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A journey from 1200 rupees to Refinery
A small office having little sunlight on the first floor of the Batavia Chambers on Kumar Krupa Road, Bangalore. A large work table in the office occupies most of the space. On one side of this table, a number of idols of Lord Ganesh is placed. An ordinary looking person is sitting in the chair on the other side of the table. By Looking at this person no one could imagine that this person is the owner of a company which is listed in a fortune-500 and he is Gujarati. This company means ‘Rajesh Export’ and the ordinary looking person means Rajesh Mehta, a genius Gujarati.
It was approximately the time of independence. Jaswantrai Mehta with his family settled in Bangalore from Rajkot, Gujarat and started a new venture of trading precious stones with his cousin. Almost 25 years later, he launched his own ‘Rajesh Diamond Company’. Jaswantrai had four sons, but he named his business after his third son’s name Rajesh because of an astrologer's advice.
Rajesh was the most intelligent among his four sons - Bipin, Prashant, Rajesh and Mahesh. Rajesh wanted to be a doctor, but after school he felt that the jewellery business was attracting him because most of his family members were involved in any business at that time. Rajesh along with his elder brother Prashant went to Bipin (elder brother of both and who was working in the bank). They both took a loan of Rs 1200 from him to start trading in silver jewellery. With this money, they bought jewellery from Chennai and sold it to their relatives in Rajkot with a profit of Rs 3500.
Gradually, they started trading not only to relatives, but also to retailers and wholesalers. They also bought jewellery from Gujarat and started trading in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and popularised Gujarati designs in the South. In a short span of time, they started trading of jewellery worth more than 1 lakh under the name of ‘Rajesh Art Jewellery’, but the Mehta brothers quickly realized that silver jewellery was not as attractive as gold.
Now, they were interested in his own manufacturing unit, instead of just trading the jewellery. But due to the Gold Control Act at that time, no company was allowed to purchase, store or manufacture gold for domestic use. The Mehta brothers found a loophole in this act. The Reserve Bank was giving gold to export so in 1989, they started a small manufacturing facility in their garage. This is how ‘Rajesh Export’ came into existence. Till 1992, the company's business crossed Rs 2 crore. The company also started its own retail stores under the name Rajesh Jewels. (Later, it was re-named as ‘Shubh Jewellers’ and today it has approximately over 80 stores in Karnataka.)
Rajesh Mehta believes, “Extension is in our blood. We can never sit idle. We will always do something”. In 1995, he made the company public limited and raised a fund of about Rs 10 crore. By 1998, the company's exports reached 120 crores. At that time, Mr. Mehta decided to build a manufacturing unit in Bangalore with a capacity of 250 tonnes and that was a risky move. But Prashant says, “Rajesh Mehta has always thought out of the box.” This facility was started on 10 acres of land in 2001-02. Today, almost half of this facility is in use. He built this facility with a vision of 20 years ahead. Then after, manufacturing units were established in Kochi and in Uttarakhand in 2007-08 and 2013 respectively.
In July 2015, Mehta bought the World's Largest Gold Refinery, the Swiss Valcambi Gold Refinery. Despite a turnover of over 1 lakh crore and a revenue of about $1.88 billion, Rajeshbhai believes in living a very simple life. He travels only in ordinary Toyota Innova instead of bullet-proof Mercedes or Rolls-Royce, and similarly, he prefers commercial flights instead of private jets. "It is absolutely unnecessary for me to buy something just to show off," he says, “I will use it when private jets are absolutely necessary and cannot live without it." In this hi-tech era, Mehta uses four mobile phones, three of which are normal and only one is a smartphone i.e. Apple I-phone 4.
Rajesh Mehta and his company ‘Rajesh Export’ are the best examples of how to overcome various difficulties, complexity in government processes, financial problems etc. to reach the highest level of success.
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