The unprecedented challenges that the pandemic has thrown to us taught us new things in life as it’s been an epic test of character and determination. In the business world, it’s been an ultimate leadership test for CEOs, MDs, and decision-makers who had to take care of their people and demonstrate empathy and cope with sudden lockdown, restart businesses in an uncertain environment, and maintain business continuity and growth.
As we turn 11 this year – when the business world is still at the crossroads of Covid 19 pandemic and technological disruptions – we speak to top business leaders from across the subsectors of the manufacturing industry to understand how they are making a positive difference in people’s lives with their leadership while spearheading innovation and growth within their companies and the industry.
We have not done any rankings here, nor have we selected the companies or placed them on the basis of any particular matrix. These leaders represent different sub-sectors, hold different positions and responsibilities, but share a common vision of putting their organisations and the industry on a path of sustainable growth.
BHARAT HEAVY ELECTRICALS LIMITED (BHEL)
DR. NALIN SHINGHAL, CMD
Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), India’s flagship public sector engineering and manufacturing company, is a single source of multiple solutions for energy, industry and infrastructure segments, catering to all energy types – coal, hydro, nuclear, gas and solar with entire range of ratings. It has 16 manufacturing units, two repair units and eight service centres, with four regional offices in India.
“BHEL is focussed on playing a leadership role on the path to achieving the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s ‘Panchamrit’ vision at COP26.”
The company posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 27.02 crore for December quarter 2021-22. Its total income rose to Rs 5,135.90 crore in December quarter, up from Rs 4,451.36 crore in the same period a year ago.
Last month, Union Minister for Heavy Industries, Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey dedicated India’s first, BHEL-built Coal to Methanol (CTM) pilot plant, to the Nation.
While enumerating the initiatives undertaken by BHEL during the ‘AKAM Iconic Week’ celebrations, Dr. Nalin Shinghal, CMD, BHEL, thanked the Ministry of Heavy Industries and the Government for supporting BHEL on a sustained basis. Addressing the participants, he said that R&D has always been one of BHEL’s core strengths and BHEL is focussed on playing a leadership role on the path to achieving the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s ‘Panchamrit’ vision @ the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).
BHARAT ELECTRONICS LIMITED (BEL)
Anandi Ramalingam, CMD
A Navratna PSU under the Ministry of Defence, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) provides advanced products and systems for military, government and civilian customers. Primarily established to meet the specialised electronic equipment requirements of the Indian Defence Services, BEL now has a significant presence in the civilian market as well.
BEL recently signed a contract with Hyperion Global Group, LLC, an infrastructure telecommunication distribution company based in the USA, to develop, manufacture and supply Internet of Things (IoT) devices for the US market. As per the contract last month, BEL will manufacture and supply IoT devices worth US$73 million to Hyperion during the first year of commencement of supply with a provision to negotiate and supply upgrades of the products, worth US$365 million, in the next five years.
“BEL is in constant pursuit of exploring new vistas and challenges in both Defence and Non-Defence segments, leveraging its core strength and expertise in the domain of Defence Electronics.”
The company achieved a turnover of Rs.13,818 crore during 2020-21, registering a year-on-year growth of 9.60%.
“BEL has always been at the forefront to serve the nation through its multiple products and innovative solutions. BEL is in constant pursuit of exploring new vistas and challenges in both Defence and Non-Defence segments, leveraging its core strength and expertise in the domain of Defence Electronics,” wrote Anandi Ramalingam, CMD of BEL, in the Annual Report 2020-21.
TATA MOTORS
GIRISH WAGH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Tata Motors is a $34 billion automobile manufacturing company with a diverse portfolio of cars, sports utility vehicles, trucks, buses and defence vehicles. It is one of India’s largest OEMs offering an extensive range of integrated, smart and e-mobility solutions.
In Q3FY22, Tata Motors Ltd’ wholesales (including exports) increased 30.4% to 200,212 units. The company said the volumes across all segments significantly grew as compared to Q3 FY21, despite supply challenges whilst there was all round market share gains in both CV and PV. Its revenue for the quarter increased 43.3% to Rs 20,959 crore.
The auto industry continued to witness rising demand in most segments even as the supply of semiconductors remained restricted resulting in adverse impact on production. At Tata Motors, our agility in both planning and execution, helped optimize production to deliver another strong quarter with accelerated sales,” said Girish Wagh, Executive Director at Tata Motors Ltd.
“We continue to increase market share in every segment of commercial vehicles and set several new milestones in passenger vehicles with decade high sales for both the quarter as well as the calendar year 2021.”
The company also recorded the highest ever EV sales during the quarter and sold 10,000 EVs in 9MFY22, crossing new milestones.
Looking ahead, he said the company expects the demand for commercial, passenger and electric vehicles to sustain even as concerns related to supply of semiconductors, high input costs and rising instances of Covid keep the overall situation fluid.
“We will remain agile, address supply bottlenecks proactively, drive our savings program harder, take prudent pricing actions while continuing to make good progress in our future-fit initiatives of transforming customer experience digitally and strengthening our lead in sustainable mobility.”
For the month of January, Tata Motors sales in the domestic and international market stood at 76,210 vehicles, compared to 59,866 units during January 2021.
ALSTOM INDIA
ALAIN SPOHR , MANAGING DIRECTOR, INDIA & SOUTH ASIA
Despite all the challenges posed by the pandemic, Alstom has only accelerated the pace of its projects.
With the advent of COVID 19 pandemic, Alain Spohr, Managing Director, Alstom India & South Asia said businesses were also made to relook at their business models while compelling teams to adopt pragmatic methods to ensure continuity of work. “We are very proud and thankful for the way the teams have mobilized themselves in this volatile environment.”
Alstom had set up a war room to strategically assess the situation and arrive at innovative solutions. “We adopted a flexible remote working model that helped us achieve good continuity of our engineering activity. Critical jobs such as quality checks, quality controls (FAI) and other processes have been revamped and are being undertaken virtually,” he said.
Having a strong and resilient business model that can adapt to changing times and ensure smooth operations across the organization is essential.”
Alstom has devised various mechanisms to ensure that its quality is not impacted by the current environment. “We also started using ‘Assisted Reality platform’ for remote assistance by deploying an app-based system on mobile devices, which facilitates online audio & video collaboration with teams and partners, across locations,” said Spohr.
Since most of its sourcing is done indigenously, the company strengthened its planning processes to minimize the impact on its business and customer commitments. “In the long run, we are gearing up to drive digitalization, predictive supply chain planning and smart logistics to achieve complete end-to-end transparency in supply chain,” he said.
HINDALCO INDUSTRIES
JAGDISH RAMASWAMY, PRESIDENT & CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER
The metals flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group, Hindalco Industries is an $18 billion metals powerhouse, and is the world’s largest aluminium company by revenues.
Jagdish Ramaswamy, President and Chief Digital Officer at Hindalco, said, “The biggest learning [during the pandemic] was that the business continuity/ risk assessment mechanism needed to be much stronger and robust. What had become a routine list of risks/ BCP was challenged and made us relook in detail,” he said, adding that who had planned for this pandemic to come and disrupt.
“The biggest learning [during the pandemic] was that the business continuity/ risk assessment mechanism needed to be much stronger and robust.”
He said agility of your people managers and business process was challenged totally and showed “how we are not prepared for agile world though we always keep talking about agility as a key future need for organizations”.
Some of the key innovative steps that the company adopted to deal with the pandemic-infused challenges/disruptions include remote monitoring and fixing issues in operations without people being present physically in the manufacturing units.
VEDANTA LTD
RAHUL SHARMA, CEO – ALUMINIUM BUSINESS
Vedanta’s Aluminium Business leveraged the unprecedented opportunity presented by the pandemic to ‘retool and reimagine’ its business. “Rather than wasting a good crisis, we pulled forward a set of transformations to make Vedanta Aluminium Business leaner, nimbler and more responsive to market forces,” said Rahul Sharma, CEO – Aluminium Business, Vedanta Ltd.
So, while the pandemic and associated lockdowns brought their own set of challenges, Vedanta’s Aluminium Business sustained itself through all disruptions.
“Most important thing is to work towards business sustainability by converting topical disruptions into sustainable transformations for reliability of assets and processes.”
The company’s priority, first and foremost, was to ensure the health and safety of its employees, families and business partners, while running its plants with minimal workforce and resources. “We leveraged intelligent automation and smart technologies to maintain business continuity. With sustained production, we were agile in responding to the changing needs of the market.”
Sharma said they had always been a technology-first company and “the pandemic only accelerated the pace of adoptions of digital and intelligent automation solutions”, which served to make their operations future-ready.
GODREJ & BOYCE
ZURVAN H MAROLIA , SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a black swan event for both consumers and businesses, according to Zurvan H Marolia, Senior Vice President, Godrej & Boyce.
“Our focus through the pandemic has been to reset, reengineer and reinvent ourselves. This has meant adapting to a digital way of life for better productivity and collaboration across the value chain, indigenizing supply chains, improving cost structures to stay leaner and monitoring demand to maximise revenue,” he said.
The company therefore secured its employees and customers by instituting several measures to protect them from the pandemic.
This included sanitised workplaces and social distancing, contactless and digital interactions with consumers, emphasis on products that could ease challenges of working from home and boosting in-house manufacturing to improve capacity utilisation and balance risks.
“The pandemic has thrown up fresh opportunities for businesses in sectors such as healthcare, warehousing, logistics and consumer durables.”
Marolia pointed out that the clear outcome of all their efforts had been the smart revival of their business volumes to cross pre-pandemic levels from the second half of the last financial year. While the economy recovered gradually to post a small growth in Q3 and Q4 last year, the company posted double-digit growth over the same period on a YOY basis.
“We believe that there is headroom for growth for all our businesses. The pandemic has thrown up fresh opportunities for businesses in sectors such as healthcare, warehousing, logistics and consumer durables,” he said, adding that the healthcare sector specifically is presenting opportunities for double-digit growth for the foreseeable future.
TATA STEEL
TV NARENDRAN, CEO & MD
The Tata Steel group is one of the most diversified steel producers in the world, with an annual crude steel capacity of 34 MnTPA. It comprises Asia’s first integrated steel maker, Tata Steel Limited, together with its subsidiaries, associates and joint ventures; and an employee base of 65,000+. It is one of the world’s most geographically diversified steel producers, with operations and commercial presence across the world. The group recorded a consolidated turnover of US $21.06 billion in the financial year ending March 31, 2021.
“We continue to drive value accretive growth in our chosen segments and our performance in key segments such as auto was very robust despite the sector being impacted by the semiconductor shortage.”
Tata Steel commissioned a 5 tonnes per day (TPD) carbon capture plant at its Jamshedpur Works in September 2021, making it the country’s first steel company to adopt such a carbon capture technology that extracts CO2 directly from the Blast Furnace gas and reuse the captured CO2 on site to promote the circular carbon economy.
The company reported highest ever quarterly consolidated EBITDA for 2QFY22, recording a 12% QoQ and 7.5x YoY to Rs12,548 crore.
LUPIN LIMITED
RAJENDRA CHUNODKAR, PRESIDENT – MANUFACTURING OPERATIONS
The healthcare industry has the primary responsibility of serving mankind round-the-clock with precision and ensuring better patient outcomes. In the same vein, Lupin stepped forward in the thick of the pandemic to respond quickly to the growing demand and supply for lifesaving medicines.
“COVID-19 is an unfortunate reminder of how fragile human life is, and also how essential the pharmaceutical industry is for preserving the lives of millions of people worldwide.”
“As we look back, we realize that the pandemic was as an opportunity to improve the supply chain ecosystem. In light of this, we are committed to evolving an agile supply chain that is capable of identifying and preparing for disruptive events, while saving the human life at the center of all its decisions,” said Rajendra Chunodkar, President – Manufacturing Operations, Lupin.
“We have been accelerating our pace of digital transformation and are focused on taking advantage of digital connectivity to market our products and staying connected with our customers.”
SKF INDIA
MANISH BHATNAGAR, MANAGING DIRECTOR
At SKF, the company has been fast to adapt to such a changing environment and has ensured business continuity to meet the evolving needs of the customers.
“Our topmost priorities have been to stay focused on our strategy, improve operating efficiencies and optimise costs through digitalization efforts, faster execution and most importantly, investment in our people’s capabilities to create long-term value for all our stakeholders,” said Manish Bhatnagar, Managing Director, SKF India.
“We focused on predictive cockpit (Condition monitoring) for maintenance, additive manufacturing for shop supplies, an AI-enabled Vision Inspection system, and a connected supply chain and full value chain to manage and collaborate with supply chain partners,” he said.
“We are optimistic and confident that the Indian manufacturing sector will bounce back swiftly, on the back of better resource reallocation, redefined work processes, strategic investments, and aggressive digitalization.”
Secondly, Bhatnagar said they managed to keep their operations running with the help of Robotics, limiting the machine man interventions at the times of lockdown. “Also, Remote Diagnostic features for predictive analysis and opportunities for Collaborative Robots, AGV, AMR for automated material handling systems are easing our operations in many ways. We even simplified our inventory by adopting E-Kanban & End2End Traceability systems.”
VOLVO GROUP, INDIA
KAMAL BALI, PRESIDENT & MANAGING DIRECTOR
Considering the fast changing world of business and commerce, marked by digitalisation, new business models and emerging technologies, Volvo said it had already embarked upon a journey of cultural rejuvenation, even before the pandemic started.
“This held us in good stead. The new culture is all about forming and deepening collaborations and partnerships towards a common purpose, by building a higher degree of transparency and trust, and nurturing open-communication across the company. The digital solutions have been key in enabling this transformation,” said Kamal Bali, President & Managing Director – Volvo Group, India.
“This pandemic reinforced our long standing belief of ‘people first’ as also that an organisation’s relationship with its stakeholders, together with its core values, stand tall and strong through these critical moments.”
In a way, he said the pandemic became a compelling setting to manage the situation through effective cross-functional collaboration. “We established digital routines to engage with our customers and suppliers across sales, new product launches and after-market. In fact we launched a complete range of new products across our trucks & construction equipment during this period.”
LARSEN & TOUBRO (L&T)
S N SUBRAHMANYAN, CEO & MD
India’s leading multinational conglomerate, with business interests in engineering, construction, manufacturing, technology and financial services, Larsen & Toubro (L&T) recently released its Q3 FY2021-22 results which showed stable group margin performance despite commodity headwinds in the EPC & Manufacturing businesses.
It reported a consolidated revenue growth of 11% at Rs39,563 crore, securing orders worth Rs50,359 crore during the quarter ended December 31, 2021. During the quarter, it received orders in various businesses such as Hydrocarbon Offshore, Metros, Rural Water Supply, Minerals and Metal, Public Space, Health Infrastructure and Power Transmission and Distribution. Its international orders stood at Rs20,521 crore during the quarter comprised 41% of the total order inflow, with receipt of large value international orders in Hydrocarbon Offshore.
“The energy industry is undergoing a tectonic shift with Green Hydrogen emerging as a key fuel in the future energy basket. This will be a win-win partnership given our extensive relationship across the energy industry, deep EPC experience in this sector, and successful ongoing collaborations with many MNCs and HydrogenPro’s focus to stay ahead of the curve, as far as technology leadership is concerned.”
In the backdrop of the current economic environment, the company said it continues with its planned path of winning targeted orders, focus on profitable execution of its large order book, leverage the strong growth momentum in its IT & TS portfolio and along with many other value enhancing. L&T recently entered into a MoU with HydrogenPro AS, a Norway-based electrolyser technology and manufacturing company, as part of its strategy to tap the emerging Green Hydrogen market.
“The energy industry is undergoing a tectonic shift with Green Hydrogen emerging as a key fuel in the future energy basket. This will be a win-win partnership given our extensive relationship across the energy industry, deep EPC experience in this sector, and successful ongoing collaborations with many MNCs and HydrogenPro’s focus to stay ahead of the curve, as far as technology leadership is concerned,” said SN Subrahmanyan, CEO & MD, L&T.
BOEING INDIA
SALIL GUPTE, PRESIDENT
As a leading global aerospace company, Boeing develops, manufactures and services commercial airplanes, defence products and space systems for customers in more than 150 countries. Boeing has had a presence in India for over seven decades and is deeply entrenched and invested in the country’s aerospace and defence ecosystem.
“These investments are embedded in our 275 local supplier-partners enabling local exporting over Rs7,500 crores from India each year, and in our developing aerospace talent in the country with over 3,000 employees including the research and engineering talent at the Boeing India Engineering and Technology Center (BIETC),” said Salil Gupte, President, Boeing India.
“We relied heavily on these relationships with our supplier and JV partners and government at all levels to stay resilient, finish production of goods in a safe manner.”
He said the company has managed to be nimble and resilient including during the pandemic and resulting disruptions and a prolonged remote or hybrid working situation.
“We relied heavily on these relationships with our supplier and joint venture partners and government at all levels – central, state, and local – to stay resilient, finish production of goods in a safe manner, and reopen critical operations as soon as possible,” said Gupte. Another success factor he said has been a “sharpened focus on speed and agility”.
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC INDIA
SENTHIL KUMAR V, HEAD OF INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION
Schneider Electric offers integrated energy solutions for diverse verticals. It recently launched the Green Yodha sustainability initiative that aims to build a community of conscious citizens, businesses, and institutions.
“We have always believed that innovative thinking backed by technology tremendously helps in building a future-ready business. Thus, even though there were challenges [due to the pandemic], we were better able to manage them, not only for us but for our customers, by adopting technology,” said Senthil Kumar V, Head of Industrial Automation, Schneider Electric India.
“The digital landscape is advancing at an extraordinary pace and companies should prepare themselves for a digital overhaul.”
He said that the recent challenges have emphasized the importance of building connected and open systems that foster industry-wide collaboration. “We believe working in silos is no longer an option. Universal automation would play a major role in building interoperable, portable, and vendor-agnostic platforms for ushering in a new era of a-la-carte automation.
Therefore, Kumar said the need of the hour is to embrace universal automation, where each entity within a supply chain is integrated through an open, collaborative and data-driven software system.
KINETIC ENGINEERING LIMITED (KEL)
AJINKYA FIRODIA , MD
The biggest lesson Ajinkya Firodia, MD of Kinetic Engineering Ltd said he learned from the high business volatility due to the pandemic is not to take anything for granted.
“Unprecedented in history, we saw disruptions and major changes in customer mind-sets; so you can’t take that for granted. Unfortunately, we lost a few of our managers and we changed our workforce overnight due to the disruption caused by the pandemic. So, as a leader, now I am trained to look at all assumptions from all angles – and prepare for any and all eventualities,” he said.
“Unprecedented in history, we saw disruptions and major changes in customer mind-sets; so you can’t take that for granted.”
As the migrant workers went back and didn’t return for a long time, the company saw many temporary workmen keep churning. “So we had to devise a multi-training platform to quickly imbibe skills in untrained force so that they could rise to the occasion,” said Firodia.
Also, the auto segment swiftly and dynamically changed preference towards electric.
MAHLE INDIA
MILIND GODBOLE, PRESIDENT
The disruptions caused by the pandemic have certainly challenged people interaction and supply chains. From MAHLE’s standpoint, the company’s President Milind Godbole said one of their topmost priorities is stepping up digitalisation. “This will enhance the ease of agile data driven decision making and a flexible work location environment. The other priority is to take our strong supplier network to the next level.”
He said their focus in these areas will enable fast and right risk management through internal systems to tackle any difficult situation with alternatives, “so we can serve our customers with minimum disruption impacts”.
“A clear strategy with frequent refresh based on customer behaviour and environmental factors is very important.”
As COVID 19 is impacting availability of adequate skilled manpower, Godbole said they are focused on job-rotation and creation of multitasking capabilities to sustain and enhance productivity. “We are also ramping up our global engineering support and shared service capabilities in India which ultimately enhances our functional capabilities locally,” he said, adding that they are also making eLearning tools freely available to employees for them to enhance or add new skills.
TVS MOTOR COMPANY
R ANANDAKRISHNAN, PRESIDENT – HUMAN RESOURCES AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Over the last two years, TVS Motor said it has constantly promoted a culture of agility and innovation to help employees navigate the challenges brought forth by the pandemic. “The company prioritised employees’ safety and overall well-being while ensuring business continuity through a slew of accelerated measures on training, PPE adherence and digitalization,” said R AnandaKrishnan, President – Human Resources and Information Technology, TVS Motor Company.
“Sustainability is the new business reality. Organisations should consciously embrace sustainable business practices, which will help create a resilient and agile future.”
While living with a pandemic continues to cause disruption, he said a business that demonstrates commitment towards the needs of its people will earn their trust and loyalty. “Our key focus has been to achieve transparency in communication by investing in a robust internal communication plan based on the pillars of ‘Information’, ‘Engagement’ & ‘Motivation’.”
AnandaKrishnan said technology has percolated to employee engagement initiatives and has been key to forging belongingness and unity among team members. “At TVS Motor Company, our digital infrastructure helped us establish the right hybrid operating model, leading to significant productivity gains.”
VOLKSWAGEN PASSENGER CARS INDIA
A COMPANY SPOKESPERSON
At the onset of the pandemic, the first and the most important step Volkswagen India adopted was the launch of its #VWellnessIndia Program. “This program was based on a holistic platform covering three important pillars of VW namely employees, dealer partners and customers,” said a company spokesperson.
Additionally, it introduced the Sarvottam 2.0 program which encompasses over 30+ solutions which focuses on Digi-Tech enablement, Process efficiency & People Management. “The core focus is to be “accessible” across the entire customer journey.
“With resumption of normalcy and recovery in the industry, our business has been growing positively and we are committed towards offering the best to our customers.”
The solutions are Test Drive Scheduler, Car Availability Tools, Booking of sales & service appointments, 360 visualiser, Online AV chat, Car Price Configurator and a lot more,” said the spokesperson.
Volkswagen India recently launched new Tiguanat, which is locally assembled at the Aurangabad facility. The company said one of the biggest lessons that they learnt from the disruptions caused was “continuity”. “For the first time, over 80% of the employed population had the intent and were actively working from home to support their stakeholders. Digital tools and mediums were made accessible in short period for employees to work effectively.”
THYSSENKRUPP INDIA
RAGHUNATH K, COUNTRY REPRESENTATIVE
With a sale of about Rs3473 crore, India is the third largest market for thyssenkrupp in Asia-Pacific. As a global group of companies, thyssenkrupp has nine operating units in India, with over 4285 employees.
While COVID-19 has produced economic upheaval, Raghunath K, Country Representative for thyssenkrupp India, said the manufacturing sector has seen a remarkable recovery in India. “Despite considerable labour and supply chain issues, the sector is steadily regaining its lost ground.”
“More companies are making headway and seeing returns from plant operations that are more connected, dependable, efficient, and predictive.”
He said a large section of the country has been inoculated, which has also resulted in the return of consumer confidence. “The recovery in manufacturing PMI in 2021 is a silver lining for the economy. The improved pace of new orders has resulted in gains for all major subsectors. This growth will continue in 2022 because production and capacity utilisation have surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the middle of 2021,” said Raghunath.
ROSS PROCESS EQUIPMENT PVT LTD
JOSEPH MARTORANA, CHAIRMAN
Ross is one of the leading players in mixing and blending technology with a legacy of more than 175 years. It manufactures industrial mixing, blending, drying and dispersion equipment. The company is privately owned by the Ross family and presently operates through five plants in the USA, a dedicated R&D center, two plants in China and one in India. Its India arm Ross Process Equipment India Pvt. Ltd has a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility near Chakan in Pune.
“Communication is king and we also saw how unity within our employees and customers have built resiliency within our company business model.”
Joseph Martorana, who is the Chairman of Ross Process Equipment Pvt Ltd and Executive Vice President of Charles Ross & Son Company, NY, USA, heads the entire Ross worldwide, looking after all the plants and businesses.
One of the most important lessons that he said he has learned during the pandemic is “how important it is to keep your workforce informed”. “We continually sent COVID updates explaining and reminding employees of the company protocols such as social distancing, mask wearing and workplace cleanliness.”