Innovative Steel Maker

Be it brand image-building, setting up new ventures, taking the family steelmaking legacy forward, or innovating, Anurag Rathi has done it all during his three-decade career to outshine many a contemporary in the construction steel industry.

- Joseph Rozario

Beneath Anurag Rathi’s suave, soft-spoken exterior lies a determined entrepreneur who has turned the family’s construction steel business into one of the most trusted and reputed names in the high strength steel bar segment. That apart, as the founder, promoter and director of Rathi Bars Limited and Rathi Special Steels Limited—both based in Rajasthan—Anurag Rathi today helms businesses that have a collective turnover of over ₹750 crore. Recently, he has forayed into the real estate sector as well through his company Rathi Oxygen Private Limited, which develops commercial properties for leasing, in New Delhi.

A seven-decade legacy

Anurag Rathi’s family shifted from Rajasthan to Delhi so far back that he has little knowledge about his ancestral home, except that it was in a village called Maroth, which now is in the Nagaur district of Rajasthan. The family business of making steel goes back to the early 1940s, with the Rathis starting off with a re-rolling mill that had a production capacity of 369 kg per day. The Rathi clan has separated since, but seven decades later, Anurag Rathi continues in the family tradition of making construction steel.

Taking up the baton

“I joined the family business right out of high school in 1989,” says Rathi, referring to G D Rathi Steels Limited, the company that was bequeathed to his father, KK Rathi. As his father felt that technical skills were of utmost importance in running their kind of business, he would go to college in the morning and then work from afternoon till late evening to learn its shades and nuances. “It was quite a difficult transition, as I had to move from the comfort of home to spend my days at the mill’s shop floor in Delhi’s extreme weather conditions,” says Rathi looking back.