Low On Sugar

Delhi-based industrial group DCM Shriram Consolidated is hedging its bets by not putting all its business eggs in one basket.

- Debabrata Das and Ashish Gupta

Ask any Delhiite to name some of the city’s big business families and chances are that the Shri Ram family will figure on the list. After all, Lala Shri Ram was one of the city’s most iconic entrepreneurs who built the famous DCM group in the early 20th century and occupied a place in the capital’s business pantheon long before the Nandas, the Singhs, and the Thapars made their names and fortunes.

Not many may be familiar with the group’s list of firsts. It set up north India’s first textile and fertiliser factory in the private sector; formed one of the earliest joint stock companies in India; and also roped in global automobile player Toyota as a business partner way back in 1983. But what they will certainly know is the group’s contribution to building some of the city’s landmark institutions: the Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, the Shri Ram College of Commerce, Lady Shri Ram College, and the Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources.

But in any family business, conflict and splits are inevitable. And the Shri Ram family was no exception. Today, the group is a pale shadow of what it was in its heyday. When Lala Shri Ram, the original promoter of the DCM group, died in 1963, the reins of the business were given to his two sons—Bharat Ram and Charat Ram—since his third son, Murli Dhar, had died in an airplane crash a few years ago. Murli Dhar used to run a textile mill in Lyallpur, now in Pakistan.