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Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - Nikhil Inamdar

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103 pages

English

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Baniya-a derivative of the Sanskrit word Vanij, is a term synonymous with India's trader class. Over the decades, these capitalists spread their footprint across vast sectors of the economy from steel and mining to telecom and retail. And now even e-tail. Nikhil Inamdar's Rokda features the stories of a few pioneering men from this mercantile community-Radheshyam Agarwal and Radheshyam Goenka, founders of the cosmetic major Emami; Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal; Neeraj Gupta, founder of Meru Cabs; and V.K. Bansal, a humble mathematics tutor whose genius spawned a massive coaching industry in Kota-amongst others. Through the triumphs and tribulations of these men in the epoch marking India's entire post independence struggle with entrepreneurship-from the License Raj to the opening up of the floodgates in 1991, and the dawn of the digital era-Rokda seeks to uncover the indomitable spirit of the Baniya.

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Entrepreneurship

Gestion et management

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	20 octobre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184006599
Langue	English

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NIKHIL INAMDAR

ROKDA
How Baniyas Do Business
RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Contents
A Note on the Author
Introduction
The Millionaire Cabbie
The Emamiwallahs
The Online Baniya
Mission Sanitation and The Man Behind
The Coach
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Follow Random House
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Nikhil Inamdar is a Mumbai based financial journalist and currently consulting columnist at Business Standard Online. He was a prime time news presenter for NDTV Profit and worked for several years as a television correspondent at reputed news channels after completing a postgraduate degree in broadcast journalism from the UK. This is his first book.
For my big, fat, thriving, shining Indian household
Introduction
The Baniya is a loosely used expression in India, employed interchangeably to refer to the corner shop kiranawallah, the calculating money lender or the quintessential Marwari businessman next door. The connotation is often negative, but the etymology of the word is found in the Sanskrit term, v nij, which simply means trader or merchant. Originating primarily in the northern and western parts of India, the Baniyas have historically been engaged in professions ranging from money lending, commodities trading, stock broking, and shop keeping. In the present day however, they straddle sectors of the modern economy as varied as internet enabled retail, mobile telephony, and oil and gas exploration.
They are a separate Indian caste with specific sub-castes-Maheshwaris, Agarwalas etc, religious affiliations- Hindu and Jain, distinctive social customs, also have typical surnames on the basis of the clan to which they belong- Bansal, Mittal, Singhal, Goel, Garg and so on. In a wider context, the term Baniya is also used in parts of the country to refer to a conglomeration of people from diverse geographical and religious backgrounds, engaged broadly in commerce.
When I was approached to do this book that would feature the growth stories of five Baniya entrepreneurs, the first thought that crossed my mind was whether entrepreneurship could be dissected from the prism of caste alone. Could I possibly use old social segregations and hierarchies as a basis to pick a group of entrepreneurs and tell their stories? Wouldn t that only restate community stereotypes that may or may not hold true any longer?
As I began approaching people I was interested in featuring in the book, one young whiz kid-whose online restaurant-discovery portal had just received millions of dollars in private equity funding-banged the phone down on me asking never to call again. Baniyas in business?! Why would you want to categorize me in that manner? he almost shrieked, evidently annoyed at my appeal to let his new-age success story be identified by the caste to which he was born.
If for a moment that incident made me circumspect about this project, all my doubts subsided once I began the interviews. For every person that was dismissive of the role their community may have played in influencing the choices they made in life, I met five others who reiterated the conscious and imperceptible weight that caste-based idiosyncrasies had on their psyche. That is not to say that those featured in this book are solely or even primarily defined by their Baniya identity. Far from it actually! After all modernity and the global nature of enterprise will have blunted old typecasts and altered our DNA considerably, wouldn t it?
But to fully discount the peculiarities of a clan established by generations of cultural and organizational frameworks would be arrogant and ill-conceived. Which is why, uncovering through these case studies why the Baniyas in particular could have long held hegemony on Indian enterprise, and continue to remain such a dominating force in the orb of commerce and trade was an exciting endeavor. From their stomach for risk and high trust culture to the strong joint family and community support infrastructure that could enable their initial rise, from their amazing ability to adapt and adjust well in unfamiliar environments to their penchant for keeping a close tab on costs and spend conscientiously; there are more positive stereotypes about the Baniyas that hold true than don t.
They have an intrinsic understanding of money and commerce. Business is second nature to them reckons Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal.com . He is surrounded by Baniyas-from his own partner Rohit, to all his competitors that inhabit India s e-commerce landscape. But, it is what Rohit Bansal himself shared with me that strikes a deeper chord. The community he says is inherently comfortable with uncertainty, and remains undaunted by the constant oscillations in their financial circumstances. What a virtue that is for a good businessman to have!
The five stories in this book-of the men behind Emami, Snapdeal, Meru Cabs, Hindware, and Bansal Classes-seek to bring out the matchless ingenuity of this community, and demonstrate through them how the Baniya has evolved with times, whilst continuing to retain his own unique cultural identity. I attempt to do this without necessarily keeping the caste factor at the fore, but with hope that the spirit of the Baniya DNA, which is wired for enterprise, will shine through in the narrative time and again.
The companies I ve chosen not only represent different sectors of the Indian economy, but also the changing landscape of doing business in India. Emami and Hindware are brands that have withstood the test of time, blossomed in the face of cataclysmic changes. Meru Cabs and Snapdeal symbolize the spectacular opportunity liberalization has afforded to entrepreneurship and Bansal Classes is a tale of triumph in adversity.
July 16, 2014
THE MILLIONAIRE CABBIE
N EERAJ G UPTA - M ERU C ABS
C irca 2006-It was a regular day at work. Neeraj Gupta was in a meeting at his sprawling, newly acquired office in Goregaon when the dreaded call first came.
Come out and take a look hollered that familiar intimidating voice on the other side of the line. Gupta skipped a heartbeat and rushed out, dashing down the stairs to the garage below, praying to the lord to give him strength to face what was about to greet him.
The scene he witnessed still flashes like a strobe in his memory. Broken windows, cracked windshields, and splintered glass on the floor-the brand new garage below the office, where he parked his fleet of taxis, had been rummaged through by one of the biggest names in Mumbai underworld. Gun shots had been fired, property had been damaged, a business for which Gupta had given his sweat and blood was being seized up literally. His life was in grave danger.
ONE DAY, 24 HOURS
The first set of calls had started a year earlier. On the morning of 26 July 2005 to be precise-the fateful day that ravaged Mumbai as torrential rains inundated the city, causing large-scale destruction of life and property. Curiously, just the night before, four of Neeraj s vehicles had met with fatal accidents all at once, forcing him to spend the entire night at Lilavati Hospital in Bandra, attending to his staff.
One of the drivers has died, a shaken Neeraj remembers telling wife Farhat on the phone, perplexed at how four vehicles from his staff transportation business were involved in mishaps on one single night. She asked him to come home early, sounding anxious. He did, but only the next morning-weary and fatigued. And just as he was about to crash into bed the cell phone rang.
Dubai se baat kar raha hoon , someone said in Hindi. It wasn t a voice Gupta recognized, but the tone was telling enough. Thankfully, the minute he uttered Dubai , Gupta had the presence of mind to start recording the conversation.
Do crore, the man threatened and hung up, elaborating no further. His instinct had been proven correct. It was an extortion call asking him to pay up.
Everything that could go wrong did on that day. Mumbai was devastated by such a ferocious downpour that by 4 pm large parts of the city had completely flooded, Neeraj lost contact with his wife and would have to walk chest deep in water for hours, looking for his missing family. It didn t stop at that. A dozen more of his cars were smashed beyond repair as the garage was inundated by water.
Even the newspapers had splashed photos of one of our car wrecks on the front page, Gupta remembers. The accident, the underworld threats, the terror of a missing family, and large scale financial losses-I was staring at, it was easily the worst day of my life, and I still shudder when I think of it.
Ironically it is this day of adversity that also proved to be a turning point for Gupta in life, and particularly in business.
GROWING UP
Neeraj Gupta was born in Mumbai in a family of second generation entrepreneurs. His grandfather s story is a quintessential rags to riches saga.
As many unemployed young men in those days would, he boarded a train from Lucknow to arrive in (then) Bombay, with pretty much nothing but a suitcase in hand and a family to feed, Gupta s father would tell him. In the course of the next few years he established a flourishing business, owning by the time of his passing, a chain of 14 eateries across the city-little shops in cinema halls, outside railway stations, and crowded business districts that sold snacks and tea to office goers. It was hard work, but it propelled the family out of poverty.
Neeraj s father, Vishnu Kumar Puranchan Gupta himself, a docile, happy-go-lucky man, wasn t really a desirous contender who harboured any ambition to steer the business into the big league. But the family always led a comfortable, middle-class life. With his grandfather s untimely death at the age of 40, it was Neeraj s uncle who handled the trade, running all but one restaurant, and eventually changing his line of business entirely to get into the manufacturing of corrugated boxes.
The one restaurant his father did inherit was leased out to a Shetty man to run. Vishnu was a ca