 |
From the penthouse on the 37th floor of Infinity on Rincon Hill, the eye sweeps the expanse of the blue bay that hugs the Embarcadero along downtown San Francisco. It’s a panorama that is almost certainly worth the $6.9-million that Gurbaksh Chahal paid to acquire his tony address.
Chahal, now 26, first enquired about its availability when the property bookings opened in December 2006 but was told the penthouse had been sold. He was not too cut up about it because he did not have the money then, he says. Less than a year later, Bluelithium, his second Internet advertising dotcom, was bought by Yahoo! in a $300-million cash deal. Chahal, then all of 25, called Infinity once more in December 2007. The penthouse was available: the wife of the previous owner did not have a head for heights.
Chahal, or G as he is called, was made of sterner stuff. The wiry youngest son of poor Sikh immigrants who came to the United States in 1985 confesses to riding high on calculated risk. As he sits in his chandeliered white living room, he exudes the confidence of an entrepreneur who at 18 sold his first dotcom for $40 million and who appeared on Fox TV’s Secret Millionaire show in December last year.
“I was the first to be cast,” says Chahal. In the show, real life millionaires go undercover to give away $100,000 of their own money to worthy causes. Chahal’s ultimate candidates were a soup kitchen, a battered women’s shelter and three individual women in difficult situations.
It was his screen debut and it left him with a taste for more. As he waits for October 15, 2010, when his non-compete clause in the sale of Bluelithium will expire, he is exploring the media space. Perhaps a business reality show that will air in January, possibly on the lines of The Apprentice with ace producer Mark Burnett, but Chahal is tightlipped about details.
“First and foremost, I am a businessman. At the moment, I am just getting my handcuffs out of the way,” he comments, as he sits coiled on a plush sofa. He is dressed in jeans and a crisp white shirt, his camera-compatible looks familiar from magazine covers such as the San Francisco Chronicle and his recent memoir The Dream.
Is he now going to bank on his looks, as indicated by his beefy shirtless flaunt for a magazine? “It was a fitness magazine. Looks help in the entertainment space but not in business. That is all about relationships and results,” he retorts.
Success forced him to mature quickly. “I knew what it was growing up poor,” he says bluntly. The family of seven, including grandparents, lived in a one-bedroom house in underprivileged San Jose. His parents, Avtar and Arjinder, had traditional Indian ways and adapted to their surroundings in a new country in a manner they knew best.
“We had a poverty-stricken lifestyle for seven years. It took my parents 15 years to achieve a middle class dream. It was strange, this show — it was a culminating experience, a top to bottom journey at a time when I had gone from the bottom to the top,” Chahal wonders aloud.
His dad was strict and his grandfather was a granthi. “I didn’t have a choice regarding the turban. I lived under their laws under their roof. At school, people prejudged you. There were not many Sikhs there. It made me the odd one out.”
It was easy to be picked on in his “very rough and very segregated” school. There were times when he came home turban in hand, once having been forced to remove it at gun point. When he eventually sheared his locks, it was because he was ready to do so. “Now I fit in better but in terms of people it’s all about finding the real from the fake.”
Chahal moved out of his parents’ home when he was 18. “It was probably very difficult for them to understand that I wanted to live independently but I was always the rebellious one,” he says.
In his book, he talks about growing up with his three older siblings, parents and grandparents. His siblings have worked for his companies. “My eldest sister is nine years older. It was interesting to see the shift from being baby to boss, but it was never difficult. In life you have to make decisions.”
His beloved grandmother, Surjeet Kaur, his inspiration, was in the green room when chat show hostess Oprah Winfrey featured Chahal on an episode on freshly minted moolah-makers recently. “But she has Alzheimer’s and it is very sad to see her at this stage. She cannot recognise people. It’s a very painful process.”
Keeping a sane head is all about family and close-knit friends, especially in the face of all the negative comments that followed his decision to write a book and take up TV. His interior designer, the monogrammed bedroom and even his blonde arm candy were dissed on the Internet. “I knew there would be a lot of jealousy and negative press but you can’t obsess about it.” It is a mantra that is true of his business approach too. “At 25 I was able to do what others at 50 could not. I see myself as a realist for I don’t want to disappoint myself.”
Which is why there was no eureka moment when he closed the deal with Yahoo! As the negotiations intensified, it hit him. “Omigod! It’s going to happen,” Chahal narrates. When the deed was sealed after three months, the feeling was one of liberation. Everyone else was shocked at the money and his achievement but by that time the enormity of being wealthy had ceased to matter.
Chahal left his personal world out of the deal: no one, for instance, knew how old he was. He was therefore judged, he says, on his professional rather than personal take.
So is this arriviste making up for lost time? Living the super-rich lifestyle rather than being an invisible workaholic? “Oh yeah!” he laughs. Life so far was all about “sacrifices” and now there is so much “stuff” to catch up on. Still, he is trying to stay grounded.
He may live in a fancy pad in town but instead of going out every night he prefers one or two “very big” nights a week. He goes clubbing with his close friends, including his brother. And this self-confessed foodaholic cooks his home meals: high proteins, low carbs. He still shops in budget grocery chains and flies economy. “I still look at price tags. You gotta act like you don’t have it,” says the man with the millions.
“For all the financial security that money has got us, I did not start my companies for the money. It was always about being a success, not about being a millionaire,” he says.
So is there going to be a blonde or redhead bahu? “Of course, I live in the fantasy that I will find someone Indian with great family values, who is ambitious, has great looks and is still single and is in the Bay Area. But that’s hard to come by,” he shrugs. No dating? He laughs heartily, spontaneously, guard lowered. “It’s very hard for me to date. Seriously, I have to deal with perceptions of what I may be like and also I don’t want my relationship to be about money. So I’d go out for fun without any pre-conditions.”
His favourite actors, Angelina Jolie and Aishwarya Rai, are “both taken” so, if he had to pick, he’d be happy taking Megan Fox or Priyanka Chopra out to dinner. After his Lamborghini he bought with his first company sale, he has now downsized to a Bentley GTX.
Where do the American and desi meet in this hybrid? “My core values are Indian, my personality is American,” Chahal says.
If there is a most cherished moment he would pick in a really very short journey it would be when his father heard his son had sold his company. “He is a not a touchy-feely guy. A typical Indian father. That day I could see in his eyes that he was very proud of me. I had taken over his role as the head of the house.”
He bought his parents new homes, paid off their loans and the family is living the American dream. But his mother would, if she could, make just one small change in the script. “Come home,” she says.