Swarovski’s country manager Sanjay Sharma owes his success to the sport.
There are times when a sport is more than a hobby, it becomes a lifeline, a way to keep in touch with a more innocent past even as the present becomes turbulent. Sanjay Sharma, country manager, Crystallized Swarovski Elements, Swarovski India, had an enviable lifestyle as part of a large, loving family with his father running a profitable manufacturing business.
Sharma’s father, who had played Ranji Trophy-level cricket, took up golf at a time when few people in India were even aware of the game. Recalls Sharma, “My father, my younger brother and I all started playing golf at the same time.” The fact that none of Sharma’s friends played or were even aware of golf did not deter Sharma from getting passionately involved with the sport. He says, “My father would be very busy with work so we got very little time with him. Golf was a way to spend time with him.”
Sharma, who is a natural sportsman, having played pretty much every sport from hockey to table tennis to swimming to cricket to handball to soccer (he was the school team captain) in school, found that golf too came easily to him. His enthusiasm got a further boost when he won the runner’s up position in a sub-junior championship and from then on golf became a regular feature of Sharma’s life. He says of what sparked his initial interest in the game, “The control over one’s mind is what got me hooked to the game.” Did his friends mock him for playing ‘an old man’s game’?
Though Sharma was about 11 when he started playing golf, showing a maturity far beyond his years, he would challenge his mocking friends to even hit a ball on the lawns of his palatial home. “When,” he says, “they would not even manage to connect with the ball, let alone hit it, they would keep quiet after that.” Even as Sharma’s life was going well, with rounds of golf with a loving father and brother, the unthinkable happened.
When Sharma was about 14 years old, his father died on the golf course of a heart attack. Says Sharma of that painful period of his life, “For about two years I stopped playing golf completely.” But then his German mother encouraged Sharma to go back to the course. Says he, “My mother supported us to continue. All my father’s golfer friends were supportive and maybe that made it easier for me to get back to the game.”
Golf now became more than just another game. Says Sharma, “Golf was one of the things that helped us cope with the loss of our father. The golf course, the game was like a cocoon that we would escape to. It was a way to get a sense of our dad around us. Golf gave us some sense of normalcy.” Golf also became a training ground for Sharma to realise that mental toughness rather than giving in to tough situations was the way to win in life. He says, “I learnt on the golf course not to give up. Whether it’s the duration of a golf game or life, there are many ups and downs, sometimes you just have to wait out a situation.”
Sharma, who has a golfing handicap of four right now, became so good at the sport that he started playing the amateur tour. But after participating in these tours, he realised that back then you couldn’t make a livelihood out of the game and so decided to sign up for an MBA. He says, “I was always ambitious. Even on the golf course I would want to hit the ball farther than anyone else. I have been in so many situations when it was swim or sink and I have had the mental toughness to pull through each time. I am a survivor.”
And this survivor instinct has stood him in good stead in his professional life as well. Sharma joined Swarovski almost 10 years ago in Austria almost around the time that he was planning to get married. And then Swarovski decided to enter the Indian market and chose Sharma to head operations here. Says he of Swarovski, “It’s been a real challenge. We were an alien brand in this country and today there aren’t many brands that can claim to have grown the way we have in a short span.”
Sharma credits every success in his life to what he learnt on the golf course. He says, “People get frightened of the bunker or a water body even though they make up a very small percentage of the area where your ball is likely to land. I focus on the remaining green rather than worry about the bunker.” And that principle has stood him in good stead so far in his life.