Bharat Entrepreneurs

Hemendra Kothari comes from a family of stock brokers. In fact he represents the fourth generation of his family. He graduated as a commerce student from the university of Bombay. He saw potential in providing corporate finance and banking services to Indian Companies. In 1975, he founded DSP Financial Consultants ltd and it has since grown to be a leading Investment Bank from India. He is the chairman of ITTIL

(Infrastructure Technology and trade india Ltd)

He was the vice president of Stock exchange, Mumbai for three years and he was elected as it’s president in March 1991. He is the promoter and chairman of DSP Merrill Lynch Ltd.

DSP Merrill Lynch Head Quarters is located in Mumbai’s Nariman Point district.

He made a deal of a life time taking home around $500 million US dollars by selling 47.73% stake in in the investment banking joint venture DSP Merrill Lynch to Merrill Lynch. He believes that, had he waited for three more years, then it would have been worth a Billion Dollars! This deal was clinched in December 2005.

In 2008, BlackRock, the largest quoted asset company in the world, head quartered in New York, with a presence in 13 countries, is all set to acquire a whopping 40% of the DSP Merrill Lynch company for an undisclosed sum.

Apart from money making ventures in which Mr. Hemendra Kothari finds himself in most of the times, he is also very concerned about wild life in India and is always ready to do his bit for conserving wild life. Given, the recent increasing poaching activities which had an obvious link to the disappearance of the Indian Tigers, Mr. Kothari along with a few heavy weight industrialists are very concerned and they are all up for supporting the Government as well as the few passionate individuals in any way they can in a bid to save wild life.

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He was trained to be a criminal lawyer but his hunger for innovation, his risk taking nature compelled him to become an entrepreneur. He is the founder of Frankfinn group and at the young age of 42, he is the chairman of 250 crore company which is considered to be the best in the field of cabin crew training.

Frankfinn is a very attractive word for the people who want to make their career in aviation and music industry. However, the journey of Frankfinn started with Frankfinn Medico Info services in 1993, which was started by Mr. Kohli with the small capital of Rs.40,000 which he borrowed fro his friend.

The word ‘Frankfinn’ also has a very interesting story associated with it. Mr. Kohli used to write for his college magazine and he used to sign-off with a pseudonym ‘Frankfinn’. When he tried to register his company with this name, authorities rejected it as it’s doesn’t sound Indian. Later a clipping from the old college magazine helped in registering the company with this name.

Very soon, Mr. Kohli was attracted to the skies, as Government of India was adopting a liberal policy. As a result the business of medical data services was given up and Frankfinn started providing flight attendant training. It was renamed as Frankfinn Aviation services.

The changes brought by the Frankfinn in training of cabin crew, speak of the innovative skills of Mr. Kohli. Mr. Kohli found that the existing training courses for the crew span between six months to one year and they were very technical. Mr. Kohli wanted to design a simpler and non-technical course for the training crew. The aviation industry experts, human resource professional and MBAs were brought together to make this thought a reality. A seven day basic cabin crew training course was designed. Training sessions were conducted all over the India and the response was as good as the placements.

Then the Frankfinn Institute of Air Hostess training was started as Mr. Kohli understood that hospitality, travel and aviation are inter-connected with each other. The curriculum was modified to meet the market requirements of all the three industries. This network has 117 centers across 95 cities and it’s still growing. The students of this institute are employed not only in International Airlines but also in hotels. A magazine ‘Aviation Times’ was also launched in year 1999 and today it has a circulation of around 50000 copies. Frankfinn is also planning to launch a low cost airline by the end of 2009 and they aim to get the funds from the capital market with an IPO.

Frankfinn Entertainment was started in year 2005 as K S Kohli could smell profit in music industry. Many music albums have been launched by the company and they are also introducing the young talent in the industry. Frankfinn Entertainment is going to launch its first feature film venture soon.

Frankfinn’s vision is to become one of the top ten companies in the Aviation and Music industries in the next 10 years.

Well, one thing is for sure, if you want to become an entrepreneur, you need to have a vision and risk taking ability. You should believe completely in what you do and don’t worry about the consequences.

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