Advantage, McNroe

How Ankit Daga is taking McNroe to the next level of growth by building on the deo brands started by his father

- Rajiv Singh

Narendra Kumar Daga was stunned for a minute. “You can’t be serious,” the 29-year-old quipped sarcastically, yet politely, to his employee on a fateful Monday evening in January 1986. His staff had goofed up big time in getting the name of the company registered. “How can you do this?” he thundered, as he broke into a high-pitched rant.

Daga was eerily mirroring the behaviour of his idol, who five years back had startled a packed Wimbledon court with his theatrics. A brash young American upstart, John McEnroe entered into a verbal volley with the umpire while disputing a line call. Approaching the umpire, McEnroe reportedly said: “You can’t be serious, man. Chalk came up all over the place.” A few seconds later, he bawled the immortal words again: “YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.” Clearly, the young tennis sensation was furious.

Back at Bhadrak in Odisha in 1986, a young Daga had thrown a similar fit. He wanted his company to be named after McEnroe. His staff, unwittingly, got it wrong; the ‘e’ in McEnroe was omitted and the name that got registered was McNROE. “I admired McEnroe for his aggressiveness and comebacks,” says Daga, now 61, who has laboriously built an over ₹400-crore company over the last three decades.

Headquartered in Kolkata, McNROE is the maker of deodorant brands such as Wild Stone and Secret Temptation. However, what gives the company its claim to fame is not the name of the tennis legend it is named after but the fact that it is the second-biggest deodorant maker in India after Vini Cosmetics’ Fogg.