Sulajja Firodia Motwani – Founder & CEO, Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions
“My being a sportsperson has made me a strong-willed person. Sports teach the importance of hard work, discipline, competing fairly, and about the spirit of winning and losing. You learn that what you put in is what you get out of anything,” says Sulajja Firodia Motwani, Founder & CEO, Kinetic Green Energy and Power Solutions, and Vice Chairperson, Kinetic Group, who draws inspiration from her grandfather – the legendary founder of Kinetic Engineering, late H K Firodia – and from a well-planned sports and fitness regime. In fact, it’s tough for her to decide if her first love is sports or business.
“As a three-four-year-old, I loved visiting my grandfather’s office and I loved scribbling on his office walls. He had always indulged me lovingly. Both my grandparents had been part of the freedom struggle and it is from them that I have imbibed the ‘nation first’ values and to work hard and sincerely for the betterment of society. In fact, Kinetic Group was born not so much with the idea of making money but to bring technology to our country and to industrialise our nation,” she shares.
Born in 1970, Sulajja was probably the ‘most hyperactive’ child in the family, “I was a tomboy, and so full of buoyancy and energy that my mother regularly put me into activities just to tire me out. Unlike a typical Marwari family, mine treated my sisters and brothers as equals. We all got to choose our line of education and our careers,” she adds. A national level badminton player, Sulajja holds an MBA in Finance from Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, US.
“Though I chose my career in business, I actively pursued adventure sports and travelled four days a week when I was working in the US. After four years there, I came back to India in 1996,” she says. “When I joined a two-wheeler business in 1998 in their sales, marketing and dealer development business, I travelled to about 200 locations across India – except for Bihar and Northeast – for the first couple of years. And by then, I had the visual map of almost the entire country,” she adds.
If she was travelling for ‘almost 20 days a month’ before 2000 when her son was born, she maintained an equally ‘crazy’ schedule from home after four days of delivery. “I wanted to be a full-time professional while being a full-time mother too. Blessed with a supportive family, it became easier for me to work from home for 6-7 hours a day for the first three months,” she reveals.
Currently, Sulajja is channelling all her energies in building the electric vehicle business. “In the last decade, our group has restructured itself. And today we have become one of the leading makers of electric three-wheelers. We also make electric golf carts and we are aiming for aggressive growth. These are exciting times for us. We are hoping to build a Rs. 10,000 crore-business within the next decade,” she states, following the footsteps of the grandparents and her father, Padma Shri Arun Firodia – who is also the current Chairman of the Kinetic Group.
Meeting people who are prejudiced against gender is nothing to worry about when the simple solution lies in ignoring them, feels Sulajja. “If you are focused on the task, then people will not think of non-issues. My family is held in high respect, and I am fortunate that I can continue that with grace and confidence. The automotive world is highly male-dominated but in a business meeting with a room full of all males, my voice is heard.”
“My father, who is the current Chairman of the Group, Padma Shri Arun Firodia, is highly intelligent but is also quite reserved, thus making people fear him. So, they come to me if there is any problem,” she says with a laugh.