Have You Hit Your Escape Velocity?

Dear Reader,

We’d all love some precedented times, wouldn’t we?

The past few weeks have tested India’s resilience. Between war whispers and wild headlines, each day felt like a breath held. The news was overwhelming, the noise relentless. It was hard to know what to believe or how to feel. And yet, here we are on the other side. A ceasefire declared. Indian Armed forces we’re immensely proud of. A country that stood tall.

The markets responded in kind. On May 12th, the Sensex and Nifty posted their biggest-ever single-day gains in absolute terms. FII inflows crossed ₹8,600 crore in May – the highest monthly tally since September 2024. Private markets echoed this conviction, with PE/VC deal value nearly doubling “week-over-week” to 5800 crore in the week ending May 9th. Across the board, confidence in India ran deeper than the headlines.

At Unlisted Intel, our conviction has only deepened. We believe in India, not just its economic promise, but its temperament. In the steel behind the stories. In the clarity we find, even through chaos.

That’s the spirit behind Escape Velocity – a reflection on what freedom really means. Not just wealth accumulation, but the power to define your own pace, your own life.

Because at some point, the question isn’t how far you can go, but when it’s time to truly arrive.

What Is Escape Velocity, And Have You Hit Yours?

There comes a point in the lives of many well-off Indians: founders, family office principals, senior professionals, first-generation strivers, and second-generation stewards of capital when the metrics begin to blur. The numbers are impressive. The homes are secured. Portfolios are active, sometimes complex. Calendars are full, capital is at work. But peace? That seems harder to come by. Not absent, just distant. A quiet dissonance, where material abundance hasn’t quite translated into emotional arrival. Success has delivered many things. Closure, strangely, isn’t one of them.

In physics, escape velocity is the speed needed to break free from a planet’s pull. In wealth, it’s the moment your money, habits, and emotional wiring finally liberate you from the need to keep playing. Not retirement, not withdrawal, but release.

You might still build, invest, and ideate, but you don’t have to. You stop justifying every choice in financial terms. You’re no longer performing success. You’ve left the orbit. (Not to be confused with FIRE – this isn’t about frugality or early retirement)

Financially, the formula is simple
Escape Corpus = Annual Lifestyle Spend x 25

Assumes a 4% withdrawal rate and sustainable returns. But that’s just the fuel. The real variable is: what kind of life are you trying to power?

Because escape isn’t just about corpus size, it’s about the kind of ship you’re sailing. Your version of peace. Of enough. Of self.

Take two people earning ₹60 lakh a year. One lives in Panchgani, grows his own food, spends ₹15 lakh, and saves 75%. He’s free in under a decade. The other lives in South Delhi, spends ₹40 lakh, saves 30%, and needs ₹10 crore to stop. Same income. Different destinies.

Spending is visible. Aspiration is invisible. Geography shapes both. Ego sets the “enough.” And peace? That’s the goal.

Every ₹10 lakh bump in lifestyle can mean ₹2.5 crore more needed. Five more years in orbit. That’s why knowing your “enough” is more important than reaching someone else’s.

Especially in India, where ambition has outpaced reflection.

Why This Number Matters in the Indian Context

We have 115 unicorns and still run ration cards. But for the wealth-building class, the real epidemic is achievement addiction. You exit a company, but your peer exits bigger. Someone becomes an LP, someone else buys land in Alibaug. You’re doing well, and still feel behind.

Escape velocity cuts through the spiral. It’s not about opting out. It’s about opting in, on your terms. Sovereignty, not slack. Relief, not retreat.

It wasn’t always this hard. In the 1980s, owning a home, clearing loans, and ₹1 lakh in FDs meant peace. By the 1990s, ₹1 crore meant “set.” The 2000s raised it to ₹5 crore. The 2010s brought family offices and dashboards – ₹20 crore became the new baseline, and with it, restlessness. Now, in the 2020s, founders are slower, family offices more selective, and wealth is shifting from “growth at all costs” to “cash flow at arm’s length.”

What It Took to Feel Free: Then vs. Now

Nobody’s exiting the game. But more are asking what winning even means.

So what’s the number?
₹7.5 crore buys quiet security.
₹20 crore lets you stop explaining.
₹40 crore disappears you from the scoreboard.

These are a reflection of how far the idea of “enough” has drifted. Not just because inflation rose, but because aspiration exploded. Our needs stayed modest. Our expectations went hyperdrive. Aspirations outpaced systems. Systems outpaced emotions. Peace became a casualty.

Escape hasn’t always meant ₹40 crore. It once meant silence, space, and not having to explain your life. Today, for many, it still does.

And that’s the point: you get to define your escape. It’s personal. There is no universal corpus. No shared threshold. Just this: the quiet confidence that if you walked away tomorrow, you’d still feel whole.

So, How Do You Know You’ve Hit Escape Velocity?

You won’t get a dashboard notification. There’s no confetti moment. But you’ll feel it, like a subtle gear shift inside.

Start here. Ask yourself:

Would I still say yes to this opportunity if no one ever found out?
Would I still share this thought if it didn’t shape my identity?
Would I still be doing this – living here, hustling there – if there were no scoreboard to win?

If the answer is “no” too often, you’re still orbiting someone else’s gravity. Most people aren’t chasing wealth, they’re chasing relief. Relief from anxiety. From comparison. From the fear of becoming invisible.

And here’s the irony:
There’s a moment when your money starts to feel….boring.
That’s when it’s working. That’s the arrival point.

So the question is no longer just what’s your corpus?

The real question is:
What’s your number,
and what life does it set you free to live?

Frequently Asked Questions