Govardhan had to give up his  dream of becoming a soldier, yet he did well in his career, tried his hand in many businesses and today he has become a successful hotelier.

Govardhan Singh Jhala belongs to Udaipur. He graduated from CTAE College. He has been working in the hotel industry for the past ten years now.

Govardhan says it has been a long journey till now as he worked in many professions and was involved in numerous businesses like pharmacy, opticals and handicrafts before coming into the hotel industry. His journey started soon after he graduated and was appointed as a Research Associate in the University, then he became Assistant Professor in the CTAE itself. After that he entered the Banking field and worked as a DRO in BOB for twenty-four consecutive years. And finally he resigned from BOB and stepped into the hotel industry and since then he has been in this line of business having hotels in Kumbhalgarh and in Udaipur.

Govardhan says he experienced a different culture for being studied in both English and Hindi mediums like he did his primary schooling from St. Mary’s School and then he went to B.N. School. After that he studied in Rajasthan College of Agriculture for a year and finally he did Engineering from CTAE College. He cherishes his childhood memories by saying that he was an all-round player in sports and went to hockey, football, chess and badminton tournaments and was also awarded the title ‘Best boy of the school.’

Talking about challenges, Govardhan says that difficulties have always been a part of life since his school time as he changed schools, then came to college till taking jobs and running businesses. He says to do any work in life, be it any profession or business, difficulties do come. You just have to face them and keep moving forward.

Govardhan has many hobbies like cooking, travelling, bird watching, photography, and reading books.

Govardhan laments that due to Covid-19, many industries were badly affected with tourism suffering the most. At the time of lockdown his business got shut down and he was left with numerous edible items in stock so with the permission of the state administration, he distributed the immediate consumable items to the poor and whatever ration was left, he made food packages out of them and distributed among the migrants which was highly appreciated by the government. He was also scared of getting his hotels acquired by the government for admitting covid patients and it being a contagious disease he was jittery that his staff might get infected by it. Also, he did not fire any staff even in such bad times but halved their salary. Hence it was a very hard time for him. So he says from all this he learnt that you must always have a back-up plan and savings for contingencies in addition to having humanity.

Govardhan considers Dr. Abdul Kalam as his role model as Govardhan has read his biography and got inspired by the fact that despite his life struggles he reached such a high post of becoming President of India. Besides, Dr Kalam was unimaginably dedicated towards his work with sincerity and honesty.

About leadership, Govardhan thinks that no one is a born leader because to become one, you have to have many qualities like to take everyone along, punctuality, risk taking capacity and acceptance towards change and its adaptability.

If Govardhan could go back in time then he would like to go back to his twenties and get himself enrolled in army school for being passionate about joining the army.