Sanjay Ghodawat

[एकनाथ पोतदार]

Style And Substance: Sure, his chopper and 102 cars make a style statement. But Sanjay Ghodawat is also substance, running a Rs 1,000 crore conglomerate from Kolhapur.

Big Business Small Towns

They have built industrial empires in an unlikely place: small-town India.The stories of these self-made entrepreneurs are unique. So are the challenges they face.

TV Mahalingam ,  Sriram Srinivasan ,  Ajita Shashidhar ,  Sudipto Dey

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Sanjay Ghodawat visits his gutka factory everyday. It’s a daily return to roots for the magnate, who is based in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. Located in the neighbouring state of Karnataka at a small hamlet called Manakpur, the factory is an hour’s drive by road. But Ghodawat will get there in 5 minutes, flat. He jumps aboard his chopper, a Eurocopter EC120B, and covers the distance before one can chew a pack of Ghodawat’s popular Star Gutka. Even if the 45-year-old founder of the Ghodawat Group chose to take the road, his journey

would not be any less elegant. Ghodawat, though, would face an unlikely dilemma. Which car to choose? A Ferrari? A vintage Plymouth? A Bentley? Or, his favourite, the Rolls-Royce Phantom? Ghodawat, to be accurate, has 102 choices. That’s right, he has 102 cars to choose from. And, the collection is growing. “I want to get a Bugatti Veyron next. It’s among the fastest in the world,” says Ghodawat, carefully twirling his Dior shades.

It’s been a long journey for Ghodawat since 1988, when he trundled along in a beat-up tempo, hard-selling a pan masala called Quality, shop-to-shop across Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa. “I clocked over five lakh kilometres on that tempo,” recalls Maharashtra’s own Vijay Mallya, who bench-presses 60 pounds everyday. By 1992, thanks to his interstate sojourns and ear to the ground, a new and improved gutka called Star was born.

Star would alter Ghodawat’s fortunes. Today, the Group has a turnover of about Rs 1,000 crore. Gutka makes up only one-fifth of its revenues, with the rest coming from a big basket of products, across a variety of markets. The group sells salt and mosquito coils in India; it exports oxalic acid to Netherlands and Greece, and exotic flowers like Gerbera and Bird of Paradise to Europe and Japan. And much more.