Tulah and P K Ahammed: How a patriarch set values for his business group

Nearly 50 years ago, traders at the wholesale rice market at Valiyangadi in Kozhikode would wait eagerly every morning for P.K. Ahammed to arrive. A bit like the open outcry system in the stock exchanges, the price-setting for rice trade was then in esoteric sign language with the hand held under a piece of cloth. And Ahammed was the lead trader who knew the pulse of local demand and supply as well as what was happening in the international markets.

Even now, P.K Ahammed remains rooted to his bearings with ears to the ground. Chairman of the over-Rs 1,000 crore Peekay Group based out of Kozhikode, with interests in steel, roller flour mills, castings and a hospital, P K Ahammed is arguably one of the oldest active businessmen in Kerala. The 80-year-old is still hands on when it comes to the business affairs of the group and attends office daily.

As the second son and multinational entrepreneur P.K. Faizal launched his KEF Holdings’ unique integrated wellness clinic “Tulah” (meaning balance), a stone’s throw from the Kozhikode International Airport today, it was his father’s early lessons in running a business and ethics that he recalled. Quite fittingly, it seemed to those who have known Ahmad over the years.

In Kerala’s dry landscape for businessmen, P.K. Ahammed’s story and rise from rice trading to manufacturing to services stands out for its steadfastness, tenacity of purpose, essential earthiness and humaneness in navigating the State’s tough labour scene and anti-capitalist stance. Nearly 20 km away from the Peekay Group’s current head office lies the shutdown township of Grasim Industries of the nationally renowned Aditya Birla group, a monument to the State’s approach to industrialisation initially.

My professional interaction with P.K. Ahammed dates back to the nineties when I was a foreign exchange dealer for State Bank and he would call for hedging of the US Dollar rates in the forward market for import of wheat, under a Government of India scheme those days. His powers of persuasion were immense. He would know the inter-bank rate (from which he would assess how much margin we take) and would not yield till he got a “good” deal.

As a Bank, we would also not give up quickly, we came to respect each other and arrived at a consensus margin which would be “win-win”. I never met a Kerala-based businessman with such a deep understanding of the forex market. For all I knew, he got his information only by talking to Mumbai and using his sharp acumen. No literature on foreign exchange was a substitute.

A banker’s knowledge of the forex market and the forward rates were a derivative of being in the trade with the Reuters 2000 monitors of those times in front . Trainings in those times at the RBI’s famed Bankers Training College at Dadar ( now shutdown) and the National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM), Pune helped. But I was amazed that he knew the international commodity rates of wheat, steel, rice, their forward rates plus what was happening in the forex market. We met our match in P.K. Ahammed for his insight, intuition and immense focus on the bottom line..

Years later, his eldest son P.K. Moidu (an engineer who looks after the Group’s castings/steel manufacturing business) would tell me that in Valiyangadi the shutters of Nellikot Traders and P.K. Ahammed &Co ( the rice trading units) would not be shut till the last paisa was tallied. “There were days when dad would stay back because the day’s books had not tallied by a few paisa but he would never down the shutters and go home till the day’s accounts were fully reconciled”.

Last week, he had called me over phone for the launch of Faizal’s new venture. It was a long time since we had talked. But before finally hanging up, he could not resist asking me about interest rates and what I felt about the rate that another Bank was charging him. That was quintessential PK — if you take care of the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves.

The Peekay Group and the family have also been involved in philanthropy. Under the CSR initiatives of the KEF Group, the Nadakkavu government girls school in Kozhikode got an overhaul recently with the latest of educational equipment and technology.

And it is this value which Faizal recalled today at the launch of “Tulah”. “Wealth can never create happiness. It is only when you give, will happiness arise for you and everyone around. I remember Dad, who is my inspiration , telling me when I was young,” He also stated that “Tulah” was not the beginning of a new business but the start of a philosophy of life which aims at holistic living with the help of traditional forms of living including Ayurveda, Tibetan wellness methods aided by modern clinical practices.

The Rs 800 crore project is expected to go fully on stream before end of the year. Kerala’s Tourism Minister, Mohammed Riyaz, rang a bell along with Faizal and wife Shabana as the harbinger for this new project, which seeks to redefine inbound health and wellness tourism to Kerala.

(S Adikesavan is a top executive with a bank.)