Enterprising engineer

It was sometime in the mid-1970s that two young men, Ronnie (Rohintan) Sabawalla and his partner Rashmi Shah walked into my office. I was works director in a small boiler manufacturing company called Wanson (which subsequently became Ther­max).

"Sir, we have finished college but we do not want to do any job or service — we would like to start our own business. Give us the chance to make any engineering item like tooling, etc.”

Ronnie Sabawalla;

They were eager and sincere. We gave them a small order of a tube-bending bench for about Rs 12,000. They supplied the item quite fast and it worked perfectly. So, when in the next three or four years’ time we needed a 50 mm thick plate-bending machine, we started a dialog with their company, Himalaya Machinery.

By this time they had made a plate-bending machine of maximum 12 mm thickness. Sabawalla was very eager to take this order and we shamelessly squeezed him on the price, saying that it was a new development item for him and as we were prepared to take the risk of being his guinea pig he had to give it at a very special price. We settled for about Rs 22,00,000, which would be about 60 percent of what we would have had to pay otherwise. Needless to say, the machine was delivered in time and worked perfectly.

left: solar concentrators; engineering product created by him

Based on this success they became established suppliers of plate-bending machines and executed new orders. Again, after another three or four years we were taking up manufacture of water tube boilers with drums made of about 100 mm thickness plate. We were looking at importing a machine costing nearly 80 to 90 lakh rupees, when again Saba­walla and Shah requested us to give them a chance. They visited a machine tool fair in Europe and opted for a French manufacturer. Here too, being the first customers for this, we wanted a special price — if I recall right, it was settled at around Rs 40 lakh and we paid about 25 percent advance. I was a bit apprehensive and offered to pay for the drawings and know-how to the French company but Sabawalla was very confident. They delivered the machine, and barring a few teething troubles, it worked absolutely fine and I am sure is still working well!

After I retired, there was a break in contact but around 1997 Sabawalla and Shah invited me to advise them on the running of their business. During these trips I noticed that they had built a bungalow with two wings, one for each family, with a common open ground at the back. Both the families lived as one with their children running in and out of each others’ homes. Sabawalla and Shah were like two peas in a pod. They travelled together by car all over India, without a driver, to attend to their clients.

Sabawalla had very innovative ideas — he had developed windmills to generate power, a small car, and even a small power-pack driven by a bicycle mechanism meant for students of nearby villages where there was no electricity. Students could get electric light from a lamp for two to three hours by charging the set generated from a bicycle frame for two hours!

Baroda resident Sabawalla developed and supplied solar concentrators for around 32 dakhmas in Bombay, Surat, Navsari, Hyderabad, Poona, Jamshedpur and practically all over India. He had a religious bent of mind. He believed in Manav Dharma — basic humanitarian religion based on good thoughts, good words and good deeds. He had read the Gita and Quran also. He revered Swami Vivekananda. He enjoyed brotherly relations with his workmen and looked after them well. All of them reciprocated his affection.

I got in touch with him again in 2011 and was shocked to learn that he had been suffering from cancer for nearly a year.

On November 20, 2011 I received an SMS from his wife Jabiz: "Sorry to inform you that our Ronnie has left for his heavenly abode on November 10, 2011.”