Article · ~6 min read

'I thought that I'll retire': Zerodha's Nithin Kamath on relearning life after a stroke

Business Today (interview with Nithin Kamath) · Business Today Free Beginner India

This is the honest India founder version of the off-switch lesson, told after the bill came due. Kamath ran Zerodha on late nights, weekends, a bad diet, and no real recovery until 2019, then had a stroke in January 2024 that made him relearn writing, speaking, and playing guitar. He is candid that he thought about retiring in the first month and that the people around him mattered as much as the physio. For an Anywhere Founder telling themselves the body can wait until after the milestone, this is the counter-story from someone who genuinely could work all the time and paid for it.

  • The founder who worked every weekend for years still hit a wall the body enforced, not the calendar
  • Health fundamentals (sleep, diet, movement) are the recovery he ignored, then had to rebuild from zero
  • Who you surround yourself with shapes whether you actually recover, not just whether you rest
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The question it answers

  1. How do I set boundaries with work when my startup genuinely needs 12-hour days to survive?

Read with it

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