Actor Vivek Oberoi said that he grew disillusioned with the film industry, which prompted him to focus on his business ventures. The actor has worked actively in Bollywood for over two decades, but is now increasingly turning to the entrepreneurial side of his life as his primary source of sustenance. In the last year alone, he said that he has raised around $1 billion (Rs 8,500 crore) for the 12 companies that he is currently a part of; two of these companies, he said in a new interview, are ready to go public. He is said to be worth Rs 1,200 crore.
Chatting with CNBC TV-18, Vivek said that he was inclined towards business from a very young age, thanks to his father, Suresh Oberoi. “He was always an investor, he was buying and selling land, accumulating land. He made money always. Land was my first introduction. When I was nine or 10, he would suddenly show up with inventory. One year was perfumes, the other year it was electronics… I would fill it up in my backpack, and go door to door. At the end of the day, he would ask me for my ‘khata book’, and let me keep only the profit. He’d take the cost from me,” Vivek said.
Vivek said that after spending some years in the film industry, he realised that he was just going around in circles and ending up in the same place that he started. “I didn’t enjoy that. It wasn’t empowering. I enjoyed being there and collaborating with certain people, but collaboration needs to be a circular give-back. People need to pick people with talent, and give them advice, or a platform, or support. That’s something that was missing in the ecosystem,” he said, adding, “It was about either going down a spiral of pessimism, or stop banging my head against that door and open an another one instead.” This is when he decided to pivot to business.
He said, “I’m not averse to obnoxious capital. In the past year itself, across my companies, we would have raised over $1 billion. That is a substantial sum. That isn’t the problem. But where that capital pipeline deploys and how is that growth protected… Somewhere, you have to marry Silicon Valley with a Marwari mindset. That marriage has to happen.”
Vivek said that even when Bollywood producers and directors would ‘copy’ international films, they would infuse them with ‘desi tadka’. “So, why not in business?” he asked rhetorically. In an earlier chat with SCREEN, Vivek spoke about his decision to move away from films. “It was only around 2009 when I decided I didn’t want to be completely dependent on this and built my economic independence. I didn’t want to be in a situation where a lobby could decide your future. Somebody could bully you into doing something because they controlled things,” he said.
