I was born in a lower middle class family. My father was a contractor, and my mother was a housewife. My father’s work took us to Sambalpur, Odisha. There, at the age of 45, my father suddenly died. I was only seven years old. Since we were not prepared for this kind of sudden sad event, we were left penniless. With no income and nowhere to go, my mother brought me and my two brothers back to a small village in Punjab where my mother’s two brothers were subsistence farmers. (As they say—when God closes one door, he opens a window somewhere else.) My uncles were lifelong bachelors, who were able to use three boys to help them in the fields and tend animals. My mother took care of cooking and cleaning the house. My brothers and I would go to school during the day and help in the field during evenings and holidays. Our school was about 4 kilometers from our village, so we had to walk 8 kilometers daily, rain or shine. In those days, the path was all dirt roads, and the only traffic was pedestrian. I did all my reading assignments while walking to and from school. Because of our good grades and financial situation, schools always provided us with free tuition and books.
After my older brother graduated from high school and I finished middle school, my mother decided to move us to our ancestral home in Phagwara, Punjab. There, I went to Government High School, and my older brother at the age of 17 years started a job to take care of the family’s finances. We rented out our ancestral home for 40 rupees per month to another family, and the four of us lived in a single windowless room.
After graduating from high school, I went to DAV College in Jullunder for pre-engineering and took the entrance exam for ISM and IIT. I was accepted to various engineering colleges, but ultimately decided to join ISM.
I remember the first day at ISM vividly. I was wearing Khadi Kurta Pajama and flip-flops, and I hired a Rikshaw from Dhanbad railway station to ISM. When I entered the campus, I asked a student on the street how to reach Tank Shop, where I was supposed to go. He told me to just follow him. Instead of taking me to the Tank Shop, he took me to his room, and that was the first time in my life I experienced ragging. For the most part, the seniors made fun of my Kurta Pajama and flip-flops.
At ISM, I didn’t participate in any sports because I was not good in any. I did participate in debates and was president of debate club and represented ISM in debates at other institutions. Those days while at ISM, most students made small groups of friends and stuck together in those groups. My group consisted of Ravi Puri and Gian Chand Gulati. We enjoyed each other’s company and did stuff together. As is the case in many schools, there were certain groups who thought themselves to be superior to others. These students were often athletes, from convent schools, or from affluent families. There were also students who enjoyed picking on those who would not fight back, calling them various annoying and degrading names. I used to be on the receiving end.
While at ISM, we all worked fairly hard. Our only entertainment was playing table tennis or badminton, or occasionally going to town to watch a movie. The total cost for the school was only 125 rupees per month including food, fee, and hostel rent. My brother, who was only a year and a half older than me, would send me 125 rupees every month. There were times when my brother was delayed in sending me money because of unavailability of funds, and on those occasions, I sometimes considered dropping out. Today, I probably would have qualified for need based financial aid, but in those days it was not available.
After graduating from ISM, all Petroleum Technology graduates were given a job with ONGC. My first job was as STA at Ankleshver Project with ONGC, where I worked for one and a half years. One day, another engineer showed me an advertisement from the paper for a job in Oman. I just casually hand wrote my qualifications on a piece of paper and mailed it to the address given in the advertisement. To my surprise, I was asked to travel to Bombay for an interview. I was the only candidate, so they offered me a job. This opportunity became a stepping-stone to go to the USA. I would work six months in the dessert camp and then get one month vacation. I only wanted to work there to save enough money to go to the USA because I didn’t like the treatment of the Dutch and British towards non-whites (PDO, where I worked, was owned by Royal Dutch Shell).
In 1969-70, the USA was encouraging immigration because they needed skilled people. I applied and received my Green Card in India. In 1970, I started my journey to the USA. During this time, the job market for Petroleum Engineers in the USA was very bad, so I decided to enroll in Texas A&M University for my Master’s in Petroleum Engineering. After getting my Master’s degree in Petroleum Engineering, I was hired by Amerada Hess Corporation as a field engineer. I worked for them for eight years in various capacities. During this period, I also attended night school and earned an MBA degree.
In 1980, I left Amerada and joined Southland Royalty as a manager of enhanced oil recovery. I worked there for two years and then joined a startup company Quinoco Petroleum as the Vice President of Engineering. They gave me a small equity interest in that company, which was the beginning of my exposure to entrepreneurship as I learned the inner workings of an oil company.
After Quinoco was sold, I took my share of the proceeds and started Omimex Petroleum, Inc. in 1987. My first acquisition was a package of marginal 110 wells scattered in six states in the USA. At that time, I had no staff and no office. To finance this package of wells, I started knocking at the doors of various banks. Got rejected by most. Finally, one young bank officer was interested in my story and gave me the loan to close the deal. I hired one lady who was well rounded and familiar with various aspects of oil business. I rented a small office and set-up my oil/gas production operations in six states. I traveled a lot and made it a point to know the location of each and every well (some of these wells were in remote areas), so that if any contract operator threatened to quit or give any problems, I could drive to the location and handle the situation myself. My hard work paid off, and I was able to improve production from these wells and increase margin by reducing cost. Cash flow was such that I was able to pay back the three-year term bank loan in one year. This made the bank very happy and developed trust in my capabilities, and thus started to finance every deal I brought to them. The bank even started using Omimex in advertisements. They had a banner stating, “We are known by The Companies we keep,” and Omimex’s name was prominently displayed in those advertisements.
If you see our company’s logo—it has arrows going in every direction. From the very beginning, I decided not to restrict myself only in one direction or area (contrary to the belief that one should only focus on one area and one direction). I simply went where there were opportunities. When I saw people running away from something or some areas, I ran towards it and reversed my direction when people started to come back. My philosophy was to take calculated risks in order to achieve extraordinary returns on investments. This philosophy took me to areas where people were afraid to go and businesses people wouldn’t touch. This approach took me to businesses completely out of my sphere of knowledge.
The first such business was growing Agaricus Mushrooms on a large scale. Our mechanized farm ending up producing 220,000 pounds of mushrooms every week, throughout the entire year. Then in 1989 when cellular phones were the size of a brick and just starting out, and the future of that technology was unknown, I decided to enter that business. I received radio frequency over a portion of New Mexico and started to develop infrastructure to provide cellular phone service. I studied technology behind cellular phones. During those years, cellular markets were fragmented. People had to pay roaming charges when they moved from their home locations to other locations. I realized that this fragmented system was going to be unsuccessful long-term, and someday a seamless cellular system would replace it, putting small operators like me out of business. I decided to sell my cellular market to a large phone company, Sprint. In hindsight, that turned out to be the right decision.
During this period, I expanded my oil and gas business by buying oil and gas fields from other companies and exploring for new oil reserves. In 1994, the country of Colombia was in turmoil. Drug Lord Pablo Escobar was blowing up buildings, and killing judges and politicians. Colombia was the murder and kidnapping capital of the world, and FARC guerrilla activities were at its peak. Most companies were afraid to work there and started running away. Texaco, one of the biggest oil producers in Colombia at that time, decided to exit and put their assets on the market to sell. Because of unfavorable situation in Colombia, there were not many interested buyers, and no bank was willing to finance any deal in Colombia. I, however, decided to go there. Others told me that I would either be killed or kidnapped there. Since there was no financing available, I risked all of my capital to purchase those assets from Texaco. It was “do or die” moment for me. We took over the operations of those fields from Texaco and started improving production and drilling more wells. Time worked in our favor, and the situation in Colombia started to improve. We brought in IFC (World Bank) to finance our projects in Colombia. The Colombia government stationed an army battalion to safe guard our facilities from attacks by Guerrilla Fighters (FARC). Meanwhile, the price of oil improved, and the situation in Colombia started to improve. Once again Colombia became a good place to invest and companies started to come back. We decided to take advantage of investors’ renewed interest in Colombia, and we sold our oil fields to a joint venture of ONGC (Videsh) of India and SINOPEC of China. Financially, this was a very large and favorable deal for us, and our timing could not have been better.
During this period, I read reports how arable land in the world is shrinking and mouths to feed are increasing. Thus, I decided to diversify into the fertilizer business. Using fertilizer to increase the yield per acre is the only way to feed the growing population from a shrinking arable land base. First I tried to build my own Urea and Ammonia plant in Colombia. At the beginning of the project, the Government of Colombia told me that they would provide natural gas (raw material for fertilizers) for this plant, but when I started construction, they backed out and I had to abandon the project. I suffered a significant financial loss. I neither gave up nor got discouraged on my idea to produce fertilizers. I kept looking for an opportunity to enter into fertilizer business. When a local (Colombian) fertilizer manufacturing company came on the market for sale, I decided to buy that company and was successful in acquiring it. This company produced Ammonia, Nitric Acid, NPK, Ammonia Nitrate and Calcium Nitrate. After acquiring this facility, we expanded its business into ten countries of the world by building more fertilizer plants. We also built explosive grade Ammonia Nitrate for the coal mining industry. When this fertilizer business was at its peak, and our reputation as an excellent fertilizer producer brought some suitors to our door, we decided to sell the business. We sold it to Yara International of Norway—one of the largest fertilizer companies in the world. My philosophy has always been that when people show interest in buying your business and offering a good price for it, do not hesitate to sell and move on to something else. We still kept our fertilizer plants in Brazil, which is the largest fertilizer market in the world. The Brazilian fertilizer business is currently undergoing expansion with the building of more plants. Our goal is to exit from it in the near future.
Meanwhile, the oil and gas business in the USA is continuing. Because my children have their own interests and are not interested in continuing the business, I am hoping to sell all of my businesses, and hopefully retire in the near future.
I merely hope my story provides inspiration and encouragement to others. There is absolutely nothing one cannot do if they make up their mind to do so. Work hard, never give up, be ready to take calculated risk, be willing to go against the wind, live humbly, and pray a lot. It is not in my nature to ever speak of my successes; the only reason I wrote this because I was asked to do so.