Harsh Goenka
Harsh Goenka (born December 1957) has been the chairman Enterprises]], one of India’s largest business groups, since 1988, when he took over from his father R. P. Goenka. Today RPG is a major player in domains like power generation and distribution, information technology, infrastructure, tyres, plantations and pharmaceuticals, with an annual turnover of around US $2.0 billion.
History
The Goenka family belongs to the Marwadi community of money-lenders and tradesmen, and hails originally from Rajasthan in western India. As early as the 19th century, an enterprising member of the family, Ramdutt Goenka, set up base in Kolkata, which was then the capital of India, and a major commercial hub of the British Empire. The family prospered in its traditional vocations of money-lending and trade. It was in the 1970s that Rama Prasad Goenka (b.1930) leveraged the family’s wealth to take over a variety of industries and corporates and thus create a ready-made business conglomerate. Many of these corporates were stressed due to the socialistic policies and the “License-Raj” then prevalent in India, and others were in the marked due to disagreements within the families of their owners. In a series of takeovers, RPG acquired such companies relatively cheap and used his financial resources and business acumen to make them viable. In this way, by the end of the 20th century, RPG had cobbled together a significant business empire. The Goenka business empire is remarkable for two things: firstly, the fact that none of their major ventures were founded by them, all being take-overs; and secondly, the resultant diversity and incoherence of these companies.
In 2010, Rama Prasad ‘RP’ Goenka formally divided his business empire (which by then enjoyed a revenue of Rs. 16,000 crores) between his two sons, Harsh and Sanjiv. The following major companies fell to Harsh’s share:
RPG Enterprises was founded by his father R. P. Goenka in 1979 and has its origins in the Goenka business family, which has been at the forefront of business in India for over a hundred years. From pioneering organized retail to running the country’s first private sector power generating plants the group has also forged successful alliances with several of the world’s leading corporations. Group company, KEC International[1] is one of the largest power transmission EPC companies in the world. CEAT is amongst the leading tyre companies in the country and a leader in neighboring Sri Lanka,
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