Editorial Viewpoint
Myth management
Speakers routinely decry the lack of entrepreneurial spirit in the community. But their apprehensions are not based on fact. Zoroastrian entrepreneurship is flourishing, more so than ever in the past 50 years.
Ratan Tata’s Nano is just one example of what a Zoroastrian businessman can achieve. True, Tata Motors is a behemoth public owned company but it is Ratan Tata’s personal determination and vision that saw this historic landmark in the automobile industry come to fruition.
Defying conventional approaches the country’s premier manufacturer of vehicles produced a car that will set an international trend in the production of automobiles. And the possibility that small groups of engineers/entrepreneurs could be awarded contracts to assemble the car means an entirely new industry would be established.
The massive l,200 acre plot of Tata Motors on the outskirts of Poona assembles the numerous components to make the final products. Few of the parts are manufactured in-house. The components are sourced from all over the country and marginally from abroad. So others also can assemble the vehicles, albeit on a micro scale.
Aside from Tata’s feat, there are other entrepreneurs set to shine in 2008. Dr Villoo Morawala Patell, the founder of Avesthagen, a research and development company based in Bangalore, plans to come out with a public issue offer around November this year. Intending to raise Rs 800 to Rs l,200 crores, the initial public offer (IPO) could propel this gutsy 52-year-old, first generation entrepreneur to the forefront of the business world.
She has already featured in Business Today’s top 25 Indian women entrepreneurs. She may become the community’s number one business woman of all time. That a lady without strong business or political connections, belonging to a minority group, is able to achieve this distinction is nothing short of remarkable.
And two other IPOs from community members may be in the offing. According to media reports both Pallonji Mistry of Shapoorji Pallonji & Co and Dr Cyrus Poonawalla of the Serum Institute of India are contemplating taking one of their companies public. Like Tata’s one lakh rupee car, Poonawalla also manufactures vaccines at an affordable price — the cost of a cup of tea, he noted — to help stave off fatal diseases.
Farrokh Cooper of Cooper Foundries in Satara is also mulling an IPO, the timing depending on the market vagrancies, he informed Parsiana. The Godrejs also have constantly reinvented their businesses and from manufacturing locks and soaps, they now expect their largest business to be real estate development.
The Wadias of the Bombay Dyeing group are also commercially developing their vast mill lands. Byram Avari’s hotel empire continues to grow despite the turmoil and insecurity in Pakistan.
The Zoroastrian Co-operative Bank that once lent grudgingly only to Parsi/Irani Zoroastrians and that too, against full security, is now flourishing with nine branches in Bombay as well as one each in Thana and Poona.
But these are the success stories. There are still many young and old entrepreneurs struggling to build up their enterprises, searching for markets and for new products.
Thus the World Zarathushti Chamber of Commerce (WZCC) meet in Poona on January 12 and 13, 2008 permitted young businesspeople an opportunity to voice their concerns and aspirations. Money, nearly everyone contended, was not the problem. The banks and other financial institutions were willing to lend.
But how does one make a business grow? How does one develop a market, make a name for oneself as a reliable manufacturer/supplier of goods and services? Where does one find competent people without having to pay astronomical salaries? How does one curtail costs?
These are age-old concerns for anyone running a business. But the Zoroastrians have an advantage as WZCC Poona president Adi Engineer and Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) chairman Minoo Shroff stated: a good brand name. People would trust a Zoroastrian, more so than others.
But the community is not sitting on its laurels. Projects such as the Venture Capital Fund, initiated by the presently comatose Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India and run by the BPP and others have financed several new businesses including a tented camp outside a forest preserve. The WZCC has also held courses for those desirous of starting their own businesses.
But perhaps one of the most useful services the WZCC could offer, as became obvious at the Poona annual general meeting, was networking and problem solving, bridging the gap between those who have reached the pinnacle of success and those who are still finding their feet.
Entrepreneurship is a lonely path to tread. In a job one has security, shared responsibility and colleagues to interact with. In a nascent venture the only company one may have is that of bill collectors. (Oscar Wilde once said the only way to remain in the memory of the commercial classes was not to pay your bills.) What differentiates a Morawala Patell from a person who is barely able to make ends meet is a question that may remain unanswered.
But for all the research done on the community’s social and medical concerns, not a single study that we know of has focused on the mercantile character of Zoroastrian businesspeople. When speakers blithely say Zoroastrian enterprise is on the wane they do so without any historic or current data on the subject. Because none is available. Instead of voicing preconceived notions and prejudices, why not systematically research what it is that makes us tick commercially?
Ratan Tata’s Nano is just one example of what a Zoroastrian businessman can achieve. True, Tata Motors is a behemoth public owned company but it is Ratan Tata’s personal determination and vision that saw this historic landmark in the automobile industry come to fruition.
Defying conventional approaches the country’s premier manufacturer of vehicles produced a car that will set an international trend in the production of automobiles. And the possibility that small groups of engineers/entrepreneurs could be awarded contracts to assemble the car means an entirely new industry would be established.
The massive l,200 acre plot of Tata Motors on the outskirts of Poona assembles the numerous components to make the final products. Few of the parts are manufactured in-house. The components are sourced from all over the country and marginally from abroad. So others also can assemble the vehicles, albeit on a micro scale.
Aside from Tata’s feat, there are other entrepreneurs set to shine in 2008. Dr Villoo Morawala Patell, the founder of Avesthagen, a research and development company based in Bangalore, plans to come out with a public issue offer around November this year. Intending to raise Rs 800 to Rs l,200 crores, the initial public offer (IPO) could propel this gutsy 52-year-old, first generation entrepreneur to the forefront of the business world.
She has already featured in Business Today’s top 25 Indian women entrepreneurs. She may become the community’s number one business woman of all time. That a lady without strong business or political connections, belonging to a minority group, is able to achieve this distinction is nothing short of remarkable.
And two other IPOs from community members may be in the offing. According to media reports both Pallonji Mistry of Shapoorji Pallonji & Co and Dr Cyrus Poonawalla of the Serum Institute of India are contemplating taking one of their companies public. Like Tata’s one lakh rupee car, Poonawalla also manufactures vaccines at an affordable price — the cost of a cup of tea, he noted — to help stave off fatal diseases.
Farrokh Cooper of Cooper Foundries in Satara is also mulling an IPO, the timing depending on the market vagrancies, he informed Parsiana. The Godrejs also have constantly reinvented their businesses and from manufacturing locks and soaps, they now expect their largest business to be real estate development.
The Wadias of the Bombay Dyeing group are also commercially developing their vast mill lands. Byram Avari’s hotel empire continues to grow despite the turmoil and insecurity in Pakistan.
The Zoroastrian Co-operative Bank that once lent grudgingly only to Parsi/Irani Zoroastrians and that too, against full security, is now flourishing with nine branches in Bombay as well as one each in Thana and Poona.
But these are the success stories. There are still many young and old entrepreneurs struggling to build up their enterprises, searching for markets and for new products.
Thus the World Zarathushti Chamber of Commerce (WZCC) meet in Poona on January 12 and 13, 2008 permitted young businesspeople an opportunity to voice their concerns and aspirations. Money, nearly everyone contended, was not the problem. The banks and other financial institutions were willing to lend.
But how does one make a business grow? How does one develop a market, make a name for oneself as a reliable manufacturer/supplier of goods and services? Where does one find competent people without having to pay astronomical salaries? How does one curtail costs?
These are age-old concerns for anyone running a business. But the Zoroastrians have an advantage as WZCC Poona president Adi Engineer and Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) chairman Minoo Shroff stated: a good brand name. People would trust a Zoroastrian, more so than others.
But the community is not sitting on its laurels. Projects such as the Venture Capital Fund, initiated by the presently comatose Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India and run by the BPP and others have financed several new businesses including a tented camp outside a forest preserve. The WZCC has also held courses for those desirous of starting their own businesses.
But perhaps one of the most useful services the WZCC could offer, as became obvious at the Poona annual general meeting, was networking and problem solving, bridging the gap between those who have reached the pinnacle of success and those who are still finding their feet.
Entrepreneurship is a lonely path to tread. In a job one has security, shared responsibility and colleagues to interact with. In a nascent venture the only company one may have is that of bill collectors. (Oscar Wilde once said the only way to remain in the memory of the commercial classes was not to pay your bills.) What differentiates a Morawala Patell from a person who is barely able to make ends meet is a question that may remain unanswered.
But for all the research done on the community’s social and medical concerns, not a single study that we know of has focused on the mercantile character of Zoroastrian businesspeople. When speakers blithely say Zoroastrian enterprise is on the wane they do so without any historic or current data on the subject. Because none is available. Instead of voicing preconceived notions and prejudices, why not systematically research what it is that makes us tick commercially?
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From the archive