Entrepreneur Suhasini Sampath, who lives in Bengaluru, was recently interviewed by influencer Sharan Hegde where they discussed her financial matters. She opened up about the sale of her business, her investments in real estate, and other topics during her appearance on “The 1% Club Show” podcast.
Yoga Bar is a brand of energy bars that Sampath and her sister Anindita Sampath founded in 2014. She sold 39 per cent of her company’s stakes last year to ITC. Over the course of the next three years, the FMCG conglomerate will pay 500 crore to acquire all of the startup’s shares.
Suhasini Sampath on the “The 1% Club Show” podcast
Sampath surprised viewers by revealing that she doesn’t live in either of her properties, despite owning two of the houses. She said she lives on rent in Bengaluru.
On asking her about the real estate investments management, Sampath said, “So I am a chartered accountant, right? So there are a couple of… like, if you have two houses, you can set off one set of capital gains by buying up to two houses.”
Suhasini Sampath dodged the question of whether she had bought two houses to save money on taxes by stating that she does own two properties but does not live in either of them. She said, “I don’t stay in either of the houses. I stay in a rented house”. She also confirmed that both of her houses she owns are rented out.
Netizens reactions on Suhasini Sampath’s rental properties
One user wrote on Youtube, “Umm, so she has 500 crore and still she is renting the house? I get wealth and all these points, but in the end money is an enabler, if you don’t spend it when you have this much of it, and still keep worrying about investment, what’s the point?”
Another person wrote, “Okay, she lives in a rented house but at least she has her house, and even if she doesn’t have one she can buy anytime in future. But no middle class person can buy a house with rising inflation in future”.
Other founders living on rent
The Yoga Bar founder is not alone in choosing to live on rent. Nikhil Kamath, a billionaire from Zerodha also resides in a house he does not own. Kamath had stated in CNBC TV-18’s “I Did it My Way” podcast in September 2023 that, “I could not get myself to buy real estate at today’s valuations because personally, I think they are ridiculous and retarded with interest rates where they are, for prices of homes and offices to go up does not make sense”.
“If I were to buy that apartment and I had to leverage, let’s say, 70 percent of it, Rs 6 crore loan would be Rs 6-7 lakh per month of EMI, which is like four times my rental cost. So, I’m living in a house which is one-fourth the EMI cost. So it makes no sense to buy,” says Bombay Shaving Company founder and CEO Shantanu Deshpande, who pays Rs 1.5 lakh rent for his apartment in Gurgaon.
First Published: Aug 21 2024 | 5:57 PM IS