Dayanand Agarwal

Dayanand Agarwal is an Indian businessperson and founder chairman of the DRS Group and currently serving as the CMD & CEO. He owns a renowned Logistics company named Agarwal Packers and Movers, which recognizes as the most awarded brand. It holds a position in the Limca Book of Record & World Book of Records. Later he invested in the education sector on a higher level & established a significant number of schools franchise named Edify Schools all over the country.
Dayanand Agarwal was born on 20 June 1951 in a small village named Nalwa, a part of Haryana's Hisar district, India. His father, Meherchand Agarwal, had a small business of buying and selling grains on a commission basis in the village itself. His mother, Sunehri Devi Agarwal, was a house maker.
He started his study at the age of 4 in a Government Middle School located in his village. He studied in that school till 9th grade and then migrated to another school as his school offered their education up to only the 9th standard. He got admitted into the Xth grade in 1964 but did not stay to finish his education.
On 30 June 1969, at the age of 18, he got married to a girl named Shashikala, and together they have four children includes Anjani Kumar Agarwal, Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Neelam Agarwal and Kiran Agarwal.
To start his career, He moved to Calcutta and got a job in charge of a pipe fitting workshop. Afterward, in 1966, he shifted to Balangir in Orissa, where he became an Accountant at a cloth shop. The following year, he went back to his native state and started a garments business in Loharu.
In 1970, he opened a garments shop in Hisar, Haryana, which merely lasted a year. Later, he got a government job in the income-tax department across the national border to Nepal. This job, like earlier, lasted only for two years, then returned to Nalwa, his village, as he had some family problems. In 1974, he went to work in a grocery shop. That became the longest stay in his village after school. 
He left only five years later and moved to Bangalore, where he got a job at Economic Transport Organization (ETO). He moved up quickly in the company and from place to place, too, so that he had to keep up his migratory lifestyle. He was transferred to Madras in 1980 and Hyderabad in 1981.
In 1986, Dayanand Agarwal set up his own transport company and quit the job. It set him on the road to his own business. He managed to buy his first truck with the help of several people. He purchased an F207 TATA freight carrier numbered ABT 812, his first vehicle, and he has placed it outside his workshop-warehouse complex. The registration number is also one that he considers lucky and has tried to get for many of his later trucks.
In the early years of Agarwal’s business career, when he started his own transport business in 1986, he concentrated on moving small parcels from Patancheru to the city. There were small parcels which were to be shifted to the city every day. The other transporters did not find it feasible to extend this service because of their overhead expenses. He seized the opportunity and started concentrating on this business. He used to collect the parcels from different factories in the area and load them in a truck at night and transport them to the city every day. The customers were pleased with the service, and he started getting more and more new clients. What began with one full truckload of parcels every day gradually increased to 10 full truckloads a day. Thus was born his first company, Agarwal Tempo Transport of India (ATT).
After two to three years of successfully running the Patancheru, Hyderabad parcel service and establishing a name in the segment, he got encouraged to do something bigger and started thinking to extend the benefits to other cities across the country and to open new branches to cater to the requirements of the customers.
Agarwal Tempo Transport of India added one truck every year for four years. The firm was renamed DRS Logistics Pvt. Ltd now has a fleet of nearly 800 vehicles. In 1988, he called his youngest brother Rajender, who was planning to study Medicine, to Hyderabad. In those days, it was difficult to get a seat in Medical College. Finally, his brother decided to enter into business and joined him in the transport business. While Dayanand Agarwal was concentrating on getting new business from Patancheru, Rajender Agarwal looked after the parcels' delivery from Hyderabad. The focus then extended to the shifting of household goods, especially for Defense and Banking officials, among whom there was a demand for this Service because of their frequent transfers.
This business, carried on in the name of Agarwal Household Carriers, slowly became famous and started growing. Agarwal's excellent rapport with Government officials, manufacturers, and other clients brought him good business, and the company started getting full truckloads at the all-India level. Within a short period, because of personalized 24/7 service, the business grew multifold, which made him well known. The company became No.1 in this segment in India.
Subsequently, another brother Ramesh Agarwal, who was employed with the Indian Air Force, left the Service and joined the business in 1988-89. Together they set up Agarwal Household Carriers, in which his brothers and another local investor were partners, but he was not part of it officially, in the documents. The three brothers then changed the name of the company to Agarwal Transport of India. But then they broke up with the local partner, who had put in Rs50,000, and in 1989, the whole business split. Agarwal paid Rs 21,000 to sort out matters, and they relaunched their old company as Agarwal Packers and Movers, concentrating on household movement. His sister's husband and another sister's son joined them, the five of them set up another company DRS Transport Private Limited, to handle the freight that ATT used to run. At last, they closed down Agarwal Tempo Transport of India (ATT).
By 1992-93, they were handling many known companies – Bharat Strips, Asian Paints, Tubes Tubes, Pratap Steels, Deccan Profiles, and others. One brother Ramesh Agarwal shifted to Delhi to expand the business, and the other two continued to operate from Hyderabad. After the industry reached a certain level and the turnover started moving upwards in both household and bulk segments, the company acquired a few more vehicles of its own. The business grew further and went to the next higher level. His youngest brother Rajender Agarwal then shifted to Bombay. This is how they established the company’s presence in the southern, western, and northern regions. Dayanand Agarwal then inducted his sister’s son into the business, as he believed in growing together.
It was decided by the brothers to focus on containers, a new concept in the country, and give more thrust to household shifting. It was also decided to open ten branches in the country over 2–3 years. Accordingly, the branches were opened at Chennai, Bangalore, and Pune to start with. In 1995, Agarwal organized his first all-branch meeting in another new location, Pune. This is something that has been established as an annual tradition, with the venue changing by rotation. That was also the year when he introduced India’s first containerized vehicle.
Agarwal started DRS International School in 2002, Six years into running the school, DRS set up Edify, which has franchised K-12 (kindergarten to 12th class) schools and preschools all over the country, especially in the south and west India its principals and teachers. From 2002 to 2004, the years for significant investment were when Dayanand Agarwal and Sanjay Agarwal left the transport business to Anjani Kumar Agarwal to manage and concentrate more on the schools.
DRS International School started operations in 2003. Today, after ten years of existence, it is one of the famous schools in Hyderabad. A new company called MDN Edify Education Pvt. Ltd was incorporated. This company started expanding the franchisee model of schools across the country.
Edify Kids Pre School, Edify School, Edify World School (K-12), and "Edvisor" extend advice to various schools in whichever area it was required. This franchise model has grown fast in the last 4 to 5 and established Edify Schools' presence in the country's significant parts. Edify started small with four K-12 schools in the first year, and with time they grew to 52 schools and are still growing.
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Category:1951 births
Category:Indian businesspeople
Category:People from Hisar district
Category:Indian company founders