BLURRED VISION: GRATITUDE: Letters from a Grandfather to his Future Generations. Chapter 27

BOTH FOR TEXT N PIX.

Chapter 27

Dear Family n Friends:

I am sitting down to write this while history is being made:
People's President APJ Kalam passed away.

Sad happenings in our parent district of Gurdaspur.

Today was the birth anniversary of the late JRD Tata. He had passed away in the year 1993, the self same year of bomb attacks in Mumbai. Just as well that, today, the Supreme Court has not stayed the hanging of the perpetrator.

Uncle of our Bhabi, Sweety, has passed away in Burhanpur.

Pray to God to grant peace to the souls of the departed.
Also pray to God to spare the Nation more agony at the hands of Terrorists.

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Let us get back to the Eureka Forbes Story.

In 1987 Akhil Marfatia, President of EFL, introduced his former colleague from J&J, Suresh Goklaney to be hired as his deputy. Suresh was a personable young man and came thru as an upright Manager. We had no hesitation in supporting his recruitment as VP Sales n Marketing. More of this later in this chapter.

In the post Khandwala era, the educational conferences had given way to Group Conferences, hosted by different companies, by turn. At these Conferences, heads of various Group Companies or heads of Major Divisions made presentations on the state of their business and strategies. These were interesting venues for senior Managers of different companies to interact with each other and to get the larger picture of the Group’s businesses.

By virtue of my long standing in the Human Resource n Industrial Relations field in Bombay. I was elected Chairman of the Human Resource Committee of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce n Industry. This was a gathering of HR/IR practitioners of the Member companies. Some of them were IR luminaries in their own right. This continued right thru my early years in GNP. However with my ultimate elevation as Managing Director of GNP, I was nominated member of the General Committee of BCCI and relinquished my role in the HR Sub Committee. Somewhere along the way, I had also relinquished my association with the Indo Swedish Business Sub Committee.

As years went by the company was out of its difficult days and was on a steady growth trend. I sensed that, and there was no need of some one like me to do hand holding.

I was, therefore, in a receptive frame of mind when the proposal for my joining the Board of Goodlass Nerolac Paints resurfaced in 1988.

At this juncture, I might as well wrap up the Forbes story before I pick up the threads of my time in GNP.

Around 1992, Forbes Forbes Campbell and Gokak Patel Volkart were merged to form: Gokak Patel Volkart Limited.

In the years 1990-92, all was not well between the Top Team of EFL. As a result, the Vice President was seconded to the Lense Division. In course of time, it appeared that the President’s management of the Company left a lot to be desired. The company was in a big mess on all counts. I don’t quite know why it happened. The net result was that the President had to leave Eureka Forbes in 1993.

Suresh Goklaney, was summoned back to Eureka Forbes to steer the company. I was drafted into an Emergency care-taking Committee along with couple of Forbes Directors to resolve the difficulties and enable Suresh Goklaney to operate the Company.

He was appointed President and the company got back to even keel. The Company has done well under his management. He was appointed Managing Director couple of years later.

As for Akhil Marfatia, early 1995, I ran into him on a flight. He was managing a company marketing Pagers. Those were the days of infancy of Mobile Phones; but pagers were the precursors. I was the Convener of the Indian Paint Conference 1995 and was keen to have a device to keep communications with all the volunteers. Hiring Mobile phones seemed very cost prohibitive. So we worked out a deal with Akhil to provide Pagers to all the volunteers. That worked well.

The next that I heard of Akhil was via a newspaper notice that he had passed away. The notice said that he was on the Board of another Company, albeit as an outside director. Thru that company, I got his family’s contacts and condoled with his son, by his second marriage. RIP.

Years went by. Mr. Madan retired as Managing Director in 1997, the same year that I retired from GNP. His position was taken by Mr. Mehra from Tata Steel.

Forbes did not figure in the strategic plan of Ratan Tata for the Tata Group. In line with that, Tatas and Forbes had divested their holding in GNP in favour of Kansai of Japan. So did the UK shareholders.

Tata’s ultimately divested the Forbes Group to the Shapoorjee Pallonjee Mistry Group in 2000. They undid the merger of Forbes and Gokak in 2008.

The new Management seemed to appreciate Suresh’s stewardship and elevated him to Vice Chairman and Managing Director.

That just about sums up the Eureka Forbes and Forbes Group story. They had been kind to me. In the post Khandwala era, my career trajectory changed, in hindsight, for the better

So, my dear Family, whatever happens, do keep faith and remember that:

whatever happens, happens for the good.

Back to my work life:

Some time in 1988 Devoo again mooted the idea of my joining the Board of GNP. He was looking to me to provide 4-5 years of stewardship as Managing Director after his n Bal Gokhale’s retirement.

I believe that Dilip Madan had joined forces with Devoo to ‘sell’ my candidature to the UK directors. The latter were familiar with me through my visits to them in the UK. Also we had had repeated interaction on the role conflict between the MD and Dy MD in years gone by.

One thing led to another, and the idea of my joining the GNP Board took shape. Based on my credentials in HR n Industrial Relations, it was proposed that I join as head of Manufacturing n HR. It was just as well that things panned out this way since I could make signal contribution in an area critical to GN’s future success. .

More of ‘why’… later.

Photo Gallery follows:

Please excuse any caption errors.

Do please point out the errors.

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