Making waves

He’s one of India’s most successful entrepreneurs, with the heart and mouth of a sailor. She’s an educator with a focus on the good and proper. Meet Ashish and Nilima Hemrajani, the couple who prove that opposites really do attract.

- Rajashree Balaram

Ashish Hemrajani’s fuchsia pants bring an audacious pop of colour to the vintage, woodsy interiors of the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, where we meet for a chat. He walks in bearing a wide grin and a firm handshake. His face is ruddy owing to the Vogue India photo shoot, which just finished on his personal yacht, Peace And Plenty. That’s a charming name for a boat, I remark. “Thanks, but by the evening, I call it ‘plenty of piss’ consid-ering the amount of alcohol that goes around,” the avid sailor quips. The more genteel Nilima Hemrajani, dressed in muted shades of beige, winces at her husband’s choice of words. Ashish remains emphatic with his refusal to decant his views into politically correct renditions. “This is who I am. Why will I want to bullshit about that?” And with that, the seemingly odd couple welcome me into their world—one brimming with a ferocious respect for individuality, where opposites truly do come together.

KEEPING IT REAL

Don’t be fooled by the goofy clown act. 45-year-old Ashish is the founder and CEO of Bigtree Entertainment, the company that launched India’s favourite online movie and entertainment ticketing platform, BookMyShow. (In 2019 alone, the app sold 200 million tickets.) With a presence in more than 650 cities in India and over 6,000 screens across the country, BookMyShow has offices in six Indian cities. It’s now expanding internationally with operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Middle East, with a team strength of 1,500 people . Ashish sums up his life right now as “living my bucket list.”