Winston Churchill once said: “A great leader is not one who creates many followers but one who creates equally great leaders.” Nand Kishore Chaudhary, better known as NKC among industry circles, qualifies perfectly for this sort of leadership. A young graduate from Churu, a small town in Rajasthan, he declined a bank job because he wanted to do something big on his own. Today, NKC’s Jaipur Rugs is India’s largest manufacturer of hand-knotted rugs, with an annual turnover of above Rs. 106 crores.
NKC recalls: “My family was part of a traditional society. We were not rich, my father had a shoe-selling shop, and I started my career from that shop. When I was at 25, my parents suggested that I continue and grow the small business as a source of livelihood for my own future family. How can I grow out of this small business? It was not for me. I wanted to do something of my own. I also got a permanent job in a national bank which I never joined.”
NKC founded Jaipur Rugs in 1978 with just two looms and nine weavers and with $200 borrowed from his father. His vision was to improve the lives of people in abject poverty via economic, educational and social empowerment. After three decades, his vision blossomed into a unique vertically integrated global organization that includes an extensive network of artisan weavers, an educational and social foundation, and an end-to-end supply chain, including product concept, design, production and delivery.
NKC’s beginnings were much more modest as he started off his carpet business with weavers from the ‘Chamar’ caste (minority community) regarded as untouchables. “I always wanted to do something for the underprivileged people in the villages, especially people from the backward sections of society who were then considered untouchables. I would go to their houses, motivate them to work for us, explain why and how it would benefit them and their community,” he says.
NKC initiated elimination of the exploitative chain of middlemen that exists at the grassroots of the rug industry. He helped the weavers establish direct contact with the global markets, ensuring them that they get fair and timely wages. “All human beings have the right to decide how to use their skills and who to work for. All human beings have the right to a fair reward for their work and to access opportunities that can grow them”, he asserts.
A focus on local inclusion and global trends led the company to be profiled as a case study by Prof. C.K. Prahalad, the management guru. Jaipur Rugs’ innovative business model has been a matter of dissertation at various prestigious colleges like Harvard, Stanford and Michigan University.
NKC also founded the Jaipur Rugs Foundation in 2004 to provide educational and skill training facilities for the children of weavers, as well as access to health services and literacy programs. To date, more than 1,600 women have benefited from the educational program, and a total of 5,462 artisans have benefited from the health camps organized by the Foundation.
He is exceedingly optimistic about rural development and emphasizes rapid economic growth as the only means to achieve success: This is a key factor that drives his business. He has been the recipient of several prestigious awards like the Social Impact Award 2012 from The Times of India presented to him by the President, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010, the NASSCOM Social Innovation Honors 2014, etc.
Thanks to NKC’s business vision and life philosophy of selflessness, 40,000 artisans are now supported by Jaipur Rugs. They work on 7,000 looms in 600 villages across six States in India. He has proved that personal empowerment and economic self-determination can be achieved when empathy, love, respect and integrity are nurtured and valued by a business entity whose goal is the welfare of everybody.
NKC’s Transformational Leadership approach has created valuable and positive change in the employees of Jaipur Rugs as well as artisans at the grassroots, by stimulating and inspiring them to both achieve extraordinary outcomes and, in the process, develop their own leadership capacity.
NKC has often been referred to as “the Gandhi of the carpet industry” among artisans and his peers. An epitome of simplicity, he is devoted to the Indian hand-knotted rug weaving industry with an objective to position it rightly and to bequeath the profit and appreciation of this to its owner and creator – the Indian weaver.
In an era when companies find it tough to manage a handful of employees, NKC has managed the impossible: creating a family of 40,000 artisans. “We can’t do great things until we start doing small things with great love!”, he adds.