By Patrick Jonas

HE WAS waiting in his hotel suite, laptop switched on with a PowerPoint presentation ready to roll. As soon as we shook hands and got some hot tea going, Mr Nihal Kaviratne made a request: 'Can I answer your last question first''

I had e-mailed a set of questions to him earlier and the last item on the list was about a charity he and his wife have set up in Mumbai.

Mr Kaviratne, 65, is so passionate about the St Jude India ChildCare Centres that it occupies a good part of his retired life. After he left Singapore in 2005, where he was chairman of Unilever's Home & Oral Care business in Asia, he set up the charity to provide shelter and care for needy children and their parents visiting Mumbai for cancer treatment. He has so far set up three shelters and has four more in the pipeline.

Mr Kaviratne made a name for himself in the business world after he was sent in to head the Indonesian arm of Unilever when that country was hit by an economic crisis in 1998. During his five years in Indonesia, he grew the company about 12 times and did six mergers and acquisitions.

The Singapore permanent resident, who is known to be one of the fathers of Unilever's best-selling beauty cream Fair & Lovely, sits on the board of several companies here like StarHub and Wildlife Reserves.

He visits Singapore about eight times a year and, in his words, the time spent here during these trips adds up to three months.

I met him recently when he was here to deliver the first distinguished lecture organised by the Banyan Tree Global Foundation.

Most of his trips here are to attend board meetings.

'I also get my medical checks done here since all my doctors are here. I like Singapore. I find that apart from all the cliches like everything works, discipline, etc, I find the curiosity of people here as something that matches my own,' said Mr Kaviratne.

Born in Bangalore, he spent his childhood there. His father, a Sri Lankan aeronautical engineer had moved to the city in the early 1940s to work for Hindustan Aeronautics, which was the only company of its kind in the region. Around the same time, his mother's family fled Burma when the Japanese invaded that country. 'My mother's father was a doctor and they were on the last boat to Calcutta,' he explained.

Her family relocated to Bangalore where his parents met and married.

The young Kaviratne studied in Bishop Cotton School in Bangalore and later moved to Mumbai where he did his studies in Cathedral & John Connon School and thereafter at Elphinstone College. It was while he was a university student that he met his wife, Shyama. 'In the 1960s it was not common for inter-caste marriages in India. I am a Catholic and she was a Hindu and it was not easy those days,' said Mr Kaviratne.

Their only child Mallika was only eight when he was transferred from India to London and, as a result, did most of her studies in the UK. While he and Shyama moved around the world, taking up various posts in different Unilever offices worldwide, their daughter stayed on in the UK and went on to do her degree in immunology, following it up with a PhD from the National Institute for medical research in London.

Now working for the Malaria Consortium, she is married to an immunologist and they have a three-year-old son.

A doting grandfather, Mr Kaviratne, an avid wine collector, has already bought 25 cases of top quality wine for his grandson.

He stores the wine in a quarry- turned cellar in Surrey, England. 'He can use the first case when he turns 18. There is also wine for his graduation, engagement, wedding, 50th birthday and the last case can be opened when he turns 60. The wine is a gift for him and was bought when he was born,' said Mr Kaviratne who did not want to reveal the value of the wines he has in his cellar.

'For the last few years I have been collecting for my daughter... ever since she was a baby, I used to hold a glass of wine under her nose. Now I do the same with my grandson,' said Mr Kaviratne, with a hearty laugh.

It shows the sense of humour he displayed almost every morning during his days in Mumbai as marketing manager with Hindustan Lever. In the early 1970s, he would join a few of the company's personal products managers for a chat with the boss every morning. And one of their favourite habits then would be to flip through the matrimonial columns of The Times Of India.

'Advertisement after advertisement would be about people looking for a girl with fair or wheatish complexion. One day, we scratched our heads and said 'why the hell can't we provide something. There are so many dark skinned girls',' he recalled.

And so started the search for this magic potion. Checks with the products development team revealed that there was a half-finished product lying somewhere in the lab. The team was told to dig it up and complete the development. It was safety tested and Fair & Lovely was born in 1975.

Today it is Unilever's largest and most profitable single skin cream product in the world. After Unilever bought Ponds, the formulation and advertising was transferred to countries where Ponds was operating and in some countries it was transferred to the Dove brand.

Mr Kaviratne took British citizenship during his stint in London. He has two reasons for doing so. His daughter had decided to sink roots there and he felt that if something were to happen to him or his wife 'then the other person will have to lean a lot on my daughter'. The other reason was the convenience while travelling.

He was posted to Argentina with 17 countries to oversee and getting a visa for each of them was very difficult. 'My Indian passport already had five additional booklets,' said the widely-travelled man who was conferred the Commander of the British Empire by the Queen in 2004.

When he is not busy with his charity work, Mr Kaviratne loves to watch movies.

He watches more than 200 a year, and all films are ordered online from Amazon. He says he gets them cheap since they are all second hand and he gives away most of them to his friends after he has watched them.

But his passion remains the St Jude ChildCare Centres.

'When I am down in the dumps, I go and spend time with the kids.'