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The M. K Sanghi Group had an extremely humble
beginning. In the early 1920s, a young man called Motilal Sanghi
from a small town in India called Jodhpur decided to start a general
merchandise shop after taking a loan of five thousand rupees. Driven
by enthusiasm and a burning desire to be successful, he soon became
the largest retailer in the state of Jodhpur and figured that if
he could sell food and garments, he could also sell cars. In those
British-Raj days of India, the only buyers of cars were the Maharajas
and the Princes of the royal states. Motilal not only established
strong personal relations with these potential buyers but also obtained
dealerships from General Motors, USA, and Rolls-Royce Motors Cars,
England. He also began to sell a new car produced by Sir Herbert
Austin in England, called the Austin Seven. By the 1940s, Seth Motilal
Sanghi, as he had come to be known by then, had established a vast
network for the sales, service and spare parts of cars. his network
was spread over Jodhpur, Jaipur, Udaipur, Kota, Ajmer, Bikaner,
Mt. Abu, Indore and Delhi.
Seth Motilal Sanghi had also diversified into the nascent cinema business and was profitably operating over ten movie theatres in North India. The aim was to use the cinema business as the bedrock for profitable real estate investments. During his lifetime, Motilal Sanghi also ventured into manufacturing industrial gases by setting up one of the first plants in Jaipur. The legacy of Seth Motilal Sanghi was nurtured by his eldest son, Narendra Sanghi, who remained an active member of the Indian Parliament for over sixteen years. The business was further expanded and strengthened by Mahendra Sanghi, Seth Motilal Sanghi's youngest son. In 1952, the Government of India asked all car manufacturers who did not have plans to manufacture cars in India to shut their operations. This resulted in the exit of auto makers such as General Motors from India. The M. K Sanghi Group now became a distributor for all the Indian manufacturers and soon became the largest automobile distribution business house in India. In 1962, the group shifted its headquarters to the commercial capital of India, Mumbai.
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