Ramkrishna Dalmia's Controversial Legacy

The Entrepreneurs Who Built India - Ramkrishna Dalmia succeeds in positioning the early day pioneer in industries like sugar and cement and services like insurance and banking within the pantheon of India's entrepreneurial stalwarts even as author Sonu Bhasin acknowledges the complications that make Dalmia's legacy difficult to assess

- BY OJASVITA TRIVEDI

TITLE: Entrepreneurs Who Built IndiaRamkrishna Dalmia AUTHOR: Sonu Bhasin PUBLISHER: HarperCollins Publishers India PAGES: 240 PRICE: Rs 307

"Bhasin does not shy away from the controversies that surrounded Dalmia, but refuses to let them entirely define his legacy. Her work offers insights into a different era of Indian capitalsm"

SONU BHASIN'S PROFILE of Ramkrishna Dalmia in the HarperCollins series, Entrepreneurs Who Built India offers an insight into one of India's most controversial yet consequential industrialists. In an era when India's economic history rejoices post-liberalisation success stories, Bhasin illuminates the early day pioneers who laid the foundations of Indian industry.

The book traces Dalmia's remarkable trajectory from obscurity to becoming a titan of Indian industry, documenting how fate and his own formidable business acumen combined to create an empire spanning sugar, cement, insurance and banking. Bhasin emphasises Dalmia's “extraordinary business acumen” and “financial genius,” presenting him as a self-made industrialist whose contributions to India's economic development were substantial and lasting. The author's research reveals a man who built his industrial holdings from nothing, relying on vision, courage and an instinctive understanding of business opportunities that others failed to recognise.