Business
Birla inherited the family business and moved to further diversify them into other areas. Of these, at least three contemporary family business groups existing in India today can trace their ancestry to Ghanshyam Das. Of these businesses, he wanted to turn the moneylending business into manufacturing. So he left for Calcutta in Bengal, the world's largest jute producing region. There he established a jute firm, much to the consternation of established European merchants, whom the biased policies of the British government favoured other than the local Bengali merchants. He had to scale a number of obstacles as the British and Scottish merchants tried to shut his business by unethical and monopolistic methods, but he was able to persevere. When World War I resulted in supply problems throughout the British Empire, Birla's business skyrocketed.
With an investment of Rs.50 lakhs in 1919, the Birla Brothers Limited was formed. A mill was set up in Gwalior in the same year.
In 1926, he was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly of British India.
In 1940s, he ventured into the territory of cars and established Hindustan Motors. After independence, Ghanshyam Das Birla invested in tea and textiles through a series of acquisitions of erstwhile European companies. He also expanded and diversified into cement, chemicals, rayon and steel tubes. Ghanshyam Das Birla during the Quit India movement of 1942, had conceived the idea of organizing a commercial bank with Indian capital and management, and the United Commercial Bank Limited was incorporated to give shape to that idea. Uco Bank, formerly United Commercial Bank, established in 1943 in Kolkata, is one of the oldest and major commercial bank of India.
Read more about this topic: Ghanshyam Das Birla
Famous quotes containing the word business:
“You’re a business idea in the shape of a man.”
—David Lean (1908–1991)
“We are told it will be of no use for us to ask this measure of justice—that the ballot be given to the women of our new possessions upon the same terms as to the men—because we shall not get it. It is not our business whether we are going to get it; our business is to make the demand.... Ask for the whole loaf and take what you can get.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“I do not claim that all women, or a large portion of them, should enter into independent business relations with the world, but I do claim that all women should cultivate and respect in themselves an ability to make money.”
—Ellen Demarest (1824–1898)