‘I like to be continually challenged’

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: His voice almost speaks of his one-time ambition. Kapil Kapoor’s intonation and baritone could have been a rage on radio and television, but life had other plans for him. Today he works and lives in Hong Kong as Timex group’s senior vice-president for Asia Pacific and travels often to India, as the group’s India president. And if it’s the long flights that trouble him, his love for food and fine wine keeps him happy about travelling, even if it’s for work.

Kapoor might have joined Timex when it was going through the worst of its phases, but his excitement about a new challenge made him wind up to get great times rolling at the company. Soon his sheer grit and determination rubbed on to other colleagues as well. But it’s not an attitude he developed overnight, he swears during an evening chat after he has just rushed back from a meeting in Noida on the outskirts of Delhi. But the 44-year-old face doesn’t show the tiredness of the hectic day. “This is how my days are,” he says with a warm smile that shows on his face pretty often.

He has a hint of an accent, shuttles between time zones but his passport bears testimony to his humble beginnings. His early childhood days were spent in a small town called Busawal in Maharashtra . “Most people haven’t heard of it. My family pulls my leg about it. But that is where my early childhood days were spent. It is a railway junction and my father was in the Indian railways and he was posted there,” he explains.

Early schooling was in Jabalpur, a few years in Bombay and then the family moved to Delhi. “I studied at St Columbus, lived in Chanakyapuri. So yes, when I come here for work, it’s a familiar territory.”