Inspiring Story of a Self-Starter: An inspiring episode with Michael McGrath who speaks with Kunal Sawhney, founder of equity research company, Kalkine.
Kalkine, now has offices and teams in several countries and the business is growing quickly. But growth and profitability wasn’t always easy nor assured, especially during the GFC. Listen to Kunal as he shares his journey, including the pain and angst of staying solvent, the many sleepless nights when he cried himself to sleep, as he wrestled with the challenge of building a viable product and profitable company.
In this captivating Troubleshooters episode, Kunal shares how he persevered, and pivoted to build the equity research and media company it is today.
He also shares the Kalkine approach to equity investing based on the value investing principle and ‘margin of safety’, as advocated by the American economist, Benjamin Graham, and investors such as Warren Buffet, and shares some tips about emerging industries, such as Electric Vehicles and crypto and private companies.
About Kunal
Kunal Sawhney is the founder & CEO at Kalkine. He is a richly experienced and accomplished financial professional with a wealth of knowledge in the Australian Equities Market. Kunal obtained a Master of Business Administration from University of Technology, Sydney. He has extensive expertise in quantitative and qualitative stock selection practices.
Kunal features as a guest speaker on various equity research platforms and news channels on a regular basis, sharing his valuable insights on the subject. His firm provides a holistic view towards stock investment recommendations to retail investors with respect to financial performance, strategy, and industry catalysts.
Email: kunal@kalkine.com
Website: www.kalkine.com.au
Transcript below
Note: This has been automatically transcribed so is likely to have errors! It may however help you navigate the points of interests for you.
Michael: Welcome to the Troubleshooters Podcast with me, your host, Mike McGrath. And my guest today is a fantastic troubleshooter. Kunal Sawhney, is the founder and CEO of Kalkine, an independent equities research firm. Kunal is a big thinker. Inspired by his hero Steve Jobs, he started his business from his kitchen table just after the GFC. He has now expanded to Canada, UK, the US and India with more than 500 staff. Kunal loves equities, and he’s driven by the idea of bringing world class research to mom and dad investors. Hi, Kunal, welcome to the Troubleshooters Podcast.
Kunal: Thanks, Mike. Thank you for inviting me.
Michael: Tell me a bit about the firm, because you think big, don’t you? You’ve become global.
Kunal: That’s correct
Michael: So tell us a bit about what’s going on now. And then we’ll delve a bit back into your past.
Kunal: Sure. So Kalkine was started about eight years back. And we are an independent equities research house. Plus we are a media house. And so we have Kalkine Media and Kalkine Equities Research. We are currently in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada and US. We have a back-office in India. So we are currently in about six countries. We’re looking to expand this further. Our global revenues are approximately about 18 to 20 million. And we are looking to expand further in Europe and expand further in the US.
Michael: And so this is a subscription model, right?
Kunal: So we have a subscription model and a media b2b advertising model. The subscription model is majority of our revenue about 90%. And 10% is the media model.
Michael: So you started about 15 years ago, and you like you like Benjamin Graham, who we know influenced Warren Buffett. So you’ve got a bias towards value investing, buy, hold, the long term…
Kunal: If we look at them, even the ASX, let’s talk about ASX. And if we look at some of the American, you know, stocks, whether we look at Amazon, or even if you look at the big four banks in Australia, in the year 2000, when there was a.com crash, and then in 2008, there was the financial crisis. And then I think in 2011, or 12, there was the European crisis, where the European Union was about to break due to Greece. And then there was now there was the pandemic a couple of years back where we had a huge 30% crash. But one thing you that you would see in all these things, you know, Commonwealth Bank was, is today more than $100. Back then it was like $10. 20 years back. And that has given you 1,000% growth. So you know, and if you divide that by 20 years. That is 50%. Yeah, pretty much per year.
Michael: Well, I can tell you love the market. So let’s have a chat about the market then. And so the current, if you look at the All Ords at the moment, it’s about 7800, quite near the recent highs. So things look pretty ok in Australia from a market point, even though we’ve got a war going on, effectively, and we’ve got inflation emerging. And we’re just, you know, we’ve just, we’ve just moved through a pandemic, the markets have been incredibly resilient, haven’t they?
Kunal: That’s correct. There are a few reasons for that I’m gonna say. In Australia, we can see there’s a lot of money being pumped number of grants being given, number of loans being given, that is obviously encouraging the spending. I think we’ve recently seen in the budget, there were a few more grants. So obviously, that’s pumping
Michael: A significant liquidity.
Kunal: That’s correct. That’s correct. And, you know, the old phrase money is cheap. That is still valid today. I think the interest rates are 2 to 3%. So you know, that is still pretty prevalent, people are borrowing quite heavily to invest in the financial markets, people are looking for opportunities.
Michael: No, it’s been incredibly resilient. I mean, if you’d said to me, when we had that we had a fairly significant correction, what 25- 30% at the beginning of COVID, right? If anyone had said to me at that point, where you’re going to be back on him in seven or eight months, back to those highs or maybe 12 months later, I would have thought you were on drugs at that point. But how wrong how wrong was I? I mean, what were your thoughts at that point? What were you telling your clients at the beginning of COVID?
Kunal: So obviously when the crash happened, you know, we were a bit worried. But once again, looking at Benjamin Graham and looking at the longer-term investing side of things. And again if you look at the charts. If you look at NASDAQ, if you look at S&P 500, if you look at ASX, they have all gone up over the past 20 years past 10 years, even with all the wars and all the financial crisis and everything. So I think we are in general pretty bullish about the markets. Yes, there will be hiccups. Yes, there will be downturns. Yes, there will be the 1987 Black-Monday. But overall, if you look at the longer-term horizon, and if you have good companies, like the big four banks, like the grocery stores, like the big financial institutions and technology companies, they have generally done really well.
Michael: I mean, certainly we’re looking forward to some inflationary period, I think of some sort, probably more than we’ve seen, for quite a long time. Stocks are generally a pretty good hedge against inflation. I mean, so that will be another reason why you could see money coming into stocks.
Kunal: That’s correct. And, and once again, I think let’s talk about the technology side of things, because we are very bullish on technology companies. So whether you look at the FANG stocks, which is Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, and Google. Okay, so these companies have done really well. Now. I was in the morning, before coming for this podcast, I was reading about Netflix, that Netflix is facing a lot of challenges, because the content cost has gone up and the number of subscribers is not growing.
Michael: Yeah. And there’s competition perhaps ,
Kunal: a lot of competition, with Disney and other new players coming through. So I think every now and then we will have companies struggling, the bigger ones as well. But if you look, again, look at the longer-term picture. Right now there is a new opportunity coming in the EV sector. So obviously everyone knows about Tesla. But I think there are a lot more companies coming through now. Who will have electric vehicles and I think there’s a huge opportunity there. And there is a huge opportunity for Australia there, with the amount of lithium that Australia produces.
Michael: Kunal we’re gonna come back to some tips because we’re not going to let you get away without any tips. But just coming back to you building your business right, now of James, my chief spy was right, it hasn’t always been, it hasn’t always been “easy-peasy” for you. Right? You’ve had some real struggles. So tell me about the day you decided you were going to start in business? And then give me that bit of a journey, right? Because, you know, most of us have had a near death experience of some sort. So you, you know, let’s just park the equities for a minute and go right your business. How’d you get it?
Kunal: Okay, so we started in 2014, or 13. Yeah, about 2013.
Michael: So just after the GFC basically. So the market was recovering?
Kunal: Market was recovering. And I think touchwood we were in the lucky phase, the markets did well in that time, okay. But where I struggled is, I was a one-man band, we didn’t have any employees. So I was maintaining the website, I was writing the research, I was selling the research, I was going on all the business channels to promote the company. So it took a lot of toll on me personally. And for the first three years, there were not many profits in the business. So I didn’t pay myself a salary. So imagine this working with no money and investing money for the first three years. I pretty much I used to cry every night that you know, what am I doing to myself? So you know, when entrepreneurs say that we sleep like a baby, you know, I do sleep like a baby: I wake up every two hours and cry. So yeah. So it was a huge struggle for the first three years.
Michael: So what was your dream like, ‘cos something was keeping you going through that?
Kunal: I think the dream was I really saw a huge opportunity to help people to help investors all over the world. So I think I read a lot of books. And if you look at Napoleon Hill, which is “Think and Grow Rich”, the old time favourite, you know, one thing they do say that you have to dream big, because if you dream small, things are not going to happen for you. So I always dreamt big. And what I kept on doing was whatever little money I made in the business, I kept on reinvesting it. And I kept on opening up new countries, New Zealand, UK, Canada, so on. We started the media business that has given a lot of branding to our business. So overall, I always kept on pushing the boundaries. And I always once again, I’m coming to the tech business and digital business. The good thing about a digital business is you can expand it pretty quickly. Okay, you don’t need to open shops, you don’t need to, you know, export goods, okay? It’s a pure digital business. We don’t even publish a single piece of paper. And you can expand it very rapidly in a very short span of time.
Michael: We’re going from you by yourself, right, one man and a dog. And now we’ve got 400 people offshore in India. There was a lot to do and a lot of people to employ. So how did you go with funding? You know, what were the milestones for you?
Kunal: So, so one thing that we did is, we still haven’t taken any outside funding, you and I speak quite a bit about it. So we don’t have any outside funding. I still control the 100% of the business. So one thing that we were able to do efficiently was manage our cost. And the big thing to do was going offshore and doing stuff. And I think that is one of the reasons which really helped to scale up my business in a very quick fashion.
Michael: So you got your tech-belt in India effectively, and a lot of the back-end is going on there. You know the market well, very good technical skills in India, yeh?
Kunal: So engineers in India would cost you per annum, a good engineer would cost you about 60 to $70,000. So, they’re not as cheap as they used to be. Okay, but they’re still cheaper than most Western countries where you have to pay $150,000. So you’re paying half of what you would pay here. Okay so I think that is what has helped us to manage the cost, and not raise any capital. And, Mike, you work with a number of businesses where before they make any money, you know, they have to raise a huge amount of capital, so the good thing is, we haven’t been in that boat, we have been able to manage it in a very efficient fashion. And once again, the biggest struggle that I face, because I just came from India last week, is to still manage that offshore piece, because I have to go there once a month and see what’s happening and how things are going and meet the engineering team, the sales team, compliance team, you know, and so on, research team, content team. So it’s not just one piece, there are 10 pieces of this puzzle that you need to solve.
Michael: ‘Cos I mean, that, you know, we talked a little bit and you were telling me that the I mean, the compliance regime is different in every territory. So that’s, that’s taken enormous toll, you know, you might not have a lot of capital expenditure, but you do have a lot of professional fees and compliance costs. As you move into particularly the US you were saying.
Kunal: That’s correct. So we hire the top-tier law firms to do our compliance. So we don’t compromise on that. And that is not cheap. Okay. And then you need the Big Four, and BDO’s and the grand consultancies of this world to help you with taxation, compliance, and other stuff.
Michael: You’ve built up a great fire, you’ve got 1000s of subscribers. So and so you’re, you’re effectively helping them make good decisions around their investments. And that’s, I presume, what drove you, is that you saw a great opportunity to, to help mom and dad type investors get informed about what they’re doing.
Kunal: Mike, you just answered the question earlier, when you asked me a question about you having a physical stockbroker in ’87. Okay, how many people have physical stockbrokers now? No one. okay, everyone is using CommSec or Westpac or E-trade or Superhero,. Number of brands, right, and how these people want to do research, so they don’t have time to go to a financial planner, or, hire a researcher themselves. So that’s where at a very minimal cost, we can offer them a good product, and they want to subscribe to us. And we have seen the growth of SMSFs in Australia. And ISA in UK. And we have seen people loving to invest in stocks themselves online using an App. And that’s where we come into the picture. So we have so when I say that, you know, let’s say we have got, you know, more than 10,000 paid subscribers. I would also say that this is just the tip of the iceberg you know. We can get to a million subscribers. It’s up to us how we execute on the technology side.
Michael: Yes, yeah. And so the advice you’re giving, obviously, you were, you know, you know, that fundamental “value investing”, you know, you know, Warren Buffett is a phenomenon, I love really kind of love what he’s done. And, but it’s interesting, Charlie Munger influenced him. ‘Coz originally, you know, using Benjamin Graham he was, he calls it, he was investing in fag-buts, those cigarette butts, right? And Charlie Munger said, Nana, let’s, we’re better off if we, if we buy, you know, great companies for a good price, then, then, you know, not so good companies for a great price. So there was a shift there. So where’s your, what’s driving your researchers at the moment? Is it fundamental analysis, technical analysis, is it a combination?
Kunal: So we are a number of things, we look at fundamental, we look at technicals. These days we’re also looking at a lot of work done by venture capitalist firms like Sequoia Capital, like Andreessen Horowitz, like Kleiner Perkins. So we’re looking at where these companies are putting their money in. So if you see, you know, lately, Andreessen Horowitz has done really well with Airbnb, and companies have done really well with Uber. Okay, so we are also looking at the technology space quite closely where these companies are putting their money. Okay, so we just look at, obviously, we look at Benjamin Graham, we look at Warren Buffett, we look at venture capitalists, then we also are these days looking quite closely at the commodity space. Now, lately, we have seen Twiggy Forest investing quite heavily in hydrogen. And there are a number of Australian commodity producers who are investing quite heavily in lithium. So we keep on looking at what different people in different spaces are doing. And that’s what drives us. So we have, we have a commodity research piece, a resources research piece, we have an electric vehicle research piece, or electric vehicle research product, we have a clean-energy research product. So we look at different things from different backgrounds.
Michael: So effectively if you’re a typical subscriber, you effectively, you’d have some ideas about what you want to invest in.
Kunal: That’s correct. So if people want to invest in let’s say, resources, we have a product and resources. If people want to invest in technology, people invest in we give them a technology product. So for an example, you know, once again, here’s a great example, AfterPay in the “Buy~Now, Pay Later” space, which has done amazingly well in the last two years. From the crash to about $8 during the pandemic. It is sitting at about $169 ~70 bucks, I think last I saw. Footsie? Yes, that’s correct. So we work around Footsie, we work around the ASX, we work around TSX, which is Toronto Stock Exchange. We work around NASDAQ, we work around S&P 500. So we work around different indices and different sectors. And we always try to keep on expanding the research. Okay, now, one thing we haven’t decided yet, but one thing we are looking at, which is a new sector coming in, as you know, more and more companies remain private for a longer timeframe. So this is something that we have seen companies don’t go public
Michael: Amazing. So effectively, you you’ve got a bit of an idea about what interests you, and you’ve generally got that covered. And are you working in each of the markets separately? I mean, if I was in the UK now, and I wanted would the would the research be based around footsie? As early? Is that right? That’s a bit of a theme, is it?
Kunal: That’s correct. So now we are seeing that, you know, we are still trying to decide whether we should launch a product around this is around private companies. There are a number of products currently like CrunchBase that covers, you know, private companies, which are which are pre listing. So yeah, so we are looking at that space. Yes. Because more and more companies are remaining private for longer.
Michael: Look, it’s fascinating space. And I can tell you, you obviously love what you do. Kunal, I mean, do you see what’s the future for you?
Kunal: The future is… we have done so currently, we are a currently we are a tech-enabled business, we use a lot of technology. Okay. And the future is in two years’ time, we want to be a pure technology business. Okay, so we are working on that.
Michael: So what does that look like?
Kunal: That looks like us having our own algorithmic user interfaces that our clients can use, that looks like our own brokerage platform, that looks like our own cryptocurrency trading platform. That also looks like maybe us launching our own coin, initial coin offering where we have Kalkine launches Kalkine. So we have our own coin, that we launch as well. So we’re looking at a number of things that turns us from a tech-enabled business to a pure technology business. And as you know, Mike, this requires money. This requires investment. This requires engineers. And that’s what we’re working on.
Michael: Where do you see technology taking research then, ‘cos we’re seeing in the last two years a real-game changer there, particularly around getting data on private companies that you couldn’t get 5~10 years ago. Now we’re starting to see where AI is much more efficient at scraping what’s out there. You used to always be able to get the top 3000 companies so that, you know, no problem. But you try and get you know, five to $100 million revenue business information on those, that’s happening now. What are you seeing in terms of where you see research going for you guys?
Kunal: So obviously, as I said, this private company piece is becoming a big piece right now. And we do want to look at that. I don’t know if you read in the Financial Review, “Fin Clear”, which is one of the financial technology businesses is also launching a trading platform for private businesses. So where you can actually buy and sell fractional bits and pieces of private businesses? Okay, so they’re launching a technology platform “Fin Clear” is doing that. That’s what I read in the Financial Review. So, so yeah, so what we want to do is, currently, if you see the research on private companies, is getting bigger and bigger, because more and more private investors are willing to put money in private companies. Now, you are a part of that, you would know that more and more investors are coming.
Michael: We are seeing that. I mean, I would say that the regulatory environment around that is a bloody nightmare. Excuse my French, right. So you’ve got to really watch, you know, the Corporations Act in Australia is not particularly friendly to the raising of money for private companies. Because you know, the unintended consequence of the regulation to protect mom and dad is that you end up having what is somewhat of a dysfunctional regulatory regime, which almost prevents you from doing anything, because you seem to be promoting, and all of a sudden, you need an AFS license. So I think that’s a challenge. But I think you’re right, I think there is appetite. People are looking for off- market opportunities that they think they know and understand. And, you know, we’ve done a bit of that work. So I mean, but you think you can play a role there really?
Kunal: Yeah, I’m gonna say, we see there is a role there. And we see a bigger role in cryptocurrencies. Because, on the last count, there were about 10,000 cryptocurrencies, and 5 or 10 of them are coming every day, new currencies, right. And these currencies are raising millions and millions of dollars. And, and some of them are pretty opaque. You don’t know what’s happening.
Michael: Yeah, no, exactly. Okay. So I think that piece is a very, and there is a lot of a lot of capital coming into these currencies. It’s not that, you know, people are not investing money. So people are putting huge amounts of money. I mean, I’m just gonna play Warren Buffett back to you for a minute because I know you, I mean, Buffett’s very concerned about cryptocurrencies. And Charlie Munger, he is chairman, or is he the chairman? Or anyway, Charlie Munger, he’s mate right? is even more scathing of them. I mean, so but you’re obviously much more persuaded by crypto. I mean, we understand the Blockchain, which is, which is a platform on which crypto runs. That’s here to stay. And that’s got utility all over the place. But Cryptos themselves, right. You know, what, what’s your view?
Kunal: My view is they’re here to stay. My view is Warren Buffett…
Michael: And he’s probably too old is he. He’s a bit like me.
Kunal: I love Warren Buffett, but you also need to think about Elon Musk. Warren Buffett is no more the richest man in the world. It used to be he’s worth $100 billion, and Musk is worth $300 billion. Okay, so you also need to look at what the current entrepreneurs and technology guys are doing. Most venture capital firms are investing in crypto currencies. Elon Musk is big into cryptocurrencies. Okay. Most banks are starting to look at them seriously now. Earlier, they thought it was a scam. And JP Morgan, Jamie Diamond at one stage said, “this is the biggest scam”. And now he says no, he himself admitted that, “I was wrong and this is here to stay”. And if you read a bit further, most investment banks are now having trading desks for cryptos. Yeah. So this is not a phase that you will see for one year. Yes, there will be ups and downs I’m going to say. If you if you read the book, “The Bitcoin Billionaires”, you know, you will see people are investing in.
Michael: But here’s the thing, you know, I buy a share, I bought a piece of the business, right? And I own some of it. And if it makes a profit, I’ll get a return. And some people might take a view that that in the future that could be worth more money. If I buy a crypto today, it does nothing. It doesn’t help anyone. It’s just an idea. And somebody else and my only hope owning that crypto is that someone else will take a look at that crypto in the future and decide it’s worth more than I paid for it. So fundamentally, it doesn’t seem to do anything. And I’m kind of wondering…. now I’m not as well read as you on this, but what’s wrong with my analysis, then?
Kunal: Your analysis is pretty correct. But one thing again, I have to say, when the, when the, you’re a man of the 80s so you wouldn’t, when the personal computer revolution came in the 80’s~84~ 85 Yeah, no one believed it will change the world like the way it has. No one thought everyone will have a computer in their home. Right. Computers used to be $3000-$5,000 back then, they were pretty expensive. And look at today. Okay, so the point I’m trying to make, it’s only a matter of time. So big companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple came and today PC’s a everywhere forget about PCs, you know, we have smartphones now. In a similar way, okay, if the big companies who have the infrastructure, by infrastructure, I mean, on your smartphone, you have a wallet, if you use the iPhone, you have an Apple Wallet, if you use Google, Google Wallet, okay? If these companies come and launch coins tomorrow, look at Apple or Google or Facebook launching them, right. Facebook has, but it has failed. Okay. Imagine the usage? Imagine that. You have a Safe Wallet, Apple wallet in your iOS, Apple launches a coin? Would you use it, to pay for it?
Michael: Now we’re saying that the crypto, the currency will have some utility?
Kunal: That’s correct.
Michael: So that’s the bit that’s missing.
Kunal: That’s the bit that’s missing right now. And what I’m saying is, there is something called “Moore’s Law”, where it says every seven years, you know, the price of technology becomes half or less than half. Yeah, and the computing power becomes twice more than twice, right? We have seen this, I hope you remember the Pentium 486 chips, you know, and look at the cost. We have seen this with the TVs, you know, the big screen TV used to be so expensive. Now, they’re half the cost, or 1/10 of the cost. We have now you’re gonna see this with the electric cars very soon. Currently, a Tesla Model 3 is worth $110,000, top end model. In the next seven years, it might be $40-$50,000, or much cheaper. In a similar way, what I’m trying to say, if crypto was to go away, it would have gone away by now. Right? If you give it 7 or 10 years, you will see a huge change in the way people use cryptocurrencies.
Michael: Yeah. Look, I think we should have a separate podcast just on Crypto actually, that will be quite interesting. All right well that’s good, look, always enjoy chatting with you. Normally, it’s in the in the corridor, or in the toilet. So it’s great that we actually have managed to sit down. So just, we like to finish on a few simple questions. So who’s influenced you, other than Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett, who’s influential who’s been the big?
Kunal: Steve Jobs. So I really like his way of thinking, I really like the simplistic design space, the way he designs the product as an entrepreneur, the way he has scaled up the business. I think he’s …
Michael: Fascinating story, isn’t it?
Kunal: Fascinating story, with no engineering background. So yeah, so Steve Jobs is my number one influence.
Michael: Isn’t that interesting? And look, I mean, you know, he got ‘done’ from Apple, right. And then he went and, you know, independently, you know, backed Pixar. I mean, that’s unbelievable! So that guy’s just, was a phenomenon around product and quality, wasn’t he?
Kunal: That’s correct. Product and quality. And I think now, I was reading a New York Times article which said, Elon Musk makes Steve Jobs look like a slacker, because Elon Musk is in the rocket space, in the electric vehicle space, in the crypto space….
Michael: He’s just buying Twitter….
Kunal: Buying Twitter, and he’s worth $300 billion. So you know, the guy who has if you if you read his book, which I have, you know, in 2008, when he wasn’t, he was struggling to raise money for SpaceX and Tesla, he was near bankruptcy. And coming from that to being the richest guy in the world and having products and companies which millions of people are using is an amazing thing.
Michael: No it’s amazing. And I suppose the nice circular thing there is that Warren Buffett is now a huge investor in Apple, having completely been bemused by technology. I mean, even though he’s you know, he was best mates with Bill Gates and Microsoft. He’s come to the party late, but he’s come in a big way now, so I heard that 30% of his investment portfolio now is an Apple.
Kunal: Yeah, Apple is a big part of his investments. That that we do understand. But I think he loves the moat of Apple. He obviously likes that if you are in the ecosystem, you and I are in that ecosystem. It’s difficult to get out of it. Yeah, yeah.
Michael: So that’s good. And then, favourite place in the world?
Kunal: Favourite place in the world? I would say London. I love going to London. I love it as a business space, as a business hub. And there there’s always something happening, a lot of deals happening, a lot of businesses coming up, so it’s always good to be there and you know, figure out things. And obviously I love going to India, so that’s very close to me.
Michael: So look, we can’t let you go without a stock tip. Now we know you like electric vehicles, right? You see an opportunity there. Anything you like at the moment?
Kunal: Sure. So, before I say that….
Michael: Stocks can go down as well as up, so this is not advice.
Kunal: I need to say that we at Kalkine can only give general advice. So, this is very, very important from a regulatory point of view that I need to mention this.
Michael: Okay, but I’ve got my pen poised, so get to it.
Kunal: Please make sure you do your own research and speak to a financial planner or financial advisor. But in saying that, let’s talk about what I see. I’m a, I’m a huge fan of technology. I think there is a huge space in the electric vehicle space, huge opportunity there. So people should look at that EV space and when I talk about EV space, just don’t look at Tesla. Look at what Tesla needs to be a Tesla. Tesla needs lithium batteries; Tesla needs a lot of sensors. So, there are a lot of technology businesses around that.
Michael: So supplying them effectively.
Kunal: That is correct. So we have to look at the ancillary industries. Now, this time, when I was in India, again on the electric vehicle space, I saw Tata. Tata, is a huge industrial house in India, the biggest company in India. They are manufacturing electric vehicles now. And imagine if, you know, 1.3 billion people, out of which 300 million people are a middle-class who can afford these electric vehicles, start buying Tata electric vehicles or Tesla electric vehicles, this space is going to zoom. And by 2030, there’s a number of research reports which say that electric vehicle market is going to double. Okay, and in some European countries, especially Norway and some of the other countries, UK as well, where they’re saying they’re going to phase out petroleum vehicles by 2035 or 2040. You will see a huge demand for electric vehicles. Okay. So, this is the first piece. And I think the second piece, which is where I see a huge opportunity is in the listed companies related to cryptocurrencies, okay. So, you know, we and you will see more and more of these companies getting listed related to cryptocurrency, so I will see this piece, also developing into a huge piece.
Michael: Okay, interesting. That was a great chat. Kunal. Thank you so much for coming in. And congratulations to everything you’re doing at Kalkine.
Kunal: I just want to say to your listeners, one last piece, that at some stage, we want to make Kalkine a publicly listed company. And so keep an eye out. That’s the only thing.
Michael: Yeah, no, we will. We’ll give them the pre-IPO update.
Kunal: Yeah. So we haven’t decided when, but we are working on. Okay, great
Michael: Excellent! Wow, what an interesting guy. I love Kunal’s ability to think globally. If you want to follow Kunal, or check out his market insights, we’ve put the detail in the show notes. Now, a quick shout out to our sponsors, Oasis Partners. – Corporate advisors, who specialize in helping business owners unlock the value in their companies. They’ve done over 500 deals. Yeah. 500 deals!
So if you’re thinking of selling, or you just want to discuss succession, call the guys that are Oasis.
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