A journey through the life of KV Shamsudheen would show him as a humanist, compassionate motivator of thousands of NRIs, crusader for NRI issues, investment adviser, educationist, intelligent investor, astute businessman, institution builder, organiser, social reformer and philanthropist.
KV Shamsudheen’s story is an intriguing and inspiring journey started 50 years ago from Blangad village in Chavakkad, Kerala, India, to Dubai in a ship from Bombay with just two dollars in his pocket and became one of the most influential Indians in the Gulf through determination and hard work.
Motivator of saving habits among NRIs
It is the chronicling of his life marked as a 13-year old boy who saved his bus fare and pocket money to invest in National Savings Stamps and persuaded his peers to follow suit. Continuing this missionary zeal in the Gulf, he inculcated the habit of saving among low income workers to secure their future for a financially comfortable life in their twilight years. His single-handed and determined initiatives created awareness about the need for financial discipline and prudent financial planning among NRI workers who would otherwise have frittered their income and ended up in debt-trap and despair.
Around 600 free awareness classes
This he achieved through numerous awareness classes, mass media, television, radio and social media. In the past 20 years Shamsudheen conducted 585 free classes for the NRIs in all the GCC countries as well as India, particularly in the Gulf pockets of Kerala. The peculiarity of these classes is that he spends money from his pocket, making the initiatives self-less.
Global universities, international media focus
Shamsudheen’s passionate and tireless endeavours to spread financial literacy and motivate low-income expatriates and their fruitful results have attracted the attention of international media and researchers. One of his motivational sessions involving 200 workers organised by Qatar Foundation in 2014 was subjected to research studies by US-based Georgetown University and the University of Michigan. A University of Michigan study found that workers would save more money and make better financial decisions with their spouses after they attended Shamsudheen’s motivational talk. Georgetown University conducted follow-up surveys 13-17 months later to see if the workers were doing better with saving, sending money home and communicating with their wives. The research study found a 30% increase in making financial decisions together with their wives, who also reported a significant increase in seeking out financial education for themselves. The study was published in the university’s Journal of Development Economics.
The entrepreneur
The entrepreneur in him manifested in the form of a trusted brokerage house when he founded Barjeel Geogit Financial Services LLC in 2001. Today it has grown to become a supermarket of financial products encompassing all types of investments and advisory services.
The crusader
Among the various other facets of Shamsudheen’s personality are his crusade for voting rights for the Indian diaspora, Aadhar card for NRIs, easy availability of PAN card, quota allocation for NRIs in the IPOs in the seventies when they were not permitted to apply for share allotments in IPOs of Indian companies. He directly represented to the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to make the IPO market accessible to NRIs. For the Aadhar car issuance for NRIs, he influenced the then Foreign Affairs Minister Sushama Swaraj.
He has led a life dedicated in creating wealth for hundreds of thousands of poor compatriots. “If tabulated the aggregate, it will be in billions. I look back in satisfaction that I could be instrumental in making their lives comfortable,” he says.
Not only that, Shamsudheen is instrumental in channelizing more than Rs 25,000 crore to the Indian securities market through various investment and savings schemes and IPOs, from NRIs.
Thousands of NRIs approach him for advice and help for finding suitable investment avenues, finding new jobs, rehabilitation and starting business.
He has actually saved nearly 300 debt-ridden expats of different nationalities from the brink of suicide. Suicide prevention initiative “Sandwanam” started in 2006.
The pragmatic investor
Shamsudheen doesn’t belong to the Ivy League, nor has he majored from any reputed business schools, but he is an investment wizard with a pragmatic and result-oriented approach to investments and savings. The words of Sheikh Sultan Al Qasimi, chairman of Barjeel Geojit, say it all: “I have personally learned a great deal from Shamsudheen. Even though I have three financial degrees I learned from him much more than all these degrees put together.”
Indo-UAE investment history
Parellelly, his biography gives an account of the investment history of NRIs over the decades, how the Indian government, financial institutions and corporates banked on the NRIs for tapping petro-dollars to prop up the exchequer.
The Covid pandemic time was another occasion when Shamsudheen’s engagement with the society was more pronounced. He addressed more than 50 webinars from across the world to guide the participants as to how to overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic as well as to show them the opportunities in the post-Covid era for businesses, employment generation and career development.