Virat Kohli turns entrepreneur, says mindset for success is same in cricket and startups

Indian cricket team’s vice captain – Virat Kohli. Photo credit: Hdqwalls

I’m sitting in Gurgaon’s Hard Rock Cafe with 35 fans of Indian cricket idol Virat Kohli. They’re the lucky ones invited by FanBox, a social engagement app by tech startup Privy Plex. Some cops enter and sanitize the place.

The cafe is in the heart of Cyber Hub, where about 250,000 professionals work or visit each day. Virat enters the cafe from the back door. Any hint of the presence of India’s Test cricket team captain would have led to chaos in the food court, which alone sees a daily footfall of 20,000 people.

That’s a price you pay for stardom. Virat Kohli, currently one of the world’s best batsman and an idol for millions of cricket fans around the world, can’t go out and have coffee in a normal cafe. He admits he has not even seen the Taj Mahal because he needs so much security to protect him always.

Here in the cafe he looks relaxed in a blue t-shirt stretched over a muscular chest. He’s in black capri pants and white shoes (without socks, of course). A huge tattoo covers his left arm. And he sports a sharp haircut.

He’s sporting and easygoing with the excited fans in the cafe shooting questions at him. “How many tattoos do you have?” one of them asks. “I have 8 tattoos now. But I’m planning to connect some of them. So I may have only three left in some time,” reveals Virat.

“Can I touch and count them?” asks a female fan.

He laughs it away.

Holding the camera phone – Virat Kohli with a fan at Hard Rock cafe, Gurgaon. On extreme left: Ahmed Arab, co-founder Privy Plex.

Newfound love for startups

Tech in Asia sits down to interview him on his newfound passion for startups. He begins by correlating the game of cricket and building a startup.

“Building a new product is very similar to going out to play in a match. There is nervousness as well as a positive feeling about it,” he tells me.

Virat is learning the art of entrepreneurship by building his own fashion ecommerce startup Wrogn and fitness center chain Chisel. And he does private fan engagements online and offline through Fanbox, as he’s doing in the cafe. Virat has a chat room in the Fanbox app and also markets discounts of his Wrogn and Chisel brands through it.

Rising from the dusty bylanes of Delhi, Virat is now one of the highest paid sportspersons in India, reportedly charging around US$330,000 per day for an endorsement.

“Understand the consumer’s need”

“Finding the right balance is important”

The discipline to succeed

How to maintain peak performance and avoid burnout

“You should remember where you came from”

“I hate losing”