Last Updated on 17/08/2024 by wccexam Desk
Mobile phone has become an extremely important thing for people in today’s time, but there are also such billionaires who do not keep a phone. They have immense wealth. They have donated crores of rupees. They live a simple life, which can be guessed only by the fact that despite having immense wealth, they drive a car worth Rs 6 lakh. His name is Ramamurthy Thyagarajan, who is the founder of Shriram Group. Let us know how he made millions of crores of wealth from a new business.
Ramamurthy Tyagarajan started a small company in the 1960s, which was a chit fund company. Today it has become a big financial institution (Shriram Finance). This company gives loans to low-income people, who are refused by the bank. Also, this company provides loans to the poor for trucks, tractors and other vehicles.
After starting the company, the billionaire saw that banks were not providing loans to a large section of the population. He recognized this opportunity and started giving loans to truck drivers and low-income people for commercial vehicles. In this way, he created a new market for business. The result was that his company started growing rapidly and today the market cap of this company is $ 8.5 billion. This company employs 108,000 people in sectors ranging from insurance to stockbroking.
Employees say that Thyagarajan lives a very simple life. For many years he has driven a Hyundai hatchback car, which he bought for about Rs 6 lakh. He does not even have a mobile phone. He says that the phone distracts his attention. Surprisingly, he sold his stake in a company worth $750 million and donated the money. Thyagarajan is now 86 years old and plays the role of an advisor.
He is such a big philanthropist that he gave all his stake in Shriram companies to a group of employees and transferred them to the Shriram Ownership Trust, which was set up in 2006. The beneficiaries of this permanent trust are 44 group officials.
In an interview with Bloomberg News, Thyagarajan said he entered the business to prove that lending to people without a credit history or regular income is not as risky as it is perceived to be. “I was never excited about making life better for people who already have a good life,” he said. Instead, he wanted to “take some of the pain out of people’s lives who are getting into problems.”
In his three-hour interview with Bloomberg, Thyagarajan said that he neither needed money then nor now. He prefers simple tasks.
Source (PTI) (NDTV) (HINDUSTANTIMES)