Ravi Tikoo: The Man Who Would Build Giant Ships
There is a certain breed of entrepreneur drawn not to steady fleets, but to grand gestures at sea. The great shipping tycoons of the 20th century built their fortunes by reading cycles before anyone else did ; buying cheap, chartering long, and betting on size when the world was still cautious. Names like Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos of Greece turned tankers into empires. J. Paul Getty and Daniel K. Ludwig in America did the same with oil and sheer scale. In Hong Kong, C.Y. Tung and Pao Yue-kong came to dominate dry bulk and tankers in the 1960s and 70s.
And we could add one from Kashmir, India ; Ravi Tikoo. A former naval officer turned London broker, he stepped out of the shadows in 1971 and ordered the largest tankers in the world at the time. For a few years, the name "Globtik" stood alongside the giants of shipping, proof that ambition in this industry has never been limited by geography.
Ravi Tikoo was born in 1927, the son of the finance minister of the princely state of Mandi. Ravi Tikoo's father served Raja Joginder Sen , a progressive ruler who ruled the princely state of Mandi from 1913 to 1947. Ravi Tikoo grew up in Kashmir, studied mathematics at Punjab University, and joined the Indian Navy. In 1961 he left India for Europe, first settling in Hamburg before moving to London in 1964.
Capt. S K Tikoo informs me this:-
" I have had a brief meeting with him 1963/64 in Jalandhar. His father with my initials was working there as GM of Masand Motors. Ravi was still serving in the Indian Navy. When I boasted that I Am Tikoo with 2 Os.hè just cut me off , saying , I am Tikkoo with 2Ks and two Os."
Entering Tanker Finance And Chartering Field
London was then the centre of tanker finance and chartering. Tikoo began not as a shipowner but as a middleman, arranging deals between banks, shipyards and oil companies. *Tanker finance and chartering* is the system by which ships are paid for and employed. In chartering, a shipowner does not sell the oil but rents out the vessel to an oil company, trader or refiner. The most common forms are voyage charters for a single trip, and time charters where the charterer hires the ship for months or years at a fixed daily rate. Banks will only lend to build a tanker if such a charter is in place, because the charter income acts as security for the loan. The owner typically puts in 20-30% equity and borrows the rest against a mortgage on the ship, with repayment coming from the charter hire. This is the model Ravi Tikoo mastered in London in the 1960s: he used his skills as a broker to secure long-term charters first, then took those contracts to banks to finance the building of his giant tankers in Japan. In 1967 he founded *Globtik Tankers Ltd* and bought his first tanker in 1968.
The Empire: Globtik and the Megaships
Tikoo rose during a rare period in shipping. The Suez Canal had been closed since 1967 and would not reopen until 1975. With ships forced to sail round Africa, size limits disappeared. Standard tankers grew to 250,000 tonnes and talk began of 500,000 and even 1,000,000-tonne vessels. No established owner would commit. Tikoo did.
In November 1971, at a press conference in London, he announced plans to build two giant tankers in Japan. He had already secured long-term charters. On delivery they would be the largest ships in the world.
The Ships
1. Globtik Tokyo – 483,684 dwt. Built by IHI, Kure. Delivered February 1973. Cost: about £21 million.
2. Globtik London– 483,960 dwt. Built by IHI, Kure. Delivered October 1973.
For three years they were the world’s largest tankers, until Shell’s Batillusand Bellamya surpassed them in 1976. A third sister, Nissei Maru_ was built for a Japanese owner in 1975.
Moving to the US
Tikoo’s wealth grew. He invested in racehorses .
In March 1977 Tikoo made headlines when his 55,000-tonne Globtik Venus_was held by strikers in Le Havre. He hired fishermen to retake the ship. Citing disillusionment with the British Government, he soon moved to the United States. after moving to the USA, bought Dunnellen Hall in Greenwich, Connecticut for US$3 million. He sold it in 1983 for $11 million. For a brief period, an individual rather than a corporation owned the biggest ships afloat.
He continued to propose large projects: three 600,000-tonne nuclear tankers in 1977, 24 ice-breaking tankers for Alaska in 1979, and a bid to buy Harland & Wolff in 1988 to build the world’s largest cruise ship. None materialised. In the following decades he withdrew from shipping and pursued other private investments.
About Ravi Tikoo, Richard Mineards writes this in February 22, 2022 issue of the Montecito Journal (Quarterly Magazine)
" I know the Greenwich (Connecticut ) community well and vividly remember attending a caviar and champagne-driven party thrown by Indian-born tycoon Ravi Tikoo, who owned the world’s largest oil tanker, the 477,000-ton Globtik Tokyo, at the time, when he owned 14-bedroom Dunnellen Hall on Round Hill Road, the highest point in Fairfield County. The bash was thrown to celebrate the birthday of his teenage son Vikram, with one of the presents including a gift-wrapped Lamborghini, complete with bow. An avowed Anglophile, Tikoo – he also owned a London home in achingly trendy Bishops Avenue, Hampstead, which he sold to King Khaled of Saudi Arabia in 1976 – wanted to play cricket after tea. A call was placed to Lillywhites in London, then purveyors of sports equipment to the Royal Family, and the gear was put on the Concorde from Heathrow to Kennedy – given he was a regular passenger on the supersonic plane – and his chauffeured Rolls-Royce picked it up enabling us to participate in a match just hours later.
Tikoo later sold the 23,000 square-foot 28-room Jacobean-style home, complete with two Olympic-sized swimming pools, to real estate tycoon Harry Helmsley and his notorious wife, Leona, for $11 million in 1983. He had bought it in 1974 for $3 million, then the highest priced property in the area. Vikram went on to marry a relative of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of the Republic of India."
Family
Ravi Tikoo kept a low public profile and did not build a multi-generational shipping house. He had two children. His son, Vikram Tikoo, born August 1964, married the daughter of Indian politician Arun Nehru. The marriage was unhappy and ended in divorce. Vikram resided in Plantation, Florida, USA. Vikram had some involvement in a later venture linked to his father’s Globtik name, but he did not continue a large shipping business.
Vikram has built a highly successful, global career in financial technology and digital banking innovation rather than maritime commerce.Presently, he serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Deputy CEO of Salt Bank, Romania's first fully digital, cloud-native banking platform. His appointment focuses on scaling up the bank's digital and next-generation tech architecture. Prior to this, he accumulated over two decades of global tech experience, including serving as Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the fintech giant Fiserv. In 2023, he was recognized by Technology Magazine as one of the Top 10 CIOs in the UK and Ireland. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Maharashtra Institute of Technology and an advanced degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
What Happened to the Business
The Globtik giants were commercially unviable. They were too large for most ports and too expensive to operate. Globtik London_was scrapped in 1985, Globtik Tokyo in 1986. Nissei Maru lasted until 2003, but the era of mega ships ended. The market also turned against Tikoo. Suez reopened in 1975 and the 1973 oil crisis cut demand and freight rates.
Legacy
Ravi Tikoo was not a long-term success, but he was a pioneer. He was one of the first Indians to operate at the centre of global shipping ; raising finance in London, ordering ships in Japan, and chartering them to Western oil majors. His career illustrates both the ambition and the risk of shipping. It is a cyclical, capital-intensive business where backing the wrong size at the wrong time can erase years of profit.
For a few years in the early 1970s, the largest ships in the world carried the name "Globtik". Behind them stood a man from Kashmir who believed he could build giants. Though the ships did not last, the ambition marked him out in the history of Indian enterprise.
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