At the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Hindustan Chamber of Commerce, Chairman Emeritus of The Sanmar Group K S Narayanan was honoured with the ‘Champion of Humanity Award 2006’. The other recipient of the award was NarayananDr S S Badrinath, President and Chairman of the Medical Research Foundation. Speaking on the occasion, Madras High Court Chief Justice A P Shah, the chief guest, referred to K S Narayanan and Dr S S Badrinath as the ‘two sons of
Tamil Nadu’.
Vijay Sankar, Deputy Chairman, The Sanmar Group, delivered the acceptance note address on behalf of his grandfather Narayanan.
G Subramanian, President, Hindustan Chamber of Commerce (HCC), Justice A P Shah, Chief Justice of Madras High Court,M Balaji, Chairman, Diamond Jubilee Celebrations Committee of HCC, K S Narayanan, Chairman Emeritus, The Sanmar Group,Ashok R Thakkar, Immediate Past President of HCC, at the diamond jubilee celebrations of HCC. “If I may offer some advice, while the immediate success of any business depends on the business model, the environment, and the efficiency of management, over the long term, it is my sincere belief gained from over six decades of corporate management experience, that ethics and transparency are the two values that should not be sacrificed under any circumstances. High standards on these two heads have enormous spin-off benefits for business, both direct and indirect. Apart from the grace of providence, I believe it is these values that have made me whatever I am today.”
– K S Narayanan.
He is Chairman-Emeritus of The Sanmar Group. When he flashes a bright smile that lights up his eyes with a naughty twinkle, time rewinds and a youthful freshness takes over. If providence has gone overboard in its benevolence to someone, he really must be special. The world may see him as a doyen of the business fraternity, but he is the ‘Grand old man’ of The Sanmar Group, ‘the chosen one’ to be touched by angels, yet unassuming about the fact that he has touched so many lives. The Champion of Humanity Award is due recognition to his humanitarian acts and to many of us who are part of The Sanmar Group, this is a moment of pride.
S B Prabhakar Rao,
Executive Director - Corporate Affairs
engages K S Narayanan in conversation.
SBP: Receiving awards is a ‘practised habit’ as far as you are concerned. At this juncture, what do you feel about this particular recognition?
KSN: I am very happy and honoured. For youngsters may be such recognition could be an incentive. As for me...
SBP: I know you have been avoiding several such recognitions in the past. KSN: I shy away from this kind of publicity. SBP: People want role models.
KSN: I am doubly honoured. But I don’t like the publicity. If somebody feels I’ve done something great, so be it.
SBP: You have been managing business growth on one side and you have continued with philanthropic activities as well. How did you start out?
KSN: There has been no plan or sudden clarion call. When people come and ask you for help, you just feel like helping as much as you can. It was sometime in the 60s…
SBP: Much earlier than that you developed the schools and polytechnic…
KSN: You see, we had a colony for factory employees at Sankarnagar and it was very diffi cult for children to go to a school that was fi ve or six miles away. So we developed the Sankarnagar school. This was in the 50s. Later in the 70s there came a situation when the Sankara schools in Chennai (independent from the Sankarnagar school) were on the verge of closing down. I revived these schools and ever since there has been no looking back.
SBP: You created the infrastructure for technical education and provided the best facilities even in the 50s when it was created.
KSN: Developing polytechnics was a good scheme to train youngsters and make them employable, be useful to the community and to industry.
SBP: The fact remains that it was part ofthe philanthropic activities you initiated, especially at a time when education was not commercialised.
KSN: You can put it that way…(laughs). In those days there were very few such institutions. Today there are plenty. The cost of education has also gone up. If you have to get good teachers you have to
pay. This ensures quality in education.
SBP: Awards, citations and recognition – you have taken all of it in your stride. However, marketing pundits would say that both from the individual stand point and from the business perspective, it has helped build the brand equity of the group (directly and indirectly). In your heyday you wouldn’t have heard of ‘brand equity building’. You have laid a foundation for Sanmar by practising ethics and transparency, which are our premium brand values today.
KSN: Those days we were involved in operational activities. There were so many bottlenecks. We never thought of brand equity. It was wartime when I started. Getting machinery, keeping the production going and such were major issues. Sales were never a problem, we sold everything we made. It was not competition but infrastructure that was a problem. Publicity and branding are current imperatives. Earlier it was sheer innovation to address business needs.
SBP: Ethics and transparency – What were the implications then and what are they now?
KSN: In the 50s when you did what is right, what is ethical, people supported you. Whenever issues were raised, I could simply talk it out and settle things across the table, with the bureaucrats. Nowadays, you have to ‘do right’ and it should also appeal to others. It was so simple those days; today things are a lot more complicated.
SBP: In every business you were in, I’ve known you to drive quality and excellence and adhere to ethical practices. How did you face the challenge from competition and adhere to ethical practices at the same time?
KSN: In the 1940s, whether it was rubber business or the carbide business, the competitors tried their
best to deter me and have my licence revoked. When questions were raised, I invited the authorities to the factory to inspect our indigenous and innovative procedures. Everything was open and there was nothing to hide. When you are right and you can prove it so, detractors are convinced and become your allies.
SBP: Today corporate social responsibility is a buzzword that every corporate promotes and publicises. What was in your mind when you drove this at that time, consistently practising it, especially with no direct pressure in terms of statutory requirements at that time?
KSN: When you earn something you must give something, put something back into society. I felt that I had to do something to make people’s lives better. I may have facilitated many initiatives but still credit should be given to the hard work that went into the implementation of these initiatives.
SBP: Your humanitarian activities come out of empathy; you understand feelings and you help.
KSN: Until you asked me, I never gave these things a thought. When there is a good cause you just help.
SBP: Were you challenged more, as a businessman in those days than the current generation of businessmen?
KSN: Those days restrictions and controls were many. We couldn’t do all that we wanted to. There was a time when I invited trouble by offering timely and emergency help.
Once a fishing trawler from Ceylon strayed into Vizag and was picked up by our men. I got into trouble because I fed and clothed them and funded their return trip to their country!
SBP: Those days we needed clearance to spend on anything, even charity!
KSN: Today, things are different. Youngsters these days push ahead. They’ve got the momentum. I think they should go for it. Finances are free fl owing, and there is so much going well for them.
SBP: In over eight decades, you have been very adventurous - whether it was the ink, carbide, rubber or cement business…
KSN: Adventure was forced on me…
SBP: Remember that time when the plane landed and the tyres had burst?
KSN: Yes. It would take several months to replace tyres, in India. When a tyre on a military plane burst beyond repair, leaving it stranded at the Coimbatore airstrip, I was asked if I could help. They obviously needed the tyre in a great hurry, and I didn’t have much time to think about my options.
I asked them to bring the old tyre to the factory for a model. Since I didn’t have the technology to make a hollow pressurized tyre, I simply made a solid rubber one that at any rate carried the plane safely to a place where a more suitable tyre could be found.
SBP: Don’t tell me this was by God’s grace and not indigenous innovation!
KSN: Everything is by God’s grace. How can I take credit for that which turns out well?
SBP: Can you call to mind the most satisfying moment in terms of accomplishment, a dream coming true?
KSN: The position I am in today is itself a dream. I never dreamed so big. My boys have taken over the reins and built this group, which is way beyond my expectations. I’m an ordinary man who takes each day as it comes. It’s just that everything has turned out well for me.
SBP: You always say failures are stepping- stones to success and you have had quite a bout of failures that you overcame.
KSN: It is all providence. One thing led to another. For example, we hoped the carbide from our plant, would be the feedstock for PVC and so on. But ultimately it was industrial alcohol.
SBP: The seedling has become a banyan tree.
KSN: Industry was good and our planning was good. Of course, we had our setbacks due to devaluation of the rupee and the resultant fi nancial crunches. But we did our best and the results followed.
" I am one of the instruments in the hands of God to promote industry and contribute to the benefi t of society. "
Group Corporate Board Members visit the Marine Terminal Facility
Left to right: P N Kapadia, Adit Jain, Mukul Dixit, S Venkatesan, N Sankar, V Narayanan, M N Radhakrishnan, Anoop Mathur & V Ramesh.
Anoop Mathur plants a sapling at Karaikal.
The Lt. Governor of Puducherry Mukut Mithi at the Facility
The Lt. Governor of Puducherry Mukut Mithi, visited our Marine Terminal Facility site on 24 September 2006.He was accompanied by B V Selvaraj, IAS (Secretary for Education & Tsunami Rehabilitation), Kumaraswamy,
IAS (Sec.to LG & Tourism), Sudhirkumar, IAS (Collector of KKL), other local heads of Departments, and VMC Sivakumar, MLA. S Venkatesan, General Manager - Operations, Chemplast Sanmar Limited, is seen taking the visitors around the facility.
K.Chakravarthy President - Control Valves Division, Fisher Sanmar Limited. Chakravarthy has donned many hats during his long stint at Thermax- from process heat division to boiler division, from a corporate role to an operation alone, from
southern zone to S.E. Asian and Middle East markets, he has lead from both sides of the manufacturing fence. What would he like to do differently? “I would like to work on the behavioural attributes of the people to channelise them towards the customer; the customer not being an order acceptance number but an entity with a human face. On the JV front, I would focus on understanding JV partners’ requirements and plan capacity and capabilities to meet the same.
M S Srinivasan Executive Director-Projects, Chemplast Sanmar Limited Srinivasan comes with a unique blend of engineering, operations, marketing, project implementation and IT skills. Hindustan Lever, EID Parry,Atul Ltd and Polaris are the
organisations he has worked for. He is a Chemical Engineer from IIT with a Global Management Program from University of Michigan. He has managed various product divisions like bulk chemicals and intermediates, glycerin, nickel catalyst, phosphates, perfumery chemicals and fertiliser plants.
Vijay Phatarphekar Executive Director- Marketing, Sanmar Engineering Corporation Limited Vijay started his career at Ingersol Rand getting a bottom up view of sales in the gas compressors group and migrated to the role of business head getting a
top down view of operations in the air compressor group. At RPG, he experienced the full gamut of the financial aspects of the business. As COO of WGSRL (Wellspun Gujarat) he set up the complete ERW pipes business.
The common thread in all the products he has handled is the wide exposure to the petrochemicals sector. “Considering the varied range and synergy between our products, I would like a new approach that is vertical-based instead of being product-based. My challenge lies in bringing about a congruence between business and functions and this will require a fair deal of maturity and sensitivity.”
Mukul DixitExecutive Director-Operations, Chemplast Sanmar Limited. Mukul Dixit specialises in the chemical industry vertical with expertise ranging from operations management in fluorochemicals, speciality & fine
chemicals and fertilizers, to project management in petroleum refineries and petrochemical plants.“Alongside my leadership roles in my earlier assignments, I emerged as a catalyst for change, having the advantage of being in the ‘cross-over’ age bracket, intermingling with the traditions of the organizations and the emerging business environment. I hope to use this strength, here at Chemplast and lead the operations with a strong feel of the pulse of the people.”
K R Murali Executive Director - Operations, Sanmar Engineering Corporation Limited Murali’s experience spans the areas of product planning and development, commercials, running manufacturing plants and IETS (EOU) businesses in
engineering services. He has over two decades in the automobile and automotive components sector (Maruti Udyog & Tata Johnson Automotive Controls).“In both my previous assignments, I was among the first entrants in the company.
The critical success factors were to put together a team and move up together. Sanmar is an established organisation where the roads have been already laid over several decades. There is a justifiable sense of pride and achievement among the employees across the organisation. The challenge, however, is to move from a good Indian organisation to a “Best in Class” global organisation in all aspects of the business.
I would like to bring synergy of individual and organisational capabilities towards this objective. Going by the warmth and open mind of the people here, I’m very confident that we will be successful.”
Regie PaulExecutiv Director,Sanmar Foundries Limited Registarted Regie his career with TELCO and has worked with organisations like Indian Aluminium and Mittal Steel in Kazakhsthan and Romania. At Romania he was CEO of Mittal
Steel’s three acquired units - welded pipes, seamless pipes and a mini steel mill. “ I have to be a change agent to enhance every individual’s contribution and develop a consciousness of his real contribution into the development of the business at every stage of his involvement instead of fully riding on the market dynamics.” As Executive Director at Sanmar Foundries Ltd., he would like to bring about an involvement of all, from the shop floor upwards and work collectively towards improving the customer index.