BY POOJA KOTHARI
“Do you know which car I drive, or for that matter, my boss drives?” That was the first thing Saurabh Srivastava heard from his boss as he parked his newly-acquired car in the office parking lot in the US. This was the early seventies.
His boss was incredulous. Here was a young guy just a few years out of business school, living in a rented house, and driving around in a Mercedes 280SE. So what if
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the B-school was Harvard Business School and the car was a second-hand buy. Neither the boss nor the boss’ boss had a Merc.
But that didn’t deter Srivastava even for a second. He was too fond of cars and too excited about his first Merc to care. “What could they possibly do? Fire me? Well, I anyways wanted to come back,” he recalls.
In the seven years that he lived in the US, he changed his car almost every year. From a Volkwagen to a Fiat to a Pontiac Firebird, the man has been behind the wheel of every car that makes the soul really happy. “I once did Boston to North Carolina, a 1400-mile drive one way, over a weekend. Those were wheels you could have fun with,” says he, of the time when gas was 29 cents a gallon.
His favourite for most of his working life, even after he came back to India, was a Mercedes. He went on to don many hats professionally – from head honcho to entrepreneur to venture capitalist. However, the one constant on each of these journeys was a Merc.
“Recently, a friend told me if you haven’t driven a BMW, you haven’t lived life,” says the 63-year-old. So, in January this year, he bought a Bimmer; and not just any BMW, but the best – the recently launched 7-series. Srivastava is super excited about two things: the Bluetooth that lets him access his BlackBerry through multiple points in the car and the state-of-the-art entertainment system that allows him to catch the cricket action while on the road.
Mention the whopping price tag attached to the fancy set of wheels, and pat comes his reply: “I don’t splurge on many things. And not much has changed in my life from the days when I was an executive from a middle-class family. I still live in the same house I’ve lived in for the past 30 years.”
And it is in this house in south Delhi that he’s growing fruits and olives. “Everyone said you can’t grow olives in Delhi but I kept trying. Last year, one of my plants bore green olives,” says the proud Srivastava. Persistence must come easy to him, given that he is an entrepreneur who has seen the fruits of his labour grow into a multi-million dollar business called IIS Infotech.
“I never have the heart to pluck the fruits though,” adds Srivastava, of the various
chikoos, grapefruit and
keenus he grows on the first floor of his house. That’s surprising coming from someone who sold off his company after building it painstakingly over a decade.
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He also plans to grow strawberries at his upcoming community-housing project in Ramgarh, a sleepy hill station in Uttaranchal. Sprawling over 10 acres, which Srivastava owns along with 20 “like-minded people”, the plot offers an uninterrupted view of Himalayan peaks. The project, likely to be completed in a year’s time, is set to be a home away from home for its owners. Upon completion, it will boast of a clubhouse and bar, dining facilities, movie theatre and a gym.
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"We intend to make it interesting and fun, so that people who own the cottages will want to come and spend time here.”
There are plans to harvest rainwater and build a lake around the property. “We would like to get involved with local farmers to package their fruit, the way they do it in Italy. Farmers get their grapes to a winery and get it packed into their own brand of wine,” says the extensively-travelled Srivastava.
For someone in his 60s, he’s so full of energy and plans that you cannot resist asking what’s next. “A Lexus Hybrid, maybe,” answers the die-hard car enthusiast.
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