The work, and the rooms it happened in.

Ritu Tawde

• Ritu Tawde
• Mayor of Mumbai

She validated the work and showed me it mattered to the entire city, not just to me. What moved me most was realising our missions were perfectly aligned — we both wanted to make Mumbai financially literate. A personal mission suddenly became a civic responsibility, backed by city leadership. I understood then that I wasn't working alone in my room; I was part of something systemic, something real, something that could actually change Mumbai. Knowing the city's leadership believed in the mission became the fuel for everything that followed.

When your passion meets the city's need, transformation becomes inevitable.

Ridham Desai

• Ridham Desai
• Managing Director, Morgan Stanley

Meeting him gave the work a global perspective I did not have before. He showed me that financial literacy is not a Mumbai problem or an India problem — it is a worldwide need, and a leader at one of the world's most respected financial institutions believed it mattered at scale. His insights made me realise that the principles I was teaching young Indians would serve them in a globalised economy, and that the second book was not just local content: it was preparing the next generation for real wealth creation. It changed how I think about finance — not as a domestic concern, but as a universal language young people have to master.

When a global leader sees your vision, you realise it is bigger than you imagined.

Radhika Gupta

• Radhika Gupta
• MD & CEO, Edelweiss Asset Management

I had the opportunity to meet one of India's leading voices in finance and investing. She became CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund in 2017 and was subsequently appointed MD & CEO, with a background spanning finance, technology and economics, including studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton — the same three subjects this whole site is built around, in someone who has actually run money with them.

Millionaire Roadmap, launched

• Esha Deol
• Actor
• Book launch · Taj Santacruz · 14 October 2026

The same evening, at the same hotel, Esha Deol launched Millionaire Roadmap at the event presented by Team Applaud. There is a strange moment when a book you wrote alone, over two years, is held up by someone else in front of a room — it stops being yours in the way a manuscript is yours, and becomes something people can pick up and argue with. That is the whole point of publishing, and it is also the part nobody warns you is quietly terrifying.

A book is finished the day it stops being yours.