In the mid-1990s, the then prime minister of Denmark was visiting India. After meeting various business dignitaries in Mumbai, he had a private session with Danish businessmen based in India. Before he began to address them in English, he stepped aside from his dais, bowed, and said, “Mr Holck-Larsen, “I salute you!” It was the Danish prime minister’s personal acknowledgement to the one person who has done the most to plant Denmark’s name in India, though not many would know of his Danish origin. Henning Holck-Larsen is the founder-partner of one of India’s best known engineering firms, Larsen & Toubro. His partner, the late Soren Kristian Toubro, too was a Dane and the two had known each other since school days in Denmark. Today, L& T is gearing up to celebrate the 100th birth anniversary of Holck-Larsen, who died in 2003 (Toubro had died much earlier). Yet, when both these men first came to India in the mid-1930s, little would they have imagined that they would found a company that would go on to become India’s largest engineering firm. Both Larsen and Toubro were working for FL Smidth & Co in Denmark which dispatched, in succession, first Toubro and then Larsen to India. FL Smidth manufactured cement-making machines, and the two were sent to set up factories to make cement so that the machineries could then be imported! The young men, both in their early 30s, saw an opportunity and, in 1938, formed a company to import such machinery from Denmark. They might have remained traders but for a cataclysmic event: the World War II. Imports suddenly became difficult, almost impossible. Strapped as they were for cash, Larsen and Toubro now revealed their mettle: they began making the same machinery here. In a sense, L& T as an engineering firm was midwifed by Hitler’s invading armies in Europe! Sufficiently Indianised After India’s independence, the two decided to stay on in India, aware that engineering products would be in great demand. In doing so, Larsen (and Toubro) became sufficiently Indianised and grew to love his adopted homeland. He would keep travelling to Denmark to meet his family, but India was now his country, his karmabhoomi. To cite an example: most foreigners flee India in the summers and visit her in winter. But Larsen would visit his native Denmark in December (coinciding with Christmas) and stay comfortably put in India’s sweltering summer! He also picked up sufficient Hindi over the years. In the mid 1970s, he addressed his factory workers in Hindi. The effect was electric: the workers, who were agitating to protest the death of a fellow worker in inter-union rivalry, immediately calmed down, and returned to their respective jobs.
-
Little would Larsen and Toubro have imagined that they would found a company that would go on to become India’s largest engineering firm
