Of the many interesting clients I
had in my career in venture capital, Ranga was the nicest. That he was, like many small scale
industrialists of the time, not averse to some self-aggrandisement at the cost of about
everyone he did business with, was purely a matter of detail.
I use the past tense, for he has moved on, no doubt, to sell a copy of
the Bhagvad Gita to Lord Krishna (at discount to the price charged by
MNCs). He was a small, avuncular man,
dressed in white and had a clean, dapper look about him that endeared him to everyone. He ran a small little company in Chennai manufacturing
proteins for his erstwhile employer, an MNC, and profits for himself, his
business existing on the excise and employee-compensation privileges enjoyed by
small units, when compared to the big ones (and, on useful occasion, some tax
evasion as well).
Ranga would have been most
content bagging the local award instituted by his street for small scale industrialist
of the year, but for a chance meeting. It
was widely rumoured (and such rumours are often perfectly true) that he had met
my company Chairman, an old schoolmate of his, at the December music festival. Now, Ranga, among his talents, could
recognise the difference between an opportunity and a protein and, in a trice,
he had sold his project idea to make iron-fortified iodised (and
God-knows-what-else) salt to the unsuspecting deficient public. The benefits of such salt seemed numerous,
and my Chairman should have promised to consume a packet or two, for there is
no better way to put off such entrepreneurs than by becoming a customer. He couldn’t though, you see, due to his blood
pressure, though till the day he retired, he never hesitated to rub salt in
others’ wounds (particularly on issues of salary hikes for his star employees,
one of whom is the writer).
Sorry for the digression, but
let’s pull back. I was asked to manage
the investment in this new goldmine. Not
evaluate the investment opportunity, mind you, for that had been done by God
himself, but only manage it. Ranga got
his first 20 lakhs from our fund and sat down to make the iron-fortified
iodised salt in a stable, marketable form.
Iron – the lonely bugger - has a tendency to attract oxygen and, rusted
salt, you will admit, is unlikely to be the next big thing (unless you are
aiming for toxicity). Every quarter, I’d
visit his lab in Chennai and come away deeply impressed at the diligence, the
sheer assiduousness, the focus exhibited by the team of scientists, entirely
comprising him and his daughter. They’d
show me the R&D register of about a hundred combinations tried, without
success, and would watch my face carefully to gauge any expressions. There were none, since I had no clue anyway.
Ranga, nevertheless, remained the
eternal gentleman. Shortly after my
wedding, he informed me that his son-in-law’s Fiat car in Chennai was up for
sale, if I was interested. It was in very good condition, he affirmed, and
would be available at an attractive price of Rs. 62,000 (those were the days
before conflict-of-interest was coined as a watchword). I put the money down right away and drove the
car back to Bangalore with the air of an achiever. The car, I will assert, worked well for about
twenty five days. Around the fourth
weekend after the acquisition, I was driving the family out to Whitefield, when
a persistent rattling sound attracted our collective attention. I looked at all the cars on either side to
warn them of a problem with their vehicles, but was surprised to see some of
them point to mine. We stopped and I got
off to take a look. The exhaust pipe – a
long gloomy-looking metal barrel – was trailing the Fiat by a good two metres,
attached to the car by the thinnest of pieces, and enjoying itself in the
process, bouncing up and down the road.
There were some pieces of metal sticking out below the chassis as well:
no doubt these had, once upon a time, held the exhaust in place. When I looked under the chassis – the first
time I had done so, of course, much of what I saw was corroded, the rest was
rather brown, much as if the iron-fortified salt had been liberally applied for
keeps. Other than a smoky sort of smell,
all else seemed under control.
Well, one can be generous and
optimistic; these things happen. With a
cloth in my hand, I picked the exhaust pipe up gingerly and dropped it in the
boot and we decided to continue. The
engine though now sounded less like a car and more like a rather angry aircraft
carrying a bovine with an upset stomach.
Passers-by stopped to stare and shake their heads and, of course, one
could not stay immune to feedback. When,
a few minutes later, a couple of lights dropped off, I knew that I was pushing
my luck. That the vehicle brought us back home was a tribute to its will-power and desire to do the right thing by its owner.
The head mechanic at the garage
that repaired my car was delighted, for, as he explained gleefully, he had
never seen such a decrepit piece. After
changing about everything in it and pocketing the substantial cash (about 15%
of the cost of the car), he advised me to sell the car as soon as possible.
It was time to call Ranga
again. He was his usual courteous self
and, when I told him that I had decided to upgrade to a Maruti and wanted to
sell the Fiat in Chennai – I can lie to keep a friendship - he was deeply moved
and promised all help. I sent the car to
his place and he put an ad in the local paper and, on my behalf, actually negotiated
the same price that I had paid him, which convinced me that, when it came to
rip-offs, he was non-pareil.
Coincidentally, this period was
when the team of respected scientists, led by Mr. Rip-Off got their product
stable. They now had the solution. But, a solution to what? For, was there really a problem? Those who needed iron, I now learnt, were
getting free-of-cost pills from the Primary Health Centres and the Tamil Nadu
Government did not seem to fall over itself chasing the product. We had invested some more money (our Chairman was known to be persistent) and we virtually
owned the company, having put up all the risk capital. Ranga, in his gentle way, blamed the absence
of sales (there were no sales at all, a unique record of sorts) on the
bureaucracy, an easy and convenient villian.
In about three years, I gave up, and our Fund moved the investment to a
category that could be called “Hopelessly written off, with no Earthly chance
of any money coming back. Try Mars.”
I learnt later that some of our
money had gone into a new car, no doubt, for the son-in-law.
