How it all began for Ludhiana’s Hero family

It all began in the early years of the twentieth century, when Thakuri Devi (my grandmother) married Bahadur Chand Munjal (my grandfather). The couple were blessed with seven sons and a daughter, Santosh Kumari. The eldest, Bal Mukund, was quickly followed by Sadanand, Dayanand, Satyanand, Sohan Lal, Brijmohan Lall and Om Prakash.

In 1923, the year my father (Brijmohan) was born, Kamalia was a peaceful town in the prosperous Lyallpur district of Punjab (later Faislabad and, now, Toba Tek Singh district). Situated a few kilometres from the banks of the Ravi and 185 km from Lahore, its mixed population of Hindus and Muslims numbered less than 20,000.

Kamalia became an important agricultural hub and textile centre, manufacturing both mill-made and traditional handmade cloth. As Kamalia gained in importance as a centre for trade in agricultural commodities, my grandfather began dealing in foodgrains. He opened a small wholesale shop. Gradually, his business expanded and he became an important supplier. Uncle Om Prakash often repeated what his father had told him and his brothers: ‘If you make honesty your business, you will prosper in any business you take up.’

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The family’s day would start with havan, the Vedic ritual promoted by the Arya Samaj. Like all members of the Samaj, my grandparents were strict vegetarians. My grandmother followed a tradition common among Hindus and Sikhs in undivided Punjab in those days; before every meal, the first roti would be broken and one part offered to a cow, another to a dog and the third to the birds. Only then would the family sit down to eat. The ritual was based on the belief that all living creatures are entitled to a share of the earth’s bounty.

My grandmother also subscribed to the Guru Granth Sahib. She would perform kar sewa at the gurdwara every morning by sweeping and swabbing the floors. The Munjal brothers were exposed to both traditions.

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A major factor responsible for maintaining family harmony was my grandmother’s insistence on respecting elders. This was non-negotiable. Not only was it incumbent upon all the children to respect their parents, but the younger ones were expected to defer to their older brothers, who in turn, would look after them. The habit stayed with them through their lives; my father would touch his older brothers’ feet every time they met, even if it was three times in a day.

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My grandfather’s legendary honesty stood the test of adversity. During Partition, when normal life and commerce had been disrupted, food was scarce. The brothers had managed to find a packet of food in an abandoned building. Bahadur Chand asked them where they had found it. When they told him, he said, ‘Take it back!’, and explained that someone must have obtained the food, perhaps at great risk, for his own family and stashed it away. Did they want to fill their stomachs at another’s expense? Abashed, his sons returned the packet of food and the family went hungry.

The Munjal brothers grew up in a time of great economic and political turmoil. The rising tide of nationalism was gaining strength across India, even as the common man laboured under the double burden of poverty and unemployment. By the time my father reached his teens, in the mid-1930s, India was reeling under the impact of the Great Depression of 1929. The agricultural sector, in particular, was severely affected.

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Against this backdrop of pervasive economic hardship, Bahadur Chand Munjal’s sons were reluctant to study beyond matriculation; money was short, and it was imperative to supplement the family income. On the other hand, joining their father’s business was not an option, it just wasn’t big enough.

In 1938, at the age of fifteen, my father found himself gainfully employed. The job involved parking himself at the sugarcane fields while the harvest was underway and counting the number of bundles being loaded. It was gruelling work because he had to stand throughout the day and remain alert.

His hard work and integrity endeared him to his supervisor. He worked for around five years, but the family realised that his talents clearly demanded a larger canvas. But where?

The answer lay to the west, in Quetta, not far from the Afghanistan border (around 150 km). My father’s older brothers — Sadanand, Dayanand and Satyanand — were already working at Quetta (‘fort’ in Pashto). The capital of Baluchistan province was referred to as a ‘mini-London’ because it was dotted with high-rise buildings. There were jobs aplenty.

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My uncles encouraged my father to apply for a job (in Quetta). The snag was that all the openings were for office-oriented clerical jobs. His brothers were mechanics and family discussions usually revolved around physical work rather than secretarial positions. To his surprise, the ordnance factory selected him for a clerk’s position. In time, his talents and ability to finish chores ahead of time came to the attention of the British officers.

He bypassed his peers and a stellar career appeared to be in store. My father always stressed the importance of his stint at the ordnance factory. He said: ‘(It) provided me with my first English lessons; from them (the British) I also learnt the importance of discipline at the workplace. I learnt about punctuality. I learnt about commitment and the importance of doing the job at hand. I learnt the basics of managing logistics and materials.’

The most important thing he and his siblings learnt was the maintenance of bicycles. The factory imparted training in two kinds of machinery, which prima facie appeared to have nothing to do with each other: guns and bicycles. The latter, I assume, were valuable to the war effort from the communications point of view. The skills the brothers picked up would alter the course of their lives.

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After Uncle Satyanand returned from Quetta, Uncle Dayanand asked him to go to Lahore, where a friend was running a bicycle shop. Uncle Dayanand, too, got involved in the business. Soon after, Uncle Om Prakash joined him. Together, they set up a small shop for bicycle parts and repairs in 1944.

In 1946, there were massive floods in Amritsar. The brothers briefly moved to Agra but later on, they shifted to Ludhiana. They opened a small bicycle parts shop in Miller Ganj. Soon after, they set up a workshed for the manufacture of bicycle parts and assembly of bicycles. They continued to do this on a modest scale, till the birth of Hero Cycles in 1956.

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The Mountbatten Plan accepted the principle of Partition. Would Amritsar, where Dayanand and Om Prakash had set up shop, go to India as they had anticipated?

The Munjal family, like all the Hindus in the region, had to run for their lives. Somehow, Uncle Satyanand escorted his still fledgling family, including my father and grandparents, out of town. The rest also congregated at Amritsar and from there, we left for Panipat where my uncle worked in a factory that made blankets.

Partition left India independent but in chaos. Amritsar had become a border city. The turbulent climate put the brakes on the Munjals’ fledgling business in bicycle parts. Even worse, riots broke out. The horrors of those days never completely left my uncles.

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My mother’s family had settled in Panipat and it was here that my parents tied the nuptial knot in 1948. All the brothers were on the move in search of opportunities, like thousands of other Partition refugees.

Uncle Sadanand had returned to Delhi and Satyanand joined him. Meanwhile, Uncle Bal Mukund had moved to Agra from Delhi and opened a bicycle business, and was joined by my father for a while. The income wasn’t enough.

Fortuitously, my mother’s cousin, Tarachand Mehta, decided to set up a business in Delhi and invited my father to join him as his partner.

While my father was changing cities and exploring new vistas, his brothers Dayanand and Om Prakash had moved to Ludhiana.

It was a fledgling if ancient town, with little infrastructure. Founded around a village called Mir Hota in the fifteenth century, it derives its name from the Lodhi dynasty (Lodhi-ana or town of the Lodhis).

The town was briefly occupied by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1805, but he later ceded it to the British, who promptly established a permanent cantonment there. In 1947, a third of the population, comprising Muslims, had decamped to Pakistan.

The void left by the Muslim community was quickly filled by enterprising refugees, the Munjals among them, who would power a quiet industrial revolution. In later years, it would come to be known as the city of millionaires.

The Munjal brothers set up a makeshift enterprise in bicycle spare parts and repairs on Gill Road. Uncle Dayanand could not have imagined that their small business would one day burgeon into a billion dollar empire.

— Excerpted with permission from the publisher