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It is not easy to grow up normal in a billionaire household. Surrounded by so much money, power and success, it is easy to lose one’s balance in life. Children, with their impressionable minds, are all the more vulnerable. That is why parents in such households make an extra effort to ensure that their kids grow up with good values. They take pains to ensure that the abundance of money doesn’t get into their heads. Discipline is strictly enforced. The virtues of parsimony, hard work and good education are regularly drilled into them. Distractions are brought down to a minimum.
Billionaire Malvinder Singh of Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises came from one of the richest families in the country, the Singhs of Ranbaxy, yet his younger days were bereft of all extravagance. As a student, Singh rode pillion with Ranbaxy salesmen on scooters when they did their rounds of pharmacies and doctors. The idea was to learn firsthand how the trade works. His father, a stickler for discipline and integrity, made him rough it out like common folks so that he could face the rough and tumble of business.
Thus, Singh went to college in a bus; in the final year he made it to a car pool! Food on the dining table was ordinary, and he was forbidden from grumbling about it. The family would often eat out at ordinary restaurants. On graduation, he was given the paltry sum of Rs 1,00,000 by his father to build a portfolio in the stock markets!
It is the same discipline that Singh has now imposed on his three daughters Nimrita (15), Nanaki (13) and Nandini (7). While in school, the girls were allowed to have a cellphone when they turned 13: they were given used devices for their use. The curfew on all gadgets sets in at 10 pm. “The children have always travelled economy class so that they know the value of money. We have always said that while we will put you on the flight, how you move up beyond economy class is something that you have to earn on your own,” says Singh. “Many a time, Japna [his wife] and I also travel with the children in economy so that we are all together.”
One tradition in business families is to expose the children to the family business at an early age. Thus, Ajay Shriram of DCM Shriram, while at Doon School in the late 1960s, was sent to the family’s factories in Kolkata during vacations. The idea was to give him an idea of how factories worked and how to deal with people. The Naxalite movement was at its peak then and well-wishers cautioned his father, Shri Dhar, not to send the young lad to the works, but to no avail. Not only was Shriram made to sweat it out on the shop floor, he also had to attend weddings and feasts celebrated by the families of workers.
After school, Shriram went to Sydenham College in Mumbai. Here, he travelled in local buses; a request for a car was turned down by Shri Dhar. Years later, when his son, Aditya, went to Cornell to study, he shared a flat with two others and his pocket money was fixed. And he too didn’t get a car. A businessman who features pretty high in The Billionaire Club says privately that his father, who came from a modest family, took them to five-star hotels only so that they could learn the ways of the rich. Otherwise, it was always ice-cream at India Gate.
Family values are important for businessmen. They live in fear of producing a wayward child who could squander away the family wealth. All evil influences are kept away, starting from television. Ashish Bharatram of SRF, and his wife, Vasvi, make sure that the TV is turned off during dinner time and no phones are allowed at the table either. The dinner topic is normally something to do with current affairs: politics, sports, studies or business. “The idea is to have a conversation where everyone participates,” says Bharatram. His two daughters, Kairavi (16) and Apoorvi (12), study in The Shriram School, which is run by the family trust. “To me the values of the school are very important. The fact that the school allows the children to discover their passion and become good citizens of the country also counts for a lot,” says Bharatram.
Like most households, the onslaught of personal technology seems to have caught new-age parents off guard. According to Bharatram, social media has become a huge nuisance: “Kids want to be on their devices all the time and parents are trying to impose rules to keep this under control. The part that we have been successful with is not using any gadgets while we are together.” Gaurav Dalmia of Landmark Holdings, father of 23-year-old Devanshi and 17-year-old twins Aanya and Aryaman, has one strict rule in this matter. “Beyond a point technology is just a diversion” which nobody follows, he admits ruefully. All his gadgets on the other hand are hand-me-downs, he reveals. His son buys all the latest gizmos, then it goes to his mother, then it goes to his younger daughter, and then it comes to him!
Huzaifa Khorakiwala of Wockhardt Pharmaceuticals relaxes the rules during weekends when his two boys, Miqdad (12) and Muayyad (8 ), are allowed to play video games for a longer time. For Khorakiwala, watching cricket is a common passion he shares with his children, who are very excited about the cricket World Cup. Family time is precious. The Khorakiwala family goes out to dinners and picnics together at least once a week.
But the focus on excellence never wavers. In present times, parents are ready to let their children get into fields other than business. Dalmia’s elder daughter, Devanshi, is a Wharton undergrad in business, working for McKinsey in New Delhi. “She is working 12-14 hours a day, which I believe is the best training you can get in your formative years.” He also believes that growing up is about learning about the world, “it is the time for self-awareness,” and quotes another of his heroes, Winston Churchill, at this point: “Figure out what your kids want to do and encourage them to do it.”
That’s how fortunes are made and preserved.
