by Sonu Bhasin
Amrit Kaur was back from Pakistan within a day and she depended completely on Kuldip in Delhi. As soon as Sohan Singh was stable Kuldip asked the doctors to do a test to see if there was any other damage. Their worst fears came true. The tests showed that there was a bulging blood vessel on the other side of Sohan Singh’s brain as well. ‘It could burst any time and my brother needed a surgery urgently,’ said Kuldip. This time he spoke with doctors and other specialists to find out the best options for surgery.
‘We were told that the hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK was our best option,’ said Kuldip. He decided, along with his bhabhi, that they would take Sohan Singh there as soon as possible.
‘We decided to go, but then Kuldip did not know how much money the family collectively had from the business. Sohanji used to manage all the money himself,’ said Amrit Kaur. She, however, did know and in the presence of Kuldip she opened the safe where the cash was kept. ‘There was just enough money for the surgery and the flight tickets. I wanted my brother and bhabhi to travel comfortably. So, I booked seats in the first class for them. I travelled by economy,’ said Kuldip.
The three of them went to UK. ‘I remember that I got up during the flight to stretch my legs,’ said Amrit Kaur. She took a walk down the aisle. She walked to the back of the first class and peeped in the economy section. ‘I saw Kuldip sitting in the first row. He was fast asleep but you know what? He had the whole bag of the medical files clutched in his arms. He was holding them close to his heart even when sleeping. That’s how much he loved his brother,’ said Amrit Kaur.
I told Kuldip of this conversation. He was visibly surprised. ‘She saw me? She saw me sleeping? Bhabhi saw me in economy. I did not know that,’ he said again and again, emotionally. His eyes swelled up and he had to clear his throat a couple of times before he could regain his composure.
Sohan Singh underwent his second surgery and came back home. ‘But he was never the same man again. He was absolutely all right in every other aspect. But his drive for business and the keenness for work went away,’ said Kuldip morosely.
‘I remember Mr SS coming to the factory but he would just walk around and then go away,’ said Neelam. Her life had changed too. She was now working with Kuldip at the Zamrudpur office. ‘I was scared initially since KS is very different from SS. We had all seen him lose his temper very often. But once I started working with him I realized that he is a very good man. He gets angry no doubt but it’s OK,’ she continued with a fond laugh. Kuldip had taken charge of the entire business after trying very hard to get his elder brother involved.
The main operations of UK Paints had moved to Zamrudpur. The building had initially started as the office and showroom for Meeta’s business on the first floor. Her interior designing and furniture business had gained momentum and she also had a factory churning out her products.
However, as the paint business also grew, especially the export business which Meeta was actively assisting, she had no time to manage her own furniture business. She decided to wind down the production and cut back the staff. Her office in Zamrudpur was also handed over to UK Paints and the entire building was taken over by the paints business. ‘Today the entire building is his office. Kuldip’s own office is where my office and showroom used to be,’ said Meeta.
‘When it was clear my brother was not going to be able to run the business I was almost in a state of panic,’ said Kuldip. ‘One, I was very young and two, my brother had been like a father figure all my life. I had never imagined that I would have to run the business without him,’ he continued. Kuldip had been taking care of the sales, marketing and all business-related activities. Sohan Singh was the one who managed the factories, the production and the overall money. ‘But I also knew that panic is not going to lead me anywhere,’ said Kuldip with conviction.
Kuldip took charge of the business in his customary style. ‘When he wants to do something, he goes out and makes a success of it,’ said Surjit Singh. Kuldip also realized that as the eldest son in the business he had a responsibility towards the rest of the family. ‘We tried to get my brother into the business but clearly he was not interested,’ said Kuldip.
With his elder brother not available for any business consultations, Kuldip drew upon the expertise of his other brother. ‘Gurbachan was the youngest, and my brother and I had always tried to protect him from everything,’ said Kuldip. But now Gurbachan was the only support he had and the two brothers became a team. ‘I grew up and understood the entire responsibility in those four months,’ said Kuldip sombrely.
With Kuldip taking over the complete operations of UK Paints, Gurbachan took charge of the factories. ‘We had started building the Sikandrabad factory in UP. With my brother out of action, we wanted to sell it. I did not have the confidence to manage so many things all at once,’ Kuldip confessed. An advance had been paid for machinery and Kuldip wanted it back so that he could recover some of the money. But they could neither find the right buyers nor could they recover the advance money. The interested people, sensing a distress sale, wanted a huge discount to the asking price. ‘I remembered that we had to sell off our Delhi factory after my father died. I did not want to do the same this time when my brother was unwell,’ said Kuldip.
He sat down with Gurbachan, now the person Kuldip needed to consult for any production- and factory-related matters. Both brothers decided that they would finish building the new factory. Gurbachan gave his elder brother the confidence that he would do it.
By the second half of 1982, it was clear that Kuldip was now the patriarch of the business. Gurbachan was his able partner. Fate had dealt a cruel blow but had now started applying a balm to the wound.
The agreement signed by Kuldip with the Russian Trade Office bore fruit. UK Paints got its first direct order. It was a big order worth Rs 1 crore.
‘There was so much paperwork to do and so many forms to fill out,’ remembered Neelam who handled all the paperwork from then.
The Russian orders started flowing slowly in the first two years. ‘I was so busy getting the orders executed, managing the paperwork and also looking at the domestic business that I did not have the time to go to Russia,’ said Kuldip. Within a year of getting the direct orders he realized that the export business was much more lucrative than the domestic business. ‘But we had built the domestic business of Rajdoot Paints from scratch and we had a good name in the market by 1984. So, I needed to find someone good to manage that business,’ said Kuldip.
The Dhingras always preferred to hire professionals to run their business. UK Paints too had experimented with a couple of CEOs. But the CEOs had fallen short of Kuldip’s expectations. Kuldip especially remembered a particular professional whom he had recruited through a headhunter.
Mr Mehra ran his headhunting firm from Nehru Place in Delhi and found a CEO for UK Paints. ‘He was a Parsi gentleman, blue eyes, tall and very handsome,’ said Kuldip.
This Parsi gentleman was brought in to be the CEO of Rajdoot Paints. He had done his post-graduation in management from IIM Ahmedabad. ‘The headhunter, Mr Mehra, had made a hard sell of him. But very soon I realized that Mr Parsi, the CEO, could not manage my business,’ said Kuldip.
Then one day Kuldip met someone at a business conference who had graduated from IIM Ahmedabad the same year as his CEO. ‘Who? Mr So-and-so? No I don’t remember anyone of that name in my class,’ said the business associate when Kuldip asked him about the CEO.
‘I was very surprised. I learnt that Mr Parsi had only gone to IIM Ahmedabad for a three-month course!’ said Kuldip. ‘I was hopping mad!’ He was also angry with the headhunter. ‘Aren’t those guys supposed to do all the checking? They charged me quite a bit of money to find someone. How can they not check?’ Kuldip said.
As luck would have it Kuldip was at Durbar Hall in the Taj Palace, Delhi, for a wedding, when he ran into Mehra himself.
‘I was so mad at him that I shouted at him right there. I wanted to beat him up. I was so a
ngry,’ said Kuldip. He sounded completely serious as he told me this.
Mehra, sensing trouble, took off like a rocket. ‘He just ran from me. He ran to the parking lot. I ran after him, and my nephew ran after me. I kept shouting, “Jaata kithe hai haraami [Where do you think you are going]?’’’ said Kuldip.
I am quite certain that if the headhunter had not sprinted out of the lobby, Kuldip would have caught him by the scruff of his neck and whacked him a couple of times! ‘Bach gaya woh [he was saved],’ said Kuldip, woefully, adding, ‘That headhunter went around telling everyone, “Beware of Kuldip. He is mad!”’
I realized that I detected a note of pride in Kuldip’s voice!
* * *
Amrit Kaur, Sohan Singh’s wife, tried her best to get her husband back into the business. Her husband had controlled the entire business, and it must have been difficult for her to see him out of it.
‘Kuldip looked after all of us very well. He spent money for the weddings of my daughters and when Harman, my son, wanted to go abroad to study, Kuldip agreed immediately,’ said Amrit Kaur.
When it was evident that Sohan Singh would not go back to being part of the business, Amrit Kaur, taking charge of her husband’s life, worked on creating a completely new social circle for themselves.
‘People who knew my father before his illness could see that he was very different now. But for new people he was absolutely fine. He loved to crack jokes, tell stories and generally be the life of a party,’ said Simran.
Amrit Kaur got Sohan Singh to join the Rotary Club and they both became regulars at the meetings. ‘He became another person entirely,’ said Simran.
Two years after the first direct order from Russia, Kuldip felt it was time to visit Moscow.
Twenty-eight
‘I Came Back without a Single Order from Moscow’
Kuldip’s younger brother, Gurbachan, was slowly coming out of the shadow of Sohan Singh. The factories were his complete charge now. He was not a chemist by background, but years of working hands-on at the factories, under the guidance of his eldest brother, had taught him a lot.
‘I would look at formulations and know immediately if they could be executed,’ he said with pride. He had not studied chemistry but the subject was the love of his life. He could spend hours poring over formulations and studying chemistry. ‘While I could not study chemistry, I made sure that my son went to the best chemical engineering institute in the world to learn about the subject,’ Gurbachan said.
Gurbachan’s own learning came from other paint companies operating in India at that time. ‘We were already manufacturing for Jenson and Nicholson and Shalimar Paints in our factory by then. The Sultanpur factory had a separate area which was earmarked for this white-labelling material,’ he said. He himself had not had any formal education in engineering or plant management. All he had learnt was from Sohan Singh and then by working on the job himself. But he wanted to learn from the best.
Gurbachan told Kuldip that he wanted to spend some time in the factories of Jenson and Nicholson to start with. Kuldip worked his magic and the companies agreed to have Gurbachan spend time on their shop floor.
Gurbachan made the most of the time he was given. ‘I saw the production techniques, I saw the processes, the systems, the packaging line and the way they would store their products,’ he said. He came back and implemented his learnings into the UK Paints factory. ‘We were a small company but we worked like a big multinational in our processes and systems and way of doing work,’ said Gurbachan with great pride.
This was noticed in the market as well. ‘The Dhingras and Rajdoot Paints were the organized ones in the unorganized sector,’ said a professional from Asian Paints.
While the products of Rajdoot Paints continued to be made at the factories, it was the exciting business of exports that became the new focus for Kuldip and Gurbachan. ‘There were new formulations, new samples that had to be produced and sent. This kept us on our toes,’ Kuldip said. ‘My brother would come to me with specifications sent by the Russians and ask me, “Can we do this?” I would say, “Of course. I will find a way to get it done. Tussi orders laate raho [You just keep on getting these orders],”’ said Gurbachan.
The orders from Russia were slow but were direct and therefore the margins were better. Kuldip wanted to increase the level of business as he realized that there was an untapped potential for business there. However, this was already turning into a crowded space. ‘Everyone was after them!’ exclaimed Kuldip. The Russians would decide on the supplier and the orders would be signed in India. Kuldip wanted to find a way to cut through the crowd of the Indian suppliers.
In August 1984, India organized a trade exhibition in Moscow. Kuldip decided to take part. He told his Russian associates that they would be able to see the entire range of his products at his stall. ‘They used to buy only white synthetic enamel paint from me. But I had a large range of products. Paints for tanks, paints for homes, and paints for army trucks—I had them all. I wanted to showcase all these in Moscow,’ said Kuldip. He had brochures printed with his product range and also got publicity materials like Point of Purchase (POP) danglers. Posters and pictures were prepared that would be displayed at the UK Paints stall in Moscow.
The flight to Moscow was full of businessmen going to exhibit their wares at the exhibition. Kuldip got talking with some of the fellow travellers. His outgoing nature proved to be advantageous once again.
‘When we reached Moscow and were waiting for the checked-in baggage to start rolling in I realized that I had no idea how I was going to transport my entire material to the hotel!’ said Kuldip. The baggage belt beeped, started moving slowly and people started pulling off their baggage as it reached them. ‘I had these long panels, rolls of posters and cartons of packages,’ said Kuldip. He removed them all and stood in the middle of the arrival hall, all his packets around him in a heap, wondering what to do next.
‘In life there have been many people who have come to my help,’ said Kuldip. This was one such time again. ‘There was one Mr Nehru who was the head of export of Sandoz in India,’ remembered Kuldip. ‘He saved me,’ he added. Nehru and Kuldip had spoken to each other in the flight. Sandoz was also taking part in the exhibition and Nehru travelled with his team to Moscow. After collecting his bags and the packages he was walking towards the exit when he saw a heap of packs and rolls with Kuldip’s head poking out. Nehru stopped in his tracks.
‘My God! How are you going to take these to the hotel?’ he asked Kuldip.
‘I don’t know,’ said Kuldip, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Which hotel are you staying in?’ Nehru asked.
‘Cosmos,’ replied Kuldip.
Everyone taking part in the exhibition, it appeared, was booked at the Cosmos as it was the hotel partner of the exhibition.
‘Arré, so are we,’ said Nehru. ‘Don’t worry, we have a mini-van coming to pick us up. You can come with us,’ he added.
‘He really saved me,’ said Kuldip touching his forehead as he remembered that day in August of 1984.
The next step was to put up the stall at the exhibition hall on the following day. Kuldip reached the hall and sweet-talked his way to get a good location for his stall. ‘It was a corner stall and quite big,’ he said. The other, more organized, exhibitors had arrived with their staff and helpers. Kuldip was all alone. ‘I saw everyone moving purposefully and putting up their stalls. Here was I, standing at my wonderful location and wondering how to first put up my stall and then how to display the stuff,’ said Kuldip.
He saw some Indian students walking past. He asked them if they wanted to earn a quick buck. The students, obviously, agreed. Kuldip got them to work and put together his stall. The POPs were up and the posters were showcasing the product range. Attractive shade cards and brochures of different paints were also placed in the stall. He even managed to exchange some dollars for a better price through the students.
‘My stall looked good but it
was quite bare,’ said Kuldip, ‘but what decorations could I put up in a paints stall?’ He looked around and saw a famous beautician who had a retail brand in India busy moving some potted plants from the general exhibition area to her stall.
‘She saw me looking at her. Instead of getting embarrassed she called me,’ laughed Kuldip. He went up to the lady who asked him to help her lift some more potted plants into her stall. ‘She was very clever,’ laughed Kuldip heartily. However, he copied her and moved some potted plants into his own stall!
‘I had told all the Russian people I was dealing with that I was going to be exhibiting. I had invited them all,’ said Kuldip. They came but there wasn’t much business done. The exhibition had masses of people but they were all common people. The Soviet Union was a closed economy and the general public had no exposure to the outside world and their products. An exhibition of Indian products was a big attraction. ‘There were lines and lines of people outside my stall. They wanted brochures, shade cards and other printed material,’ said Kuldip
Kuldip was quite disappointed with his first experience in Moscow. ‘Not a single order got signed,’ he said ruefully. But he perked up. ‘That was August 1984. But in less than four years, by 1988, I was a star in Russia,’ he said proudly.
Twenty-nine
‘Our Guns Were Loaded and We Were Prepared for Any Eventuality’
On 31 October, soon after Kuldip returned from Moscow, Mrs Gandhi was assassinated by her bodyguards. The next two days saw carnage on the streets of Delhi. Innocent Sikhs were butchered on the streets. Mobs were moving from colony to colony, market to market, killing Sikhs and vandalizing their homes and businesses.
Sohan Singh and his family were in Golf Links. That colony was largely protected due to the profile of people living in it. Moreover, each house had its own security and the entry points had iron gates. So Sohan Singh and his family were not in danger.