'I think India has lost a lot of time'

DK Jain, Chairman Emeritus of Lumax Industries, goes down memory lane in a freewheeling conversation with Mayank Dhingra. He believes that India may have lost valuable time by not going in for liberalisation sooner.

- Mayank Dhingra

It is an overcast Thursday afternoon in Gurugram when DK Jain enters the Lumax corporate office.

The Chairman Emeritus who has been part of this auto component maker's growth story for over six decades now is in a mood to go down memory lane and recall his early days as an entrepreneur. "It started off with building relationships and that has been our core strength for the last 75 years," he says.

This, continues Jain, was the fundamental principle in building the base for Lumax while constantly nurturing it to be able to reach the levels attained today. "My objective was to build more relationships, be it with our employees, customers, or whoever came in touch with us."

"We were not industrialists, or belonged to a rich family," continues Jain. "In 1954-55, my father started a workshop that made glasses, and later put up a small factory in old Delhi." Barely 19 and transitioning from school to college at that time, he was summoned by his father and company's founder SC Jain, to help him manage the business.

"Within six months, I actually started enjoying working in the factory," he adds. The company had just received bulk orders to supply roof lamps for the transport authority buses, and later struck up strong ties with the likes of Royal Enfield, Standard Motors, and Escorts.

Challenges of Licence Raj

Jain recalls some of the challenges faced during this era of the License Raj. For instance, when he had to visit Japan for the first time in 1966 to get trained in metallising - a process that is conducted on the plastic headlight reflectors - it took a good four months just to get the foreign exchange for the travel.