LUNCH WITH BS: Analjit Singh

The family's honour

Max India's chairman is on a mission to restore his late father's honour and see he gets the Padma Vibhushan he had to turn down.

Even Analjit Singh's closest associates don't know what made him call his company Max. Here's the story. The M came from his father, Bhai Mohan Singh, A from his mother, Avtar Kaur, and X was for all other forces, including God. Singh clearly adored his father when he started out in business some 25 years ago.

It has been about a month since Bhai Mohan Singh died on March 27. We are sitting in a wood-paneled room on the ground floor of Singh's stylish home at Aurangzeb road, the toniest and costliest patch of land in New Delhi. The sun outside is scorching. So, I am cooling myself with a nimbu pani, while Singh is talking about restoring his father's legacy. Last year, Bhai Mohan Singh was nominated for the Padma Vibhushan, the country's second highest civilian award, by the government. (He had got the Padma Shri many years ago.) But he wrote back to the government saying he could not accept it as criminal proceedings had been initiated against him in the courts on account of some personal guarantees he had given for his second son, Bhai Manjit Singh.

"It is my mission in life to see that his honour is restored and he gets the Padma Vibhushan, even though it is going to happen after his death," says Singh. He has already settled four of the five cases against his father and hopes to close the fifth one soon.

Anybody who knows Singh well will tell you that he has harboured deep bitterness for getting less than what he feels was his rightful share of the family business, the crown jewel of which was Ranbaxy.

"In the family settlement [of 1989], the family gold, Ranbaxy, went to my eldest brother [Parvinder Singh, who died in 1999], the family silver, all the real estate assets, went to my other brother [Bhai Manjit Singh]. All I got was a factory at Okhla where I had to offer VRS to the workers out of my own pocket," says Singh.

Yet, it is also a fact that for the last several years, it was Singh who looked after his ailing father, taking care of all his medical needs and providing him with secretarial and support staff.

In 1993, after a pitched boardroom battle with his son, Parvinder Singh, Bhai Mohan Singh had been despatched unceremoniously from Ranbaxy, the company he had nurtured for almost four decades. But Singh kept him involved in Max right till the end, sending his father information promptly, whenever he desired.

In the last few years of his life, Bhai Mohan Singh never failed to lavishly praise his youngest son to one and all. "He used to embarrass me at times with his praise," Singh says.

We have now moved on to a table at the other end of the room. The vegetarian fare "" cutlets, pasta, kidney bean salad and spinach "" is delicious but not heavy.

There is a photograph of Bhai Mohan Singh on a shelf on the side. I ask him who all have inherited his father's wealth.

Bhai Mohan Singh willed all his assets to Singh, barring a little cash for his eldest son's wife and two sons. (Bhai Manjit Singh has got nothing.) Singh now owns 85 per cent of Delhi Guest Houses Pvt Ltd, the company that owns the four sprawling adjacent bungalows Bhai Mohan Singh built for himself and his three sons at Aurangzeb Road. Singh has also become the chairman of the Bhai Mohan Singh Foundation after his father's death.

In addition, he has inherited all the legal disputes Bhai Mohan Singh was involved in with his two grandsons, Malvinder and Shivinder. "Are you looking for a settlement," I ask him.

"A part of me says that I should carry on with what my father had initiated, while another part says let's settle it and get on with life," says Singh as the waiters serve us the season's first mangoes.

The conversation now moves on to Singh's business. Singh had hit the headlines in March when he along with Asim Ghosh acquired 12.26 per cent in Hutchison Essar. The acquisition, funded partly by Hutch, had come just months after Singh had exited the company by selling 3.16 per cent stake in the company to Essar Teleholdings for Rs 675 crore. (He had sold 41 per cent to Hutchison for Rs 561 crore in April 1998.)

"The total foreign shareholding in Hutch Essar was crossing the prescribed limit of 74 per cent. Since I have known the company, I invested in it," he says, adding: "It is one of the few private investments I have made."

Till not so long ago, it was said he was always in start-up mode. In the last 25 years, Singh has tried his hand in such unrelated fields as pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, trading, flexible packaging, information technology, insurance and healthcare.

It is only of late that things seem to have taken a turn for the better for Singh, now 52. He has sold several of the businesses he started and is now focused on healthcare and insurance. (The flexible packaging business continues to grow on its own momentum, though Singh is investing Rs 135 crore to ramp up the capacity.)

Each of the businesses has now attained a respectable scale now, Singh says. Max New York Life is New York Life's largest venture outside the US, Max Healthcare has six hospitals in and around Delhi and is adding two more. "Between the two businesses, we will touch over a million lives in Delhi by the end of the year," he adds.