Episode Description

“Unless you don't dirty your hands, don't lose some money, you'll never truly learn this business…”

Praveen Dugar and Deepak Dugar call this the “tuition fee” one must pay to buy precise market knowledge in India's used commercial vehicle financing - a market with endless permutations of vehicle types, body variants, regional preferences, and customer profiles. This philosophy has helped them grow Mahaveer Finance’s AUM from ₹50 crore in 2016 to over ₹1,000 crore today.

When they took over the 35-year-old business from their father in 2016, the brothers faced a choice: continue the status quo or reimagine the business for the coming decades. They chose transformation – shutting down the profitable trading arm, dropping the deposit license, delisting from the stock exchange, and embracing institutional capital.

In this revealing conversation with Ishwar Prasad (Vice President, Elevation Capital), the Dugar brothers share how they've transformed a multi-generational family business into an institution, their framework for calculated risk-taking in new markets, and why they maintain radical transparency with the team.