My Belief In ‘Entrepreneurs Powering India Story’ Stronger Today, Says Harsh M ...
In a 2023 interview with BW Businessworld, you had said, “Create More Entrepreneurs, Make India Innovation Capital”. What are your additional thoughts on this?My belief is getting more strengthened on the role of entrepreneurs in India's growth journey. Ultimately, it is the entrepreneurs who will take us to a 10 trillion dollar economy. The government has to create the right environment in terms of policy framework, availability of infrastructure, taxation, etc. Beyond that, I think, the initiative will have to be taken by entrepreneurs to drive growth.
In the last few years, we have seen a big change in the overall entrepreneurial ecosystem in India. We are seeing more and more entrepreneurs coming in from smaller towns, from non-business families. The whole ecosystem has developed very well. It still needs to be developed. And, technology is the biggest disruptor.
I think for the ecosystem to be developed more, we need more people involved in helping entrepreneurs scale up. When you start a business, you are doing things on your own, but when you scale up, you are getting things done from others. That's a big shift and many entrepreneurs are not able to make that shift.
You also need management consultants. There are so many management schools in India, but I find that the Professors who teach management are not a part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Internationally, most Professors are consultants, but here I don't know why (that’s not the case here).
(As for the geographical spread), Currently, the biggest hub for entrepreneurship, I think, is Bangalore (Bengaluru). Gurgaon (Gurugram), Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, are among other big emerging centres.
(As or my own individual initiatives), we are running a platform for entrepreneurs to learn from each other -- Ascent. Some 1400 entrepreneurs have signed up with us. We started with Mumbai. From Mumbai alone, we have around 800 entrepreneurs. We have started chapters in Delhi, Bangalore (Bengaluru), Chennai and we would like to start chapters in Calcutta (Kolkata), Hyderabad and Pune.
You are passionate about ‘Innovation’ – you say that it’s not a one-time measure; it has to be a constant, perpetual effort. You thought of plastic bottles for coconut oil by way of an innovative differentiator long ago, to cite one example. Watching from a distance, with your ‘hands off and mind on approach’, would you like to talk about some of your innovations? How important is it for a leader to be a lifelong learner for life?
Our start of the innovation journey was converting the market of coconut oil and edible oil from from tin to plastics – it gave us a tremendous advantage; it helped us grow the brand. Then Saffola was once only a refined safflower oil, we went into blended oil, because blended oil has got traction amongst all the doctors. So now we have a host of blended oils. To give another example, we came out with masala oats – it has done very well in the market and it created a new market segment.
There are many such brand-specific innovations.
If you stop learning, you get irrelevant in the business world. And you have to continuously learn – and this has to be a part of the organisational DNA. You can interact with thought leaders, you can do a lot of internet research, you can read reports. You also need to do consumer insight and you have to go and meet the consumers, find out what the latent needs are. You have to engage with the retailers, the distributors… You can learn from your own people, from all stakeholders.
You often say that you like to recruit smarter people. How important is this as an HR principle?
I strongly believe that you know you have to go on raising your competency bar in the organisation on a perpetual basis -- A single person cannot be the best in everything. I may be very good in one part of the business; there is some other part (of the business) where somebody else is better than me. You have to make yourself redundant, too -- you are not going to be there doing the same role all the time, so you have to empower others.
A moment that gets talked about in news articles is the phone call that Mr Keki Dadiseth made to you, and what ensued thereafter. Did you keep in touch with him thereafter?
I have not kept in touch with him -- say through a phone call. I may bump into him at some event or somewhere else but have not been really in regular touch with him.
Your grandfather came to Mumbai from Kutch in 1862 and this is how, in a way, began the entire journey. In terms of family owned businesses, India ranks third; according to an estimate, family owned enterprises contribute over 70 per cent to the GDP. How should family owned businesses engage with professionals? How should they plan succession?
First thing to determine is how many family members are there in the business and what is the complexity of the business. Some businesses could be very complex. You need to identify the gaps -- that is a starting point, so you know if a business requires certain competencies (from professionals) and if the competencies are not available in the family.
On the larger question, there is no one right answer, but you will have to go on delegating, empowering individuals, because ultimately as the business grows, there will be limitations as far as family members discharging all the responsibilities by themselves is concerned.
How you coexist with professionals is a very crucial -- you have to create the right culture for professionals to excel, and you need to have a high degree of openness, trust, and an environment for meritocracy for the professionals to thrive.
Do you think certain individuals or families or communities or certain states in India are blessed with special entrepreneurial acumen and abilities, and if yes, how can they further encourage entrepreneurship at large?
To some extent, genetics plays a role. If one were to study the Top Hundred Rich list, my hunch is that Gujaratis and Marwaris would hog the limelight -- in terms of the number of billionaires on the list. That shows that to some extent, some communities are able to produce more entrepreneurs, but this is changing quite fast, especially in the last four to five years, as I mentioned earlier. Entrepreneurship is now growing across India amongst non-business families, and the route to success, or the route to create a business, is very different now, compared to what it was, maybe, ten years back.
What about your children’s involvement in your business?
My son is a Director in Marico and I'm grooming him to take over from me at the Board level. He has started his own business which he is doing very well. He is proud of the fact that he has done something on his own. My daughter is handling my philanthropy initiative, which is different.
Entrepreneurs are surrounded with multiple uncertainties, especially in the context of an extremely volatile and uncertain global environment that we face today. How can they convert adversities into opportunities?
The global environment is changing rapidly -- who could have predicted what will happen with Russia, Ukraine war continuing or the happenings in Bangladesh, Pakistan… It's very very volatile.
So I think the first thing is to get the right perspective -- in what is happening internationally. I think that's the role of the top management. Depending on the implications for your business, you have to have a roadmap in terms of what you do in this current situation. For example, where are you getting impacted? Are you getting impacted because of high oil prices or high plastic prices for supply of raw materials? Are you getting impacted because of the freight trade? Are you getting impacted because you're not able to ship your products to some other destinations? So one has to take an overall look and then decide on the mitigating factors. This has to be continuous, especially in times of a crisis.
Are you writing another book after “Harsh Realities: The Making of Marico”?
I am not going to write any more book now because I think writing a book is much more difficult than what I thought it would be. I also realised that the book-reading habit has gone down in India; people don't want to read books, they want to listen to podcasts. So I have done many podcasts which may have a higher impact than books.
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