Managing Director, Jindal SAW | Founded 1984 | New Delhi
Jindal SAW makes the pipes that carry water, oil and gas under cities, deserts and seabeds. It runs plants in India, the United States and the UAE, and its annual report says its products have reached more than 80 countries. In the year to March 2026, it reported consolidated revenue of about ₹17,895 crore.
The woman who has led it as managing director for many years has used a wheelchair since she was 11. For a quarter of a century, alongside the steel business, she has also run a campaign to make India’s buildings, monuments, trains and toilets usable by people like her. This is her story.
A dancer, until the drive home
Sminu Jindal was born into one of India’s best-known industrial families. Her grandfather, O.P. Jindal, built the O.P. Jindal Group, and her father is Prithviraj Jindal. She has credited both men with her interest in the family business, India Today reported in 2013.
As a child she studied at a boarding school in Jaipur. She also learnt Kathak, and at the age of nine received a distinction at Bharatiya Kala Kendra, according to The Better India.
When she was 11, she was in a car accident on the way home to Delhi from school in Jaipur. The crash caused a severe spinal cord injury, and she has used a wheelchair ever since. “I knew I would probably never walk again but I was also determined to get back on track,” she told India Today.
Her family adapted their home around her, and kept track of medical developments. Asked by Open magazine in 2026 how much her family’s wealth and support had helped, she answered in one word: “Immensely.” Growing up, she rarely met anyone else with a similar disability. “For a long time, I thought I was the only one in a wheelchair,” she told HerStory.
She went on to study commerce at Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi, where her father had a ramp built so she could get around. She later earned a silver medal at the FORE School of Management, according to Jindal SAW.
The first day at Swastik
She started in the family business young, as a trainee. In 1994, the year she finished college, her father offered her charge of Swastik Foils, a loss-making Jindal SAW unit that made thin stainless steel coils. “It was my ticket either to stay in business or to go out,” she told Open. Her reply to her father was cautious: “I don’t know, I’ll see what I can do.” His answer was: “Give it your best shot.”
The welcome was harsh. “On my first day, the entire top management resigned, refusing to report to a woman in a wheelchair,” she told HerStory in 2024. Open put the number at eleven department heads.
She was studying for her MBA at the same time. She read engineering books so she could talk to supervisors in their own language. When people doubted that she could understand the machines, her answer, as she told Open, was: “But that isn’t the only way to run a machine.” The problem with the unit, she decided, was simple: “Honestly, nothing was fundamentally wrong. The unit simply hadn’t had enough concentration on it.” She put money into new machinery and focused on the product. Quality, sales and profits followed, and the company says she turned the unit around within a year.
Not every idea worked. She tried to sell extra-thin stainless steel to replace mild steel in bicycle rims, and learnt, as she told Open, “that consumers prioritize overall cost just as much as quality.”
She has also been frank about where she started from. “The name got me in,” she told Open. On leadership, she said: “If you lead a team, you want them to look up to you for strength, not sympathy.”
Taking the top job
In 1997 she moved to Jindal SAW itself, and rose to managing director. After her marriage she also spent time at a group plant in Texas, helping turn around another unit, and has recalled receiving threats there telling her to go back where she came from.
By 2009, when the FICCI Ladies Organisation named her Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, she was leading the company as MD. The same year, the World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader. India Today reported in 2013 that the company’s earnings had risen from about ₹400 crore to ₹7,500 crore after she took over.
Jindal SAW today works as a set of distinct businesses. It makes large-diameter welded pipes for oil, gas and water; ductile iron pipes for water supply; seamless carbon and alloy steel pipes and tubes; stainless steel pipes and tubes; and iron ore pellets. Speaking to Open about her years as MD, she talked about diversification, reviving the seamless business, and adding ductile iron pipes.
The seamless division at Nashik dates back to 1994, and the company set up a ductile iron pipe plant in the mid-2000s. By 2024, it described itself as the world’s third-largest maker of ductile iron pipes, supplying them to over 40 countries. Under her leadership the group also moved beyond pipes. Through its subsidiary JITF it went into urban infrastructure, waste-to-energy and logistics, including river transport. She admitted to India Today that the newer ventures had not all succeeded yet, because the economy turned as they were being built.
She is careful not to take all the credit. “Organisations change collectively,” she told Open. She also chaired the ASSOCHAM National Council on Iron and Steel for 14 years.
Svayam: making the country usable
In October 2000, she founded Svayam, an accessibility organisation run through the Sminu Jindal Charitable Trust. It began as a website with information for people with disabilities. She also tried a job portal. It drew a single application, she told Open, which convinced her that the real barrier was getting out of the house in the first place. “Accessibility had to be created in their surroundings so they could travel from home to the place of their choice,” she said.
Her own travels taught her the same lesson. She told Outlook Business that on one train journey from Delhi to Allahabad she was “wheeled through railway tracks to reach the other platform”, then lifted onto her seat because there was no room to turn the wheelchair. “India has perhaps the best policies and disabled-friendly infrastructure, but all on paper,” she said.
So Svayam moved from information to building work and policy. In 2007, it held a workshop at the Ministry of Tourism, and the ministry agreed to link central funding for tourism projects to accessibility. In 2008, working with the Archaeological Survey of India, Svayam made the Qutub Minar accessible, which The Better India described as the first World Heritage Site in India to be made truly accessible. The project needed more than 200 meetings, she told HerStory, and won a National Tourism Award. The Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, Ajanta and Ellora and Jallianwala Bagh followed.
Svayam pushed for disability questions in the 2011 Census, audited 340 buildings in eight cities under the Accessible India Campaign, and signed an agreement with Delhi airport in 2018. Its Accessible Family Toilets campaign, which she calls her proudest work, had reached 138 districts in 14 states by 2024, according to HerStory.
She prefers to talk about “reduced mobility” rather than disability, because the work also helps older people, pregnant women and anyone recovering from an injury. “I do want people to look at it as their right and not be handed over to them as pity,” she told Outlook Traveller in 2025.
Where things stand
Jindal SAW has had a harder couple of years. In FY26 its consolidated revenue and profit both fell, with net profit at about ₹925 crore, down from about ₹1,458 crore the year before. It has kept investing, including in a new seamless pipe plant in Abu Dhabi. “Some may say it’s an unsteady investment, and we are going slow, but we will never cancel it,” she told Open.
In May 2025, the board reappointed her managing director for another term from February 2026. She is also candid about what has not worked. Asked about hiring people with disabilities at Jindal SAW, she said: “I’ll tackle it straight away: we haven’t had much success with this.”
She describes herself as “a true dreamer” who paints, sings and reads fiction. Her request to others is a modest one. “I would like for people to judge me with a little bit of kindness,” she told Open. “You just be kind in judging because I think I’m extremely harsh in judging my own self.”
Founder Journeys is a Sakhi Sangini series telling the stories of women who built businesses in India. This story is based on public interviews and reporting.
Sources: Open (October 2026); HerStory (November 2024); The Better India (August 2019); Outlook Business (September 2014); Outlook Traveller (January 2025); India Today (September 2013); Business Standard (May 2025); Khaleej Times (August 2024); Jindal SAW Annual Report 2025-26; Jindal SAW; IIFL company profile.
