extensive experience, he shares riveting examples of how policy changes, like the creation of private sector banks and infrastructure equity funds, can uplift entire communities. Learn about the collaborative efforts needed between the market, civil society, and government to create an environment ripe for entrepreneurial success and self-sufficiency. For those interested in public policy careers, Luis offers valuable insights into educational programs that can equip you with the skills needed to make a meaningful impact.
But the episode doesn't end there. Luis enriches our conversation with personal stories and life lessons that have shaped his journey. From the importance of mastering local languages for effective community engagement to maintaining physical fitness and adopting a purpose-driven approach, his experiences are both enlightening and inspiring. He also shares his thoughts on living a regret-free life, urging us to connect with loved ones and appreciate the richness of our experiences. With poignant book recommendations and suggestions for future influential guests, this episode promises a wealth of knowledge and inspiration to help you live a more impactful life.
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in the team is you need to have diversity. I wear this band called Inclusion on my wrist and it's basically it's actually from a friend, from her nonprofit that she runs called the Jai Bakil School, and it's really a school for disability and this band is supposed to talk about, you know, including people persons with disability but to me it's including everyone in your sphere. And a friend of mine, ravi, who runs one of the co-founders of the Indian School of Development Management, isdm, would tell his students hang out with people who are different from you, because that's where you get new ideas. We all live in this echo chamber, so, as a startup entrepreneur, look at building out teams where people come in with different experiences and different things that they bring to the table, as opposed to everyone being a clone of yourself.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Inspire Someone Today podcast, a show where we dive into the stories and insights that has the power to create ripples of inspiration in your life. I'm your host, shrikanth, and I'm thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration. If you enjoyed listening to Luis in part one the Forrest Gump moment and his career trajectory I promise part two is even better. We talk about public policy, how one can build career around public policy, some excellent book recommendations, micro experiments in the power of three round, and who does Lewis want to get on this podcast to be hosted? All of this and more as we bring in the last part of this two-part series with Luis Miranda. Listen in One element I want to touch upon. You made a reference of having the right team and vision. How critical is that interplay? You might have a great team, not a great vision. You might have a great vision and not a great team. So how critical both of it is.
Speaker 1:So I struggle, I struggle Honestly, I struggle with a lot of the efforts that people do trying to define vision. Vision, whatever, whatever.
Speaker 1:And I honestly still don't figure out what the difference is. My view is you got to have a goal. Nike's goal was do it. That's it, okay. There was a tagline For us at ISPP. It is building next gen policy leaders for a rising India. That's it Now. Whatever we do, whether it is working with staff, it's all development. That's the focus. That's my North Star to look at. We got to focus. That's my North Star to look at and we work on that. Anything we've got to do, we've got to ask ourselves the question how is that impacting that North Star?
Speaker 1:Now, if you don't have a good team, the questions they will be asking you will not push yourself. You will have mediocrity over there. And secondly, if you have a mediocre leader, the people who join under that person also will be mediocre, because they will never allow someone to be smarter than them because they're insecure of their job. That's something I learned. I was to me, wanting to make sure that I was never the smartest guy in the team. All the other guys below me should be smart, because they're the ones who can make me look good and it doesn't mean, again, pedigree.
Speaker 1:I remember, when we were at IDFCP, one of our board members who went to the top business school in India and also went to Chicago Booth. He said you don't have people from these top schools and I said I don't want them. I want people who would work hard and be excited about our passion, because the area within infrastructure doesn't want this. We don't want the guys who are chasing the highest salary. I don't want that. And I want people who will be committed to the cause, and that's how we were successful. We had people from different backgrounds and that's one more point also which is on the team is you need to have diversity.
Speaker 1:I wear this band called Inclusion on my wrist and it's basically it's actually from a friend, from her nonprofit that she runs, called the Jai Vakil School, and it's really a school for disability and this band is supposed to talk about, you know, including people, persons with disability, but to me it's inclusive, including everyone in your sphere. And a friend of mine, ravi, who runs one of the co-founders of the Indian School of Development Management, isdm, would tell his students hang out with people who are different from you, because that's where you get new ideas. We all live in this echo chamber. So, as a startup entrepreneur, look at building out teams where people come in with different experiences and different things that they bring to the table, as opposed to everyone being a clone of yourself. Because we had a diverse team at IDFCP and at ACFC Bank. We had different interests, we had different experiences, et cetera, but we all came in together to be able to have that one vision of building up a great bank, improving the infrastructure in the country. That's what we did.
Speaker 2:Great, let's pivot into a different topic, as you have pivoted into a different work area, that is, public policy, and there is a lot of institutions that is coming up. You did mention about it a lot of schools that is coming up in the field of public policy. Walk us a bit about the importance and relevance of public policy in the current day and time and a bit about Indian School of Public Policy as well.
Speaker 1:So a couple of things. We get asked a lot what is public policy, what is the importance of it? And Path has this lovely story to talk about. When you give someone fish, that's charity. When you teach them how to fish, that's killing. But on the other hand, if you just had laws which made it easy for anyone to go and fish and let them sell their product freely, with the support that's needed to help out build the infrastructure, then you wouldn't need to give people fish, because people will be fishing on their own and make a living from it. Secondly, you won't need people to teach people how to skill, because already fishing would be aspirational. So you would have people setting up pools or places for people to learn how to fish. You would have infrastructure being built and people building boats and people building coal storage, et cetera, because it's an aspirational business to be in. So if you have the right policies in place, you really don't need philanthropy. You don't need skilling Already. The market will serve near that.
Speaker 1:Now, the markets don't work for everyone, so therefore you have some cases where market failures happen. They do happen. It's not that it works in every place and therefore there's a role for Samad Sarkar Bazaar, which is the markets, the social civil society and the government to play together. We all need to work together and I sort of realized this when a few years ago. And I sort of realized this when a few years ago, to be honest, my introduction to public policy was when I was involved with the Center for Civil Society and understood the role of public policy, and what I realized was, in all these startups that I was involved in, I never appreciated totally the role that policies played in that. We knew it was there in the back, but the work that went behind it.
Speaker 1:I've been a beneficiary of public policy changes One, when private sector banks were allowed to be set up as part of the opening up of the economy in 1981, they allowed private sector banks to be set up. That was a public policy change. And then, secondly, when the government wanted to have more private infrastructure investment, more private sector investment in infrastructure, when Yashwant Sinha announced, in the budget of 2002, the setting up of an infrastructure equity fund. Both were public policy announcements that took place at that time and it helped me both professionally and financially, and I don't see why that can't help others. So that is why I see the importance of policies which can help stimulate growth. So the banking sector would never have been what it is today in India if it wasn't for that move to allow private sector banking.
Speaker 1:Now some of those banks failed. Part of them two of them, are part of HDFC Bank. There are 300 actually Centurion Bank, bank of Punjab and Times Bank. They're part of HDFC Bank. But it doesn't mean that therefore, the private sector banking failed. It just felt that some people who don't do well get taken over by others. Gtb got taken over by Oriental Bank of Commerce. The market settled it.
Speaker 1:So that's one sort of thing that how it's healthy over there in the past, and that's something which I believe that therefore, we can come up with.
Speaker 1:Help people develop better policies and help people understand government better. We'd be able to grow the economy more so. Recently I was with a group of friends and we were discussing what's driving each of us the four of us got together and what would we like to achieve at the end of, say, five years and what's driving us to get there. And I said you know what to me is, what I really would get excited about at the end of five years is to see a more prosperous India about at the end of five years is to see a more prosperous India, because I believe that taking India out of prosperity is the best. Economic development is the best way to get people out of poverty, and to do that you need to have better policies which are growth-oriented, at the same time taking care of the bottom 50%. I think you can't have a system or a shape-shaped economy where some people are making money and some people are getting worse off. That's not acceptable in a democracy or in any society at all.
Speaker 2:So that, to me, is what drives me and therefore the role of public policy in the current state of affairs that all of us and for the future of the world and the country. And if there is an angst listening to this conversation and has an interest in making a career in public policy, how can they go about that path?
Speaker 1:so it's. It's interesting. You know, we we have a lot of people asking us you know why should I study public policy? And I think that actually let me come back when Parth and I were talking about this maybe in 2016, you know should we set up a public policy school? The first question I had was where are the jobs? Because if we don't have jobs, then what's the point of educating people over there? Because they want to be able to take a course and then do something with it at the end of it.
Speaker 1:And then, a couple of years later, we realized the time was right and people were looking at recruiting people with a public policy background, and we started it. So if you want to study public policy background and we started it so if you want to study public policy, you can do it through part-time courses. We have a program for working professionals, our first executive program. It's a four-month program. Other places, like the Fashina also has a program like that. Tis also has a program. So we have a lot of people setting up programs which will teach you. If you're working and you don't have time to take off and you want to understand more about public policy, if you have time, you then should look at taking a program, which could be a one or a two-year program. We decided to do a one-year program because it's an easier way that you're taking away from work only for a year as opposed to two years, and therefore the ROI becomes better and more effective for you than taking a two-year time out. And then we also run shorter-term executive programs, and we also have an online program in public policy together with L&T EduTech, where, if you just want to do a MOOC on what public policy is about, you can do it over there. So here's the various ways that you can do it. I strongly believe that a public policy degree in a few years will be as valuable as what an MBA does.
Speaker 1:If you look at what some of the startups have today in the gaming industry, what's the biggest challenge they have today? Regulation Retail. The biggest challenge they have today Regulation Retail. What's the challenge you have? Regulation. In all these cases, the biggest risk you're running is actually regulation, besides execution, and that ability to handle regulatory changes is what we teach at the Indian School of Public Policy and other places teach. We teach at the Indian School of Public Policy and other places teach.
Speaker 1:I was talking to one of our students, the same one who's going to put on my address book, on my calendar, and she was talking to a student, the people who are applying to ISPP.
Speaker 1:The two questions they had was one was ROI, and secondly is the faculty, and from an ROI perspective which is based on our numbers over the last five years, you can recover the cost of your starting salary is more than the cost of your program. So there's like a hundred percent markup in your year one itself and you're only taking a year off. So the ROI is pretty attractive from that perspective. We've not been long enough to figure out what the sort of long-term ROI is, but I don't think it's going to be like getting into private equity and having that huge ROI, but things will be significantly different. The second is faculty and I think really what builds up in any educational institution is really the faculty, and I believe that we have the most amazing faculty in the country. Some of the people are just mind blowing and the ability to spend time with them as a student is just fantastic.
Speaker 2:We'll move on to a segment of this conversation, which is the power of three round Louis, 13 July 2025. What would those three things that you tell Louis Miranda of which is the power of three round, luis, 13 July 2025. What would those three things that you tell Luis Miranda of 2025? Basically, this is your advice for your future self. Sure, I think three things.
Speaker 1:One be good in Indian languages. I think that's been a handicap for me when I go work in the village that we have a place in outside Nasik. I'm handicapped because I'm not fluent in Marathi, one of the NGOs that I chair, kuro. I am handicapped because I'm not that fluent as I should be even in Hindi. So one is be good in languages. Two is be fitter. In the last three years I've had three surgeries, some of it I can claim that I was totally not responsible for. But my bypass operation two years ago I was part, I contributed to it. So yeah, so stay, don't ignore your physical fitness. And the third bit of advice is don't change anything else. That I've done in the last 62 years. Everything else is fine. I have no regrets in that.
Speaker 2:Three book recommendations for all listeners, Luis.
Speaker 1:Okay, the first one would be a book that one of my professors wrote, george Stigler. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics. His book is called the Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist. So that's the first book. The second is a book called Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, which actually impacts. So first book, george Stigler taught me really the role and the limitations of government. The second book, on Poor Economics, taught me about understanding people's behavior and why a lot of NGOs, some of the interventions they do, don't make sense and why some of them make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:And the third book is a book called, written by a rabbi whose name I don't remember, but the book's called when Bad Things Happen to Good People, and it's a book that I came across when one of my cousins was diagnosed at the years in his 20s and had cancer. His mother, my cousin, had written to me saying, listen, I need to get some medicines from the US. And I just walked into the University of Chicago bookstore that morning and the first book that hit me was this book, when Bad Things Happen to Good People. And it's a great book I found, which really helps people who are struggling when shit happens.
Speaker 1:And the first thing and this was written by a rabbi who found out that his son was a young kid and was not going to live past his teens, and he talks about the agonizing, initially trying to figure out why did that happen, and blaming and trying to figure out why did that happen, and you know, and blaming and trying to figure out reasons why it happened, and his conclusion was there's no point trying to understand why it happens, but the fact is that it has happened. What do you do now? And so that's what I found. So I found these three books are books that I would recommend as highly influential in my life.
Speaker 2:Now the book's recommendations as highly influential in my life. Now the book's recommendations state three life lessons through your journey.
Speaker 1:I think, something we talked about earlier, lbw, okay, role of luck. Sometimes it's not all that you do Now the brilliance luck plays a large role. Two, the toolbox you have, the skills that you pick up, is very important to have. And three, artwork Wonderful. The LBW, I think, is a lesson.
Speaker 2:That stays on, particularly for all the cricket-loving fans. Lbw easier mantra. Yep Luis, if you were to recommend three individuals to be featured on this podcast, who would those three individuals be?
Speaker 1:I think the first one would be Julia Roberts, because there was a movie she was in and I can't believe that I've pretty woman 30 women and I saw that movie with my girlfriend at that time at Eros theater and during the movie I said to myself I got to get married. My wife had never forgiven me for going for a movie about a prostitute and then proposing to her. But that's exactly what happened and I came on and many years later I bumped into Richard Gere on a flight and I told him the story. And I'm still waiting to meet Julia Roberts. So when you get to interview her about the impact she had on people's lives, please call me for that interview.
Speaker 1:I guess someone else who I guess I would love to serve, is it people that you would like to interview or the people that I would like to interview? It can be either of it, okay. So then, another person I think for you to bring on board is a guy called Dr Bang. He and his wife have done some fabulous work in Gachiroli, and just hearing their story has just been phenomenal. They've been highly awarded by the government also.
Speaker 1:But the lesson that they came up with when they started their work in Gachiroli they came in studying at Johns Hopkins and they had the template as to what they would do and suddenly realized that that's not what the community wanted. And they realized that if you want to be successful in whatever you do, you've got to do what people want and not what you, sitting on the top, believe that's to be done. So I think their story has been extremely influential. And the third person I'd say is someone who actually taught me a lot on leadership Again, it sounds like I'm a cricketing fan, which I'm not really Gary Custon, and I got to know him when I was on the board of Delhi Daredevils and he was our coach and his lessons over there about how he brought the Indian team and led it to success, to their World Cup victory, was also a fabulous story. So yeah, these three people.
Speaker 2:So you gave a list of fantastic guests and you have made my life that much more harder to chase them down Great. So one piece that I ask all my guests, Louis, is micro experiments that they do for them to live the life they have been living. From that context, what has been your three micro experiments? Go to three micro experiments.
Speaker 1:So I'll tell you about three things that I have on my phone as a reminder on my Google calendar every day. But to help me reiterate it, the first is Jomo, the joy of missing out. It's a reminder every day that say no to things. You don't have to be involved in everything. So Jomo is so important for us. The second is be present.
Speaker 1:I have the bad habit of multitasking, and why is my wife mad? She'll say she'll tell me something and she get irritated because I was doing something else. I would repeat everything exactly verbatim to what she said, but she's irritated because I wasn't concentrating what she was saying. So I have a reminder to myself that to be more present. And the third is and this is like spitting, I don't know what I'm doing is a wrong micro-experiment. The third is single servings, and what this means is I have a seafood problem. I see food I eat. So the question is like you know, how do I just not take? So I realized that the best way to do it is just help yourself once and don't go back for a second. So these are the three sort of micro-experiments that I do One to be present than three single sellings.
Speaker 2:I would want to ask you a couple of things on the philosophies of life. One is again, I want to draw your attention on one of the blog posts that you wrote, which was there's more life than just finance, and I would say it's easier when you're at this stage of your career to kind of reflect back and saying, okay, this is what it is. That's the argument a lot of the people would have when they're at this stage of your career, it kind of reflect back and saying that this is what it is. That's the argument a lot of the people would have when they're building their careers. So what's your take on that? Why is life of purpose is a lot more important than a life that is left just on finance?
Speaker 1:You know people told me, lewis, it's fine for you to talk about purpose and all that stuff because you made money. And the fact is that, no, I've always said that. And actually go back to a conversation I had way back in 1989. I was just I was 27 at that time and I was having dinner in New York with one of my classmates, and I remember that dinner for two reasons. This was with his father, was the Dean of Philosophy at the American Catholic University and he asked me a question at dinner. He goes what are your, your plans? So I told him I'm going back to city bank and I'm working in mumbai. He said but what are your longer term plans? I said I want to get into politics. This was way back in 1989, not when I'm, when I have, when I'm 62. And he asked me why? And I gave him the, the standard crap that we talk about when we're in our 20s. I want to have an impact. I want to change the world. Blah, blah, blah. And he told me something which is so profound. He said Louis, you don't need to be a politician to change the world. The world needs good bankers. Be a good banker. The world needs good lawyers, the world needs good accountants, the world needs good gardeners, the world needs good teachers. So whatever you do, if you're doing it well, you have an impact and that's important for people to understand. So this thing of purpose and having a larger goal to work towards is important. I've now got into politics so I realized that what I articulated in 89 was wrong in a way. But what I meant to say in 89 was not that I want to get into politics, but I wanted to have a purpose in whatever I did. Coming back to India was the purpose, because it was that if I wanted to do something, I'd rather do it back in my own country than do it somewhere else. I never expected this was in 89, before the opening up of 91. So I never expected that to happen, but it happened and I was lucky that in 91, the markets opened up and created opportunities which I never dreamed about.
Speaker 1:When we started HDFC Bank, it was not about to build a bank which would be worth $157 billion. That was never on the card. It was just about how do you build up a bank that can show people that we can build up a great Indian bank in it? That was the purpose. Similarly, when we started IDFC, private private equity, it wasn't about making money, it was about how can we improve the quality of infrastructure in the country. That's what the aim was, and similarly with ispp, which is, anyway, it's a non-profit and I'm putting in money instead.
Speaker 1:Uh, and actually it's interesting this one ad over here that you know it's given me more joy and my wife more joy giving money away than making that money. It's just amazing the sort of the adrenaline rush we get from giving money away. So it's so much higher than making it. But it's about how do we sort of build up the next gen policy leader. So that's important and it's just more than just about, you know, making that money and I've got that view right from when I was a young kid. It's not something that's happened now after making the money, it's right from before. If that was the reason, I would not have quit a lot of other places I did along the way.
Speaker 2:And in all of this, like they say, bogged road, how important it is for taking care of the self.
Speaker 1:If you ask my wife, she'll tell me that I work too hard, I don't take care of myself. I mean literally. I've had three surgeries in the last three years. I had six bypasses. I don't even know what word to use for that, it's two, triples, six bypasses, the graft's done. I had a hernia last year and then I had a kidney tumor this year which was malignant.
Speaker 1:I actually don't get too worried about it, but it taught me certain lessons here. I actually wrote a blog a couple of years after my surgery and I think the lesson that I took from this out of 41, don't ignore the role of genetics in your life. I should have realized in hindsight that I have a history of heart problems in my family. I'm going to have a heart problem 80% of and this is a number that my surgeon came up with. I have no idea where he got it from, but I had a quote of that a significant part of heart problems is genetic. So if you've got a trail of you can't ignore that. You are more than 50% likely to have a problem if you don't take care of it. So that's genetics is important.
Speaker 1:Second is sleep. I used to pride myself in sleeping four hours. I was this hero. I worked hard, I kicked butt and I think at that stage of my life it was good that I did it. I spent time. I was a good father, I spent time with the kids. I never missed any parent-teacher meeting, et cetera concept of this and I also played hard. I worked hard, but at this stage I realized that no one can beat a hero. So sleep is important. Get the 7-8 hours of sleep. Third is exercise. I mean during COVID I had slowed down on my exercising and that led to a lot of the problems that I had. I go for a walk every day. I sort of do some spend trading also because that's important.
Speaker 1:The fourth is limit how much you eat that single serving story which I talked about earlier. That's about it. Control the size of the portions you eat. The next one is the food types that you eat. That is also important. Make sure you have a balance of protein, carbs and fiber in your food.
Speaker 1:The sixth one is take your medications. I was very proud of the fact that until I was 60, I never took any DD medication. I think I was nice. I was stupid about that. I should have started on certain things earlier, but it is what it is. So now, when you want to tell me take a medicine, pop it here. And the seventh lesson is listen to your wife. She still doesn't think that I've listened to the last point very carefully. But yeah, these are the seven lessons that I got, and then later on I added one more, which was after my kidney, sort of, for another tumor on my kidney is do annual health checkups.
Speaker 1:Annual health checkups help me identify my bypass and help me identify my kidney, and I think that's so important here. And I've been lucky. I've been lucky because, one, I've had early warning signals. Two, I have a network of friends who can connect me to the best doctors. And three, I have the money to afford the treatment or the insurance policy. I chair a health insurance company, but most people in India don't have that benefit, and that's something which is driving me to say what can we do to create affordable and accessible healthcare in India? And we're starting at ISP, a center. We just focus on that here.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. I just love the broad variety of topics that we covered, starting with your stint at Citi, all the way till taking care of the self and the importance of self. Thank you so much for sharing those, Luis. This show is all about creating ripples of inspiration. Before we sign off, what's your Inspire Someone Today?
Speaker 1:message to all of our listeners In the end, we only regret the chances we didn't take. Just don't have regrets in life. That's the simple lesson. Whatever you want to do, do it. Death brings a finality. So if there's a person who's old and you say I got to go meet that person or I want to talk to that person, don't wait till tomorrow. That person may die. Don't have regrets, that's all. When you are in your own deathbed and you sort of got your last minute, you got to look back and say what a life I had. That's it. So I think it's just a regret-free life is what I'd tell people to aim for. Just a regret-free life is what I'd tell people to aim for.
Speaker 2:What a lovely message. I definitely will have no regret of the fact that I didn't get you on the show. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Inspire Someone today. This is Shrikant, your host, signing off. Until next time, continue to carry the repulse of inspiration, stay inspired, keep spreading the light.
