Autobiography of Shri P.P. Chhabria launched

March 10, 2008 - PRLog -- There’s No Such Thing as a Self-Made Man is the biography of Mr. P.P. Chhabria, Chairman and Managing Director of Finolex. Told in the first person in an intimate, easy-to-read style, this book has been written by Saaz Aggarwal after several months in conversation with P.P. Chhabria and several of his family members and close associates.

The Autobiography of Shri P.P. Chhabria was officially launched amongst the august gathering of Mr. K.P. Chhabria, Mr. Nanak Ruparni, Mr. Srichand Hinduja, Mr. Pratapsingh Rane, Dr. Pandit, Mr. Jayantrao Patil - finance minister and Dr. Vijay Bhatkar on Saturday 8th March, 2008 at I2IT, Pune.

Top Industrialists ranging from the Hindujas to the Kirloskars, Poonawallas, Bajajs and over 500 guests, well-wishers and family members were present to grace the occasion and commemorate the launch.  

The function started with the Welcome Note followed by the dignitaries at the dias sharing their personal and rare experiences with the audience on how they knew Mr. P.P. Chhabria and how he started his journey and struggle at a very young age and how he braved difficulties and slowly and steadily rose above all glitches and moved to the top.

Says Mr. P.P. Chhabria, “Through all my years of working, I never thought back to my childhood or felt sorry about my early struggles. I was always extremely busy, and I was always completely focused on my work. It’s only in the last few years, as my pace of work reduced that I have thought about the early days and felt the wish to have my story documented. The process of bringing out this book has given me great fulfilment, and as I now look at the published volume, I am very pleased with the results.”
Mr. Chhabria further added that he would be donating his personal wealth towards education and making sure that the children of today should get what he missed out on.  The Government of Andhra Pradesh has given him a 50 acre land to develop a School for which work is already on.

The official Inauguration of the Autobiography was followed by a vote of thanks by Mrs. Aruna Katara, daughter of Mr. P.P. Chhabria who spearheaded the entire program.  All proceeds from the sale of the book would be donated to the K.E.M. Hospital, Pune




About the Autobiography

At one level, this is a thrilling rags-to-riches story. The 15-year-old Pralhad arrives in Pune two years before Indian Independence to work as a domestic servant in the home of a relative. While he fulfilled his duties of cleaning, buying vegetables, staying up late to fill buckets of water and rising early to bring in the milk, could he ever have dreamt that he would one day lead a burgeoning manufacturing industry into the next millennium? Finolex, established in 1958 by P.P. Chhabria and his younger brother Kishan or K.P. Chhabria, is today the number one manufacturer of cables in India, and second only to Reliance in the manufacture of PVC resin. Journeying with P.P. Chhabria through the events and twists of fate that led to this conclusion gives the experience the flavour of a bestselling thriller.
From another perspective, this book is also a management text. P.P. Chhabria’s formal education ended when he was only in class 2. In this book, this reserved and even rather reclusive gentleman describes how he learned all that he needed to know to be the leader of a large corporation. Never missing any opportunity to learn from those around him, and keenly absorbing the lessons of each experience, P.P. Chhabria is one of those rare individuals who was able to use his powers of observation to glean his own theoretical insights and this is what gave him the required knowledge and perspective. In this book, he shares his subsequent learning in the areas of Sales, Finance, Quality, and people management, and tells what he did to build an enviable, almost formidable, reputation for both Finolex and himself.
At yet another level, this is a personal documented history of our country – a country that had just gained Independence, and was drained of resources by the Second World War and the withdrawing British. It had also suffered the trauma of Partition that left thousands, including Pralhad Chhabria and his family, homeless. The book also documents the age of bureaucracy that followed, and the environment of communication and technology of the time, describing the stages that Indian manufacturing went through over six decades to make India one of the leading nations of the world. It is also the personal documented history of our city, and strewn with interesting and little-known facts about Pune.
And finally, this can be considered as a strongly spiritual self-help book. Throughout his many struggles and the personal tragedies of his life, the one underlying force that pervaded all P.P. Chhabria‘s thoughts and feelings and filled him with humility was a strong sense of the higher reality and its impervious laws. Read also about the important role his guru Swami Ram Baba played in his life.
This fascinating story depicts a unique Indian businessman with an international business outlook and a very traditional personal life, and is a must-read for every student of management in this country, every young aspirant setting out on the rocky road of entrepreneurship, and for every forward-thinking human being struggling with various facets of existence.




About the Author
Saaz Aggarwal is a Bombay-based writer who lives in Pune. Besides poetry, frequent humour columns and book reviews, her achievements in journalism include launching and managing Ascent for the Times of India, Mumbai in 1990. In her first job she worked as lecturer in Mathematics at Ruparel College, Mumbai in the early eighties, and was HR head of the software company Seacom Solutions (India) Ltd for ten years till 2006. Her popular painting series Bombay Clichés depicts urban India using a traditional folk style. She currently divides her time between writing, painting, and conducting training programmes.

Availablity
There’s No Such Thing as a Self-Made Man was launched at I2ITon 8 March 2008.
The book will be available at all leading bookstores and can also be purchased directly from www.ppchhabria.com.  


Media Contact: Zubair Poonawalla @ Reach Out PR # 9422 00 9260