Man of steel and other NRIs of note.
Net worth Networked
Nasima H Khan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Acquisition is just one way of growing. But overseas Indians are becoming giants in more ways than one. L N Mittal has an insatiable appetite for steel. Since 1992, his Ispat International(NYSE:IST) has been gobbling up struggling mills in Mexico, Quebec, Trinidad, Germany, Khazakhstan, Ireland... and turning them around.
The $440 million sales a year company of 1992 has turned really big, recording $2.7 billion sales last year! And Mr Mittal is ranked amongst the richest men in the world.
Armed with an MIT degree in engineering, Swraj Paul went about seeking a bank loan to start with in 1968. Thirty years later, he has retired as chairman of the £500 million Caparo empire.
''Believe me,'' he says, ''It was harder for me to get a £5,000 loan in 1968 than it is for me to get a £5 million loan today.'' But again, it was expansion, buying up units to become big that got him there. And peerage in the House of Lords is just a fallout.
V Rastogi, another non-resident Indian, is also on a buying spree in Europe, taking in more companies and expanding business. Is this need to acquire more to be big a trend among overseas Indians?
Says Satish Batra, ''All overseas Indians start out small. The very reason for them to go abroad was to seek better economic prospects. So everything starts with the skills they possess and the hard work they put in.''
It would seem however, after the first million, the next million is much easier to get. But companies are not acquired blindly. ''Yes, there is expansion, but for reasons of business,'' says Batra. Business sense prevails. If it makes economic sense to control the inputs coming into the manufacturing unit in order to maintain quality, one should go ahead and do that.
''It's not expansion for the sake of expanding,'' feels Batra who is managing director La Vidette, Aachen, Germany. An engineer by profession, it was natural that he should seek to do business in the field of pollution control. With thirty years experience in Germany, he has now spread his business to Netherlands and has also opened an office in New Delhi.
Sunny Chabra, who owns and runs AMC Computers in New York, seems a virtual veteran at acquisitions. ''Every businessman wants to grow,'' he says. ''And one way of doing that is through acquisition. Every private company tries to grow big by going public.''
Chabra himself started out as a salesman in the company which he acquired when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. What he got for half-a-million dollars then has now turned into a $100 million company.
Chabra has just recently completed a deal to take over a $20 million company and hope to finalise the acquisition of another $60 million company in the next four to six months. He's now turned his eye on India. ''I'm looking to acquire a small office here, he says. It's just his beginning here.
Acquisitions as more than just a business decision? Maybe NRIs need to grow to satisfy their ego, feels Jagmohan Singh, President of the Delhi-based NRI Institute, which guides overseas Indians in investing in India as well as promotes ties and trade between Britain and India.
He too agrees that overseas Indians start small. ''They go mainly as professionals, and work very hard to make their money,'' says Singh. And back home, they are barely recognised for their achievements abroad. So, he feels, they try to grow bigger just to gain the recognition they feel is due to them but has not come their way.
There are others who have made it big globally. The Hinduja brothers, for example. Their international business empire is valued at more than $150 million, and is based mostly on trade. The Hindujas have however, diversified by investing in hospitals, power and other infrastructure areas in India.
Says S P Hinduja, chairman of the group: ''The Indian way of living is the democratic way of living, where there is also freedom to pursue one's interest. Such as in my family. One may be interested in infrastructure, one in media communications, one in something else. If there is no flexibility, the child will say, I don't want to join my father's business. But with flexibility, one can diversify.''
Another shining example is 75year-old Hari Harilela. He heads the wealthiest and most respected Indian family in Hong Kong. The Harilela group started with trade but has moved in a big way into real estate and hotels.
After the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese authorities last year, Mr Harilela was appointed advisor to the Chinese government on Hong Kong affairs and member of the committee that drafted the basic law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The there is the well known Sura Chansrichawla of Bangkok. This Bangkok-based Sikh, Hotel magnate is also into real estate and banking. He even made an attempt to take over the Syrian Christian Bank in India.
NUMBERS COUNT:
Size does matter, not only in terms of the business NRIs own, but also in terms of number and expertise. Indian communities across the world are making their presence felt. They are seen as hardworking, dedicated to their families, stressing their children's education and upwardly mobile. Especially so in the USA, UK, Canada and Southeast Asia.
''The 1 million-strong Indian community here is dynamic. They are doing very well,'' says Mr Lalit Mansingh, the new Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
The community in Britain has certainly turned high profile over the past two decades! Indians are doing well for themselves in Britain: They are well respected as medical practitioners and businessmen, and increasing in number in political circles. And they have all but straddled the global world of finance.
Among those of whom an average Indian feels proud is Rana Talwar, Group Chief Executive of Standard and Chartered Bank. Based in London, he says: ''Indians are getting more opportunities now than ever before. And the fact is that Indians are mobile, they are not selective about a place. Things have changed from the sixties and seventies. Earlier, corporations would reserve top jobs for their own countrymen. Nationality, race, colour -these don't matter anymore. Only merit counts. The world is becoming more professional, and one is promoted regardless of nationality.''
The glass ceiling of yesteryears has actually shattered, and not just in Britain. Like Talwar, there are others in top jobs in finance in other parts of the world.
Victor Menezes in Citi Group, Rajat Gupta in McKinsey, Jim Wadia in Arthur Andersen...
And if they are straddling finance, NRIs have become synonymous with the Silicon Valley. The heartland of many start-up electronic and software companies, Silicon Valley has become home to many Indians. Prominent names include Suhas Patil of Cirrus Logic; Vinod Khosla of Sun Microsystems; Prabhu Goel of Gateway and Chandra Sekhar of Exodus Communincations.
The biggest name in recent times is Sabeer Bhatia, who sold his hotmail system on internet to Bill Gates' Microsoft for a whopping sum and is now part of Microsoft himself.
Professionals are doing especially well. Doctors have come together to form the AAPI -The Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin which is a body with growing political clout. It has raised millions for the Democrats and its 1995 session was addressed by President Bill Clinton himself. It is currently headed by Kalpalatha Guntupalli, its first woman president.
The Patels have a run on 12,000 US motels with a turnover of $6 billion. And their new generation is entering the hotels industry. The patriarch Dahya Bhai Patel is considered a pioneer in this field as he is responsible for bringing 1,000 Patels into the motels business in the early stages.
But its only in Britain that persons of Indian descent have climbed so high in politics -four of them are actually in the House of Lords!
Overseas Indians really do keep growing!
|
