Although a teacher's son, Girish Arora always wanted to be a ‘business man'. And he started his entrepreneurial journey by setting up a small business of schoolbags. The next step was importing used Xerox machines from Australia, repairing them and selling them in the Indian market. Then he saw a huge potential in batteries and founded Base to become a distributor for this sector in 1987.

The business grew substantially and he went on to become the exclusive distributor for Panasonic batteries in 2000. While the business was doing quite good, he was far from satisfied and soon he took the leap from being a distributor to becoming a manufacturer. But this was far from easy as he himself points out: "The biggest challenge I faced was shifting the line of business from being a battery distributor for Panasonic to a technologically advanced battery manufacturer. The challenge also included understanding the gap that existed between the manufacturer and customer and trying to bridge that gap by developing products that my customers want."

Of course, he never looked back from then. Today, Base is a Rs897crore organisation employing 800+ people working in field for sales and service and another 800+ people employed at the manufacturing unit in Solan. A second manufacturing plant, a mega Greenfield unit, with one of the largest manufacturing capacities in South East Asia has been set up in Hosur, Tamil Nadu with an estimated investment of Rs432 crore. The second is expected to start operations in September 2014.

Arora explains the logic behind this new plant: "The focus for the past few years has been on increasing production and strengthening distribution. To tackle production we have successfully set up the largest integrated battery manufacturing plant in Hosur." With production to begin at the new plant, he is expecting the company turnover to cross Rs1,200 crore this financial year