Book Review - The Marwaris From Jagat Seth to the Birlas

Very few books have been written on Indian Business history but these series of books edited by Gurucharan Das make up for it. The book primarily deals with what factors have led to make the Marwaris extremely successful businessmen not only in India but also outside of India.

A good amount of information about where these Marwari businessmen came from, how they migrated across different parts of India and set up businesses is covered in the book. A lot of comparison between the family firms set up by Marwaris and the Jewish family firms (mainly into money lending) is presented, the manner in which these small firms scaled up from money lending to becoming leading Industrialists in pre and post-independence Era is explained in detail. Marwari is a generic term which refers to the business community who were predominantly from the Marwar region in Western Rajasthan, they were typically Agarwals or Jains. It is interesting to note that most of these Marwari firms were not only into money lending to the peasants but also the preferred business partner for the smaller kings and also the East India Company when the British came into India to set up their trading business in India.

Most of the Marwaris migrated towards the Eastern part of India and set up their trading firms in and around Calcutta, Assam and to an extent Bihar also, while some of them ventured towards Bombay but it was usually the Parsee and the Gujarathi businessmen who dominated the trading empires in Bombay.
Over the period of 19th century many of these family firms had graduated from just money lending, to private banks to becoming dealers for various multinational products from Europe and this set the stage for the MNCs to enter India post-Independence.

The reader get a good overall picture of what fundamental traits the Marwaris have to make them so successful in the field of business. The most important of them being a good accounting method (Parta as it is called), ability to allocate capital in the most efficient and productive way and form a good network within their own community to help each other in times of distress. What initially started of just Opium and cotton textiles trading over the years has now seen Marwari firms into various industries be it old economy or the new age business. As the fundamentals of business management haven’t changed much the family firms have changed and adapted to the new paradigms of business.
Case in example is of the Birla group which has been extensively covered by the Author and also taken input from the book Business Maharajas by business historians Swati Piramal. The challenges faced in today’s complex business world be it about succession planning, corporate culture etc etc is something the new generation of Marwari firms have to deal with. The GD Birla group seems to have got their act together by appointing professionals to run the company but the family still monitors it on a regular basis and also involved in key decisions, something that other first generation non business group will have to learn from.

A good book for anyone interested in knowing Indian Business history and the rise of Marwari businesses in particular.

Book Review An Unfinished Agenda

Some dream, some discuss and very few actually do it, this is the story of Dr.Anji Reddy, son turmeric farmer and his journey from a humble town called Tadepalli in Andhra Pradesh to getting his business Dr. Reddy's labs listed on the New York Stock exchange the epicenter of capitalism. A book written by Dr.Reddy himself about his early days as a chemical scientist and how his entrepreneurial journey started.

A lot of details about the policy environment during the 60's in India like the MRTP act, price controls specifically related to Pharma products have been described in detail and will give the reader an idea of how difficult it must have been to start an enterprise in India. In spite of all the ups and the downs and multiple failures Dr.Reddy's is one among the few Indian Pharma success stories that has created tremendous wealth for all its stake holders.

Very few might know that Dr Reddy's was the first company ( all though it had a different name then) to make bulk drugs at such a large scale in India, while older stalwart Indian pharma companies like Cipla and Ranbaxy were too apprehensive to get into the bulk drugs market , Dr Reddy's takes this huge risk and comes out with quite a few block buster chemicals like Metronidazole, Sulfamethoxazole, Ibuprofen etc etc.

The book also gives an overview of the golden period of the 60s and 70s which is often reffered to as the golden era of antibiotics when penicillin, Norfloxacin, Ciprofloxcin became extremely popular in treatment of various medical complications. We also get to understand how competitive the international pharma market is and why there are so many litigations, patent infringments every now and then in the pharma world, the sheer size of business opportunity and stakes make it so competitive. DRLs journey outside India, especially the lucrative markets of western Europe and US are well explained with all details of challenges faced and is a lesson for future generation of Indian companies that might want to enter the US market.

DRLs foray into drug discovery and its moderate success in this field, the failed acquisition of German company Betapharm( at that time it was the biggest Pahrma aquisition by ann Indian firm) , DRLs entry into Biotech and DRLs CSR initiatives have all been elaborately detailed out.

Lots of anecdotes of Dr. Reddy's work style, why Hyderabad is the pharma capital of India,how he dealt with the MNC competition when he started the business, his relationship with industry peers like legendary Cipla Boss Dr.Yusuf Hamied, Bhai Mohan Singh of Ranbaxy, how they decided to name a molecule of the glizatone family as Balaglizatone in honor of Lord Balaji etc etc make it all the more interesting.

Lots of technical stuff that mostly a pharmacologist or a organic chemist can only understand have been written, I personally did not understand most of it but I sure understood one thing that Dr.Reddy was fascinated by chemistry and medicines and never ending ambition to find new methods to produce drugs and thereby reduce cost and make it more affordable to people in the developing world.

The dominant theme throughout the book was about good science, affordable medicines and reasonable business sense to deliver profits.

A good read to understand the early years of the Indian Pharma Business.

Book Review - Intel Trinity

Anyone even remotely connected with the semiconductor industry should read this definitive guide of how Intel Corp becomes the most important company of the digital age, silicon valley and its impact on humanity.

A combination of three unlikely technocrats who came together from Fair child Semiconductor and then founded Intel...the trinity of Bob Noyce know for his vision and jaw dropping risk taking ability, Gordon Moore , the soft spoken technological genius ( founder of the Moore's law ) and Andy Groove( author of Only the Paranoid Survive) the business Wizard with super human energy is stuff of legends.

The defining moments when Bob Noyce co-invented the Integrated circuit ( had be been alive in 2000 he would have got a noble prize for the same) , the creation of the revolutionary 8086 Intel microprocessor which powered millions of computers in the 80s and last the greatest hitech marketing campaign of the century which is Intel Inside for the pentium chip is beautifully detailed out.

As with most businesses complacency and fatigue seems to have crept in and Intel has been caught on the wrong foot with nothing really worthwhile to contribute in the mobile era and have lost the game to more nimble companies from Korea and the Valley itself.

Nevertheless great corporations dont die away easily and are known to comeback with even more greater products and intel with its technological prowess is capable of doing it .

Book Review - Bhujia Barons

Well researched book about one of the biggest food brands in India, offers insights into how typical Marwari businesses start and flourish and also how the future generations have adapted themselves to take the business to the next level.