Studs in horseshoes

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It’S a different world altogether. Far removed from the quotidian humdrum of everyday life. It’s a world where thoroughbreds are conceived and reared to enable them to blaze into the racing arenas of the country and set the adrenalin rushing for its millions of patrons the world over. Everything else is peripheral to its royal existence and continuing lineage. This is the world of the stud farms.

It is marked by lush green expanses of land, lines of stables, the presence of prized stallions, broodmares, yearlings and foals. There is a battalion of staff, starting from the manager to the vets to syces and groomers, the stud farm is obviously also a business venture. However most often than not, it’s one driven more by passion than mere profit. Ask owners like Cyrus and Zavaray Poonawalla of the state-of-the-art Poonawalla Stud Farms in Pune or Vijay Mallaya of the sprawling Kunigal Stud Farm in Karnataka or then Ameeta Mehra of the reputed Usha Stud Farm in Delhi. They will tell you that the returns in terms of sheer pleasure far outweigh those in terms of money.

About 75 stud farms are registered with the Stud Book Authority of India. Almost all of them are located in the periphery of the cities they belong to — be it Pune, Bangalore, Jaipur or Ludhiana. For the simple reason that according to the norms laid down by the Stud Book Authority, you need to have a minimum 10 acres of land to start a farm. The second pre-condition is the fee of Rs 50,000 that needs to be paid to the Authority for registration. This is the easy part. Because what makes a stud farm work says Zavaray Poonawalla, owner of the country’s top stud farm — the Poonawalla stud farm in Pune — is a combination of both the tangible and the intangible.

“It has to be a judicious mix of hard work, dedication and finance. Finance will give you the infrastructure you require, but it’s only personal attention to details and your passion that will see you producing the best blood stock in the country,” says Poonawalla who proudly admits that he spends half his business hours at the stud farm that he owns jointly with his brother Cyrus Poonawalla.