When it comes to sanitaryware, the products of his company are a household name and available across the length and breadth of the country. Somany talks to DARE about his experience, his challenges, tells us about the innovations of his company, shares some offshoot business ideas, and much more
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| Sandip Somany |
Tell us about your journey at Hindware. How was the transition and what were the initial difficulties faced?
I have been involved with the company since 1982. Back then, I was studying as well undergoing occasional training in the company. In 1985, I started working with the company in an official capacity. I had to undergo quite an exhaustive training, which got me starting to work at the shop floor level and involved in every process that is required in the production stages. I remember working with my own hands, trained under supervisors along with all other workers. During this phase I got a comprehensive understanding of the processes and the technicalities involved. Then over the years, I moved into other positions – one step at a time to reach the level at which I am today.
As for the transition, in those days, it was a natural expectation of the parents that their children will join the family business. By large, back in the day, even the children expected that after their studies they will get into managing the family business after their studies. That said, the company had a structured training program to induct the newer generation. Of course, it was pretty elementary, if we compare it to the training standards that we follow today. But the training did hone me into getting to understand the business in greater details and thus I spent a good three years on the plant and its intricacies doing just that. The time spent then helped me in good stead in the years to come.
During those days, while the newer generation groomed itself into a family owned business, it was very important to not look like a complete idiot in terms of asking the wrong questions. There are many times when one would want to ask very basic questions but make them sound reasonably intelligent. Because one does not want to be remembered as the person who had no idea about the business when he joined. Being a member of the promoters’ family, it was assumed by employees at various levels that I had all the answers, as if I were prepackaged with all the knowledge. The fact was that I had to learn like and as much as everybody else. Living up to these expectations was quite challenging.
Besides these, to some extent, winning acceptability of the employees was also a key issue. Those days, of course, were different, as people would accept a family member coming in with the ultimate intention of going to the top. Now it is lot tougher. Today there are aplenty professionals working in the company; any family member joining in has to be really competent to be able to command their respect.
You have turned around sick divisions into profitable ones. How did you go about it?
The first independent charge that I took, in 1989, was that of a company called Krishna Ceramics in Andhra Pradesh. The plant was struggling to get its products and production right. We acquired and merged this company into our business. The plant was located 50 kilometers from Hyderabad, which was then a sleepy little town. For me, taking over this company had challenges and offered many learnings. The first thing that I realized was that the people running the company (staff and managers, not the workers) were completely incompetent. If I recall it right, we only retained two people and the rest were asked to go. We hired fresh people to give the responsibility of running the plant. It was challenging to train them, making them understand where we were and where we wanted to go, etc. Meanwhile, the workers thought some rich person from north India has bought the company, so demanded to double-triple their wages. This led to a strike within the first year of taking over. We took a tough stand and broke the back of the union – by simply saying, wage increment will be production linked. Since then we have had very good relations with the workers and the union.
Hindware at that point of time was principally operating in north and east India. We had small pockets in the south like Bangalore and Cochin, where we had our presence. So, we went about setting up our marketing network in the south. The plant, when we took it over, had a capacity of producing close to 1000 tonnes per year. Today it does 18,000 tonnes in a year. We brought in a completely new chain on the distribution side, wholesalers, retailers, etc which was quite challenging. With many such challenges tackled, within eighteen months of taking over the sick divisions, they turned around and started making money. This was very heartening for me as well as the very young team there. The average age of employees at that plant back then was 25 years. All this gave me the confidence that I can independently go out and look at opportunities.
To sum it up, there were some key strategies that made all this possible. First was the focus on the production side, where we cut our costs, utilized the plant capacity, and made sure that we produced what the customers wanted. Secondly, we had some very motivated and dedicated people to run the operations on the plant as well the sales-marketing front. The third thing was a structured manner of penetrating the market by showing a long-term commitment to our customers.
What kind of R&D goes into bringing out new products?
It all starts from consumer feedback and from trying to understand what consumers’ expectations from this product category is. As in, the desires that are still unfulfilled. Having done this groundwork, the next is our design board, where we have a whole team of talented designers. These designers conceptualize new products and take them through the development stage till it reaches production level. From here on it is a very detailed and laborious exercise, which requires a lot of adjustments and fine-tuning to get the right efficiency of the product.
These products are made at a temperature of 1,220 degrees centigrade. The challenge here is to put in right procedures, not only to speed up the process of modeling but also keep it production friendly and efficient. From the days of doing everything manually, we are now at a stage of computer-aided designing facilities.
Besides computers, there are other technological advances too. As you know, our products have a lot to do with water. For instance, flushing is done with water. Water is not as abundant as most people treat it to be. Future wars, as many experts believe, will be to control water, not oil. We have been leading the drive in India to make our products ecologically friendly. From a national water consumption level of 15 liters per flush, we have already brought it down to 6 liters per flush. This could be achieved by design innovations and advancements in hydrodynamics.
Hindware products have the capability of flushing with as low as 2 and 4 liters of water. All our new products have a dual-flush system. As in, after urination, you can now use half the quantity of the water to clean the bowl. To put some numbers, a typical water saving products of ours saves 28,000 liters of water per year per toilet. Considering that we make 3 billion pieces a year, out of which toilets would be around 1.7 million pieces, that is a significant amount of water that we help saving every year. Over a period of time, we have come to introduce automatically flushing urinals using infrared sensors, men’s waterless urinals, and more such innovations.
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written by Himanshu Daga, June 08, 2009
Its a inspirited story which can be inspired so many youngsters to achieve
their own goal...
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Actually I have done my interior designing and looking for a mentor like you got training from your Company initially. I am looking for mentor who will guide me in this industry as i have just finished my course and cannot work due to timing issues but i don't want to loose confidence out from interior designing.
It will a very big help if can help me get in touch the right person.