Taikichiro Mori – the name doesn’t ring a bell, does it? Even if you go and check out his Wikipedia page, it doesn’t even have even 10 lines. Then what is he doing in a blog post about finance!

Well, be prepared to be surprised.

Taikichiro Mori was the richest person in the world 30 years ago when he passed away. Yes – THE RICHEST person in the world and not one of the richest. It wasn’t that long ago. The Indian economy had opened. Microsoft had been founded and was growing at a breakneck speed but the fortune at the top of the pyramid was reserved for real estate magnates in Tokyo. As a matter of fact, when he died, his net worth was roughly twice that of Bill Gates (the richest American at that point in time).

What is even more surprising is the fact that he literally started his business after he retired as a professor in Economics at the age of 55. He was born on March 1, 1904, in Tokyo. He graduated from Tokyo Shoka University and in 1932, he became a professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology. By 1954, he became the Dean of the Faculty of Commerce at Yokohama City University. He retired in 1959, at 55, to run the Mori Building Company after his father’s death – a relatively small setup consisting of two small buildings that his father had built up from savings as a rice farmer.

While some of us dream of living a quiet life in the hills post-retirement, Mori had different plans. He got late into the business – late but that didn’t stop him from working hard and reaching the top of Forbes Billionaire list by 1991. Mr. Mori was known as “ooya-san,” a friendly term for a landlord in Tokyo. He literally left his mark across the city with many buildings carrying his name.

He was a man of modest ways and a sedate academic background, but one big lesson that he can teach is the core idea that it is never too late to start with a good investment.

I am sure all of us know at least 10 people who heard about Bitcoin 10 years ago but how many of them invested in it then? I would hazard a guess that very few of us would be invested in it even today because we might have missed the boat and it is too late! While that might be true for Bitcoin (or Eicher Motors, or Asian paints, or Bajaj Finance) – it is not true for instruments that give us a fixed return. Investing in Bitcoin (or Eicher Motors, Asian paints, or Bajaj Finance) carries a significant amount of risk and hence timing can play a big role but that is not true for alternative investments that altGraaf offers. It is time to look beyond the traditional avenues for returns. When we talk about returns, there could be broadly two kinds – fixed and those based on equity. In the case of fixed returns, the ones that are offered by banks / FDs are so little that they can hardly beat inflation. The ones that are offered by equity, depend on such many factors that it can be difficult to predict. Rupee appreciation/depreciation can impact them. The price of oil going up / going down can impact them. Sometimes even baseless rumors can impact share prices – you would be surprised how often that happens. Because of the above reasons, a stream of predictable fixed returns must form an important part of a person’s portfolio. And because of the fundamental nature of fixed returns – it will never be too late for you to get into the world of alternative investments. Check out the deal we have going on for Everest Fleet. It won’t make you the next Taikichiro Mori but with 17.5% returns, it will set you on the right path. Remember, it is approximately 60% subscribed – get in before it is too late. Well, at least for this deal. Trust us – we will always have more to offer you.

-Ravi Handa

The author is currently an educator at Unacademy where he teaches Math to MBA aspirants. He can be reached on Twitter or LinkedIn.