Interview with Anil Jain, interviewed by Gunnar Trumbull, Mumbai, India

In this interview, Anil Jain, CEO and Vice Chairman of Jain Irrigation Systems Limited, explores the origins and history of his family's business--from the founding legacy of his father, to how he and his brothers have committed to maintaining the values and ethos of the company for generations to come. Founded by Bhavarlal Jain in 1963, the family business began in kerosene trading, and later secured a gas agency with ESSO. This work brought Jain into contact with rural Indian farmers, who would come to him to fuel their tractors, and who--unbeknownst to them--had a transformative impact on Bhavarlal Jain's conception of business. As Anil Jain explains in the interview, one day, his father "saw a saying written behind a tractor--on a trolley of a tractor--which said that agriculture is a profession with a future." That fortuitous interaction changed the trajectory of Jain's business, imbuing it with the now world-renowned commitment to farmers and the environment. Since that time, Jain pursued agencies to sell seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, pipes, and tractors. In the 1970s, the company also expanded into the food processing business. In the interview, Anil Jain describes the risk