Booming Business

Satyanarayan Nuwal’s Solar Industries India is seeing explosive growth

- MEGHA BAHREE

Satyanarayan Nuwal has accomplished many things in his long career, among them creating India’s largest maker of explosives (by revenue) and the first private supplier of explosives for warheads. He has also hit another milestone, as the 73 percent stake that he and his family hold in Solar Industries India, the company he founded in 1983, rose to be worth $1 billion.

Solar Industries’ shares have been a strong performer on the Bombay Stock Exchange for the last five years, up fivefold to a recent price around ₹1,000. The company now sports a market capitalisation of $1.4 billion. The company also featured in Forbes Asia’s list of 200 Best Under A Billion companies in 2019 and previously in 2010. Solar sells its products in 51 countries and has four overseas factories in Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey and Zambia. Two more are expected to come online in Australia and Ghana. Over the past year, Solar’s shares have risen by 9 percent on the back of a 28 percent increase in revenue to ₹25 billion ($354 million) in the year ending in March, and a 19 percent rise in net profit to ₹2.6 billion.

A native of a village in Rajasthan, Nuwal dropped out of school after class 10. He set up his first business to make ink in 1970 at the age of 18. It failed and he spent the next several years trying his hand at different ventures, including a leasing business and a transport company. All failed. In the late 1970s he moved to Maharashtra to work with a relative, sleeping in a railway station because he couldn’t afford an apartment.