It was time to go to phase 2 of the plan after village ladies started saving 25 paise every day; Tonse Madhav Anant Pai told them that their children were falling ill very frequently because they consumed only fish and rice.

He urged them to give the children a glass of milk every day. “That was impossible, a glass of milk was unaffordable” was the reply from most of the ladies in town.

So Pai urged them to buy a cow for their houses.

They laughed: “We cannot afford a glass of milk, and you want us to buy a cow?”.

But Pai gently told them that he could finance the cows for the women.

And repayment was also painless, he explained: “Just give your child a glass of milk, and I shall purchase the rest of the milk from you and adjust the cost of the cow.

You don’t have to do anything else.” It took a while to persuade the first woman.

But when she agreed, it was a game of “me too” & “me too” spread the movement like wild fire.

Within a short while, there were so many cows in the village that Pai could not purchase all of their milk.

He therefore formed a milk cooperative.

To handle the amount of money coming in, he started a bank- Canara Industrial and Banking Syndicate Ltd – with its headquarters in Manipal.

The first branch of the bank started its operations in 1925 at Udupi in Karnataka.

By 1937, it had secured its membership as a clearinghouse in Mumbai.

He then started weavers’ cooperatives, who too were financed by the bank.

Then to benefit the community he began schools, then colleges and then institutions that taught engineering⚙ and medicine.

This complex later became the prestigious Manipal Educational Complex.

In fact, to grow the bank, Pai used to look around for good businessmen, who had the urge to grow and both the ability and willingness to repay the amounts borrowed.

In one of his travels, he met a trader, whom he helped get a yarn licence from the government.

*That businessman was Dhirubhai Ambani.*

And that is how a member of the Pai family remained on the board of Reliance Industries as long as he was alive. That’s why Reliance Industries banks with Syndicate Bank and uses it as its lead financier in many of its dealings, even to this day.

Learning from the story
1. The best investment is in your own business. Tonse Pai used this philosophy not only to nourish village children but to repay Cow loan as well & created long term revenue earning source for village households.
2. It is said that if you want to go fast, go alone and if you want to go far, go together. He used this philosophy to aggregate milk resources and formed milk co-operatives & scaled them big and replicated this model across multiple fields like weaving, education etc.

Questions to ask ourselves
1. How can I re-invest in my business to create self sustainable and ever growing business model?
2. How do I aggregate resources in my business to scale my business?

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