That was his turning point and he never looked back after that. That dream took him from his rural dwellings to the nearest city – Solapur. The size of his contracts increased and very soon he was known as a Contractor.
From there he expanded his footprint into rural banking knowing the pangs of a rural borrower that he himself was at some point in time. This venture too started very small and today has branched into three distinctive financial organizations set up under his stewardship.
A seed of a Dream that was sown in a small village outside Solapur brought him out of that village and he was on the road to create a bigger than dreamt entity. He began small. Today his business philosophy is rooted in the belief that everything born in this universe was first small. Whether it’s the Blue Whale or whether it’s the largest sequoia tree or whether the richest person in this world – it all began small. Time Flies, they say. In Bapu’s case, he flew with Time. The small town boy had arrived.
Thus was born the Lokmangal Group of Companies with Bapu as its Founder Chairman. Today, more than two and a half decades later the Group is diversified into sugar refining, ethanol, dairy, banking, education, entrepreneur development, garments, biotech, farmer development, fertilizer etc.
The group has blended a lot of ‘Not for Profit Organizations’ that are created as a ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’(CSR),wing of the ‘For Profit Organizations’ of the group.
Subhash Deshmukh never forgot his humble roots. In fact he embraced it and was soon a champion for the poor and the plethora of social causes in and around Solapur, Maharashtra. It was therefore not surprising that in a very short time he was known for his championing the needs of the poor and doing what he could to alleviate those needs. He is known for the large social impacting programs that his companies execute out of the profits they generate. In fact he began practising Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR much before the word got to be as Fashionable as it is today.
A classic example is the Mass Marriage which is now conducted every year since 2004. It has been lauded as an example of how CSR Projects must be managed and executed for its efficiency, planning and roll out.
Identifying, the pulse of the people is necessary to address social issues. Expensive marriages in rural areas are a major cause of debt, which often causes a landowner to become a poor farm worker. Bapu started an innovative initiative to address this problem – mass wedding programs that are offered for all religions. This enables farmers to live a life of social respect without mortgaging their land to meet the cost of the marriage. These debts to finance marriages cost often become killer debt burdens. Unable to bear the crushing interest and principal payments these borrowers often resort to suicides. Recognizing this,Bapu actively supports the mass marriage initiative and till date more than 2500 couples have been brought today in holy matrimony under the aegis of this organization.
Just this one project is now is a bi-annual project spread over two geographical locations and is elaborate day long event where hundreds of thousands of people congregate in an almost festive atmosphere. Last year 100,000 people had lunch at Solapur, Maharashtra where the event was held and almost 7,000 volunteers took part in the event to ensure that it went off hassle free.
Bapu is widely known in Maharashtra not only for the businesses he created. He believes that Government(s) alone cannot achieve anything sustainable and meaningful unless enterprises big and small, businessmen and enterprises come together. If they do not, our farmers and the poor in our rural spaces of our country will remain poor. Due to lip service, social upliftment programs will be rolled out one after another. Government and Politicians must partner with Business houses and their employees in order to administer social Life Transforming programs. Without such a partnership in place, efficacy is questionable.
Bapu’s ability to churn out Leaders is immense. Not a single one of these businesses is personally supervised by him. That speak about the volumes of the man and his abilities. Today the vision that causes him sleepless nights is not business expansion, it is the desire to create entrepreneurs and to build the leadership bank for India’s Socio-Political development. He believes that B-schools are sprouting across this nation of ours spewing similar graduates with similar ideas. Almost like a factory line producing similar products. Businessmen are caught up with creating more businesses because growth is the mantra, stop growing and you’re dead.
At a recent speech he delivered, Bapu said, “Leaders are not being developed. Businessmen, Entrepreneurs are not being mentored. Enterprises are not being incubated fast enough. If not now, when? If new companies and ideas are not incubated now when will they become mutli million Rupee enterprises? The challenges for small businessmen are immense. Banks talk about financing SME’s but the challenges refuse to go away. Venture Capitalists dont venture into the rural spaces as much as they show an appetite for risk in the urban jungles of this country. The ratio gap between Employment and Entrepreneurs is not encouraging in comparison with the US, China and Brazil or even Japan.Unless that trend changes quickly, we are going to be faced with a huge problem, unemployability is already the next big problem not unemployment.”
“We need to develop Entrepreneurs,” he exhorted a group of students who were graduating from his Lokmangal Group’s Colleges. “We need to teach people how to create wealth. The GaribiHatao slogans are dead. This is not the time for sloganeering. This is the time for action. The gap between the rural and urban population of this country is growing by the minute; simply because there is not enough effort to market the farmer’s produce to take it to National or Global consumer. The kind of waste that is being created in Agriculture is simply not ignorable. The bulk of tomato produced is wasted in every rural farm because there is not a sustainable and feasible way to store it.”
This further stems from his belief that unless there is active public participation in social upliftment programs, our country will become a tragic case of how we the people of a country turned a blind eye to the suffering of our rural brethren. Therefore instead of being an armchair critic like most of us tend to be, Bapu decided to act. Today the number of programs that are executed speak volumes about the man and his vision. These are social, cultural, sport and even literary projects.
A professor of a reputed Management Institute noted: I have seen the project management capability of these projects and as someone who has worked in and on professionally managed projects of scale, credibility and status impacting nature, Bapu’s projects are flawless.
Mind you, most of these projects are not managed by B-School grads, they are all managed by people who simply call themselves, “Bapu’s People”.
Subhash Deshmukh is there to inspire, motivate and train you to become your Dream.
