KOCHI: Sunil Kant Munjal was supposed to arrive in Kochi at 4.15pm on a recent Wednesday. But at 3.30p the information came through that he was in Coimbatore. So, it seemed he would be late. But thanks to a helicopter ride, he was right on time. The chairman of the Hero Enterprise had come to release the book about the family called ‘The Making Of Hero’ during the annual meeting of the Kerala Management Association. The 221-page book published by HarperCollins Publishers has already scaled up the bestseller charts.
The book traces the history of the Munjal family who migrated to Ludhiana, Punjab from Kamalia in Pakistan during the partition in 1947. Hero Cycles was set up in 1956. In 30 years, it became the largest bicycle company in the world. Very early in the book, Sunil answers an important question. “While my uncles Dayanand and Om Prakash were packing up to move to Ludhiana, one of their suppliers, a Muslim man by the name of Kareem Deen, was preparing to shift to Pakistan.
He manufactured bicycle saddles under a brand name he had created himself. Before he left, Kareem Deen went to see his friend Om Prakash Munjal. What happened next would be a life-changing moment for our family. Uncle Om Prakash asked Kareen Deen whether the Munjals could use the brand name for their business. He agreed… and so, with nothing more than a casual nod, his brand passed to the Munjals. Yes, dear reader, you guessed correctly, it was ‘Hero’.”
The book is packed with numerous anecdotes and shows the trials and tribulations the family faced before they were able to make a mark. As the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in the foreword, “Brijmohan Lall Munjal and his brothers belonged to the first generation of entrepreneurs who believed in the credo of learning by doing. They also ran their enterprise like a giant family and prioritised people and profits together in a symbiotic relationship.”
They had the providential good luck too. In the 1970s when Atlas Cycles, the largest player in the industry, was plagued by a long labour strike which coincided with the peak season for bicycles, many Atlas dealers had to rush to Hero Cycles to procure their supplies. “Once they entered into this relationship, they got to experience our way of doing business. From this point on, their relationship with Hero became permanent, this put us on a continuous growth path,” says Sunil.
One of the most important chapters is on how the family restructured the company so that the transition of ownership to the younger generation would be smooth. As Sunil says, “Global research studies, show that 94 per cent of family businesses rarely survive beyond the third generation. In many cases, they tend to implode because of infighting. Only 6 per cent remain intact or make a smooth transition.” Thanks to careful planning, the Hero Group has managed to stay in the six per cent. In a way, this book can be a textbook for family firms on how to run a successful business.