LESSONS LEARNT
There’s however, no bitterness, just valuable lessons learnt. “Despite it all, Niky-Tasha became a brand name overnight, it had intrinsic value and I realised that nothing goes wrong if done with love, honesty and sincerity.”

That was when LIC happened. A friend working with the insurance giant came up with the proposal. “I said why not? I was in a vacuum, I had no work. And I realised that earlier too I had been in marketing, only I now would be marketing different stuff.” There were many who had the audacity to laugh in her face but Ritu has been on the upswing ever since.

Her portfolio is packed — 50 RNIS College of Insurance all over the country to train insurance personnel and above all, w.escolife.com.

The techno-savvy Ritu takes off like an unbridled racehorse when it comes to Escolife: “RNIS is brick and mortar support for Escolife, which is a high-powered technological support to provide service to the insurance sector worldwide.”

A pat on the back has just come from ‘The Asian Insurance Review’ which has declared it the second best insurance website in the world. This without an official launch yet!

“These little joys of life are like mentors. We’re moving slowly, surely and strategically. We are bringing about virtual office and consumer education. There’s a revolution taking place in this sector.
In the next few years, 3,00,000 jobs will emerge from the insurance sector alone. There are 8,00,000 LIC agents, and it did Rs 2.32 crores worth of policy last year and settled 86,000 claims.” It’s easy to see why she is the top agent in the country!

LIVING KINGSIZE
“Yes, sometimes my family asks me why I work so hard. It’s gratifying for my heart, my soul, for me as a person. I want to see a day when people in the insurance business will say, ‘There used to be an agent called Ritu Nanda who helped me do something more’,” she says, emotionally.

And there is life beyond her office too. She has just done a book on her late father called ‘Raj Kapoor Speaks’ (Penguin). She also has ‘Rimari’ to promote young artists as it is “difficult for artists to market products, by supporting them, we give them wings to take off.”

A self-declared unsocial person, Ritu says, “Our life, our priorities are very focused. During the weekends, we go to our country house ‘Nirvana’. I play the piano, I read, I spend time with the family, and as they say, watch the grass grow with my grandkids.”
On Monday morning she’s back to the grinding stone.

HER DADDY’S DAUGHTER
The late showman Raj Kapoor would certainly have been proud of his first-born Ritu Nanda and her book on him, ‘Raj Kapoor Speaks’ (Penguin), released on his birthday on December 14 last year. She put it all together in a month-and-a-half!

“It was a tight deadline but the fact that she is a bit of a workaholic helped,” says Ravi Singh, Editor, Penguin, who worked on the book with Ritu.

The book comes with two CDs. “You can hear him speak, feel him there as much as I do,” says Ritu, An update of an earlier 1990 publication of the same name, the book has more to offer. “The book has 80 per cent more material which is substantial; of the whole book, 60 per cent is pictures,” explains Ravi.

It has Raj Kapoor talking on himself and his work including his films, heroines, family, music, childhood, etc. Most of it has been culled from his interviews and archival material and from interviews with family and friends that Ritu conducted.

The publication happened after Penguin learnt that Ritu was thinking of a new version of the book. “We approached her and took it up from there,” says Ravi.

Photograph: Anuj Parti
Photograph: Subhash Simhudu