Crown-ing achievement

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/09/2019 (2380 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The first car Ashok Dilawri bought was a 1967 Oldsmobile 98.

In 1972, Dilawri had left his home in Delhi, India, to study business and hotel management at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas —probably the best place in the world to learn the business — earning a pittance not far from the bright lights of the strip. But he needed a vehicle, so he pooled together $400 to buy the Olds. He drove it for two years, and later sold it for $700, nearly doubling his initial investment: the birth of a car salesman.

A few years later, Dilawri was working in food and beverage management when an uncle in Ottawa called and asked if he wanted to help run a car dealership. He quickly climbed the corporate ladder, working his way from the bottom rung to become general manager. In the early ‘80s, American Motors asked if Dilawri would be interested in moving to Winnipeg to run its Jeep-Renault dealership on Ellice Avenue. The fledgling titan — making a good living already and putting that at risk — said yes.

“When I started the business, it was a money-losing one,” Dilawri said in his office overlooking the sales floor at Crown Honda on Waverley recently. He was the only employee, working 14-hour days to prepare trainees to join while moving as many vehicles as he could, investing everything he had into the business. Within a month, the dealership started turning a profit, and hasn’t looked back since.

Thirty-five years later, Dilawri’s Crown Auto Group has ballooned to six dealerships and over 400 employees, consistently ranking as one of the country’s best-managed companies. But at 67, Dilawri has slowly been stepping aside to take on a coaching role, and two of his children, Dhiya and Kabeir, have begun taking on leadership roles, running the day-to-day operations of one of the city’s most venerable businesses.

“I never felt any immediate pressure to get involved in the business, but felt like if I didn’t there would be a gentle nudge,” said Kabeir, the group’s vice-president of sales.

“When you have a family business, more or less from the time you’re a young person, you’re a part of the business,” said Dhiya, who joined the company on a full-time basis in 2014, and now serves as vice-president of strategy and business development.

In a way, the siblings grew up in the dealerships, visiting their dad and mom, Annu, who’s worked as a customer service executive, from the time they weren’t tall enough to peer through the windows of a Honda Civic. The Dilawris — who are cousins to the owners of The Dilawri Group of Companies — learned firsthand from their parents what it looked like to run the business, but knew that their ascendance in the company was anything but a given.

They needed to work for it, says Annu Dilawri. “We did not bring them up thinking they’d one day just run dad’s business,” she said.

The duo both attended Queen’s University to study business, and during the breaks between semesters, would work various jobs across the company’s lots. Dhiya, the eldest child, worked every job from receptionist to financing and inventory, and Kabeir worked as a lot attendant and in the service department to learn the ropes.

‘There’s going to more change in the car business in the next five years than there was in the previous 30.’– Dhiya Dilawri, vice-president of strategy and business development, Crown Auto Group.

Kabeir joined the company full-time upon graduation, moving up to finance manager and sales manager before attaining his current role, and Dhiya took on corporate jobs with companies like Imperial Oil and Land Rover after completing her MBA in France, becoming a highly sought-after businessperson in her own right. Eventually, Ashok says, he told his daughter, “If you’re going to work in the auto industry, consider coming to work with us.”

In 2014, at a career crossroads, she took the lane that led to Winnipeg. “From a personal standpoint, being back in Winnipeg and working close to family made sense,” she said. And the Dilawris work closer to family than most, with Ashok never too far to provide guidance as the business transitions from the first generation to the second.

The car industry has changed markedly since the 1980s, the patriarch said. The emphasis then was on customers visiting multiple dealerships — sometimes six or seven — and the “digital” element of the business was years away. According to a 2017 IPSOS poll conducted for the Canadian Black Book, customers visited an average of two, and that number has dropped since, Dilawri said.

Though he helped steer the dealerships to success in the 1980s and ‘90s, he said the automotive sales industry is now facing a distinct set of challenges — digitization, electrification, automation, car-sharing, ride-sharing — that a new generation of businesspeople are more attuned with. Luckily for him, his kids are up to the task.

“There’s going to more change in the car business in the next five years than there was in the previous 30,” said Dhiya. The Crown group has already conducted pilots at a pair of its dealerships geared toward online auto sales — an option trending in the U.S. that hasn’t quite caught on in smaller Canadian markets — and the company is constantly refining its customer approach to assure the dealership remains relevant in the changing car-buying environment.

Even Tesla, the oft-headline-making electric car company helmed by Elon Musk, has opened brick-and-mortar dealerships despite its online model, Dhiya said, which, to her, shows that dealerships still have value. “We’ve explored online buying, but I still believe people want to smell the new car and sit in it before they make the second-biggest purchase of their life,” she says.

And despite car sales generally trending downward, their dealerships have maintained consistent month-to-month sales growth, Ashok said, putting the company in a good spot as his role changes and as his childrens’ elevate.

Thirty-five years after coming to Winnipeg, Ashok Dilawri is certain he made a smart move, and has no regrets about resisting expansion to B.C., Alberta or the U.S. to continue growing in Manitoba. Once a newcomer, his story has become a distinct Winnipeg success story.

The story of an immigrant coming to the city and making it is nothing new or unique, said Dhiya. “It’s kind of the story of Canada,” she said.

Now, the next generation is tasked with writing the latest chapter.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca