What the King Taught a First-Generation Founder

Some stars entertain you for a weekend. A few become the soundtrack of your life. For me, that has always been Shah Rukh Khan.

Today, 2nd November 2026, Shah Rukh Khan turns 61. Looking back feels less like reviewing a filmography and more like flipping through my own scrapbook.

It started on a TV set

My journey with Shah Rukh did not begin in a cinema hall. It began on a small TV in the late 1980s.

I was a school kid when Fauji came on Doordarshan. Lt. Abhimanyu Rai was not the polished hero Hindi cinema gave us. He was raw. He was restless. You believed him.

Then came Circus. Now I was hooked.

He did not look like the sons of film families. He did not talk like them either. He felt like the older cousin from the neighbourhood who had decided to take on the world. Middle-class India saw itself in him.

Asansol, 1992

Deewana released when I was still in school. I went with my school friends to a cinema hall in Asansol.

When the motorcycle burst onto the screen with Koi Na Koi Chahiye, the hall went crazy. Whistles. Shouting. Nobody sat still.

Most newcomers take years to build a following. He arrived as a star in the very first frame.

The villain we cheered for

Then came Baazigar and Darr in 1993. A hero playing the villain was unheard of. Heroes were supposed to be good. He did not care.

We found ourselves rooting for the bad guy. “I love you, K-k-k-Kiran” is still stuck in my head. The terrace scene in Baazigar broke every rule of how a hero was meant to behave.

That was the first lesson, though I did not know it then. Do not play it safe. Safe does not get remembered.

Bangalore, 1995

In the mid-90s I moved to Bangalore for college. The timing could not have been better.

Those were his golden years. Every release was an event. Watching a Shah Rukh film stopped being weekend entertainment. It became a ritual.

Then came Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

I watched it at Swagath Theatre in Jayanagar, with my friends. The tickets were sold out, so we bought them in black. One hundred rupees each.

We were students. Money was always short. After paying that much for the tickets, there was nothing left for the interval. No popcorn. No samosa. We sat there hungry and watched the whole film. Nobody complained. It remains the most expensive film I ever watched on an empty stomach, and I would do it again.

We were far from home. Living on our own for the first time. Missing our families, though none of us would admit it.

And on screen, a boy leaves London and travels all the way to Punjab for the girl he loves. Distance was the whole story of that film. We were sitting there, more than a thousand kilometres from home, feeling every bit of it.

The film made distance feel small. We walked out quiet and happy.

The rest of the 90s

Dil To Pagal Hai and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai followed. Rahul in his college hoodie felt like someone we knew. Carefree one day, carrying real responsibility the next. That was us too. College was ending. Real life was waiting.

Yes Boss and Pardes showed the India we were living in. A country opening up, full of ambition, unsure of itself but hungry.

He changed how love looked on screen. Arms wide open. Eyes full of belief. Every young man in India tried that pose at least once. I will not say whether I did.

Life got busier. The ritual stayed.

College ended. Work began. Families grew. Somewhere in between, I started my own journey. In 2013, we started Brainium.

I am a first-generation entrepreneur. No business family behind me. No safety net. No godfather to make one phone call. Every client, every hire, every payment had to be earned.

I slowly stopped following cinema. There was no time. But whenever a Shah Rukh film released, I was in the hall. No excuses.

The 2000s: the King tests himself

The 2000s gave me too many favourites to pick one.

Mohabbatein. Kal Ho Naa Ho. Veer-Zaara. Swades. Don. Chak De India.

Look at that list. A romantic teacher. A man who loves and lets go. A love story across a border. A NASA engineer who comes home to a village. A cool, dangerous don. A disgraced hockey coach who builds a team from nothing.

He was no longer just the boy with open arms. He was testing himself, film after film. Some of those risks worked. Some did not. But he kept trying new things, and that is why we kept watching.

2010: the finest acting of his career

My Name Is Khan is not on the 2000s list because it came in 2010. But it belongs in this story.

He played Rizwan Khan, a man with Asperger’s syndrome, who crosses America to tell the President one simple thing. My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist.

There was no open-arms pose in this film. No dancing in mustard fields. Just a man with small gestures, a quiet voice and a heavy heart. I think it is some of the finest acting he has ever done. A star at the top of his game chose a role where he had to disappear into the character. Many actors never take that risk.

2013: the craze came back

After that came a stretch of average films. Fine, but not an SRK event. Anyone who loved him felt it. The halls were full, but something was missing.

Then Chennai Express arrived, and the craze was back. Houseful boards. Crowds at first-day shows. The old energy, in a new avatar.

I remember the timing because 2013 is also the year we started Brainium. I was learning how hard it is to build something from zero, and he was showing that even a big star can reset and start again. A lesson from the biggest screen in India, in the first year of my own company.

The years he was written off

A few years later, the same thing happened again. Zero in 2018 was the last in a run of films that people did not take to. The writing-off began. Newspapers, social media, everyone had an opinion. Many said his time was over.

He went quiet. He took a long break. No noise. No excuses.

I have seen this movie in my own life. Every founder has. There are quarters when nothing goes right. A big client leaves. A project fails. A deal you counted on disappears. Everyone around you has advice, and most of it is not kind.

Whenever Brainium faced a downturn, I thought about him. I thought about how he came back after every fall. Not once, but again and again. That thought has pulled me through more bad quarters than any business book.

What do you do in a downturn? You stay. You work. You wait for your moment.

2023

Then 2023 happened. Pathaan. Jawan. Dunki. Three films in one year, after a long gap.

I watched all three on day one. Pathaan and Jawan in a packed hall felt like a full circle. The soft romantic hero of my college days had become a tough action star. The face had aged. The magnetism had not changed at all. When he looked straight into the camera, the whole hall went silent.

The comeback was not luck. It was a man who had decided he was not finished.

More than a movie star

What makes his story stay with me is not the box office. It is what he built around it.

He came from a modest background. No film family. No godfather. He proved that talent and hard work can beat privilege, though it takes much longer.

Then he did what many stars do not. He became a businessman.

Red Chillies Entertainment brought world-class VFX and animation to Indian cinema, on Indian soil.

Kolkata Knight Riders came when franchise cricket was new and risky. The early years were rough. He stayed through the bad seasons. KKR went on to win the IPL in 2012, 2014 and 2024. Today it is a brand millions in this city love like family. I live in Kolkata. I have seen that love up close.

He did not stay inside the box the industry made for him. He kept widening it.

What a first-generation founder takes from him

Here is what I learned from watching him, and from building my own company:

1. Never give up. Every founder faces flops. Keep showing up. The ones who stay are the ones who win.
2. Aim big. Do not shrink your dream to fit your starting point. He came from nowhere and aimed at the whole country.
3. Love the journey. Whatever it takes, enjoy the work. If you only love the result, the road will break you.
4. Respect everyone. The driver, the intern, the superstar, the client. Everyone gets the same respect. People remember how you treated them.
5. Dress well. Speak well. How you present yourself is part of the work. Every public appearance of his is a small act of respect for the audience.

61 and still running

Today the journey shows no signs of slowing down. His next film, King, is coming in late December. That is right around my own birthday weekend.

I will be in the hall on day one, as always.

Happy birthday, Shah Rukh.

Thank you for the memories. Thank you for the hundred-rupee black tickets at Swagath, and for the hungry intervals that was worth every rupee. Thank you for proving, again and again, that outsiders can build empires.

We are still building ours.