How Ashish Bharat Ram transformed SRF and put the firm on fast track

Much of the Shriram empire may have shrunk from early glory days but his SRF is going great guns

Armed with an MBA from Cornell University in the early 1990s, Ashish Bharat Ram sometimes wondered whether he had made a mistake in coming home to join the family business.  

He had reasons. His father, Arun Bharat Ram, was then engaged in yet another feud, this time with his own brothers Vinay and Vivek (all of them sons of Dr Bharat Ram), on a further division of the assets, following the first split in the Shriram family in 1989.

The good news was that in 1999 the dispute was settled amicably and Arun Bharat Ram gained control of SRF (known