Bhavarlal Jain, founder of pioneering micro-irrigation firm Jain Irrigation Systems, died Thursday after a brief illness in Mumbai. Jain, who owned 30% in the Bombay Stock Exchange-listed firm, had featured among India’s richest in 2010 with a fortune of more than $600 million. The second-largest micro-irrigation company in the world, Jain Irrigation has revenues of over $1 billion, 30 factories and supplies to 116 countries. The patriarch was the subject of a Forbes Asia cover story back in 2008.
Known as “Bhau” or big brother, Jain was born in 1937 in a village in Maharashtra’s rural heartland to a family of famers and petty traders. Having bolder ambitions, he moved to what was then Bombay to study commerce and law, after which he prepared to join the civil service. But his mother, who never went to school and had lost nine children before Jain was born, urged him to do something that would help the cattle and birds.
Bhavarlal Jain, son of the soil
Jain began trading in agricultural products–tractors, fertilizers, seeds and pesticides. He stumbled into his niche when he saw a drip irrigation system in 1985 at an agricultural trade show in Fresno, California and decided to start making them in India, targeting small farmers. His first attempts to procure the technology from Israel were futile as no one was willing to partner him. He persuaded James Hardie Irrigation of Australia to license its technology, but it took him more than a year to convince India’s hidebound bureaucracy to let him acquire the know-how.
It was a tough sell to India’s marginal farmers who could ill afford the $400-per-acre cost of the system. But with a timely government subsidy and the slogan “More crop per drop” , which underscored the higher yields farmers could get with less water, Jain made headway. So far it has reached 4.5 million farmers.
Emboldened the company expanded into fertilizers, plastic sheets, food processing and solar water heaters. In 1994 it raised $30 million on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, using it for a slew of new ventures, including merchant banking, granite quarrying, software and telecom. All of these failed and the company almost went under. A timely bailout by a private equity firm helped put Jain Irrigation back on track.
Jain, who described himself as a dreamer, had long handed over charge of operations to his four sons. The family lived together in a house in Jain Hills, Jalgaon, headquarters of his business group. The 1,000 acre campus, converted from virtually barren land to a verdant landscape, is testimony to what micro-irrigation can achieve. It includes an agricultural institute to train farmers on the latest techniques of farming and irrigation.
A staunch Gandhian, Jain was always dressed in white and ate only home-cooked vegetarian food. Despite seven heart attacks, two bypass surgeries and a stroke, Jain never stopped working and was always full of ideas for new projects. His days began with a morning walk to the highest point of Jain Hills, where he mediated and did yoga. He was often accompanied by his grandchildren and company executives.