Bengaluru-based entrepreneur Suhasini Sampath recently sat down to discuss money matters with influencer Sharan Hegde. During her appearance on “The 1% Club Show” podcast, she opened up about the sale of her company, her real estate investments and more. Sampath is the founder of Yoga Bar, an energy bar brand she launched in 2014 along with her sister Anindita Sampath. Last year, she sold 39% of the stakes of her company to ITC. The FMCG major will acquire 100% of the startup over the next three years at a valuation of ₹500 crore.
Sampath surprised viewers by revealing that even though she owns two properties, she doesn’t put up in either of them. Instead, she lives on rent in Bengaluru.
When Sharan Hegde asked her how she is managing her real estate investments, Sampath replied: “So I am a chartered accountant, right? So there are a couple of… like, if you have two houses, you can set off one set of capital gains by buying up to two houses.”
Asked if she had bought two houses to save tax, Suhasini Sampath skirted the question by saying she does own two properties but does not live in either of them. “I don’t stay in either of the houses. I stay in a rented house,” she revealed. She also confirmed that the two houses she owns are rented out.
You can watch the full exchange below:
“Umm, so she has 500 crore and still she is renting the house?” asked one person in the YouTube comments section. “I get wealth and all these points, but at the end money is an enabler, if you don’t spend it when you have this much of it, and still keep worrying about investment, what’s the point?”
“Okay, she lives in a rented house but at least she has her houses, and even if she doesn’t have one she can buy anytime in future. But no middle class person can buy a house with rising inflation in future,” another person opined.
However, in preferring to stay on rent, the Yoga Bar founder is in good company. Zerodha billionaire Nikhil Kamath also stays in a house that he does not own. “I could not get myself to buy real estate at today’s valuations because personally, I think they are ridiculous and retarded with interest rates where they are, for prices of homes and offices to go up does not make sense,” Kamath had said in CNBC TV-18’s “I Did it My Way” podcast in September 2023.
Bombay Shaving Company founder and CEO Shantanu Deshpande also pays ₹1.5 lakh rent for his apartment in Gurgaon. “If I were to buy that apartment and I had to leverage, let’s say, 70 percent of it, ₹6 crore loan would be ₹6-7 lakh per month of EMI, which is like four times my rental cost. So, I’m living in a house which is one-fourth the EMI cost. So it makes no sense to buy,” he explained.
