Ep 1- Rajeev Amatya : The mindset we all want

Rajeev Amatya is the cofounder and the Managing Director at Kaymu Nepal. Rocket Internet, a German based company and the parent company of Kaymu Nepal is one the pioneer in e-commerce business in Nepal. Before joining Kaymu he has worked as an Investment banker and Strategic consultant. He is also the co-founder and CEO of 88Yaks based in Italy.

When he had been to our University as a guest speaker, people said he is just too young to be the “Managing director” of one of the largest online business in Nepal . And I was like why not; would you expect a fifty plus person to be sited on the director post of an online business? No offense to people who are in their fifties; I don’t think age matters at all. If anything matters, then it’s the willingness to learn, explore the opportunities around and calculate your risk. It’s all about your mindset and this is what I learned from the brief conversation I had with Rajeev Amatya.

Here are the five mind sets we all need:

1.     Follow your interests and there can be more than one passion for you

I know it’s a cliché but it is the one thing that works. Rajeev does not have any particular interest in one field. He humorously mentioned he is not very good at anything. That meant he was always open to new things.

Rajeev was a student of Accounting and Management strategy. He worked as an investment banker, Strategic Consultant and in many other fields. He has less of an academic background of what he does now in Kaymu. When I entered his office, he said he was learning Machine Learning simply because he wanted to.

While he is great at what he does, he does not believe he will be working on one industry all his life. So whatever interests him, he learns about it.

2.     Find your motivational place and go there everyday

There might be your favorite YouTube channel or podcast you enjoy or a book from your long waited wish-list-to-read. Do something that challenges your recent knowledge. Surprisingly Rajeev is not into reading books ( I always thought great minds read a lot of books), These days you can find almost anything on YouTube so there is no compulsion of reading to learn new things.

How many of us have scrolled through Facebook for five minutes and realize we have been doing that for an hour or so. Well, it will take a strong will power not to do that but there are always ways to be more productive. So find your motivational place and go there every day. You know they say about the bath and motivation do not last long, so we recommend them every day.  

Five awesome websites you can learn from:

a)     Coursera

b)  Highbrows  

c ) Curious    

d) Lynda    

e) Code Academy    

3.     Predict today. Just Today.

We have big dreams and we schedule our time for achieving that dream. We are occupied by our chase to have a business started or have a great job or settling in. What we miss to realize in that chase is that we have only today to work upon our entire dream. Have a to-do-list for today and only today. Okay, you can have a master to-do-list but you can only act upon today’s list. Grab today’s opportunity to realize you dream and everything will fall into their places eventually.

When Rajeev started talking with Kaymu guys, he had two options; one was to stay in Berlin with his work and another was to come to Nepal and start a company from scratch. There was an awful amount of risk for starting an online business in Nepal. He picked the option to start the company. Even if things would have gone wrong with this business he would have learn much strong lessons than if he had choose the other option. 

4.     Get a Mentor

Having a real life Oogway is always great. But even if you don’t have one, you can search for your Oogways and ask them to share their knowledge. Everyone is willing to share their knowledge, you just need to ask. Email them or go on meetings with them, I am sure they will respond to your request. May be not all but definitely some will.

I got to have this conversation with Rajeev because I asked if he could spare some time talking about his experiences. See this works. Okay, not always but whenever it does, you get your Oogway for a short period of time. Unlike Po you can have as many Oogways you want.
( This is in reference to the movie Kung fu Panda, if you have not seen the movie please do, it's awesome!)

5.     Pay attention to your health

Seems obvious. But most of us don’t find time to work out. We can’t function with rusted mind and body. And exercise is one way to keep our body away from rusting. Being in our twenties we don’t normally care about our eating and exercise habit (until we are dating someone) but having a good eating habit and regular exercise can help us to have a more productive day.