Rahul Bajaj on Succession Planning

Born on 10 June 1938 in Kolkata, Rahul Bajaj inherited a family business that his grandfather Jamnalal Bajaj had founded in 1926 and his father Kamalnayan had diversified into scooters, cement and electrical equipment. The succession plan put Rahul at the helm of Bajaj Auto in 1968 as CEO, when he was thirty years old, well before the formal 1970s restructuring of the group.

In 2005 Bajaj stepped down from his executive role at Bajaj Auto and handed the managing director's seat to his son Rajiv Bajaj, marking one of the cleanest generational transitions in Indian family business. The handover was unusual because Rajiv, then in his late thirties, was given operational autonomy to drive the Pulsar-led motorcycle pivot even as Rahul remained on the board as non-executive chairman.

The very next year, 1972, brought a second shock: the sudden death of Kamalnayan Bajaj placed the entire industrial conglomerate's responsibility on thirty-four-year-old Rahul's shoulders. He had to consolidate operational control across auto, electricals and cement businesses at exactly the moment the Piaggio tie-up had ended — a crucible that defined his leadership style.

Bajaj progressively transitioned to non-executive and emeritus roles in his final years: stepping down as chairman of Bajaj Finserv in March 2019 to become chairman emeritus, and then in April 2021 ceding the non-executive chairmanship of Bajaj Auto to his cousin Niraj Bajaj while retaining the chairman emeritus title. The staged exit — cousin rather than son in the auto chair — was a deliberate signal of family-business governance beyond primogeniture.

In April 2021, after roughly five decades at Bajaj Auto, Rahul Bajaj stepped down as non-executive chairman on grounds of age, handing the role to his cousin Niraj Bajaj while retaining the chairman emeritus title. The choice of a cousin rather than a son signalled a maturing family-governance model in which the next generation's CEOs (Rajiv and Sanjiv) operated under separate non-family chair oversight.

His sons Rajiv and Sanjiv Bajaj continued to lead separate arms of the group after his death — Rajiv as managing director of Bajaj Auto and Sanjiv as chairman of Bajaj Finserv — while daughter Sunaina Kejriwal (who died of cancer in 2024) directed the Kamalnayan Bajaj Hall and Art Gallery. The sibling split mirrored the 2008 demerger logic, with each heir holding a vertically-defined operating brief.