INDIA'S OLIVE OIL CRUSADER

As the son of industrialist Ramkrishna Dalmia, Vidyanidhi Dalmia needs no introduction to India's corporate firmament, but his pioneering efforts to introduce and popularise olive oil in India makes for a story that can be told and retold.

- Joseph Rozario

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE Dalmia business empire was second to only the Tatas and the Birlas. Founded by industrialist Ramakrishna Dalmia, it boasted myriad businesses and was counted among the pioneers of Indian industry. it is to this great industrialist and his wife Saraswati that Vidyanidhi Dalmia (or Vn Dalmia) was born in 1954.

The Dalmia business empire, incidentally, continues to influence the world of enterprise some eight decades later and the extended Dalmia family and its relatives still control companies in india and abroad that boast an aggregated turnover in excess of Us $15 billion!

Formative years

VN Dalmia graduated with a Ba (honours) degree in economics from Delhi’s shri ram College of Commerce, and then moved on to the University of Virginia’s renowned Darden school of Business for his MBA. his journey as an entrepreneur goes back to the days when he was the commercial director of Dalmia Biscuits Pvt Ltd and executive director of Dalmia Dadri Cement Ltd—companies his father had founded together with his brother Jaidayal Dalmia and son-in-law shanti Prasad Jain, under the then Dalmia-Jain Group. “Dalmia Biscuits then was india’s third-largest producer of branded biscuits and confectionery, and i oversaw major expansion of the company together with revenue growth,” says Dalmia. Besides Dalmia Biscuits, he was also the executive director of Dalmia Dadri Cement Limited—one of the few cement producers in north india at the time—where he was able to conceive and undertake a major revival plan for the ailing company, with the involvement of central and state governments, banks and labour unions.