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The Magna Carta of 1215 is known as the Great Charter. It is considered the vehicle that brought democracy into the world. The far more humble Magma Carta is not a charter service; it is a vehicle for passenger car finance from Magma Leasing. It is making big bucks for its managing director Sanjay Chamria. Says he: ?The trick lies in finding your nich? and striking it rich.?
In his early days, Chamria never expected to end up financing cars. ?I had always wanted to be a chartered accountant, so I joined the course while studying commerce at St Xavier?s College,? he says. I passed out with a scholarship from Calcutta University and completed my chartered accountancy course in 1985 even before I had turned 21.
All that I remember of those years is intense study and hard work.
?I received several exciting job offers from multinationals and banks. But I was not interested in working for someone else. My father had a flourishing income-tax consultancy business. But I was not keen on joining that either. I had an entrepreneurial streak in me and I wanted to exploit that.
?Fortunately, I came in contact with Mr Mayank Poddar in 1989 and that proved to be a turning point. He was looking for someone who could take his property and finance business to new heights. And I was looking for a business. We struck up a partnership and started Magma Leasing the same year with just three people.
?Those were tough times, for the car finance business was yet to take off. We borrowed money from banks, institutions and invested our own funds. In the first year we managed to do business of just over a crore.
But I was not disappointed. When you start, you have very little expectation so the volume of business didn?t really matter to me. The fact that I had finally got started on my own did. There was very little awareness about the business in 1989. Since then, I must add that it has grown phenomenally.
?After a rosy period of about four years during which we steadily increased our volume of business, we hit a rough patch in the mid-nineties. It was a bad time for the credit business, for a lot of people were borrowing money for setting up units and then disappearing.
?We decided not to grow during that period and doggedly followed our collections, seeking legal advice and negotiating with clients. The policy worked. We recovered most of our money. In fact, by 1999, we had recovered everything. But our business stagnated. We had to look for fast growth to compensate for the time lost.
?Acquisition seemed to be the only way out and we sought the services of KPMG as adviser. In 2000, we took over Consortium Finance. That gave us a major presence in the north. They had 15 branches across the northern region. Since then, we haven?t looked back.
?All this while, we have been following a policy of consolidation and growth. Over the past few years we have been growing at a rate of 70 per cent. Competition has been stiff and now we have multinationals like ABN Amro and GE Capital as our rivals. The market, too, has deepened. For the first time this year we are going to sell more than one million vehicles. And this excludes commercial vehicles.
?This is fabulous news for us. But whether the growth will continue is difficult to predict. It is obviously linked to economic growth in general, the condition of the roads and even the monsoons. As for competition, I have always considered that to be a challenge. In every industry, you face competition.
?Last year, our turnover touched Rs 860 crore. This year we are looking at Rs 1,300 crore. More than 900 people work for us now. While Calcutta remains our headquarters, we have 54 branches all over the country.
?West Bengal now contributes less than 20 per cent of our total business. As a result, I have to travel a lot but I don?t mind that. I have often been asked what?s the point in sticking to Calcutta when I hardly get to spend time here. Wouldn?t it be more convenient to move to Delhi or Mumbai? But I don?t wish to. We have been here for three generations. Calcutta grows on you. I would like to be in the city for the rest of my life.?
Chamria knows where his home and heart are, even if Magma?s roads increasingly lead elsewhere.