Business career
Lala Gopal Roy, Ram's uncle, was one of the founders and the first secretary of Delhi Cloth & General Mills (DCM), which was founded on 2 March 1891. Prior, he had been a munim (a kind of private secretary) working in a pedhi.
Ram's first interaction with DCM happened in 1905, when Ram, at the age of 21, attended an annual general meeting with his uncle, Lala Gopal Roy. His uncle died the same year and Ram's father, Madan Mohan Lal, was appointed in his place as secretary of the company. In 1909, Ram, at the age of 25, joined the company as an apprentice in the accounts department under Munim Ram Path and though Ram at the time did not have a formal company title, he had enough authority to act on his father's behalf. Ram ran the company with his father for another decade; however, his father gradually lowered his own responsibilities, and Ram assumed formal charge of the company.
During World War I, Ram secured a large contract to supply tents for the British Army and the British Raj government, which grew DCM's earnings. Ram also grew his personal fortune through the tents contract by forming a distinct tent company which had a tripartite ownership between DCM, which owned 50%, Ram, who owned 25%, and a contractor who owned the remaining 25%. Ram and the contractor were entitled to receive 20% of profits from the tent deal and DCM received 50%. Ram used the money he earned from the tent deal to buy shares of DCM, which increased his holding in the company from less than 5% to 16%, and then to 20% by 1925.
Between 1923 and 1929, DCM's sales increased by three times and the company was the only textile producer in the region of Delhi and Punjab. In 1932, DCM entered the sugar industry and Ram supervised the construction of the company's sugar mill in Daurala, Meerut. In the 1930s, Ram led DCM's entry into various industries that began to manufactured a vast variety of products, including textiles, chemicals, vanaspati (hydrogenated vegetable oil), pottery, fans, sewing machines, electric motors, and capacitors.
In 1941, Ram was knighted by the British Raj's government and his younger brother, Lala Shankar Lal was later knighted as well. In his business career, Ram managed to make managed to make Delhi Cloth & General Mills an industrial empire by 1963, the year he died. During his business career, Ram was noted as one of North India's most prominent businessmen.
