Watch: Early Retirement in India: Tier-2 FIRE and Business Story

3:57 We were never able to explain exactly what it was but I think it was something around that even us is very capitalistic and there is a lot of hard work that you have to keep doing and you feel that there is a little bit of distance between you and your parents who are living in India and we could imagine the same thing from our kids like they would feel distant from us and somewhere it felt a little lonely I think in the longer run so we knew that at this age it was not something that that would bother us because we would just get busy in our careers busy in raising the family and just enjoying what else is out there but in a couple of years we could imagine being at a state where it didn't feel that great and we knew that at that stage it becomes very difficult to come back so that's why for us it was more that we can do this sooner rather than later other than that I I'd had a baby in

5:01 In 2000 early 2018. so we were also struggling with the challenge of raising a kid as part of a nuclear family which is true in India as well I guess if you live in big cities when parents are not nearby then it's the same challenge I guess that you face but we also felt that even if we wanted to really enjoy in New York you know having a small kid is not the right time for it so so that also sort of decided the timing for us that we can go sooner rather than later got it so it sounds like you listen to your heart I mean so there is no like a concrete specific reason that you can put but your heart felt like it might be time to go maybe come back so that's great so you came back to India in 2018 so did you decide a place or like so maybe you can talk a little bit about your career transition like what was your thought process when you are planning to or when you decided to move back and

6:02 And how did you go about it yeah okay so in terms of career so I was sort of starting to get a little that a little dissatisfied on my work as well so it had been almost nine or nine years that I had been working in this organization and and again everything was really great day to day but if I imagined myself 10 years 20 years down the line being really successful in that place and becoming really senior I didn't think I would feel satisfied with the life that I've lived being sort of that self-centered I guess where I was making money for myself and living a happy not happy I would say living a luxurious life but then there wasn't a lot more character to it than that in my head at least and and

7:04 That's what was bothering me so and we had we my husband and I both didn't have a lot of like didn't have a lot of aspirations to spend on a lot of things we we always lived in a simple house we always had simple clothing and we didn't really pursue a lot of luxuries which would give us satisfaction of earning the money I would say so we we had put a decent amount of savings in our bank and we thought you know we could just take some time to to retire and and just see what what we actually want to do independent of earning money and then we could do that so when we moved back in 2018 the natural the natural place to go to was our hometown because there there is already a home and our expenses would be less and we we could just take the time off and not do any work so that's what we did and for one year we were basically just not doing anything about what we

8:07 Would want to do we explored making games we explored you know just make doing something for the local vegetable vendors on a lot of like ideas that we could think of Might exciters but nothing really stuck and and after some time we felt that maybe this isn't exactly what we want to do it didn't like sitting either at home was also not giving us a lot of satisfaction we were missing being around people going to work and that's when we thought there was also obviously some level of societal pressure I would say there were relatives around if we were living somewhere maybe nuclear maybe we wouldn't have felt as much pressure but everyone who would come home would be like why have you come back from us why are you sitting idle not doing anything when you can earn so much money so it was all of that pressure also probably

9:07 Added up and a lot of other software things wherein we then decided maybe we can take a job and then we explored that for maybe 10-15 days where we thought and we talked to a few people who were in jobs here in India and again it felt like a very hectic lifestyle that people were following and we felt like if we were you know gonna do that then then again we might end up in the same place a few years later where we were before we returned to India and that's why we felt we tried to get a little more balance in our life where it will not be this extreme that we are just not working at all and it will not be the Other Extreme where work has become everything so we'll try to be here in a smaller City close to our family and still doing some commercial activity that helps sustain us and gives us that satisfaction great so thank you for sharing that time and there's a lot of information there in that in the details that you

10:10 Provided maybe let's try to unpack a little bit more just that would be helpful for the audience and if you're okay to share so you mentioned about moving back to India and you know the lifestyle that you maintain as a minimalistic or you know trying to have that kind of a lifestyle you were planning to retire early but was the intent always that you want to take some time off and then get back and decide what you want to do or what are you thinking of like a permanent retirement and let let the life goes on that's one question I just wanted to touch base and then we can go into yeah you know I actually we were thinking of it as a permanent retirement and and we were hoping that we would find our passion that we would really want to do so my personal inclination was towards going to maybe an NGO and doing some social work and spending my life on that my husband's was a little more around having a bit of leisure I guess where you don't have to worry about anything and you kind of can

11:13 I guess what you how you put it before was probably right where you can do what your heart wants to do you don't have to like you don't have any obligations that you have to worry about in in some ways so that was so so obviously it was very different for the both of us but and we spent the year actually visiting a lot of other folks so we have a couple friends who live in mp and do organic farming there are also batchmates from ID Delhi and so so we visited them they are also kind of doing that where they're retired early we also visited another couple Who were settled in in Himachal Pradesh and so they also had moved back from us they they were they were earlier settled in gurgaon for a couple of years and then they had moved to MP so we we visited a lot of people where we felt you know those might be kind of where our life would also lead us because people who had come before us were doing

12:15 These things but none of those sort of excited us because obviously for everyone it's a very different different thing that each person's heart wants right so so any of the options that we had explored and seemed right and when we that we both of us have actually always loved technology and loved coding and loved what jobs we were doing just just maybe not in the setup that we were doing it if we could feel a little more free doing it and that's how we actually thought if this is what we really love doing that maybe we should just spend the time doing it and starting a company in a small small town also fulfilled that social aspiration inside me a little bit because it is generating employment for people who are here who don't want to move to a big city or just helping in that sustainability a little bit I guess yeah great thanks for sharing that so it

13:18 Was a permanent plan of our retirement but after exploring like you know what you really want maybe you're trying to balance it out based on just an experience at least for now right until whatever your heart feels perfect yeah if if it is okay I mean this is a common question that comes across like a lot of aspirants from written to India especially a lot of people might be considering you know retiring after moving here because they don't want to continue the corporate world or whatever the reasons from your perspective if you're open is there certain numbers right in terms of like you know you have to think about like how much of Corpus fun like how much of savings that you need to have in your account based on your expenses I think that would be helpful again this is not like a fire kind of like a retired early kind of a deep dive so this is just a quick point that we can touch yeah no I think I can just share some numbers what we had worked out for ourselves we had thought that because you'll be living in a smaller City maybe you know

14:20 Two lakhs a month kind of expense works for us so 24 lakhs a year is kind of what we need and you can sort of try to back calculate from there how much money you need to have invested so that you can have that much returns coming in we were always hoping we can generate some sort of passive income Source in India as well we can maybe have some some we had some property of our parents so we were thinking maybe we can construct something there give it out on rent to generate some income or we're also in the middle thought we built an Airbnb here so that that can help fulfill the need of meeting people and also and also generating some income so that is what our plan was but yeah I think I think when like truly there is no income coming in you also start spending less for just some psychological reason and and that's why I didn't think that particular aspect was very hard my my

15:24 Personal feeling is probably very different to conventionally how we think in this is that we should not worry about that aspect so much because no matter how much money you have you will always like as you keep earning more your lifestyle keeps becoming more and more expensive and at each point you will feel that money is not sufficient to ever retire so so it's like if you're feeling the need to take this down if you should and then figure out the money aspect you know on the side and and I'm making an assumption here but I feel like most of the people who are even considering this are fortunate enough in terms of the intellect they've got or the hard work they've got that they would be able to make it fine right because they've reached the stage in their life where they're no longer struggling with basic needs even thinking about five and if they've reached that stage I

16:25 Think they'll be fine in life and they would be able to earn something or the other yeah there is never a end to your desire right I mean the more is always better but it's also determining what's more important you know whether continuing that race or this is a quality of life that I would like to maintain and based on that you can do everybody's calculation is different everybody's way of looking at the life is different but thank you very much for sharing that I think that's very helpful maybe just going back to some of the things that you have mentioned since you worked in Bangalore you worked in like a big Metro in New York which is much different than like I think you know when you move back to the hometown I don't know where you like moved back so you can tell about that so maybe my question is more about is there something that you miss in terms of the interactions the intellectuals or like some of the things that are available right I think because a big Metro is different from maybe a a

17:26 Small or like in a medium town so if you can talk a little bit about living in these big metros like in India us yes and then like coming back to another town in India I think that would be very helpful for someone who is considering about moving to like a tattoo City or three City so that would be very valuable sure so absolutely I think living in Bangalore as a bachelor was definitely amazing because there are a lot of like things to do friends to me like most of your friends from college would also be in one of these three four big cities so there's a lot of fun you can have and at that point I think people don't have very many responsibilities as well so it's it's sort of the stage of life as well where you enjoy all of those things very much was again I think very similar in that sense that there was like there is this whole breadth of experience available in New York where

18:26 No matter what your interests you will find enough people who are interested in the same thing and there'll be some or the other community that you can find and engage yourself in within those interests but at this stage of Life at least when I moved to karnal I live in karnal now which is in haryana I feel the smaller cities in India have also gotten very nice infrastructure at least in this area in and around Delhi so my place is about two and a half hours from Delhi and so the thing I like about the city is it's not very far from Delhi it's not very far from Chandigarh so I can find enough of my friends in these two cities that we can connect regularly the roads are amazing so travel time is not a lot and again the airport connectivity similarly we have airports in both these places so it doesn't take me very long to go to the airport as well then in a regular day-to-day way I don't have to

19:28 Deal with a lot of traffic I don't have to like going anywhere is not a hassle and then we can also hire a lot of help I guess here which is which is true in bigger cities as well so I don't think that's a that's much of a difference but there is definitely a level of slowdown in pace which is there in a smaller city so for example here when we live here we have a small kitchen Garden we try to spend some time growing our own vegetables because I mean that is one challenge which we truly felt in India that the food quality itself you can't really trust so I talked to a few people who are like you know related to Farmers and they said even Farmers nowadays are growing their own vegetables separately which is free from the injections and free from all the pesticides and and you know the what they're growing for commercial use is different and we're getting that commercial useful and vegetables so we're trying we're trying we're trying to find organic pulses

20:30 And Grains Etc as well trying to make sure because this was one thing which we actually truly felt as one big difference one big sort of thing we miss about New York that the food quality was really great another thing a message to people is I was definitely missing some of the things our taste got acquired to like a good pizza the kind of American Pizza which is which is more difficult to find in India but there are still places where you can find it we got used to eating cheesecakes we were used to eating avocado so but I was actually surprised we did find a shop in karnal which sells avocado yeah so so you know it's stuff is all out there I think it's just about finding it yes certain things are going to be more difficult being settled here but each place has its pros and cons and I think it's more about just seeing which ones which cons are you okay to live with definitely so yeah thanks again for

21:30 Sharing such a valuable information that's going to be very helpful maybe moving on to that another point that you mentioned which is starting a a if a business or an you know into an I.T company in in your hometown so I would love to hear a little bit more about that I mean especially finding people you know who has this experience that's one aspect and also like maybe ease of starting your own business in India is it easy hard because it might be people who are considering about becoming an entrepreneur when when they move back so it would definitely be a good perspective for somebody who has done this who was in a career in a professional career before so I think if you can expand a little bit on those two things that would be very helpful you are so my honest opinion actually is that it's really difficult still even though it has probably become easier than before given what we hear from the

22:32 Government but it was still quite difficult for me to start this business the one thing that actually made this easier of course was my husband who has done multiple startups before so he had a great deal of experience in in starting and failing or succeeding companies but but I think for me definitely coming from a job the challenge was the kind of whole variety of skills that you now need in for running a business in a job you're a lot more focused on sort of your role and becoming an expert at that then starting a small company you have to do everything like right from making sure electricity is coming in your office and you know how do you now figure it out you put a generator or something so that people can actually work efficiently or providing them with tea or coffee and stuff like that which you never even had to think about in a regular job which you would even look down upon I

23:33 Would say in a normal way that why am I having to do these things but you kind of have to do everything and and as we keep growing there are like there are 10 different types of taxes that you have to take care of so you have to make sure even very early on to have a CA and handle a lot of these Financial aspects and then you know you have to play the role of an HR also you have to play the role of a sales person also and you have the play the role of the person doing the execution as well so if we were lucky that we were we were able to always find people who who were joining us in various kind of positions and who were smart enough that our company was able to do too well and yeah so I think in that sense actually we felt like starting the company in a small City obviously it becomes a lot more challenging because you have much smaller pool of people to choose from when you're going because not everyone

24:33 Wants to move here but then once we're able to find such a person and it aligns for them that this is where they really want to stay we get a much better attention and it's probably also about sort of the culture that we're trying to maintain we're ensuring that there is no toxicity in the work culture there is you know working hours are are are reasonable and and that so a lot of things that we've actually borrowed from the American work culture where we we've always spent our so even when I was in Bangalore because I was working for an American company all the work culture and work ethics I know about are inspired from a US U.S based organization so that is what we have also tried to imbibe in our organization okay great so I know I think you kind of mentioned maybe a perspective from coming from a professional career to like an entrepreneur where you have to wear a lot of hats lot of things that you have to take care maybe just to clarify maybe for the audience is it going to be much more

25:34 Challenging from A administrative side doing a startup in India versus doing a startup in us right I mean I just wanted to so just maybe feel it a little bit more on that particular topic is it just maybe more bureaucratic like more forms to fill in or maybe the difficulty of starting a company in India is much more harder than what you know maybe abroad so I don't know if you have any perspective on that or anything that you can share there right actually I don't really have much perspective on because I didn't really get an experience of how difficult it is to do in us but from India's standpoint I would say there is definitely some bureaucracy involved but for the most part I think there is help available so there are people who are experts in a lot of these areas who are available to sort of guide you on how to do these things it's easy to miss some of the things

26:34 But if you're okay to just sort of keep some more buffer as in in terms of financials and sort of so they're like very very small things like maybe there's esic which you have to give for people who have lower income there's some insurance that is insured by the government and let's say you forget about it because no one told you that this is something you need to take care of as soon as you become I don't know five to ten percent company so then you're like fine I missed it and then later whenever you start doing it there's some fines that you have to pay and some little more paperwork that you have to do but maybe if you're okay with that those kind of like extra money that you have to spend because you didn't care about these aspects from the beginning then that can make your life a little bit easier so I would definitely say it's not easy but if you take a little more money as your buffer and feel that you know focus on some of the more core aspects of our business to begin with and then maybe get to these a little bit later then that might help okay great maybe just switching the gears a little bit

27:35 So are there anything that you miss from us or cons of living in India maybe if you can summarize I think you know we kind of touched about a lot of positive things and other aspects so if there's anything that you know from your perspective that you miss or you you know not like is the right word but I mean you know this is not like an ideal place right I think in India so anything that you can share from your perspective no absolutely there are a lot of things that we miss on honestly first of all at the top it'll be clean air especially around this area there's a lot of pollution and normal days it's still okay but there are like maybe at least one or two months in the year when it becomes like really unbearable and you have to be indoors and always with the air purifier on So that obviously is one big challenge then there is just I think aesthetically how beautiful us is most of our cities I guess maybe because of population or I don't know

28:35 Whatever reasons are not that pretty in a usual way we obviously have a lot of monuments and everything which which are great and really pretty but in a general sense like when we were in Jersey City we could just walk over to the river and there was a nice nice little walkway around it and we could just take a walk there and it would look like you know you're on a on a trip where you're you're on a holiday so you don't get that kind of a feeling here in at least a kind of city where I live then like I mentioned before about the food there are definitely certain things that have acquired The Taste for and I miss those and I think a little bit on the sort of work culture wise also just even for very small things that you have to do like maybe you have to get something repaired in your home or you have to call a plumber in U.S I felt like it was very easy because if someone

29:36 Said they're going to come in at that time they're going to come in at that time and you could just leave your key there and they would do the work and go here if someone says they're going to come at 2 pm they you have to make at least 10 calls after that and after that this person comes so all of those were definitely a big cultural shock for us that you know we've always lived in this culture but somehow even within three years we returned even then it felt like a big cultural shock so I'm sure for people who've spent more time in US it would feel like a big deal and other than that is there anything else yeah I think that would broadly summarize the kind of things we miss but I think there's like the for the for some of these things I feel there is some level of Beauty in this kind of chaos that is which is there in India it's not a very organized sort of place but you do find once you come back and give it to some time you do feel acquainted to it and and and it

30:38 Doesn't bother you as much okay great yeah again thank you for sharing that so is there any topic or anything else that you wanted to communicate that we haven't covered no I think I'm good okay great so thanks a lot I think we are going to our final segment which is like in the rapid four so what's a surprise thing that you noticed after returning to India yeah the kind of kind of is and everything and the kind of things that are available in India now when I had gone to U.S I remember India as it was at the time when I had left so when I came back I realized India has moved forward from there what my image of India was yeah in a lot of ways India is a lot more similar to us than I had imagined before I moved okay great and your

31:41 Favorite travel destination in India nearby we can go quickly yeah and then favorite Indian dish or a restaurant and then there's maybe and then the last one is favorite part of living in India I would say a little bit around spirituality there is a lot of lot of health of information we have around spirituality here which is just innate to our culture we don't have to do much to sort of get those which are difficult to find anywhere else and so yeah and in terms of spirituality actually they also say that it matters where you are and given that a lot of like people have spent their lives pursuing spirituality in India

32:42 This is the land itself has those vibrations and being here you can feel a little more spiritual than than other places so that I would say is one thing that I feel is us okay great so I think that's all for today once again thank you very much for sharing your personal Journey a lot of nuggets there especially in terms of living in a tattoo City you know the things that you miss the aspects of starting your own you know business a lot of a lot of lot of valuable information and I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your story with us absolutely you know it was very wonderful talking with you great thank you all for joining us on this insightful journey of Desi Return if you enjoyed this episode and want to explore more stories and expert advice make sure to subscribe and hit the

33:42 Notification Bell don't forget to leave a comment below with your thoughts and experiences by the way check out the links in the description below for our Facebook group and social media for updates and engaging discussions as well as connecting videos thank you once again and until next time journey be filled with joy growth and endless possibilities