He might harp about getting old, but his attitude towards work, his love for finer things in life or for that matter his company?s name, all spell youth. Tang is Anil Nanda?s fresh new way of looking at life. So what if he is on the wrong side of 50s?

It?s been almost a year since Tang (The Anil Nanda Group) came into being after he sold off all his stake in Goetze India Ltd to auto components major Federal Mogul Corporation and stepped down from the company he had once bought and was understandably close to his heart. It?s been over two years since he has been fighting a case against elder brother Rajan on the sale of Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre to the Fortis group. Tough times, yes, but also times that helped the younger son of HP Nanda to turn challenges into opportunities and to constantly rediscover himself.

So right from real estate business (Akme Projects Ltd) to leather manufacturing (Gossini Fashion Ltd) to animation (La Vision animation Pvt Ltd), he took a plunge into it all to rake in Rs 360 crore during 2007-08. And no, he doesn?t like to take all the credit for taking the new venture to a high, instead he likes to shower praises on his team and his learning from the testing times he has been facing. He says, ?I had to succeed. I don?t have anything else to fall back upon. There is nobody to take care of me, so I have to give it my best shot.?

And work might have kept the 56-year-old busy, but it didn?t completely take him away from his passion of living life King size. It?s evident in his Victorian looking home having elaborate drapes and innumerable clocks ticking away in tandem as well as his office decorated with large paintings of flowers, bohemian candle stands and carved chairs. Anil lives life on his own terms and he admits as much without a flutter. ?I love doing up my home as well as office. I take a lot of pride in doing so. Some people like a minimalistic look about themselves, I don?t. I think it?s very cold. I clutter. I know I do, but that is essentially me. So what??

And he lends a personal touch to everything around him by picking up everything himself. ?People tell me that I love to shop but they don?t realise that I don?t have a wife to do these chores for me. So, whether it?s towels or linens, I pick them up myself. And I like to do it because everything in my house reflects on me.?

Though Anil is his own master in doing up his home and office, he follows some norms. Take, for example, his dressing style, ?I wore the tie and jacket because you were coming for this interview,? he admits candidly. On a more serious note, he adds, ?When I have to meet my staff, attend meetings, I wear a tie and I always carry my blazer to the office. I try and build a formal culture. A tie is a must for senior executives because it builds a kind of formal environment. The environment, I think, is important because if you are in a certain environment, your input is better and your output is better.?

And this might be just one aspect of Anil?s life, but it reflects on the kind of person he is. His staff gets as much attention as things around him do. A defining thing about this ?partly hidden Nanda is that he is very real,? says old colleague Surinder Kapur, chairman of Sona group of companies. ?I?ve known Anil for a very long time and I?ve seen him interact with people at his workplace. I?ve been on the board of Goetze India and I?ve seen how he leads the company. What is fascinating about Anil is the fact that he is not just good at his work but he is also very compassionate about the people who work with him. I?d say he is an excellent leader.? He adds, ?He is a private person and yet he is social. I?d say he is an interesting combination of humility and talent.?

Ask Anil about his style of working and he gives all the credit to his father. ?The biggest asset we got from him was the extensive training, which was never under him because he said, ?You are the SOB (son of the boss) and you will never get right training if you work in my organisation because you will be Hari Nanda?s son?.? After completing his senior Cambridge, his father asked him what he wanted to do. Did he want to be a pilot, a doctor or an engineer, or go into finance? ?I said, no. He said. ?Then don?t waste your time. The best thing for you will be practical training.? Escorts had the best international tie-ups. At 17, after a holiday of a month, I was sent to the Ford World Headquarters. It was like throwing somebody into the ocean.?

So when most boys his age were probably partying, Anil was learning it the hard way. ?I was treated like anybody else. I was given a certain amount. I had to look for my own accommodation, cook, pay for gas, do everything myself. The only luxury I had was that we were given a new car every six months. But that was only because we were all working with Ford. We (Rajan and he) grumbled like hell and said that dad could have done better. But then we realised that it was his style. We had to go through the grind. So right from working on shop floors to tightening nuts and bolts to coming back to India after training in the UK, the US and Germany, I went through it all. When I got back he again asked me about what I wanted to do. It was somewhat strange.?

Anil blurted out garments to his father?s surprise. If it was something else that Anil was noticing in these countries, besides work, it was garments. ?I remember cheese cloth went from India and it really made big there. Embroidered tops and clothes were around in America and Germany. I thought I would make it really big. And dad told me if you do well, great, if you don?t, you have the option of coming back to the family business.?

Anil failed miserably. ?In retrospect I am happy that I failed because I wouldn?t have been where I am if I had made it big in the garment industry.?

Anil might have been inducted into the family business but it was no smooth sailing. Given Anil?s inclination for commercial marketing and sales, he was put in the sales and marketing department. ?We?d acquired a blade manufacturing company and we had done a tie up with Unilever. I was put in as a salesman to train in the Levers for one and a half year. The set up Livers has is unmatched. I think it was the best learning experience that I have ever had. I even went into rural India to understand their style of working. I travelled to Bijnaur, Najimabad and Kotdwar. In fact, I remember it was probably in Kotdwar that I didn?t even know where to stay. So I hired the railway waiting room, which had three beds. It?s difficult to believe one has been through all this but I spent three days in that waiting room. I saw how people in remote rural India cycled all the way to supply one or two blades to a small time vendor because that was his requirement.?

Today Anil is simply living off the knowledge he gained over the years. ?When I joined Goetze India in 70s, I had a terror of a boss. If I had any issues I could never go to my father because I was told he wasn?t my boss. So I had to work hard in the company and that?s how I learnt it the hard way,? he admits.

Having learnt his basics at the bottom is probably why Anil is the way he is?humble and grounded?despite the Nanda surname. He explains it simply, ?I try and understand their issues and problems. I try and put myself in their shoes and understand their mind. I think that?s how you can carry a team forward. If you sit there and just say I want this done without understanding issues and problems, it doesn?t get done. You have to command respect, but not out of fear. And I really value my employees. In fact, they are the ones who have really kept me going. Some of the people at my home as well as my office have worked with me for 15-20 years. If there is one thing that has kept me going during tough phases, I?d say it?s my young energetic team.?

Dr Naresh Trehan describes Anil as a ?very good human being.? And that he says, ?is the most important thing. I think it?s the best that a person can be.?

In fact, a very touching moment for Anil was when a class fourth employee?s son (whose studies he had sponsored in a school in Patiala) got a job as a senior executive in an IT company. ?These are things that give you real joy,? says Anil.

But Anil?s joy, he admits, also comes from other worldly things. ?Oh, I love to pamper and spoil myself, be it shopping or treating myself to a spa. In fact, I love massages. I?m not an early riser. I?m a lazy guy. I?m ashamed to admit that I have a swimming pool, but haven?t stepped into it for two years. I?ve been planning to work out, but I don?t have a nagging wife,? he smiles.

Not marrying, admits Anil, was a personal decision. ?People tell me I?ll miss a wife when I get old. But I don?t have one so I don?t know what it?s like. It?s one thing to be lonely and another to be alone. I like my space but I?m not lonely.?

Moreover, Anil?s work keeps him busy to think about other things. Even when he is at home his mind is agile and thinking of new ideas. ?There are times when I send mails and messages at midnight. I?m thinking of ideas, future plans, all the more now because I?ve entered a field, which is new and has players who?ve been there for 40 years. I?m not a big boy in real estate, I?m new. I can?t be the largest but I want to be the best in my business.?

What is also interesting about Anil is the fact that he hasn?t stuck to traditional corporate image and he?s gone ahead and done unconventional businesses. It?s another matter that they?ve failed. For example, it includes his brand of jeans that he launched about five years back and his computer company. ?Oh, the jeans business was a concept too fancy to take off. I got jeans hand painted after they had been stitched. I lost a lot of money. The computer business that I began also failed. I also resurrected our leather factory when I had to begin all over again. Thankfully that worked,? he says. ?Our group has had the bad luck of never having made it on our own. We fell flat on our faces. We have worked best in collaborations.?

Talking of the group, Anil isn?t very happy about how things have shaped up between him and his brother Rajan. But for him, it was simply a matter of choosing what he thought was right. ?Nobody likes unpleasantness. But today it?s for everyone to see what we have done with the company. We both decided to go our own way. Today I?m fighting a case against my brother and my only desire is to put the heart institute in the trust that my father wanted it to be in. I haven?t asked for it to be given to me. I don?t even know if I will even have anything to do with it as a trustee. But I do hope the case is sorted out sooner than later.? He goes to say, ?Where else in the world do you have a trust being sold? I did all I could. I spoke to every director individually, made representations but nobody came forward for reasons best known to them. I walked out.?

He adds, ?You know what happened to Escorts. There is nothing left of what my father built. Where are we today as a family? Our father left us with a golden goose and we killed it.?

Today the younger Nanda might have a few hundred crores less to call his own and without the famous Escorts name, but he made his choices. ?I literally relaunched myself two years ago when I restructured Goetze India and walked out of Escorts. What is it that I got? I never asked for shares or anything. I wasn?t interested in all of that.?

The most important thing for him, says Anil, is credibility and respect. ?It?s not your bank balance. It?s not your assets. If you have credibility, everything else follows.? And it seems it has already started following for this young 56-year-old Anil.

Fact File

* Anil Nanda is the younger son of HP Nanda.

* He walked out of the Escorts group two years back and set up his own company Tang a year back.

* Akme Projects Ltd, his real estate company, has three foreign investors in three different projects. These include Cathedral, an Irish FDI, and MPC Synergy, the largest retail fund in Germany and Austria.

* He hopes to complete eight million sq feet of residential construction by 2010 (excluding new projects).