TULIKA, in Hindi, means paint brush. And Ms Tulika Tripathi certainly lives up to her name: She wields the brush occasionally.

A few paintings by her dot the walls of her high-rise apartment near Newton but she wishes she had more time and space to indulge in her creative passion.

Her work as managing director of Michael Page International’s Singapore office keeps her busy. During the weekends these past four months, she has been busy planning for a big day. More of it later.

Ms Tripathi is fairly new to Singapore, having moved here from her firm’s Geneva office early last year.

What makes her special is that, at 32, she is one of the youngest managing directors in Michael Page – a leading professional recruitment consultancy which has 166 offices in 28 countries and over 5,000 employees.

It is listed on the London stock exchange and has a turnover of US$1 billion a year.

Ms Tripathi’s journey to the top reads like a Bollywood script, in some ways scripted by her.

The daughter of an Indian diplomat, she did her primary school education in Trinidad and Tobago and moved to Delhi to do her secondary schooling.

By the time she was in Class 8, her father had moved to Geneva and the young Tulika found herself in a Swiss school doing her International Baccalaureate.

It was a place where she excelled in maths, being part of the team which took part in various maths Olympiads.

She finished school at 16 and wanted to do engineering but her father was against the idea and she enrolled for economics in Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College. That was when she started to work, so that she could pay her fees.

“As a child I wanted to be a self-made person like my father and maternal grandfather and so, since the age of 16, I have been financially independent.

I did a number of jobs to pay for my university degree and my MBA. It was not because I needed the money but because I felt it would make me a better person and this taught me a lot,” she says.

Her grandfather Gauri Shankar Bajpai was raised by his blind mother and, through hard work, rose to become India’s spy chief – head of the Research and Analysis Wing.

She compered MTV Asia’s MTV University and worked part-time for event management companies.

This was also the period when she made her appearance in a hit Bollywood movie: Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, as Kajol’s friend.

She had earlier had a bit role in Daar while she was in Geneva. Her family has close ties with Yash Chopra and Bollywood.

Her maternal grandmother played the role of Rekha’s mother in Silsila and her mother, Neeta, according to Ms Tripathi, was supposed to act opposite Rishi Kapoor in Kabhi Kabhie when her father’s eyes fell on her.

Her father Sanjeev Tripathi, then a young Indian Police Service officer (he later joined the foreign service) proposed to Neeta and she left the sets to marry him. He was 22 and she only 17.

Dad is now at the Indian PM’s office and mum teaches at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and the Indian Institute of Planning & Management in Delhi.

The family’s ties with Bollywood and Yash Chopra, however, continued. Ms Tripathi’s younger brother Tarun was also drawn into the movie field.

The IIM Lucknow grad was the head of marketing at Yash Raj Films before he joined MySpace India last year as director, marketing and content for its India operations.

However, the pull of the movies was greater and he quit the job recently to become a full-time scriptwriter.

After her graduation, Ms Tripathi did her MBA in Delhi and joined a consultancy firm in Mauritius, where her father had been posted.

A couple of years later, she started her own consultancy only to sell it to Microsoft and join HSBC in India, where in just one year and at the age of 23, she became a vice-president.

Marriage took her back to Geneva where she joined Michael Page.

Her marriage did not last but her career zoomed.

She worked her way up to become the managing director of the branch in four years.

She managed 110 per cent growth for her Switzerland office while the Singapore office lagged badly in growth, prompting her bosses to ask her to take over.

“I was asked to move to Singapore because our organisation sees Asia as a strong area of opportunity in the coming years and Singapore is an important hub for this,” she says.

A few months after she arrived came Lehmann and the accompanying financial tsunami.

It was a bad time for the recruitment business but, in her words, it has been very exciting.

“They say that when darkness falls, the stars begin to shine and I think this year was a great opportunity for leaders to hone their skill set in terms of running a lean organisation while maintaining profitability and retaining your top talent.”

And she has done just that, advising her clients and riding out the storm.

These days, she is busy planning her wedding to Frenchman Vincent Cleme, who works in the insurance business here.

The two love to take long walks and, on the way, observe the various buildings and their architecture.

She also does power plates – a vibration device that transmits waves of energy throughout the body – to keep herself fit.

She and her fiance plan to have a destination wedding in Udaipur early next year. And her passion for the brush is coming in handy. She has already designed a logo, in the form of a Ganesha with the letters T and V, for the wedding.

[email protected]