Bookmyshow relies on social media, but founder Ashish Hemrajani isn't a Twitter or Facebook buff

Bookmyshow founder Ashish Hemrajani believes in keeping it real.

His business may depend substantially on social media but he isn’t a Twitter or Facebook buff in his personal life.

He prefers instead the old school focus on first principles like common sense, integrity and giving back to society.

“You could be in an offline or online business, be in a high profile business which gets written about in the papers. It doesn’t really matter,” said Hemrajani. To emphasise his point, he gave the example of Radhakishan Damani founded Avenue Supermarts, owner of the D Mart chain of supermarkets.


Radhakishan Damani founded Avenue Supermarts, owner of the D Mart chain of supermarkets. (Image: BCCL)

“Everybody was chasing internet companies and out comes this guy called D Mart, based out of Bombay and he lists and he’s got a valuation of, I don’t know how many billion dollars. I think he wasn’t in the limelight, nobody spoke about innovation. He didn’t grab headlines. Surely, he had his first principles in place and that’s why he created tremendous value for the company and his shareholders,” said Hemrajani.

From one business head to another, some doffing of the hat.