When you meet Shashikiran Shetty for the first time, he comes across as a regular guy, not the head of a billion-dollar company. Dressed in a striped white and pink full-sleeved shirt with grey trousers, the moustachioed 60-year-old eases into conversation without any trappings of formality.

 

He stresses on the importance of humility, on staying grounded as you get more successful in life—lessons learnt from his deep faith in spirituality and daily prayer.

 

The founder and chairman of Allcargo Logistics Ltd, one of India’s largest private logistics company, is not particularly animated while talking about his achievements. To set up a business of this scale from scratch with a starting capital of about Rs25,000, 35 years ago, would have involved many hard-nosed decisions, negotiations and heartbreak, but he brushes them aside with a smile: “Of course, it was much more complicated than that.”

 

Our meeting had moved at the last minute from a private members’ club in the Bandra-Kurla Complex, Mumbai, to the Allcargo office building in nearby Kalina. He was in the middle of some “homework and reading” for the World Economic Forum in Davos (held from 23-26 January; he was to attend a session on what the future office would look like).