When in 1986, a young lady who had just graduated from Wellesley College at MIT stepped onto the company’s shopfloor as a trainee, NRB Bearings, a Mumbai-based bearing maker, was all of Rs 10 crore in sales. All those men around her knew the odd-woman out as their chairman T S Sahney’s daughter who was on a short floor stint before she got into the corner room some day. What no one imagined, however, was that the same 26-year-old Harshbeena Sahney Zaveri would turn the company into a Rs 300-crore entity and a market leader in the next 20 years.

Zaveri, who’s director and president of the company recalls: “During my traineeship I had noticed that people in our company considered themselves inferior to executives from Nadella, the French firm with which we had a JV. I thought the first thing we should do is change the corporate image all over.” In the mid-90s NRB became the first company to get a corporate certification, and Zaveri was instrumental in suggesting the idea.

Then in 1998, Zaveri suggested that the company should not renew the agreement with the foreign collaborator and should set up an engineering workshop on its own. At that time, the idea seemed far fetched.

I presented a blueprint to the board of directors and it was really hard to convince them that we could do it on our own. I also got them to sanction Rs 10 crore annually for two years for the project. In the end they gave in, says Zaveri. The Thane factory, where Zaveri had barred entry for everyone, till it was completed in 2000 was inaugurated by a director from Renault, the French vehicle maker.

When she was the company’s marketing head she also visited NRB’s existing and prospective clients and enquired about their future requirements. “The research came handy when we purchased new machines,” she says. For a woman it was difficult to convince collaborators or employees about what she believed in. “But my performance after I took over as a marketing head, helped me win their trust. The success of our engineering workshop convinced my partners."

As she fiddles with the diamond pendant she is wearing, she counts on her finger the number of clients NRB is catering to these days Maruti Udyog, Bajaj Auto, Yamaha, Hero Honda, M&M, Renault, Volvo, General Motors, Electrolux and GKN in Europe. We have also started a factory in Thailand recently, she adds.

Asked about her first million she says, "I was 10 when I was made a stakeholder (5% then). So I do not know when I made my first million... But maybe I had a million five years after I joined NRB.And if you still insist, it was when I married my husband.” Aziz Zaveri is a diamond exporter.

In 2005, NRB bought out its 26% stake in its joint venture with Timken France SAS. This year, NRB Bearings figured on the Forbes list of Asian companies under $1 billion in sales. The list focused on companies in Asia, Australia and New Zealand which had consistent performance in sales and profit growth in past three years. The company is growing 20% year on year. “We are targeting $1 billion revenues by 2020,” she says.