Jeffery:
Well Nikhil, we like to just jump right into things and we’re right at that right now so welcome to Supporters fund ask and angel. I’m your host Jeffrey Potvin, let’s welcome our investor for today Nikhil thank you very much for joining us.

Nikhil:
Oh thank you. Thank you, Jeffrey for inviting me today. It’s an honor and a pleasure. I’ve seen you working from when the fund was that small or maybe there was there wasn’t even a fund, we were just members as i met you I used to meet you at York Angels and I think from that seed, no pun, intended it has become a big treat it seems right, so congratulations to you and your team. Hard work.

Jeffery:
Thank you. Yeah, we do love what we do so it makes a big difference

Nikhil:
Absolutely. There’s nothing like something that you love to work for right

Jeffery:
Agreed. Gets you going every day. Yeah, well I’m glad that we were able to connect and chat and I know we’ve had many many conversations today, we’re going to have one a lot more specific around early-stage investing and debt, and all these good things but before we jump into that, I’m hoping you can give us a little bit of a background on yourself kind of where you’ve come from. From running operations to Russian companies all the way through to where you’ve been for the last nine years. I think it’s been nine years feels like it’s been nine years at RD. So yeah I’ll turn it over to you to kind of uh —

Nikhil:
Where did you get this Russian operation, I omitted that from a LinkedIn profile, but you got it. Well to be honest uh after I did my MBA in India. I joined I had this opportunity to move to Russia, and that was I was very young it was a fantastic opportunity and I jumped on that I said listen if I don’t take this opportunity right now it’s now or never, right. So and Russia at that time was opening up, this was 95 – 96, so I’m aging myself out there uh young as a young person just out of uh off out of my MBA and I take this opportunity to work with Cadburys so I hop on this plane go to Russia take this opportunity work in this exciting growing market in Moscow and other parts of Russia. So I worked with Calgary’s for a couple of years and then later on I jumped and started working with lewis uh Levis Strauss with the jeans company, I worked there for another five-six years and that made me travel uh that gave me an opportunity to travel all over Europe and see each and every part of Russia. So i you know I traveled to Vladivostok which is on the side of you know near Japan to Kaliningrad which is near Sweden, and all the Baltics and up in murbans we just meet Norway Sweden and Russia meets together so fantastic stuff I was involved in the development of the product’s sales of those products uh and it was a fantastic opportunity I mean. A young person couldn’t ask for more, right. That gave me an opportunity to learn different languages I’m very fluent in Russian. And that gave me the opportunity to learn a lot of languages so even when I travel to Europe I’m more or less okay right uh so after that, we decided me and along with my wife we decided to immigrate to Russia — to Canada, sorry. And that’s how um that’s how I came out here in Canada and I think um this was the best step that we ever took as a family, right. So my wife started on this path to become a doctor she became a naturopathic doctor and I was involved in sales for the next five six years I worked with staples, athletes granger, and yellow pages, and then I decided to — listen it’s funny why I got in finance okay when I was doing my mba I didn’t get good grades in my finance subjects and I thought that I was strong in finance and yet I didn’t get good grades so I wanted to take revenge on those professors and that’s why I did my CPA I said i you know I love finance and so I did my CPA and that’s how I and as part of my project I was involved with R&D capital which is the company that I’ve worked for right now for the last eight years now and they’re the ones who signed up on my CPA so I’m ever thankful to them you know somebody has to sign off on that, you have the requisite work experience and everything right and um and I’ve been there with them for the last eight years fantastic journey as you know R&D capital it’s one of the biggest companies doing street financing uh we structure 250 deals a year and uh so that has been a journey from yeah and i didn’t that i mean I should have told you that I was a engineer by training so there was a slight uh engineering bent of mind always and then into sales speaking different languages and then and then um CPA and finance so that worked out pretty well when you’re working with uh with companies right, you understand the technical aspect as well as the financial aspects of the company so that has been the journey in short

Jeffery:
It’s amazing and uh I’m not sure it’s a short journey i think you’ve got a lot more to go and that’s pretty exciting on what you’ve accomplished today

Nikhil:
Oh thank you, there’s more to accomplish as we move forward there’s so much things happening as you know Jeffrey uh jeff, it’s an exciting — we live in exciting times you know there’s so much to accomplish so much to do um uh some people i mean in the sense despite the pandemic, i should say despite the sad news, we have despite the fact that we are locked in homes uh for so long a time i think I think we can look at the future with a level of optimism. i always believe that there’s always a silver lining in the dark clouds that are always there right so…

Jeffery:
I like it it’s fantastic and optimism is the best way to go

Nikhil:
I’m — you die without optimism to say…

Jeffery:
I agree i agree so i want to well before i have to ask this question just because i ask it in every instance of the events and the talks that we do have what’s what is um one thing about you that nobody would know? after all the things you’ve shared what’s one thing about you know would know

Nikhil:
Yeah my love for quantum mechanics

Jeffery:
All right

Nikhil:
Yeah nobody would know that but uh I don’t understand it and yet that’s just that’s most of the time if I have some time that I need to spend I spend on that trying to learn as much as possible about quantum theory and quantum mechanics but I can tell you something I don’t understand even after going through it spending so many hours so so don’t ask me what it is and how it works and everything it’s just that I think I love it. And yet i don’t understand it.

Jeffery:
All right well I’ll hold the questions off on quantum mechanics until uh later time but I’m also a fan so I can understand why you like it there are so many interesting parts to it, uh from all computing speed power everything else that can go into this space… it’s absolutely amazing

Nikhil:
yeah yeah and and a few books out here uh the one behind scene is one of the best books that is there obviously talks about Einstein and discovery of is equal to mc square, but i love quantum mechanics but anyway go ahead sorry

Jeffery:
i like it that’s a good thing it’s good passion is good um well we can go back a little bit into your background and because i think it’s it’s quite fascinating that you’ve worked in such a broad market which being Russia especially and it’s an open market, opening market, and how much it’s changed and i always like to look back at the things that we’ve done in our past that helped shape our future and you got into finance, you got into being a cpa, and all of those things came from all the experiences that you have had over time and i like that yeah you’re going back against your teachers and you’re proving them wrong i think we’re very similar when i was going through finance in high school couldn’t stand it, got into university and it just was easy so i did it and did well and i was like ah this is kind of interesting and maybe i can apply myself but it’s amazing how much the world works off of this, but when you go back into the Russia times i’m sure there’s a million stories i’m super intrigued i know that back in the 80s everybody wanted levi strauss pants jeans they’re all about the denim but you’re obviously that’s before your time in this area.
But when you were in russia what were the things that really caught your eye on this new emerging market and what were you having to do to compete but also to get the attention of the buyers because this is a pretty big segment uh it’s a country that’s opening up and i’m sure they weren’t just peppering money everywhere so what kind of were the things that you had to do to kind of really get yourself invested you learned the language which is huge so you really went above and beyond

Nikhil:
Yeah i think uh to start uh we were working with distributors and dealers and they were speaking only Russian and I had a translator with me and i know that sometimes she didn’t translate it as well i could feel it so i said that you know i think i gotta learn uh learn this language right away right so i took it upon mysel