The true Meaning of Success by ace photographer Gautam Kulkarni

Gautam Kulkarni

Gautam Kulkarni has spent the last 10 years of his life focusing on what constitutes real success in this material world. Gautam Kulkarni is not only a highly successful entrepreneur who founded his Chartered Cost Consultancy company in Dubai at the age of 23 and turned it into a multi-million dollar business, but also found his true passion in photography and philanthropy. In our conversation with him, we asked him how he managed to break-free of the vicious cycle of sacrificing passion for ambition.

"When I started my company, I was fully dedicated to the growth and expansion of my office. I was extremely ambitious and focused on growing my company to become the largest in the region." said Gautam. Although Gautam's life seemed thriving and fulfilled, he always focused on how he felt rather than what he had. Whilst the world around him called him successful, he felt the need to redefine the meaning of success and started to question himself on what he truly wanted.

This search for meaning pushed him to do more of what made him feel alive. His love for adventure and looking for roads less travelled was the starting point for his love affair with travel and then photography. His first long solo trip was travelling the length and breadth of China for 3 months with no prior bookings or idea of where he would go. He let his heart dictate his next destination and found a connection he had not experienced with the world around him before. "I enjoyed travelling around the world and capturing diverse cultures and stories of people, especially those whose lives were very different from my own" added Gautam.

Whilst travel was his escape from the material world, his true love for photography was ignited on his trip to the Maha Kumbh Mela in 2012. Gautam says "I had never seen such a large gathering before in my life and whilst it was chaotic, it was also strangely calming. I felt a deep sense of connection with the people there as if we were all children of Mother Earth. In this deep meditative state (which I was not aware of at that time), I was sitting and watching people go about their day and I found a small boy standing next to me. I asked to take his photograph as he had a beautiful smile and the boy surprised me by asking me what I was willing to give him in return for TAKING his photograph. I had never thought of taking photos in this way and whilst I wanted to give him something, money did not seem an appropriate exchange. I decided to print the photo and give it to him instead. The look on his face at seeing his own photo and the disbelief that he was going to be able to keep the print, is etched forever in my memory. Shortly after this, he called all his friends and soon I was surrounded by people who wanted me to take their photos and give them a print too".

Gautam truly believes that the idea for his amazing concept "Pictureforapicture" was a gift from the heavens above. He feels that a simple gesture of giving something back has the capacity to not only spread happiness to others, but the potential to connect with people even when you couldn't speak their language. Gautam's book "pictureforapicture" is an amazing collection of all his travels and experiences of meeting people in different parts of India, living with tribes in remotest parts of Africa, meeting nomads in Iran and many other wonderful stories of connecting with people through photography. He finds that his photography and philanthropy are the perfect way to balance the scale with his ambition, which has helped him live a more fulfilling life.

Picureforapicture is available on Amazon and Kindle and is published by Notion Press. Gautam's Instagram handle is #hobograph and his social media is managed by Groundwork. The success and fulfillment of this adventure led him and his wife and to found their charity - the Kara Foundation (#kara_foundation), which thus far has funded several education and healthcare projects in India and Nepal. His wife Kanchan is also a renowned mental health coach and has been doing exclusively pro-bono work since the start of the pandemic.