The first time we appeared in the press
The first time we appeared in the press was 15 years ago, on September 5th.
I first spoke to Nikhil Walavalkar as Sachin, my pseudonym for speaking to clients during sales calls. You didn’t want the CEO making sales calls. 😬 By the way, I’ve even met customers pretending to be Sachin in the early days of Zerodha.
Anyway, one day I got a call and picked it up as Sachin. Turns out it was a journalist from Economic Times, and I was shocked. I had to suddenly switch from Sachin to Nithin. I faked a weird accent so that I wouldn’t be recognised. 😬
When this story came out, our account openings suddenly went from a few hundred accounts a month to almost 500. I was convinced I had discovered a growth hack.
Over the next 5–6 years, I spoke to countless journalists, until 2017–18 when the popularity of traditional financial media started declining due to social media and other factors.
That’s when I started posting on Twitter and LinkedIn. Until then, I wasn’t that active. If you look at what’s been more beneficial for us between traditional media and social media, there’s no comparison at all.
The ability to tell your own story directly to the people is powerful. Of course, you need to know how to tell your story well. 😬 If not, you become a meme.