Jay Karan Sharma, a late Haryana businessman and founder of Chetak Logistics Ltd., has been awarded ‘The Logistics Man of India’ by Alden Global Value Advisors. He has been given this honor for his important role in taking the business of logistics and transport in the country to great heights. With his hard work and perseverance in the life of initial deprivation, he got a lot of success by starting this work. Due to this, today lakhs of people are living in this work.
Jai Karan Sharma was born on 1st November 1955 in Jhinjhar village of Bhiwani district of Haryana. His father Jagdish Sharma used to do wrestling as well as farming. Mother Misri Devi was the household lady. He was married to Krishna of Kathura village. The ancestors of his grandfather Pandit Ramswaroop came from Rajasthan. Father Jagdish Sharma first worked as a milk seller with elder brother Chhotu Ram Sharma due to financial crisis, later took the agency of Atlas Cycles. In 1968-69 he moved to Calcutta in search of livelihood. There he opened a dhaba. This increased his income a bit.
Despite being a good volleyball player and meritorious in studies, Jaikaran Sharma initially did farming with his father for a few days. After studying up to class VIII in the government school of the village, he did his further studies from Achina village. At the age of 16, he passed the Haryana Board examination with good marks. After this he went to Calcutta and from there he passed the pre-university examination.
During this time he also worked in a transport company. Pleased with his hard work while working in Calcutta and then Khetri, the owner of the company Sant Lal transferred him to Delhi. In 1975, he came to Delhi with his wife. Here in the office located in Paharganj, he started looking after the marketing-sales work for the company. After some time he was made the branch head of North India, but later he separated by assigning the work there to his younger brother Ram Phal and two friends.
In 1979, he took a loan and formed his own company named Chetak. With the financial help and guidance of PS Gehlot of Hindustan Copper Limited in the company, he started the work of transporting fertilizers by hired trucks. It made good profit and he came to be called the Fertilizer King. Later he took the contract to transport the tractors of Tufe Company in Madras. When the automobile revolution came in India in the eighties, they started shipping Maruti cars by trucks. On receiving the letter of intent from the company, he bought his trucks and started taking big and long distance contracts. After earning good money from the work of big companies like Hyundai, Ford, Tata Motors, Toyota etc. Jai Karan made a record by buying more than 100 trucks in a day.
Despite being a college drop out, Jai Karan was very quick in management and engineering. In 1980, he started opening his branches in every city. During this, he opened a total of 60 branches and gave employment to thousands of people. He used best management principles. Like a skilled engineer, he made many changes to the body of the trucks so that they could carry more cargo. He passed away on 11 October 2020.
Jai Karan, of social and religious nature, generously helped poor daughters to get married, build dharamsalas, open clinics and colleges. He also donated lakhs of rupees for the construction of Devi Mandir near Andheria Mor in Delhi and Hanuman Mandir in Haridwar.
Jay Karan Sharma, late businessman from Haryana and founder of Chetak Logistics Ltd.