He lights up your life ; Acquiring Havells for the princely sum of Rs 10 lakh in 1971, he moved up from being a trader in electrical equipment to a manufacturer of switchgear.

The year was 1958. Qimat Rai Gupta, a young school teacher fromMalerkotla in Punjab, had reached Delhi to pursue his dream ofstarting his own business. He invested his entire savings of Rs10,000 a substantial amount then to launch a small trading businessin cables and wires at the Bhagirath Place wholesale electricalgoods market.

Over the next decade, the school teacher's business acumen andperseverance yielded rich dividends and he took the next step:backward, into manufacturing. But he needed a brand. What betterthan Havells, with its vaguely foreign twang? Acquiring Havells forthe princely sum of Rs 10 lakh in 1971, he moved up from being atrader in electrical equipment to a manufacturer of switchgear.

Indeed, that laid the foundation for the success story that isHavells India today. Reminisces Gupta's son Anil, who is now theJoint Managing Director of Havells India: "What sets my father apartis his calculated risk taking abilities. He is never satisfied andis always looking to do something new. That is why he moved on tomanufacturing, even though the trading business had taken root.

Over the next couple of decades, Qimat Rai Gupta aggressivelyexpanded his manufacturing base in Delhi. In the '70s and '80s,Havells started making changeover switches, HBC fuses, and miniaturecircuit breakers (in a JV with Geyer, Germany). By 1990, revenueshad hit Rs 30 crore.

But the turning point for Havells came in 1992, when Anil joinedthe family business armed with an economics degree from Delhi's ShriRam College and an MBA from Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Anil had global ambitions for the group: "I felt that the grouphad to adopt a two-pronged strategy. One, our products should beworld class in terms of quality and technology. Two, we shouldrapidly scale up our distribution network, both in India and abroad,to gain market share.

To achieve this, he gradually shut down the old manufacturingplants. All the ten plants that Havells today has are new and havethe latest technologies. At the same time, he expanded the productportfolio. Today, Havells makes industrial cables and wires,switches (Crabtree), fans, compact fluorescent lamps and lightingfixtures. It's among the top three in most of its products and isincreasing market share with some aggressive brand building.

Now, Anil and his core team are planning to take the Havellsbrand global. The acquisition of Sylvania, the world's fourth-largest lighting and fixture brand, has given it a distributionnetwork spanning 50 countries, mainly in Latin America and Europe,and a diverse product portfolio.

Today, the school teacher lords over a Rs 5,400-crore businessemploying over 7,000 people. Its strong brands, large distributionnetwork and diverse product portfolio will be its key strengthsdriving its growth internationally.