You can't go and tell people I'm not sure. You've got to make a decision and then believe your gut instinct and move on with it. The reason you are here is you add value. The day you stop adding value, you're history. I would rather have 10 ordinary people than have one superstar. Business is not about one person; it's about creating a team that is lasting and can deliver in the long term. The minute the superstar is gone, it could fall apart. The day you arrive, you're history because it's a treadmill; you've got to keep going. Every day when I get up and go to work, it's like today you've got to add something to the business. Walk into a restaurant, sit down and ask for a Coke, and the person says there's no Coke, there's Pepsi. So it is availability that makes all the difference.
Sil, good morning and welcome to Kumbha. My pleasure to be here. It's an absolute honor and delight to have you in season 3, known in the circles as the FMCG surgeon in India. A three-decade-long career in FMCG, and every boardroom Sunil has largely walked into, we're told the stock price doubles. So I hope to get a lot of that journey captured today in Kumbha in three parts: one, revelation about you the leader, inner circle who and what made you, and your take and appreciation on leadership and the market. We'll go back to your college days, the engineering boy who then went on to study at IIM Calcutta. What was that moment like when you decided that the technical line is not for you?
It's not that I decided the technical line was not for me. Right out of college, engineering was the thing. I joined Siemens medical electronics, and it was primarily service and a little bit of sales. But as I did my day job, over a period of time I figured that all this is fine, but if you really want to run a business, then only engineering is not good enough. You need to understand the P&L, supply chain, all that stuff. That's when I realized I need to take a step back and go back to school, learn the basics of business, and that's how I ended up doing an MBA. I still love engineering. Like my wife says, if I'm at home, my favorite thing is tinkering around something. I still remember when I went back to my grandma's place, she would have a list of things saying this doesn't work, this doesn't work. Yes, so I still love engineering. It's just that you realized when you need to do business, you need to be knowing much more.
Yes. So I still love engineering. It's just that you realized when you need to do business, you need to be knowing much more.
Okay. And then you got into I think post campus, HLL was your training ground. How is that factory like, you know, producing some of the best FMCG talent till today in the country? Walk us through that first week and in that three-year span, what did you learn in the HLL scheme of things?
So the big thing in HLL was not the first week. The first week was a very comfortable week. We joined at Golita, which is now of course they've sold it. All the senior leaders would come down to tell you about different parts of the HLL businesses. That was a big thing: these guys are spending time with management trainees on day one explaining the business. That was one big takeaway: senior leadership needs to get involved if you want to build a real strong pipeline. The basic thing is first get the basics right. So you've started at ground level in sales. I've actually sat on an auto cutting bills in Kanpur in the heat of summer, outlet to outlet. At the end of the day, some accounting would have gone wrong and I had to put money from my pocket because the numbers didn't add up. Or the ITC stint where you went and stayed in a village for four weeks, no electricity, no water, no toilets, no bathrooms. For someone who had never been north of Nagpur, going to rural India, figuring out what life was, learning about actual rural India. I think that connects you to the Indian consumer much more. The entire management training program where you do stints in marketing, sales, finance, operations, everything gives you a good overview of the business, which then sets you up for success in the future. The foundations are the most important thing there.
Do you think today the workforce that comes in from campus, this millennial Gen Z, quite I don't know what alphabet we are on, how do you make them appreciate that this grounding is really important from sales and then the transition to marketing?
Yeah, so today's generation is a bit impatient, wants to get on and rise up the career ladder faster. So that's a challenge. But the management training program that we've structured in Tata Consumer, for example, very clearly you start in sales. If you're a sales and marketing trainee, you start in sales. You will do two years. We do have attrition because of that, because a lot of them go through the training program and then leave, but I would live with that attrition because the net result of what you get is far, far better. So instead of the four years that Unilever those days used to have the sales stint, we've crunched it to two, but that two years is critical. Because if you don't understand actually what happens at the moment of truth when a consumer is picking up your product, the execution, sales distribution, then later on in life when you're making big decisions, you're second-guessing how it will actually work. You don't have the ground reality.
Correct, correct.
So what are three things that you want them to pick up when they enter that program? What are three things that you feel after that two-year stint, all my management trainees before they come into leadership roles, they must pick up?
One is obviously the pulse of the market. Second is the consumer connect. And the third is that there is a middleman called the retailer who is sitting between you and the consumer. So unless you know how to deal with that, you're history.
Okay.
And then at 31, I think three, four-year stint at HUL?
Three and a half. And then you went into at Coke, into what you call the biggest lesson you learned running a business at that age which stayed with you. An entire bottling plant given to you, production, HR, sales, everything. Did you ever have moments of doubt whether you were ready for that role?
Yes and no. I mean, fleetingly you would think, am I making the right decision? And they always say you're always lonely at the top. So bottling plant, you're the head. You can't go and tell people that I'm not sure. This was in Surat. You can't go and tell people I'm not sure. You've got to make a decision and then believe your gut instinct and move on with it. So at times, yes, am I taking the right decision? But here's the thing: I have this philosophy that doing something is better than doing nothing. So you just got to move on. Did have those doubts, but after some time you start rolling and all the doubts disappear.
But you never had a stint in India with Pepsi, was it?
No. So it was Ahmedabad, Surat, and then my last thing was Mumbai, running what is now I think the Bhiwandi factory. It was the Gold Spot factory then. Coke had just taken over all the bottlers including the Parle plant in Mumbai, and I moved here to run the Mumbai business. Then for whatever reason, I decided to move on and I get this call from Pepsi. My first instinctive reaction was no, I can't be working for Pepsi. You can't have worked for Coke and then work against those guys. But it was Pepsi Hong Kong calling up for Vietnam. So I went up and first looked up on the map as to where is Vietnam. One thing led to another, landed up in Hanoi. Actually landed up for an interview in Hong Kong, they said cancel your return ticket, go to Ho Chi Minh City, meet the team. Ho Chi Minh City the guys said okay fine, but go to Hanoi and have a look at the place, don't come back and say you made a mistake.
I keep saying it, you've said it was one of your best postings, right?
It was. So the equation was 8% distribution, 5% share, 20 people, and half a million dollars of bad debt. That was the equation. But my calculation was it can't go worse than worse. So that's how I landed up in Vietnam.
And I think your boss told you in the first week, if you don't add value day in and day out, there's no need for an expat.
Correct. So this is Wun War Vun Bhun said very clearly: Sunil, the only reason you are here is you add value. The day you stop adding value, you're history. Because expats normally, those days expats were much more common, and when you landed up, people expected you to be superman. If you're not superman, then the local team will never respect you, so why are you here? So yeah, every day and that continues till now. Every day when I get up and go to work, it's like today you've got to add something to the business.
That Vietnam stint, tell me, did it teach you something about yourself that you feel you couldn't have learned had you stayed in India?
Yeah, I think for me the big learning was when I went for the interview in Vietnam. From Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City and met Wun. When I landed up in his office, I said the person, and this was the year 2000, Vietnam had just come out of the embargo. It is not the Vietnam that people see today. They were quite constrained in their development till that point. There were no foreigners or expats big time. My question to him was: listen, when I landed at the airport, this guy was standing with a sign, I understand, but after that I couldn't make any conversation because I couldn't read any street signs, it's all written in Vietnamese, Roman language but couldn't make out anything. I still remember I was asked for lunch, what sort of cuisine, so I said I eat anything, so he said Chinese is okay. I said yes okay, till I landed up, oh this Chinese is not the Chinese that I thought it was. I said so how do you survive in this place? And Wun's answer was: you know Sunil, I'm a Punjabi, and my last posting was Chennai. They eat rice there, not rotis, they wear lungis, not kurta pajamas. I couldn't read the sign boards, I couldn't converse in Tamil. So what's different? I think that was my big aha moment: the big thing in India is because of the diversity, you adapt very quickly, whether it's the south, north, etc. So adaptability to the local culture was the big aha moment. My biggest learning in Vietnam was: when you operate in India, it might be different languages, geographies, but broadly Indians are Indians. Whereas when you land up in a foreign country, you're not only dealing with business variables, you're dealing with cultural variables. So you begin to multitask on a different level as an expat. I think that was my big takeout.
Yeah. So you know, bit of a sidebar there: when communication culture is a kind of inhibitor barrier, how do you build trust as a leader with teams? What's important for leaders to keep in mind in this type of environment in terms of building trust with people?
I think fundamentally, you've got to be competent. Because if you don't have competency, no matter which culture, people will not respect you. That's number one. Second, you've got to respect people. You got to understand their culture. You got to understand that you're a foreigner who will come to adapt, not that the rest of the team adapts to you. And then I keep using this dialogue: you've got to find a few good men and point their noses in the right direction, because you will have competent people in any culture. It's all about setting a vision, setting a plan, and then getting it rolling, respecting the team and taking them along.
So then was the next stint I think after Vietnam was Philippines, right? Which you said a bottler that literally flirted with bankruptcy. You had to grow the business. You barely didn't have enough money. How do you as a leader in this scenario innovate and build confidence in a team when resources are so scarce?
