Sajjan Jindal to fight it out with global biz leaders for EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2022

“Musafir hoon yaaron, na ghar hai na thikaana”. If this soul-soothing Bollywood 1970s classic sung by the great Kishore Kumar is something you draw inspiration from, then you have found your common link with a stalwart. For Sajjan Jindal, India’s ‘man of steel’ in the new millennia, this song has been the driving force in his four decades old journey to the top of the country’s business community.

Jindal, Chairman and Managing Director of JSW Group, has bagged the Indian version of the prestigious EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 Award. And with this accolade under his belt, he will compete, on behalf of India, with the who’s who of the global business leaders for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year global awards at Monte Carlo in June.

For Jindal, taking up the challenges in the steel business since his early days is a fait accompli. As he now recalls, since his school days he used to regularly spend hours at the family’s steel plant in awe. The process of steel making had such an effect on his young mind that it was only the matter of time Jindal would begin his career in early-1980s as in-charge of a new still mill in Mumbai.

According to him, entrepreneurs are problem solvers at the face of adversity. “At the heart of entrepreneurship lies innovation and problem solving. Entrepreneurs are always on the look out for new ways to solve problems and create value for their customers…..But most importantly entrepreneurs never lose sight of their purpose, their vision and values,” he said while receiving the awards.

Jindal, who now heads a group that is the largest steel producer in India and exports high quality steels to countries like Japan, from whom we used import a few years ago, started his career in 1984 in his family business. A few years later, buoyed on the confidence he gained from his steel project, he built JSW’s Vijayanagar Works in Karnataka - currently the largest steel plant in India.

Since then, he has transformed and diversified the group’s business into energy, infrastructure, cement, paints, venture capital and sports. The $22-billion JSW Group is currently one of India’s largest business groups with operations spread across the USA, Europe and Africa, apart from India. After growing by a whopping 83 per cent year-on-year Jindal Steel - the group’s flagship business entity - registered Rs 1.46 lakh crore in revenue in FY22 - making it one India’s largest entities by turnover.

That, however, is unlikely to encourage Jindal to rest on his laurels. At 63, he is busy transforming the core business by aligning it to green missions.