February - 2004 issue > Cover Story

By Karthik Sundaram

“I CAUTIONED MY WOULD-BE WIFE TO THINK carefully before she agreed to marry me,” recalls Robert Chandran, President and CEO of the $3.8 billion Chemoil Corporation, gazing out at Pier 3 from his Embarcadero Center office in San Francisco, CA. “‘Indians, my dear, don’t think of divorce as a way out,’ I warned her,” he says. “If there is something I value more than the business, it is the partnerships we build in life.” Chandran should know.

At quite a young age, the Mumbai-born Chandran came down to Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, when his uncles put up a paper distribution office to be run by his father. “They knew he was trustworthy and their gamble paid off.” After a master’s degree in Chemistry, Chandran went off to the Asian Insitute of Management in Manila, the Philippines, for an MBA, and continued working for an engineering company there. “I met my wife there and we have been in this partnership now for 28 years,” he laughs. Chandran grew to be the general manager of the engineering trading company, but decided the Philippines was a small market.

Soon after, Chandran, wife and child landed in the U.S., with all of about $1,500 in familial wealth. “That was soon gone. The hospitals took care of it when we had our second child,” recalls the CEO. The company in Philippines was loathe to let go of Chandran and agreed to set him up an office in San Mateo. “I joined my previous owner in 1976,” he recalls, “and I had to organize a loan to pay an overdue bill of $10,000 in the first week.” From there, Chandran built up the engineering trading company to a fairly large business, doing about $40 million. Parallely, Chandran began investing in real estate, and by 1981, owned about 740 apartments in the San Mateo area. “I invested in areas where I could drive and see the building within an hour,” says Chandran. “While I was a good buyer, my wife—the most organized person in the world—managed the apartments.”

In 1981, one of the brothers of the partner at the trading company partnered Chandran in his real estate endeavour. “Till he recently retired from ChemOil, he hasn’t ever interfered in what I did. The absolute trust is a phenomenol driver in business,” says Chandran fondly of his partner. The Filipino brothers fell apart, and the partner at the trading firm pushed down Chandran’s role within the company. Chandran quit.

Within 25 days, he launched his own company. Chandran bought an Epson printer, an Apple, and a bunch of software including the DB2. “That was my introduction to technology,” he smiles. Chandran, his Filipino partner and another Indian formed Chemoil with $120,000 and drew a credit line for $1 million from the Bank of America. “We had a freight contractor working for us in the previous company, where the contractor put a bunker clause, after the 1979 oil crises. I retorted that we wanted a contract for supplying him. The freighter agreed, and we were asked to fetch him 1000 tons of fuel and a 100 tons of diesel in Los Angeles within 30 days. The freighter asked us to get him a price in a week’s time!”

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