Carving His Own Destiny

Few scions are gifted with the mettle and resourcefulness to change their family legacy and create their own business empires through innovation and enterprise, as has been demonstrated by Harshavardhan Neotia. The architect of the enormous realty business that defines the 1,500 crore Kolkata-based Ambuja Neotia Group in its present avatar, here is a man who literally has changed the way the city lives and conducts business, not to mention his numerous contributions to the social, cultural and economic fabric of society.

- Joseph Rozario

AMONG KOLKATA’S OLDEST MARWARI BUSINESS HOUSES is Tarachand Ghanshyamdas, a legendary firm whose interests ranged from banking and insurance to wholesale trade and commodity futures. Founded by Bhagoti Ram Poddar of Ramgarh, it boasted pan-India operations and even beyond in far-off places like Shanghai, China. It is to this historic firm that the Neotias of the Ambuja Neotia Group trace their genesis as a business house.

An illustrious past

“My forefathers came to Calcutta some time in the 1890s, and ever since the Neotia family has been an integral part of the city’s business scene,” says Harshavardhan Neotia, who as chairman of the 1,500 crore Ambuja Neotia Group heads what is one of the biggest real estate companies in eastern India. Asked how the Neotias came to be associated with the Poddars (of Tarachand Ghanshyamdas), he takes us back to the days of the patriarchs of the Ambuja Neotia Group—his late father Vinod Neotia, the late Suresh Neotia and their elder brother Bimal Kumar Poddar, who had been adopted by his great grandfather, Janki Prasad Poddar. Janki Prasad was a partner in Tarachand Ghanshyamdas, and this led to the three brothers joining the celebrated firm, which in the meantime had diversified into distribution of petroleum products, as a leading franchisee of Burmah Shell.

Winds of change

With the dissolution of Tarachand Ghanshyamdas sometime in the 1950s, the trio set up their own firm, Radhakrishna Bimal Kumar, but while continuing to function as a franchisee of Burmah Shell. The sad demise of Bimal Kumar Poddar in 1968 ushered change once again when brothers Suresh and Vinod took control and diversified into cement and fertiliser trading, marking the Neotias’ entry into the cement business, which was to be their mainstay for the next couple of decades.