Imagine a situation where you are a 100-meter sprint champion in your college and suddenly, you come to know that you can no longer run due to a medical condition. Even worse, you cannot even walk from now.
Sounds discomforting right? If just imagining such a scenario makes us uneasy, imagine what a person would undergo when affected by it in real life.
Recently, team Cafemutual met fighter Rushabh Desai who has not only beaten all odds and achieved his goals but is prepared to deal with whatever comes his way with confidence.
Let us hear it from Rushabh:
The journey goes back to my college days in 2008 when disability had not hit me. I was doing a part time job in a stock broking firm, Sykes and Ray in the financial planning department.
This was my first-hand experience in advisory profession and my career started at a period when the market was witnessing 2008 financial crisis.
On the last of my graduation I started noticing unusual patterns in my body. Such symptoms started increasing day by day while I was unaware of what was wrong with my body. This continued until I could not walk properly. This hit my parents and they took me to a doctor wherein I got to know that I had a muscle disease but even they were not sure which one. I went through a number of doctors in India but nobody knew the exact disease and its cure.
The next few years was very challenging for me. I was very discouraged as I could not understand the direction my life was taking. So I started working with my father in our single family office to keep myself busy and distracted. I spent those years understanding the personal finance industry and managing investments of my family.
I came to know that I was suffering from myopathy. Later, I travelled to Paris to the Institute of Myology for my treatment. After the diagnosis, I was shattered and shocked to know that I had GNE Myopathy, a rare muscle disease, which has no cure. I was just 21-year old then and this news changed my world forever. I was just not able to accept my fate.
I could not take this as a full stop to my dreams, so I decided not to lose hope and keep learning about the disease and discover a way out of this. With the help of my family, I went to the US for a few years for treatment. This made me understand how dependent I was physically and financially on my parents. I wanted to do something more independently to support myself.
In 2015 even with the disability, I joined Motilal Oswal Private Wealth Management, which also gave me the confidence to start something on my own. After working there for over two years, I gained confidence to start my own advisory business at the end of 2018.
I realised that people suffering from various disabilities face severe financial problems. Being financially independent plays an utmost role in their life so I first started approaching individuals suffering from such medical issues with the help of communities for financial advice.
This changed my view towards advisory and I became more focused towards my business. Today, I have clients from different strata’s and walks of life whom I advise for wealth management.
Besides, with each of my clients, I try to build a long-term relationship by getting familiar with their background, understanding their goals, risk appetite, asset allocation and time horizon. I believe in keeping investments for my clients simple and focussing on creating a good corpus for their financial objectives.
My disability has not improved over these years but I know now that I will fulfil all of my dreams and passions particularly in the field of financial planning and need based financial advisory. With each passing day, I know things will become more challenging for me but that does not scare me now. In fact, I look forward to the day that will take me closer to my target of reaching more clients and becoming a meaningful part of their financial growth and independence.
Team Cafemutual salutes the spirit of Rushabh and wishes him a greater success in financial advisory business.
