Ramesh Chauhan on Bootstrapping

The brand itself predates Chauhan's ownership. In 1966, Italian doctor Cesari Rossi and Indian businessman Khushroo Suntook introduced Bisleri bottled water in India by setting up a Thane factory, naming it after a 19th-century Italian alcohol remedy drink created by inventor Felice Bisleri.

In 1969 the Jayantilal Chauhan family of Parle Group acquired the struggling Bisleri brand for Rs 4 lakh (then about US$50,000), as the Italian founders looked to exit the Indian market. The acquisition was a strategic rescue of a brand whose Italian name, in Ramesh Chauhan's later telling, 'added a dash of class to it' — a soft intangible-asset purchase that decades later would become the umbrella brand for an entire category in India.

Firstpost traces Bisleri's Italian roots — entrepreneur Felice Bisleri's alcohol remedy drink made of cinchona, herbs and iron salts, sourced from a spring called Angelica in the Italian town of Nocera Umbra. After Felice's death in 1921, family doctor Dr Rossi took over, and in 1965 Rossi and Khushroo Suntook set up the first Bisleri water plant in Thane.

Chauhan positions himself as a 'savvy businessman sitting on cash reserves'. He discloses that proceeds were invested with Merrill Lynch — 'we can draw on the money any time we want' — and that Bisleri follows a policy of not borrowing. The 'we don't borrow' rule is presented as a strategic commitment to fund growth from internal accruals and invested cash, a notably conservative posture for an Indian consumer goods company of that scale.