Vardhaman Book on Jainism

Author(s): Jayshree Menon
Publisher: Bennete Coleman & Co Ltd

Page 99

orn to a farming family in a tiny village,
Bhavarlal Hiralal Jain studied commerce U and law and went on to become a gazetted officer in the Maharashtra Civil Services. But in 1962, urged by his mother Gauribai, his entrepreneurial instincts came to the fore. With a meagre capital of Rs. 7,000 (the accumulated saving of his joint family) the only business he could contemplate was marketing and distribution. He took up a small kerosene agency and started going from door to door selling kerosene oil and domestic gas cylinders on a handcart.
So successful was he, that within a few years, he had graduated to marketing products of national and multinational corporations. He also began supplying farmers with essential items like seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, tractors and light diesel oil. He became the proud owner of a petrol pump. And then destiny intervened.
One October evening in 1973, he saw a Scottish drilling rig refuelling at his petrol pump. It carried the inscription, 'Agriculture : A profession with future'. Nostalgia flooded him. As a boy, he had seen his father and uncles cultivating the family land in Vakod village, near Jalgaon in Maharashtra (his ancestors had migrated about 100 years ago from Agolai in Rajasthan). He decided that agriculture would be his thrust area and began seeking out agencies for agricultural inputs and equipment like seeds, pesticides, fertilisers, electric motors, PVC pipes, tractors and implements.
The year was 1978 and a sick banana powder unit was being sold for Rs.30 lakh. Jain could muster only Rs.5 lakh. The bankers refused to finance the purchase of an old unit, but Jain, with his rare persuasive skill, managed to raise another 10 lakh from them. The remaining amount was provided by his suppliers and customers. Once bought, the banana powder processing unit was ingeniously converted into a papain processing plant.
HUMIPUTRA!
HE AND HIS JAIN GROUP HAVE INTRODUCED A AGRICULTURAL TECHNIQUES TO EEASIER AND HIS YIELD MORE PROFITABLE
99 VARDHAMAN
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