Name
Age
Status
Occupation
Food: I am trying to follow a good balanced diet. I have a very much Indian vegetarian-based diet, trying to avoid anything that is too fat or with too much sugar. It is hard for me to reduce the carbs intake with that kind of regime but I would say that my diet is as healthy as possible. I do take some protein supplement as we are lacking enough protein on a daily basis with the type of training that we do. I like to get a smoothie in the morning or after a long hard bike session for example with protein powder, banana, avocado and oat milk.
Exercise: It depends a lot of the week and the race plan that I have but I would say on average I am now at 14 hours a week. Close to a full Ironman distance race, I would go probably to 16 to 18 hours, but it’s too hard for me to do more. I already struggle a lot to do 15+ hours a week with work and with tyring to be a good husband and a dad.
When you were younger, were you active in sports?
My journey to fitness really started when I was 14 to 15 years old. I always did a bit of sport when I was young. I was competing in volleyball in my teenage years. I did a bit of badminton. Then when I was in the last year of high school, I took up swimming, simply because I could see I would have had a better grade at the exam than if I was doing athletics (which was how you would get grades in sports in high school).
Then a friend of mine told me I should continue to swim with the squad. Which I did then when I went to university, I got into water polo but eventually went back to swimming
What did you get into as you got older?
I got into running when my wife Rashmi and I were playing some fun football with her colleagues in Lausanne. One guy said he was not going to come as he was training for his first half-marathon and didn’t want to get injured. That’s when I looked at him and said I wanted to try one too. I didn’t know how to run, didn’t know anything around training. I just started to do some runs, without any specific methods. I did my first half in the Lausanne Half Marathon back in 2010 I believe.
Then we moved to Shanghai and for a couple of years I took up cricket, and then decided to try my first full marathon in Seoul in 2016. I managed a time of 3 hours 37 minutes and it was an awesome experience but very painful.
I got better at running when I moved to Singapore and trained with the Singapore Shufflers, managing a time of 3 hours 24 minutes at the Singapore Marathon. Then I got into triathlon.
How did you get into triathlon?
A friend of mine told me I should try. He pushed me with a couple of other friends to try my first Bintan Triathlon, Olympic distance. I don’t remember my time but I remember he was pissed at me because I went faster than him. This is how I got the bug and kept going.
What was it about triathlon that has kept you going until today?
I think they say why would you suck at one when you can suck at three? And that is quite true for me. I was never a good swimmer, nor a good cyclist (I never cycled before) nor a good runner and triathlon was a nice mix of the 3. I was ok at it and got hooked at wanting to get better at it.
My family then moved to the United States for my wife’s career and I quit my job to settle for a bit. Whilst looking for a job, I had nothing much to do and that created a lot of anxiety for me. I have worked all my life since I am 16 and never had a break ever.
In this new country with no friends nor family, in an environment (Silicon Valley) that didn’t see any value in a profile like mine, I had to find something to push my mind away. That’s when I trained for my first Ironman 70.3 which was Santa Cruz 70.3. I went on to do more and more and even qualified for the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in South Africa in 2018.
We moved back to Singapore and now triathlon has become my way of life. My days are structured around my training, our family holidays are my races and now I have convinced my wife to try the sport too, so it’s become a family obsession.
What are some of your major accomplishments in triathlon?
Every race I complete is an accomplishment. The rankings or the World Championship slots are not that important. I think the best accomplishment is when you know you’ve done your best, you race to your full potential, you gave everything. A race where you put everything you had out there is the best accomplishment there is. If it translates to a slot or podium, great, but that’s not what motivates me most. However, of course, my qualification for the Ironman World Championship in Kona and the 3 Ironman 70.3 World Championships I have done are fantastic results that I am proud of.
Most memorable race?
I am sure a lot of people will think I would say Kona 2024 but it’s actually Challenge Roth and Ironman Langkawi in 2023. Roth in Germany gave me goose bumps. That Solar Hill you see on YouTube videos is absolutely unique. The vibe in this race is like no other, the whole town is here to celebrate the sport and whilst you find amazing athletes, I feel the community is here more for the love of the sport than in the Ironman scene where the competition spirit is high (with the qualifications and all).
Completing my first full Ironman at Langkawi in 2023 was my most memorable race, and it came with my qualification for Kona, which was unbelievable. Langkawi is known for being one of the hardest races in the world and I executed this race the best I could. I raced smart, I didn’t think of the qualification, I just focus on doing the best I could. I thought I had no chance so I didn’t overpush on the bike. Kona was a mythical race but I had a bad race – I wasn’t healthy, I was tired and not in a good shape so it was a hard one for me but I still did it.
“What matters is how you make of the cards you’ve been dealt with.”
Cyril Bedat
Why did you decide to leave your corporate job and invest into PURPOSE and Simply Active?
I think I was always an entrepreneur but I never had the guts, the idea, the courage and the support to try. It was never the right time, the right prospect, the right reasons. But when Noor (founder of PURPOSE) pushed his message on LinkedIn to find a partner to grow the brand, it felt that this was the right time and the right thing to do. I felt I have learned what I needed to feel strong into trying to do this.
Building a business is hard but when you build a brand it’s another type of game. I believe in the mission and vision we have. Our ambitions are high, very ambitious, very hard to achieve with a lot of obstacles and barrier to break but I will not stop trying. Building a global brand from SoutheastAsia, trying to show what Singapore can do, promoting a brand that wants to have a positive impact on the community is extremely challenging. You compete against so many odds that sometimes I asked myself if I am not an idiot or crazy (or both).
With Simply Active, I have made my best decision yet to find a real good partner in Kris who now leads the business with me and we hope to help more Singapore-based people to live a more healthy lifestyle. It’s nice to see the community grow and see that we can help people have better performance and fulfilling their potential.
What are your goals?
I would love to qualify again for Kona since I had a bad race in 2024. I would love to try to do a good one and see where I am in the competitive triathlon field. For PURPOSE and Simply Active, the goals are long term, with a clear road map in the next 10 to 15 years, provided we can survive and grow because it’s a very hard space out there. We want PURPOSE to become the first global performance brand from Southeast Asia, focusing on heat and humidity for all.
When you were younger, did you experience any incidents that made you feel insecure about yourself?
Of course I did. Multiple times and sometimes I still have them. Everyone has their own journey, mine is not better than anyone else. I think very often we look at our own journey and struggles and forget that we are not the only one struggling and that a lot more people have been dealt with more difficult cards to play than yours. It doesn’t make it easier but it gives some perspective when it’s hard.
Have you gone through any adversities in life that made you change how you viewed life?
What matters is how you make of the cards you’ve been dealt with. None of my family members went to university, so I didn’t know much about support and grants or anything. I just knew I couldn’t live and study without working so I simply checked where I could earn a bit by working on the side, enough to survive in Geneva.
Whilst a lot of my friends were enjoying the university life of partying, I was still in a restaurant waiting on tables or selling newspapers at the train station. But this is way easier than being born in the slums of Mumbai and never have had a chance to get an education.
In every situation I had to go through, my emotional side is always taking the first step but my calm side (yes it exists) helps me to analyse situation more calmly and more rationally. What we decide to do is about choice. Sometimes the situation is not fair, sometimes someone is doing something to you that is not right, but what matters is how you respond to those situations. It’s not easy but that’s what I try to do.
When did you feel the least confident about yourself?
That was 10 years ago when we moved to the US and I was trying to find a job there. At that point I worked hard in the 10 years prior, to show my potential, and through my career at that time, I am proud to have done my best and this best was good enough to be recognised and respected. It was the case at my former employer LVMH and also in the agency I was at the time.
When we moved to the US, I was entering a very specific and special place, one that was all about tech, all about product and the definition of marketing was growth marketing which meant promotional stuff which was the exact opposite of the experience I brought in (importance of the brand, the craft, the message). The fact that I spoke 5 languages, lived in Asia and in China was 200% irrelevant. I was just non-American, never lived there, never worked in tech, and was probably too direct to fit culturally.
When you worked all your life since the age of 16 without any disruption, not even 1 month sabbatical, to stare at a screen, to apply for jobs all day without getting any calls or positive emails for 2 months was very hard for me. I lost a lot of confidence in myself. It was hard also as a husband, a father, to look at myself in the mirror and feel like a failure. That’s actually where triathlon saved my mind and allowed me to have a space where I could let it out, or a goal to achieve in the day with my training.
Did you ever struggle with your body?
For the people who know me now, they probably won’t believe it but yes I did. I was chubby when I was a kid. I was the fat boy of the group. I was the one laughed at, never got any girls’ attention. I know it sounds stupid and funny but that’s what drove me to push myself in doing more sport. I just was tired of being called fatty all the time.
Are you satisfied with your body now?
I don’t look at my body the same way I look at it as when I was a teenager. I am fine not being very muscular, not having a 6-pack. I am able to go through a full Ironman and being in the top 5 to 10% of the crazy athletes who are doing this sport in the world. I am happy with that and with the way this body performs.
