Savitri Jindal: The Matriarch

Image: Madhu Kapparat for Forbes India

Savitri Jindal

She is the quintessential Indian woman of a bygone era. A simple saree drapes her diminutive frame, with its edge arching over the forehead. She is happiest when talking about her sons and late husband. None of the trappings of wealth in her sprawling glass and concrete bungalow in Delhi —the M.F. Husain on the living room wall or Tyeb Mehta or Manu Parekh — seems to affect her.

Meet India’s richest woman, Savitri Jindal, with a net worth of $14.4 billion.

The 60-year-old is as traditional as an Indian woman can get. Until her husband O.P. Jindal’s death in 2005, she didn’t even ask how much money he made. She was quite happy playing the role of the mother and wife. “In our family, women do not venture out. We remain in charge of the house while the men take care of everything outside,” she says.

But the death of her husband in a helicopter crash in 2005 catapulted this mother of nine to the chairmanship of the $12-billion (revenue) O.P. Jindal group with extensive interests in power and steel. In practice, however, it is her four sons — Prithviraj, Sajjan, Ratan and Naveen — who run the businesses. But the matriarch is the glue that binds the entire family together and the inheritor of the late Jindal’s political constituency.

Savitri Jindal’s ascent to the top has proved lucky for the group. Its turnover  has nearly quadrupled in the last five years; her sons are coming into their own, taking companies public, striking foreign alliances and making acquisitions.

But Savitri Jindal herself remains focussed on her public life. She typically keeps away from the hurly burly of business and spends three days a week in Hisar constituency which she represents in the Haryana Legislative Assembly and where her late husband had begun his career five decades ago by setting up a bucket manufacturing unit.

O.P. Jindal was one of India’s greatest uninstructed engineers, his biographer Anil Dharker writes. He often would design most of the machines at his factories himself. It is this engineering acumen that helped him set up a vast industrial empire within a few years. Jindal set up factories across India, including Jindal Ferro Alloys in Visakhapatnam and an integrated steel project in Chhattisgarh (then Madhya Pradesh).

Much later in life, O.P. Jindal brought this innovative thinking to succession planning. He devised a structure in which each of his four sons would hold one-fifth of the promoter shareholding in each company. He would hold another fifth. This meant each son would be in charge of his own slice of the empire, but have a share in his brothers’ businesses as well. The philosophy extended to the house that Jindal built in Delhi where there are four separate quarters linked by a common kitchen. All four sons (Sajjan when in Delhi) and their families stay in the same house.

“Jindal sahab had ensured that our sons had independent domains but stayed together as a family. Even today, they are independent and do not interfere in each other’s work. However, if one of them starts a new project or has a problem, the brothers sit together and talk about it,’’ Savitri Jindal says.

This solidarity is reaffirmed at least twice a year. On March 31 and August 7, respectively the death and birth anniversaries of O.P. Jindal, the family makes time to be together.
This and the numerous chats the brothers have on family matters are overseen by Savitri Jindal.

While she is determined to keep things this way, there are also plans to release the cross-holdings and allow each of her sons to explore his business interests independently. Savitri Jindal inherited her husband’s shareholding in the group. Her share in each company will later pass on to the son heading it.

But she would retain the late Jindal’s passion for public work. She has continued the family’s work on social welfare projects and likes to remain in direct contact with villagers in her constituency. “We have a tradition that wherever we set up a factory, we also set up a school and hospital,” she says.

Her public presence is a sharp contrast to her early years in the family when she hardly stepped out. “I had never even been to the Hisar market. Jindal sahab used to say that everyone in the market was a relative and elder to you. And women in our house were not supposed speak to elders,’’ she says. But change has accompanied wealth.

Savitri Jindal’s focus remains on family leadership. “Jindal sahab used to say that the workers in our factories are our extended family and we should take care of them. He thought the same of his constituency and I am trying to keep that up,’’ she says.