Anshumman Joshi’s tryst with the world of business began as a teenager. Or so, he claims. Back then, as a 14-year-old student at the New Era Public School in Delhi, Joshi claims to have started a mobile reseller business out of the UK, employing a local there, and making some 300 quid as commission from various mobile companies. Then, by the time he turned 18, he claims to have started a travel business, offering cheap air tickets with a focus on markets such as Canada and the UK, with backend offices in India.
Since then, in the two decades that followed, Joshi has gone on to serve a jail sentence for something he claims he has never done, float a political party, become a chairman at a co-operative bank, change his name as per an astrologer’s advice, and is now gearing up for perhaps his biggest corporate battle ever. Joshi’s Dhanvarsha group, which he claims is a $6.5 billion entity, wants to buy out the publicly owned Dhanlaxmi Bank, a bank with an asset book of over Rs 14,000 crore.
(This story appears in the 21 October, 2022 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)