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Meet the man from Kolkata who built a 25,000 CR Iron and Steel Empire. 1. Born in a business family in Kolkata, Mahabir Prasad Agarwal started his journey as a first-generation steel and iron trader in 1970. While trading, he never got the right quality of scraps to produce higher steel grades. His business went bankrupt, and he had to do something. 🤔 2. He came across direct-reduced Iron (aka Sponge Iron), which directly reduces iron ore into Iron by a reducing gas. He knew it could be an alternative feed material to steel melting scrap and reduce our reliance on imports. That's when he had an idea. 💡 3. In 1990, he started a sponge iron factory in Sambalpur, Orissa, with an initial capacity of 0.06 MTPA (million tonnes per annum). Mahabir started a company where he wanted to produce India's high-quality sponge iron. Shyam Metalics and Energy was born. 🚀 4. Mahabir started, but the sponge iron market in India during the 1990s was fragmented, with large players like JSW Steel and Jindal Steel and Power. Moreover, iron ore and coal price volatility impacted margins, and transportation from mines in Orissa was difficult. He came up with a plan. 👇 5. He reinvested all his trading income and operational revenues to keep the plant running, and emerged as the top five players as India produced 5.44 million tonnes of steel annually and went from a heavy importer to the world's largest producer of sponge iron by 2001. 💪 6. In 2002, Mahabir started another factory in Mangalpore, West Bengal with an initial capacity of 0.06 MTPA sponge iron. However, the 2008 global crisis reduced the sponge iron demand by 80%. As the worldwide iron market shook, Mahabir had to focus on new products, or his business would fail. 🤔 7. By 2014, he had opened a 0.13 MTPA factory in Sambalpur, Orissa, and a 0.59 MTPA factory in Jamuria, West Bengal, to focus on iron pellets, billets, TMT Bars, ferroalloys, and other rolled products. He also established a captive railway siding power unit to save power in both factories. He was not going down this time. 🙌 8. By 2018, Shyam Metalics and Energy had reached an annual capacity of 2.90 MTPA. As it expanded its captive power units to 94 MW in Jamuria and 118 MW in Sambalpur, it scaled to a revenue of 4052.43 CR at a profit of 636.78 CR by 2019. But the big moment came two years later. 👇 9. On 24th June 2021, Shyam Metalics and Energy Ltd listed through a 909 CR IPO that oversubscribed a whopping 121.43 times. As it scaled to a capacity of 5.71 MTPA and became the 4th largest sponge iron player, it became a 10,000 CR company. 📉 10. Today, Shyam Metalics and Energy clocks revenue of 10,387 CR with three manufacturing facilities in Sambalpur, Jamuria, and Mangalpur with a combined capacity of 8.85 MTPA, supported by 227 MW of captive power. ⚡ ➡️ Who says Bengalis can't do business? Mahabir Prasad Aggarwal has built a 25,306 CR company from the heartland of West Bengal. 🙏