Diamonds represent what Govind Dholakia, known to many as Govind Kaka, accumulated. Morals represent what he believes he refused to compromise.
I have often heard that an inclination towards spirituality dulls one’s hunger for success, that the more deeply one turns inward, the less driven one becomes to earn, achieve and accumulate. Govind Kaka’s life offers a compelling challenge to that assumption.
A deeply religious and spiritual person, Govind Kaka has nevertheless built an extraordinary business empire. His life suggests that spirituality does not necessarily take away the edge from ambition; perhaps, when understood differently, it gives ambition a direction. It can help one discover not merely what one wants to achieve, but why one wants to achieve it.
Born on November 1, 1949, into a farmer’s family in Kathiawar, the fifth among seven siblings, Govind Kaka grew up in a large joint family. It was an upbringing far removed from the world of diamonds that would come to define his later life. He attributes two important traits to his parents—compassion from his mother and fearlessness from his father.
The seeds of entrepreneurship appeared surprisingly early. As a child, he once borrowed three rupees to buy balloons and sold them for a profit of ₹3.50. The transaction sounds trivial, but the lesson he received from Batukbhai, who had lent him the money, stayed with him far longer than the profit. He was told to regard his earnings as a gift from God, not to squander them on sensory pleasures or the vagaries of the mind; if money was saved and used wisely, God would continue to multiply it. What began as advice to a young boy became, decades later, something close to a business philosophy.
The boy who experimented with three rupees would eventually arrive in Surat, where he began as a diamond polisher. But the businessman in him was not content merely to learn the craft. He borrowed again, this time to buy rough diamonds and have them polished. It was a modest beginning to what would become a remarkable business journey with his friends Virjibhai Godhani and Bhagwanbhai who joined him as partners.
What distinguishes Govind Kaka’s entrepreneurial story is not merely his appetite for growth but his curiosity. His travels across countries such as Israel, Belgium, Russia, Australia and Canada exposed him to new technologies and ways of doing business. He was willing to adopt what he found useful rather than remain comfortable with established methods. One particularly interesting insight captures his approach to business. Whenever he visited a new city or country, he would often arrive a day early and spend time exploring it like an ordinary visitor. He would walk around, talk to people, visit factories, stores and hospitals, observe the local culture and try to understand the problems people faced. Only after getting a feel for the place would he turn his attention to its business possibilities. For Govind Kaka, understanding a market began not with numbers or opportunities, but with understanding its people, their lives and the problems that needed to be solved.
But it is spirituality that gives this pursuit of wealth its larger context. His childhood connection with the Bhagavad Gita gained a deeper clarity and understanding through satsang with spiritual figures such as Dongreji Maharaj, Atmendraji and Indravadanbhai Choksi. He recalls Indravadanbhai as someone who showed him the path. Govind Kaka writes that his satsang with Atmendraji strengthened his resolve to make money by excelling in business and use it for the larger good of the people who crossed his path.
Perhaps this is where he found what he considered the right reason to pursue wealth – not merely to accumulate it, but to use it in the service of others. Govind Kaka does not reject wealth; he seeks it deliberately. But he does not regard accumulation as the final destination. His philanthropy, too, is described not as his personal achievement but as God’s work, with himself merely an instrument.
In this sense, spirituality does not appear to have weakened his ambition; rather, it seems to have given his ambition a purpose beyond himself.
But the real test of his values came when his business partner Godhani passed away. Govind Kaka and Bhagwanbhai could have returned his share to the family and continued the business. Instead, they made Godhani’s minor sons the partners, allowed their father’s stake to continue growing, arranged for them to be trained and eventually passed the share to them. What struck me most about this episode is that values are easiest to profess when they cost us nothing. Their real test comes when doing what we believe is right means giving up a financial advantage.
As a parent, one of Govind Kaka’s lessons, “Burn Your Bad Seeds” stayed with me. His childhood recollection of being punished by his elder brother after returning home with gambling winnings gives this idea a personal context. It made me think about how important it is to address a bad habit when it is still a seed, rather than allowing it to grow into something much harder to uproot.
His story also carries a lesson about inheritance. Through the story of Dronacharya and Ashwatthama, he makes an interesting point: wealth, power and legacy should not simply be handed down without preparing children with the wisdom, discipline and maturity to handle them. A parent’s success is not a child’s entitlement.
Not all of his lessons arrive so legibly. A good number are expressed in a cryptic manner and I often found myself pausing to work out what was being conveyed. Some of the dots I managed to connect; others I am still waiting for my mind to join. If you want his takeaways stated plainly may find this the book’s chief frustration.
I do not know Govind Kaka personally, and the man behind an autobiography can inevitably be more complex than the portrait presented in its pages. Yet the personality that emerges here is infectious. I have never considered myself particularly generous, but the book left me wanting to push myself a little harder, earn a little more and share that little more with others. It is a habit I have not managed yet, and I am not certain I will. But I want to, which is more than I did before I opened the book.
If this book has made me want to plant even one such seed in my own life, that is not a small thing to receive from a stranger’s life. Though by the end, he no longer reads like one.
