Business and Pleasure
Regarded as one of Mumbai's most eligible bachelors, Aditya Kilachand is discreet about his personal life. Why is it so?
Aditya D Kilachand (better known as AD) has certainly mastered the art of flying under the radar. Very little is known about his personal life. His recent relationship with Baby Doll singer Kanika Kapoor is the only information in the public domain and even about that, he says, “People always speculate”. As the 45-year-old son of Mumbai’s original social commentator, Shobhaa De, you would imagine AD would automatically be in the media firing line. But perhaps his background has given him the wisdom never to comment on rumours.
“I am a private person, and I only speak to the press when there is something relevant to speak about,” says AD.
Private, keep out
Aditya hails from one of South Mumbai’s most respected business families. He is the son of novelist, columnist and style icon Shobhaa De from her first marriage to the late Sudhir Vrajlal Kilachand. His inner circle comprises the members of South Mumbai’s swish set, such as Haseena Jethmalani, Pratapsinh Gaekwad and Uraaz Bahl. You may have seen his name on a list of Mumbai’s most eligible bachelors, but other than that, he has managed to stay away from the glare of the media, mainly focussed on business interviews.
But the serial entrepreneur turns out to be a serial monogamist as well. He knows how to avoid talking about his own personal life, but will concede that some of his girlfriends could be called “glamorous” and is clear that you cannot label him a playboy because when he is with one person, he is with that person till the end.
And he remained dedicated to his first love – golf. “It is my love of golf that some of my previous girlfriends have had issues with,” he says wryly. Golf appears to be in his blood – his cousin Akshay Kilachand is the golf captain of Willingdon Sports Club and Aditya has been a keen golfer since his college days. Most Sundays see him waking early to play the sport, so whoever is in his life needs to accept that there will seldom be cosy breakfasts in bed. And with his mom being the eternally elegant Shobhaa De, whoever he does eventually settle down with will have a tough act to follow. “She is not the sort of mother who keeps nagging me about marriage, but she does make hints,” he says.
Business first
The biggest relationships Aditya commits to so far are his business ventures. His latest is a project in Alibaug, the quaint coast town that is just a speedboat ride away from Mumbai. Avas Wellness, the new venture, is being touted as the ‘Hamptons of India’ the original Hamptons being a small group of villages and hamlets in Suffolk county, New York, which well-heeled Manhattanites escape to in the summer months.
Last year, during the lockdown imposed to slow the spread of the Covid pandemic, the affluent of Mumbai migrated to Alibaug. Aditya’s family has had a place in Alibaug for more than 30 years now and he had betted on this coastal town years before the pandemic hit, making his first investments there a decade ago, years before the RORO service, a ferry service that gets you from the Gateway of India to Mandwa jetty close to Alibaug in just 60 minutes, started operations. This was a wise move because his project, Avas Wellness, has attracted personal investments from the Serum Institute of India’s CEO Adar Poonawalla and Dubaibased Gaurav Kapur, whose family co-founded YES Bank.
Aditya believes that within the next five years, Alibaug will be the hottest destination in India and hopes that his holistic living and wellness project will be seen as the gold standard of the coast getaways within India. “I’ve always seen great potential in Alibaug,” he says.
This project is a complete U-turn from Prive, the membership-only nightclub Aditya had launched in 2006, which was modelled on London’s Annabel’s, one of the world’s most exclusive members-only clubs. Adjoining Prive was a contemporary Japanese restaurant called Tetsuma, which Aditya opened years before the Taj’s Wasabi became the city’s swishest restaurant, and in 2019, Aditya opened Happy Thai, a mall-based eatery set up with chef James Biaka from Tetsuma.
His own journey with luxury, however, actually began with fashion, a love affair that did not last long. At the age of 25, he had launched Almari.com, a fashion marketplace that was all about content and commerce, with all of India’s foremost designers onboard. It never took off the way Aditya had hoped it would, but it was not a disaster either.
He recalls, “It was a great concept and I think we were about 20 years ahead of our time. But we were fortunate to be one of the few companies that were acquired just before the dot-com bubble burst.”
As his latest venture works out, Aditya has some advice for Indian luxury consumers: “Discreet luxury never goes out of style. That is what true luxury is about! Loud and flashy is trashy and always was. Quite luxe is very cool.”
This also seems to be his approach to his personal life: staying discreet.
“DISCREET LUXURY NEVER GOES OUT OF STYLE… LOUD AND FLASHY IS TRASHY AND ALWAYS WAS” –ADITYA KILACHAND