- Cancer hit him when he was at the peak of his CA career. It has been eight years now. He still has it. But he is not ready to give up. He is fighting it. and living his best life.
- Presently, he runs his own tax firm, “Tax Mavins,” and is transforming the lives of thousands of people fighting cancer with his NGO, “Win Over Cancer.”
- This is the story of CA Arun Gupta, who is fighting cancer every day and “doesn’t have the time to die.”
How I Started My CA Journey
I had three uncles in my family who were very successful chartered accountants, so choosing the field was not a choice. In short, California just happened!
I put in all the hard work and finally qualified as a chartered accountant in 1995, and I immediately started working for a CA firm.
After only 11 months at my first job, I accepted a new position as the head of the corporate tax division at a conglomerate worth 3,000 cores in 1995 (actually, my senior quit, so I was promoted!).
I was young. I was new. And I didn’t know how to handle such a big responsibility. That was when my director gave me a life mantra: “Never be afraid of anything new in life.” “Every expert was once a fresher.”
working hard and working on
Over the years, I worked tirelessly and expanded my work portfolio.
In 2006, BMR Advisors (the 3rd largest tax advisory firm in India) were impressed by my “diverse experience,” and I was selected to set up their “automated tax compliance practice.” Within 3 years, our practice, Vertical, achieved a turnover of around $2 million.
Unfortunately, the global recession of 2009–10 gave me my first pink slip when our vertical practice was dissolved.
I was a little upset but unfazed by the setback. I got a diploma from ACCA UK and started IFRS online training in 2010.
The following year, I was back as the CFO of a mid-sized cash surplus group, helping them expand and diversify.
Life was going on amazingly well, when suddenly…
Diagnosed with cancer
In 2011, I was admitted to the hospital due to food poisoning. only to find out there was more. I was diagnosed with a type of blood cancer called “chronic lymphocytic leukemia.”
When the doctor informed me about it, I was really scared. My wife broke down, but later she gathered courage (she is one strong and supportive woman, I must say!).
The most difficult part was telling my parents, as they were already heart patients. As expected, the news was a terrible shock for them. more so because I had a slow-growing cancer whose treatment would start only after reaching stage IV. So, all we could do was wait and watch.
The cancer was growing every day. “This was like a time bomb ticking inside my body, which I knew would explode one day.” But I could not do anything but wait for it to explode. “And I had to live with this.”
But, as they say, it is all about perspective. We could do nothing about it. It was beyond our control. What we had control over was how we reacted to it.That’s when my wife and I made a promise to ourselves:
“We accept what has happened. But we would remain positive through everything and try to lead a normal life. “And teach our kids to be the same too.”
Getting Ready to Fight Cancer
“We had to fight back.” So, we didn’t focus on the problem. “We focused on the solutions.”
My wife and I set short-term targets to overcome the challenges and resolved to work on them.
Death was never on our minds. We had accepted that it was a constant and that one could not be afraid of it. We decided to keep living with “dignity.”
Finances were a prime concern. We had a few years before the treatment started. So, we planned the finances accordingly—for my treatment, my children’s higher education, emergency funds, investments, etc.
My kids were informed about my chronic illness. Me and my wife prepared them for the worst, instilling in them the necessary strength to go through every phase of life.
On the work front, I also had to prove continuity to my employers. I worked on external stakeholders for my employers and colleagues to give them confidence that I could continue to work.
I also tried alternate medicines to push back my treatment for the maximum possible time.
During the “waiting” time before the treatment, I got time to think deeper about cancer, the treatment, related costs, etc., which gave birth to a significant initiative in the future.
“Nothing was easy.” But I gave it my all. “And it went on…”
Cancer multiplies Increase My Strength
2015, September. After almost 4 years of being diagnosed with cancer, my blood parameters indicated that I had reached stage IV of CLL, and finally, I could start my treatment.
During the course of the treatment, I took a sabbatical because the strong chemotherapy would render me unable to work.
In fact, during my treatment, the doctors told me that I would be drained of my lifelong savings in a matter of a few months. All this for just a 3% chance of survival up to only 5 years (imagine the stress!).
Luckily, we worked with the doctors to reduce the cost of my treatment by up to 40%. My leukemia developed a rare complication called Richter’s syndrome. This complication transformed into another cancer: DLBCL (lymphoma).
According to the doctors, patients with Richter’s have a survival time of just 8–9 months. Yet here I am, living, fighting, and winning at it.
2017. I had a relapse. I may have it again sometime in the future. But that’s life. Nothing can be planned. and I’m prepared to give it a tough fight.
That same year, I also started my own consulting firm, Tax Mavins.
Doctors call it a miracle that I survived and am able to work for more than 12 hours a day.
I know why. Because “God” selected me to…
“Win Over Cancer”: Starting the NGO
While waiting for my treatment to start, I got a chance to interact with other patients, survivors, and caretakers.
We interacted about the illness and life before, during, and after the treatment.
During our discussion, we discovered that the main financial challenges faced by cancer patients and their families were:
- high cost of treatment, coupled with low medical security.
- loss of income, coupled with a significant depletion of assets in a short period of time.
- Cancer has the highest socioeconomic cost of any disease due to the combination of these two factors.(Images courtesy of the Live strong Foundation and the American Cancer Society.)
At that time, I knew that I had to do something to help reduce the cost of treatment for other cancer patients, raise permanent funds for families fighting cancer, and create alternate earning capabilities to support them.
That was when I started counselling people and writing extensively about cancer and different aspects related to it.
I wanted to make society more aware of cancer and help cancer patients, survivors, and their families in their struggles. Thus, in 2013, was born “Win Over Cancer“ (WOC).
Luckily, being in the finance industry for more than 20 years, I had built a good network over time. This helped me earn clients for my practice (which funded my treatment) and also CSR partners for running programmes at the NGO.
“Cancer is a friend; this helped us devise our plan of action.” Our programmes are based on our experiences with cancer. We believe that cancer, as a disease, impacts the entire family. So, any support programmed for cancer must be designed with the patient’s family in mind.
