Previous Occupation: Working with MLD Group ( Family Business )
Sector: Tea , Polymers ( Manufacturing ), Power, Warehousing
Work Experience : Involved in the family's business since 1996.

Tell me a little bit about your family business.

We are a Kolkata based group, fourth generation now, my great grandfather moved to Kolkata in the early nineteen hundreds. We are essentially tea planters with plantations in Assam & Doaars (West Bengal). We are also into packaging - jute and plastic. I started looking after the plastic woven sacks division during my engineering days in Chennai. Our jute business is based out of Kolkata whereas the plastic division is in South India.

Can you please share with us some insights about working in a family business?

Well, a couple of things. My elder brother also has a MBA qualification. He did his Master’s from Babson College in Boston, and I was here at the ISB. I was fortunate to also be a part of the Kellogg Exchange Programme. There I took a course on family businesses with Professor John Ward. This course in particular opened up many new venues of running a family owned business.

Amongst various ideas I picked up was the one of a family constitution and how you can actively prevent any kind of differences in your business rising out of sibling differences. My brother & I have addressed this head on. For instance, instead of dividing our roles businesswise, we created verticals. If one sibling looks after the tea business as in our case, and one looks after the plastic division, there is always going to be a conflict of interest,capital allocation, time allocation, asset allocation etc. So we decided that one person should look after finance across businesses, one should handle marketing & operations etc. By doing that, the interests of every individual and all the three members in the family ( My dad, brother and I ) are equally tied in to all the businesses.

You came to the ISB after six years of working in the same family business. And then in the year 2003 you went back again. Can you tell me the main benchmark that you have seen post ISB in your business?

The biggest difference is the simple hunger for size. We used to be happy manufacturing 7 lac kgs of tea. Bringing it to 80 lac kgs in 7 years and similar growth in packaging, from 150MT per month to 1000 MT per month would easily be the best yardstick to measure progress. We also diversified into new technology businesses like Wind Power. Me experience at ISB and then at Kellogg, took away an excuse which I always used to give myself that I was not ‘equipped’. Now, I really have no more excuses to offer to myself because I know that the kind of education I have received is amongst the best in the World. So if I don’t achieve anything in life going forward it is going to be because of my own limitations and not because of my skill set or technical knowledge.

Another big shift was in the way we handled our human resources. A traditional Indian family business, especially the Marwari business community to which I belong functions on a ‘Babu’ culture, where the boss is always right. Now, we are very particular that the senior management has to be smarter than we are in that particular domain. He must know more than we do. I think this learning came primarily out of my interaction at the ISB. The kind of diversity the school had, convinced me that I would simply never know everything about running a business alone. At best, I could know how to manage people who would do this for my business.

On a lighter vein, can you share with us your favourite experience at the ISB?

My wife, Punita, stayed with me on campus. Almost every night I used to wake her post midnight to make something for me to eat and then we would go for a walk around SV III. I think, this was the only time, that the school’s workload permitted students to spend with their spouses.

So you were here as a student and as a married man. They used to call you Papa Bear for that. How did you manage your married student life out here for one year?

The entire credit for that has to go to Punita. The kind of schedule that the school puts on you, the pressures of delivery, projects, assignments, case studies, group discussions, whatever you may call it, you tend to forget that you are married. You tend to forget that you really have to go back home. The spouses, they are the ones who take the brunt of everything and it is to their credit that a married student survives on campus.

What do you think is the alumni’s role in building the school?

Whenever I meet somebody from the ISB, I keep telling them that I will know that I am a successful businessman the day I can recruit students from the ISB to join my organisation.

On a serious note, I think I am pretty well connected to the school. I am actively involved in the admission interviews, information sessions etc. As president of the Kolkata chapter of the alum association, I help spread the word.

The role of the alumni in building the school cannot be understated. Simply put, the school and the alumni can only co-exist. There is no other way. They have to grow together in everything they do.

Any advice for the ISB students?

Build on your social and networking skills because grades don’t matter after the first job. Grow your social network ! Grades are important but in that process if you don’t network and you don’t end up having the ‘speed dial’ list of people whom you can call up for help or advice, you are missing out on half the fun and opportunity.

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