Commodity Online
Managing director of Sanghavi Exports International Pvt Ltd speaks about the beginnings and rising to apogee of his glittering diamond business, which was started from Surat and now reached up to New York.

I was born in Old Deesa village of Gujarat’s Banaskantha district in 1951. My father was into a small-time money lending business. I had my primary education at my own village in Deesa and college in Ahmedabad.

My dream was to become an engineer. But when it was time to make a career decision, I changed my mind to go into medical line. However, I could not get into it with the kind of marks that I got and we were not rich enough to give donations. So my dream went into a spin.

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Since my knowledge of science was better, I was contemplating to get back into engineering. During my holidays in 1969, I went to Navsari to see the diamond polishing work that one of our relatives had.

I had a very narrow view on the diamond business then. My pre-conceived notion was that the diamond sector belonged to the uneducated and had a very poor image about the people working in this business. During these holidays, I learnt the diamond rough and polishing techniques from my uncle. I was highly impressed with the way business was developing and calculated whether this would suit me. I overstayed there for two months and went back home with a firm decision to enter into this business.

After four months, I came back to Surat again with Rs 200 in hand and headed straight to Mahidarpura diamond market from where we operated for long. From 1971 to 1975, we were one of thousands of diamond dealers/brokers who thronged this market.

My two brothers were into diamond polishing here and they left it and joined me in our business. In 1980, my elder brother, who was a building contractor in Deesa, also joined us. We set up Sanghavi Exports in 1982 with four brothers as partners and our Hong Kong office in 1984 at a time when people were closing down offices across the world. In 1989, we set up the New York office and since then for seven years we have bee bagging the highest exporter award in non-DTC category. We were not into manufacturing line then. Today we are also a sight holder.  Continued...