Goodbye Skipper!

'He asserted in his usual jovial style that he was not an MBA like his audience at IIM-Ahmedabad but perhaps had an even better business degree: MBB'.
'He went on to explain to his perplexed, blue chip B-School audience that MBB stood for "Marwadi by birth"!'

Shivanand Kanavi salutes Shashi Ruia, co-founder of the Essar group who passed into the ages on November 25, 2024 in Mumbai.

I met Shashi Ruia for the first time 25 years ago when I was working on a report on the Essar Group for Business India magazine.

Before meeting him, I did my homework -- going through company balance sheets, meeting various financial and industry analysts, bankers and Essar's senior executives as well as business rivals.

Prior to this assignment, I knew very little about the group. I had visited the DRI based steel plant in Hazira and written a piece on their excellence and innovation in a new section in Business India called 'Manufacturing' created to highlight good manufacturing stories.

My background was in physics and hence I had largely been doing stories on high tech and related businesses and not delved into steel, oil and gas, petroleum refining, telecom, infrastructure or shipping.

Essar was a complex conglomerate, which had investments in all these sectors and more.

When I met him, the anxiety must have shown on my face because the main thing he did at our first meeting was put me at ease, enquire about my family and, of course, regale me with stories from his days at the Madras docks in a refreshingly informal fashion.

I had a tight schedule and I had soaked in as much as I could from all sources; from within the company and outside; from admirers as well as critics.

As the story progressed, I met the Ruias: Shashi Ruia, Ravi Ruia, Prashant Ruia and Anshuman Ruia formally.

They faced more than 42 tough questions that I had gathered by talking to critics and analysts, openly and confidently.

They opened the books of even privately held businesses to counter some of the allegations against them.

In fact, they even asked me to collect more "negative perceptions" in the market if any and come back to them for clarifications.

There was absolutely no attempt to hide or obfuscate anything that I asked for.

What I learned through this process of due diligence made me focus on the future of the group rather than the short-term troubles they had at that time.

At the end of the exercise, I felt I had done a good job and so did my boss, Ashok Advani, an Oxford educated lawyer, and a media pioneer, who is no mean business analyst himself.

Shashi Ruia (referred to as SNR by most friends) was a journalist's delight and any corporate communication person's nightmare!

Once you gained his confidence the insights you gained about how Indian big business works, no doubt generously sprinkled with strictly "off the record" candid anecdotes, were delightful grist to the mill of a business journalist like me.

SNR's quick financial analysis, done on the back of the envelope, without any recourse to elaborate spread sheets, were remarkably accurate in summarising facts and coming up with projections.

In an apocryphal story, he asserted in his usual jovial style that he was not an MBA like his audience at IIM-Ahmedabad but perhaps had an even better business degree: MBB.

He went on to explain to his perplexed, blue chip B-School audience that MBB stood for "Marwadi by birth"!

The late '90s were perhaps the most difficult times the group has faced so far.

But I was impressed by SNR's calm, by his optimism and child-like enthusiasm for new ventures.

I came to know that his great pleasure in childhood was to accompany his father to the family's Shekhawati Gaddhi in Zaveri Bazaar, south Mumbai, to see his elders do business.

His curiosity; readiness to start at the bottom of the ladder and learn the ropes of banking, commodity trading, even international trade and coastal shipping at the ripe old age of 10 showed him as a child prodigy of sorts.

It also explained his child-like enthusiasm in new ventures in later years.

Around the same time he also learnt the ropes of the chemical and pharma business at the family owned factory in Vile Parle, north west Mumbai.

But he was versatile enough to assemble perhaps India's first batch of air conditioners from a German engineer employed by his family.

I remember that there were many who advised him to sell out his telecom business in the dire straits of 1997-1998 but he held on doggedly.

When Vodafone valued Essar's portion in Hutch-Essar at over $5 billion a few years later prior to acquiring it, he stood vindicated.

He was a man who paid attention to detail and loved to be at project sites.

As every employee in Essar pretty soon found out the best place to meet the Chairman was not in the swanky group HQ at Mahalaxmi, south central Mumbai, but on the dusty sites; be they highway and pipeline projects or steel mills and factory townships.

He visited them regularly and enjoyed engaging all his staff in his walkabout style of management.

At the Hazira steel plant where he used to often spend his Sundays, I am told the staffers called their Sunday "Shashiwar"!

Back in the late 1950s, the family had migrated to Madras from Bombay to attempt a fresh start in business.

Suddenly his father passed away and SNR gave up an engineering education and started his first independent business venture.

He started with an engineering fabrication unit. He was very proud when he got India's perhaps first car AC unit and fitted it in a car in Madras.

When the Madras Port Trust started giving out tenders for dredging and for constructing breakwaters, SNR quickly saw a business opportunity and ventured into construction, dredging etc.

It then suddenly led to a foray into shipping when an opportunity presented itself in far away Goa.

He was a great people person. His easy going conversations with his staff, remembering every detail of their families, their travails and triumphs, made him a much loved patriarch.

In fact it is not uncommon to see many employees being long serving staffers and in several cases the second generation of his early associates.

His exchange of pleasantries with one and all, be they drivers, personal assistants, executives or top notch secretaries to the Government of India; often breaking into fluent dockyard Tamil if they were from Tamil Nadu, disarmed everyone.

My Business India cover story 25 years ago ended with a reference to the Skipper of the Ship Essar -- Shashi Ruia: 'He could retire, handing the business over to the younger ones, and take to golf at the Willingdon Club next door and improve his present handicap.

'But he will have none of it -- his eyes are set on the choppy Arabian Sea and, like a true skipper, he assures you that the rough seas will pass.'

Goodbye Skipper!

Shivanand Kanavi, a frequent contributor to Rediff.com, is a theoretical physicist, business journalist and former VP at TCS.
He has authored the award winning book Sand to Silicon: The Amazing Story Of Digital Rechnology (Tata McGraw Hill, 2004, Rupa Books 2007) and edited Research by Design: Innovation and TCS (Rupa Books 2007).

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com