Avon Cycles MD Onkar Singh Pahwa conferred with Padma Shri

Onkar Singh Pahwa, the Managing Director (MD) of Avon Cycles, was conferred with the Padma Shri on Sunday.

Thanking the government for choosing him for the award, Pahwa said that he was also grateful to his family, team and well-wishers, who always stood by him in thick and thin. “It is actually my whole team, with whose efforts and support, I have achieved the milestone,” said Pahwa.

Pahwa joined the business in 1973. Over the years, it has been a roller-coaster ride, he added.

Those days, there were no facilities, like courier service, mobile phones or cars, Pahwa said. “At times, I used to go to Delhi/Mumbai in trains just to get a few papers signed and come back. Finance was also a major issue in the initial years. But we are happy that the company has reached a turnover of Rs 1,150 crore (2024),” he said.

Providing more details about his journey, Pahwa shared that there are 2,000 dealers of Avon in India and today every kind of bicycle, including e-bike, fancy cycles, regular standard bicycle, autorickshaw and fitness equipment, is manufactured by the company.

He added that safe cycling infrastructure needed to be given, especially to school children. “In our times, almost every child came to school on bicycle but today parents don’t allow children to go on bicycles because of safety concerns,” said Pahwa adding that the company was exporting bicycles to 65 countries.