Why this founder is doing bhangra at home during lockdown

Bhangra in Bengaluru? It could be Archit Gupta working out. The founder of ClearTax initially found the lockdown tough as he had to balance work, exercise and domestic responsibilities. But now he has got a hang of it.

“I work from a desk at home from 10 am to 8.30 pm, with small breaks for walking or exercise,” Gupta tells ETPanache “We use a lot of cloud collaboration tools like Zoom, Slack, Google Hangouts and Google docs across the company when we work.”

“Not being able to ‘walk the floor’ was a big challenge. We have replicated the office water cooler over a Slack channel,” Gupta says with a laugh. “We also have a consistent informal ‘gappe (chat) session’ over Zoom or Google hangouts.”


Gupta wakes up by 7 am and does yoga and meditation. Then he begins work. “I keep regular office hours. I work in a proper posture at my desk, never on the bed or couch. Evenings, I help with the dishes and work out,” he says.

“I work out with kettlebells on alternate days. I do yoga and dance [bhangra] workouts with my wife following some YouTube channels. We dance badly but it’s a ton of fun,” he says with a chuckle.

Gupta and his wife Vineeta have also started cooking and baking together. “We cook simple Italian recipes. We bake cookies, bread, open-face sandwiches, pizzas, calzones. I’m the dishwasher and sous chef,” he says.