The chairman of Radico Khaitan is a man of details. ?The chalta hai attitude does not work for me,? Lalit Khaitan says. It is this attention to detail that has won his company appreciation from his peers and from the market. He has indeed come a long way from the day his family first acquired the Rampur Distillery in 1972. ?We had to get out of Calcutta with the labour climate worsening in the state. A family friend told us that Rampur distillery was a good buy. So we bought it for some Rs 16 lakh at that time,? says Khaitan. But did anyone in the family have an understanding of the liquor business? ?No, none at all. We were into making steel furniture and transmission line towers. We got into the business when a family friend, whose opinion we trusted, convinced us about the investment,? says Khaitan.
The investment has indeed done well for him but Khaitan?s first day at the distillery was not very auspicious. ?I was taking a walk around the campus as the new boss and fell straight into the molasses fermentation tank.? However, he learnt fast and was soon in command of things. Today, his company is the most profitable in the Indian liquor industry and is fast catapulting into the global league on the back of a joint venture with Diageo, one of the world?s top liquor companies. The company has also been launching its own liquor brands from the year1999 while continuing its bottling operations. 8PM, the company?s flagship whisky brands is today among the market leaders in its category.
So was it an easy journey? ?I have had both ups and downs,? he says. We started with bottling for Shaw Wallace but had a very small capital base. As a consequence, I had to rotate the same amount and struggled a bit. I did manage to increase production in 1989-90 and things got better from then on,? says Khaitan.
Khaitan is known by his employees for his meticulousness. ?He is very specific about what he wants. Whenever, we take something to him, we have to be sure that it is up to his standards,? says a Radico Khaitan employee, ?for instance, when we have to give him certain documents, then we have to present them in a particular style and format. Abhishek (his son) is not so much into fine details. As long as the document has the required information, he is happy with it.? Khaitan defends himself, ?I have been accused of getting too much into details but then this habit has served well for me. As they say, God lies in the details.?
Are there any other lessons that he has learnt over his professional career? ?I have learnt that very intelligent people may sometimes not do that well. The difference between success and failure is just ten per cent,? he says. Never look back, take life as it comes and have no regrets are some other mantras that he swears by.
The love for detail is reflected in Radico Khaitan?s office as well. In the visitor?s area, you can find coffee table books on the largest diamond, cocktail recipes and Indian royals. The office itself is a study in understated elegance. Textured cream walls interspersed with paintings, wooden floors, furniture with clean lines, all come together to give you a feeling of calm and luxury. The man himself has refined tastes and speaks with erudition quoting authors and scriptures with ease. He reads across a wide spectrum including philosophy, management and general interest books. ?Currently, I am reading books on medicine,? he says. Why medicine? Well, I want to understand how the human body functions so that I can understand what is happening in my body,? he says. Khaitan had a bout of illness, and true to his character, has set out to understand the reasons behind it.
What impresses you about Khaitan is his curiosity and the drive to learn even at this age. He went to Harvard for an owner and chairman?s programme at 52 and was the top student there.
But why did he go for it? He was, after all, running his business quite well. ?I always knew that I was doing the right things, but wanted some confirmation of the same.? So did he discover, he was right? ?We studied hard. You know, at Harvard, they teach with case studies and we learnt that there were always many ways to approach a problem. Mostly, I discovered that I was following the right approach.?
So what does he think of younger managers who seem to become leaders at a much younger age? ?I think 40 is the new 60 now. We had much less exposure in our times,? he says. What about his son?s management style? Does he get along well with him? Do they see eye to eye on management issues,with his son being a new age professional with an MBA degree and him an old world businessman? ?We seem to have the same view more often than not,? says Khaitan.
An employee confirms, ?When you ask Lalit for a opinion on something and go to Abhishek with the same issue, you can be sure that they will come up with the same perspective.? So are there any differences at all? ?Well, Abhishek is more impatient than I am. He is also a harder task master than I am. He does not tolerate mistakes, while I may be more benevolent,? he says.
So how does he manage to attain the worklife balance and avoid stress? ?An hour of exercise is a must in the morning wherever I am in the world. I have not missed it for even one day over the past 40 years. Exercise for me is the biggest stress-buster. It also helps me maintain my discipline. After exercising, I come to office if I am in Delhi or work as required wherever I am. I travel a lot now for my own work and also for various industry bodies of which I am a member. Now with our partnership with Diageo, I am travelling more than ever before,? he says. He sells liquor to the masses, so what is his own favourite? ?Whisky. But I do not have lots of it and I also do not have anything aged less than 12 years,? he says.
What are his future plans? Does he think his company will grow to even greater heights? ?If I was the only one running the business, I would have perhaps attained as much as I could, but now with Abhishek, I seem to have developed new wings of ambition. He understands the business, is a dynamic professional and has what it takes to make it. I think the sky is the limit now,? he says.