He brings the cool in your homes and offices – literally. From leaving studies to joining his dad’s business for the sheer passion of working, to streamlining it and then starting a totally unrelated business from scratch and making it big, Mr. Umesh Swami’s story is as unconventional as it gets.

 

Mr. Swami’s family migrated from Mumbai when he was in 10th standard. All of 16 years of age, he took over his father’s plastic manufacturing business because there was nothing else to do. (We are told that during the “Navnirman” days in Surat, everything was shut including colleges). With an air of confidence, a young enthusiastic Umesh was confident of giving a new lease of life to his family business. The romance of working and its adrenalin rush took over him completely so much so that he never went back to studies.

 

But he had the itch to prove himself and chart his own destiny, the one that had setbacks, failures, challenges but a strong desire to prove himself and do something innovative. With various failed or should we say non-exciting businesses like running looms, a video theatre (he shut that because he didn’t want to be made fun of) behind him, Umesh wasn’t the one to give up.

 

Learning from everything that he had done so far in many small businesses that the man started and rustling them up all together, AC’s happened to Mr. Swami accidentally. He assembled a few for a friend to begin with, got satisfactory nods from them and got recommended to others. He peered at books about ACs just as you would read your daily newspaper….we want to highlight that he doesn’t hold a technical degree, lest you forget. The motivation came from more orders from word-of-mouth publicity, resulting in his first workshop which was a small set-up where he began to assemble ACs for family and more friends.

 

And that is exactly how Jay Air was born, just out of thin air and a thick determination.

 

The company was growing exponentially under Mr. Swami’s dexterous technical skills and the focus on delivering quality products and service. He knows his mantra of client satisfaction well enough so much so that they hardly have any marketing work force till date. With hordes of positive reviews flowing in and having delivered a record order of assembling 125 ACs in the fledgling state of the company, Jay Air was flush with excitement and a zeal to up the ante.

 

A new office and premises happened, the team grew and the plans charted. The major breakthrough came in when the company pitched in to Blue Star for dealership in South Gujarat and bagged it. They haven’t felt the need to tie-up with anyone else – Blue Star had so much faith in them that they kept Jay Air buzzing. They suggested various changes to Blue Star which were implemented by the company to improve the designing and performance. Blue Star holds Mr. Swami in high esteem and always asks for his recommendations. With Mr. Umesh Swami at the steering, Jay Air delivered cool and slick order of 150 tonnes air conditioning in a day back then. The company has now grown up to assembling and delivering 9000 tonnes of AC annually and is growing at a steady pace.

 

In contrast to his nature of always adding a new thing in the game, Mr. Swami does not plan to diversify from his current business, but aims to train both his sons to handle the business and take it to heights. Not one to give away the business on a platter, he has asked his sons to work their way up the ladder and learning the ropes of the business right from ground zero. Mr. Swami firmly believes that they need to earn their responsibilities and its consequences.

 

While he has seen setbacks too, he chooses to look at the positive side – what he didn’t gain from the lack of an adjectival degree, he made it good it with his hard work. He is an on the job MBA he quips. However, that doesn’t undermine his respect for education – both his sons have acquired the best of education and are now applying it to the business. The only thing he regrets is that his father left him too soon and could not see the heights Jay Air has achieved.

 

His message to the youth is that there can never be any short cut to success. “Today’s generation has a lot of intelligence and talent but the only thing they lack is the passion to work hard” he ruminates. Just work hard and you will get all the riches you’ve aimed for says the man who has proven this enough. The business is settled now but Mr. Swami has new targets, new challenges –in a totally unrelated thing. He plans to live his long cherished dream of traveling and exploring new places and make good the time he couldn’t give himself and his family all this while. He shares cherubically that two copies of his passports have already been stamped and more will be inked. Who says you have to be explorer only in the business. Let the wanderlust strike.