Our History
Water: Our First Product
1930s
Every successful business venture, including our very own, is often made to appear, much like how the goddess Athena was said to be born, to have sprung into existence fully-formed. Belying this illusion, sustained, as is invariably the case, by invisible and noiseless background machinery of human ingenuity, more often than not, there lies a multi-generational story of great overcoming and great striving and great daring. The kind of a story that, over the course of many repeated retellings from one generation to the next, nucleates and crystallizes into something approaching a myth. We are creatures not only of habits, but of stories too, and it is primarily through stories, not spreadsheets or mathematical abstractions or sales figures, that we get to make sense of ourselves and the world around us. So in order to give you a layered sense of what Dhan Group is truly about, beyond our lofty mission statement and stated wealth management goals, I wanted to share one such story. To us, it is as profoundly personal as it is mythopoeic of our very own business beginnings. To you, we hope, it will afford a glimpse of what lies at the very heart of our enterprise.
Our great grandmother was named Rukkamma, but in our family, we have always referred to her, reverently and with much affection, as Thathi.
Thathi married very young, as was customary and common at the time, into a family that resided far away from her native birthplace of Tamil Nadu. She left her native lands, lands of unforgettable steep gopuram towers and ritual sunrises, as fates would have it, in order to plant her roots in the fecund soils of Andhra Pradesh, where she was to receive mentorship from her mother-in-law in all matters maternal and domestic as she grew into a young woman that she was fated to become. No one knows whether Thathi, a frail and elfin girl then, found the experience of uprooting and rerooting herself so many miles from her birthplace and having to learn to make her husband’s family to be hers to be something rather exciting, scary, or perhaps neither. But for whatever internal challenges she might have faced, Thathi evidently surmounted them with firmness, humor, and resolve (which virtues of character, unbeknownst to her younger self, she would have to summon over and over again in the not too distant future), for in the wake of attaining her womanhood, she was blessed with three children.
However, Thathi’s marital bliss was cut short by a great tragedy that tried and taxed every last drop of her mettle’s reserve. By the time that she turned nineteen years old, the outbreak of cholera claimed the lives of her beloved husband and two of her beloved children. In the wake of this devastating loss, Thathi was left with one young son, an elderly mother-in-law, and a house deeply enmired in debts. Thathi’s husband, my great grand-father, was the breadwinner of the family, and his untimely demise robbed the family of any source of income. Thathi herself only possessed a third-grade education level.
Disconsolate and stricken with pitch-black despair, Thathi was on the verge of doing the unspeakable and resigning herself to what must have struck her (as it would most people in her shoes) as a hopeless, unsalvageable predicament. Subject to the vise-grip of enormous stress and hardship, she almost committed suicide and she took her son, our grandfather, with her by walking into a nearby river.
Yet she chose not to. Upon making her journey to what she thought was her final resting place, turbulent and turbid rapids, for whatever reason, Thathi summoned her inner resolve once again and swerved course. We believe that she credited her son for this.
From that very same river, whose unbridled and roaring flow now seemed to reflect her new-found will to survive, much greater than her will to the contrary, Thathi began filling up clay pots of water and distributing that water around her village in order to earn money, support her family, and pay off the debts of their house.
This is how our great grandmother commenced her grand journey that would continuously inspire our family and our vision for many years to come.
It is this initial very real stream of a quenching, valuable, and physical asset that marks the beginning of our journey. It is also this stream that is the namesake of our company.
Dhan (prounounced with "dh" as in "they" and rhyming with "done") means to spring forth, flow, be quick, run, and bear fruit. It means the hustle. It means wealth.
Economies: Our Muse
1950s-1980s
Thathi swore to educate her son. She thought that with education under his belt, our grandfather would not find himself in want of a comfortable life. Our grandfather inherited Thathi’s grit and sang-froid as well as her endurance and he proved himself again and again as a top ranker beyond a certain age in his scholarly pursuits. Ultimately, vindicating his mother’s high hopes, Our grandfather, Dr. Sambaiah Palaypu, ended up earning a PhD in economics and securing a lecturing tenure at a university. Thathi’s colossal overcoming that suffused the entirety of her life inspired her son’s vision and dream of helping to improve the lives of people through his knowledge and expertise in this field of economics and the distribution of resources. And though a great man that he was, it seems that one of his few regrets was the fact that he felt a little disappointed in how much he was able to achieve towards fulfilling this dream with the path that he had chosen.
Philosophy Generations in the Making
But this vision and this desire to help others didn’t die with him, as our grandfather made sure that Laxmi Prasad, our dad, imbibed it with his mother’s milk. Thus, Laxmi Prasad in his turn chose a path of a businessman and an entrepreneur and he pressed his business talents and acumen in the service of this singular vision of helping others achieve their financial freedom. It is this vision and these values that we and every other member of our team share too. This is the wellspring and the source whence the spirit of our whole enterprise comes. It is to help people like our Thathi, and farmers who are exploited for their labour and land, honest and hard working men who simply want to catch a break, women and children who are in vulnerable positions but are brimming with strength to fight for a better future and many, many others deserving financial freedom. Our mission, vision, and cause is to ensure not just for the basic financial provision for all stewards of this earth but also for a fulfilling quality of life for each person as well.
Innovation: Our Motivation
2000s-2010s
Laxmi Prasad and Geetha, our parents, moved to the United States in the late 1990s with a dream of starting their own business. After arriving in the country, they began a tax practice in the early 2000s, innovating on-the-go with payment technologies like PayPal at the forefront of the time. They were determined to strategize business solutions through knowledge, study, and innovation which solved customer problems customers did not even know existed.
Through hard work and dedication, they were successful in growing their business by generating solutions wherein customers would not feel pain points. Our drive has always been innovation as it is what helps push a community to cross the finish line of solving real challenges. They believed strongly that having exciting goals is what would inspire others and motivate them to reach those goals.
The passion for innovation continues today as we strive to create unique solutions to help customers all around the world. We are constantly pushing forward and making sure we never settle for mediocrity but instead continue to think creatively and come up with innovative ideas that can make a difference in people’s lives. It is our hope that through this drive for innovation our legacy will be one that drives positive change and leaves an impact on future generations.
Quenching Thirst: Our Kick
2020s
Real Assets: Back to Basics
Our family’s transition from a traditional tax practice to a wealth management firm was driven by the desire to offer specialized planning and holistic financial growth services for our clients. As tax preparation became increasingly automated, competitive, and routine, we decided to focus on helping our clients expand their financial portfolios with services like Self-Directed IRA Accounts and Investment-category immigration.
When blockchain technology began entering the public consciousness several years ago, it was only natural for us to become involved in the field. We were already on a mission to help customers through their own individual finish lines of financial betterment. Seeing the rise in inflation and uncertainty regarding both fiat and crypto currencies drove us to innovate an idea combining tokens with real world assets that possess intrinsic and stable value. This gave birth to Dhan, our group of businesses facilitating tokenized assets as wealth management solutions designed to meet our customers' greatest needs.
Our family had been involved in a tax practice for several years, but as that industry became more automated and competitive we began to look for a different kind of financial service. We moved into wealth management to provide specialized planning for holistic financial growth of customers, introducing concepts like the Self-Directed IRA Account and Investment-category immigration to our clientele base. We have always been invested in learning new technologies and exploring innovative ways of growing wealth, so when we heard about tokenizing assets several years ago it seemed only natural that we would join blockchain enthusiasts on this mission. Knowing that inflation and currency uncertainty was rising, we developed the idea to marry tokens with real world assets that had intrinsic value and stable financial or business merit--thus was born Dhan, our group of businesses offering tokenized assets as wealth management products to help our customers achieve financial betterment.
We hope that this little heart-to-heart has not left you, the reader, indifferent and that you too found yourself moved by our familial and business vision for the world that we inherited from our dear Thathi. If that is the case, we warmly extend you our invitation to participate with us to make our vision come alive.
In Loving Memory of Rukkamma Palaypu