On the other end of the floor is Bandipur where tigers are swimming towards their prey with huge luminous eyes. Next is Ranthambore where a lioness is out on a stroll. These are three of the six meeting rooms of Kothari's asset management firm of DSP Black Rock, and each is named after an Indian National Park.
Showing visitors around brings a glow to Kothari's face — the kind that happens when an investment banker seals a billion dollar deal. Kothari has seen it all. Kothari comes from one of the original moneyed families of the city. His great-grandfather, Purbhoodas Jeevandas Kothari, was one of the founders of the Bombay Stock Exchange, Asia's oldest bourse, in 1875. The family flagship for many years was DS Purbhoodas, the broking outfit. In 1975, Kothari expanded into other financial services and set up DSP Financial Consultants. His big moment came 20 years later in 1995 when he set up a joint venture with Merrill Lynch. Kothari did some of the biggest deals of those times including the 100-year Yankee Bonds of Reliance Industries, Lafarge's acquisition of Tata Steel's cement business and innumerable overseas floats and public sector divestments. He exited the venture in two tranches in 2005 and 2009. In November 2009, Forbes had put his net worth at $740 million. In 2008, he formed DSP Black Rock. Wildlife conservation is his latest passion. He now invests his energy more and more in his Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Kothari says he fell in love with nature in the year when “brokerage business wasn't very interesting". Right after BCom from Sydenham College in 1967, and before he joined his friend (late) Ashok Piramal at Morarjee Mills, Kothari and three friends had driven up to Nainital in Uttarakhand. “While coming back from Nainital, we decided to take a slight detour and go to Corbett National Park. As soon as we entered the park we saw a leopard on the road. We were there only for a night but the beauty of Corbett and its animals had me in thrall," says Kothari. “During my school days, I used to go to Tulsi Vihar (close to Powai). We also had a house in Matheran. I used to go to Khandala quite often too. It felt good to be there with nature."
After Corbett, Kothari started going to wildlife sanctuaries more often. Initially, the objective was “enjoyment and adventurism". He attended the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, which gave him the opportunity to trek in the Himalayas. It was during his trekking trips that he developed an instinct for conservation. “That's the time I started to develop this feeling to save tigers because for many years I didn't see them and I missed seeing them." But it wasn't until a decade or so back, when he met Bittu Sahgal (a leading conservationist and now one of the trustees of his trust), that Kothari could put together a trust committed to the preservation, protection and conservation of wildlife across India. “It took two more years after I founded the trust in 2002 to actually get it active because I wasn't finding the right professionals for the work," says Kothari, sitting in his spacious ‘sanctuary' from where waves can be seen crashing against the Marine Drive promenade. Read the full report here.
Source: Arghya Ganguly, Business Standard, Mumbai.
