He believes learning continues through life. ?The day you stop learning is the day you start becoming old.? But Harsh Pati Singhania definitely does not have to worry on this account. Fit at 49 may well describe the managing director of JK Paper, the largest producer of branded copier paper in India, with an annual turnover of over Rs 1,200 crore. Singhania is candid, ?I don?t think I am the repository of ideas in the company. Everybody has ideas and you can learn from everyone and every situation. My job is to encourage those ideas to come up, to hear people out when they have ideas, pick them and encourage people to try out new things.? A believer, Singhania does not miss out on his puja daily. And in his free time, which he rarely gets, he longs to go to musical concerts. ?I haven?t been to one for a long time.?
For the fourth-generation industrialist belonging to one of the oldest industrial groups in India?JK Organisation, with a turnover of Rs 13,400 crore?learning began early. ?Being in a business family you were somewhat exposed to business, even though at home there was a clear situation where my father did not bring work home.? But it was during school holidays that the young scion was sent to check out factories, ?So there was a certain interest in looking at factories and businesses.? It was college that gave the young Singhania ample time to explore and learn. ?While pursuing B.Com at St Xavier?s in Calcutta, we had a morning college that started at 6 am and got over by 10, so after college I would go to office.? During his training period, Singhania worked in varied departments in different family businesses. ?To begin with, my father put me in the jute mill, where I worked in different departments and used to sit in the hall.? Looking back, Singhania says, ?Sitting outside in the hall was the best thing to have happened to me. When you are sitting in an open hall, you are able to witness different understandings and emotions of the team. So if today I am in a room and if somebody talks about a situation outside, I can picturise and comprehend it much better.?
After over two years of initial exposure and understanding the finer points of business, Singhania decided to sharpen his learning skills with an MBA from the University of Massachusetts. He was newly married then. In 1984, the young couple rented an apartment near the campus. While his wife, Mamta Singhania, pursued a bachelor?s in science, Singhania enrolled for an MBA. ?Doing the MBA was a deliberate choice. I wanted to be recognised and accepted by the JK team because of my competence and professional qualifications and not just by virtue of heritage,? he says. Beyond the professional MBA training, Singhania values the experiential learnings of the US. ?From an Indian perspective, you always view the US to be the land of luxury and comfort, but I realised very quickly that those people work very hard. The apartment building where we lived also had offices, and irrespective of whether it was snowing or raining, if the offices opened at 8 am, all people would arrive before time. It gave me a different dimension. It?s not that the Americans have this level of attainment by chance, but it was by sheer hard work. And ultimately, it made me realise that the success of a country like the US lies in hard work. Also, in a work situation, people did not like to waste time, the Indian gup culture had no place.?
And it was this work culture and ethos that Singhania brought back with him when he returned to Calcutta and got involved with the polyester business of the group in the sales and marketing division. After a three-year stint, Singhania moved to Delhi in 1989 and got involved with the paper business as an executive and slowly climbed the ranks. He was instrumental in transforming paper from a commodity business to a brand, for which Singhania put his branding lessons from MBA to full use.
In the early ?90s, JK started getting into the cut size space, and was the first company to get into mass marketing of the A4 cut size paper. ?If the pack reads 500 sheets, the pack would have as many. The consistency and quality of product were a promise to the customer. We were also among the early ones to invest in automatic cutting and packing machines. As more office automation was happening, multi-function paper was developed that could be used in copying machines?all in one machines, printers, or even as letter heads. We put in the packaged branded product, in which we were ahead of the game and succeeded.? To achieve this, JK Paper aligned its marketing strategies and channels of distribution and worked closely with customers.
?For improvements, we did R&D with paper machine manufacturers to achieve better functional properties in paper so that the product could run higher speeds and tolerate higher temperatures.? However, Singhania feels that branding success does not come out of an attractively packaged product. ?It comes from living up to the requirements/expectations of the customer in every experience.?
But the success of the paper baron was preceded by some very hard lessons. Singhania seamlessly transcends into a different time when he recalls the most difficult phase for JK. It was in the second half of the ?90s, when the group was in an expansion mode and suffered a liquidity crunch, coupled by high interest rates. ?The group went through a lot of difficulty to achieve targets and meet financial commitments, after which we ended up restructuring the company.? The restructuring led JK to sell its polyester business to Reliance Industries. ?It was a very long-drawn phase; answers were not easy. But the only way was to keep your head down and keep working, take some tough decisions and hope to pass the downturn. I learnt that in times of difficulty, other people can run away from the company, but you cannot run away. So you have to carry the baby, whichever way it is. You can?t shirk responsibility. While on the inside you know how difficult the situation is, you have to put up a brave front for the team, enabling them to keep their spirits up,? he says.
The bigger lessons of his toughest phase taught Singhania to try and be better prepared for unexpected events. ?Take risks, but have a more conservative financial architecture, because you don?t know how a financial crisis comes up. You have to work as a team, so you have to carry your people with you and you have be carried by them. Communicate the difficulties and at the same time, keep the hope alive.?
The Singhania surname itself was a great motivating factor and a substantial source of learning for Harshpati. ?It?s incredible to see what the elders had achieved and built. We can all argue that the landscape is much more competitive today, but there were different kind of challenges in those days. It?s a lesson how they built and sustained the business and the systems that they have put in place. If a group survives over a 100 years, there must be something in the systems, rather than just personalities. And that is worth learning,? he says.
The core of the JK system, Singhania says, is its structure and systems-driven approach. ?Even in my grandfather?s time we had professionals at senior positions in companies. And that complemented the vision and entrepreneurial ability of the generation that was building the business. Therefore, the culture of the organisation became such that everybody worked around a system, rather than a personality. So there was emphasis on consensus building, understanding, method and analysis, rather than just gut feeling. If you have a process and systems-driven organisation, it is likely to survive changes in leadership, whether family or non-family. The person who is at the helm of affairs will change over a period of time, but the system will prevail.?