Leaving his high-profile corporate job at the age of 38, Vinod Saraf decided to give up the CEO life to chase the long-standing dream of opening his own business.
The man behind Rs 20,000-crore market cap Vinati Organics, Vinod Saraf has an interesting story, one that he has dubbed “beggar-to-billionaire” (B2B). From a middle-class family of modest means, Saraf rose to become a reputed business leader heading a leading company of the Aditya Birla Group. But at the age of 38, he decided to give it all up to chase the long-standing dream of opening his own business.
The story of Vinod Saraf begins in Rajasthan where he was born to a small trader. He was the eldest among seven siblings. In his modest circumstances, education was the way to rise and Vinod excelled in studies. He completed graduation as a state topper at just 17 years of age and then earned his MBA from the prestigious BITS Pilani as gold medallist at 19.
While Vinod’s early Hindi medium education did not make him a catch for large MNCs, his calculative brain was spotted by a textile entrepreneur. After working in different companies in the textile business for over 10 years, Vinod Saraf landed a job in one of the companies of the legendary business family Birlas. Working with the late industrialist Aditya Birla, Saraf rose to become the managing director of Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd. (MRPL). He has worked in companies like Grasim Industries, Modern Syntex and Bhilwara Group.
A young turk of sorts being the leader of a company at under 40, Saraf took the big risk of giving it all up and chasing his businessman dream. When he founded Vinati Organics in 1990, he never thought his business would grow this big. With equity investment, bank loans and listing to raise funds and his own savings, Saraf set up a company to make IBB or Isobutyl Benzene, a niche chemical which is a raw material for the major painkiller ibuprofen.
Plagued with quality issues, his business saw a big turn around after his daughter Vinati, after whom he had named the brand, joined the business. A graduate from Wharton University in US, Vinati Saraf Mutreja, aided by a consultant she brought in, built on her father’s platform to take the company from to be listed among the largest ibuprofen makers globally by volume. Vinati today heads Vinod’s company as the CEO and Managing Director. In 2019, Vinod Saraf featured among the newest billionaires created by India. In 2023, Saraf's net worth stands at over Rs 15,500 crore ($1.9 billion), as per Forbes.
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 "Meet Vinod Saraf, left high-profile CEO job to start his own company, now worth Rs 15,500 crore")
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