From dishwasher to construction: How Vijay Varma turned hunger into Sai Vijay Construction, a ₹160 crore juggernaut

Vijay Varma was just 10 when hunger taught him its sharpest lessons. Born in October 1978 in Bisau village of Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu district, he lost his grandparents and father by age 11, leaving his mother to raise six children alone.

A mother’s quiet defiance

In a community where women rarely stepped outside their homes, Varma’s mother found a way around tradition. “My mother had six kids to feed but could not challenge her conditioning. So she found a way around it instead,” Varma recalls. Before dawn, she would gather dried leaves, firewood and dung from the forest, trading 30–40 kg for just 1 kg of flour.

Small mercies kept the family going. When his elder brother earned “after 7 days, ₹14 in a week ferrying lunch boxes at a government hospital in 1989, his mother splurged on vegetables and milk. Let’s get what we don’t normally have,” she said. But the work ended within a year, and uncertainty returned.

READ ALSO: From Class 5 dropout to Lalithaa Jewellery IPO: Kiran Kumar builds Rs 11,000 cr empire with 4 gold bangles

Streets of Mumbai, then Pune

When an acquaintance offered to take Varma’s elder brother to Mumbai for ₹500 a month, 10-year-old Vijay made up his mind: he would go too. Despite his mother’s protests, the 12-year-old’s stubbornness won. The journey delivered them to Ulhasnagar, where they slept on wooden planks above a gutter. Overwhelmed by the filth, they moved to Pune with their mother’s ₹200 emergency fund.

On a railway platform, they were robbed. “We got up and cried, wondering what to do. It was a stranger’s compassion that turned the tide,” Varma says. A Muslim “chacha” who maintained railway toilets fed them for three days, let them sleep on the roof and use the facilities, asking for nothing. For 18 days, the brothers washed dishes for a vada pav vendor, earning ₹3 a day.

The eight-day challenge that built an empire 

Fortunes shifted when a Rajasthani contractor, Niradhar, offered renovation work at Mangala Theatre. Too young to be hired, Vijay helped an elderly woman sift sand, working three times faster. Impressed, the contractor began paying him ₹ 8 a day. Over months, they mastered tiling, plastering and RCC, sending monthly money orders home. After a year, they returned to their village with Rs 65,000 hidden in tiffin boxes, recounts Varma.

Emboldened, they recruited six boys from their village and approached builder Vimal Kumar Jain. Dismissed as “just children,” Varma pushed back, claiming expertise. Given an impossible eight-day deadline for a 15-day sample flat—with no pay if they failed—the team finished in three. Jain, stunned, handed them Rs 5,100 as blessings. “It proved to be the turning point,” says Varma. Their company, Shyamsundar Cheeranjeevlalji Construction, grew to 350 workers by 1994–95.

Varma’s Rs 730-crore overseas expansion 

By 1998, the firm employed 850 workers with an annual turnover of Rs 8 crore, rising to Rs 20 crore by 2004–05. In 2008, Varma founded Sai Vijay Construction, formalising it as an LLP in 2011. Despite an income tax inquiry in 2017, the company emerged unscathed. “Our records were so meticulous that investigators couldn’t pin even Rs 5,000 in discrepancies on it,” he says. Today, the company is valued at Rs 160 crore, with international projects worth Rs 730 crore in Oman and Yemen.

READ ALSO: Save 25 litres of water on every car wash: How a Pune man built a ₹10 crore waterless business

“Never shortchanged a rupee”: Varma’s code for success

At 48, Varma’s formula remains simple. “Honesty, hard work and perseverance. I have never shortchanged a single person for even one rupee in my life. It’s what my mother has taught me.” He completed his 10th grade through open schooling in his 30s, followed by a civil engineering diploma and a PhD. Now, he lectures engineering students, his planned half-hour talks stretching to two hours.

Not every scar has faded. In the early ’90s, police mistook him and his brother for thieves, beating them without explanation. “It taught me a vital lesson: build genuine relationships with respectable people. The company you keep is very important.” These days, between ledgers and site visits, Varma sings Marwari folk songs and learns the piano—reclaiming a childhood he once traded for survival.