by Sonu Bhasin
One distinctive characteristic of Kuldip is that he has to get the better of adversity. The move to Delhi was a mild adversity. The unhelpfulness of the extended family added to it.
‘We were still the poorest of the extended family. All other uncles and their families were managing established businesses. So, I guess no one took us seriously,’ said Kuldip.
When Kuldip came to Delhi all he had in mind was to expand the market for the products being manufactured at Amritsar at the UK Paints factory. He had to start from scratch as he did not even have an office in Delhi. ‘No one expected the business to take off the way it did,’ said Kuldip.
But against all odds and expectations it did!
1970–78
‘Meeta has always been by Kuldip’s side in whatever he has done. His success would not have been possible without her’—Ajit Singh Syali, ex-head of RAW and a family friend.
Twenty
‘I Was Running a Small-Scale Factory Unit in Golf Links’
‘I was running a small-scale factory from one of the most premium addresses in Delhi—Golf Links,’ said Kuldip as he looked back to 1970.
Trucks with sacks of dry distemper paint material would come at night to the Dhingra house in Golf Links. They would bring the material from the Amritsar factory for Kuldip. ‘I am surprised that no one complained,’ exclaimed Kuldip. ‘Maybe all of our neighbours took pity on me. They must have thought bechara kaam kar raha hai, karne do [poor boy is working, let him work],’ he added.
The Romanian embassy had vacated the first floor of the Golf Links house. Kuldip and his mother came back to the capital from Amritsar and moved back into their house. The age of SOHO—small office/home office—was still a long way off, but Kuldip started his work from home. ‘I had a car—a Standard Herald—that I had bought third-hand and I had the terrace of my house. Bas aur ki chaidiya si? Kaam shuru kar ditta [What else did I need? I started the work],’ he said.
Kuldip’s uncles had shops in old Delhi which were called B. Uttam Singh and B. Kesar Singh. The trade knew the Dhingras of Uttam Singh Kesar Singh. Kuldip took advantage of this and started introducing himself as the Dhingra from Amritsar. ‘I told the traders that I was representing Uttam Singh Kesar Singh of Amritsar,’ said Kuldip. The orders had started coming to Kuldip even when he was in Amritsar and it was one of the reasons he decided to move to Delhi instead of merely moving out of the house in Amritsar.
The Amritsar factory by now was also manufacturing dry distemper. Dry distemper is a water-based wall paint and consists of a mixture including chalk lime and glue to which water has to be added before use. The white stiff paint, however, continued to be the mainstay. The Dhingras were using the Rajdoot brand and they sold their products through the traders and contractors. Kuldip’s uncles were also in the same business and were among the largest distributors of the premium paint brands—Jenson and Nicholson and Shalimar.
‘They must have had good relationships with the trade and the contractors. Did you ask them for help?’ I asked Kuldip.
‘Our stuff was not high-end like those brands. It was the cheaper variety. My uncles did not want to be associated with the cheaper stuff as they felt that their reputation would get affected,’ explained Kuldip without any rancour.
‘However, my eldest uncle who was the wealthiest among the family was very fond of all of us. He helped me,’ said Kuldip.
For at least a few months Kuldip worked alone. His was a one-man business. From ordering stock out of Amritsar to delivering to the trade in Delhi, he did everything. ‘Dry distemper was getting popular in early 1970s and the Amritsar factory was producing it. They would send it to me in boris [sacks],’ said Kuldip.
One of the most popular brands of dry distemper was Moresca by Blundell Eomite. Eomite was the original paint company—Elephant Oil Mills—which was later bought by Blundell. Paint, till then, was sold in the retail market in tin cans or small sacks. Blundell Eomite brought in the plastic boxes for the first time in India. ‘They sold to the retail in plastic boxes of 1.5 kg packing. People were happy with these boxes as they could wash the boxes and recycle them for various uses in their homes,’ explained Kuldip. Plastic boxes gave Blundell Eomite a premium look.
Kuldip, the shrewd marketer, ordered plastic boxes for Rajdoot Paints. He ordered them locally from Delhi and the empty boxes were delivered to the Golf Links house. Thus, he had the boxes from Delhi and the paint material from Amritsar. The trucks would reach Golf Links after dark and unload the sacks at his house.
Kuldip needed some workers to pack the material that came from Amritsar into the plastic boxes that could then be delivered to the trade. But the problem was finding the workers to pack the boxes. Golf Links was an upmarket residential area and workers trooping in would have caused a problem. Further, he was out in the market the entire day. Who would supervise the workers even if he found them?
Kuldip, as always, found a way. At ten every night, the area around the Dhingra home would see a flurry of activity. Various servants and drivers, who worked in other houses of Golf Links, would make their way to the Dhingra house. They would troop in one by one, as and when their sahibs and memsahibs retired for the night. Kuldip would leave the front gate open and the servants and drivers would go straight up to the terrace. Kuldip would be waiting there, surrounded by the sacks that had come from Amritsar. There would also be weighing scales, packing boxes, sealing machine, stencils, black paint and other packaging material.
Each worker would be given a task. One had to weigh out the exact quantity of paint and put it in the box. Another had to close the box and hand it over to the next worker, who would use the sealing machine to seal the box. The packed and sealed box would be stencilled with the brand, Rajdoot Paints. The last part of this assembly line was to stack the filled boxes according to their size.
The workers would work for four to five hours after which they would go off to their respective homes. They would get only a few hours of sleep before they went to their jobs the next day.
‘The servants all seemed to be happy as I would give them cash for their work. This was their part-time job! Word spread among the servants and I was never short of workers,’ said Kuldip. The workers displayed in full force the power of word-of-mouth advertising.
Once the boxes were ready they would be stored in the makeshift store room, the garage of the house. Each morning Kuldip would take his car, which would be parked outside the house, and start making deliveries to various traders in the morning. The system worked efficiently. The factory in Amritsar produced, packed material in sacks, and sent it off to Delhi, where it was packed in smaller boxes and stored in the garage. The small-scale industrial unit set up at the Dhingra house in Golf Links was running to full capacity.
Kuldip soon ran short of space in the garage. He needed the backyard of the house as well. He requested the Romanian embassy to move floors. Kuldip needed the ground floor of the house so that he could use the backyard as the working area as well as the storage area. The Romanian embassy obliged and the small-scale unit moved to the ground floor.
Kuldip now hired his first employee in Delhi. He met Narendra Malik and asked him to join immediately. ‘I really needed a helping hand as the work had started to get very hectic,’ said Kuldip. Narendra joined work at Golf Links as it was the only workplace of Rajdoot Paints. Narendra, a young man himself, shared the responsibility of going to the trade and contractors to sell Rajdoot Paints.
‘I remember that we used to go from shop to shop telling the traders about our paints. We did all work together. We even ate our lunches together. He was a beginner like me in those days. But see where he is today,’ said Narendra. He worked with Kuldip for many years before leaving and joining competition.
‘How did you get the traders and contractors to buy Rajdoot?’ I asked Narendra. We were in the Berger Paints’s Zamrudpur office, a surprisingly low-key building for India’s second-largest paint company. A couple of private security gu
ards sat outside, mostly shooting the breeze, and a small board bore the Berger Paints logo.
Kuldip Singh Dhingra controlled his business from this office. Narendra left Kuldip Singh before this office was set up. My meeting with Narendra had to be rescheduled by half an hour as Kuldip Dhingra had waylaid Narendra as he was on his way to meet me in one of the meeting rooms. Spending time with Kuldip brought back old memories for Narendra.
‘We went and spoke about Rajdoot Paints to the trade, and we built the brand largely by word-of-mouth. All the traders had customers who did not want the absolute premium stuff. We would pitch Rajdoot Paints for these people,’ said Narendra in his measured voice.
The traders did not know of Rajdoot in the beginning, but they started to recognize the two young men who would regularly visit them. Kuldip continued to use his Standard Herald car to make deliveries to the traders.
Kuldip soon realized that the painters were the main influencers in the paint-buying decision. While dry distemper and oil-based paints were slowly gaining a wider acceptance, safeda continued to be top horse for painters.
Kuldip and Narendra started targeting the painter community to talk about Rajdoot Paints. The painters were, and continue to be, part of the unorganized market. It is common to see clusters of them sitting by the roadside with paint brushes in neat stacks. Contractors and others who want to use their services simply walked down the road and hired them. Kuldip and Narendra too would visit the morning painter-mandis and invite the painters to come to their ‘painters meet’ after working hours. Chai, samosa and other snacks were used as baits.
‘We would hire a local community centre and have all the painters come there,’ said Narendra. Once the painters were in the room, Kuldip would launch into a sales spiel and tell them all about the history of the Dhingras and the advantages of Rajdoot Paints. The painters would be taken through the product range of Rajdoot Paints. Over time Kuldip also launched some small ‘schemes’ for the trade.
‘We would tell them that if you sell so much you can go to Mussoorie or if you sell more you can go to Goa,’ remembered Narendra. To overcome the resistance from the trade, Kuldip would give a ‘buy-back guarantee’ to all the traders. ‘We had confidence in our product so we would tell the trade that if there was the slightest problem from the contractors or the painters we will buy back the entire stock from them,’ said Narendra. Over a period of time the trade started promoting Rajdoot products.
Twenty-one
‘We Got Married and the War Broke Out!’
Kuldip, now twenty-three years old, was a bachelor much in demand. Although he now lived in Delhi, he would visit Amritsar often to meet family and discuss business.
Every time he came back to Amritsar the shaadi (marriage) conversation would be broached. ‘But Mummy would always say, “He has so many girlfriends. How will he get married?”’ laughed Amrit Kaur, Kuldip’s bhabhi.
Kuldip, like his brother, did not believe in ‘seeing’ a girl for marriage. ‘How can I say no to a girl after meeting her? Bahut bura lagega usko [she will feel very bad],’ said Kuldip.
Meeta Jolly was a contemporary of Kuldip’s sister Ashi. ‘Meeta and I knew each other a bit and went to college together for a year,’ said Ashi. A relative in the extended family of the Dhingras knew Meeta and her family well.
When Meeta’s father started looking for a boy he asked her what kind of a boy she wanted. Meeta told him that she wanted a boy like Kuldip. She had seen Kuldip when he used to sit at Hall Bazaar. She did not say that she wanted Kuldip but a boy like Kuldip. But her father understood.
The relative of the extended Dhingra family was approached to take the rishta to the Dhingras. ‘I had seen Meeta and had liked her very much. She was a very creative person,’ said Amrit, adding, ‘and she still is!’
‘It was to be a December wedding in Amritsar and we literally had fireworks in the sky on the day of the wedding,’ Meeta said. The war with Pakistan broke out on 3 December. Meeta and Kuldip got married on 2 December. A big reception had been planned on the night of 3 December. ‘We went ahead with the reception but there were fighter planes roaring across the skies,’ remembered Meeta.
The marriage got off to a thunderous start for the young couple. ‘I was only twenty years old and did not know anything about contraception,’ said Meeta. She told Kuldip that she did not want kids very early.
‘Absolutely right,’ Kuldip said, shaking his head vigorously.
Meeta asked him shyly how to handle contraception.
‘Don’t worry, I will take care of everything,’ Kuldip said. ‘See I am having this pill—this is a contraceptive,’ he said.
‘Really? I have never heard of a male pill,’ said Meeta.
‘Tch . . . ! You are very young. What do you know? I know nah,’ said Kuldip. He took out a tablet, poured himself a glass of water and gulped the pill down. The pill down his gullet, he looked at Meeta and said briskly, ‘I have taken care of everything. Don’t worry.’
‘I was a fool. I had no idea at all about anything,’ laughed Meeta. The pill, of course, did not work! ‘Rishma made her appearance exactly nine months later!’ said Meeta as she spoke about her firstborn. ‘And when I would get angry at him because I used to be sick in my pregnancy, he would just smile, pat me on the back and say, “Sab kehende ne ki husband-wife wich pyar badhda hai bachche se [People say that the love between a husband and wife grows with childen],”’ said Meeta with fond exasperation.
The couple came back to Delhi in the middle of the war. The Golf Links house was their first home. The paint business was settling down but cash was always short. The factory continued to gobble up all the cash for machinery and raw materials.
‘I remember that I had to adjust to the new life as I was used to more luxuries in my parents’ home,’ said Meeta. She came from a well-to-do business household but did not allow the new circumstances to faze her. ‘I wanted him to be absolutely free to focus on the business, which I could see was starting to do well,’ said Meeta.
The business was indeed doing well. Kuldip’s hard work and enthusiasm paid rich dividends and the business in Delhi boomed. ‘I made sales of Rs 10 lakh in the first year itself and that too for only the Delhi territory,’ said Kuldip with deep pride. He was also proud of the fact that these sales were with payment terms that ensured fast payment and were highly profitable. The two shops in Amritsar, after many years of operation, had an annual turnover of just over Rs 6 lakh, and this included the factory production as well.
Twenty-two
‘We Were Angry. How Dare They Demand Our Heritage?’
While the Rajdoot business was growing, the working partners’ children in Amritsar were also becoming older. The second generation of the working partners had their own ideas about the business and there were rumblings of discontent.
‘Working with them had become cumbersome, but my brother did not want to take any action as he was still unsure about my ability to handle the business,’ said Kuldip.
Sohan Singh had waited before precipitating matters with the working partners. He had started to get uncomfortable with the working partners taking their share of profit out of the business.
‘Oh, they had the absolute right to take their share, but we saw them as true partners,’ explained Kuldip. ‘The business needed all the cash that it could get. The profits from the business were the only source of funding for capital spending as well as working capital. There was machinery to be bought for the factory and the output depended entirely on the amount of raw materials available,’ he said.
In those days, smaller businesses did not have access to loans from banks. Rajdoot Paints was an SME (small and medium-sized enterprise). In fact it would have been termed as an MSME (micro SME). The margins were good on the material being sold but working capital was a constraint.
Working capital was required to keep the factory going. It was also needed to buy stock from branded paint companies. Selling paints of other brands was
a big part of the revenue stream for the Dhingras. ‘We were distributing Jenson and Nicholson paints and Snowcem paints from our shops in Amritsar. We were fairly big distributors and would have many senior people from these companies visiting us,’ remembered Kuldip. The sales teams and their leaders met their large distributors and the Dhingras in Amritsar were among the must-visits for all management.
‘Arun Nehru used to visit us as he was in sales back then, in Jenson & Nicholson,’ said Kuldip. ‘He would come home and have dinner with us. It was like family relations with him,’ he added fondly.
The stock the Dhingras bought from these large brands needed to be paid for, even if it took longer to sell. Thus, working capital was required not only to grow the business but to keep it running.
The working partners wanted to build their own houses. They wanted to use their share of the profit from the business to buy the plots and then build on it. ‘We were living in a rented house but they had built houses for themselves,’ seethed Kuldip. The partners had a 15 per cent share each in all Sohan and Kuldip Singh’s businesses, making them collectively 30 per cent shareholders of the business. The Dhingra brothers tried to cajole the working partners to leave part of their profit in the business so that it could be used as working capital but their plea went unheeded.
‘Then we learnt that they had bought a plot to build a paints factory,’ said Kuldip quietly. This was like a betrayal for Sohan Singh and Kuldip. Setting up their own factory with the money from the Rajdoot Paints business meant that they were going to build competition for the very business they were partners of.
‘The partners admitted to building a paints factory when my brother confronted them. They said, “Our children are growing older and they need their own business,”’ said Kuldip.
The Delhi business was doing very well by 1972. With Meeta taking care of the house and his life, Kuldip was focused on building a wider range of customers. The business and its growth trajectory gave Sohan Singh the necessary confidence to split from the working partners.