She did an MBA in US, acted with Amitabh Bachchan, and left an Anil Kapoor film for marriage, now runs a Rs 120 crore chicken business empire

Perizaad Zorabian shared screen space with Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and once ruled the small but stylish world of Indian English-language cinema. Today, she runs a Rs 120 crore poultry-to-quick-commerce business with 700 employees, and she recently revealed she walked out of a film with Anil Kapoor and dropped Nikhil Advani's 'Salaam-e-Ishq' the moment she decided to get married. The actress opened up about the decision in a recent interview, and the story behind it has little to do with Bollywood and everything to do with butterflies, biological clocks, and a family chicken business nobody expected her to fall in love with.

Zorabian's exit from films did not happen because offers dried up. It happened because she chose a different life, one that took her from an MBA in New York to an acting class she joined almost by accident, and finally back to the family business she had dreamed about since she was eight years old. Her story is a reminder that Bollywood fame and personal ambition do not always point in the same direction.

The Girl Who Wanted To Be An Entrepreneur, Not An Actress

Long before cameras found her, Zorabian wanted to run a company. Growing up in a Mumbai-based Irani family, she watched her father closely and decided early on what she wanted to become. "I was 8 and couldn’t even pronounce entrepreneur correctly, but I knew that’s what I wanted to be," she said in an interview with Suketh Shah.


Acting entered her life almost by chance. While pursuing an MBA in New York, a friend introduced her to the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She enrolled out of curiosity and spent a year training there after finishing business school, still planning to return home and join the family trade.

An Om Puri Film Changed Everything

Back in India, a modelling coordinator spotted her at a family gathering and offered her a Fair & Lovely ad. That one commercial opened doors, and soon she was cast opposite Om Puri in Nagesh Kukunoor's 'Bollywood Calling'. She took a month off work for the shoot and then went straight back to her desk. "I was fully hands-on at Zorabian," she recalled.

The film's release got delayed, so Zorabian assumed the moment had passed. It hadn't. When Pritish Nandy Communications bought the film and put her at the centre of its promotions, everything shifted overnight. "My life changed after that," she said. Indian English cinema was still a tiny space with very few actors in it, and Zorabian suddenly found herself in demand.

Films Followed, But Stardom Never Did

Roles in 'Morning Raga', 'Joggers Park' and 'Mumbai Matinee' built her into a familiar face in that niche circuit. She travelled to China for three months to play Indira Gandhi on stage in 'Bandung Sonata' and later starred with Amitabh Bachchan in 'Ek Ajnabee'. Yet she never mistook that recognition for mainstream Bollywood stardom. "I was not a Bollywood star. I wouldn’t get the kind of attention that a Karisma Kapoor would get," she said.

An Ultimatum From Her Father

For years, Zorabian juggled film shoots with work at the family business, until her father asked her to pick one. She chose acting, with his blessing, and went on to build a varied career across cinema, television and theatre.

At 33, Zorabian married businessman Boman Irani. Before the wedding, he told her he would prefer she didn't travel extensively once they were married, a comment that set off a small storm at home. "My husband said, ‘Once we get married, I don’t want you to travel’. And my mother was like, ‘What nonsense! How can he say that?’ and my sister-in-law was like, ‘That’s it. Don’t get married. He already knew you were an actor. Why would he say something like that at the last minute?’"

Zorabian saw it differently. "He didn’t say you can’t travel. He said, ‘I will wait for you but I would prefer if you didn’t travel’. I didn’t take on another film after that."

Choosing A Family Over Film Offers

The decision wasn't only about her husband's wish. Motherhood was on her mind too. "Biologcal clock was ticking," she said, explaining her shift in priorities. She later admitted that getting pregnant was what made peace with leaving films possible. "I knew the only way to be okay with it was to get pregnant, so I chose to have a family."

Big offers kept coming even after that. Subhash Ghai wanted her opposite Anil Kapoor in 'Black and White', and Nikhil Advani offered her a part opposite Sohail Khan in 'Salaam-e-Ishq'. She turned both down. Her mother, unwilling to see her daughter's independence clipped, had a warning for her new son-in-law: "My mother told my husband, ‘She is a butterfly. Don’t clip her wings because she will wither away and die’."

Marriage, it turned out, did not cage her. She stayed active in theatre and television and later looked back proudly at one moment on stage after having two children. "I had given birth to two children and I was at 48 kgs wearing a pair of shorts and standing in front of 1100 people to a standing ovation," she said.

From A Struggling Poultry Firm To A Rs 120 Crore Business

While her film career faded into the background, Zorabian was quietly rebuilding something else. When she first got seriously involved in the family business, it was in financial trouble. Over the years, she turned it from a traditional wholesale poultry operation into a modern food company with retail, ready-to-cook products and quick commerce under one roof. The business now employs around 700 people and earns close to Rs 120 crore a year.

For someone who has spent years in the poultry trade, Zorabian is oddly picky about her own plate. She eats chicken daily at home, by her own admission, but avoids ordering it whenever she eats out.

(Source: TOI)