Big dreams and best taxpayer
Building his business was not easy. Kaus Miah was 20 years old when he began his business in 1950 with just Tk 2,500 that he borrowed from his mother. And yet in less than two decades, this manufacturer of Hakim Pury Zarda, was declared the best taxpayer by the government of East Pakistan. He was only 37 years old at the time.
Kaus Mia was born in 1931 in Chandpur. He was a student of Class VIII during the Second World War in 1945. His schooling came to a halt due to the war. After the war his father tried to send him to school again, but he refused to go. “My father did not want me to do business. He couldn’t understand why the son of a zemindar would want to be a trader,” Kaus Mia said in a recent interview.
He said, “When I was 20, I borrowed Tk 2,500 from my mother and started up a stationary shop in Puran Bazar of Chandpur. That was in 1950. I shop all sorts of stationary items, and even cosmetics, in the shop. The next year I opened up another shop. In a few years, I had six shops in all.”
He got the agency of several brands of cigarettes, biscuits and soaps during the East Pakistan period. In next ten years, he was elected president of the Chandpur Traders Union.
After around 20 years, he had a falling out with his brother. He then gave up the business and migrated to Narayanganj where he ventured into a new business of chewing tobacco or zarda.
Kaus Miah paid taxes for the first time as a businessman in 1958. In a matter of a decade, he became the best taxpayer in 1967.
“I was amazed after receiving this recognition. Why me, I thought, when there were so many big businessmen in the county. I went to the tax office and was told that I had been given the award after six years of monitoring.”
The Hakim Pury Zarda business baron Kaus Mia has topped the list of taxpayers for many years, a feat which many leading businessmen in Bangladesh have failed achieved.
In independent Bangladesh too, Kaus Mia was conferred with this honour by the government of Bangladesh. He received this award consecutively till 2016. This year he was awarded a special ‘tax card’.
A recent visit to the Hakim Pury Zarda factory at Nawab Deuri Road in Old Dhaka, found the workers busy packaging the tobacco. Kaus Mia's office is a tiny room on the first floor of the factory building, with just a bed, a few chairs, a table and a steel shelf in the corner. Kaus Mia sits on the bed and runs his business.
Kaus Mia said when Bangladesh became independent in 1971, he started stocking tobacco from different parts of the country in his two warehouses at Rahmatganj and Narayanganj.
Kaus said, “I had amassed 300 thousand maunds of tobacco. People said I was crazy. As a tobacco crisis broke out in the country in 1978, I sold the tobacco and earned Tk 2 billion to 3 billion in profits.”
Along with the tobacco business, Kaus Mia started selling Shanti Pury Zarda in Narayanganj. In 1976, he registered the trademarks of Shanti Pury, Hakim Pury and Manik Zarda.
In 1978, he had to shut down the factory in Narayanganj in face of labour unrest.
In the 80s, he came to Dhaka and started the business afresh. He appointed 30-35 workers in the new factory. Nearly 600 kilogrammes of zarda, chewing tobacco, were sold in the first month of the new business.
Kaus Mia also owns 16 cargo vessels.
Asked whether he pays tax out of responsibility or patriotism, Kaus Mia replied, “I never thought about why I pay taxes. I have been paying taxes since 1958. After independence of Bangladesh, I simply continued to pay.”
When asked if he had any message for the businessmen of the country, Kaus Miah said, “I know nothing about the others, I can only speak for myself. From childhood I had been taught not to cheat anyone. My mother always told me, do business honestly, no one will be able stop your success.”
The article is rewritten in English by Toriqul Islam