As an 11-year-old boy, Rakesh, with his family, left the Silk City of India, Surat, to live in a cramped 1BHK flat in Dombivali, Thane. For five years, the family of nine members lived in those difficult financial circumstances striving to make both ends meet.
Shaping of the Finance Wizard
Early Childhood
Rakesh completed his schooling from a local vernacular medium school and joined the Mulund College of Commerce to earn his bachelor’s degree.
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The challenges of his student life could not affect his love for books, especially numbers. He always topped in Math and even helped his friends with their studies. Instead of holding him back, the financial struggles were building a rock-solid personality.
The Shift
Apart from the financial crises, another misfortune that hit the family hard was Rakesh’s mother falling ill. Being diagnosed at the last stage of cancer, medical treatments were futile. She breathed her last in the year 1988 when Rakesh was in Grade 10. This incident left his eldest brother and sister to shoulder all the family responsibilities. In a way, each member of the family became self-responsible.
The incident further made Rakesh understand the value of money for leading a stress-free life. He could foresee the importance of financial security and wanted to secure his family in all ways.
Germination of a Life-Long Career
Rakesh’s eldest brother chose the CA path for Rakesh who was the youngest among seven siblings. Having finished his Grade 10 in a vernacular medium, the English language was a challenge for him in college. But since childhood, Rakesh knew how to overcome challenges and sailed through. Further, when it came to numbers no one could stop him. They were at his fingertips.
Thus, with self-study except coaching in just one paper in the final year, Rakesh cleared all his exams at one go. Even before his 3 years of article-ship was over, he was certified as a CA and also had a handful of clients.
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Hailing from a Jain business family, Rakesh always had the idea of starting his own firm. His practice started at Mulund in a 200 sq. ft. rented office in May of 1996. For 3 years it was a complete one-man show. Gradually he added more clients to his customer base. He grew to lead a strong team managing, accounts, audit, taxation, and advisory services for corporates and non-corporates.
Hailing from a Jain business family, Rakesh always had the idea of starting his own firm. His practice started at Mulund in a 200 sq. ft. rented office in May of 1996. For 3 years it was a complete one-man show. Gradually he added more clients to his customer base. He grew to lead a strong team managing, accounts, audit, taxation, and advisory services for corporates and non-corporates.
Personal Growth over the Years
The firm (Rakesh Doshi & Associates) that he established in 1996 was initially just for accounts and taxation for individual clients and small size partnership firms. Eventually, his company grew to provide advisory services, auditing, company law, consultancy, NRI taxation to corporate assesses, trusts, and NRI clients.
In addition to his CA practice, he also supervised the finance and investment department of family businesses (Real Estate and Iron & Steel Business). He took major decisions with respect to cash flows, taxation, and wealth management. Under his guidance, the families’ wealth too multiplied exponentially.
Goal Ahead
Today, Rakesh’s dream is to provide financial literacy in every household of India, irrespective of their financial status. He feels, even if the lower-income people invest in SIPs, it will pay handsomely after a few years. He wishes to cultivate in people the habit of saving and investing.
Rakesh’s inherent nature to give back to society is behind this urge. Even within his family, he advises the younger generation to take up wealth management courses apart from other study programs.
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In his words, “From 1996 to 2004 I generated income for the family but never created wealth. Had I been aware of the concept of wealth management and power of compounding at that time, it would have been a bit of a different story today. So my advice would be – keep upgrading your financial knowledge. Start saving and investing early”.
