'I'm in no hurry to make all the buildings in India'

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: He sports a tattoo, wears a bracelet, has a close shaven look and loves to work out. He can easily pass off for a guitar toting yuppie if he doesn’t hand over his business card to you.

But then image traps he feels, are constricting. At 35, Manish Uppal is leading the Rs 800-crore Uppal Group as its managing director. He works hard and works out harder because life is about survival of the fittest, he says.

When Manish’s father Bhushan Kumar Uppal started his construction business as a builder in 1979, Manish was barely six. His earliest memories are of his father working hard at the business. Yet one thing he remembers is that his father never talked business at home. “Once he was back home, he’d never talk business. And, I believe, the more you think about something, the more the chances that you will mess it up.” But whether he wanted to have anything to do with the family business was something that he never really thought about seriously. “When you are growing up, you want to do different things and it was the same with me. From wanting to a be an archeologist to a doctor to an architect, my ambitions went through various phases.”

But it was his fascination for architecture that probably got him interested in the Delhi-based family business. After finishing his schooling from Bal Bharti, he joined Bhagat Singh College to pursue his bachelor’s degree in commerce. In fact, he did go to London to pursue his long cherished dream of doing his MBA but had to come back because of some family problem.

“I was contemplating studying architecture when I happened to visit few sites my father was working at,” explains Manish. That was the beginning of a passion of sorts. Manish took to construction business like he never thought he would. “I loved everything about it right from the beginning. It’s like conceiving a child. You see it growing in front of you and then delivering it. So, there is a lot of job satisfaction.”