Remembering Anil Kejriwal: A Visionary Entrepreneur And Eternal Optimist

It was the summer of 2017 when I first met Anil Kejriwal. My friend Swapnil, who was his wealth manager, got me to meet him for a possible investment in a start-up I had planned. Little did I know that this brief one-hour meeting at his home in Gurgaon would blossom into a relationship, which I can neither define as purely professional nor personal.

Through this piece, I will try and remember the man who was as young as 70 as a 27-year-old, by sharing anecdotes which have left an indelible mark on not just me, but those lives he touched in his hugely successful career.

Having studied in IIT Kanpur, Anil Kejriwal was obsessed with the IIT way of life and IITians in general. After my first meeting, I realised that getting investment from him was a fallacy since I had not studied at the prestigious institution which abbreviates with IIT.

Anil Kejriwal was synonymous with IIT. He set up the first global chapter of IIT Alumni in Singapore in 1992, a country whose citizen he was. His pioneering initiatives included setting up perhaps India’s first IT parks in Delhi NCR, Kolkata and Bengaluru. In the 1980s, he was the largest exporter of computers from India, when computers were still considered rare in India.

A few weeks after I first met him, Anil Kejriwal, who I referred to as Anil Sir, called me and asked me to meet him for a casual lunch. This would be the first of many such meetings where we would discuss almost anything. Politics, governance, our work and his way of doing business, which was visionary and pioneering but frugal in its approach. But what stood out was that every time I met him, he had moved ahead on his plans, and had crafted out Plan B as well, which was not a fallback, but the next big thing he was going to do.

We had started meeting almost once a month, either at the India International Centre. There was some magnetism about his personality which drew me towards him and I realised over the years, that this was how others felt too. His down-to-earth persona and young-at-heart conversations blurred our difference in age and background. We had become friends who would hang out together.

His most recent eureka moment came when the pandemic hit the world in 2020. Anil Sir called me one day during the lockdown and gave me a download about iodine and its benefits and how it was the best defence against the virus. While we were still ruing about the impact of the lockdown, Anil Sir had sensed a business opportunity. Over the next few weeks, he launched i2 Cure as a start-up at 70! A global company was born while the world was locked down. Such was the magic of Anil Kejriwal.

Anil Sir ran the company like a true startup. Lean team, simple office and a cap on salaries. I would often ask him the reason for this and he would tell me that he is attempting to redefine how a start-up should run, without the need for external investment.

My company did some work to create knowledge-based content for the i2 Cure range of products. He kept reminding me that this was a start-up and hence he could only pay me out of pocket for the project. “Not to worry Anil Sir, only reimburse our out-of-pocket expenses. When the company grows, I will fleece you,” was my reply. This one sentence defined our relationship over the next few years. He referred to me as being part of the founding team of i2 Cure and as his family to everyone he introduced me to. The line between a professional and personal relationship had now been erased forever.

Kejriwal built a global trading empire and counted Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister of Singapore and the now former prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina as his friends. He spent a large part of the last two years in Bangladesh, where has planned to set up dialysis centres on a mass scale and also develop the Cox Bazar beach area as a global tourism hotspot. He was also in the advanced stages of discussion for setting up an IIT-type institution in Bangladesh.

A few months ago he called me to meet a close confidant of Vladimir Putin, Boris Titov, who besides being a top ranking minister in Russia, also owned Abrau-Durso, Russia’s largest wine company. I was introduced as his family, a nomenclature which had become fairly common by then. Anil Sir was keen to launch canned sangria in the Indian market in collaboration with the Russians.

Uncanny as it may sound, I met him for the last time on July 29, the day he was leaving for an IIT study tour to Tanzania, which would become his final resting place. We met over lunch at the India International Centre. He was his usual perky self, brimming with new ideas and exploring business opportunities in Africa, since he was going to Tanzania anyway.

We drove to Khan Market since Anil Sir wanted to buy medicines to take care of his acidity. I even gave him a homegrown concoction of ajwain and rock salt which I carry, and he felt better. For the first time, he spoke in fair detail about his family, which was not part of his usual character. Little did I know that this would be our last meeting ever.

Very few can match the energy, spirit and entrepreneurial zeal which Anil Kejriwal demonstrated. As he watches over us, I can’t help but think that a new business idea is taking shape in the heavens above.

Samir Ahluwalia

Guest Author The author is a Partner at the Content Advisory Group.