More than just a simple family man

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

What does it take for an ordinary man to stand out from the crowd?

For Sri Prakash Lohia -- a man who could easily pass unnoticed -- it was quite an achievement to make his family's small, spun yarn factory into Indonesia's largest polyester exporter, as well as the world's 10th-largest synthetic fiber producer.

Lohia, nicknamed SP by his friends and family, could have chosen to spend his youth enjoying the benefits of his family's wealth. Instead, he used his head start in life to win the race.

When he was just 19, an age when most young people are still struggling to make it to their lectures on time, SP had finished his formal education at a university in New Delhi and started to help his father run the family's polyester business.

He made sacrifices, among them missing out on weekend parties and nights on the town, but it was worthwhile. Now, some 33 years later, SP has been more than just a source of help in the family's business.

The man succeeded in nurturing Indorama Synthetics, the company founded by his father, M.L. Lohia, in 1976, from only a single fiber manufacturer into a company with an annual turnover of more than US$400 million.

Indorama, a synthetic fiber supplier for textile manufacturers in more than 71 countries worldwide, currently runs 10 factories in Purwakarta and Bandung, West Java, with the help of almost 8,000 workers. It exports 60 percent of its products to markets in Europe, Australasia, South and Central America, South Africa and Canada.

"Textiles, and whatever is needed to make textiles, are one of the primary needs," SP said in explaining his family's typically Indian choice of industrial field. "It's a vast field to enter into. Back then, it was easier to go into, the technology was not very advanced."

SP's life was submerged by the world of business as early as childhood, when the man of few words learned the skills needed as an industrialist by watching his father and grandfather managing family factories in India.

"Everyone in my family is involved in business," he said. "Our lives evolve around our business and the welfare of our 12,000 workers worldwide."

The family business might have shaped SP into the strict, officious man with a well-groomed appearance that he is now. However, family values also became a foundation for his entrepreneurial career.

"Business is not learned through education. You know business by instinct. Education only helps with techniques," said SP, who had managed to skip a grade twice when he was in junior high school and was known as a bright student.

"I always think business, business, business," SP said in a relaxed but clearly enunciated tone. "My father used to take me to his factories. That is probably why business is in my blood."

Sitting in his conference room on the top floor of his company's building in Kuningan, South Jakarta, SP projected the image of a young businessman turned tycoon, after struggling in a foreign country for more than 30 years.

SP said that he had to deal with language problems and the country's weak infrastructure back in the 1970s. "The hardest period was only the first three to four years."

Despite SP's formal appearance, he really opens up when he talks about his son of 30 and daughter of 26. He refers to his wife (whose brother is one of the world's top three tycoons, Lakshmi N. Mittal) as a "real, lifetime partner".

"He firmly believes that a happy family is the foundation for the growth of any business," said Lohia's friend of 20 years Ganesh Grover, who is also a senior executive of the Lippo Group.

Admitting that hard work is the key to his success, SP said that he spent around 10 hours a day on business matters. "Before it was longer; my son is now running the business very actively."

Friends and colleagues describe him as a family man who likes to spend time outside the office. And, though he comes across as a man of the world, he claims to be a simple Indian who believes that after living for nine years in a house, he has to move to another. Or after five years of hard work, the next four years should be spent relaxing a little.

"It's the nine-year life cycle -- expansion, consolidation, and so on," he explained.

The vegetarian also holds on to traditional values, including that families should stick together -- in the same house. For now, that means his already grownup children, and in the future, his children's children.

"He believes in humanity and all faiths -- that if you can help a person, it will be the biggest contribution you ever make," one of his colleagues said.

SP may be a man of values, a successful businessman and an innovative industrialist but he shyly admits "I have been trying to learn golf for three years, but I can't seem to get the hang of it."

Well, as many people say, you just can't have it all. (003)