When an abstruse founder of a large, privately owned set of companies centred around the oil and gas industry passes away at the age of 58, the issue of succession has every chance of playing a major role in the company losing its way. This was not the case for KZN Oils.
Rajen Reddy met Esay in their latter years of high school when the two were bright-eyed young things with a bright future ahead of them. Over the next 45 years they would marry, have three beautiful children, start a business running their own petrol station… and then grow that business into one of South Africa’s most impressive family-owned businesses–KZN Oils (part of the RR Group of companies)–and a leading light in the oil and gas field.
Key to the success of the company was the working relationship between the husband and wife team of Rajen and Esay. He was the entrepreneurial force, the charm offensive that would chip away at the old boys networks and other social obstacles in their way. Rajen had started his working life as a plumber (a career choice that did not thrill Esay’s father), but once he entered the world of entrepreneurial opportunities his star truly shone bright. All along, however, Esay was by his side, running the finances, the books and helping smooth Rajen’s way however possible. As a family business, it was all part of Rajen’s long-term vision.
“He was very far-sighted,” recalls Esay Reddy, now CEO of the RR Group. “He wasn’t your typical Indian man who wanted the wife to sit at home waiting for him to come home with supper prepared. He decided that it was important for me and for our family that I have a career within the company and I’m forever thankful for that. He pushed me way beyond what I thought was my own potential.”
Reddy passed away in February 2021 after battling an illness. He was still a relatively young man (certainly in terms of his energy and vision for the future) and someone with so much still ahead of him. Esay recalls that he had always talked about his five-year plan for the business and the group… yet he passed away without leaving that vision committed to paper for his successor to follow. Fortunately, his successor had worked by his side in the business of oil and gas and in the business of raising a family. Devastated by the loss of husband and partner of close to half a century, she soon realised that the business needed urgent attention and leadership… and that was when all the years of Rajen empowering Esay kicked in, as if he had sowed the seeds for it in her DNA over four decades. So Esay got to work while grieving his passing.
“I went through Rajen’s diary for the past year to create a picture of the network he had built and then, just one month after he had passed, I started traveling across South Africa to meet with the people Rajen had met with as I started to piece together the puzzle that Rajen had left in an attempt to put his vision down on paper,” says Esay.
The experience was cathartic on so many levels. Had she been a stay-at-home mother, then at that point in her grief she would have experienced what so many wives in particular have experienced: you are left alone in your grief as the world continues to turn, and in her case with adult children that can be a devastating period for any wife. Esay, however, had a mission–to take over the leadership of their company, to ensure all their employees had jobs and futures… and to unravel her husband’s plans for the business. However, in working through the mystery on her own, and having been such an integral part of the company, the experience afforded her the opportunity of not just documenting her late-husband’s plans, but rather enabling her to add to her husband’s vision and legacy. Instead of just following a map he had laid out for HIS vision, she had the unique opportunity to pick up the threads and to carry his plan along the paths that opened up to her. One might almost think that Rajen had planned for Esay to be challenged with the task of tackling the puzzle of his missing business plans after his passing. And, who knows… quite possibly he did!
“Piecing Rajen’s plans together in that way helped me to survive, as it gave me something to focus on. If I didn’t have to do that then what would I have done other than spend my days and nights grieving for him,” she says, going silent for a moment. “I don’t think I would have been sitting here talking to you today as it helped me focus on something else but, at the same time, every day it offered me a form of connection with him, as if we are still building this legacy together.”
Secrets of Success
It’s no easy task to create a company employing hundreds of people in the Oil and Gas industry, including the organisation’s many subsidiaries and companies that range from transport and logistics, to the manufacture of medical devices, in addition to telecommunications and education. It all started as the classic tale of a husband and wife owning and running a single petrol station, but the success itself was created through the combination of an incredible work ethic and the commitment to providing the highest levels of quality and service, along with trust in one another, a willingness to save and invest for future growth, and courage to take calculated risks that offered the promise of substantial paydays down the road.
During the growth of the company the couple had very separate duties and responsibilities, with Esay running the businesses’ finances and operations, while Rajen brought the business in with his charm and ingenuity. That separation of duties also had a major impact on the success of their working relationship.
“It can be very difficult to work as a husband and wife in your own business, but we had a very good set of rules. It was just two rules, in fact,” she laughed. “When I drove into our offices, he was the boss. And when we arrived back home in the early evening, I was the boss!”
Having taken over the reigns since his passing, Esay also had to imprint her own style of leadership on the business. While Rajen was a micro-manager to the degree that he knew everything that was going on everywhere in the business that he had built from the ground up over four decades, for Esay stepping in as leader at such an advanced stage of the business she knew she would have to rely on delegating to a trusted team.
Our passion is to start a project to help the community in mind first, and this should always be a project that we really and truly believe in.
“I try to always surround myself with people who understand our vision and who can execute it. I have been fortunate to work with a wonderful group of heads of departments who share this vision and who I can trust to plan and execute on that vision,” says Esay.
While much of the company’s growth is carefully planned, some ventures are purely organic and arrive by happenstance.
“We heard about some medical manufacturing equipment that was being sold at a very reasonable price, and after doing our calculations and some research we bought it and started manufacturing, and this has taken us into an interesting new area of opportunities,” says Esay, explaining how they uncovered a unique source material to assist the group with one of their CSI initiatives–the distribution of sanitary pads. This initiative focused on the desperate needs of teenage schoolgirls who are often forced to miss at least two days of school per month as they could not afford sanitary pads. They were forced to stay at home to maintain the dignified natural cycle of being a woman, which would be impossible to achieve at school without sanitary pad. Through the efforts of their CSI they discovered the opportunity of using banana leaves to manufacture sanitary pads, which offered a major cost-saving, thereby enabling their available funds to stretch further to help even more schoolgirls. “Bananas are indeed plentiful in KZN,” smiles Esay. “We never set out to create a giant, profit-making organisation… our belief has been that if your focus is on creating value for local consumers, along with creating employment opportunities, then we will get what we deserve.”
The organisation is also looking to disrupt the communications industry by producing an affordable phone with iPhone-like connectivity for students… but limiting many of the “distracting” features. They also plan to offer greatly discounted online access through leap-frogging telecommunication infrastructure costs by hooking up to satellite networks.
Not to forget that they want to create a school as well as a project to support and empower youth with mental health needs that the state is not providing at present.
One of their most exciting projects is their LPG project for distributing safer and more affordable gas cylinders to human settlements. The genius of the project is that the units are incredibly safe and can be topped up with whatever amount the consumer has available, rather than being forced to buy a full cylinder.
“They are light and easy to carry and are made with a translucent composite material that doesn’t explode in a fire,” adds Esay. They are also designed to look more decorative, rather than the current utilitarian and heavy gas cylinders most widely in use throughout South Africa.
While this project has been designed to operate on a profitable basis, Easy emphasises the importance of giving back at all times to your surrounding communities.
“I believe that the function of commerce is always to give, and that’s our culture at KZN Oils and with the RR Foundation. It’s not to do things to make money fast. Our passion is to start a project to help the community in mind first, and this should always be a project that we really and truly believe in,” she adds. “Empathy is one of our driving forces and everything we do starts with a driving desire to truly help people, and that’s why the gas project started. The same applies to our healthcare projects and products, and that is why in particular we are so excited about making sanitary pads out of banana fibres. Who knows where this innovation could take us,” smiles Esay, full of passion and purpose.
With so many plans for community projects to grow, along with the operations of the group as a whole, the loss of Rajen has been felt all the more keenly as there was so much good that he was preparing to do for the community. His absence has left a great vacuum but, fortunately, Rajen’s succession plan has proven a great success (whether it was by design or simply pure luck), as not only is Esay Reddy fully prepared to step up to the leadership role of their company, but she has the passion and drive to keep growing the legacy that had filled her husband’s dreams. And it’s only fitting that she takes over his leadership mantle, as it offers her the chance to work with her late-husband’s vision to create a legacy that can truly become their own… while at the same time benefitting local communities and, in some cases, the global community.
