Mohib N. Khericha : The Man Who Understood Markets Before Markets Understood Themselves

Part 1: The Boy Who Wasn’t Supposed to Be Extraordinary

There was nothing in young Mohib’s childhood that screamed “merchant banker.” He studied in Gujarati medium, spent more time watching movies than reading textbooks and proudly calls himself “average” in his early college years. He was surrounded by toppers, gold medalists and overachievers and he was completely unbothered.

But somewhere in his second year of B.Com, something clicked. Neither a dramatic moment nor a divine revelation. Just a quiet, personal realisation: “If I really want to do something, I’ll have to study.”

So he did. Seriously. Hard enough to score a first class, one of only 5 that year. And when most students feared the Chartered Accountancy course, Mohib walked straight into it, not because he wanted prestige, but because CA was for people who wanted their work to mean something.

His articleship under HV Vasa & Co. was less of a training period and more of a bootcamp in life. Vasa wasn’t just a boss; he shaped Mohib’s work ethic. If Vasa wanted a Bombay ticket at midnight, Mohib arranged it. If he wanted a specific biscuit from a particular bakery, Mohib would find a way.

The assignment didn’t matter. The standard did. He learned precision, discretion and the art of getting things done without noise. Skills he would use for the rest of his life.

And through all of it, he wrote every day. He kept diaries for 30+ years, capturing the birth of his daughters and son, the death of his parents, his marriage, big wins and losses and every other thought in between. When he re-reads them now, he laughs at one simple truth: “Even the worst pain fades. Time erases almost everything. Why fear anything?”

Part 2: The Banker Who Could Get What No One Else Could

After qualifying, Mohib didn’t join a big firm or chase glamorous jobs. He opened his own practice and discovered he had an unusual gift: He could make complicated things simple.

CAS forms that bankers struggled with? He filled them overnight. Projections nobody understood? He drafted them in clear, logical English.

Bankers from outside Ahmedabad who needed non-veg food in a vegetarian city? He took them home and fed them.

Permission, paperwork and people, he stitched all three together with ease.

Soon, he had relationships with all the prominent banks of India including CBI, BoI, Union Bank, SBI and BoB.

And here’s the fun part, he wasn’t networking. He was just being genuinely helpful. His friendliness opened doors and his competence kept them open.

By the early 1990s, he began handling public issues. His first bigger one was around ₹7-7.5 crore in 1992-93. Within a few years, he was executing ₹60-80 crore issues, which were clearly massive deals for that market era.

Ahmedabad was then the country’s beating heart of primary markets. Out of the top 5 brokers in India, 3 were from Ahmedabad. This was the time of giants and Mohib was in the middle of the ecosystem, quietly becoming indispensable, with one core belief, “If you remove the friction, money flows. If you remove the ego, trust flows.”

Part 3: The Builder Who Played the Long Game

Mohib lived through more market cycles than many people read about including the Harshad Mehta boom and crash, the Ketan Parekh mania and collapse, the 2006-08 melt-up, the post-Reliance Power crash and the 2020 Covid panic.

“I’ve seen days,” he says, “when CNBC’s opening music would raise my blood pressure.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. He had positions big enough to rattle anyone. But he kept showing up. He woke up at 5 am, made his own tea, went cycling with his 18-member group and came back to office with a clear mind.

He watched cycles rise and fall and noticed something: People panic. Markets swing. But was of the opinion that no matter what, your fundamentals should not. Across his journey, Mohib collected a handful of philosophies that shaped him:

1. Don’t chase shortcuts. Chase longevity. If something won’t matter in 5 years, don’t borrow stress for it.
2. Competence compounds. Every banker he helped, every promoter he guided, they returned.
3. Luck favours the prepared. He didn’t pray for good markets. He prepared for bad ones.
4. Ethics aren’t a slogan. They’re a moat. He has stories of people returning money he never expected back because his integrity created a mirror.
5. Never forget where you came from. Whether it was ₹10 lakh issues or ₹80 crore mandates, he treated everything with the same seriousness.

Today, Mohib stands as Managing Director of Chartered Capital & Investment Ltd., a firm that entered the corporate world in 1986 and stayed relevant across four decades, four market cycles, three regulatory regimes and countless disruptions. What began as a quiet practice is now a publicly listed merchant banking firm with a market cap of over ₹97 crores, built on consistency rather than noise.

He built a career without noise, without shortcuts and without losing his sense of humour. His story says something every entrepreneur needs to hear:

You don’t need to be loud to be legendary.

You just need to outlast most people’s attention spans.