Big boys just wanna have fun

Ayush Maheshwari: It’s all about communication. Picture by Aranya Sen

From spearheading the dealer service network in a Fortune 200 IT company to singing and dancing before the camera, his 200-kg frame refuses to step off centrestage.

Twenty-five-year-old city boy Ayush Maheshwari wants to change people’s lives with his moves. To be released in August, the album — with eight songs — shot and recorded in India and abroad, will urge people to follow their heart and achieve bigger goals in life.

Bigger could well be the key word for this La Martiniere alumnus who makes no bones (what’s that!) about his weight. The album, produced by a global music company, is more than a mere medley of tunes and twists.

“We are shooting the last and most important part of the video in Calcutta and that’s what brings me here,” smiles the “Big Indian” and the youngest director in Automatic Data Processing (ADP), the $ 7-billion multinational, headquartered in Chicago.

“I always try to innovate ways to help people get more out of life. I drew up an initiative, Karma Yatra, in our company to facilitate internal communication and empowerment of the people,” says the die-hard Asha Bhonsle and Lata Mangeshkar fan, who started his career as a systems analyst after graduating in computer science from Marquette University in the US.

And the result, he says, has been “phenomenal”, with people dreaming big and putting in their best. “We had the first experiment in our Hyderabad office last year, where we even invited family members of our employees. The chaprasi danced with the CEO’s wife and led teams with the vice-presidents as members. Today, people feel free in our company, productivity has improved and the attrition rate has gone down,” explains Ayush, who anchored the show as a strategy to make work more fun.

Enthused by the idea, the US office has decided to organise similar soirees there and a few Hyderabad-based IT companies have also approached Ayush.

“It all lies in enabling communication and I owe my skills to the city, where I grew up picking up this art from the lovely people around me,” smiles Ayush, talking about his first teacher, Ma’am Bhesania, of La Martinere.