From a childhood spent playing on the dusty streets of Delhi to working his way through the glitzy boulevards of Dubai, Gaurav Sinha is the epitome of the successful adman. You know the updated Mad Men sort—silver-tongued sophisticates who could sell snow to an Eskimo—but is that who he really is? “I didn’t want to be that guy,” says Sinha, who instead opted for what he calls “monastic materialism”, where he has his bets on mindful consumption that relooks luxury. His vision is ambitious—a world where we can live and buy consciously, without selling our souls.

The style, swagger and sharp-talking triple-threat that was reinvigorated by the open-arm embrace of the TV show Mad Men into the cultural zeitgeist. But an Ad-man with a conscious? Well, for that you have to look a little harder, perhaps at Gaurav Sinha.

Sinha describes himself as a ‘perennial protagonist’, adopting the mantra that if he is going to do something, he’s going to do it right.