At 22, a chemical engineer with a degree from IIT-Madras had just about $8 in his wallet when he left India for Canada. Fifty-four years later, he is the founder, chairman and chief executive of the Toronto-based $55.5 billion insurance giant Fairfax Financial Holdings, who just cracked a deal with the Indian government for its majority stake in IDBI Bank.
Vivian Prem Watsa, often called the Canadian Warren Buffet, was born in August 1950 in Hyderabad as the third of the four children to an Anglican Christian maths teacher Manohar Clarence Watsa. After attending the Hyderabad Public School, he moved to IIT-Madras and then to Canada in 1972, where he secured an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, Ontario. Interestingly, the self-made Watsa funded the Canadian education by selling furnaces and air conditioners door to door.
Watsa began his career with Confederation Life, a Canadian insurance company, as a research analyst in 1974. That was his introduction to the world of investments and insurance and the discipline of assessing businesses for their underlying worth. His mentor John Watson introduced him to the investment philosophy of Benjamin Graham, who is widely regarded as the father of value investing.
Within a decade, Watsa was ready to be an entrepreneur. He roped in his former boss Tony Hamblin to start an investment firm Hamblin Watsa Investment Counsel in 1984. Next year, his nascent firm took over Markel Financial, a bankrupt Canadian truck insurance firm, and renamed it Fairfax Financial Holdings two years later, which grossed $55.5 billion in revenue in 2025.
He shares many similarities with the real Buffet. Both have used insurance businesses as a source of investment capital and are associated with long-term, value-oriented investing. With the sobriquet of the maverick Berkshire Hathaway founder by his side, Watsa built the foundation of Fairfax brick by brick. Today Fairfax is a global insurance and investment giant with focusing mainly on property and casualty insurance. The group also has reinsurance operations.
For Watsa, the IDBI Bank deal is more than acquiring a bank. According to him, it is a bet on his home country’s economic future and a chance to expand a financial empire that has been built over four decades. By clinching this deal, he has created two milestones—flowing the largest FDI into the domestic financial sector as also making his largest investment here. Fairfax is speding ₹52,878 crore to get a controlling stake in IDBI Bank.
The 75-year-old, who is married to Nalini Loganadhan and has three children, never wanted to leave India, but his father nudged him to learn as much as possible and go wherever the quest for learning takes him to. However, he wanted to keep the ties with his home country warm. In 2014, Fairfax Financial Holdings established Fairfax India Holdings, a Toronto-listed investment company focused on opportunities in a rising economy. The India-centric company has now become his largest exposure that covers banking, financial services, including investment banking, wealth management, general and life insurance, airport and ports and chemicals among others.
The parent Fairfax co-founded ICICI Lombard in 2001, in which Watsa remained invested for the next 18 years, then selling his stake to launch Digit Insurance. The India investments of Fairfax also include Thomas Cook, CSB Bank and Bangalore International Airport Limited.
IDBI Bank is the crown jewel in Watsa’s $11 billion Indian empire. He hopes to complete the $5.6 billion takeover of the bank by March next year. He wants to transform the bank into a diversified financial services group by bringing his existing investments in insurance (Digit Insurance), investment banking and wealth management of IIFL Capital into it, so that it becomes a global financial services powerhouse.
A key aspect of Watsa’s investment is that he owns majority stake in all companies he invests and the number adds up to over a dozen. (He picked up over 60% in IDBI Bank.) This is where the Indian maverick is distinct from his inspiration. Watsa invests to operate and grow. He is no armchair investor.