When Adi Godrej, 64, says, ?If you don?t change, you won?t survive,? he means it, down to every single letter. For, the man is at the helm of the 110- year-old Godrej group. Milestones for the company are not merely restricted to emerging as a leader in one vertical or other, surpassing targets and setting new ones or foraying into new sectors, they are symbolic of a resurgent India?from pre-independence era to post- and from closed economy days to these interesting times of globalisation.
?The issues now are very different from what they were then. There was a shortage of everything in those days and you could sell all that you made. The challenges were how to increase your capacity or how to get a licence from the government. Now, it?s all a question of competition, being efficient and marketing well. No doubt, these times are much better for all of us,? he says.
Adi, chairman of the Rs 7,500-crore Godrej group, joined the business as a twenty-something when the company was ?relatively small and it was easy to get to know everything.? After completing a course in mechanical engineering and management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he worked under the guidance of his father Burorji Godrej and uncles to learn the nitty-gritty of the business. ?I thought that if I studied management on top of engineering, it would be very useful when I came back. It was one of the best decisions that I took because I was the first management graduate to join our group. I was ready to bring about changes, which altered the perspective of the company. From being very engineering oriented, we took a lot of steps towards improved management, which helped us grow,? he reminisces.
What Ardeshir and Pirojsha Godrej started as a safety lock manufacturing company in 1897, which later started making soaps from vegetable oil, today has businesses spanning sectors like consumer durables, FMCG, real estate, safety equipment, office furniture and industrial goods. According to Adi, ?About 400 million Indians use one of our products everyday.?
If Godrej was the first company to manufacture locks, it was also the first to make typewriters. Though electronic and electric typewriters have now vanished from the face of earth, but the company still makes manual ones. ?We are one of the only two manufactures left in the world that make manual typewriters. They sell in places where there is no electricity,? he says. Out of the many sectors that the Godrej group has a presence in, FMCG and consumer durables account for about 30% and 35%, respectively. But, it is the property business that Adi is now gung-ho about. ?One business that we expect to be the single biggest business in our group over the next two years will be the property development business,? he says. The group is currently developing 50 million sq ft of property across the country.
Belonging to the league of the first business houses that emerged out of India, the group has maintained its stronghold on some sectors while cutthroat competition is making it difficult for the group to continue its leadership position in others. Ask Adi if he intends to foray into some new economy sectors and he is quick to reply: ?We are already in many sectors. Some of them are growing very rapidly. And we have a lot of opportunities in them. So if we waste our effort, energy and finances on new sectors, which might be difficult to enter, we won?t be able to do as well as in our existing sectors.? High on the group?s priority list is also pruning of some businesses. ?Recently we sold a company (BPO). We will also exit some small businesses that are not core to our business,? he says.
True to the group?s mantra of changing with the times, Adi is keen to spread his business far and wide. In the offing are acquisitions in developing countries that he is actively scouting for. However, talk to him about being bogged down a bit by MNCs and other Indian companies that have taken the lead over Godrej in some sectors and he replies with a straight face, ?We have done better than many groups and there are other groups who have done better than us.?
However, despite the ups and downs one thing that has remained with Adi throughout is his management mantra, ?Sales is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is reality.? He says that they as a group had started with a vision to be the leader in most categories they operate in, but now they aim at taking the leadership position in all the categories they are operate in.
The leader still signs in at work at eight in the morning, and usually calls it a day around seven in the evening. And for him, this schedule is not akin to putting long hours at work, ?It?s just around 12 hours,? he says. His management mantra has remained unchanged just like the habit to start his day early, but the winds of change have slightly altered his leadership style. ?When I was young, I had the command style of leadership. But, now, I listen better to other people. I also encourage much more team effort than I used to earlier,? he reflects.
Adi, who comes across as a straight-forward and a no-nonsense person, is a fitness freak and makes it a point to exercise for at least 10 hours a week. Even at this age, the industrialist looks pretty much in shape and is into a lot of adventure sports. ?I have always been very fond of sports all my life. In younger days I used to play a lot of tennis and squash and I used to horse ride a lot,? he recounts. However, now, it?s water sports all the way for him. Adi says that despite a tight schedule he manages to water-ski every Sunday with his grandchildren?Aryaan and Azaar.
Travel is his another passion. He has been to over 70 countries either for business or pleasure. Married to Parmeshwar Godrej, Godrej is a father of two daughters?Tanya and Nisa and one son Pirojsha.
While his daughters have already become a part of their father?s empire, Pirojsha joined the company for a brief while as a management trainee after which he quit to pursue higher studies. Does Adi have a succession plan in place? ?We are working on it. I have a brother, a cousin and a nephew in the business, so we have a fair amount of family in the group. But we don?t really need succession planning. We have professional heads for each business and there is a very strong succession planning for them. The family will be in the supervisory role and only get involved with the strategy, governance and human resource development issues.?
The man who has seen many phases of the Indian story says that economic policies in the country are reasonable good now. But, they could be still better. ?We need to open up the economy more,? he opines.
Charismatic leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and Jack Welch are some of the favourites of a man who doesn?t shy from taking a leaf or two out of the management books of the younger generation. ?I think it?s great to see companies that started 10 or 20 years back become very successful now. It?s superb for India. I hope that the number of such companies grows by leaps and bounds,? he says.
Adi, who has many friends among the young breed of leaders, vouches for the powers of entrepreneurship and the change it can bring about on Indian economic landscape. ?There are no shortcuts, there is nothing like hard work and a strong vision,? says the man, signing off with the time tested adage.