“My name is Kovid, and I’m not a virus”. These were the first sentences from the Twitter profile of Indian entrepreneur Kovid Kapoor, which caused a stir on the social network.
The 31-year-old, the boss of a travel startup, explained on social networks that he had traveled abroad this week for the first time since the start of the pandemic, and that his first name had “entertained a lot of people.”
“My future overseas trips will be fun!”, he launched on Twitter, with the message receiving 40,000 “likes” and being retweeted 4,000 times, adding that, if his first name helps him break the ice in meetings, on the other hand when he went to order coffee, he requested that his first name not be made public.
His comments sparked a series of jokes, memes, messages and even interview requests, introducing a hint of levity into a painful subject, as the number of Omicron variant contamination increased in India.
He told AFP he hoped all this publicity would reflect his company, which is in trouble like everyone else in the sector.
Kovid, which means, in Hindi and Sanskrit, a scholar or learned individual, is a less common first name in India. His mother, he explained, had chosen his first name long before he was born.
“It’s an easy-to-remember name with a beautiful meaning,” he added. “He made an impression when I showed up. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
