Richest Indian In Australia: How 'Presence Of Mind' Changed Fortunes Of A Billionaire - Company Founded With Late Mother Is Now Worth Rs 86,000 Crore

Success Story: Vivek Chaand Sehgal is a well-known billionaire businessman in both Australia and India. The 66-year-old is a co-founder of the Motherson Group, which has annual revenues of $12.5 billion. This empire is estimated to be worth Rs 86,180 crore in business terms. In Australia, he is reportedly the richest Indian. With a net worth of $2.8 billion, he was listed in the 2014 Forbes list of billionaires at position 659. He is presently the chairman of the auto parts manufacturer Samvardhana Motherson Group, which he cofounded in 1975. The group's primary business, Motherson Sumi Systems, was founded in 1986 and is a joint venture with Sumitomo Wiring Systems (Japan).

Vivek Chaand Sehgal: Background

In India's capital city of Delhi, Sehgal was born on September 28th, 1956. At Birla Public School in Pilani, Rajasthan, he completed his education. At the University of Delhi, Sehgal received a bachelor's degree. Prior to leaving the day-to-day administration of the company in 1995, Sehgal held the post of managing director. He has served as the group's chairman ever since. Laksh Vaaman Sehgal, his son, serves as a director on the boards of Motherson Sumi Wiring India and Samvardhana Motherson International.

Change Of Business

Sehgal's grandfather was a well-known jeweler. When Sehgal was 18 years old, the Hunt brothers were purchasing silver from all over the world, and he was getting paid one rupee for every kilogram of silver he delivered to the airport. Each month, he made about Rs. 2500. This was a modest sum of money in those days, as Sehgal remarked, "more than what my father was getting from the government at that time." In 1975, Sehgal established Motherson with his mother and started trading silver. However, the Hunt brothers' bankruptcy put the company's future in the silver sector in peril because they had monopolized the silver trade in that area. Instead, Motherson started producing vehicle parts, eventually creating a collaboration with Sumitomo Electric and ultimately grabbing success out of the hands of failure.

Samvardhana Motherson International, formerly known as Motherson Sumi, the industry leader in autoparts, is where Sehgal gets the lion's share of his wealth from. He split off the India wire harness company in March 2022 and floated it as Motherson Sumi Wire India on the Indian stock exchange. BMW, Ford, Mercedes, Toyota, and Volkswagen are some of the company's clients. Vivek is one of the wealthiest Indians in Australia, according to the Forbes report from 2023, with a net worth around Rs 32,800 crore.