Armed with a Basic Teachers' Course degree from Gyanpur Degree College, when young Lalla Ram Maurya, son of a poor carpet weaver from Bhadohi, went looking for a job, he was told to come back 20 years later ``by which time some opening should hopefully be available.''

Rather than wait, Maurya decided to do something on his own, saddled as he was with the onerous responsibility of fending for his younger siblings. ``It was a do or die situation,'' recalls the owner of the Rs 25-crore Ideal Group of companies, To begin with, Maurya tried his hand at farming ``on our small plot of ancestral land in the village.''

Simultaneously, he decided to cultivate his family's ancestral skill, and that of almost all families in the Bhadohi-Mirzapur belt of UP, namely that of carpet weaving. Interestingly, Maurya started acquiring the skill of carpet weaving as part of the now notorious child labour brigade. ``I was around 12 or 13 years old when I started helping my father in weaving carpets. Since most of the carpet industry in this area is essentially in the form of family enterprises, not all child labour can be termed exploitative,'' opines the self-made 41 year old entrepreneur.

Initially Maurya assisted his father in weaving in the evenings after toiling in the fields during the day, ``It used to take us at least nine months to weave a carpet, reminiscences Maurya. These carpets were then supplied to local carpet exporters. It was during a trip to a manufacturer to recover a blocked payment of Rs 70 that Maurya hit upon the idea of starting his own carpet manufacturing company. ``Instead of paying me my dues, the manufacturer offered to pay for registration of my company and on the spur of the moment I decided to name it Ideal'' says Maurya.

And though the going was rough for the initial three to four years, Lalla's (as he is popularly called) hard work and honesty paid rich dividends. Within a span of two to three years, Maurya had managed to set up animpressive 150 to 200 looms in Bhadohi. Ideal Carpets Limited ventured into exports in 1981 with an export order worth Rs 5,000 from Germany. Here again, the initial four years were fraught with problems with non-payments after taking delivery of consignments. ``I had to make frequent trips to Germany and was even based there for some months at one point of time,'' recalls Maurya. But here too luck favoured him and he made several new contacts with US carpet importers.

Business boomed and soon Maurya added Ideal Carpet Industries to the list of companies in his group as part of backward integration of the group. The company processed raw wool obtained both indigenously from Bikaner and imported from New Zealand into yarn.

Collectively, Ideal Carpets Limited and Ideal Carpet Industries have a turnover of Rs 24 crore at present.

Not content with limiting himself to the carpet business alone, Maurya made a foray into the hospitality business in 1993 with the launch of a three- star hotel in Varanasi in a tie-up with no less than the renowned Best Western Group of the US. The hotel, Ideal Best Western too has proved a major money spinner for Maurya who is all set to turn it into a five-star hotel within the next couple of months.

Plans to start a chain of hotels in Lucknow, Delhi and Jaipur are on the drawing board stage . And in keeping with the new trend of industrialists having media mouthpieces of their own, Maurya too has a Hindi weekly called `Ideal Express' published from Varanasi.

Undoubtedly, a man with a midas touch, Maurya's motto is hard work and honesty pay for themselves at the end of the day.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.