VED Council recently organised a session ‘The Reliance Success - Untold Stories’ at Chitanvis Center. Vinayak Marathe, former Senior Vice President, Reliance Industries and Vishal Agrawal, Director, R C Plasto Pipes & Tanks Pvt Ltd were the speaker. Vinayak Marathe shared some interesting stories about Reliance and its founder Dhirubhai Ambani. He pointed out that Reliance as a corporate is what it is only because of highly motivated individuals who drive its growth. Their motivation is largely due to the owner’s trust, confidence, affection and a free hand given to them to take decisions. This, for example, was seen in the erecting of Patalganga Project which was commissioned 18 months ahead of the schedule. At that time, Dhirubhai would not be willing to take a no and in that process acquired heavy erection machinery, started number of fabrication units, invested in ITI to train youth from Gujarat and so on. This investment was a fraction of the savings in interest due to completion of project ahead of schedule.

 

Dhirubhai’s risk taking ability was unmatched and so was his vision. He was always ahead of his competitors and executed his bold and grand ideas with precision and speed. Vishal Agrawal spoke of the importance of branding in growth of an enterprise and believes that advertising is a paid medium and hence should be designed in a way that the revenue generated from such spending is at least 3 to 4 times the normal revenue. He said that he learnt his branding lessons as a young kid when he insisted on naming the Sadar Ganesh mandal as Vaibhav (his brother) Ganesh Mandal. He also shared that it is very important to keep the eyes and ears to the feedback from the market. Vishal, while speaking about Plasto’s journey, highlighted the importance of keeping customers needs in mind even if it increases the production cost and also stressed on the importance of focusing on volumes. At the outset, Rajiv Sen, VED Member, welcomed the guests. He also conducted the proceedings of the session. Varun Vijaywargi, Secretary, VED Council, proposed the formal vote of thanks.