When Jagdish Khattar joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1965, he became the first in his family to take up a job. Everyone else was self-employed. Last Tuesday, in announcing that he had become an entrepreneur, Khattar finally responded to the call of his genes.
The journey to Carnation Auto India Ltd — that’s the name of Khattar’s company, which will set up an independent, pan-India, multi-brand sale and service network for cars — has had more than its fair share of twists and turns.
Some time after his family moved from Dera Ismail Khan, in the North West Frontier Province, to Delhi after the Partition, Khattar acted in a film called Gandhi Path. The film never got released but he still got offers to act in Jagriti and Raj Kapoor’s Boot Polish. But Khattar was in Class II then and his father thought he ought to focus on his studies. As he dedicated himself to the curriculum at DPS Mathura Road, where a certain Montek Singh Ahluwalia was his classmate, Ratan Kumar, who eventually acted in the two films, became a star.
Khattar was not your usual bureaucrat. He tried to reduce the layers of decision making that invariably installed decisions. At the steel ministry, he upset the plans of the Ruias of Essar by giving them the clearance to expand capacity in three months when they expected it in 15. He was instrumental in freeing the production of pig iron, an important raw material for engineering and forging industries.
For two-thirds of his tenure as a bureaucrat, he was with state-owned enterprises. “I treated them as my own companies,” says Khattar. One of the earliest instances of celebrity advertising in India took place when Khattar, as the head of the Tea Board, got cricketers Ian Botham and Sunil Gavaskar to endorse Indian tea. He also carried a tray full of tea in his hands at tea fairs.
By the early 1990s, as a joint secretary, Khattar began to feel that he would not get much further in the government. Soon after, he found himself face to face with R C Bhargava, who had earlier left the government to join Maruti Udyog Ltd and risen to the top job there. It was agreed that Khattar would join Maruti and replace Bharagava as the managing director in 1997.
The carefully-laid succession plan came apart as the two principal shareholders of the company, the Union government and Suzuki, began to battle for control. The government nominated RSSLN Bhaskarudu as the MD, who was not acceptable to Suzuki, and the two partners found themselves locked in a court battle. Khattar was at the centre of a fracas in which he was merely a silent spectator.
He bided his time, quietly, until the matter was resolved and he was appointed the MD in July 1999. But soon after the manufacturing sector entered a recession and Maruti found itself losing market share.
Khattar dealt with it by focusing sharply on customer service and steered the company into a plethora of new businesses. For the next eight years, until retiring from Maruti in December 2007, Khattar, who at times toyed with the idea of obtaining an MBA but never got down to doing it, ran the company with common sense and instinct. For instance, he would tell his people to push the sales of the mauve Zen Estilo with discounts because it stood out in traffic.
It is not surprising therefore that as an entrepreneur he has chosen a business that is customer-centric. He has put his money — and that of others like Azim Premji — where his instincts are.
