From ?12 to ?12,000 crore. A business built differently

Savji Dholakia Hare Krishna Exports

These names might not ring a bell. Simply because neither the businessman nor his business believes in aggressive marketing or advertising campaigns. Gujarat-based Savji Bhai believes in are his people, their families including “in laws”. And of course, no fear of failure.

Few years back though, he was in the news for gifting hundreds of cars and houses to his employees and receiving a Padmashree Award. This in a way, made me curious to know more about this lesser known personality and get some idea of how the man thinks and approaches life in general. He was giving a talk at Venture Catalysts++ | India's 1st Multi-Stage VC and was probably a good time to hear him despite being a Saturday evening.

Born in a poor family and he left home at a fairly young age with only ?12 in his pocket.

Today he stands atop a ?15,000 crore business that he has built on very basic 3 philosophies.

?PEOPLE

His people and employees seem clearly priority no1 for him. There are no two ways about it. For him, revenues and profits were and will always be a by-product of keeping his people and their families happy. Think of it, if you organise and sponsor pilgrimages for parents and in-laws of your employees, its very hard for them to churn away to competing firms. He over-indexes on making his employees leaders and ensures that they are emotionally invested and work as intrapreneurs and not just for the monthly credit in their bank account.

Its not the economic benefits that keep the pack together all the time, the emotional and mental well being is equally crucial in building long term leaders in companies.

NEVER FEAR FAILURE

An interesting story he shared was of sending his son – Dravya, to Hyderabad without providing him any of the basic survival tools. If you think of it, its a fairly daunting task to leave your privileges behind and to go to a new city with language barriers, no money, no roof and most importantly no mobile phone and referencing. Dravya applied at 30 places and finally managed to get a job at a bakery that also doubled up as his home at night. ?

That real on-the-road life helped his son understand the finer nuances of business a hard reality of the real world.

My takeaway was that repeated failing makes the potential to probably make one an expert and is a major component in achieving success – but FAIL small and fail again and again. In a way, this will intuitively help you build a long term defensible business with the only variance being the size of eventual outcome you create for yourself and your stakeholders.

?GIVING BACK TO COMMUNITY

One of the other instances that he spoke about was his interaction and respect for our Narendra Modi who committed 15 minutes of his time to visit the company’s factory opening. It so happened that the interaction lasted for around 30-35 minutes and in return for the extra time, he wanted to find a way to make this up to the PM. Neah, he didn’t donate money to the party fund or no favors exchanged. He built more than 50 dams for the betterment of people.

Given his affinity towards his employees, I asked him how he would probably go about motivating folks who are 24-30 years old from a Tier ! city without having the luxury of having too much capital to address their ambitious and evolving needs. But I will keep his answer to me private for now ??

He's an astute businessman and has proved his mettle but he's a far greater philanthropist. Over the years, he has built 111 lakes and over 50 dams in Gujarat and his contributions have been recognised by the government as well that awarded him with the prestigious Padma Shri award.

#creatingvalue #largebusiness #philanthropymatters #givingbacktothecommunity #diamondindustry #happyemployees #employeesfirst #peoplefirst #peopleandculture #workculturematters #padmashri #buildingvaluenotvaluation #exportbusiness #indianbusinesses Alteria Capital Anuj Golecha Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma