The Casby creed

"Then came the storms. In November 2002, the Bombay Port Trust (BPT) decided to cancel all stevedoring licenses. As a result, the company lost a lot of work in Bombay port…In December of the same year, the company lost its chairman and leader Khushrooh Byramjee in a tragic car accident. A bleak scenario indeed…now the company had no license, no work, no leader,” recalled Mahakhurshid Byramjee, chairperson of the Casby Group who took over the reins after her husband’s death. "But there was no question of selling. There was only one way to go and that was forward.”

On October 21, 2007 the firm which initially started as M. B. Eduljee Cassinath and Sons celebrated its 150th anniversary at a dinner at The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower in Bombay.

"In his working life of around 35 years it was Khushrooh who expanded the family enterprise from one entity to a clutch of companies in various fields,” declared Mahakhurshid. "He changed the entire portfolio, the look of the business single-handedly.”

Undergoing a sea change, particularly in the last three decades, the Casby Group has moved from distribution and stevedoring to port operations and management, CFS (container freight station), trucking, freight forwarding (general cargo and gems and jewellery), courier services and financial services. It was the late Khushrooh who was the Group’s anchor, lifeboat and buoy. The businessman was but 55 years old at the time of his death.

Casby Logistics Private Limited, the Group’s flagship, was incorporated in 1999 as successor to M. B. Eduljee Cassinath and Sons, one of the oldest and most successful stevedoring firms in Bombay port, set up in 1857 at a time when much of BPT was not even developed! So renowned were the firm’s stevedoring skills and so strong their reputation that it became known that "if Cassinath can’t do it no one can,” narrates Meherjee Cassinath, the founder’s grandson, who was named after his grandfather, in a short film made to commemorate 150 years of the company’s establishment. "It was in the early 1980s that the Cassinaths and the Byramjees (whose original surname was Bookbinder) joined hands in running Cassinath and Sons. It all happened when Boman Cassinath passed away, leaving behind his wife Jerbai and son Meherjee who was well settled in Canada and had no desire to return to India to take charge of the family business,” Mahakhurshid narrated the story to the assembled guests at the 150th year celebrations.

The arrival of containerization on the shipping scene in 1980 virtually tolled the bell for conventional stevedoring. Cassinath and Sons was adrift and in danger of sinking. Meherjee approached his good friend Khushrooh with a partnership stake, to try and improve its net worth so it could be sold at a better price. "It is ironic that my father entered the company with a different agenda, which was possibly to shut it down, but instead he turned it into an enterprise which lived even longer than he did,” Rishad, Khushrooh and Mahakhurshid’s son who is the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Group, told well wishers, clients, contractors, port officials and members of the shipping fraternity at the Taj. "With his sharp business instinct, cheerful personality and an inherent sense of honesty, Khushrooh made Cassinath and Sons once again one of the topmost stevedoring concerns in a short period of 15 years and obtained an award for being the No 1 stevedores (in Bombay port) in 1997,” stated Mahakhurshid. Among the firm’s cherished memorabilia is a gold medal from Napoleon III, Emperor of France, a silver medal from the King of Norway, a Red Cross and pin of honor from the Emperor of Austria and and, the jewel in the crown, a knighthood for Eduljee from the King of Italy in 1974, states the film detailing the firm’s history.

In the year 2000, M. B. Eduljee Cassinath became Casby Logistics Private Limited. From Bombay port, the Group took a windward rounding to extend its activities to the Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal (NSICT) and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust across the harbor and to more distant waterfronts — Mangalore, Paradip, Kakinada, Marmagao, Kandla — handling containers, break bulk, steel and bulk cargo like oil cakes, sulphur, etc. Realizing that the world of international trade was changing, Khushrooh steered the Group towards new businesses — trucking (with an indigenous truck design which would become the company’s trademark), couri­er­ing, air cargo, investment banking.

"Dad had a deep understanding of businesses. He was meticulous and had a great eye for figures,” states Rishad. "I came into the business when I was 18. For the first year I was in Centrum, learning hands-on how the business world works. I then moved to the shipping side, standing on the bustling quay alongside large ships and cranes — living out any boy’s dream!” He worked with his father for four years and was a few months into his Masters in logistics and supply chain management in Edinburgh, Scotland when Khushrooh’s sudden death necessitated his return home. "My eldest sister Jahaneen Johnsen who lives in the US stayed in Bombay for nine months after the accident to help. Much of my time was devoted to work and that took my mind off things,” he says. Second sister Kainaz Irani also lives in the States.

Capt Jimmy Sarbh, the former CEO of P&O Ports, involved the Byramjees in the company’s projects. "Our very first job after Dad was at Mundra in Gujarat at the new container terminal started by P&O Ports (now called Dubai Port World),” says Ri­shad. For Mundra port, Casby Logistics has been given complete vessel-side operations and intra-terminal trucking, together with CFS and labor management. "New work meant investment in heavy equipment like reach stackers, forklifts, trucks, etc which we did and reaped its rewards. But our greatest strengths were our employees and staff,” states Mahakhurshid.

Centrum, a merchant banking company co-promoted by Khushrooh and Chandir Gidwani in 1996 (as Centrum Finance) "with five people, a small capital and little more than a tube light and fan” now has 70 branches and 750 people with offices in the Middle East and representative offices in London and New York, asserts Rishad. Centrum Capital Limited, Centrum Direct Limited and Centrum Broking Private Limited provide portfolio management, investment banking, foreign exchange services, stock broking, etc. It was Khushrooh’s vision and financial background which helped start Centrum at a time when the financial services markets in India and globally were in turmoil in the mid 90s, notes Gidwani, vice chairman of Centrum.

Casby Logistics now looks to convert itself into a world class third party logistics service provider, by consolidating all its services by road, sea and air and providing total logistics and supply chain management under one roof. "We are looking at warehousing,” says Mahakhurshid who also runs a construction business under the name of Jakari (a combination of the first two letters of her children’s names) Developers Private Limited which has built a complex of 40 villas and is into a second phase of 20 luxurious bungalows at Lonavla near Bombay.

With India now a country of choice, logistics and the import/export cycle will stay steady on the scales in future, says Rishad.

The consolidator

"Khushrooh was my friend and associate for several years… The wealth of knowledge and guidance that I acquired from him I couldn’t possibly have from any other source. He indeed was my guru,” writes Gidwani in his preface to the biography of the late entrepreneur published as a tribute by Centrum Capital. "I told him (Gidwani) I would not be able to contribute to the making of the book as it was (in early 2003) too soon for me to talk about his life. So he took on the project himself,” avers Mahakhurshid.

The book, launched at the Taj function, is a pictorial and anecdotal journey through Khushrooh’s life and times, seen through the eyes of his vast circle of friends and business associates, old photographs and prints apt reminders of a family known for its expertise in bookbinding, gold embossing and gilt edging which earned its members popularity among the royalty of England and the princes of (colonial) India!

Khushrooh’s great-grandfather Byramjee Bookbinder set foot in The Times of India (TOI) Press in 1880 at the age of 19, after his own father had spent 25 years running the binding department in a building off Churchgate Street under the name of Kaikobad Byramjee and Son. In 1901, the Press moved its operations to its current location at Victoria Terminus (VT) with Byramjee as the superintendent. Soon he was promoted to head the sales of a new publication, The Evening News of India, and later, The Illustrated Weekly as well. The British directors observed, the book records, that "the family of Bookbinders were no clock watchers and their expertise and keenness to work would indeed astonish the advocates of a 40-hour week!”

"We distribute around 400,000 copies of the TOI every day via 700 vendors and 2,000 sub-vendors in an approximately 40 km radius, from VT (where TOI is headquartered) to Chembur, Ambernath and distant Bhiwandi,” says Rishad who notes with pride that he is the seventh generation to be associated with the TOI.

Ram Tarneja, former managing director of the TOI reminisces in the book that Khushrooh and his father Pheroz complemented each other in the business, though they were very different: "While Pheroz spoke eloquent Urdu, Khushrooh struggled with his broken Parsi-Hindi, but they made a great team.”

A chartered accountant from London, Khushrooh was on the board of several leading companies – The Great Eastern Shipping Company, NSICT (where they were also the local partner of P&O Ports), Chennai Container Terminal, Jollyboard Limited, Praj Industries Limited and The Zoroastrian Co-operative Bank Limited. He was also the honorary treasurer of the Bombay Stevedores’ Association, a member of the board of trustees of the BPT and was known to have an excellent rapport with dock trade union leaders.

In 1986, Khushrooh and Maha­khurshid had set up the Byramjee Foundation, a private discretionary charitable trust, with a percentage of profits from the business being put in each year. "My mother and I are trustees. We feel people need help the most with medical costs which can really wipe a family out,” opines Rishad. Khushrooh himself had been generous with his time, money and professional prowess for deserving causes — be it the B. D. Petit Parsee General Hospital, the Fort Gratuitous Dispensary, Sir J. J. Charity Fund, Rotary Club, the NGO (non-governmental organization) Childline or the DDD-AG (Disposal of the Dead with Dignity—Action Group).

Infighting within the community troubles the son. "If a population of around 40,000 in Bombay cannot keep peace, then what is the hope? How many associations do we have — one lakh people and one lakh associations!” quips Rishad. Adds his mother: "As a community we have lost our sense of judgment. We have become so emotional we don’t think ahead. We are sold on old ideas, old thoughts. It takes months for issues to be brought to the table and bickering follows!”

With the Casby Group far from sold on old ideas, the Byramjees are ready, willing and able to go the long haul, to test new waters in an incessantly moving world.