investment banker Hemendra Kothari: Small talk: Sculptures, stocks and safaris

At the finale of the recently-concluded exhibition, ‘India and the World: A History in Nine Stories’, at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, veteran investment banker Hemendra Kothari, Chairman of DSP BlackRock Investment Managers, sat in the front row, cutting an unassuming figure. One couldn’t tell, from looking at him, that his eponymous foundation had supported the closing event that had vocalist Shubha Mudgal and her accompanists perform. “My interest in music developed thanks to my late wife,” Kothari says later. “We try and organise a musical programme every year in her memory.”

Kothari’s own interests cuts across other streams of the arts. His Nariman Point office is decorated with paintings by both old and contemporary masters, collected lovingly over the years. Large, wall-to-wall paintings vie for space with smaller pieces. But Kothari picks out a KK Hebbar as his “personal favourite”.

His interest in art came from his sister Dr Devangana Desai. “She is an authority in art and art history, and so is my other sister Dr Kunjlata Shah,” says Kothari, 71. “When CSMVS was looking for funds, my sister encouraged me to support them, and I was quite taken with the work they do. The museum has come a long way, and I think it has much to do with the dynamism of its director Sabyasachi Mukherjee,” says the keen collector of antiquities.

But if there is a cause closest to his heart, it is wildlife conservation. Kothari chairs the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT), which currently works to protect the fragile ecosystem and animal habitat in some 130 national parks and sanctuaries across 23 states in India. “Protecting the ecology means protecting the habitat, and our trust works in about 50 tiger and 733 nature reserves,” he says. None of this, however, is part of his company’s corporate social responsibility initiative. “CSR is a great idea, but it requires a project,” Kothari says. “Many NGOs are unable to create a concrete project. Usually, if a corporate house does undertake a project, it is around its factories. I think the enforced CSR mandate has the potential to spread out. Perhaps companies can look at 50 per cent of work in their factory areas, and 50 per cent outside them.”

Kothari hails from a family of stockbrokers. The former President of the Bombay Stock Exchange smiles when he recalls how he started out. “When I graduated, my father told me there was no future in the stock market,” Kothari remembers. “I joined the [Piramalowned] Morarjee Textiles, and started working with cotton mixing, cart-clothing, spinning and weaving. I was 22 when I became the local head of sales. That year, Morarjee Textiles made the highest profits. I thought, then, that I could do something in the stock market.”

Kothari says his business developed from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s “Over that decade, I got to know the few institutions that existed, and their corporate clients,” he says. “In 1976, I travelled to the US, Europe and the Middle East to build relationships with banks and investment bankers. In the 80s, Germany’s Dresdner Bank and France’s BFCE (Banque Francaise du Commerce Exterieur) asked me to be their agent in India.”

Today, Kothari has forged strong partnerships with foreign investment firms such as Merrill Lynch and BlackRock. He believes philanthropy “is in my blood” and the Kotharis, as a family, have supported sanatoriums, education institutions and hospitals. Kothari says his greatgrandfather always encouraged them to give back to society, and now the next generation has followed suit.

Hemendra’s daughters Aditi and Shuchi both support WCT passionately. Pointing to two elephant sculptures he picked up from London’s Elephant Parade (a public art event to protect the Asian elephants), he says: “Wildlife is where our heart really is.”