IT'S NOT A MAN'S WORLD — SANGEETA TALWAR

‘I have set the bar of excellence quite high’

Papiya De

Ms Sangeeta Talwar, MD, Mattel Toys India

Dream merchants is how Ms Sangeeta Talwar, the 44-year-old managing director of Mattel Toys India, would like to describe her team. “We sell the dream world of Barbie, the adrenaline driving Hot Wheel cars and the nurturing comforts of the Fisher Price toys,” she explains. It was perhaps her belief in the philosophy that “those who dare to dream have a whole world to win,” compounded with the dream world of Mattel toys that managed her to lure her out of Nestle India after 20 invigorating years. Ms Talwar joined Mattel in April 2001, and her primary responsibility is to develop the overall strategy of the company and make Mattel the largest brand in the Indian toy market. “There is a tremendous opportunity to develop the toy market in India and I want Indian children to get exposure to the right kind of toys, ones that will help them understand the world around them better,” says Ms Talwar.

The $6 billion Mattel is the largest brand in toys internationally and in India its turnover is around Rs 60 crore. Ever since she took over
this year, Ms Talwar has worked hard to change the way Mattel India functions. First, she has linked Mattel India to the international
systems and brought in all the sales, accounting and performance policy systems followed by the parent company. Secondly, she has tried to make the company much more responsive to change and delayered the sales team and encouraged team work within the organisation. “I have set the bar of excellence quite high and asked my team to think international and act local,” says Ms Talwar.

Ms Talwar believes that to be successful one has to have the essential five C’s: concept, conviction, commitment, courage and compassion. Even as she graduated in Economics in 1976, Ms Talwar was very clear that she wanted to belong to the league of business managers. In 1979 when she completed her MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta she had two lucrative offers: one from Nestle and the other from Smithkline Beecham. Since Smithkine had only Horlicks as the major brand, Ms Talwar opted for Nestle which had a plethora of brands in a number of segments. She believed that Nestle would have on offer much more exciting assignments with many leading brands.

In 1979, she joined Nestle and worked with the food products business. In those days the Maggi brand had met with huge success in Southeast Asia and the Indian management was keen to bring it to India. Ms Talwar was instrumental in launching Maggi noodles and as the group product manager took the brand forward with a range of products like sauces and soups under the Maggi brand.

After her stint with marketing, Ms Talwar joined the sales team of Nestle as the regional sales manager , northern India. “Sales is an extremely challenging job because it requires execution of the strategies impeccably in the field,” she says. To be a good sales manager one has to have the mental flexibility to deal with people who come from very different backgrounds, believes Ms Talwar. “A woman has to work much harder to get people to believe that what she is saying is actually going to work,” she adds.

At Nestle, there was not a single day she can recall when she was bored with her work, primarily because the organisation had in store for her completely different assignments, one after the other.
After her experience with the sales team she had joined the human resource department and was directly responsible to share the vision of the company with its 3000 employees. At that juncture, Nestle India wanted to aggressively grow from a Rs 500 crore company to a Rs 2000 crore company in the next seven years and Ms Talwar’s job was to change the HR policies and create leadership training programmes to make the staff partners in the company’s progress.
After this two-year break from sales and marketing, she came back once again with much greater responsibilities as the executive vice-president, marketing. In 1996, she was seconded at the headquarters in Switzerland as strategic advisor and worked with other products like chocolates, confectionery and beverages. She was in Switzerland till 1999, away from her husband, though her daughter was with her. “I have been fortunate to have tremendous support from my family, my husband has always encouraged and respected the choice I have had to make. He has gone the extra mile to provide a best match between his profession, my work and our family,” says Ms Talwar.

She cherishes a dream to travel across the globe with her family and other than travelling what excites her most during her leisure is socialising and reading. Ms Talwar believes in being “18 till I die” and her current job with all its colour and creativity has all ingredients to help her stay young at heart. “Mattel’s offer helped me change my paradigm completely as this business is entirely focussed on the under 10 age group,” she says.