Czech Mate

Meet the new champion of the retro-revival movement, and the man responsible for its resurrection.

- Arun Janardhan

Anupam Thareja could very well have been in his own living room, as he walks around the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai with the air of someone who lives here and isn’t just visiting. It’s late in the morning as he limps slowly from the lobby to Café Prato, that’s being cleared up post breakfast.

The limp, the result of a bike accident he’s recovering from, is a testimony of Thareja putting his foot where his money is. As the founder of Classic Legends Pvt. Ltd., which is kicking the Jawa motorcycle back to life in India, he takes his job seriously, and likes to practise what he preaches.

His long hair tied in a ponytail, his beard almost dropping down to his neck, Thareja is not your quintessential clean-cut corporate head. The founder and managing partner of private equity firm Phi Capital is “overdressed” for this meeting in an army green round-neck T-shirt with a pink Jawa bike printed on it, and jeans. Sipping on a macchiato, he tugs at his beard and drawls, “I hope this is not the result of a midlife crisis but a passing phase.

“When working in a bank, you had no option,” he says, grinning. “We had daily shaves and weekly beards. Now, it’s daily beards and weekly shaves, or literally no shave.”