Founder's Story
From the Slums to Global CEO: How Divakar Vijayasarathy Is Disrupting a $160B Industry | Ep. 202
Fri, 18 Apr 2025
Divakar Vijayasarathy is the founder of DVS, a global platform revolutionizing the accounting and business services industry with a presence in the USA, India, Singapore, and Dubai. A self-described Thought Capitalist, Divakar is also the author of 16 books on taxation and a globally respected strategist in scaling professional services. His mission? To help CPAs and small firms overcome fragmentation, eliminate fear, and scale toward global impact and freedom.💬 In This Episode:What if scaling your firm wasn’t just about better tools, but about completely rethinking your mindset?In this mind-expanding episode, Divakar breaks down the illusions that hold entrepreneurs back, especially in the professional services industry. From growing up in the slums of India to building a multi-country platform for CPAs, he shares how fear, perception, and discipline shape success.If you're a service-based founder, CPA, or anyone who feels stuck doing everything in your business, this episode is your wake-up call.🧠 Topics We Cover:What “Thought Capitalism” really means—and how it drives modern valueWhy most CPAs and service providers stay small (and how to escape it)The three-part transformation every founder must go through: mindset, vision, actionHow to turn a one-person firm into a $10M+ business through DVS’s growth modelThe truth about exits—and how DVS creates liquidity from day oneWhy scaling is less about hard skills and more about decluttering your roleThe hidden costs of fear in fragmented industriesWhy discipline + direction = inevitable success🔑 Key Quotes:“The accounting world isn’t playing to win—they’re playing not to lose.” “One plus one doesn’t equal two. It equals infinity.” “Success isn’t about effort—it’s about perception and discipline.”📍 Want to connect with Divakar? 🌐 www.onedvs.comOur Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com
Chapter 1: Who is Divakar Vijayasarathy and what is Thought Capitalism?
And I really like to understand your thoughts on building a global company. Normally, we just kick it off with your background. But before we do that, I want to understand what is a thought capitalist?
Okay. I mean, let's get to the thought part of it later. Let's start with the capitalism part of it to begin with. I'm sure we are in the maker of capitalism, U.S., right? Now, what is capitalism? You are a product of the American society, right? We see the capitalist as a culture, as a cult, as a religion, right? Now to you, what does capitalism mean?
Chapter 2: How does perception and illusion drive capitalism?
Are you asking me? Yes. Man, that's a good question. If I was to think of a non-definition, my own definition, that's people being able to be entrepreneurs and thrive and make money and have the freedom to work where they want to work.
Absolutely, right? I mean, so you're talking about people being able to be themselves, express themselves and create value, right? Now, where does this value get created? On what basis? You look at someone like, okay, who is the richest man on the planet? Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Whomesaver. Where does their value come from? Where does the wealth come from? Shares, price of their shares.
There is a thriving stock market, which either basis, it's not only a function of what Elon does, it's also a function of what he believes and whether I resonate with what he believes. whether what he produces, it's not only about whether it's of utility value to me, is it something which I believe can sustain over a period of time.
So ultimately, if you look at capitalism, there's a huge element of human quotient behind it. Be it the belief, be it the perception, and be it the real utility. When you put all of this, we call it as values. This is what capitalism was all about. And thought capitalism is actually seeing through it. You see through what ultimately drives capitalism. It's not what you do. It's not why you do.
It is how whatever you do is being perceived by the society or economy. That drives your value. It might sound really crude. We can speak for hours and days on this. But that's the ultimate core of thought capitalism. Going to the depths of what drives capitalism. It might sound strange, but it's ultimately perception which drives capitalism.
It reminds me of the phrase perceived reality. That's really what it is. It might not be what it actually is. It's how people perceive it to be something, which is why it's so important to write books, to do things, to build up the perception about you
in the public eye thank you that was deep man that that was that's the deepest thought we've ever had on this show right as we started by the way um so i i appreciate that and i can tell that you are a very deep thinker because before we started we were talking about all these books that you're reading and i'm very fascinated by your thirst for knowledge so take me back in your life
when did you realize that you have this thirst for understanding and this thirst for seeking out knowledge?
I mean, first of all, thanks for the kind words, but it's more than a thirst for knowledge. It's a search for truth, we could say. I started, I mean, I literally grew up in slums in India. So, At that time, I passed out CA, which was at that time one of the most toughest examinations in the world.
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Chapter 3: What was Divakar's journey from the slums of India to global CEO?
So that's when I realized prosperity is not a function of effort. Then what is it a function of? Then came the quest for search. It was entirely about trying to understand what it takes. And the more deeper you get into it, the study of trying to get to what it takes took me towards spirituality, towards religion, towards economics.
And at the deepest of all what it takes, there was an answer which I was refusing to believe. Just to give you a simple question, why should oil be sold in dollars? Why should there be a gold standard? Why not any other metal? Why not the silver standard? Why not platinum standard? Why not aluminum standard? Now, why should, even if you're talking about Bitcoin, okay, why Bitcoin?
Why is the non-fungibility of Bitcoin be an attribute which mankind should believe in? So you get to the depths of all of this and start questioning the why. At the deepest level, there's just one word beneath all of this. Illusion. when you actually understand that's what it takes, the game is so different. It's absolutely different.
And this was a journey which took almost a couple of decades in life to unravel, which took me from a sole proprietary practitioner across three bankruptcies trying to figure out what it takes to scale an industry which was so fragmented globally. So, so fragmented. In the U.S., you have 650,000 CPAs in the U.S., 45,000 CPA firms. Only about a thousand firms have done more than $10 million.
Less than that. More than $10 million of revenue. Why is that so? On a $160 billion market. So now, get to the deepest part of it. Why the industry was so fragmented. I found one word. Fear. Fear. It was entirely the fear of the unknown, the fear of being cheated, the fear of not knowing how to engage with people, the fear of getting into a bad partnership.
That dominated the spirit of accountants world over. So they said, okay, I'm happy being in my own well because I at least know I won't lose. But they also never had a chance to gain big. The accounting fraternity all along was only playing to not lose. They were never playing to win. That's why they were fragmented. They were so small in size.
They were dispersed despite the size of the opportunity. That is what we are trying to solve for in DBS, if that makes sense.
I like the illusion part, by the way. The illusion, I think we could insert perception for the sake of this conversation, right? You know, creating a perception around your organization, around you as the founder, CEO. And then the fear part, I think if you asked, you know, you know, there's over 3000 stated billionaires right now on the Forbes list.
I'm sure if you asked all of them, what's one thing that differentiates them from others is they had no fear and they were able to take the leap and to do the things that no one else is willing to do. And I think that's very hard. So I'm, I am very fascinated that you took many years through religion, through seeking, through doing all these things, through traveling, and you figured this out.
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Chapter 4: Why is the accounting industry so fragmented and what role does fear play?
We've got numerous examples of where we've been able to grow businesses from three, four times in three years to as much as 10 times in two years. The moment you liberate them, the scale what they will be able to achieve is enormous. And the promoter still owns up to 40% stake in the company. It's like owning 100% of a lemon versus 40% of a watermelon, right? The game is so different.
The game is so different. That's how we try and solve for it. Because the biggest challenge in the accounting industry where I come from is the accountant is the head of HR, head of finance, head of client relationships, head of execution, head of technology, head of operations, right? You name it, it is one man who studied one particular course, but manages 10 different profiles, right?
That's the problem we are solving for. We declutter the person's profile. His head first, then his profile, and then his organization. The outcome is phenomenal. It's magical. I mean, just imagine, Dan, rather if you enjoyed podcasting, right? But if you had to sit and edit, you had to market, you had to reach out, You do a zillion things around it.
You end up spending 80% of your time around the function rather than on the function alone. It's such a suboptimal state of existence. That's what we relieve a CPA from. And that's where the real value creation happens.
This reminds me of the book, The E-Myth. Have you ever read this book?
No, no. Even.
Even. This is like the first, I mean, this book is old, 30 years old. And in the beginning of the book, it talks about somebody who wants to create a bakery. And they create the bakery, but they realize that not only do they have to bake, they also have to provide customer service. They have to provide front desk. They have to check people out. They have to do a million other HR.
They have to do a million things that they didn't want to do. They just wanted to bake. And then they go out of business because they realize it's, or they can't scale. Like you said, it's impossible because they do every job. What you said is like almost every service company
company that I know or service industry falls into that same trap of starting with one person who wants to do one job and they're stuck. They can never scale past that. And then, like you said, the multiple is very small when they want to sell. So many of them just close. I don't know. I forget the number, but it's like, you know, 50,000 or something businesses.
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Chapter 5: How does DVS Advisory Group help CPA firms scale and exit?
Um, they must be, um, like what's after a few months or a year when you've been working with these people, I mean, how do you, what's the, what's their personal transformation that happens in that time?
I mean, it's a great question. So typically Dan, we have a very simple three-step process. If you want to scale, someone joins us, even before they join, we go through this process. The first change is in the mindset. The person needs to understand what took me here won't take me there. Marshall Goldsmith, I'm just borrowing his terms.
If you're from a 1 million to a 5 million or a 5 million to a 15 million, the game is completely different. It's like imagine driving a car with 80 horsepower capacity with a car with a 200 horsepower. You could get a Toyota at 200, but you would need a Lamborghini at 500 horsepower. It might say just two and a half times, but it's 10 times the price.
That's what it takes because the engineering is required to scale to that level of a different orbit. So the first change has to happen in the mindset of the promoter, of the partner. And what I'm saying is universally applicable to all service industries. Second phase of change is visioning. You should know what you want in life. I mean, a simple question then.
which I asked many people, what is your dream? They would say like, I would want a big house. Okay, what does a big house mean? It'll be a massive boss. It could be 5,000 square foot. It could be 50,000 square foot or 500,000 square foot based on what your definition of big is. But that needs to be defined. So the visioning exercise is a serious part of what we do.
There are three steps in visioning. And then we get to what we call the actions. We get to the numbers part of the game. What does it take from here to the vision? And then we solve for it. That's a process. Changing mindset, visioning, action. And once we do that, the outcome is actually magic. What comes out is the unadulterated human spirit in motion. It's a real force of nature at that time.
If you are an accountant, you could be great at doing your tax returns. But you might not be the best person to be managing HR or people or whatever. Now, if you are only put to manage tax returns, from managing 1,000, you could even be managing 10,000. It gains energy for you. We keep saying, know your energy gainers and drainers. So we identify in the mindset part.
The second part is know who you are. So in that know who you are, we really get down to the person in terms of what that person actually is made for. There is no judgment here. It is a discovery of what it is. And then when you end up doing what you are actually born to do, what your real purpose in life is, you are a beast beyond belief. So that's the stage.
Mindset, which will also include discovery. Visioning, where we reduce your aspiration to clear numbers. And action, where we move from point A to point B. That's the game. That's the process.
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Chapter 6: What challenges do accountants face in their roles and how can they declutter?
I've never personally had an exit with the company that I had started. But I would love to. And I think that's very interesting. So you're putting in this work. I think every entrepreneur, the goal is to exit some someday, at least in the U.S., outside the U.S. Many times it's legacy and they pass it down to their kids. But the U.S. at least, most of the time, I think most people want to exit.
So how does this play out? You're seeing success. You're doing all this stuff. And then what?
So once you grow with us, you've got two options. I mean, there are three options. One is we ourselves will buy you out if that's something which you don't want to. Dan, you've run your distance three, five years and then now you want to shift or you want to retire. You just want to chill in life or you're just bored of what you're doing.
That's something which is new to the... That's the innate sense of the US market. People retire in their 20s, 30s and 40s or 50s. There is no retirement age because they just want to exit. In such circumstances, we can buy them out. Because by now, yours is not a business, it's a function. Transition is so easy. If you are the whole and soul of your venture, transition is impossible.
But the fact that we've been able to come and work on you, what you've been doing is now reduced to a function which can be replaced. That is what gives value to what you've done also. Now it is not just a business based on your expertise. It's a business which is an engine what is being built. So we ourselves will do a full buyback.
Or if you're buying a home, you want to sell 5%, 10% of your business, we can do a fractional buyback. And the third, which is a much most lucrative option, we are going in for a public market listing in 2027-28. You can convert your shares for public stock and you can always exit at your convenience. These are the three models what we offer.
So what does a company need to get to be in order to exit? Is there certain things in place that need to happen before it's viable for companies
So once they come on board into the DBS platform, we work with them. There's a nine stage process what we take them on, where we study each and every function of theirs, we figure out what we can automate, what we can productize.
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Chapter 7: What is the three-step transformation process to scale a service business?
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Because the biggest challenge, and I'll give you an example, is the most simplest activity when a client comes on board. Sending a letter of engagement is a two to three week activity in the U.S. with most CPA firms. This is I'm speaking from personal experience. It's a very simple process. Because what is a fee is an iterative experience.
Just look at the amount of energy which goes to conclude a letter of engagement between the client and the... That's the least of the areas where you would want to spend your time on. We have automated that. It might look like a small automation, but it has saved three to five hours of every transaction which someone gets. That's a significant chunk.
This is how we just try to simplify each and every element of the game. And over the first 12 to 18 months, the game is completely automated or structured. At that time, a CPA's business is something which we can do 100% by ourselves. Because by then, the first 12 to 18 months, your role in the organization from being the fulcrum, it becomes a function.
And that function can be replaced by another person who is passionate about doing what you want to replace.
and then we do and go in for a complete exit or you want to grow you're ambitious dan you're saying okay i can go and build my empire i can go and conquer i just need support i need capital we can give you i need leadership we can give you i need technology we can give you we can support you to whatever limit you want to grow because ultimately everyone's going to bring in make the every growth is going to make the platform richer right at the end of the day
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