With Dabur insulated from the founding family's ups and downs, its scientist-chief is free to pursue his interests - an oncology firm, a healthcare fund, even a new sax.
The facade has been done in sandstone. There’s a fleet of silver Ambassadors next to the porch. The staff all wear white muslin kurtas that reach the knee. Everywhere you meet the almost forgotten Indian greeting of pranam. Mosquito coils, circular like the chakra of life and death, are at the bottom of the tall glass windows. And the drinks have names that make them sound herbal, pure and life-giving: Gulab-jal (rose water), Banaras, Moksha, Prana, Surya, Satvic et al.
The names could also have been straight from the brand portfolio of Dabur, the homespun fast-moving consumer goods company. It is present across categories like health care, dental care, skin care, hair care and ayurveda. Some brands that can be exchanged with the drinks menu of Amanresorts are Gulabari, Pudin Hara and Uveda. Dabur Chairman Anand Burman agrees. He reads the details carefully. “Prana (life) is to add to it or take it out?” Banaras it shall be for both of us, a gin concoction laced with betel nut and paan, writes Bhupesh Bhandari.
Amanresorts is not crowded, though it is lunch hour. But I can see that a kitty party has begun to assemble at an adjacent table. Women dressed for the occasion are floating in. Restaurants love them because they eat well. But women at such parties have the habit of talking at the top of their voice and all at once. This strikes the other guests with terror. All conversation in the rest of the restaurant is pulverised to silence. Knives and forks begin to work at a brisk pace. Fortunately, the women here are quiet.
Burman is media-shy. He lets Dabur executives do all the talking. The subtle message here is that professionals run the company and not the Burmans. No Burman has an executive role. There are four of them on the board of 11. Technically, they could be outvoted by the other directors. Senior Dabur executives say the Burmans don’t ram their ideas down their throat. The story goes that the company had come up with a new candy and took it to the chairman before the launch. Burman found it horrible and spat it out. Still, the company launched it with great success! “Thank God that I am not in product development,” Burman remarks when I check the story with him.
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Dabur and its promoters were the best kept secrets of India Inc till about 15 years ago when the Burmans decided to list the company on the stock markets. That is when they came out of the shell. Contrary to popular perception, the Burmans are not Bengali but Punjabi Khatris. The business was started by
S K Burman about 125 years ago in Kolkata. One of the first trained doctors in the country, he came out with an ayurvedic range to counter imported medicine (there was no penicillin around at that time, though quinine sold in large quantities).
As much as 85 per cent of Dabur’s business still comes from natural, herbal and ayurvedic products. Burman, 57, is a scientist (his father and the grand old man of Dabur, A C Burman, never got to finish college) with over 40 patents against his name. Even now, he admits, the days he rolls up his sleeves and enters the company laboratory are the best. How does he reconcile with a business that, some say, is not on a firm scientific foundation?
“You want to know the science,” says Burman, “I will give it you.” Our starters have arrived — Thai papaya salad for Burman and Ceasar’s salad for me. His father calls to check whether he will join him for lunch. Research has shown, Burman elaborates, that herbal and ayurvedic products have elements that can cure. The best-selling oncology drugs, he says, have roots in herbal products. So, where is the reason to doubt the efficacy of such products? “Our products are not just feel-good but do-good also,” says he.
He talks further of the properties of Pudin Hara to cure stomachaches. The brand, I inform him, was at one time extremely popular in my part of the country. To curb drink abuse, the government had declared the whole district ‘dry’. People sought refuge in Pudin Hara. It gave some sort of a ‘high’. “But the alcohol content is very low, just around 7 per cent,” Burman remonstrates. “Better than nothing,” I tell him. We agree another round of Banaras will make us stronger to take on the rest of the long day ahead.
There are several Burmans in Delhi. There are two trees, one has two families and the other three. Yet, they have stuck together. While families like Modi, Birla, Shriram, Bajaj and Ambani have split, the Burmans haven’t. How? Holding his Banaras by the stem, Burman spills the beans. Each generation has sorted out the shares amongst its progeny. So, says Burman, there is no issue over ownership. The Burmans have no executive role, so that removes any possibility of a conflict over who runs the company. Each tree gets two seats on the board. There is a family council of all Burmans which decides by consensus who joins the board. All Burmans are free to get into any business so long as it does not conflict with Dabur’s business, though they are free to compete with each other. The brand Dabur is owned by the company.
Burman, in fact, with one of his uncles, has floated a health care fund and has on his target a corpus of $200 million. Big Pharma, it is well known, has designs over homespun drug makers because of their expertise in making cheap generic products. This gives an excellent arbitrage opportunity to financial investors. “This hasn’t escaped our attention,” Burman admits. He had, to be sure, set up a pharmaceutical business with focus on oncology from scratch for Dabur. Some time ago, Dabur Pharma was sold to Fresenius Kabi of Germany. Did it hurt? Burman thinks for a while and then replies with an emphatic no. A partnership like this, says he, was essential if the company had to grow, especially in Europe. But Burman has grown a new chord with oncology. His private company, Onquest, has got into cancer diagnosis. Burman’s son, Aditya, looks after that venture.
What this means is that Burman has oodles of time at his disposal. “This helps me do some badmashi (naughty things) now and then,” says Burman. He plans to buy a new saxophone, go to the Singapore Grand Prix and watch it from the Force India pit. The main course arrives — a fish salad for Burman and Kerala fish curry for me. The portions are good.
Two salads in a day — Burman has to be a health freak. He also has for long had a fetish for the digit two. “What interests you in the number two,” I ask. “It’s not for number two money, I can assure you,” says he. But the number has been lucky, he admits. His cousin, Amit Burman, has a similar fixation for the digit one.
Dabur had, in the not-so-distant past, drawn up plans to spread its wings in the neighbourhood. It had set up a processing plant in Nepal along with the Rana family to take advantage of low-import duties there and the Himalayan kingdom’s open borders with India. The Maoist insurgency ensured it didn’t work half the time. Burman says the investment has already yielded enough returns for the company. But what about Pakistan where Dabur had announced a joint venture and even a factory? The company had made advertisements for that market? Those plans, Burman says, are as good as shelved, thanks to the uncertain regime of taxes there.
As we make our way out of the hotel (Amanresortschain is owned 50 per cent by DLF), I offer him two Dabur Hajmola digestive candies, one green and the other purple. He pops the green one. His wine red Mercedes rolls in. What’s the number on the plate? What else but 0022.