Born in Churu, Rajasthan in a traditional Marwari family.
Parents: Bhani Ram Chaudhary and Saraswati Devi.
High School: Government Bagla Senior Secondary School, Churu
College: Government College Lohia, Churu Chaudhary joined his father’s shoe business, ‘Bharat Boot House’ during college. But soon after college, he left to pursue on his own and even left a bank job offer of a cashier at the same time.
During this time, Chaudhary met Ilay Cooper, a British designer and researcher who had come down to Rajasthan from England to study Shekhawati Wall Paintings. Nand and Ilay bonded, and Illay became the first few persons to inspire Nand to take up carpets.
1978 Both shared an interest in the paintings and NKC soon discovered that his friend had a great vision towards life and living.
Growing up, Nand used to be an introverted kid but an avid reader and a nature lover. Apart, NK also studied the works of Tagore and Gandhi, and spiritual texts of Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita. He explored his heritage, recognised his values, and began his lifelong journey to discover his life’s purpose.
Married to Smt. Sulochana Chaudhary.
Nand Kishore always wanted to create a business which fosters and nurtures, and remove all the exploitative practices. During college, on one of the occasions, his professor was asking about the purpose of business. One by one, students raised their hands to offer views. NK raised his hand to speak, telling the class, “Business is next to love. It is the creator and preserver of a civilization.” His teacher commented to the class, “This, ladies and gentlemen, is a successful business entrepreneur.”
Took Rs. 5000 loan from his father to buy a bicycle, raw material and to set up two looms and nine artisans in Churu. A master from Beneras was called and NK along with his artisans learnt the art himself. NK worked day and night, ate at looms with weavers. First carpets were an identical twin carpets, of 6*4ft sq to export under the name of Bharat Carpet Enterprise.
Within three years, ten additional looms were added in regions of Ratangad, Sujangad, Laxmangarh, Jodhpur.
First Media Mention by Ilay Cooper, Inside-Outside featured NK in a title ‘More than Revival’ by Ilay Cooper.
Direct export: First step towards eliminating the Middlemen and connecting weavers directly to Global markets.
NK’s belief of treating everyone with dignity, empathy, respect and love guided a lot of his decisions; and removing middlemen was one of the most challenging tasks to do back then.
With a growing network within India’s rural belts, the Government of India granted Jaipur Rugs the rare privilege (then) of using walkie-talkies to monitor and connect different areas.
For him, Gujarat was a learning period, a school, where learning of various knotting techniques and design trends was undertaken, a Gurukul. All along with delivering the best of the quality, I tried bridging the gaps between the two worlds, viz. the grassroots and the global markets.”
After spending 13 years in Gujarat, NK came back to Jaipur and re-named his business as Jaipur Carpets. A sister concern was setup in US, Jaipur Rugs Inc.(now known as Jaipur Living) to ease distribution in North America and beyond. NK first daughter, Asha joined the business as CEO of Jaipur Rugs Inc. and NK kept his focus intact at grassroots.
NK also struggled a lot during this phase as he to deal with professionals and overall Global Business. “It was a process of self-discovery. I had to own up for all that went wrong,” he says.
Jaipur Rugs’ artisan network marked 10,000+. Over the years, this unparalleled artisan proposition became the strength of the organisation.
NK’s other daughter, Archana Chaudhary joined Jaipur Living, as the Director of Quality Assurance respectively.
NK setup Jaipur Rugs Foundation, under the Rajasthan Public Trust, to engage, develop and sustain the artisan network. Since day one, NK’s vision has always been sustainable and enterprise driven solutions to society.
Artisan’s network grew to 40,000.
The organisation bagged their first international design award, ‘America’s Magnificent Design Award’.
NK’s younger son and daughter, Yogesh and Kavita joined the business, as head of Sales/Marketing and Design respectively.
Jaipur Carpets was renamed as Jaipur Rugs Pvt. Ltd.
A year of change, and new beginnings as the emphasis then shifted to unparalleled quality and innovation in designs, with the help of an amazing army of skilled artisans to create flawless pieces of art.
Production marked 1-Million Square Feet of Hand knotted Carpets.
NK initiated digitalisation and ERP implementation across the company to organise the supply chain.
NK received a call from the then Global Prof. of Management, C.K Prahalad. Prahalad’ approached Chaudhary to do a case study on the vertical integration model of Jaipur Rugs.
‘Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’ by CK Prahalad published bringing Jaipur Rugs to the international market.
During the same time, NK also established a Higher School of unlearning to bring coherence between professionals and grassroot wisdom. “We made the professionals work with our older uneducated managers in different departments to develop a deep understanding of the business process. I also took the challenge to teach them the basic fundamentals to manage the business and people like ours, which they never learnt in their school and college. The idea was to help them ‘find themselves through losing themselves’,” says NK.
NK received Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the year award
NK’s daughter, Kavita launched, Artisan Originals, Manchaha collection. What started as an experiment, soon turned into a movement. For the first time, the weavers in rural Rajasthan got a chance to become the designers of their own rugs. Each rug became a reflection of the personality, the emotions, and the life story of the designer weavers.
NK received NASSCOM Social Innovation Honors 2014.
NK met ten partners of Bain and Company at a Leadership summit, and that’s when the journey to restore Founder’s mentality had begun.
NK changed the HR’s department name to ‘Search for the Divine soul’
search for the divine sole
Raj Sisodia and Michael J. Gelb covered Jaipur Rugs in their book, the ‘Healing organisation’ describing NK’s vision of innocence and Jaipur Rugs’ as an ashram.
Present day And
Vision beyond!
NK’s vision is to create the best artisan proposition for the Global Hand Knotted industry, by connecting the artisans and customers directly to each other and nurturing co-creation. NK’s relationship with the Grassroot has only grown stronger. He says, “I am not the owner of this business, the real owners are people who put in their hard work to produce beautiful carpets which are liked by customers around the world.”
His mission is to bring the weavers art directly into the home; thereby providing the consumers the blessings of the village and warmth of the home to develop weavers in their journey of becoming weaver to an artist.
He believes that Business is a process of self discovery and in doing so one can succeed in letting go of all of the anxieties, fears and ego that stop them from growing and experiencing what is pure.
“No one is born perfect nor ever will be, but striving to be better is what makes life worth living and is what will lead you to true contentment. So don’t be scared to lose yourself. The person that emerges out of the maze might just surprise you.”, says NK.
