Within minutes of meeting Deep Kalra, the founder and CEO of MakeMyTrip, you are aware that the man is interested in scrabble, scuba diving and transcendental yoga. That is what his smartly-designed card tells you.
What it does not let out is that the 39-year-old is a total water enthusiast. A swim at a local club is how he usually starts his day, a beach holiday is what he prefers and snorkeling with his kids is |
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Deep Kalra, CEO - MakeMyTrip |
The man has also got a diver’s certificate. And he has also got his team to go on water-holidays – rafting, to be precise.
Last December, MakeMyTrip had sent 380 of its 750 employees on a four-day trip to Rishikesh, its largest rafting event, informs Kalra. Usually, the teams are kept small and the emphasis is on finding new places. “We travel second class. We find unused beaches, where we pitch tents. Usually, there’s no one around. Most importantly, we leave the beach as we found it, making sure there is no waste left,” says the boss, of his team’s many rafting trips.
It was as a graduate student at Delhi’s St Stephen’s College that Kalra got interested in rafting. “It was a quick getaway that provided real value for money. Also there was a huge fun quotient to it,” he adds.
Being a swimmer, since his school days at St. Columba’s, ensured he had no fear of water. “My school was one of the few in Delhi to have a pool. We did 50 laps at a time and couldn’t stop for fear of being caned,” recalls the IIM alumnus, who finds swimming the “most efficient” workout. “You get to work more muscles in the least amount of time” is the quick reasoning.
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What are you reading at the moment?
Just finished reading Malcolm
Gladwell’s Outliers and Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger. I’m about to pick up
How Starbucks Saved My Life next. |
What’s the first thing you do when you get to office everyday?
Check my email.
Who inspires you the most?
No one really. Just trying to actualise
my goals keeps me going.
Rate in order of importance - fame, money, power
Power, fame and money.
Three people from corporate history you’d want to meet.
Jamshedji Tata, Steve Jobs and
Richard Branson.
What’s your management style?
I’m very hands-on till I get to know a person. I go out to hire really good people, people who are better than
me. Once I get to know their ability to deliver, I’m very comfortable delegating.
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A place you really want to visit.
Lots of them really. My wife and I recently made a list at the back of a coaster in a restaurant: Brazil, New Zealand and the Andamans, among others.
Your favourite holiday destination?
Has to be Maldives.
What are you addicted to?
Nothing really, especially not my Blackberry. Maybe to fun-filled weekends with my family. I really feel let down if I don’t meet my friends or go out with my family over the weekend.
Are you a morning person or a night person?
Definitely a night person. I need an alarm to get up in the mornings, though I get up by 7am.
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His love for water sports took another turn in 1995. During his honeymoon in Langkawi in Malaysia, he took a short course in scuba diving and got hooked. Since then, Kalra has dived into the deepest trenches of the Red Sea, explored a shipwreck off Maldives and discovered the beauty of the exotic Great Barrier Reef. His most recent dive was off Malaysia again, in the territory of Sabah.
“Once you discover the world under water, it is such a high that you cannot forget it. The colours are incredible, as is the sight of weeds swaying when the tide turns underwater,” he sighs
The discipline of scuba must appeal to the entrepreneur in him. Scuba diving is about using the oxygen in the tank most efficiently: the more calmly you breathe, the longer you can stay underwater. It’s definitely a game for the slow and steady. A diver needs to go down and come up, slowly, to become acclimatised to the pressure.
It’s almost like trying to set up a business: the longer you preserve your cash, the more time you have to build the business. And the entrepreneur needs to keep adjusting to the changing economic scenario and the demands of his customers to stay on top. As Kalra faces his second economic downturn since he turned entrepreneur in 2000, his scuba training is sure to help him keep his head above water.
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