Meet Inder Jaisinghani, forced to quit school at 15, started from a chawl and built Rs 49,000 crore company

Billionaire Inder Jaisinghani today commands a net worth of over Rs 9,000 crore. However, life remained a struggle for decades before the businessman and his brothers’ patience and perseverance bore fruit. Inder Jaisinghani is the chairman and managing director of Polycab India, leading electrical wires and cable company with a market cap of Rs 49,294 crore. 

Jaisinghani’s story starts as a 15-year-old who was forced to give up on education and take over the responsibility of providing for the family after his father passed away in 1968. He took over the small electrical shop started by his father in Mumbai’s Lohar chawl. Together with his brothers Girdhari, Ajay and Ramesh, Inder began expanding the small family business. 

In 1983, they founded the brand Polycab. They set up a small garage-like shop of 1,000 sq ft and experimented with wires. While his brothers focused on production, Inder went out taking care of sales and marketing of the business. After early struggle, they established a manufacturing unit in Gujarat’s Halol. Year by year, they grew their business and took the company from strength to strength.

A big milestone came in 2008 when World Bank’s private equity arm International Finance Corporation invested in Polycab and took a stake. The company expanded its product line to LED lighting, switches and electric fans in 2014. In 2019, the Jaisinghanis took the company public, leading to their worth skyrocketing. The Polycab stock got a tremendous boost from positive growth in the power sector in 2022. Inder Jaisinghani joined India's ever expanding list of billionaires in 2021.