Ritu Nanda’s the top insurance agent in the country. She reveals the secret of her success to Purabi Shridhar.

For someone from a family with four generations in showbiz, facing the camera was a real agnipariksha for Ritu Nanda. “I was facing the camera for the first time and it was the ultimate test for me,” smiles Ritu, the number one Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) agent in the country.

To her, the endorsement is the final testimony to her professionalism. Something in which Ritu, daughter of the late showman Raj Kapoor, and wife of Escorts supremo Rajan Nanda, revels.

“After 14 years in the profession, the LIC chairman himself came unannounced to my office and was here for one hour. I was like a little child; imagine he came for me! It feels great to be number one in the country and among the top 1,000 best insurance professionals in the world for the last five years,” says the chairperson of Escolife, with unmitigated childlike pride, sitting in her office surrounded by paintings by emerging artists.

And that’s another story!

TURNING TOPSY TURVY
Holder of the Limca Book of Records honour for selling the largest number of ‘Jeevan Dhara’ policies in one day, Ritu could also walk away with the record of going against every conventional grain and upsetting every archetypal notion. Maybe because she believes in going against the tide.

The story begins with her marriage.
Ritu was 20 years old when she married Rajan Nanda. A neighbour and family friend played Cupid between “two different people from different backgrounds”. From day one, she realised that she was married to a workaholic. He had to be because when they finally found time for a honeymoon she was two months pregnant!

“Apart from standing on my head, the only way to catch his attention was to turn into a workaholic too,” she quips. There’s no bitterness, instead her voice is laced with the pride of a much-loved wife, confident of her husband’s support and encouragement. Ritu delightfully twists aphorisms too. Sample this one: “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach but to stay there is through his brain.”

EUREKA!
It was a matter of stomach and brain that launched Ritu as an entrepreneur. After 12 years of marriage, babies, housekeeping, banking, et al, her first venture ‘Niky-Tasha’ took birth in the kitchen itself. “One day there was an LPG gas strike. My cooking was delayed endlessly. So Rajan said, ‘Why can’t there be a cooking range that can run on both gas and electricity?’ ”

Thus was launched Niky-Tasha, named after her children, Nikhil and Nitasha. “It was created as an occupation for a housewife but in doing so I had woken up a sleeping giant. I was on top of the world till I fell down. That’s why I say people should go to Harvard to learn or get hammered and learn!

“Niky-Tasha was the first colour commercial on TV. We had so many firsts to our credit. We booked three-and-an-half hours of prime time on national TV for a Zubin Mehta Orchestra, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Paris Opera. We did everything right. The only tragedy was I was in a business reserved for small scale industries.”

Ritu’s foray into the television manufacturing business too took a similar beating. The best of intentions, market surveys, scientific marketing, and infrastructure notwithstanding, Niky-Tasha took a nose-dive overnight. That’s when Rajan came to my help and I realised that turnovers were for the bees.’’

Going by the dictum that in times of crisis there can be only one general, Ritu withdrew from the arena, leaving Rajan to restructure the company, which took him 13 years.

Why? “Because I’m a woman of a different profile, you don’t know how hard it is to get professional recognition. Our credibility was at stake, we took responsibility, and we paid back every single penny.”

Lessons Learnt