Background
Dad, a schizophrenic, with a minuscule salary of ₹700 per month; mom, a cancer patient; elder brother, deceased from a dog bite reaction; home at a place which was dominated by Naxalite activities, Gondia. With this as his background, came the light of the Bhatia family—Bhavesh.
Photo With Bhavesh Bhatia
His Story
Bhavesh’s childhood was a continuous struggle. Yet, he had a hankering for adventures.
“मुझे adventures पसंद है। (I love adventures.) In the 8th grade, I made a friend who had an amputated leg. After finishing our 10th grade, we made a trip from our hometown to Kathmandu, Nepal—a distance of 5,620 km—on a bicycle. I had to do the pedalling. He had to do the handling.”
And together, they managed their ride. The trip was to make an identity of his own, to prove himself to the world. He did prove himself. He was welcomed like a hero in his hometown.
“गाँवसे २०-३० km बाहर, ४००-५०० लोग welcome करने आए थे। (There were 400-500 people outside my town to welcome me.)”
But the euphoria of success didn’t last long.
Soon after returning, his mother was taken seriously ill with stage IV blood cancer.
“घर, ज़मीन, जो भी बचाया था, सब बेच दिया। दोस्तों, रिश्तेदारों से जितना हो सके उतना क़र्ज़ा लिया। (We sold everything we had and took out as much loan as we could for her treatment.) But fate operates on her own accord. We lost her, regardless of our efforts.”
Bereft of a great loving support, left alone with a relapsed dad, he was now an unemployed double graduate. This is how Bhavesh’s life stood in the early 1990s.
“माँ चली गयी, पर मैं और daddy बिल्कुल footpath पर आ गए। (Mom left us, but me and dad were on the streets.)”
“I had a master’s degree in Psychology and Economics, yet I was without a job. To be honest, I didn’t want to do a job; I wanted to do business. But what business could I do back then? There was none. I had to find a job. I worked as a telephone operator for a while, 18-20 hours a day for a handful of coins. Later, I got trained as a massage therapist. In fact, I was awarded ‘The Best Massage Therapist in Maharashtra’ award. I worked day and night; I worked till my hands were swollen and somehow managed to save ₹5,000.”
These hard-earned ₹5,000 were put to the best use possible.
Bhavesh learned a skill—candle making—a skill that would transform his life. With the ₹5,000, he bought 20 kg of wax and a simple candle die for raw material. Thus, he embarked on his dream of starting a business. His manufacturing unit? A single wooden table. His retail store? A rented handcart. The name registered—Sunrise Candles. The year was 1994 and the place, Mahabaleshwar.
“Back in the day, candles worth thousands of crores were imported from countries like China. Even today, the scenario hasn’t changed much. It was obvious that there was a tremendous opportunity in the candle business, especially in the ‘fancy’ candle business. And Mahabaleshwar, being a tourist destination, played to my advantage.”
Bhavesh’s mornings became reserved for manufacturing candles and his evenings, for selling them. He started with plain candles but soon, he was designing fancy candles. Within the first few years, he had created thousands of beautiful designs.
“People used to come to my handcart and fall in love with what I was doing. They would buy a few candles, and then send more people to my handcart. On my handcart came tourists who were specialists in business. They helped me with marketing, packaging, sales, and whatnot. The business grew in this way.”
Yet, there was the sword of debt hanging over his head.
“We knew that if we wanted to expand, we had to reach outside Mahabaleshwar. So we started taking part in exhibitions. At one such exhibition, there came a couple who worked at Infosys. It was their wedding anniversary. I gave them a small gift from my side. They were so impressed that they invited me to stay at Infosys for three days and mailed all the 25,000 employees of Infosys to encourage them to buy my products.”
It’s miraculous what a small act of kindness can do. A ₹60 gift brought in a business of ₹23 lakhs. The whole debt was paid off, with interest.
By now, Bhavesh was employing about 30 people. The production was now far exceeding the selling capacity of a handcart. He had to find more places to sell his candles. Again, the tourism value of Mahabaleshwar came to the rescue.
“A few hoteliers were now willing to put up a small selling unit of ours at their hotels. By now, even we’d understood where we should sell the candles, you know, tourist places and such. We put up our stall wherever we got the opportunity and the whole ownership of the stall was given to the guy running it. We could expand even more in this way. More than a thousand corporates are now associated with us including the Taj Group and Grand Hyatt Group.”
His business now ran smoothly. Yet, the hunger for adventures wouldn’t let him sit still. He took up mountaineering.
“अगर आपको कभी trekking वगैरे करना हो, तो आओ हमारे साथ। (If you want to go on a trek, join us.) I have just finished climbing Kilimanjaro, and my dream is to climb Mount Everest. It’s, like, a real bucket list item.”
With an annual turnover of more than ₹200 crores, Bhavesh’s company, Sunrise Candles, enlightens more than 70 countries across the globe. It employs more than 10,000 people all over India at its 71 manufacturing units and more than 4,500 selling units.
Good story, eh? But what is the big deal about Bhavesh Bhatia?
The big deal is that he is totally blind.
Bhavesh finished his double degree with the help of his mother who read all his books to him. The institute where he learned candle making was, in fact, the National Association for the Blind, Mumbai (NAB).
He was awarded the national award at the hands of the President of India, twice, out of which, one was for being the best employer in the country, which was the best among 58,000 nominations. Out of the 10,000 people he employs, about 9,500 people are blind.
He has won a staggering 114 medals in national Paralympics, and still competes for more. As if that wasn’t enough, he became the first-ever blind person to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and aspires to be the first blind person to climb Mount Everest.
And that is a pretty big deal!
Advice to the Youth:
- “Never tell your destinations where your problems are. Tell your problems where your destinations are.”
- “Success is nothing but being able to sleep well at night. Do whatever you want but never do anything that’ll take away your night’s good sleep.”
- “And don’t wait. Each day is the best day to start doing what you want to do. Just start doing it.”
Bhavesh sees the world in a way none of us can see. He has a uniquely different perspective on life, a perspective that sits at the far end of the positivity spectrum—something we can emulate. Here’s a story he shared with me that illustrates my point:
“The turning point of my life came when Baba Ramdev hosted a huge shibir of 40-50,000 people in Mahabaleshwar.”
“I went there with my friend to see if I could get a cure to my mother’s illness and also, my own. Baba Ramdev was tired telling all these people, “आँखे बंद करो और अंदर झाँको। आँखे बंद करो और अंदर झाँको।” (Close your eyes and peek within, close your eyes and peek within.) Then, I heard an inner voice. It said that these people had to try to close their eyes, and even then, they were failing. And here I was, lucky to have been spared of the trouble. “Treatment तो नही मिला पर मेरा काम हो गया।” (I didn’t get a treatment to our illnesses but I got a cure for my problems.)”