‘Education and healthcare are future areas of growth’

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Saikat Neogi: Dec 12 2009, 21:04 IST

Tags: Qimat Rai Gupta | Havells Products

Even at the age of 72, Qimat Rai Gupta strives to seek new challenges. After building Havells into a formidable company and acquiring and turning around Sylvania, the veteran businessman has now set his sight on healthcare and education business. In an interview to FE’s Saikat Neogi, he elucidates how he turned the fortune of the company from scratch to a Rs 5,500-crore entity, lessons learnt from the slowdown and the road ahead. Excerpts:

You started as a trader. How did you build a brand like Havells?

I was marketing Havells products in India and during the process bought the goodwill of the company. At that point of time I realised that if we buy the company, we will be able to make it a big brand in the domestic market. So, I bought Havells in 1971.

What was the road map you had in mind to turn around the company?

At that point of time I just had a mental roadmap. But with the passage of time, things started developing. When we took over Havells, it was not a respected brand and there was no acceptability of the product amongst customers, government agencies and other bodies.

But for us, it was an opportunity to build our future business. I put up a factory in 1975 and subsequently added a few more. The main focus was on marketing and it took us almost 15 years to build the brand.

There were a plenty of roadblocks in arranging funds and in starting the manufacturing facilities. At that

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