The road to success is not always an easy one, there are various ups and downs that one might have to overcome in order to achieve their goals in life. One such story is of Ardeshir Godrej who co-founded Godrej Brothers Company which is presently known as the Godrej Group. Godrej is a brand that is India’s first choice when it comes to almirahs, locks, and other household items. The company was founded long before India gained its freedom and benefited from the assistance of luminaries from India such as RN Tagore and Annie Besant. Even the queen of England used one of his creations in 1921 when visiting India due to their immense popularity.
The first of Burjorji and Dosibai Gootherajee’s six children, Ardeshir was born in 1868. The Gootherajees were a prosperous Parsi-Zoroastrian family from Mumbai and Burjorji and Sorabji, Ardeshir’s father and grandfather, were real estate brokers. His father changed the family name to Godre in January 1871. Fresh out of law school in 1894, Ardeshir was engaged by a renowned company to present a case in Zanzibar on behalf of a client.
Despite the failure of his first venture, which sold surgical instruments, Ardeshir was adamant on carrying on with Indian manufacturing. To launch a new lock-making firm, he was given a loan by Parsi industrialist and philanthropist Merwanji Cama as per Better India.
Ardeshir Godrej quit his first love, law, and began the Godrej group’s work in a shed on May 7, 1897. His locks were more cheap than those imported from England since he discovered that foreign-made locks featured an incorporated spring that regularly broke down. After that, according to Better India, his locks became more attractive to buyers and sellers, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The 125-year-old consumer goods tycoon Godrej Group, with $5.2 billion in annual revenue, is owned by the Godrej family as per Forbes. Presently, the group chairman is patriarch Adi Godrej, an MIT graduate, who took charge as group head in 2000 and has a net worth of $13.9 billion as per Forbes, 2022.