In the big league

JSW Steel CMD Sajjan Jindal has built the country's largest steel company, overcoming several problems in the past 25 years

It was the year 1993. Sajjan Jindal was meeting then ICICI Chairman Narayanan Vaghul with a detailed project report for a proposed two-million-tonne steel plant at an investment of Rs 40 billion. At that time, Jindal owned a cold rolling unit with revenues of a relatively modest Rs 2.5 billion. Tata Steel’s plant capacity then was around two million tonnes. When Vaghul expressed some apprehension at the sheer scale of the project, Jindal replied that if the Indian steel market was two million tonnes, then Jindal Iron and Steel Company (JISCO, now JSW) would be selling all of it.