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A socialist in the boardroom

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Bhupesh Bhandari New Delhi
Veer Singh, Analjit Singh's son, tried his hand at sports, music, academics and farming before saying yes to business. Bhupesh Bhandari narrates the curious journey of the 30-year-old entrepreneur.

On the road from Dehradun to Mussoorie, on 21 acres that include a sal forest, a new wellness retreat, called Vana (Sanskrit for forest), has been taking shape for five years now with an investment of almost Rs 300 crore. There will be 90-odd rooms and suites, and over 50 therapy rooms. By the time it opens in January next year, Vana will have a wellness team of over 100. Treatments on offer will include Ayurveda, yoga, oriental therapies (Tibetan and Chinese), spa, aqua and fitness. For Tibetan medicine, it has signed an agreement with the health department of the Dalai Lama's in-exile government. The 100-per cent cotton uniforms of the staff have been designed by Spanish fashion house Cortana along with Indian designers Abraham & Thakore and Lecoanet Hemant.

A flautist has been hired to play his instrument all over Vana. Siraj Saxena, a Madhya Pradesh-based artist, has created over 400 artworks with colleagues and friends for the retreat.

The tariff will start at Rs 35,000 a night and go up to over a lakh for top-end suites and villas. That's steep. But then Veer Singh, the man behind the project, wants it to be the gold standard in the industry, a global wellness destination. So that Vana is not compared with Ananda in the Himalayas, owned by the Khanna family in nearby Rishikesh, Singh has decided not to hire anyone from there, the only exception being a technician for the waterworks. At one time, the resort was being built in collaboration with East India Hotels of the Oberoi family. That was the time Singh's father, Max Group Chairman Analjit Singh, was all set to help the Oberois save their company from the takeover threat it faced from ITC. Analjit had always admired the Oberois, and Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways, for their excellent service; now was the time to become a partner of his idol. However, the Oberois finally decided to take help from Mukesh Ambani, leaving Analjit no choice but to exit. Around the same time, Singh too decided to part ways with the Oberois and build the project on his own.


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Singh is 30. He looks sincere and candid, doesn't duck uncomfortable questions. He is thin, almost frail. Compared to his cousins, Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh, he appears quieter, less restless and more at ease with his station in life. The short name of his venture reflects his father's aversion grandiose names. Analjit named his business Max - M for his father, Bhai Mohan Singh; A for his mother, Avtar Kaur; and X for all else, including god. Singh has toyed with different career options at different times. During his school days, he wanted to become a sportsman (either tennis or golf). He next tried his hand at music and learnt the sitar, tabla, drums and even the flamenco guitar. But musician he was destined not to become, though he is learning the flute these days. Then he wanted to become a physicist because "physics is the purest science" but found it "too technical and modern" for his taste. His next venture was farming. That took him to co-activist Vandana Shiva to learn organic farming. Finally, because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Singh got into business with Vana, though he is not involved in any of his father's businesses.

Since childhood, Singh has had a socialist bent of mind. "I had an issue with capitalism, consumption, corporations and governments," he says without any trace of regret or shame. So, Singh destroyed all his credit cards, removed the air-conditioning ducts from his room, brought his wardrobe down to just four pairs of clothes and slippers, and insisted on travelling by bus and a bicycle within the city. For travel outside Delhi, Singh would book himself into second-class train compartments. Once, when he was travelling by AC III, Analjit was bewildered. "Why do you have to travel third class?" he asked his son, little knowing that the coach was air-conditioned. Analjit would worry about his son's security, and would often talk about it, but never did he put any strictures on the lad. In fact, Analjit encouraged him to do different things. In the 1990s, when Singh enquired from his father the possibility of joining the family business, Analjit asked him to get the atlas: "There is a whole world outside and all you want to do is join Daddy?"


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The socialist streak would come up for dining-table discussion only when Singh, while studying at Imperial College in London, began to demonstrate outside the United States embassies at various places. Analjit, after all, was doing business with American corporations like New York Life. Has the streak taken Singh away from religion, the opiate of the poor? Analjit, after all, is not only a Sikh but also a staunch follower of the Chinmaya Mission. "I am not into any particular religion or faith, though I follow most principles of Sikhism," says Singh. "I follow Buddhism, especially its ecological concerns (Singh carries the tattoo of a tree on his forearm), and have learnt a lot from Hinduism, Jainism and Islam."

Singh says the weaning away from socialism happened some years ago when he realised that "life is the way it is. It is not necessary for me to correct everything, to be so hard to myself". But some traits are still there. He lives not in his parents' bungalow in the Lutyens Zone of New Delhi, easily the most exclusive patch of real estate in the country, but in a one-bedroom house in Nizamuddin East and drives around in a Honda City, though our meeting takes place in Lodhi Hotel (previously the Aman), a luxury property owned by DLF.

He is dressed in a white kurta-pajama, with a black jacket, black cufflinks and black leather shoes. The black watch on his wrist looks unassuming. Singh says it's because of his experiments with socialist thought that he hasn't cramped on staff facilities at Vana: living quarters, gymnasium, meditation rooms, school, recreation centre, state-of-the-art cafeteria et al. All bed linen and towels in the bathroom at Vana have been made rom 100-per cent organic Indian cotton. In the beginning, all cereals, oils and pulses used in the kitchen will be organic. By the end of 2014, Singh wants all fruit and dairy items also to be organic. "In three to four years, my target is that every molecule of food that comes to Vana, for the guests as well as my team, is fully organic," says he.

Singh has not studied business management or worked in the hotel industry. Most of what he does is commonsense, though he closely studied luxury resorts like Chiva-Som and Kamalaya in Thailand before starting work on Vana. For instance, he has laid down six standard operating procedures for his staff when they greet a guest with a Namaste. Will he succeed? That will be clear over the next couple of years.

Meanwhile, the ex-socialist has become a serial entrepreneur - he wants to take Vana abroad and has already identified two sites.

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First Published: Jul 26 2013 | 9:49 PM IST

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