From Station Platforms to a Billion-Dollar Explosives Firm

Satyanarayan Nuwal was raised in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, where his father was a government accountant. After Class 10 he spent a year with a mentor and then tried business. At 18 he started a small chemicals and trading firm, which was not very successful.

He married at 19 and settled in Chandrapur, Maharashtra, where he struggled until 1977. According to DNA India, he could not afford basic essentials and frequently slept at railway stations. The article gives no start date or exact length for this period. It says he never lost hope.

That persistence led him to Abdul Sattar Allah Bhai, who held an explosives magazine and licence but was not interested in running that business. In 1970 Nuwal had begun renting explosive magazines to customers who needed ammunition for coal mines. He later became a consignment agent and then, the article says, India's largest explosives dealer.

In 1995 he founded Solar Industries, headquartered in Nagpur. It first supplied explosives to publicly owned coal mines. By 2006 its turnover was about 78 crore rupees, and the profits funded 13 facilities and expansion to 29 locations. In 2010 it received a licence to make explosives for the Indian army, making it one of the first private firms to do so.

The company now makes explosives, propellants, grenades, drones and warheads and operates in 65 countries. Its market value rose from 1,765 crore rupees in 2012 to over 35,000 crore by November 2022. Nuwal owns 73 per cent of it, and the article ranks him 72nd on the Forbes India Rich List.