Keshav

The idea of an underdog has always been something Keshav Bhutani has been familiar with. At the age of three, his father passed away, and he was confronted with his immediate absence. When his friends hung out with their dads, he was left trying to figure out what that meant. Family members stepped in and tried to play the role, but it didn’t erase the void. He knew the stories of his father, a man who came to America, learned a craft, and had the guts to break off and start his own company.

At a young age Keshav was told he was the “man of the house,” but he didn’t feel like a leader. He found this concept to be illogical because he was just a child, and as a result, anger began to build inside of him. He found himself to be lost through most of his younger years, so he turned to bhangra and hip hop in order to find community and identity. He also began to use drugs and alcohol to cope with his feelings of inadequacy. While in college at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, he realized that he had developed unhealthy coping mechanisms. He didn’t like this, so he decided to use the adversity he’d experienced to drive himself forward instead of being swallowed by it. He began to take long drives, meditate on a problem, reflect, and look for patterns in his life in order to solve it. He realized that this worked.

After graduation, his creativity and confidence began to flourish. He interned at a tech company and learned a great deal about strategy and risk taking--both skills that he is currently using at the family business and in his work with collecting and trading sports cards. Now, he harnesses his understanding of the underdog to seek out unlikely finds, recognize the “hype curve,” and sell at the optimal time. He no longer sees absence as an obstacle but rather as an opportunity to be creative. He is using this philosophy to build something beautiful--much like his father did--so that he can give back to the family he holds dear.