Recently, Zomato was in the news for offering a 1.6Cr salary at IIT D.

The breakup was: Rs 60,00,000 in gross pay + Rs 1,00,00,000 in Restricted Stock Units.

What would be the net pay, is a guess.

Turns out, it was a marketing stunt. And, even this offer was withdrawn.

If you go back 4 years ago, Startups were paying crazy salaries.

Getting 25Lakh (net) was not unheard of for freshers.

Now, such offers are gone.

I investigated further, spoke to a few Partners at reputed consulting firms, even their net salary is less than 1Cr (here we are speaking about a fairly senior position, not freshers).

Investment Banking (from a salary viewpoint) used to be great. But, the number of Investment Banking front end roles have dried up considerably.

On this tweet that I did on Twitter, top 3 options came out:

[1] Politician: yes, they make a lot of money. But, extremely hard to become one. You need a lot of money to become a successful politician in the first place.

[2] Course selling/content creation: Had done a piece earlier why content creation is getting harder. Do it for fun, but if you are doing it as a profession. And, banking on it to make money. It might take a long-long time.

Supply of content >>> has gone up exponentially.

[3] Investing: A really bad idea to MAKE 1 Crore.

The goal of investing was always to protect your wealth from inflation.

Unfortunately, people got caught up in the entire episode of: FnOs and whatnot.

Honestly, if you are making 15-20% CAGR sustainably from the market (pre-tax) that is a very good return. Anything more, you will have to take crazy risk.

So to make 1Cr, just from investing, you require big capital to begin with.

You should definitely learn investing to protect your wealth.

And, grow it in small amounts.

But, picking it as a profession doesn't work for most. You are likely to make more money from your current job.

In 2024, I feel that the best way to make money would still be:

a. Doing a solid corporate job.
b. Starting a niche business where competition is less or you have some unfair advantage.
c. Going abroad and working.

This is how you are likely to make your first 1 Crore.