Says Rahul Verghese, founder of Running and Living Infotainment Ltd, who has participated in 28 marathons across the world

Rahul Verghese could have been a run-of-the-mill manager in any of the blue-chip companies, but the IIM-Ahmedabad graduate decided to make a career in running.

For a man who has held several high-profile positions in MNCs like the Hindustan Lever, Nestle and Motorola setting up his company Running and Living Infotainment Ltd was quite innovative. He also runs a website Runningandliving.com.

Verghese said his company's objective is to connect brands with Indians through running. He also aims to talk to CEOs, marketing heads and HR heads of various companies to tell them how running can measurably make a difference to organisations internally, energising people, building teams and rejuvenating brands to get get their messages to reach out to consumers, meaningfully.

"We have set up over 25 running groups in different parts of the country since October last year. We have a goal to get over a 100 groups 'up and running' next year. We have started a monthly run on the first Sunday of every month in Gurgaon where we plan to take the numbers up to 1,000-1,500 and then proliferate the locations where we would have these runs," Verghese said,u00a0 while explaining the concept of his company that organised the Gurgaon Marathon on Sunday.

"When I returned to India from US in 2003 I realised that we are one of the most unhealthy nations on the planet, have fractious societies with leaders focused on getting to their vote bank by seeking to divide rather than unite, we are a billion consultants where we perform well individually but normally make poor team players. We are low on self-confidence and self esteem," he said.

Talking about the success of his campaign, Verghese claimed, "We have weekly runs in each of our running groups through which people have lost weight, gained supreme confidence, been humbled by overtraining and overconfidence, quit smoking, dropped cholesterol levels and blood sugar. I have got emails from different parts of the country saying 'you have changed my life.'"

Verghese, a product of the St Stephen's College, Delhi, has run 28 marathons in different parts of the world including New York, Chicago, London, Athens, Rio De Janeiro, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Delhi "One of my goals is to run in all seven continents. I am participating in the 54-km Two Oceans Ultra Marathon in Capetown in South Africa on April 11 which will make Africa the sixth continent in which I will run. That would leave only Antarctica," he said.

Leisure Valley in Gurgaon on Sunday morning, come to life as hundreds came to register for the 10-km and 5-kmu00a0 run organised by Runningandliving.com.

An estimated 700 to 800 people participated in the marathon. "We really had a great time," said an enthusiastic first-time runner.

"I ran 3.5 km today in the 5-km stretch," said an ecstatic Narendra Nayak, vice-president, IBM, who participated in the marathon.

The runners also bought special t-shirts to raise funds for the treatment of four thalassaemic kids.