Ghanshyam Das Birla

He married twice in his lifetime. He had 3 sons from his first wife Durga Devi – Laxmi Niwas, Sudershan Kumar & Siddharth while his second wife Maheshwari Devi had two sons – K.K. Birla & Basant Kumar.

Birla died at the age of 90 on June 11th, 1983.

Ghanshyam Das Birla was born in Pilani, a small village in Rajasthan state of India, into a Marwari Maheshwari family. His grandfather was a Marwari businessman and used to lend money for a living.

Birla left Pilani for Calcutta in order to start his own business as he wanted to prove himself. He successfully established a dealership in cotton and as his business escalated he came back to Pilani again and got a mansion constructed for the family.

Later, Birla took over the family business and decided to expand it—he turned money lending business into manufacturing. He started a jute enterprise irrespective of the fact that British policies and rule supported European merchants more than Indian businessmen at that time.

He saved his business many a times from getting shut down by the British and Scottish merchants. They tried to establish their monopolist ways by trying to pester him and harm his jute firm. It was during World War I when there was a supply problem all through the British Empire that Birla’s business became a great success.

It was with such success that Birla decided to further diversify his business and with an investment of 5 million Indian Rupees he formally set up the Birla Brothers Limited in 1919. He established a factory in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh in the same year.

Besides being a successful businessman, he was also active in politics and social service. In 1926 he was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly. He was the founding president of Harijan Sevak Sangh, an organization founded by Mahatma Gandhi.

Birla established and pioneered a lot of new concepts in India during his time—he started a manufacturing business in Calcutta at a time when Indian businessmen were not given any preference over the British and Scottish merchants. He slowly expanded it into various industries like cement, chemicals, rayon, steel tubes, tea, banking, etc.