How much money we made in 2024

[00:00:03] Hey everyone, this is Voice with Warikoo, with my Ankur Warikoo. In this English podcast series, I cover a lot of things in this English podcast series. Career, relationships, personal finance, success, failure, and frankly, anything else that comes to this time. Every week on Thursday, a new episode on your favorite podcast platform. Voice with Warikoo.

[00:00:29] This podcast will be slightly self-indulgent one, and forgive me for that. Right from the start. It's about how much money did we make in 2024, and the income sources that led to that. The reason I share this is, frankly, not to boast, not to project that, oh, look at me, I'm so cool. It's an attempt to inspire.

[00:00:50] It's an attempt to tell people that through multiple income sources, you could run what could be an immensely gratifying and immensely purposeful journey, which could make a lot of money for you as an individual, as a business, for your team members. And that's my honest hope. So forgive me in advance if it comes across as boastful. That's the last of my intentions. Quick background. My wife and I, we own a holding company.

[00:01:19] It's called Zaan Webveda Private Limited. Zaan is the Kashmiri word for knowledge or to know. Webveda is the brand name of the company. It stands for online knowledge, web, online, Veda, knowledge. And it's a private limited. It has three business units. One is Brand Variku, which is the content business. Second is Webveda, which is the education business. And third is investing, which is where we invest the company's profits. So let's first talk about the Brand Variku business unit, which is the content business.

[00:01:48] And this is our content play. I am the face of this content and we create content across YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, newsletters, podcasts, books. It's a cumulative of about 14.8 million followers. They are, of course, overlapping, not unique. And this is as of Jan 2025 when I recorded this podcast. Within this business, we have multiple income streams. First one could have been, but it's not, is advertising.

[00:02:16] We do not run any ads on YouTube and thus we do not earn any money. This amount will range from about one to one and a half crores if we were to turn it on for the 800 million views we generate annually every year on YouTube or we did last year. And don't ask me why we haven't turned it on because that's not important for this conversation. The second income stream is affiliate income.

[00:02:41] This is income we earn when we share links to brands through our content and the viewers end up buying something after clicking the link. So the business earns a share of that revenue that we generate through the link. And from Jan to December 2024, we earned 48 lakhs in affiliate income. And the best part about this is 100% of this income we have earned and have earned in the past, will continue to earn in the future. It goes towards the education of kids who cannot afford it. It's a very simple process. Students mail me.

[00:03:11] We ask for the student ID, college details, Aadhar, and a link to pay the college or the school directly. And we make the transfer. Simple as that. Last year, we contributed 43 lakhs towards the education of 104 kids. And so far, the existence of the company, we've contributed nearly 1.7 crores towards the education of 397 kids. All thanks to you because you make the purchase. Income stream number three is public speaking.

[00:03:38] I love public speaking and a lot of corporates invite me to their team events, all hands, leadership off-site to address the audience and share my experiences. We're not cheap. I charge 9 lakhs an hour. And we are very, very selective because this isn't my livelihood. And I want to spend my time only where I want to. In 2024, we earned 2.4 crores in speaking fees, which is a ridiculous amount because it's frankly insane that I can earn this much for something that I love doing.

[00:04:07] Income stream number four, book royalty. I publish a book a year. These are written for an audience that has never read or doesn't read books often. And my biggest joy is receiving an email that states this was the first book I finished. Four books have been released so far. And whatever they sell, we earn a royalty. And in 2024, we earned 1.65 crores in book royalty. Income stream number five is brand collaborations and endorsements.

[00:04:34] So as a public figure with their distribution, a lot of brands reach out and they want to promote their products or their services. So every brand we work with, they have to fulfill at least two of these three criteria. One is that I've personally used them as a consumer and I love the experience. Two is that I personally know the founder or the CEO from before. Or three, that the brand has been in existence for five plus years. And because of this criteria, while we get around 300 to 350 queries per month, we end up working with about one or two every month.

[00:05:02] This income stream was meant to support Webveda and will eventually come to near zero, at least in terms of the brands that we work with. And in 2024, we earned 2.8 crores approximately through brand collaborations and endorsements. Business unit number two, which is Webveda, that's the education business. This is where I spend 80% of my time. It's an online school offering affordable courses with lifetime access and 100% refund in subjects that school and college do not teach.

[00:05:29] Time management, money management, communication, startup, career planning, cold emailing, etc. We have, as of yesterday, 428,000 students who have enrolled at an average price point of about 1,100 rupees. We're growing at about 6,000 to 8,000 students per month. 7% of our students are from outside of India. Average completion rate is 72%. Average refund is 5.5%. We launch one course every quarter. And we have a total of 12 courses now on the platform.

[00:05:59] And in 2024, we did 9.6 crores of sales on Webveda, which frankly was the worst year in three years. But those reasons are known to us and they are not of worry to us, at least for now. So between these two income streams, we earned about 16.84 crores as a business. Then there is business unit three, which is investing. We're a profitable business, 20 to 25% of bid down or profit margin.

[00:06:27] And we deploy the reserves of the company into various assets. I am an aggressive investor, which is not recommended, by the way. And the mix of our current investment is mutual funds are about 70 lakhs. PMS or portfolio minus services are about 8 crores. Startup debt is about 1.62 crores. Startup equity is about 3.5 crores. Stocks in India are 95 lakhs. Stocks in the US are about 93 lakhs. And real estate is about 3.75, which is the house we own. So a total of about 20 crores.

[00:06:56] This last year was about 13 crores. So it's an insane and unsustainable, if I may add, growth rate of 48%. None of this investing is active, by the way. I spend less than five minutes every month tracking or managing it. And I'm happy to pay a fee to experts who manage the money for me. Which brings me to a very important point. A lot of us, we're very passive with our income. What I mean by that is we are living in jobs and are frankly like dead people.

[00:07:24] We show up, we burn out, we earn a salary and we somehow okay with that. But on the other hand, very surprisingly, we're extremely active with our investments. With stock to buy, when to buy, when to sell. We're exploring trading. We dabble with FNO. We join Telegram and WhatsApp, stock tip groups and whatnot. And my question is, what if you flip this? What if you got really active with your income? Don't just settle for a salary, like explore ways of earning more. Don't ever stop hustling for it.

[00:07:53] And then just get passive with your investing. Like boring SIPs. And that I think is the key to a wonderful life. Active with your income and passive with your investments. Consider it for what it's worth. Some important disclaimers. These numbers are revenue numbers. They're not my salary. This is not the money that I earn or my wife earns with me. There are a lot of expenses after this number, right? Team salary, marketing, software.

[00:08:22] So as I said, our profit is between 20% to 25% and we deploy all of that. Number two, the joy of, oh my God, running a bootstrap business cannot be overstated. At 44, this is the best way for me to grow. Slow, steady. I have an incredible team that I call the Varicru that I love to pamper. I'm not accountable to any investors. Instead, to my audience and my students. I have a lot of time on hand to think and plan. And I get to actually take long-term bets.

[00:08:49] And frankly, this very same performance that I shared with you, if this was a VC-funded company, this would have been an absolute disaster. But for a bootstrap, it's like incredible success. And third, again, as I state this, this is intensely hard for me to share it. Not the numbers because the transparency, frankly, comes very easy to me. And I'm a very self-assured person. So I don't fare any judgment. What's hard is the assumed cockiness that my mind keeps telling me will be an outcome.

[00:09:18] Look at how much money my make and look how cool I am. And it's hard for me to keep this yearly disclosure objective. I've been doing it every year since we started the company. In the hope that I hopefully inspired you to live life differently if you aren't happy with how you are living it so far. I hope this was helpful. All the best.