Hamara Bajaj@ 100: Yesterday's resilience, tomorrow's challenge lie ahead

Economic liberalisation has not been kind to India’s family-managed business conglomerates. By the early noughties, the inability to compete in open markets precipitated acrimonious internal squabbles, which caused storied “licence raj” giants to disintegrate — Singhania, Shriram, Mafatlal, to name a few. This could have been the fate of the Bajaj group, which entered its 101st year last week. Between 2002 and 2008, a public feud among the brothers of the third generation posed the danger of splitting and weakening the group, just as new competitors were threatening its core businesses. It speaks much for the prudence of the antagonists that better sense (and, apparently, deep family feeling) prevailed. A memorandum of understanding split key assets between the larger-than-life scion Rahul Bajaj and his cousins, on one side, and his younger brother Shishir and his son Kushagra, on the other, and concluded a financial settlement to untangle crossholdings. The Rahul Bajaj faction retained Bajaj Auto and the finance business, and his brother consumer goods, the sugar business, and real estate.

 

That the group’s flagships remain more or less dominant in their respective fields speaks volumes for the capabilities of the third and fourth generations, which inherited this divided empire. In the 2025 annual Barclays Private Clients Hurun India Most Valuable Family Business, the Bajaj group weighs among the top five, a consistent ranking. This is a creditable achievement, considering it keeps company with younger groups such as Reliance (at 68 years), Jindal (74 years), and HCL (a mere 49). Among the top five groups, only A V Birla is older at 169 years. Bajaj Auto is a good example of managerial competence and risk-taking, such as Rahul Bajaj’s well-documented risk in launching the indigenous Chetak scooter when his licence with Piaggio ended in 1972. A protected market ensured the Chetak had a long waiting list and the surpluses from consumer advances made Bajaj Auto one of India’s most cash-rich companies.

 

Instead of relying on the Chetak workhorse, Rahul Bajaj’s son Rajiv decided to scrap it — despite his father’s disapproval, it is said — when he saw the two-wheeler market trending towards motorcycles. This risk certainly paid off (the Chetak returned in 2020 as an e-scooter). Bajaj Finance, overseen by younger son Sanjiv under the Bajaj Finserv umbrella, has emerged as India’s largest private non-banking financial company and earned a Harvard Business School case study in 2022. Bajaj Hindusthan remains Uttar Pradesh’s largest sugar and ethanol producer.

 

Prima facie, the relative stability and success of the Bajaj group flagships make them poster boys for Indian family-managed businesses. But yesterday’s resilience could become tomorrow’s challenges. The group’s management ethos remains conservative. Group companies are run by professionals, but the scions retain control of strategic decision-making. Its core pre-liberalisation businesses have been successful, but the group has not managed to move beyond this mix. A foray into cars via a partnership with Nissan did not work. Its venture into e-three-wheelers has been successful and it dominates that segment, but the group has been less successful in the e-two-wheeler market. In consumer goods, where multinational brands compete, Bajaj Electricals has a negligible market share. Few businesses are said to survive beyond the fifth generation. Bajaj’s Gen-Next, thus, will be put to the group’s toughest test yet.