They say in business there’s hardly any room for emotions. Cold business logic often dictates where or how a business must go. But ask successful entrepreneurs about their very first venture, and chances are you’ll be suprised how emotions take over as they travel back into time to relive their early starting up days. 1831, Bhagirath Place in Old Delhi evokes such sentiments in Qimat Rai Gupta, 72, chairman of Havells.

The $1 billion plus electrical equipment manufacturer, which acquired SLI Sylvania last April, now operates from a spanking new 180,000 sq ft headquarters in Noida. But this tony 200 sq ft shop is where it all began in 1958. Gupta, then a strapping young man of 21, came to Delhi from Punjab in search of better fortunes and bought this shop for Rs 4,000 to trade in electrical goods. Later, Gupta acquired the Havells brand from one Haveli Ram Gandhi and the rest is history.

Guptaji & Co continues to hold a special place in Qimat Rai’s heart, and continues to function as Havells’ key depot for Delhi. Occasionally, small dealer meets are organised in the first floor office. But once a year Qimat Rai and his son Anil Gupta—who is the managing director of the company—visit the outlet without fail on the morning of Diwali to perform puja and pray for prosperity and success of their business. “This (shop) is like our mother; how can we forget it?” asks Gupta.

Every alternate Sunday, Chandubhai Virani drives down his Honda City to Dharmendra Road in Rajkot, and spends some time watching a small shop that sells sandwiches. The chairman of Balaji Wafers, a Rs 350-crore maker of potato chips and snacks, takes evident pride in the hard work and struggles he went through in his early years to build his business. “I started in this 6x10 ft shop in 1986 with an investment of Rs 3,000, selling sandwiches,” he recalls.

Now, Virani visits just to ensure that the quality of sandwiches being delivered is still as good as before. Before setting up the shop, Virani used to supply home-made wafers to cinema halls from 1974-1982. As business grew, he bought 1,000 sq yd of land in 1989 to set up a small wafers-making unit, and 3,000 sq yd in 1999. His big moment came in 2002, when the Virani family bought 45 acres of land to set up Gujarat’s first large fully automated potato wafer making unit. It was rumoured food and snacks giant PepsiCo had offered to buy out the company for Rs 500 crore.

For Kishore Biyani, who’s synonymous with organised retail in India, his first Pantaloons store launched in Kolkata in August 1997 is special too. This flagship store, which heralded a phase of aggressive expansion for the company, had an advertising budget of around Rs 4 crore, which was quite unheard of in the retail segment then.

“But that store generated Rs 10 crore for us, exceeding our expectations,” Biyani recalls. Even after setting up India’s fastest growing retail business spanning diverse product and consumer segments, Biyani admits that this store is among the most important milestones in his entrepreneurial journey.

“It’s only natural that some people have an affection for their first business. It could be because they learnt the business there, or it could just be about nostalgia,” says S Manikutty, professor at IIM-Ahmedabad who has researched family-owned businesses. That’s particularly true of first generation entrepreneurs like Biyani or Gupta. But where the family business is being run by the second or third generation, it’s likely that this emotional connect would be missing, Manikutty adds.

Source: TOI