BIA Installs Dr. Rajesh Doshi as President; Industry Leaders Use Ceremony to Press Case for MSME Ambition
· Free Press Journal
Mumbai's Hotel Sahara Star on Saturday evening was not the venue for a routine leadership handover. The Bombay Industries Association's 62nd Installation Ceremony — compact in ceremony, substantive in content — marked both a change of guard and a deliberate pivot in how one of India's older industry bodies sees its own role in the country's economic moment.
Outgoing President Hitesh Shah handed charge to Dr. Rajesh Doshi, Managing Director of Diagold Creation Pvt. Ltd., in the presence of diplomats, government officials, and a cross-section of Maharashtra's business community. Vice President Ritesh Choksi delivered the vote of thanks.
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The evening also saw the signing of an MoU and the formal unveiling of the cover page of BIA's revived institutional publication, Entrepreneur.
A President Who Came to Business the Hard Way
Dr. Doshi's inaugural address was, by design, unflashy. A medical doctor who entered entrepreneurship not by choice but by circumstance, his opening was deliberately candid — and it landed. "Entrepreneurs are people who refuse to accept limitations," he told an auditorium of fellow business builders. "They create something where nothing existed before."
Founded in 1948, a year after Independence, BIA has accompanied India's industrial arc across eight decades. Dr. Doshi's presidency, he made clear, would not be custodial. His theme for the year — Arise, Awake, Achieve — was unpacked with uncommon precision. Arise, he said, means committing to a larger purpose beyond hesitation. Awake is about awareness of the potential in businesses, people, and the country. Achieve, crucially, is about execution — not just ideas.
His stated priorities are institutional: strengthening BIA's structure and continuity; creating substantive member-facing learning and engagement forums; and, critically, equipping members for a world reshaped by artificial intelligence, global supply chains, and new export markets. "BIA must not simply be a networking platform," he said. "It must become a growth engine for entrepreneurs."
The Numbers Behind the Narrative
Chief Guest Anish Damania — Managing Director (Group Relationships) at JM Financial Ltd. and Honorary Advisor to MITRA, Maharashtra's state-level policy think tank — brought a capital markets lens to what is often a rhetorical conversation about MSMEs.
His figures were blunt: India's MSME universe spans 7.5 crore enterprises, 99% of which are micro-sized. They generate 33 crore jobs, contribute 31% of GDP, account for 35% of manufacturing output, and — the number that silenced the room — 48% of India's exports. "The nation runs on you guys," Damania said, with the directness of someone who has spent 30 years watching capital flow toward and away from small businesses.
His chosen topic, Scaling Without Losing Control, was well-matched to the audience. He drew on the example of a promoter who started a company with ₹1,000 in his pocket and today holds 51% stake in a firm with a market capitalisation of ₹1.2 lakh crore. His counsel was structural: capital discipline, governance systems that allow delegation without dilution, and technology adoption as non-negotiable rather than aspirational.
He also placed India's MSME challenge in a global frame. In Japan, he noted, 99.5% of enterprises are MSMEs — contributing nearly 50% of GDP. "Even countries like Japan and Germany, both heavily industrialised and technology-intensive, are built on MSMEs," he observed. The implication was clear: scale and sophistication are not in conflict with the MSME structure. Absence of ambition is.
Built Small, Thought Big
Guest of Honour Surendrakumar Tibrewala, Managing Director of Fineotex Chemical Ltd., offered something rarer than advice — a credible case study. His address traced Fineotex's journey from 400 metric tonnes of annual capacity in 2017 to 2 lakh metric tonnes today, with a market cap of approximately ₹2,600 crore, over 1.75 lakh shareholders, zero debt, and a cash reserve of ₹300 crore. The company has since acquired a European entity in Malaysia and, more recently, True10 Technology, an oil and gas company based in Houston, USA.
The operational lessons he distilled were unadorned: speed in execution, delivery, and troubleshooting; R&D proximity to prevent quality rejection and stay ahead of the market; rigorous cost and inventory management; and — perhaps most pointedly — delegation.
"Delegation is the thing which is lacking in MSME," Tibrewala said. "Everything is one person doing, and nobody is delegating." He spoke of empowering his own children, who now lead Fineotex's next growth phase, and offered a line that drew the loudest response of the evening: "Never let the words small, micro, or medium live in your ambition. Always think big."
Why This Matters
BIA's 62nd ceremony arrived at a moment when India's MSME policy discourse is in flux — tariff realignments, the China-plus-one opportunity, PLI scheme uptake, and the looming question of AI-driven productivity all press simultaneously on businesses largely ill-equipped to respond alone.
That an industry association of BIA's vintage is explicitly centring AI, global supply chains, and institutional reform in its presidential mandate is not incidental. It signals where the pressure points are. Whether BIA can convert that agenda into actionable programming for its members — and not merely frame it — will determine whether the Arise, Awake, Achieve theme becomes a record of intent or a record of results.