He lights up your life

The year was 1958. Qimat Rai Gupta, a young school teacher from Malerkotla in Punjab, had reached Delhi to pursue his dream of starting his own business. He invested his entire savings of Rs 10,000—a substantial amount then—to launch a small trading business in cables and wires at the Bhagirath Place wholesale electrical goods market.

Over the next decade, the school teacher’s business acumen and perseverance yielded rich dividends and he took the next step: backward, into manufacturing. But he needed a brand. What better than Havells, with its vaguely foreign twang? Acquiring Havells for the princely sum of Rs 10 lakh in 1971, he moved up from being a trader in electrical equipment to a manufacturer of switchgear.

HAVELLS INDIA

BUSINESS: Switchgear, electrical fittings and lighting

TURNOVER: Rs 5,400 crore

TURNING POINT: In 1998, when intense competition from MNCs made it invest heavily in manufacturing.

LESS-KNOWN FACT: Brand spending is more than that of top five brands in sector put together.

LEADERSHIP POSITION: Among the top three in every product category.

“We had to make world-class products and scale up distribution” - Anil Gupta, Founder’s son and Joint MD, Havells India

Indeed, that laid the foundation for the success story that is Havells India today. Reminisces Gupta’s son Anil, who is now the Joint Managing Director of Havells India: “What sets my father apart is his calculated risk taking abilities. He is never satisfied and is always looking to do something new. That is why he moved on to manufacturing, even though the trading business had taken root.”

Over the next couple of decades, Qimat Rai Gupta aggressively expanded his manufacturing base in Delhi. In the ’70s and ’80s, Havells started making changeover switches, HBC fuses, and miniature circuit breakers (in a JV with Geyer, Germany). By 1990, revenues had hit Rs 30 crore.

But the turning point for Havells came in 1992, when Anil joined the family business armed with an economics degree from Delhi’s Shri Ram College and an MBA from Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Anil had global ambitions for the group: “I felt that the group had to adopt a two-pronged strategy. One, our products should be world class in terms of quality and technology. Two, we should rapidly scale up our distribution network, both in India and abroad, to gain market share.”

To achieve this, he gradually shut down the old manufacturing plants. All the ten plants that Havells today has are new and have the latest technologies. At the same time, he expanded the product portfolio. Today, Havells makes industrial cables and wires, switches (Crabtree), fans, compact fluorescent lamps and lighting fixtures. It’s among the top three in most of its products and is increasing market share with some aggressive brand building.

Now, Anil and his core team are planning to take the Havells brand global. The acquisition of Sylvania, the world’s fourth-largest lighting and fixture brand, has given it a distribution network spanning 50 countries, mainly in Latin America and Europe, and a diverse product portfolio.

Today, the school teacher lords over a Rs 5,400-crore business employing over 7,000 people. Its strong brands, large distribution network and diverse product portfolio will be its key strengths driving its growth internationally.