Twins become billionaires riding family’s scooter draft
THE TWIN great grandsons of Mahatma Gandhi’s “fifth son” have become billionaires riding the draft of their uncle’s motorcycle business.
Anurang Jain’s net worth hit US$1.1 billion (RM, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after auto parts maker Endurance Technologies Ltd. soared 74 per cent since its October initial public offering. His brother, Tarang, has a US$1.1 billion (RM5 billion) fortune based on the valuation of closely held Varroc Group, which also makes components for motorcycles and cars.
Both companies have long counted their uncle’s Bajaj Auto Ltd. as their biggest customer.
“I will be the first one to shout at them if I find any problem,” Rahul Bajaj, 78, said in a May 11 phone interview.
“Bajaj Auto has always insisted on better quality and lower cost. Indeed, both had worked on cost and quality, otherwise they would not have grown.”
Bajaj, who recalls sitting in Gandhi’s lap and digging wells for the independence leader at his ashram, realised as a teenager that what propelled his family most wasn’t the spirit of non-violent political protest but a quest for success.
“People say, while you are a child, you think of being a policeman or a pilot,” Bajaj said in an interview with Harvard Business School in 2014. “I never thought of anything else: Business, business, business.”
Since then, Bajaj transformed himself into the king of the Indian scooter industry and amassed a personal fortune valued at US$4.2 billion, ranking him No. 433 on the Bloomberg index of the world’s 500 richest people.
Samir Shrimankar, a spokesman for the Bajaj Group, confirmed Rahul’s net worth, while Anurang’s was verified by Sunil Lalai, an Endurance spokesman. Varroc representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Publicly traded Bajaj Auto, started by Rahul’s father and run by his son since 2005, is the group’s flagship business and India’s largest exporter of motorcycles and three-wheelers.
The company is part of Bajaj Group, controlled by the billionaire and three cousins – Madhur, Niraj and Shekhar – through Bajaj Holdings & Investment.
Varroc, based in the western city of Aurangabad, is India’s No. 1 motorcycle parts supplier and had revenue of US$1.5 billion in fiscal 2017, according to its website.
Publicly traded Endurance had revenue of 55.7 billion rupees (US$831 million) in the year ended Mar 31, most derived from its aluminium casting business.
The families trace their lineage to Jamnalal Bajaj, a freedom fighter Gandhi considered to be his fifth son. Jamnalal, who created Bajaj Group in 1926, persuaded Gandhi to establish an ashram in his home state of Maharashtra in 1932 and his family lived there until the Hindu leader’s assassination in 1948.
Bajaj’s family moved to Mumbai around the time of India’s independence in 1947, after years spent in and out of British jails. Rahul’s father took control of the family business in 1942, creating the precursor to Bajaj Auto three years later and expanding the enterprise to include cement, electrical appliances and scooters.
It was the scooter business that kicked the family fortune into high gear.
Built up by Bajaj during the 1970s and ‘80s against the headwinds of a centrally controlled economy, the company became India’s top scooter brand while expanding to places like Colombia, Sri Lanka and Nigeria.
The two-wheelers became a prized commodity, especially in northern India, where “you couldn’t get married in a middle-class family unless the girl’s family was ready to give a Bajaj scooter” as dowry, Rahul Bajaj told Harvard. Families would order one when a child was born or buy them on the black market. — WP-Bloomberg