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MARCH 2017 VOLUME 5 ISSUE 12 ` 200

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UPCOMING

INTERVIEW

WE HAVE A NEW- AGE RAYMOND EVOLVING, FAIRLY RAPIDLY’

aymond has been an iconic brand in India for ages. Generations have identified the over 90-year-old brand

with high-quality suiting and fabrics. The legacy tagline and imagery of its path-breaking advertising personifying “The Complete Man” has touched and stayed with us for decades. But that said, Raymond has been confronting a classic challenge that most legacy brands do: Staying relevant. A challenge that Sanjay Behl, CEO, Lifestyle Business, Raymond, has taken head-on since he joined thetop post at the company in 2013. “The key challenge was of a brand getting older in a country getting younger,” he says. “There was an urgent need for the brand to evolve from its legacy trappings in classic suiting and trousering fabric, largely meant for the pre-millennial generation and restricted to special occasions like weddings.”

Behl has set an uphill task for himself: To transform the suiting manufacturing Indian behemoth to a cutting-edge contemporary fashion retailorganisation in India as well as in select markets globally by 2020. In essence, the transition means moving Raymondbeing a “classical product- oriented organisation” of over nine decades to becominga “menswear full wardrobe solution-based organisation” by 2020. “It had to be a holistic transformation, almost akin to a rebirth of an organisation, but without any dilution of thecore brand equity and inherent organisation strengths,” says Behl. A massive three-phase organisational overhaul is underway, already achieving what it set out for the firstphase. In an interview with Amit Ranjan Rai, Behl talks at lengthon his strategy and action plan to turn his vision for Raymond into reality as well as the trends shaping business today.

Photographs by SAMEEP SINGH | Motorcycle INDIAN CHIEF VINTAGE

WARDROBE COURTESY RAYMOND MADE TO MEASURE: A

statement quilted jacket stylishly paired with in spring themed printed

premium Giza cotton shirt and classic blue denims

with a printed pocket square for accessory.

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CEO INDIA | 31

INTERVIEW

WARDROBE COURTESY RAYMOND MADE TO MEASURE:A stunning single breasted window pane suit in Emerald teamed with a luxurious pristine Giza cotton shirt. Paired with the ensemble is a striking yellow pocket square and dual toned classic brogue.

organisations. I started my career with my dream company Hindustan Unilever; and every day, of a decade spent at HUL, was inspiring and invigorating. The next decade ofmy career in the telecom industry between Nokia India and Reliance Group provided me with an unmatched excitement of scaling-up businesses from mere ideas, and opened me upto the true power of dreaming with my eyes open.

There have been many defining moments that have shaped my career but none more than the tougher assignments that came my way, a few seemingly unsurmountable adversities and the share of failures that I have had along this journey. Further, I have been blessed with inspiring and tall mentors guiding me through my professional journey. Early in my career as a sales manager at HUL, I was confronted

with the challenge of diffusing the first ever trade boycott of Unilever products in India for want of higher retail margin. Managing the militant trade amicably, constantly engaging with the organisational leadership, providing measured responses to media and eventually manoeuvring an unconditional withdrawal of product boycott helped me gain tremendous confidence as a business leader at a

fairly young age. Thereafter as a brand manager, the disruptive success of Vim dish wash bar opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for household care business in India. However, following this significant success

was an abject failure of a new brand launch in the low-cost segment of the same category. Leading marketing

of Nokia for mobile phones in India was like a roller coaster adventure, wherein we managed to double brand market share to over 80 per cent in an exponentially growing market in less

than 2 years. My stints in Reliance were varied from overseeing the group brand across diverse industries at one end

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to the start-up of a satellite television venture on the other.

Even though I have had a fair share of failures amidst a few endearing successes in my career, it is the purposeful mentorship which I received and an accelerated learning from each one of these experiences that I truly value till date.When you joined Raymond as a CEO, what were Chairman and MD Gautam Singhania’s expectations from you? What were the challenges facing the 91-year-old company and the iconic brand, and what were your priorities when you held the reins of the company?I joined the organisation in July 2013 as the CEO for Lifestyle Business, which comprises of textiles and apparels portfolio. The mandate given by the Chairman and MD, Gautam Singhania, was to enhance Raymond Group’s financial leverage commensurateto the strength of the iconic brand Raymond. In terms of fiscal metrics, it translated to stemming the decline in operating profits in the shortterm (1-2 years); and elevate the organisation to becoming a ‘high- performance’ and ‘relevant and sustainably profitable’ company in the medium-long term (3-5 years).

To me, the real task was to transform a suiting manufacturing Indian behemoth to a cutting- edge contemporary fashion retail organisation in India, and in select

markets globally. The essence of this transition for Raymond organisation was to move from being a classical ‘product’-oriented organisation for over nine decades to becoming a menswear full wardrobe ‘solution’- based organisation by 2020. It had to be a holistic transformation, almost akin to a rebirth of an organisation, but without any dilution of core brand equity and inherent organisation strengths, especially in the areas of

QA

You have worked for about 10 years in the FMCG industry (with HUL) and about the same time in telecom (with Reliance ADAG and Nokia). What made you join a textile business?How do you see your professional journey so far?What inspired me initially to join the textile industry was an opportunity to work for an iconic brand, Raymond. But the final decision to switch from a new age wireless industry to a seemingly more conventional textile and apparel industry got triggered by the enormity of challenge on offer in my role asa leader of this nine-decade-old behemoth — which was to transform a legacy market leading textile fabric organisation into a contemporary and cutting-edge fashion, lifestyle and retail institution. With over 3 years into this journey now, I have felt only more exhilarated and inspired with every passing moment by the limitless potential of my brands, a fiercely committed team and an institution called Raymond.

My professional journey of over 23 years has been very gratifying. I consider myself fortunate to have got

ample opportunities to work on diverse assignments ranging across consumer goods to the service industry, in India and global markets — from start-ups to managing and transforming large, established and complex businesses.

I have also had the privilege to work with and learn from some of the best people, brands, businesses and

My immediate vision for Raymond Group is to emerge as a cutting-edge men’s fashion and retail conglomerate in

India and select global markets by 2020.

The single biggest challenge has been to balance the inherently while catalysing a radical transformation of legacy businesses

across cry that unifies employees and aligns their passion to the

INTERVIEW

no time, we had a new-age Raymond evolving, fairly rapidly.

As I look back, we have already come a long way over the last 3 years, having accomplished most of what we set out to achieve in the

first of the three identified phases of organisational transformation. In this massive organisational overhaul that is underway, there have been a few misses and setbacks along the way, but none that would derail us from the path that we chose to tread. As we progress into the second phase of Raymond evolution, we now have an

advantage of tremendous tailwind and organisational momentum.

What has been your action plan so far to transform the company, streamline operations and drive efficiency? If you can elaborate the key steps taken to get the company in a much better shape? At the outset, we articulated and cascaded a clear vision and an enabling

strategy to all the stakeholders of Raymond. This encompassed spelling out a 3-phased transformationalpath forward of ‘Vision, Mission and Strategy’, in three distinct time buckets termed as Raymond 1.0 (2014-2017),Raymond 2.0 (2016-2020) and Raymond3.0 (2018-2025).

To support Raymond 1.0 Vision, a granular and comprehensive

‘Strategy-into-Action (SIA)’ execution plan was detailed out with a clear set of quantifiable milestones for each business and function, with specific tasks, sub-tasks and platform owners, resources in measures of time, people and money, tracking and management review processes, linkages with performance management system and incentives, and so on.

Raymond 1.0 was pivoted on the following five key pillars:

1. Starting Jan 2014, we shifted from a legacy ‘product-centric’ org structure

of ‘textile’ and ‘apparel’ divisions to a ‘customer-centric SBU (strategic business unit)’ structure supported with functional shared servicesorganisation at the lifestyle level. Over the last 3 years, we have aggressively invested to build a sustainable competitive advantage in all the four SBUs and build world-class excellence in all the key functions.2.Immediately thereafter, starting April 2014, we dispassionately started divesting in all the non-strategicand non-core businesses, including cutting our losses by shutting down unprofitable non-strategic retail stores. Further, we rapidly outsourced all the non-core but strategic activities viz.IT services (outsourced to Accenture for 10 years), payroll, admin facilities and so on.3.Building a world-class leadership team to catalyse the new organisation structure was amongst my top priorities. Every single one of the

‘Top 350’ leadership roles were individually re-assessed from a strategic perspective and re-evaluated for manning. Of these, leadership talent for a third of the ‘Top 75’ roles was externally hired from industry best global benchmarks of talent and functions viz. apparel SBU head from Tata Trent, brand & retail heads from HUL, retail project head from Shopper Stop, creative head from Givenchy & Prada, digital head from Burger King, and so on. In the process of hiringexternal and elevating internal talent to leadership roles, the average age of my direct reportees has reduced from 52 years to 43 years over the last 3 years.

To enable building a high- performance organisation, we also overhauled the performance management system with clear

linkages of quantified KRAs (key result areas) with consequent management framework at all levels within the

excellence in product quality and the conventional trade channels.

The single biggest challenge has been to balance the inherently conflicting objectives of delivering exponential profitable growth while

catalysing a radical transformation of legacy businesses across the group.

Early in this journey, it was vital for me to create a rallying cry that unifies employees and aligns their

passion to the stated audacious vision of organisational transformation.

However, amongst the foremost challenges at a personal level was also to gain professional credibility amongst my direct reports and larger teams, as someone who could effectively partner them and lead them, given an apparent lack of experience in the textile industry. On the brand front, the key challenge was of a brand getting older in a country getting younger. There

was an urgent need for the brand to evolve from its legacy trappings inclassic suiting and trousering fabric, largely meant for the pre-millennial generation and restricted to special occasions like weddings.

Post alignment of immediate and long-term expectations with the

chairman and board of the company, my topmost priority in the first six months was to learn, assimilate and reflect on as many elements of the business value chain at Raymond and the industry. In this phase, I travelled quite extensively and actively engaged with multiple stakeholders including customers, investors, trade partners and strategic vendors — both in India and globally. I also met up with as many employees

as possible across levels, businesses, functions and locations. During this learning phase, I did not trigger any material change in products, processes or people. Thereafter, I moved with high speed and initiated massive changes across the organisation and within

conflicting objectives of delivering exponential profitable growth the group. Early in this journey, it was vital for me to create a rallying stated audacious vision of organisational transformation.

organisation. The core tenets of the evolving organisational culture at Raymond are based on the five tenets of meritocracy, transparency, personal accountability, bias for action and collaborative working.4.A comprehensive rejig of Raymond’s business value chain, both horizontally and vertically, was carried out toalign all elements with the stated business vision. This included product innovation, portfolio simplification, retail renovation and expansion, brand re-positioning, supply chain re-hauling,IT/digital integration from sourcing to retail, newer business models (viz.MTM or mark to market, offshore manufacturing) and global expansion.5.Enhancing levels of corporate governance and continuing to raise the levels of strategic, executional and fiscal diligence at the Raymond Group level has been a guiding vision of Chairman and Managing Director Gautam Hari Singhania. This resulted

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in the formation of a high-quality Advisory Board for Lifestyle Business in early 2015. The board constitutes of Ravi Venkatesan (Chairman, Bank of Baroda, and Ex-Chairman, Microsoft India), Rajiv Bakshi (Ex-CEO, Cadbury, Pepsi), BS Nagesh (Founder, Terrain, Ex-MD, Shopper Stop), Mihir Doshi (MD, Credit Suisse India), Richa Kar (Founder, Zivame, woman lingeriee-comm brand) and Manish Chokani (Enam Capital).

The advisory board engages with my leadership team every quarter, wherein diverse topics of potential relevance

to Raymond Group get discussed and debated at length. Within 2 years

since inception, the advisory board has already had a significant role in shaping the strategic agenda of my businesses and Raymond Group.

What is your vision for Raymond? How do you plan to bring the past glory of

Raymond back? How do you plan to make the company future-ready? My immediate vision for RaymondGroup is to emerge as a cutting-edge men’s fashion and retail conglomerate in India, and in select global markets by 2020. The Raymond brand will continue to build on its position asa classic bridge-to-luxury offering for the full wardrobe needs of a discerning male.

In the long run, my vision for Raymond is to evolve as a unique and compelling ‘lifestyle’ brand, with its offerings going beyond just the full wardrobe solutions, extending deep into a few relevant categories like male grooming or personal care.

Raymond's transformation is a 3-phase process, of which we are at

the end of our first phase, comprising of organisational restructuring, portfolio sorting, talent sourcing, brand repositioning and retail renovation and expansion. The second phase has just

begun; and this phase will encompass retail expansion into smaller tier towns, the convergence of all retail formatsin larger markets, digital integration across all nodes of our value chain, remodelling of our integrated supply chain and purposeful investments on talent and leadership team. The third phase beyond 2020 will largely be about our evolution as a ‘solution’-based organisation and making digital as a ‘way of life’ at Raymond.So is the focus now shifting from the traditional fabrics for suits model to a more lifestyle and retail brand forapparel? What is your growth strategy for the apparel business and whatare the new areas you are entering/ initiatives you have taken?The core of on-going transformation at Raymond is the transition that we are making from being a ‘product’ company to becoming a ‘solution’

company. In the first phase, we will evolve as a one-stop shop for all the needs of a menswear wardrobe — all products and accessories, for all occasions, all services from custom- tailored to ready-mades to bespoke clothing lines. So in sum, rather than offering our customers with what we manufacture, we are in the process of re-configuring the organisationto cater to what our customers wish for. Consequently, we plan to extend Raymond to meet lifestyle-related needs of the (complete) man, which may range from a compelling range of men’s grooming products to highly specialised curated vacations.

In the apparels business, we have four power brands in our portfolio

— Raymond, Park Avenue, Parx and Color Plus. We are amongst the three biggest apparel brand players in India today. Our growth strategy is based on a triad of sharpening our product portfolio, enhancing and expanding

our retail footprint and effectivego-to-market strategies. Our power brands complement each other to offer complete wardrobe solutions for the discerning Indian male.

For the product, our focus is to sharpen the brand positioning leveraging each brand to its full potential hence capturing the ‘full wallet’ of our customers. We have recently owned the white shirt

category in the country introducing Raymond Whites, coupled with the launch of world-class products such as lightweight jackets and top-end sweaters for our customers.

As far as the retail footprint is concerned, we are focusing on

expanding aggressively in order to create an optimal footprint through exclusive brand stores, large-format retail footprint and multi-brand stores. With 1,100 exclusive brand retail stores and market reach spanning 400 cities,

Raymond is the largest and most penetrated fashion retailer in India. Beyond continuing to expand store reach optimally, we are also renovating and digitising our existing stores to enhance shopper experience in retail. We have also created a unified robust CRM platform with sharp analytics- driven action ability to configure a digitally immersed omnichannel business. Also, Raymond is known for brand leadership through disruptive advertising.

Our apparel business has been witnessing a strong double-digit growth over the last 3 years which is significantly ahead of the apparel industry growth. We have almost

doubled the apparel business over the last 3 years and will continue to scale up this business to attain profitable market leadership in this segment.

The company reportedly also has plans for global expansion. If you can elaborate?We are the largest suiting manufacturer in the country and the leader in this space. Our garmenting business is based largely on B2B exports and we serve some of the top global brands in the fashion and retail space. Out of all the 55 countries across five continents that we supply our products to, the US contributes 30 per cent, Europe 25 per cent and Japan 20 per cent. Exports overall contribute 15 per cent to our overall revenue at present.

We now want to move from an ‘export-only’ model to develop the market and increase business by establishing a face to the name in select regions. We have shortlisted a few markets where we would like to be present 365 days and invest in building

deeper relationships and strategic partnerships with fashion brands and top retailers across the US,Europe, the UK, the Middle East, South Asia and Japan.

We have recently set up an office in Dubai and are catering to customers from Gulf countries, South and Central Asia and East Africa. Our existing London office caters to customers

in the UK and Europe. We are in the process of opening an office in New York that will primarily cater to the customers in North America.

We manufacture world-class suits, jackets, trousers and shirts at our garmenting manufacturing units and currently have four garment manufacturing units, all in Bangalore, with a current capacity of over 2

million jackets per year. Suits, jackets, trousers and shirts will continue to be

My vision for digital transformation is to rapidly evolve from digital being an ‘enabling platform’ as to it becoming a

‘way of life’ at Raymond over the next 3 years

competitively priced for global markets. Ethiopia will be amongst the largest suit-manufacturing singlelocation facility in the world with over 2 million jackets per year from a single location and once the facility is fully commissioned, it will generate an employment for around 10,000 people.What have been the key initiatives on the digital transformation and technology side? Is big data helping drive your businesses?My vision for digital transformation is to rapidly evolve from digital being an ‘enabling platform’ as to it becoming a ‘way of life’ at Raymond over the next 3 years.

We set up a division called the Digital Customer Centre (DCC) in February 2016 with the primary mandate to create a road map for digital integration and enhancement in various aspects of the organisation.

We have assembled a highly passionate young team with a mandate to lead

us into the stated vision in a defined timeframe.

On big data, amongst the foremost tasks undertaken by the DCC was to consolidate and enrich consumer data that was available in different systems, platforms, brands and retail stores within the organisation. Today, we

have data that covers 4.6 million loyal

brand customers that have transacted with us, their purchase history and preferences. With this data, we are able to create actionable customer insights and segments by clustering customer groups based on their purchases, maturity stage, product usage and satisfaction.

We have created multiple customer archetypes and our businesses

are able to target their products and solutions with much more sharpness basis the behaviour of

customers. The data is fairly complex

across geographies, categories and attributes and we are now looking at benefits from better managementof the complexity through actionable segments. We have also connected our feedback tool with customer segments and are able to ascertain satisfaction and feedback from different typesof customers and the impact of our actions taken for them. This is tied together by CRM platforms that are integrated with our POS across our network of over 1,000 stores.

Our digital team has also built propensity models that help us market to the relevant consumer sets and we are seeing very good responses due to sharp targeting. Today over 60 per cent of our revenue flows through the CRM platform and its growing every month. We have also aligned digital channels of communication for our customers across social, email and mobile and map channels of preference and use those to communicate.

On e-commerce, we recently launched our own e-commerce channel raymondnext.com which is aimed at widening the repertoire of engagement with consumers through occasions, categories and brands. The site is our primary node for consumers online and the go-to destination for information on our product and services.

Currently, the inventory is common

with marketplaces online, the website is building into the front-enddiscovery platform and will be wired for omnichannel fulfilment and experience in the near future and will offer the best and everything that the Raymond group of brands have to offer. Our team has an update released every two months with enhanced features and improved design as they learn about what is working better through site analytics.

On customer experience, our first in-store digital experience has been for our brand Raymond Made To

the core product lines. We also have a best-in-class capability to cater to ‘Made To Measure’ customers, for domestic and global markets.

Though we continue to stay committed to the ‘Make in India’ story, we are in the process of setting up a new garment manufacturing unit in Ethiopia which will get commissioned in May 2017. Ethiopia is amongst the fastest-growing stable economies in the African continent and has duty- free access to the US and European markets, making our products36 | MARCH

2017CEO INDIA | 37

I have a passion for living life to the fullest. I have always believed that life has much more to offer than just the

corporate life. So I travel, read, write, paint, play and do whatever

I set my eyes on, and enjoy doing.

INTERVIEW

Measure, with a very immersive client solution that helps our staff serveyou better. We have also invested in 3D virtual reality where consumers can customise and visualise the end garment on their own 3D avatar which helps them choose with confidence. We are working on similar solutions for our other businesses that help solve customer pain points and aimat creating delight in the shopping experience at our store.

How does one nurture such values which give emphasis to disruption and innovation within the organisation?How are you nurturing innovation and disruption within your organisation? Innovation thrives in an enabling organisational culture with a purposeful intent and an ensuing demonstrable behaviour of thetop leadership team. The intent is demonstrated by creating a

workspace that encourages creative self-expression, fuels fearless experimentation and has a robust mechanism to learn from a few expected ‘misses’ in the process.However, a common mistake to watch out for is to label every idea asfundable and pass down every miss as an unfortunate outcome of a well- intended risk.

Raymond has thrived for long on high impact product innovations backed by sustained investment in

world-class manufacturing technology. However, pure-play product innovation alone will not provide us with a sustainable competitive edge in

the medium to long term. To raise our game towards a more holistic

innovation culture, we have to mobilise each component of our business value chain, from sourcing to retail; and even the process of post-purchase life cycle management of our customers.

In addition, we institutionalised a ‘New Business Ventures’ vertical at Raymond, that was designed to operate as a start-up on ventureequity or seed capital of the promoter, with an objective to evaluate new business ideas, test them for their feasibility and create a compelling consumer proposition before we decide to commercially scale them up.

There has been a significant momentum on market-creating innovations over the last 3 years at Raymond with the launch of many new products like Technosmart, Whites; new product segments like light weight jackets, auto fit shirts or combo packs; new categories like

linen and khadi; new retail models like converged Raymond Stores, backend tailoring hubs; new technologies like anti-crease or stretchable fabrics; and so on and so forth.

However, I believe that we still

have a long way to go before ‘market creating’ innovations become a ‘way of life’ for us at Raymond. We are deeply engaged in creating suitable organisation and relevant team structures to foster innovation as their core DNA. This may additionally need a significant re-haul in our performance management systems alongside a deliberate and conscious infusion of diversity among many others things to create a sustainable innovative ecosystem.What are your passions outside of corporate life? Please share some examples of your initiatives outside corporate life.I have a passion for living life to the fullest. I have always believed that life has much more to offer than just the corporate life. So I travel, read, write, paint, play and do whatever I set my eyes on, and enjoy doing. Recently, I

took a resolve to be fitter at 50 than what I was at 40. With a few years ahead of me and having dived deep into my resolve, I am confident that I will surely achieve the same. What’s more is that I am having a blast every moment working towards this personal goal of mine.

Another thing that I have immensely enjoyed doing is staying high on

my learning curve and sharing my professional experiences and insights with colleagues at work, industry forums or at educational institutes.

So I have got onto the advisory board of a start-up technology company based out of New Jersey, volunteered to be on the academic boards of a few

management institutes and have shared my perspectives on a variety of subjects at various forums and institutions across the country. What I have found immensely useful is the default

reverse mentoring that I receive by just

being actively engaged with multiple platforms outside corporate life.Overall, if you have to sum up your ‘impact’ at Raymond, what would you like to say?I would say that I have had a positive impact on triggering a turnaround at Raymond, though it is still early days in our journey towards a more holistic transformation. Apart from a robust fiscal performance ahead of its peers,Raymond has also outperformed the Sensex significantly by triplingshareholder value over the last 3 years.

Equally gratifying has been our making the cut in ‘Great Places

to Work’ in the debut year of our participation this year, and a dramatic shift in employee engagement scores of the organisation to over 80 as per the Hewitt survey, which makes us

a benchmark amongst the highest performing organisations.

WARDROBE COURTESY RAYMOND

MADE TO MEASURE: Pure wool, classic Prince of Wales

check, single breasted suit with maroon accents with a powder

blueGiza cotton shirt. Paired with

the ensemble is a shade of blue printed tie and a contrasting red

pocket square.

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CEO INDIA | 39

INTERVIEW

Personal MemoWhat is a day in your life like?A routine day in my life is filled with an innate desire and ensuing actions to max out every moment. I am an early riser and my day starts at 5.30 am. After an hour-long workout, I like spending an hour relaxing and sifting through the newspapers in the morning. I reach office latest by 9.30 am as I prefer having an early start to my work. Office hours are fairly organised and filled with many formal and informal meetings, intermittent with little breaks that I plug-in by design to have some free time to catch- up with TV, music or friends. I almost always leave office on time and get to be with my family well before dinner time. Post an early dinner with family by 8.30 pm,

I like surfing through Netflix or watching TV prior to retiring by 10.30 or so.What do you think are the best ways to hand out pink slips?Having a tough conversation with an employee, whether it is during the enormity of handing out a pink slip or while conveying a routine feedback, is an integral part of every leader’s job. I have always stated the facts (what) and rationale (why) in an absolute forthright and an honest way, while staying sensitive to the employee concerns on his or her future. I have a firm belief in ‘transparency’ being amongst the most important virtues in building stronger teams, organisations and institutions.

Please elaborate on CSR and community service programmes undertaken under your guidance.Raymond has always demonstrated a deep commitment to socially inclusive growth model through multiple CSR initiatives running over the past 5 decades. Under JK Trust canvass, one of the core initiatives is improving milk yield of cows and buffalos through artificial insemination programme in rural India, which by now has positively impacted and touched over 2 million lives. A few other key initiatives are in the areas of imparting quality education to children and providing technical skills to underprivileged sections of society for better employability.

One such programme that is taking shape now is our ‘Tailor Outreach’ programme. As part a 4C programme recently launched at Raymond -- Community, Capability, Connect and Customer Outreach — we intend reaching out to 1 lakh tailors in India over the next 5 years; and directly contribute towards upgrading their skills and technology using a ‘Public Private Partnership (PPP)’ model in partnership with the Ministry of Textiles and Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. I am personally committed to raising the level of professional dignity and economic betterment of the tailoring community in India.

Five interesting things in your office…A customised Ferrari bucketseat doubling up as my office chair, a pictureof my first day at work, a portable Bose speaker, an unlimited supply of plain A4 white sheets and sharp pencils, and an attendant alarm bell.How do you unwind?I immensely value spending quality time with my family, be it a seemingly routine ritual of dining together or the exciting playful time with my son, they help me unwind like nothing else does. During my time alone, I like reading books or watching movies.Your ultimate holiday destination...My ultimate holiday destination is London, for the reason that it has everything that I wish for on offer. It is amongst the most

cosmopolitan city, easily accessible from anywhere in the world, rightfully boasts of a rich heritage, offers diverse options of cuisine and entertainment, has the most scenic countryside and is so easy to manoeuvre given English as the primary spoken language.What is your greatest indulgence?My greatest indulgence is my insatiable appetite for digital video discs. I have a wide collection of DVD’s of all kinds — ranging from world movies to Bollywood flicks to

critically acclaimed documentaries.Are you fond of collecting anything?

As a child, I used to collect published pictures of cricketers. I

remember waiting for the newspaper every day, or saving

pocket money to buy sports magazines, so that I could access

pictures of cricketers in action. The act of cutting and glueing cricketer snaps in a picture album used to be quite a high for me in my schooling days. My love of collecting pictures

has stayed with me albeit the cricketer snaps

have got replaced with candid pictures of family and friends now. Despite digital repositories becoming a norm now, I am very fond of getting the hard copy prints done and enjoy the ritual of creating conventional photo albums.Music…I love Hindi movie melodies of the seventies circa. My favourite combo is melodies created by RD Burman and Kishore Kumar.What is your kind of cinema? A few favourite films…My choice in cinema is quite varied. I love movies ranging from the ones based on world wars or autobiographies to even slapstick humour ones like David Dhawan and Govinda flicks of the 1990s.What is your kind of car and why?My kind of car has always been an SUV. My current car is a Mercedes ML350 and it ranks amongst my favourites.Favourite actors/actresses...My favourite actor is Akshay Kumar — for his sheer grit, immense talent and the versatility of the roles that he has adorned over the last decade or so. My favourite actress is Kangana Ranaut, almost for all the similar reasons.Favourite cuisine...I enjoy Indian cuisine the most, with a clear bias for North Indian food. My favourite dishes are Mutton Rogan Josh and Pindi Chole.Any CMD, CEO you admire and why?I am an ardent admirer of my current CMD, Gautam Hari Singhania. He is a true visionary and a bold entrepreneur. He is also a leader of utmost integrity as a person and as a professional. The extent of empowerment that he has entrusted me with inspires me to excel even beyond the tall expectations that he has from his leadership team.

I am also an ardent fan of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Group. His ability to dream big, backed by his courageous leadership, is truly infectious. The confidence he reposed in me during my formative years has been a great influence in shaping myself as a business leader.40 | MARCH

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