Kapal Mehra: the man who aimed to be India’s polyester king but ended up with nothing

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Kapal Mehra once went head-to-head with Dhirubhai Ambani in the ruthless synthetic textile wars of the 1980s. In a battle fought over polyester yarn and government licences, Mehra would ultimately lose everything.As a serious contender, he should have secured a place in corporate folklore. Instead, remarkably little is known about him today.

After the swift collapse of his fortunes, it is almost as if Kapal Mehra was erased from memory.His story begins, as many Indian business dynasties do, with a father. Orkay Silk Mills was founded in 1968 and soon grew into one of India’s fastest-growing textile firms.In the 1970s, a young and ambitious Dhirubhai Ambani approached the elder Mehra for advice on setting up a dyeing unit. He was rebuffed with patrician disdain.

Flexing his biceps, Mehra is said to have told him: “You need to mix blood with chemicals to make dyes. You can’t do it.”Dhirubhai was not a man to take such an affront lightly. From that moment on Orkay was a marked company.After inheriting the company, Kapal Mehra moved aggressively to scale up.

Alongside his brother Jitendra Mehra and son Pankaj Mehra, Orkay Industries operated mills in Saki Naka in Bombay’s industrial suburbs and later at Patalganga — the very corridor where Reliance was expanding.In 1981 came a breakthrough. Of 43 applicants seeking a licence to manufacture partially oriented yarn (POY), Orkay was one of just three to receive approval — the others being Reliance and JK Synthetics.Though still smaller than its rivals, Mehra radiated confidence. Orkay, he declared, was a mini-Reliance that would soon become a maxi-Reliance.In 1984, Mehra took Orkay public.