Inside Nicobar Founder Raul Rai’s World Of Sport And Spirit

A little odd and an unexpectedly fun conversationalist, it’s hard to put a pin in what makes Raul Rai tick. His home mirrors that ambiguity. There’s an antique staircase and carefully chosen curios upstairs, the kind of elegance one would expect from someone closely associated with a luxury lifestyle brand; downstairs, the mood softens into a more lived-in register, with a golf studio, family room and gym.

It’s evident that Rai is very much a product of both worlds. “Effortless, relaxed and quietly whimsical,” he says, describing Nicobar, the brand he’s built. It fits him pretty well, too.

Midway through our conversation about his golfing life, he shares an anecdote about detachment, one that mirrors the larger philosophy he brings to everything else. “My golf coach told me that the next leap in my game isn’t technical— it’s mental,” Rai says. Every shot, he explains, is marked either a one or a zero. It’s a one if he stays with the process rather than the outcome i.e., if he swings freely, without tension and doesn’t cling to the result. Everything else is a zero.

The philosophy seems to extend, he shares, to the moment we’re in. “Everyone cares about results,” he says, “but I look at the process. Was I briefed well? Do I know the most interesting things Sonal has written? Do I have five strong talking points?” If the preparation is done calmly and without stress, the outcome matters less. “If the interview goes well, great. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too.” He grins.

The big themes of his life are sport, entrepreneurship and spirituality, and they have all come together. “It’s one of those things where all the dots connect much later in life,” he says, before adding, “Or, like you, I’m a storyteller. We find a way to connect the dots, right?”

A Navy kid who changed seven schools in twelve years, Rai’s relationship with sport began early. Growing up in Mumbai’s Navy Nagar in the 1980s, just a jog away from the US Club, he spent hours every day moving between table tennis, badminton, tennis and squash. With his father in the Navy, sailing was part of the rhythm too. “Literally the same day, I’d play three out of those four sports,” says the state-level table tennis player, whose first love was squash.

At 18, Rai moved to the US for college and went on to build a career in investment banking. He admired the entrepreneurs he worked with but admits he lacked the nerve to become one himself. “I didn’t have the guts,” he says, raised as he was to seek the most risk-averse, yet lucrative, path.

By 2009, he had moved back to Mumbai with his wife, Simran Lal (of Good Earth), when a message arrived from Harish Thawani of Neo Sports. “It said the first seven people who respond can play golf with Sadhguru tomorrow morning at Willingdon.” The round proved catalytic. An Inner Engineering course followed, introducing him to a daily meditation practice, something he once would have dismissed as floofy.

It was on the golf course that Rai’s spiritual journey began; it was also where the idea of entrepreneurship started to take shape. Returning to India had been professionally unsettling. “I wasn’t finding my stride at work,” he says, acknowledging that the vulnerability made him more receptive to risk. He’s also quick to own his privilege—he had married into the Eicher family.

Meditation, Rai says, sharpened his need to ask fundamental questions: Why do we exist? What is our purpose? He began thinking about the gift of having spent 18 years in India and 18 years outside it. “I came up with this very corny line,” he says, “that my purpose was to inspire India to modernise without necessarily Westernising.” The line may have been corny, but it became the germ of Nicobar.

A BIG ONE ON DREAMS

A lifelong sportsman, it’s Rai’s love of golf that brings Esquire India to his door, a passion that has even inspired him to build a golf studio in his basement. It’s also a game that connects generations in the Rai family. At 16, Rai began playing with his father at the Air Force Golf Club in Delhi. The interest resurfaced during COVID, when his son, then 10, was encouraged to spend more time outdoors. Golf became, as Rai puts it, “a little bit of a gift” during an otherwise dark stretch of lockdown.

“I can play golf with my dad, who’s 86 today. I can play with my kids from the time they’re five or six,” he says. “Which other sport lets a 55-year-old play with a six-year-old and with an 86-year-old?”

About a year ago, the family decided to add a golf simulator to the basement, an independent space designed to draw their sons’ (Arjun and Raghav) friends in. The simulator has proved as much of a magnet as the flat-screen TV and the professional-grade gym. A scheduled surgery in 2024, coupled with a growing awareness of the importance of strength and core work after age 50, had led to the installation of the gym. “Golf gives me the excuse to try and stay fit,” he says. “So it’s really around sport that I use the gym, rather than the gym leading.”

The space was designed with the help of Aman Arora and Joel Pinto of Knox Studio, where Rai had been training before surgery. A dedicated cardio room houses a treadmill, exercise bike (a gift from his mother-in-law), Pilates reformer and rowing machine, the latter inspired by House of Cards. “I would say my favourite machine is this beautiful Technogym Run, which has sessions where they guide you through different runs on hills and speeds,” he says. There’s also a separate strength-training room. “My workouts are a mix of strength, cardio and mobility,” he adds. “I try to keep all three in play.”

Over the past five years, as his own golf game has intensified, Rai has begun competing seriously. He’s already part of the team representing India at the World Amateur Golfers Championship. “I'm a big one on dreams, and I decided that one of my dreams is to be able to compete in the senior British Open amateur,” he says. To that end, he’s been training with Bengaluru-based coach Tarun Sardesai.

That a game involving little more than walking the greens with a stick and occasionally striking a ball could inspire this level of commitment is, in its own way, heartening. Rai says his love of golf is threefold.

“First, it’s four-and-a-half hours in nature,” he explains. “Then you’re actually hitting the ball for maybe fifteen minutes? So it’s four hours to catch up with friends.” Some of his deepest friendships, he says, have been forged on the course. “Honestly, my kids have opened up to me so much while we’re playing.”

And then there’s the more philosophical pull. “Ultimately, life is about finding your own potential, not competing with anyone else,” he says. He recalls a business school professor who once told him they weren’t there to make students smarter, but to help them “march to their own tune.” It stayed with him. “I grew up incredibly competitive,” Rai says, “and it’s miserable comparing yourself to others. Golf is just you and the course. At its essence, it’s you versus yourself.” Therein lies the attraction—that’s the only competition this sports-loving, spiritually inclined entrepreneur is interested in.