Deepak Puri – The founder chairman and MD of Moser Baer

Deepak Puri is an Indian businessman and entrepreneur best known as the founder chairman and MD of Moser Baer, one of the leading Indian manufacturers of digital data storage devices. The company established in 1983 in Delhi was liquidated due to its bankruptcy on 20 September 2018. The company had branches in over 100 countries, and had collaborations with several international optical media storage manufacturers. For his contribution to the growth of Indian industry, he was honoured with Padma Shri in 2010.

Deepak Puri completed Mechanical engineering at Imperial College London before marking his professional career in the corporate sector in the early 1960s. He joined as a junior executive of ESSO in Kolkata in 1962, followed by Shalimar Paints and floated his first company two years later. He started his company – Metal Industries in Kolkata, beginning with trading and later moving to manufacturing as well. He migrated to New Delhi in 1983 because of rising labour cost and established Moser Baer the same year. The company reached new heights with the invention of floppies, CDs and DVDs in the late 1990s. However because of bankruptcy the company was winded up most recently in 2018.

Deepak Puri – Some interesting and unknown facts

1. He is the brother-in-law of senior Congress Leader and Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath.

2. He hailed from a family of landlords, but he was not interested in agriculture or joining government service.

3. His company was started as a joint venture with Switzerland based Moser Baer.

4. He has been conferred the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the Amity University.

5. Though he got into business in the 1960s, his success in the field came much later in the 1990s when CDs and floppies revolutionized Indian IT and digital data storage device sector. Till then this field was had monopoly of foreign companies. Initially the company started with floppies.  

6. His company Moser Baer India forayed into CDs in year 2001.