United colours of enterprise
Blending grit with passion, Ashish Soparkar built Meghmani Organics into a leading colour pigments maker.
By Tapash Talukdar, TNN |
Ashish Soparkar saved Rs 5,000 from his annual salary working with a chemical unit, way back in 1975, to pursue his dream project. Today, he jointly owns seven companies with a combined turnover of nearly Rs 1,000 crore and a flagship company, Meghmani Organics Ltd (MOL), which is a major pigments and pesticides manufacturer.
Soparkar, managing director and co-founder of MOL, has turned difficulties into opportunities, unlike many who shut down their businesses. ���One should look ahead for opportunities to stay in the market than complaining about it,��� says the 56-year-old Soparkar. The journey hasn���t been easy for the families of Soparkar and Jayantibhai Patel, his partner in the venture.
Though he has made it as an entrepreneur, Soparkar doesn���t belong to a business family���his father was a government officer. Initially, he wanted to set up a chemical factory near his hometown Ahmedabad. So he went to MS University in Vadodara to study chemical engineering. While staying in the university hostel, he met Patel.
���We used to make plans about starting a small firm and marketing its products,��� says Soparkar, who then joined the Mumbai-based Excel Industries to sharpen his skills in the business and learn production methods. At 25, Soparkar and Patel set up Ashish Chemicals at Vatva GIDC near Ahmedabad. ���Both of us collected Rs 10,000 to start this dye-stuff factory and that was an important milestone for us,��� he recalls.
There was a plethora of teething troubles. Consistency and compliance issues led to product recalls. ���We were new and inexperienced for client-vendor relationship and so it was a major challenge for us,��� says Soparkar. However, he managed to re-assure his clients and somehow egged on with production. He even took loan from family friends to finance the additional production and brought significant changes in his product portfolio to cater to domestic as well as international clients.
In 1986, the company started doing exports and added a fair number of clients to its list. Thereafter, it set up six more companies to meet the regular demand of over 300 MNCs across the globe. During 1989, he earned his first million due to the expanding exports market.
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Now, Soparkar puts family first, something that he confessed to have neglected owing to high stress levels in earning his first million. ���My wife has been the major sufferer.��� His family supported him most of the times when the chemical industry was passing through rough weather. His mother gifted him a scooter when he needed it. ���I still remember the vehicle number of the scooter,��� he smiles. Above all, he considers that time has played a crucial role in what he is today. His next big Rs 650 crore project in Dahej is on completion mode. But for Soparkar, humility remains the touchstone of success.ADVERTISEMENT
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