Ajanta, Amul and Samooha - Part 1

I wanted to write this for long but there is no better time than now to sit down to express this.

This would be first in a two part blog entries related to this topic very close to my heart.

In early 90s I served in Ajanta Clocks in the remote town of Morbi near Rajkot. It was one of the best experiences of my experiments with life. I had two offers at a time while taking up the position at Ajanta. I chose Ajanta to manage their Tool Room than being a Junior Technical Officer at VIP Industries at Nasik in a hierarchical structure.

Ajanta was a family run business and there were 8 brothers or cousins from 3 families managing the show. The most influential, then, amongst them was Shri. Pravin Bhai Bhalodia. He could be termed the Managing Director and was actually called back from his second year in BE as the founder Shri. Odhavji Bhai R Patel and the family needed many working hands to run the operations. Shri Odhavji Bhai himself was a teacher cum entrepreneur who made those age old mechanical clocks which I remember to be winding until the coil spring broke!

Ajanta was a model that was so unique and I admired it so much that India should have emulated that model in many ways so that SHE could have been much more successful than where we are at the moment.

At least 1500 families from around 20 villages benefited from the initiatives taken by the Ajanta entrepreneurs then. More than 25 company owned buses were fetching around 1700 employees from villages as far as 80 kilometers. The workers, mostly girls between age 14 to 22 who otherwise were made to sit at home without schooling by their parents were ferried to work and also were taught some lessons or two from the books which their well-off counter parts were studying. The girls were being seen off with a set of furniture and some cash when they get married and decide not to serve anymore with their beloved employer. Although some well educated urban minds termed this arrangement as exploitation I felt the other way around. If not for Ajanta, those girls would have wasted their skills and deprived of the exposure to industry while their families starved. Thanks to these girls their younger siblings could go to school!

Another interesting aspect of the venture was that there were only 3 so called qualified engineers in such a large enterprise and I was one of them. All others were experienced and innovators within their area and departments. The Department Managers learnt their best skills on the job and through a few exploratory trips overseas.

I think now it would be clear as why I chose Ajanta amongst the 2 choices I had even though I had to work from 8AM-9PM in a purposeful venture than the routine work offered by the other employer.

Even today, after 45 years of a legacy in clock making and being the largest manufacturer of clocks and with a slight difference of being a split group now popularly known under brand names Samay, Prince, Ajanta, Rewa, Orpat offering several products Samay and Ajanta is an entrepreneurial marvel.

It is unfortunate that we are in a system where the unseen entrepreneurs, who represent the 80% real India that resides in HER rural and suburban belts, are deprived of the Padma awards they deserved for their business cum social innovation loosing them to the ones who work with the creamy 20% and yet be awarded thanks to the handy work of their PR agencies. Would they have accepted the awards if at all nominated is another topic to discuss!

In my next part let's see what's common with Amul and Samooha.