A man of conviction is one who paves his own path and treads it alone, with a belief in himself and his abilities. Shishir Bajaj, Chairman and MD, Bajaj Hindustan is one of those, belonging to the league, who has carved his own destiny.

Born in the illustrious Bajaj Group, the lone ranger and brother of Rahul Bajaj, Shishir has been on the driver's seat after he acquired the Bajaj Hindusthan for himself from the parent Bajaj Group. A man with zeal to dazzle in the royal court of the sultans of sugar in the international firmament, Shishir has already chiseled out a niche for himself in the sugar market.

One of the promoters of the Bajaj Group, Shishir has been steering the Bajaj Hindusthan Ltd by dint of his impeccable strategy. As a result of his efforts, the Bajaj Hindusthan today has emerged as the country's number one sugar and ethanol manufacturing company. Headquartered in Mumbai, the gateway of Indian biz world, the company's nine plants are located in Uttar Pradesh.

An MBA from New York University majoring in finance, Shishir without wasting time, jumped into the business in 1974 and since then he has been shouldering the overall responsibility of the Company. Thanks to his sheer incisiveness and caliber, Shishir was made the Managing Director of the Company in 1988. Since then there was no looking back for this corporate leader.

Thanks to Shishir's visionary strategy of making profit, the company under him has the largest sugarcane crushing capacity in India of 89,000 tonnes crushed per day (TCD) and produces around 1.5 million tonnes of sugar annually.

With his two promising sons, Kushagra, the CEO of Bajaj Hindusthan Limited and Apoorva, who is studying chartered accountancy and also works for Bajaj Hindusthan, the terrific trio has given the Bajaj Hindusthan a fresh blood. If Shishir is the Sultan of sugar, Kushagra is the spirit behind the venture who has infused fresh blood into the Company.

Shishir realizes the sweetness of sugarcane as he knows that the future is bright for the industry. As per the estimate, sugar consumption in the country is expected to grow at 4 to 5 per cent every year to reach a per capita consumption figure of 27 kg by 2014. Keeping that in mind, Shishir has doubled his efforts to expand the production capacity of the sugar mills of his company.

So, Shishir's focus right now is on an expansion spree: either through new mills, or through acquisitions of state-owned or private mills. No doubt, given his aggressive approach, the indisputable sultan of sugar is sure to have many more sugary feathers in his cap in years to come.