Time brings change and outlooks and preferences change with each passing generation. Even for Marwaris, a community known for its rigid adherence to tradition, this holds true, as has been exemplified by Neetish Sarda of Smartworks and father Ghanshyam Sarda of Sarda Group of Companies, whom we have featured on our cover this issue. While Ghanshyam Sarda—an eminent jute baron from Kolkata—illuminates the Marwari business horizon as a stalwart of the industrialist era, son Neetish Sarda, the head honcho of Smartworks, a leading name in the business of co-working spaces, symbolises the modern generation’s penchant for new-age businesses.
Vaibhav Khandelwal, the co-founder of Shadowfax Technologies, likewise stands out as yet another example of the changing face of Marwari enterprise. An integrated third-party logistics services provider based out of Bengaluru, Shadowfax leverages technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer efficient, cost-effective and agile end-to-end logistics solutions in this era of online shopping, which is rewriting the rules of the retail business.
Kartik Gaggar of Rajasthan Studio, yet another new age Marwari, has successfully integrated his Shekhawati lineage, his love for culture and the power of information technology by creating a business that promotes the diverse arts and crafts of Rajasthan, both online and offline. Rajasthan Studio also endeavours to create and support a pan-India community of artists and build an ecosystem to empower young, budding and talented artists.
Together with Kartik Gaggar, in a special art section, we have featured three national award-winning artists and craftsmen from Rajasthan—Ram Swaroop Sharma, Prithvi Raj Kumawat and Dr Jyoti Swaroop Sharma.
With all this and more, we bring you yet another interesting issue of MARWAR.
Marwar is a community-based magazine with an emphasis on profiling the best and the brightest in the Marwari community. The magazine reaches the elite in India and abroad who want to read and discover the wonders of all things connected with the community. Thus, the subjects featured have to have the flavour of Marwar and Rajasthan—its culture, lifestyle and traditions. We highlight arts, crafts, music, dance and theatre as well as fashion and food that are connected to the region apart from immensely successful businessmen and businesswomen. In the past, luminaries like Laxmi Mittal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Indu Jain, Sanjiv Goenka and Rajashree Birla, to name a few, have graced our cover.
