‘He had five kurta-dhotis, three suits’: KM Birla tells Nikhil Kamath about grandfather BK Birla

Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, said that when his grandfather Basant Kumar Birla passed away five years ago in 2019, he owned only five pairs of kurtas-dhotis and three suits. Birla said that his father, Aditya Vikram Birla, his grandfather, BK Birla, and his great-grandfather, Ghanshyam Das Birla, were all products of their times and therefore strikingly different people.

Birla spoke to Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath in the latest episode of his show ‘People by WTF’. “My grandfather passed away about five years ago and I went and opened his closet looking for something. I had five kurtas and dhotis and three suits. That was it. Getting a new suit made was like a major project for my grandmother and aunt. That’s the kind of life they were used to and that’s the kind of life we ​​were exposed to through them,” Kamath said.

He said his great-grandfather was a product of a pre-independent India, and his grandfather a product of a time of scarcity, when India was in its nascent stage as a developing nation. “So I mean you lived within your means and didn’t spend too much. It was a very different mental landscape at that time. My father grew up in liberalized India and I believe that the companies you run also shape you as a person. It’s not just the other way around. So they were all quite different,” he said.

The industrialist said his father, Aditya Vikram Birla, had a broader vision about business. “My father was more risk-taking and wanted to expand his business outside the country more aggressively. It was also a different India, so bigger bets could be made than, say, my grandfather. So yes, they were three very different people. I had a great relationship with all of them. Each equation was very different, as you can imagine. So yeah, a lot of love, a lot of encouragement and laughter,” Birla said.

Recalling his youth, Birla called his great-grandfather, with whom he spent hours on Sundays, his best friend. He said his grandfather also loved him immensely. His father, he recalled, was a “tough taskmaster.” “When I started going to work, I looked at it like I hadn’t really experienced it before,” he said.

Birla said his father required him to stay on top of things all the time, but also gave him a lot of space. “He was also very motivated and very demanding of himself. So I think it was fair,” Birla said.