From tea stall to Rs 254cr-turnover business: Balvantsinh Rajput's journey

The inspiring story of Balvantsinh Rajput, who built a successful business despite difficult beginnings, is one worth reading about. He lost his house in the disastrous flood that struck Gujarat in 1972. The situation at the time was so bad that he did not even have a pair of clothes to change into. Today, however, he owns a business that has a turnover of Rs 254 crore.

Rajput's father used to work at an oil mill and later started selling tea and supari. Rajput started helping his father with the tea stall, and it became one of their major sources of income.

After the 1972 calamity, his father asked him to go and meet the chief minister at the time, Madhavsinh Solanki. Instead of meeting Solanki, he approached Congress leader Jinabhai Darji, who advised him to start a fair-price shop in his two-room house, and got him the necessary licence. Rajput has come a long way from there and is now the owner of Gokul Group, which has a turnover of Rs 254 crore.

Today, he has a successful food oil business that he operates from a lavish office, but he still remembers the time he would accompany his father to sell tea and supari from the cart. He believes that no matter how successful one becomes, one should never forget the hardships and difficulties they had to face to reach there.

Once the business picked up, he decided to try his hand at politics and met several Congress leaders. He started off his political career as a member of the Congress but decided to join the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) after some internal differences with Congress members.

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