Parth Jindal talks about carving a niche as creates his own path
- by Gouri Shah
Dressed in a navy blue suit and pink tie, 28-year-old Parth Jindal is the picture of contentment. Seated in his office at the mega JSW Centre in Mumbai, the recent dad is radiating joy that only a new parent (deprived of sleep but high on happiness) can. “My respect for all mothers has gone through the roof. There is a baby in the house after a long time, and everyone is pitching in. That’s the best part about living in India,” he says. But don’t be fooled; when it comes to work and his family’s thriving business legacy, Jindal is not just a legacykeeper— he’s ambitious, entrepreneurial and eager to carve his own path.
Name game
Image: Shumbham Lodha
His father, Sajjan Jindal, built the US$13billion empire on the back of their steel business, which currently accounts for 80 per cent of group revenues. Jindal no doubt comes from privilege, but in a remarkably short time this Brown University and Harvard Business School alumnus has managed to gain credibility and establish his own brand of leadership at JSW Group.
He began by spending two years working abroad—a hedge fund in New York followed by JFE Steel (JV partners of JSW Steel) in Japan. He moved back home and after learning the ropes was given his big chance to prove himself. “Six months and complete freedom,” he recalls. Jindal went on to turn around their loss-making entities JSW Cement and JSW Steel USA. “Before that, I was just Sajjanji’s son,” he says, having earned his stripes.
Good sport
The younger Jindal is determined to steer the conglomerate into new industries— paint, cement, and sports—led by his vision to build India’s first publicly traded sports company. Apart from Reliance Industries, the JSW Group is the only other entity positioned with interests that pan the Indian sporting ecosystem. They are represented in the top three sports leagues through its teams Bengaluru FC (Indian Super League), Delhi Capitals (Indian Premier League) and Haryana Steelers (Pro Kabbadi League). They have also invested 100 crore into creating India’s first high-performance training centre, the Inspire Institute of Sport in Vijayanagar, and are managing some of India’s most promising Olympic talents such as Neeraj Chopra, Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik and Vikas Krishan Yadav.
While sports ventures have got them adoration and recognition with fans, the other two businesses—paints and cement—are likely to prove more challenging. But Jindal is confident. “There are very few industries where a new company has entered an area (steel) dominated by the Tatas and outdone them,” referring to his father’s journey. “When a market is growing, there is always space for more players.”
It’s a mix of his keen sense of business and youthful energy that seems to be the key to his success. He says, “One night in college, many years ago, my roommate convinced me to climb Europe’s tallest mountain. The next morning, I woke up to a bill of US$10,000 on my card. I had bought mountaineering equipment and a ticket to Russia.” Today, he tells me he’s scaled Mt Elbrus, Mt Kilimanjaro and Naya Kanga, among others. And he’s planning to climb Mount Blanc in September. Jindal can sometimes be impulsive, but unlike most he’s not just wandering into new territory, he’s also unafraid to work to get to the summit, quite literally sometimes.
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