hoojie on the run

i forgot MD!

agent: check your notes for a link.

Jeremiah Mburuburu wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:i have decided to share my story, the rise and fall of family x, the business story of my father's generation.

may i suggest the title, The Golden Lota?

ok. will consider.

C1’s bride shot herself dead a week after my mother died.

Natalia Romanova wrote:still reading. but paused to say. loads of respect for C' FIL.

oh yes! hats off to that man (though part of the motivation might have been more of self-pride then the well being of his married daughter. his daughter's well being and his self pride happened to be in consonance in that case). and he set the right condition too! only my mother had the misfortune of wasting 15 years of her life in A's wife's wicked subservience.

My father, and I suspect his brothers too, had no attachment to wealth and property. They had supreme confidence in their ability to create wealth. They always returned to their ability in the worst of their moments. They imagined themselves to be indestructible wealth creating machines. My generation had fierce attachment to wealth and property -- the scrap yard land -- and zero confidence in our ability to earn wealth.

very interesting observation.

thanks nats. you and i will keep this thread on top.

together we can do it.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:thanks nats. you and i will keep this thread on top.

together we can do it.

lol... am on bangalore crash right now (I am a distracted reader, and hence slow). so sorry to hear about it.

D got a call from a woman. She dropped a bomb on him. She said she was C's...

or kitne bombs hai in this land-mine of a story, e-bhaiya?

"She had an idea why D was flying to Bangalore so often of late and it was not just on account of business."

you need to edit this. it shd be C, not D.

Natalia Romanova wrote:"She had an idea why D was flying to Bangalore so often of late and it was not just on account of business."

you need to edit this. it shd be C, not D.

oops! edited in my original copy now. texas!

The other half his wife had already shoved into her blouse when the officers inventorying the lockers were busy chatting with D.

That's gutsy. *respect* (something I could never ever do, I am such a phattu).

am confused. wasn't it C1 who was incensed first? why did he join hands with u?

"Once possessed of them C1 said that whatever land stood in his father's name belonged to him and he would not give it to his other cousins. I followed suit. The matter went to court, dragged for several years and the partition agreement was eventually nullified by the court. D1 and I won. But we both had different problems now. D1's problem was that the land that belonged in the name of his father in Bombay was in the possession of A1 and B1 (that he is still trying to wrest from them). My problem was that most of the land in Calcutta belonged to A and the rest to B and C and only some to D (though I enjoyed full possession of most of the land in Kolkata)."

grrrr, YOU are D1... you meant C1 here, right?

Damn, yes C1 nats. I am editing the original. He did not join hands with me when he complained to CBI but we still remained friends -- our moral calling apart. My net has crashed. I am from phone. Dunno when net will be up.

C1's moral calling was revenge more against B1, the accomplice, who had been transplanted by my father to bombay and who lived in a flat adjacent to his in which C1 was a 1/4th shareholder and that had been bought by his father C (with his hard earned money) and who had robbed him of most of his father's business by pretending to be C's heir. but he (C1) could not seek his revenge without dragging my father into it and hiding his movements from me. it remains that C1 still hated my father (though the hate had subsided by then) but the seeking of revenge from B1 had only intensified.

This is good reading. I am two-thirds of the way through, with the raid right after the gold withdrawal.

thanks! do note my typos as pointed out by nats above. also you can skip the epilogue (ruminations).

Read it. That's a LOT of stuff happening in just 2 generations of a family. Glad you captured it honestly.

Just finished reading it, including the epilogue. The entire tale is told with a lot of honesty and introspection. You should seriously try to expand this into a novel. Bring in some research to make the times come alive some more (e.g. changing laws with liberalization, changing social norms regarding displaying opulence, how your lifestyles changed through this time), build out the characters some more with a few more personal anecdotes and small incidents, and you can have yourself a novel about the liberalization of India from the industrialist perspective. If you are up to it, you could even explore the lives of those semi-literate works manager relations and the poor local workers in your factories and how those evolved. That would make it a comprehensive social chronicle a la A Suitable Boy for the '80s and '90s .

I can somewhat go back and pinpoint where the fall sorta began, and it was even before the meteoric rise! And that was because A's wife wasn't up to the task of becoming the family's lead. She humiliated C's wife and possibly others too, and that's when the partitions began. C went to Bombay, which was part of the 'plan', but should have been the reverse. Imagine how things would have shaped out then?

panini press wrote:Just finished reading it, including the epilogue. The entire tale is told with a lot of honesty and introspection. You should seriously try to expand this into a novel. Bring in some research to make the times come alive some more (e.g. changing laws with liberalization, changing social norms regarding displaying opulence, how your lifestyles changed through this time), build out the characters some more with a few more personal anecdotes and small incidents, and you can have yourself a novel about the liberalization of India from the industrialist perspective. If you are up to it, you could even explore the lives of those semi-literate works manager relations and the poor local workers in your factories and how those evolved. That would make it a comprehensive social chronicle a la A Suitable Boy for the '80s and '90s .

excellent! i am glad you liked it and flattered that you wasted no time reading it. your suggestions are good. the semi-literate managers were from our community in UP. the workers were all exclusively from bihar and eastern UP. their stories beg to be told.

it was purely by accident that i found time to write this 30+ page tale. it just happened. but i think it is a good foundation. once my older graduates, i will go into semi-retirement and craft a non-fiction book around this tale and give it some literary flourishes too. by that time, the information i reveal (in the book) will also be ready to be laid bare in the public domain with impunity. i draw inspiration from ashwin sanghi:

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120812/jsp/graphiti/story_15842107.jsp#.UCnbKZ3ibP9

sanghi basically has car dealerships in mumbai (he is a twitter and fb friend). he works by day and writes by night and self-published his first book and was republished by a leading book house and is now an acclaimed writer. he writes well. you might like his historical fiction, chankya's chant. he is a few years younger than me. if he can do it, why not me.

Natalia Romanova wrote:I can somewhat go back and pinpoint where the fall sorta began, and it was even before the meteoric rise! And that was because A's wife wasn't up to the task of becoming the family's lead. She humiliated C's wife and possibly others too, and that's when the partitions began. C went to Bombay, which was part of the 'plan', but should have been the reverse. Imagine how things would have shaped out then?

you are looking it entirely from the "female" perspective. this was not a reason. A never listened to his wife. Neither did his brothers (but not so the next generation). He never let her meddle in his business or corrupt his mind. he knew she was a shrew. thus she never "enjoyed" the family-head status as such -- though she enjoyed respect. he was sceptical of women by nature. when B1 got married, the bride-to-be was the sister of A1's wife. A was highly opposed to the alliance. his philosophy was, "two sisters in the same house will tilt balances and form unhealthy alliances." but B's wife stuck to her ground (the girl was very pretty). C and D had to plead and cajole till A finally relented. as history would bear out, A's fears were not unfounded. in the end B1 did gang up with A1 to boot D from Bombay. A1 and B1 are still the thick of friends!

Just finished reading it in the middle of two meetings and several phone-calls. All in all, I must say: Wow. Gripping story, Hoojie. But you haven't said why you closed down the steel mills after taking control of them. What drove the liquidation bit? None of your earlier ambitions about reverse integration etc were dependent on the unified family. After you got more than your fair share of the family spoils, why didn't you revisit those plans?

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Just finished reading it in the middle of two meetings and several phone-calls. All in all, I must say: Wow. Gripping story, Hoojie. But you haven't said why you closed down the steel mills after taking control of them. What drove the liquidation bit? None of your earlier ambitions about reverse integration etc were dependent on the unified family. After you got more than your fair share of the family spoils, why didn't you revisit those plans?

great questions all.

my reverse integration plant (sponge iron unit in durgapur) was not entirely NOT dependent on the united family. but after C's untimely death, i had to put it on hold for some time because i was managing, full time, the mini steel plant in Calcutta (earlier i was managing only the backward integration project). i had also lost my father's support for this ambitious project because he was distracted by the events in bombay. the moment i lost my father's support, my cousins started mocking my dreams and i retreated (in the prospectus, i had presented our family as united! my cousins were directors! i could not pull it off without their support!). but i was firm in my mind that i would return to it a bit later. events would happen faster than i had anticipated for in less than 2 years, in end 1990, my father had lost his head-of-family status and was back in kolkata, disillusioned and charting his own way (TULEC).

by now, 1991, i was handling the reins of the mini steel plant and the rolling mills without interference from anyone. i immediately switched to making alloy steels. i closed the rolling mills for they were old and not suitable for rolling alloy steels. i took the company public to set up an alloy steel rolling mill in the mini steel plant's premise: http://www.indiainfoline.com/Markets/Company/Singh-Alloys-and-Steels-Ltd-Wound-up/513697

i also took loans from IDBI. but i could not return to the public for i could not expand later (as explained below)!

all my cousins ganged up and challenged the IPO in kolkata high court a day before the IPO was to open. their argument was that the company was listed as a joint family asset in the "partition agreement" and could not be taken public without their consent. my lawyers argued that ltd. companies were juristic bodies and unless they were signatories to the agreement, they could not be included in any such list. the court ruled in my favour. my cousins appealed to the division bench. again the court ruled in my favour and i raised money from public.

i set up the rolling mill and started manufacturing primarily spring steel flats and rounds. my main buyer was a company registered with RDSO (railways) that supplied coil springs to the railways and automobile, suspension spring sets to OEMs and replacement market. my competitors were companies like sunglag iron and steel and no longer integrated steel plants or the rogue induction furnaces (that made mild steel and cheaper). (i was much smaller in size than sunflag though but making the identical product! because of the electricity writ petition mentioned below i could not expand either -- WBSEB refused to give me more power!)

my cousins precipitated an excise raid on me (relating to unfair practices conducted in my father's time) in 1995. i was in enforcement directorate's lockup for 2 days and finally settled it with them by paying them 2 crores. that weakened me financially but i survived. i made plans to diversify into steel castings too. the rogue induction furnaces could not compete with me in alloy steels and steel castings that i would manufacture because their furnaces were smaller in size (my steel castings and furnaces were big) and their technology did not give them the flexibility to make alloy steels (only construction grade mild steel). i met success. by now i have been battling with the mini steel plant for 8 years and it is 1998. i am still making good profits and paying dividends. the nail in the coffin was an electricity case relating to maximum demand (a component of electricity charges). all the electric arc furnaces of west bengal had jointly filed a habeas corpus petition in mid 80s against WBSEB asking why should they pay full maximum demand charges when WBSEB supplied them power only intermittently (those were power shortage and loadshedding days in WB). the high court gave an injunction ordering us to pay only 1/2 maximum demand charges and ruled in our favour 10 years later. the WBSEB appealed to the supreme court and in 1998 the supreme court ruled in WBSEB's favour. all mini steel plants were slapped with arrear maximium demand charges for the last 20 years, with interest, that ran into crores! all the electric furnaces of WB closed shop, as did mine.

i closed the MSP, salvaged whatever i could, and exploited one of the bridges we had built with a large corporate and started from scratch -- this time in the steel service sector. i was disillusioned with merchant manufacturing and disillusioned with excise and sales tax. but the govt. would chase me and morph from excise to service tax and continue to haunt me.

btw, i left out these details in the story because the story was not about my generation. it was about A and his generation (with our inclusion limited to our involvement with that generation).

Thanks. In a sense, Family X and you were also victims of Kolkata's politics - from the union issues to this last nail in the coffin from WBSEB...things might have turned out very differently (starting with the patriarch's continued existence) in, say, Gujarat or Bombay.

Almost done with it but need to read it another time to digest it all.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Thanks. In a sense, Family X and you were also victims of Kolkata's politics - from the union issues to this last nail in the coffin from WBSEB...things might have turned out very differently (starting with the patriarch's continued existence) in, say, Gujarat or Bombay.

this is the ESSENCE. i will shamelessly plagiarize this when i compose the final story. the only thing i can say with confidence is that i would have prospered with my mini steel plant had it been bombay. better ports there (for importing scrap) and closer to the market (TELCO and engineering industries of coimbatore that consumed a lot of alloy steels). i imported a vessel through kolkata port. it was my first and last import -- the draught was low in hooghly and only a 10,000MT vessel could dock! they don't make such small vessels in the world anymore! no silt removal in place! i had to close shop only because of dickhead WBSEB. we should not have lost that case -- our grievance was just. WBSEB should not have hounded us with the arrears. they killed an entire industry. they should have sought repayment in installments and waived interest. WBSEB had no human face. the CPIM govt. was insensitive to our plight.

Typical sarkari thinking, completely unmindful that they are killing their golden goose, sinking industry and destroying jobs. No wonder people badmouth the commies so much.

Another question: your grandfather stumbled into the scrap business more or less by accident. Why did you stick to it? Like your father who got into TULEC franchises, why didn't you look at other businesses? What was the compelling draw of steel?

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Another question: your grandfather stumbled into the scrap business more or less by accident. Why did you stick to it? Like your father who got into TULEC franchises, why didn't you look at other businesses? What was the compelling draw of steel?

i was young. i had role models (my father was not one of them). Dr. J. J. Irani, MD of Tata Steel was one. Before him, Russi Mody had diversified tata steel into dealing in coffee, tea, leather, garments, commodities, cement (tata steel had a cement plant), bearings (tata bearings), refractories (tata refractories), mini blast furnaces (tata korf -- later tata metaliks). Dr. Irani sold or closed down all these businesses (well most of them). he gave a reason to my father in one discussion. he said, "mahendar, one should stick to the knitting." that had an indelible impression on my nascent mind.

also, i was fascinated by metallurgy and alloy steels. making alloy steel is a bit like cooking. it requires simmering, refining and a tadka of chromium, silicon, nickel, vanadium etc. i employed ganpath rams. these ganpath rams were metallurgists from NITs with loads of professional experience. i imported spectrometres (for analysing composition of steel in seconds during refining). i was fascinated by it and wed to the industry.

one of my business rivals after i had entered the service sector was one manoj agarwal. he was a couple of years younger than me and they were a team of 6 brothers (with weak links!) and he the youngest. their family had just started business by trading when i was running the MSP. manoj gave me competition in service sector when i closed my MSP and entered the service sector while his other brothers continued to trade. their family was fully aware of A's generation's history and was emulating it (arbitrage trading was their niche -- one brother in kolkata, another in ludhiana. they made money doing this). they had the added advantage of learning from the mistakes of A's generation or his next (namely, disunity and public fighting).

manoj was a terrifying rival. he would give me sleepless nights and i would pray not to be pitted against him. his strengths were his brothers and money (money from marwari money market). his biggest strength was his mercurial mind, ambition and hard work. yet i outwitted him twice and finally, by a stroke of luck, uprooted him from my domain. after that he did not compete with me for his ambitions lay elsewhere and he totally left my domain. we became friends.

once when commuting in a train, him and i sat in adjacent seats and chatted for 4 hours. the conversation veered to metallurgy. i though i would give him a few lessons about emerging technologies. he corrected a couple of my assertions and then started lecturing me about new technologies. i was shocked that this Bcom boy (don't be fooled by his assertions in his website that he is an alumnus of NIT, kurukshetra) knew more about steel technologies than i did. l. n. mittal was his idol and he knew all about l. n. mittal's life.

he stole my dream and built an empire that i had once dreamt of and he built MUCH MORE. he bought ferro manganese, iron ore and coal mines in odhisa and jharkhand. he fully integrated his process. though his worries are far from over (gaining a firmhold in alloy steels takes a LOT of time -- a culture has to be developed and you cannot develop it overnight), his group has crossed the critical threshold and is indestructible.

his group: http://www.adhunikgroup.com/

manoj is the mastermind of the group (as you can read in the site). sabse chota sabse khota hota hai, the youngest is always the shrewdest.

my father used to hate them (the agarwals of the adhunik group). he was faced to deal with the eldest, ghanshyam agarwal, who used to come visit my father. manoj was still studying. my father gave him a nickname, khargosh, rabbit, because his conversational style was predictable and nimble like the movements of a rabbit. a typical conversation would go somewhat like this:

namaskar
how much are you buying?
what price are you quoting in the next auction?
how much profit did you make in the last auction?
who did you sell to?
how much inventory are you carrying?
.
.
.

the questions would be rat-a-tat and before the other person would have finished answering one, the next question would already be hanging in the air!



i too gave him a nickname in my mind: chodu.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Another question: your grandfather stumbled into the scrap business more or less by accident. Why did you stick to it? Like your father who got into TULEC franchises, why didn't you look at other businesses? What was the compelling draw of steel?

i have thought about this question whole day. perhaps i should have closed the mini steel plant (like C1 closed the bombay MSP in 1991 -- and he shifted to trading) and tried something else with hot money in hand (fresh from closing the MSP). it was not that i did not know that running the dying mini steel plant was a BIG and RISKY challenge that i was undertaking. i had my father's prosperous TULEC franchises as an example before my eyes. he ran 6 centres and each centre posted ~4 lacs PAT. his business closed because of TULEC's disinterest in education followed by my father's arrogance. my father did have a proposal from NIIT to adopt their banner but my arrogant father refused (ego issues with the NIIT senior officers -- i think he changed in his last years). ironically, NIIT is NOW one of my tenants in a premise from which my father used to operate one of his TULEC centres from!

i might have made a mistake back then. i was never ambitious (if i was, i lost steam fast or got disillusioned fast).

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Natalia Romanova wrote:I can somewhat go back and pinpoint where the fall sorta began, and it was even before the meteoric rise! And that was because A's wife wasn't up to the task of becoming the family's lead. She humiliated C's wife and possibly others too, and that's when the partitions began. C went to Bombay, which was part of the 'plan', but should have been the reverse. Imagine how things would have shaped out then?

you are looking it entirely from the "female" perspective. this was not a reason. A never listened to his wife. Neither did his brothers (but not so the next generation). He never let her meddle in his business or corrupt his mind. he knew she was a shrew. thus she never "enjoyed" the family-head status as such -- though she enjoyed respect. he was sceptical of women by nature. when B1 got married, the bride-to-be was the sister of A1's wife. A was highly opposed to the alliance. his philosophy was, "two sisters in the same house will tilt balances and form unhealthy alliances." but B's wife stuck to her ground (the girl was very pretty). C and D had to plead and cajole till A finally relented. as history would bear out, A's fears were not unfounded. in the end B1 did gang up with A1 to boot D from Bombay. A1 and B1 are still the thick of friends!

Well. All I meant was that they led to c going to Bombay too. Had D gone to Bombay instead, And c stayed in Calcutta, things would have been very different. In the sense that the entire business prospered or failed coz of the personalities of a, c, and d. And the cities they were in somewhat aided or restricted their behaviors.

yes, possibly.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:Dr. J. J. Irani, MD of Tata Steel was one.

an ode to dr. irani

russi mody had neglected tata steel's modernization and mentally he was still trapped in the pre-decontrol era. in the pre-decontrol period, tata steel could afford to live in SAIL's shadow. inefficient SAIL would force the govt. to raise prices of steel and tata steel would reap the benefit. russy mody invested in highly experimental (not yet commercially proven) and illogical technologies like the korf technology for making steel. the korf technology relied on 30% melting scrap for input. india was a net importer of melting scrap so the technology made no sense. but the mammoth korf furnace was erected and fired in tata steel when all the old mills were screaming for modernization. even capacity expansion had been neglected.

dr. irani ruthlessly modernized tata steel and doubled, tripled capacity. there would be a huge digital hoarding in the works recording the production for the year up to that moment and next to it would be the target -- screaming aloud. he kept everyone on their toes and under pressure. he uprooted antiquated mills (rail mill, forging unit, bar and rod mill, merchant mill, strip mill) and installed state-of-the-art hot strip mills, continuous casters and cold rolling mills and imported mammoth, second-hand blast furnaces from spain to replace the battery of puny blast furnaces. he gave his officers very stiff deadlines to erect and commission these lines and they delivered (the brightest officer, b. muthuraman, erected and commissioned the prized cold rolling mill, imported from japan, beore time!). he slashed the workforce relentlessly during his stint without a labour strife. he gave workers and employees golden handshakes. he achieved a lot in his short stint (he was a man possessed). he started the momemntum for a cultural and technological change in tata steel, that continues to date, in just the nick of time!

Natalia Romanova wrote:am confused. wasn't it C1 who was incensed first? why did he join hands with u?

oops, sorry. figured your question now. i figure you've figured out the answer too. but, to answer your question, alignments keep changing in such fights (like in business and politics). we are still friends -- the long drawn fight for spoils has taken a definite shape and there is no threat to our alignment; we are aligned now only because we like being aligned (read friends).

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

Natalia Romanova wrote:am confused. wasn't it C1 who was incensed first? why did he join hands with u?

oops, sorry. figured your question now. i figure you've figured out the answer too. but, to answer your question, alignments keep changing in such fights (like in business and politics). we are still friends -- the long drawn fight for spoils has taken a definite shape and there is no threat to our alignment; we are aligned now only because we like being aligned (read friends).

yeah, you explained it later.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:making alloy steel is a bit like cooking. it requires simmering, refining and a tadka of chromium, silicon, nickel, vanadium etc. i employed ganpath rams.

LOL.

One more reason to publish the story: bring out the truth about how the WBSEB killed local industry. The bhadralok need to know.

So the tenant you recently evicted, who fabricated those charges against you, how is he related to A, B, C and D?

panini press wrote:So the tenant you recently evicted, who fabricated those charges against you, how is he related to A, B, C and D?

biz friend

yes. a biz friend from the steel service line i am in right now. he is not related to the story of A's generation.

(deleted post. i did not agree with my analysis. more introspection required -- later.)

ok, last amusing post to conclude this thread with. a post concerning that tambrahm gentleman's daughter who was my first crush (she is married with kids and an acclaimed exponent of BN):

a few months ago i was conversing with her over sms and i started flirting. i finally concluded by saying, "to be honest, i am not interested in married aunties. goodnight and bye!" she immediately replied, "wah, pehle chadhaya, fir thappad!?" (first teased, then slapped?)

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:ok, last amusing post to conclude this thread with. a post concerning that tambrahm gentleman's daughter who was my first crush (she is married with kids and an acclaimed exponent of BN):

a few months ago i was conversing with her over sms and i started flirting. i finally concluded by saying, "to be honest, i am not interested in married aunties. goodnight and bye!" she immediately replied, "wah, pehle chadhaya, fir thappad!?" (first teased, then slapped?)

what or who are married unkils interested in?

ha ha! perhaps only in ceos with garden, mba and material like aaver QB.

panini press wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:making alloy steel is a bit like cooking. it requires simmering, refining and a tadka of chromium, silicon, nickel, vanadium etc. i employed ganpath rams.

LOL.

One more reason to publish the story: bring out the truth about how the WBSEB killed local industry. The bhadralok need to know.

I very much doubt if the bhadralok would shed a tear over the demise of an industry. They'd probably celebrate the prevalence of the rule of law over unscrupulous imperialist capitalist Bania businessmen who were getting rich at the cost of the local proletariat and the state. Hearing of the troubles of family X might even inspire an impromptu session of Rabindra-sangeet antakshari.

LOL!

Why did you delete the note on JJ Irani??

ummm, i will rewrite the credentials bit but not the rest. tata group does not wash its dirty linen in public -- why should i? russi mody is still revered by them and is still an important guest in their founder's day event in jamshedpur. (ditto darbari seth and ajit kerkar history)

dr. j. j. irani was a phd. in metallurgy from univ. of sheffield, UK (he got a gold medal for his thesis). he was an extremely bright scholar and served in the research wings of the industrial science labs of UK before being invited by jrd tata to join tata steel.

nani palkhiwala (tata sons) on these issues!

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/darbari-seth-never-betrayed-tata-confidence-palkhivala-clarifies/60049/