Ajit Jain Quotes
100 Ajit Jain Quotes
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BONUS: Five Warren Buffett Quotes on Ajit Jain
[On Ajit Jain] It is impossible to overstate how valuable Ajit [Jain] is to Berkshire. Don’t worry about my health; worry about his.
Warren Buffett
[In 1992] Ajit Jain… is simply the best in this business.
Warren Buffett
[On Ajit Jain] I talk to Ajit more than any other manager we have by far.
Warren Buffett
[On Ajit Jain] He had no background in insurance. I just liked the guy. I would love to glue myself to Ajit. You can argue that Ajit was when we discovered the electric light. It was huge. I was huge compared to anything we’d ever done at Berkshire. –
Warren Buffett
If Charlie [Munger], I, and Ajit are ever in a sinking boat – and you can only save one of us – swim to Ajit [Jain].
Warren Buffett
In insurance, it is essential to remember that virtually all surprises are unpleasant.
Ajit Jain
I didn’t know how to spell insurance, or reinsurance, but I was hired to do a job in the reinsurance operations of National Indemnity.
Ajit Jain
Lots of capital, patient capital, and a real stomach to put that capital to risk.
Ajit Jain
[On Warren Buffett] He’s smart, he’s quick, he’s decisive, and he’s supportive. I can take a deal that I’ve spent 10 days trying to analyze and give it to him, and in five minutes he’s two steps ahead of me. And he’ll give you an answer; he won’t send you back to the drawing board and say, ‘Do these three other things and then come and talk to me.’
Ajit Jain
To have a boss like Warren [Buffett], is even better than having no boss at all.
Ajit Jain
More often than not, the person who is buying the product from us knows more about the cost of goods sold than we ourselves, the sellers, know about it. And that’s a very scary position to be in.
Ajit Jain
I probably assign more value to minimizing the downside.
Ajit Jain
It’s so easy to make dumb mistakes in this business.
Ajit Jain
It’s the ability to make a decision in spite of the uncertainly, to act and move on…
Ajit Jain
It’s very different to distinguish between the hand one is dealt and the person playing the hand.
Ajit Jain
[On talking most nights with Warren Buffett] Quite honestly that is the biggest perk of my job.
Ajit Jain
I’ve been very fortunate to be working for Berkshire.
Ajit Jain
Warren uses the phrase that ‘He won the ovarian lottery’, but I won the lottery when I joined Berkshire.
Ajit Jain
There are a lot of family businesses that have stood the test of time in India.
Ajit Jain
Even though I enjoyed being an engineer and looked forward to engineering as a profession, I very quickly realized that engineers – certainly in India, but also here in the United States – end up being shortchanged.
Ajit Jain
[On being an engineer in India] I was working six days a week and making a quarter of what the people in sales and marketing were getting paid.
Ajit Jain
[On being an engineer versus a salesman] I figured that if I couldn’t beat them, I’d join them.
Ajit Jain
[In 1973] IBM was looking for people for sales and marketing for their data-processing operations, so I joined them to sell computer systems in India.
Ajit Jain
[On studying at Harvard University] I was a strict vegetarian, so food was a problem.
Ajit Jain
I kept thinking: ‘What am I doing in a place like Harvard with all these superstars?’ I was sure I was going to flunk. So there was a lot of fear, and I never enjoyed it.
Ajit Jain
[On studying business at Harvard University] I was a little disappointed with what they taught us in business school. A lot of it seemed so obvious, and I felt like they were making a big deal out of something that was really very natural and intuitive.
Ajit Jain
I was delighted to join McKinsey.
Ajit Jain
[On working at McKinsey] The pay was great, the first-class travel to Europe was great, and it was nice to have the name on my resume. But I never really enjoyed the job.
Ajit Jain
[On his time at McKinsey] Playing consultant, drawing charts in the middle of the night, wasn’t as much fun as being a salesmen for IBM. So, one fine day in 1981, I just felt like I’d been there and done it, so I pulled the plug.
Ajit Jain
I probably wouldn’t have come back [to the United States], but for the fact that when I was in India I got married, and even though I’d gotten the western world out of my system, my wife hadn’t.
Ajit Jain
[On McKinsey rehiring him when he returned to the United States] Made the same mistake twice.
Ajit Jain
[On joining Berkshire Hathaway in 1982] When I joined Berkshire, I didn’t know how to spell insurance, or reinsurance, but I was hired to do a job in the reinsurance operations of National Indemnity. Fortunately that was at a point in time when it was raining gold in the industry, and you really didn’t need to know much about the business as long as you could understand some basic numbers.
Ajit Jain
[On the joining the insurance industry] The industry does go through cycles, and I was very lucky in terms of having gotten into the industry at one of its peaks.
Ajit Jain
[On joining one of Berkshire Hathaway’s insurance business’s] There was a huge shortage of capital in the business at the time, and we were one of the few entities that actually had capital. So we’d get bombarded with deals and phone calls from people wanting insurance. Being new, I didn’t understand most of it, but, every now and then, I would see something where I would look at the numbers and say, ‘This looks interesting.’
Ajit Jain
[On how his responsibilities have changed at the reinsurance operation] I was responsible for the operation then, I’m responsible for the operation now. My responsibilities haven’t changed. It’s just that we’re doing a lot more now than we did back then. We cover a broader spectrum of deals, and we’re making bigger deals. But I wouldn’t say that my responsibilities have increased. They are what they were then.
Ajit Jain
I have a business card that says ‘President, Reinsurance Division,’ but it doesn’t mean anything.
Ajit Jain
[On estimating in 2000 that Berkshire Reinsurance had about 10% of the reinsurance market] That number could very easily fluctuate from less than 5 [percent] to more than 15 percent at the drop of a hat.
Ajit Jain
[On the factors that have contributed to the business’s success] In addition to the capital, you need that brand name or franchise value. People know if they’re going to buy something from Berkshire, and they’re buying it for something, that we will give back to them 15 or 20 years from now. The Buffett name, the Berkshire name – that lends us a lot of credibility.
Ajit Jain
Given the mindset and the orientation that Warren [Buffett] has, we have an unfair advantage over our competition.
Ajit Jain
[As a result of Warren Buffett’s mindset] The operating manager, which fortunately happens to be me, ends up getting more than his share of credit than the situation does.
Ajit Jain
[On Warren Buffett and the insurance business] A boss who not only understands the business, but could teach it to me and everyone else in the business. He’s just a unique individual. To have a boss like Warren, is even better than having no boss at all.
Ajit Jain
Warren [Buffett] and I might have had a 30-second conversation or a 30-minute one, but he has been involved in every piece of business I have done.
Ajit Jain
[On being compared with Warren Buffett] There is no comparison. Warren is a lot smarter, he has a lot more experience, and he can make judgment calls. There is no dimension I can think of where I think I’m anywhere close to where he is.
Ajit Jain
Warren [Buffett] has shown me, how to look at deals in terms of their fundamental economics, as opposed to getting lost. But he’s also influenced me in terms of how you do business. He has discouraged me from getting too close to the line when it’s a close call. He’s taught me this whole notion of doing first-class business in a first-class way.
Ajit Jain
[On Warren Buffett influencing his management style, beliefs, and management philosophy] Probably not enough. This is probably one of my weaknesses. I probably haven’t treated the people who work for me in the same way that Warren treats the people who work for him. But, it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges.
Ajit Jain
Warren’s [Buffett] inheriting people like Ron Ferguson [General Re] and Rich Santulli [Executive Jet], who built up businesses of their own. We’re recruiting kids out of business school, and even though some of them have been with us for 10 or 12 years, I still don’t end up giving them the same degree of freedom and authority that Warren gives the people who work for him.
Ajit Jain
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