A BIOGRAPHY OF AMJAD KHAN CHOWDHURY

The enormous difficulty Amjad Khan had to go through in the early years astounded him greatly. He felt it would be easy for him to acquire financing for his own firm after serving the country with his blood and sweat for decades and handling finances totaling around BDT 300 crores as Quarter Master General (QMG). After one denial after another, he found himself in the office of Mr. Aziz Ahmed, the then-Managing Director of Janata Bank. He put his faith in his efforts and approved a loan of $20,000.00.

It was a substantial sum back in those days. His wife had inherited a home on RK Mission Road from her parents, which he retained as a mortgage. He liquidated three-quarters of my pension savings for BDT 1.9 million. After putting all of this together, he purchased Rangpur Foundry Limited.

At this time, his experience in North Bengal had a significant impact on the purchase. His fantasies of gleaming agricultural fields were quickly dashed by reality. Others in the sector were creating tainted and substandard goods, making it difficult for him to stay in business. Despite this, he refused to compromise his business principles and participate in any unethical acts. The firm came to a grinding end, as fate would have it. His colleagues consoled him by claiming that prevailing customs did not force him to pay his debts; yet, his conscience told him otherwise.

He was confident in his business strategy and convinced he could make it work. Rangpur Foundry Limited, being one of the Pran RFL Group’s major enterprises, brought him immense delight.

He moved to the capital after experiencing financial difficulties in Rangpur. He concentrated his research on agriculture, specifically the utilization of tube wells by farmers. Year after year, the losses piled up. A shift in corporate emphasis felt necessary. His father had been exposed to the real estate industry for long time and had decided to pursue it. One of his breakthroughs was the formation of REHAB.

Profits from this venture were used to launch PRAN. PRAN stands for ” Programme for Rural Advancement Nationally.” He chose the name to support my concept of a Bengali agrarian revolution. In Narsingdi, he rented six acres of property. The firm was founded to meet the global demand for agricultural goods by local farmers. The concept was simple: prepare the items in a way that extends their shelf life, maintains quality, and properly markets them. He would argue that we haven’t done too badly; their first shipment of exports was sent out in 1996, and the firm now exports to over 106 countries.

Pran is the country’s largest food processor, with a consumer base of almost 300 million people. Pran employs around 60,000 people directly and approximately 100,000 farmers across the country. Drinks, snacks, tomato products, tea, and rice produced by the PRAN Group brought in Tk.100 crore in export earnings in 2007. PRAN-RFL Group now manufactures over 25 different light industrial and plastic goods, as well as 170 different culinary item.

His tenacity remained intact even after he retired from the police service years ago, and he could not accept the reality that RFL and its goods were ineffective. The business went ahead and reengineered it, investing around ten crore taka in the process. RFL currently has over 300 items and has outperformed PRAN in terms of revenue. In 1980, he founded RFL with Cast Iron goods, then expanded into the PVC category in 1996 and then into plastics in 2003. Pumps, tube wells, bearings, and gas stoves are among RFL’s offerings. It holds the distinction of being Bangladesh’s largest cast iron foundry and light engineering facility. A large portion of the items are shipped to other countries.