Like Prime Minister Modi, he's a big picture man. I believe that I am one of the very few chosen ones. JR Data was there. Ajit Bidda was there at that time. If these guys can make it so big, I'm much better than all three of them. I'm never going to retire. So you have a problem. I told my son especially a huge credit I gave of whatever I've done in my life to Mumbai, city of Mumbai. Ambition is to become number one steel producer in the world.
What do you remember as some of the learnings that you had when you were a child? And from your parents?
Yeah. So, you know, a large family has its huge advantages. Now we don't have, I have three kids which is also like large kind of standard. Yeah. So my kids all three of them are now married. So at that time, you know, living in a joint family with nine of us and then my uncle, he had three, four kids and so, you know, we were then my cousins, my dad's cousins, their kids, we were all friends, like, you know, growing up together. So what the biggest learning in a joint family is to, you know, to give or to share, right? So we learn to share. It's not that everything in anything came, it's mine, it's mine, right? No, you have to share. If we had fruits, everybody will share. If suppose in the mango season, I'm talking about then, you know, 50, maybe 55, 60 years ago, Hisar, you know, the fruits would be only seasonal fruit and would come, would be very rare. So if let's say a mango comes home, couple of mangoes would come or whatever, then we will all share. My mother will make sure that we all share, brothers and sisters.
Yeah. So you learn sharing, you know, orange season.
Learn how to also get along, how to sort of negotiate with family members because, you know, if you're selfish, you're not going to survive. You cannot survive. They will.
Because everybody will put you on a side.
Yeah. You have to be part and parcel of the group.
Yeah. That's a huge learning in today's time in a nuclear families, you know, the kids are, you know, they find it difficult. And especially those who have single children.
I think it's very, very sad actually. I feel very sad if you are a single kid, you have no sibling to, you know, go back to or as a support system.
So what were your dreams at that time when you were growing up and you were still in Hisar, maybe you'd still not gone into engineering school yet. You've not left home. What did you think you wanted to be? Just an, you know, somebody like your father, a business leader.
Yeah. Actually I don't remember. So no great young people. A huge credit I give of whatever I've done in my life to Mumbai, city of Mumbai. Wow. Yeah. Because this is an amazing, amazing city. I've lived in Delhi, Hisar, Delhi and then Mumbai and Bangalore. So these are the four cities I've lived. But, you know, nothing can be as amazing or as, how shall I call it, than Mumbai.
Energizing, yeah. So when I just came in, you know, I met Wala Bansali, if I don't know if you know him, Wala Bansali is the founder of Inam. Inam. Yes. Yeah. And he was, we were young. He's like little bit older than me. Maybe I don't know how many years older but, you know, we were, he used to meet me and we were young so, you know, we used to spend time and so he used to tell me that, you know, you have to, he's a very, you know, yeah, I'm like a small town kid, you know, but he was very, very organized, very systematic. So he told me that Sajjan, if you want to do well in life, you come with me, I'll take you somewhere. I said okay. So he took me to Reliance AGM, annual general meeting. And so I said, why, I'm not a public company. What are you, why are you taking me? So I got a real shock to see what's, you know, then I went to, then on my own I went to Hindalco's board meeting, AGM, then went to Tata Steel AGM, JRD Tata was there, Ajit Bidda was there at that time and then like I started to, my ambition started to kick in, you know, that why can't, because I said if these guys can make it so big, I'm much better than all three of them.
Yeah. Really? I said they are not engineers. I mean Ajit was engineer. They are not, you know, they look much more ordinary than me. I look much better than them. I'm more fitter. I have more energy. I, you know, I have three more brothers with me who are, you know, equally good. So, you know, I really thought that our group can be something different. We have to be different. So I went to my father first. I spoke to my older brother. He said, huh, good idea. I said we should go public as a company. We must list our company. We must grow big. We must make it like huge and what the hell, you know. So then I went and spoke to my older brother and my brother said yes, I agree. Then Ratan was the finance guy in our group like at that time, you know, when we were all kids. It's like that. No, my older brother was projects guy. He would build new projects. Ratan was finance and I was just entering. So then I told Ratan also. So yeah, both of, all three of us went to dad. Dad, we need to go public and we need to make it big. We did. So my dad said, but we are very big. We are doing very well. Look, what do you want to achieve? So then I had to explain about Reliance, about Tata Steel, about, he said leave them. Oh, you, we are, we not happy? Are we not doing well? Why, why you? But then we had a little argument with him over dinner and at the end of the dinner he said okay, if you three agree, I have no problem, let's go. Navin was still very young at that time. So that's how we started to create ambition, believe in the ambition, believe in building big stuff and that's how things in the business changed from there on. So, give a lot of credit to Mumbai because of the thing that Mumbai has, you know.
The whole ethos, the culture of.
Yeah, the energy in this city.
And in those days, now things have changed, those days Mumbai, everything was mega even those days. Okay, Delhi was like a small town from business perspective. You know, anything in Delhi people think would do, you know, not from a governance point of view, Delhi was very, very poor. Mumbai was even those days was very high. Shareholders were all here. Stock markets were here, you know, so this was the city. Who mentored you? Now one is of course taking you around and showing you and explaining, but I don't know if anybody really mentored you. Did you have any one mentor or anything?
You famously, you know, you're talking about, you don't maintain a diary, okay, and you don't make any notes. The other day I had our common friend Harsh Mariwala, who, you know, he's meticulous, he makes all his notes, he's amazing and he'll file it away and he'll look at it 5 years later if he's meeting somebody, he'll have access to it and he'll remember, okay. And you famously don't do have any of that. So from this small company, okay, which you built up, and we'll actually come to Jindal Vijayanagar and then to your journey there on, you actually created this whole empire where you are known for your execution skills. You have amazing execution. You have amazing teams that you've been able to build up. You are able to raise mega finances. Okay, because you're investing, I don't know, every year 75,000 crores or, and the figures keep changing and growing only. So where did you learn all this that you could be, you know, so organized in your companies and without a scrap of paper and without having anybody mentored you?
No. So I actually, as I said, grew up watching my dad, right. So my dad was also not very, not very like me, you know, I don't keep any papers. My dad never had any diary or any paper. He would tell his secretary like that. I'm also very similar. I'll tell my secretary that, you know, nowadays because of the WhatsApp, I just, if somebody's inviting, then I'll just forward it to my secretary that, you know, please remember that this event is there. So while growing up, so in business, you know, sorry, what was the question? I lost.
How did you learn to create an organization?
No, it is like, so my real mentor is my father in that respect, you know, I watched him very closely and also then when I moved to Mumbai, I watched him from a distance. So he was a real mentor. And so he was, and he always believed in, because we are four of us, so brothers and sisters, of course, but sisters were not in business, so we brothers. So my father gave us tremendous independence. Whatever I wanted to, he allowed me to do, which is absolutely unbelievable, you know, otherwise the old man or the main guy tries to control, you know, and especially if you're four. So but he just allowed me to do whatever I wanted, allowed my older brother do whatever he wanted, Ratan, Navin, and we all have excelled because of my father, because my father gave us this exposure and told us to take risk, don't worry about the risk. And, you know, I have this very famous thing that I say that we have, if something goes wrong, I will pack up my bags and go to Hisar, you know, that's my like a safe haven, like my, you know, so because Hisar, we feel so comfortable, everything is there, everybody is our person, has given so much to our family is unbelievable, you know, so we really feel very, very comfortable in Hisar. So therefore we can take a lot of risk. When I was building Vijayanagar, you know, there was a time when the technology failed and there was a complete collapse and.
You were right there. Yeah. Yeah. We used to travel together and because you were also building your factory right next to it.
So, but, you know, Suki, not even once.
I had this feeling in me that I will collapse, I will fail. I never thought. I had this huge strength or huge support system of my father, my brothers, that I will never fail. Obviously we brothers wouldn't, monetarily wouldn't want to get from each other because then you are like, you feel, you know, a little low in the family. You don't want to, if you have a problem, you'll go to them but you say I don't want your money but I just want your emotional and other support.
Correct. Otherwise there's a problem. Otherwise there's a problem, you're taking away from somebody else's company and it'll have impact on that relationship.
Exactly. So they are also growing, they also need a lot of capital. So then obviously they will not say no.
But then it is a little, you know, so none of us has, every one of us have gone through difficult periods and everybody does, but all four of us have gone at different times into, but the best part in our thing is that growing, when we were growing the businesses, that we supported each other at whoever got into difficulties, the other brothers supported. So that has really, that is a very big strength that is there in our family. No, but I still want to stay for a moment, you know, you take very big risk, okay, you took the risk that you're talking about when you built this Jindal Vijayanagar steel plant. In fact, it's a side story which I'll try and come back to, but you chose a new technology, okay, so you had this driving ambition, I want to set up this plant and you chose it which nobody else in India at that time had chosen, it was only the second plant in the world. It's actually very similar to my own family story also of choosing new technologies which nobody else, the electric arc furnace way back at that time, continuous casting, then the EOF.
First was in Mukund, I think the first, second or third in the whole world.
Completely different technology, yes, lots of risks. So we also learned how to take risk. But you took a mega risk. But even now you continue to set up very large projects and you do it, but you say you have no fear, you have no fear of failure here, you have no fear of, you know, it doesn't come to you at all.
What gives you that strength or that confidence?
No, I think the word fear or failure is part of, not part of me. No, I mean I don't want to say it in a way that I'm, I don't want to sound arrogant about it, but when we were growing up, it somehow it never came into us.
You were not brought up with fear.
Not brought up with fear.
So you fall, you fall, you get hurt, you get up, you run, the whole attitude was of moving forward always.
There's a concept in life called fail forward.
So you fall, you fail, you get up and you.
Move forward. Yeah. Yeah. That is what my father, teaching or not, my father never taught us anything. He never told us do this and don't do this. Never said like that. But we just followed him. We just, we saw him. He's riding a horse. Okay, that's a good idea. We'll ride a horse. He will not tell me that you ride a horse. But there will be another horse. So Navin is a polo player, you know. He's got now hundreds of horses because he loves polo. But that is in our family. We don't have that fear, you know.
So that to me is a very big lesson to everybody is that really not to have fear and not to fear failure. That is the most paralyzing thing. Suki, that happens when you are born because we were nine of us. So we didn't have this overprotected environment around us. Okay. If we go and play cricket and a ball hits and it's bleeding, it's okay. You know, you won't believe it. It's okay. On one Diwali, Navin, my younger brother, he was very young, he was probably 15, 14 at that time, so he lit a bomb, he put a can on top of it and lit, you know how, remember it make a nice noise.
So the bomb bursted too soon and this can cut his hand like this. You know, a big cut, huge cut. He didn't tell anyone. He took the car at 15 or 16 or 14, I don't remember, he knew how to drive. He drove the car to our hospital which is like 2 km away, 3 km away. He drove to that hospital, got the stitches done. Diwali day, we were still cracking our crackers on the other side of the garden and this fellow was on this side and he got the stitches done, put a tape on it and came back. This is like many, came back. Then everybody asking, where is, we call him Buntu, where is Buntu, where is Buntu. My mom is asking, my dad is asking. Then suddenly the watchman said, he's gone to the hospital. Why? Why? All right. He came. My mom gave him a slap. Give him a slap that you went, you got cut, you are stupid, you are this, you are that. There was nobody who was sympathetic towards him. My sisters were. Then my one sister just took him and took him away from my mother. My mother was so angry. So that is the environment we grew up and that is why we are very rough and tough. We don't care. Now my grandkids, they are so overprotected.
So I keep telling my daughters, my son, let them fall. Let them fall. The more they will fall, the better they will become, you know.
Yeah. Otherwise, you know, one servant is this side, one servant is that. Oh.
Yeah. Oh man, you know, so I try to give a lot of this thing.
You don't, you give advice to your children?
Not too much but very little, very, very rarely I give advice.
Okay, that was one of my things that I wanted to ask you about is that what is it that you have taught your children, you think, because you talked about your father and the influence that he had. What about you and your children? Is there things that you've consciously tried to teach them and what do you think you've unconsciously taught them?
No. So I seriously follow my father's way of doing things. I really think that my father was a real institution and whatever, you know, how he brought us up. Like when I got into business, so he never, you know, told me that you do this and don't do this and he gave me a separate business and he told me that, you know, this factory in Mumbai, when I was moved to Mumbai, that this factory is not making money yet but it has a lot of potential. If you work hard, you can turn it around. If you turn it around and make money, then you can grow your business, otherwise I will, you know, take care of your day-to-day living and but that's about it. So he had given me the business and told me that this is it.
So what have you done with your kids?
So my daughters and my son, I've told them that whatever you want to do, I will support you. I will help you to establish that. But thereafter, you have to work hard. You have to grow that business. You have to take it to a different level. You know, otherwise I'm doing my own business. I'm pretty young. I still feel that I have many years to go and I'm not going to retire at all. I will retire the day I really retire, you know. Yeah. When I retire permanently, that is the day I will retire. So, I'm never going to retire. So, you have a problem. I told my son especially that you have a problem that, you know, I'm always going to be there and running my business. So don't think that you will inherit my business very easily, by the time you will also be in your 60s or maybe even, yeah, let's say 60s. So therefore why wait for me, you grow your own business. So but they all three of them have a lot of fire in their belly. They want to do, they want to.
So what are the things that you would like to say to them but, you know, we sometimes hesitate as parents not to give too much of gyan to children.
So it's not worthwhile giving them too much gyan because they are also very smart, very intelligent. But I'm like friends with my kids.
You have open conversation.
Yeah, very open, which I did not have with my father but with my kids I have a lot of open conversation. That's what I believe. I don't know what my kids believe, but I do have.
Business is something that you're very passionate about. You actually love business. The idea of creating businesses, it's like, I can see it. You and I were together a few days ago. We were together in China and we went to, we started out the previous night. We were up late because the chairman of a company who was hosting a dinner for us. So we were up till 12:00, 1:00, went to sleep. By 6:00 we were up, 7:00 we were in the train and whole day and we were out seeing things. We went and sat and saw this autonomous vehicle. This is the future of transport, urban transportation where you sit in a drone which is powered by these small electric motors and it's an unmanned vehicle. There's no pilot. So you sit in it alone. It's already pre-programmed and it just takes off vertically and it goes and it drops you wherever it's supposed to drop you, you know, in 3 minutes, 5 minutes you cross the whole city, you know, and that's what we're doing. So, we did all that. We did some other things. At 7:00 in the evening, we're returning. And he says, I'm so excited. I'm ready to work another 10 hours. I see. Where do you get this energy from? Where do you get this energy from? Where do you get this drive? You're actually like a child, you know, who's got a new toy. Every time you have a new company, a new project, there's just that brimming with enthusiasm.
So, you know, Suki, what I feel that the time is, see, one is India, you know, we are so fortunate that we have born in India, we are building India, we are part and parcel of this country and we are helping it to build, whatever we are putting our contribution to build it, right? And I believe that I am one of the very few chosen ones by the Almighty who has the ability and the caliber to make a difference to this nation, to our country. So that's my inner feeling. It's not true but it's my inner feeling. I live with that feeling, with that feel, that's what drives you.
That's what drives me, that I feel that, you know, I have to do this, I have to do that, so much to be done. I want to be.
