Rakesh Rathi, Chairman and managing director, Parthiv group of companies joins for an exclusive conversation with NewsX as part of the India A-list series. He is recognised by NewsX for excellence in finance.
Talking about his entrepreneurial journey till now, he said, “We are in a multiple ventures. I am a Chartered Accountant by profession. I started my career as a finance person. Then I started with insurance. Insure efficient is a tech platform. All across India we have 50 plus locations in the insurance business. We started in FinTech as well, which is called LCPD. My clients come and find very reasonable economical rates. I started a restaurant business, which is called Explore. I then started off with my furniture business also that is called D3M. Recently, I am starting with a facility management company called security and housekeeping. We have also have a startup business.”
“I am a 10th fail and I did my CA in nine years. My family is in this business only. I am first person in my family who cleared CA and started my career as an employee in the company. I was working for 16 years with my dad and then I said that I wanted to start something of my own. I could not do it earlier because I did my CA very late. I cleared it in 14 attempts and joined Probe India Limited at the age of 28 as a finance person. I then worked for Dr Batra. In many enterprises, I was working as a CFO then I founded the Parthiv Group in 2016 after the death of my wife. She was diagnosed with cancer,” he added.
Speaking about coping with pandemic, he said, “We set up a very good technical platform. We are also in the community of servicing. It was slightly disturbing for us too. The difference is, in the first pandemic, only the metropolitan cities were closed. In the second one, even small cities were closed. We suffered almost 2-3 months. Now, we are able to sell and we are touching new heights and started three more ventures in the pandemic. I started our furniture business recently. We started a manufacturing unit in Mumbai only. Indian people want to buy their own country’s brand.”
Sharing his view on the ‘Make In India’ initiative and taking it to the next level of village level entrepreneurship, he stated, “The entire India is residing in tier three or four cities. Moving by MP, Rajasthan, I touched the small cities also. Now, the time is coming that we should collaborate with the small villages also because all consumers stay in the small villages actually.”
Talking about doing CSR activities along with running a successful business, Rakesh said, “I run an NGO as well. The thing I love is to help others. Somewhere I want to get the blessings by doing such works.” When asked about his advice to youngsters, he gave a motivating advice and said, “Never give up. Whatever is your dream, just do it. Basically, don’t kill your dream and as and when you work you will get a successful result.”