If you’d like a quick recap of everything that happened at Ananta Quest, this episode brings together the key moments, insights, and learnings from the day.

From purpose and health to wealth and life transitions, here’s a summary of the Ananta Quest experience.
🎧 Listen to the episode here: https://whatifyoulivetobehundred.com/podcast/ananta-quest-launch-dec-2025-a-recap-ep14/
▶️ Watch the episode here: https://whatifyoulivetobehundred.com/video/ananta-quest-launch-dec-2025-a-recap-ep14-whatif100/

Hi, welcome to one more episode of What If You Live to Be 100. This episode is going to be a little different.

Now, over the previous episodes, what I have been doing is covering some facets of life issues related to the point of time when we are in our late 50s or early 60s and navigating the next phase of life.

So whether it was money, whether it was health, etc., we have been looking at those subjects, and I’ve been sharing some viewpoints in the past. Now, around the same topic, around the same issues which are relevant to people at this age, we had this big event of ours called Ananta Quest.

You know, alongside What If You Live to Be 100, which is this content series that I have been talking to you on, there’s an impending business called Ananta Quest, and in which business we are addressing the same fundamental aspects for the same cohort—the cohort being people in, let’s say, around 50 to 65 years of age.

We call them the primers, the prime generation, and we have spoken about it before. So for the same primers, basically, beyond me getting real experts—experts in health and wealth, you know, and purpose—to come and spend the day at an event and share their insights on the same subjects, we had our first event at Ananta Quest happening on December 13th at the Taj Lands End in Mumbai.

And today, I want to talk to you about the event—how it went and what all happened.

So bear with me. It’s not one of my typical episodes on this content series, but I hope you will find it interesting.

So, to go back to the Ananta Quest event, like I said, it happened on Saturday, December 13th, and it was at the Taj Lands End in Mumbai, in a large ballroom where the capacity of the place was around 350 delegates.

You know, much as we had prepared for it and we had brought registrations and everything, there was, you know, obviously an anxiety that early in the morning—our sessions started from 9 in the morning—whether early in the morning on a Saturday enough people will turn up, whether our first keynote will have a good audience in the room or not.

To my pleasant surprise, the hall was packed at 9 in the morning. It was a fabulous sight to see, and we got started. Of course, there was a little breakfast before that. Post breakfast, as we got into the ballroom, the event started.

We had none other than the one and only Ashish Vidyarthi, the well-known film actor—much more than a film actor, in fact.
He is a person with many personas, as he calls himself: one man, many personas.

So he was our morning keynote speaker, and he did an amazing job. He literally sparked a fire in the audience there as he talked about his own journey—his own journey of literally reinventing himself multiple times in his life and his career. He is about 60 at this point, and he has done so many things in life, from being an actor in the Hindi film industry to going down south and, you know, being an actor there, to coming back and creating music.

He has recorded a rap song, which he played for us—it was fabulous—to doing stand-up comedy, and then being a video blogger and whatnot. So he has constantly reinvented himself, and using his own example, he gave a fabulous message to the audience right at the beginning of the day: that there is nothing to fear with the change, the transition that is happening, and if anything, it’s an exciting new phase. One does not need to be held back by the baggage of our past.

So what if we had been a CEO, or what if we had been a doctor, or whatever—the next phase can see us in a completely different light.

So that was a key message from Ashish, and the audience loved it.

So post his first talk, we had a short break for coffee, but when we came back, we started out with a very important first session. In fact, the entire day was planned as a sequence, as a continuum.

It was not just a bunch of individual speakers coming and doing their thing and going. I mean, there was a journey for the audience from morning to evening.

So the journey—after the celebrity keynote—started with the most important subject which is relevant for this audience, and which is the subject around the idea of purpose. Because what we have seen in our discussions with people at this age is that, you know, all the set things that one was meant to do in life—whether it was education, whether it was work, career, life, family, parenting, getting kids settled in life—you know, all of those things, by and large, are done by the time you are 55–60.

And then you discover that you have 30–40 more years in life, and where you feel the most lost is to figure out what to do now, because this is uncharted territory. So figuring purpose is an important part of this transition, which is why we chose to start the day with that session.

And to run that session, we had Deepa Soman, a very well-known and reputed market research specialist—but much more than market research. She’s been a people connector, somebody who, you know, manages to get stories out of people.

So she was our moderator, and this was done in the form of two discussions. The first discussion that she had was with a couple—a doctor couple—Dr. Renuka and Dr. Anil Bradoo.

Renuka is an ENT specialist and surgeon, and Anil is a urologist, a uro-surgeon. And, you know, while being husband and wife, they are absolutely accomplished in their own respective fields, in their own right. But the interesting thing is that aside from medicine, they have chosen to also, you know, branch out into something that they had been passionate about, which is music.

And not only branch out in terms of, you know, singing an art song or doing some occasional karaoke, but in fact transcending heights in the music space by creating a full-fledged band in the name and style of The Tuning Folks.

All of the participants, all of the singers in that band, being doctors—and having performed now to full houses in large auditoriums more than 100 times over the last 10 years.

And this has not only given them joy and a direction to pursue their passion, but moreover, every such program that they do, they also dedicate to giving out information about certain medical causes, so that the audience present can go back with a little more knowledge and understanding about specific aspects.

So it’s a very interesting way in which they have found a certain purpose beyond medicine. They have also ensured that they continue to pursue something they love to do, which is music. And as medical professionals, they feel it is their bounden duty—and something they like to do—which is to spread awareness about medical causes, which they are also able to do through The Tuning Folks.

So Deepa had a good conversation with them, and we were able to understand and appreciate this. So it was a very interesting way in which the Bradoos had figured out a kind of purpose for themselves.

Deepa also had a conversation with another lady, Manisha Lath Gupta. Now, Manisha has a different and very interesting story as well. She had been a corporate person—a marketing head, somebody who was a CMO at companies like Uber and Axis Bank.

And in the prime of her career, something—some trigger—happened, and she and her husband decided to leave it all and move to a place, kind of a farm close to Panchkula, all the way away from being in Mumbai.

And they had a farm there—grow trees—but not just grow trees. Basically, for Manisha, her big cause is around sustainability, around giving back to this planet. So she decided to take this up with a clear focus on what is called permaculture—permanent agriculture, as it used to be called.

So she became a farmer, from having been a city-bred, hardcore corporate marketing person. And over the last 15 years that she’s been there, she has constantly grown that space and, you know, created wonderful stuff—rainwater harvesting, managing, like she says, the only food that they get from outside their farm is salt.

Everything that they consume is grown on her own farm. The water she drinks is from her own space. And in doing so, she has found immense satisfaction in, you know, doing this—giving back to the planet.

So she talked about it, and she also shared how her family has found joy in the same journey. So hers was a very, very inspiring talk, and again, the delegates were able to take that away—that first of all, you need to dare.

It was a big step for somebody in the city to jump and go all the way and live on a farm. But, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained, as I say. So she took the plunge, she worked hard, she made it happen, and, you know, she finds a lot of satisfaction at this point of time.

So Deepa again managed to draw that story out from Manisha through the conversation. And post these two, Deepa summed up the whole space of purpose with her own framework and her ideas around how the audience could themselves figure their purpose—based on the techniques that Deepa shared, as well as drawing inspiration from the Bradoos and Manisha Lath Gupta.

So that was a fabulous session to get the day started.

Then we went into more, you know, more specific things. So we started the day after that, you know, in terms of specific topics. We started with the space of wealth and money, and for this, we had Girish Ajgaonkar as a speaker.

So Girish is the Chief Operating Officer at Happyness Factory, who are a very large platform for goal-based investing. They are a mutual fund distributor. You know, what Girish brought out—and this was very interesting, very important, very relevant for the audience.

So one of the things which even I have talked about in my previous episodes when I talked about money is that, you know, whatever kind of corpus one has built up to the stage of 55–60, there is often an anxiety that people feel around the idea that, what if—I outlive my money?

Because first of all, I don’t know how long I’ll live in this era of longevity, and from the time that my income stops and I start living off my retirement corpus—I’m drawing out from it—so what if I live more and my retirement corpus gets exhausted?

So that’s the worry that a lot of people have. It may be a justified worry or an unjustified worry, but that’s the anxiety that people often have.

So one of the big asks of Girish was to give this clarity—that why one should not have anxiety. And he did it in this very interesting way. He said that most of the time, people think about finance and portfolio and all that starting from products—starting from where you are invested, what’s your portfolio like.

And according to him, that’s the absolute wrong point to start. He feels that money is about what you need it for. It’s not about where it is invested or what returns it is giving. It’s about what you need the money for. Are you having adequate money for that? Then what’s the need to worry?

So by taking examples of a particular case, he showed how—what kind of broad allocation one might have—and how, when you think about your cost of living, the inflation that’s going to increase that, and the broad return one is getting from a mix of assets that one has invested into, whether the money that you have is going to last you through your life.

Or, in terms of the calculation, you might suddenly find that maybe by age 77 or something, you would have run out of money.

I mean, it’s a shock to find out—but nothing like hard data put on a sheet to bring that out. And if that is the case, then Girish also explained what are a few simple things that you could do to get away from that situation and get to a point of comfort where you feel that you are sorted and you should not worry about money after that.

So it was a very, very interesting and thought-provoking session. A lot of people came to me after the event and they said, “Oh my God, when we first started listening to him, we thought we are done—we should not be living beyond 75 or 76 because we are going to run out of money.”

But of course, then they heard the rest of his talk. So that was the talk by Girish.

After that, we—so Girish told us about how to make our money last for us while we are living, how to stay comfortable and without stress in the process. But there is an extended element to money, right?

It’s not just the money that we have earned is not just for ourselves, but for people who are left behind us after we are gone. Because we owe a certain ownership and a responsibility towards them—whether it’s our spouse, whether it’s our children.

So the next session was actually about legacy, and, you know, thinking about how to manage the money post yourself—post after you’re gone. And this was taken by two ladies, Anuradha Shah and Nisha Khurana, both coming from Warwick.

And this session was planned before lunch. We were running a little late, people were hungry, so it was a tough timing of the session. And somehow, maybe in our minds when we planned the agenda, we thought that there is a certain aspect to this talk—talking about wills and trusts and all that—so we thought a 30-minute session would be enough.

As you know, to our surprise—let me say it this way—this turned out to be one of the most popular sessions of the day.
The talk went really well. Both the ladies opened up the subject into areas that people may not have had the right awareness about—whether about probate, or whether about, you know, thinking about your wealth with respect to your child’s possible divorce and how much of your wealth is connected to a divorce settlement potentially.

I mean, all those kinds of things that people don’t think as much about, and many other topics, were brought out by the two ladies. And there were so many questions that people had for both of them.

And since there was lunch right after their session, I saw that even during lunchtime, they hardly got a chance to pick up a plate because people were hovering around them with more and more questions.

So that was a fabulous session that we had.

And then we broke for lunch, as I said. And when we came back from lunch, it was another impactful and extremely important session—the session on physical health. And this was taken by Dr. Bhavin Jankharia.

So Bhavin has been, of course, an eminent—one of the best radiologists in the city, maybe in the country. But much more than that, he has been somebody who has opened his mind, who has shared articles, books, around various subjects.

And specifically, in the context of our Ananta Quest, he had written this book called Atma Swastha, which is about how one can take care of one’s own self. Because, as he says, the only person who can help you for your own health is yourself.

There is nobody else who can do that.

So Atma Swastha is about how you can do it for yourself. So that book was literally the core of his talk. Because here again, in his talk, he went on to explain a lot of fundamental aspects about physical health—what you can do preventively to avoid disease in the first place, and then if you have disease, how you can still combat it and manage it better.

So that, as he says, how can you increase the healthspan? The lifespan is likely to be more, thanks to medical innovation and doctors and surgeons in the city. But if you’re going to live long, how can you be sure—how can you try and extend a healthy life for as long as you can within your life?

Maybe the last few years you may not have a choice, and one may have some disease, etc., but how can, for most parts of your life, you maintain a healthier self?

So that was the core, and again, extremely well received by the audience. You know, very, very impactful talk.

After that, we had Dr. Aditya Nair, who is a psychiatrist, and who spoke about mental health. Now we all know—and I think again I have spoken about it in previous episodes of the series—that this is a point of time in life when, for example, if you retire from a corporate job and your designation and the company association goes away, or you exit out of your company and leave that business and again your designation goes away, or if you’re a professional and you stop practicing and want to do something else—

What you are known for—that is not associated with you anymore, except you say you were X this or you were X that.

Now, in that scenario, a lot of things which went with the territory—the importance that you got, people who were hovering around you, the invitations to events and activities that you got, the phone that kept ringing—all of that goes down substantially.

This is also the time when sometimes children move to a different city or a different country, parents sometimes pass away, relationships change, friendships are different.

Given all that, there is a lot of change happening, and all of that often has a big impact on our minds and our awareness. And this can cause stress, it can lead to anxiety, and it can lead to things like depression.

So Dr. Aditya Nair brought out that topic very well and gave us some interesting inputs about how we can manage it better.

So that was a talk on mental health.

After that, we had a panel discussion, and this discussion was around the subject of where do you make home at this stage of life.

I happened to be the moderator for that session, and alongside me, we had two speakers. One was Mr. Adarsh Narahari, who is from Primus, who are into senior community living development, so he has deep experience in this space.

And there was Ashok Sharma, who’s been a city-bred, Mumbai-based person—a corporate head honcho over many years—but now thinking about, you know, whether living in an urban metro is the right thing for us or not.

So what are the options?

So it was a very interesting and lively discussion, with a good exchange around the pros and cons of leaving your city, where you have a lot of connections and a lot of social dependencies, and considering going somewhere else—all because the quality of life in your city is deteriorating thanks to pollution, noise, etc., etc.

So with that kind of dilemma—whether you consider going somewhere else, if so, where else and why—so that was a very interesting discussion, and both the panelists contributed very well to open up options for the audience to think about.

After that, we had a very important—probably one of the most important and relevant talks of the day—which was around cyber safety. And this was delivered by the expert Akanksha Srivastava.

She has been practicing this for many years, and she advises and guides so many companies and bodies, including the police and armed forces, etc., around the subject of cyber safety and general risk aversion for digital and technology.

So again, the short time that was given to her—her subject is so vast that one could possibly have a much longer session and still not be able to do full justice. So in the 30 minutes that was given to her, she picked up some of the most relevant and important points that people need to be aware of in order to ensure digital and cyber safety for themselves.

Again, it was a very popular session, with lots of questions at the end. And, you know, even after that, people kept asking
her about these typical issues that they face.

The final session of the day—it was a closing keynote—was from an absolutely amazing speaker, Shayamal Vallabhjee.

Shayamal has coached, you know, for mental psychology—the Indian cricket team, the Indian women’s cricket team, the South
African cricket team, Olympians, and several corporate leaders. And we had the privilege to have somebody as accomplished as him to be our closing keynote speaker.

His was a talk with three or four very interesting stories—stories from his own life, from his own journey. And through that anecdotal communication, he was able to bring out such interesting perspectives for the audience to take back as value-add, making for just the perfect closure to a very interesting long day.

A long day, but a long day which was very well spent by the audience in that room—absorbing a fabulous mix of content.

So as I had mentioned in my very short morning talk, you know, too often we have been told that so-called retirement planning is all about getting your money situation sorted. Especially by finance companies—they say, no, retirement planning means get your money sorted.

So we think that if our money situation is sorted, we are all done.

The reality is far from it.

As we could see through the day, there is health, there are relationships, there is figuring out where to live, there is finding purpose, etc., etc. And unless one really accepts and understands the horizontality that life presents, and addresses that, it would be very difficult to make the second innings truly meaningful.

You might fix the money front, but you may not have fixed the others.

So the suggestion right in the morning was to look at the day’s agenda from the point of view that you need to address the horizontal aspects of life. And I believe we delivered squarely on all those fronts.

And we could make that out from the fact that a day which started at 8:30 in the morning with breakfast and ended at 6:30 in the evening still had almost 75 percent of the audience seated there.

Some had to leave a little early because it was a Saturday, but the fact that this audience—this age group—is not really used to spending the whole day sitting in a room and listening to people, and yet they stayed back, was really thanks to the content that we had put together.

So in conclusion, we believe that Ananta Quest had a fabulous start in its first outing.

And from the point of view of this content series, What If You Live to Be 100, we were really talking about the same points that we have been discussing here on the series—except that in addition, we brought in real people, real experts, real stories, and real conversations into one room for a full day.

And finally, I just want to say a big thank you—to all the speakers who took time out to be with us, to all the delegates who trusted us with an entire day of their lives, and to everyone who made Ananta Quest possible.

We’re just getting started, and I look forward to sharing a lot more with you in the times to come.

Thank you for listening.