Ashwin Desai's specialty chemicals company Aether Industries, had a spectacular rally on the bourses, resulting in the 72-year-old entering the billionaires' club. At heart though, he's still a core engineer or a technician—a technocrat
Ashwin Desai loves swimming, especially against the tide. Make no mistake, he is no daredevil. In his own words, the 72-year-old is an ordinary family man who enjoys the little joys of life—whether it is going on long bike rides with his wife or taking a nine-day long walk from Surat to Shirdi or occasionally starting his day by swimming in the Tapi river, followed by surti sev khamani for breakfast.
But look closely into his journey into Forbes’s billionaire club and Desai’s life appears rather tumultuous, involving walking away from his family business after his father’s demise to trading his family’s upmarket and swanky bungalow for a one-bedroom house before giving up control of a company he built from scratch.
“There are two types of people in this world,” Desai tells Forbes India on a video call from Surat. “Those who are brilliant and those who are hardworking. I belong in the second category, and I take pride in that.” Desai, with a net worth of $1.2 billion, is ranked the 2,259th richest person in the world, according to the 2023 Forbes World’s Billionaires List. He entered the club after his company, Aether Industries, had a spectacular rally on the bourses through last year.
Desai is the founding promoter and managing director of Surat-based Aether Industries, a publicly traded specialty chemical company that manufactures active ingredients for sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and oil and gas. It is also a provider of contract research and manufacturing services (CRAMS) to numerous multinationals. “I never thought I would be a billionaire,” says Desai. “Because, at heart, I’m still a core engineer or a technician. Maybe you can label me a technocrat.”
Desai took Aether public in June 2022, almost a decade after he started the company, raising ₹808 crore from the capital markets. The company’s shares were listed at a 10 percent premium, rallying over 42 percent in the last nine months, and are today valued at ₹11,200 crore. The company posted annual revenues of nearly ₹600 crore last year with profits of ₹108 crore. Desai and family own 87 percent stake in Aether, whose clients range from Saudi Aramco to Dr Reddy’s and United Phosphorus Limited, among 200 others.