Lord Of The Field

With Nikhil Nanda behind the wheel, tractor maker Escorts wants to provide holistic agri-solutions, including an Uber for tractors. In the process, it hopes to make farming great again and reclaim its past glory.

- Manu Balachandran

Nikhil Nanda has pretty much seen it all. In his 44 years, the suave and affable millionaire has witnessed his family’s fortunes flourish and then dwindle rather quickly.

As the son of the late Rajan Nanda, former chairman of Escorts Group who passed away in Gurugram on August 5, Nikhil Nanda was born with the proverbial silver spoon with the group being counted among India’s biggest business houses. Yet, in later years, plagued by the company’s misfortunes, Nanda also felt the sweltering New Delhi heat when the power supply to his office was disconnected over non-payment of dues.

“We have gone through beautiful times as well as tough ones,” says Nanda, now the MD of Escorts Group, sitting in his office in Faridabad, an industrial town on the outskirts of New Delhi. “Today, we have complete clarity about what we are doing. The company has pared its debt from ₹1,200 crore in 2004 to naught after a lot of strategising.”

The Escorts Group comprises three engineering divisions. It manufactures tractors and farm equipment under the brands Farmtrac and Powertrac; it has a construction equipment arm and also a railway equipment division. The three units raked in combined revenues of ₹5,015 crore and a profit of ₹344 crore in fiscal 2018. The agri-machinery arm (primarily tractors) accounts for over 80 percent of revenues.