Ajay Piramal Age, Wife, Family, Caste, Biography, Net Worth & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Ajay Piramal

• Does Ajay Piramal smoke?: No

• Does Ajay Piramal drink alcohol?: Not Known

• Ajay was born into a Marwari textile business family with roots in Rajasthan.

• His grandfather, Seth Piramal Chaturbhuj Makharia, had gone from rags to riches, who initially ran a cotton business and formed the Piramal business empire in 1920 after he came to Jhunjhunu’s Bagar town from Makhar village post the first world war.

• His grandfather is an important name in Bagar’s history who also has a postal stamp to his name. That is because he did a great amount of philanthropy work in the 1920s by doing development in Bagar. 

• His family name was “Makhariya, but his father used his grandfather’s name “Piramal” as his surname, which thereafter continued the tradition.

• His grandfather founded a textile business after he acquired ‘Morarjee Mills,’ India’s oldest and first registered cotton mill, Unit 2 of which was succeeded by his father, Gopikrishna Piramal.

• He fell in love with Swati, a Gujarati doctor, during his MBA, and married her even before completing the course. 

• Immediately after completing his MBA at the age of 22, he joined his father’s business of textiles and cutting tools. Ajay, along with his two elder brothers Dilip and Ashok used to jointly run his father’s businesses, but after his father’s death in 1979, Dilip separates his business and started ‘VIP Industries’ and ‘Blowplast’ in 1982-83. Five years later, in 1984, his other brother Ashok died of cancer, after which Ajay became the chairman of ‘Piramal Enterprises’ and was appointed the chairman and managing director of ‘Morarjee Mills,’ but the Datta Sawant strike of 1982 hampered the textile industry in Mumbai, which forced Ajay to go for some other options. 

• The same year, he acquired ‘Gujarat Glass’ and proved to be a decent investment for him.

• He has been fond of horses since his childhood and used to play polo in his younger days. 

• The turning point came in 1988 when he expanded his business into pharmaceuticals and healthcare sector and acquired ‘Nicholas Laboratories,’ a pharma company for ₹16 crore, and renamed it to ‘ Nicholas Piramal.’

• Although they knew nothing about this sector, they worked overtime, put the best practices, used competitive prices, indigenously-made drugs, and in just a matter of few years they rose to such a  level that they were able to compete with the heavyweights of that time like- GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer.

• In 1993, he split the company into pharma and real estate after acquiring healthcare company ‘Roche Products’ for ₹20 crore, and built ‘Crossroads,’ one of the first shopping malls in India.

• In 1996, pharma company ‘Boehringer Mannheim’ paid a commission to Piramal, after which he took over them, which strengthened the branded generics portfolio.

• The very next year, he did a joint venture with the consumer goods company ‘Reckitt & Colman’ that helped him build a strong sales team.

• At the age of 36, he got enrolled in the world-renowned Harvard Business School in the U.S. for his Advanced Management Programme (AMP), to sharpen-up his business skills. 

• In 2000, he acquired pharma company ‘Rhône-Poulenc’ for ₹236 crore, one of his biggest acquisition of that time.

• In 2005, he acquired the commercial real estate investment company ‘The Glass Group’ for ₹84 crore, and personally invested ₹180 crore to make a turnaround.

• He is an ardent follower of the “Bhagavad Gita” and inspired by it he co-authored a book called “The Light Has Come to Me” in 2006, for management lessons.

• In 2009, he acquired pharma company ‘Minrad’ for ₹188 crore, one of the biggest companies in the interventional pain management category.

• The same year, he founded a non-profit organization called ‘Piramal Foundation’ that aims at providing healthcare, education, livelihood creation and youth empowerment. For its outstanding work, the foundation was awarded the ‘Corporate Trailblazer’ award by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, instituted by India Today Group. 

• In 2010, he did one of the biggest deal of his life when he sold his domestic formulations business to Abbott Labs for $3.8 billion.

• In the early-2011, he had tons of money to invest but was running out of options to invest because at that time India was mired in corruption, bureaucratic red tape and unclear and changing government policies, which made it difficult for the businessmen to invest.

• In 2017, he entered the housing finance business with Piramal Finance Limited (PFL) through its wholly-owned subsidiary.

• His son Anand is the executive director of ‘Piramal Realty’ while his daughter Nandini manages the Piramal Group’s human resource department.

• The Piramal Group is a worldwide business conglomerate with 4 key companies: Piramal Enterprises Ltd, Piramal Glass, Piramal Realty and Piramal Foundation. 

• He is really fond of ties, which his wife exclusively buys from ‘Leonard’ in Paris.

• The Piramals have been family friends with The Ambanis since the 1980s and in 2018 they turn this friendship to family relations when his son, Anand got engaged to Mukesh Ambani‘s daughter, Isha Ambani.