Aditya Birla Group Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla said that when his grandfather Basant Kumar Birla passed away five years ago in 2019, he had only five pairs of kurta-dhoti and three suits. Birla said that his father, Aditya Vikram Birla, his grandfather, BK Birla and his grandfather, Ghanshyam Das Birla, were all products of their time and, therefore, very distinctly different people.
Birla spoke to Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath in the latest episode of his show 'People by WTF'. “My grandfather died about five years ago, and I would go and open his cupboard and look for something. He had five kurtas and three dhotis and suits. That's about it. Getting him to make him a new suit was like a major project for my grandmother and aunt. We were also exposed to that kind of life that they were used to,” Kamath said.
He said that his grandfather was a product of pre-independence India and his grandfather was a product of a time of scarcity, when India was in the new phase of becoming a developing nation. “So I mean you didn't spend too much because you lived in your life. It was a very different mindset then. My father grew up in liberalized India, and I think the businesses you run shape you as a person. It's not just the other way around. So they were all very different,” he said.
The industrialist said his father Aditya Vikram Birla made his vision of business more expansive. “My father was a risk taker who wanted to expand his business outside the country more aggressively. It was a different India too, so you could make bigger bets than my grandfather. So yes, all three of them were different people. I had a great relationship with all of them. As you can imagine, each equation was very different. So yes, lots of love and good cheer and laughter,” Birla said.
Recalling his youth, Birla called his grandfather, with whom he spent hours on Sundays, his best friend. He said that his grandfather also loves him immensely. He recalled that his father was a “hard worker”. “When I started going to work, I saw him as someone I hadn't experienced before,” he said.
Birla said his father always asked him to stay on top of things, but he gave him a lot of space. “He was also very driven and demanding of himself. So I think it is fair,” Birla said.