Entrepreneurs Who Build India: Gujarmal Modi - The Resolute Industrialist

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The year was 1932, and a young man had just been banished from the state of Patiala. His crime? He had refused a glass of wine in the celebratory party at the Patiala Palace. It had not mattered to the maharaja that the man was a teetotaller.

The ban proved to be a boon as the thirty-year-old left Patiala and created one of the largest business empires in India. Looking for a new location to set up his factory, Gujarmal zeroed in on a sleepy village, Begumabad, on the outskirts of Delhi. It is here that the seeds of the Modi Group were sown. Starting with a sugar mill, he established a conglomerate with businesses including tyres, textiles, copy machines, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, oil and steel, to name a few.

This is the story of a resolute, ambitious young man who saw adversity as an opportunity and went on to create history. In the process, he set up some of the finest factories, created an industrial town that was way ahead of its time, generated large-scale employment and gave Indian manufacturing new wings. Gujarmal's ten per cent allocation from earnings towards social responsibility, long before it became a corporate buzzword, and human resource initiatives became benchmarks in the history of Indian business.

A treasure trove of learnings for modern-day entrepreneurs, this book celebrates the man and his vision, grit, determination and spirit of entrepreneurship.

SONU BHASIN is one of the early women professionals in the corporate world. She has led various businesses in senior leadership positions during her career, including when she was a part of the TAS (Tata Administrative Service), ING Barings, Axis Bank,Yes Bank and Tata Capital Limited.

Bhasin is an independent director on boards of well-known and reputed domestic and multinational companies. As part of her work now, she focuses on family businesses, and is the founder of FAB- Families and Business.

She is a family business historian, a business author and the editor-in-chief of Families & Business magazine. She has been named one of the Global 100 Most Influential Individuals for family enterprises in 2020. Sonu has a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in mathematics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University, and an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University.

I find it an irony of fate that Gujarmal Modi-founder of India's seventh largest business empire in the 1960s-is today better known as the grandfather of Lalit Modi-the one of IPL fame. From being called a 'dirty Indian' by an Englishman in pre-Independence India to being banished from the princely state of Patiala; from setting up some of the finest factories in pre-Independence India to being coerced to follow the Indian government's diktat-Gujarmal Modi saw it all. But he was undaunted in his endeavour to set up some of the best and largest industries in India. Starting off with a single sugar mill in 1934, Gujarmal Modi, almost single-handedly, expanded his business to become one of the biggest industrialists in India by the 1960s. After his death in 1976, the business empire fell apart but even today, some of the industries set up by him and his inheritors survive and are worth over $2 billion collectively.

Gujarmal Modi and the Modi Group are not a lone example of thriving business empires set up in pre-Independence India that grew in stature and size in the following years and then lost their way as they were hit either by family feuds or liberalization or both. The Indian industrial and corporate sectors are scattered with people and businesses who lost their way after they saw their glory peak in the days that some consider to be the most challenging in the lives of Indian businessmen--the years between 1947 and 1991.

India became independent in 1947 and the new-found freedom brought forth aspirations and dreams for not just individuals, but also collective dreams of social, political and economic freedom. However, the first prime minister envisaged a developmental model that had the state playing a dominant role as an entrepreneur as well as the funder of private businesses. The dreams of the economic freedom that entrepreneurs had dreamt of in the new India quickly withered away as the British Raj was replaced by the Licence Raj.

Due to the restrictions placed by the Licence Raj, which many say was a complex and opaque system, being an entrepreneur in India was a big headache. Further, the entrepreneurial spirit was kept on a tight leash by the complex and authoritative system. Entrepreneurs were successful not so much because of what they did but because of who they knew. Such was the dependence on the benign hand of the government that businessmen, due to their association with politicians and bureaucrats, were also enveloped in the cloud of corruption in the minds of the general public.

However, people forget that there were many entrepreneurs, and indeed businesses, during those particularly challenging times that worked tirelessly to make the new India.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages