BLURRED VISION: GRATITUDE: Letters from a Grandfather to his Future Generations. Chapter 24

Dear Family and Friends:

We have had the pleasure of welcoming our elder daughter in law Rajbir on a two day visit to Mumbai. With both her sons in University, she has closed the house in Toronto and moved back to Jakarta. Her Banvas is over, as she says. She met the larger family at the 5^th birthday of our grand niece, Naisha, daughter of Sofia n Vineet. The rain Gods were kind enough to bestow generous rains upon Mumbai city but did not disrupt her visit. She is now in Delhi to be with her parents.

Now, let us come back to the Forbes Group, post Khandwala’s death.

I recall asking a UK director of Forbes, in the days following Khandwala's death, as to what will happen to the Group. His answer was: The Group will survive but it will be changed.

Sure enough it was changed.

We were all apprehensive whether Tata’s will choose a Forbes Group person to be the successor. Or if they deputed a Tata director, who would it be. We all lent support to Dilip Madan as the Forbes Group’s heir apparent to the Chairman’s job. Madan moved himself to Chairman’s corner Office.

After some days of suspense, word came through that Dr. Freddie Mehta would be the new Group Chairman.

Since the Chairman’s corner office was occupied by Madan, Dr FAM made a virtue of necessity and carved out an office suite for himself by taking up the space used by Raja n Ghadhiali n his Accountants. A new office was built for Raja; but Ghadiali and the Accountants moved to the 3^rd floor. Neighbours again!

Devoo, the good friend that he is, floated a proposal to take me on the Board of GNP, albeit as HR head for GNP. The Vice Chairman of GNP, a Tata director sent for me to persuade me. I told him that it was a smaller job and I would take my chances with the new Management.

After Dr Mehta had settled in, I briefed him on the role of HR in the Group. He was candid enough to say that things change. And change they surely did. By way of background, in those decades, Tatas did not have any significant central HR Function. The function was present in varying strengths in different Tata Companies. Those were the days of the late JRD Tata when large Tata Companies were kingdoms in themselves.

The business of Eureka Forbes was a bumpy ride. Nemmie Josiah was running the business and not leaving any elbow room for Akhil. Also the sales force was not fully attuned to payment by results. By now Madhav Kale had joined as CFO and Madhav Joshi as GM Engineering.

It was in these circumstances, that one fine day the Chairman summoned me and told me that I would be Director in-charge of Eureka Forbes and Akhil and his Team shall report to him through me. It is quite probable that some ‘well wishers’ had put this idea forward to him.

Since Akhil was at his wits’ end, he accepted this with a smile. He was agitated about Nemmie not leaving any space for him in the main-line business of Vacuum Cleaners. I advised him to take ownership of the AquaGuard business and have some results to show for his effort. The product had been launched but was languishing. In the initial stages a few hundred units were sold. But sale of AG had to be shut down due to many complaints reaching the Chairman and also Bombay House. They regarded this as a nuisance product. Akhil was again left without a product.

I then suggested to Madhav Joshi to run a survey of the installed units and see what lesson the data provided. It took some time, but the survey established that many of the Units were out of order. The good news was that the Units that were in working order, they were producing good quality water. We were encouraged that we had a good product but had to debug the quality issues. Obviously E’Lux had handed an untested product to us and we had to do the hard work.

I led a delegation of Akhil and Madhav Joshi and Dr Rao who was the expert on “water “ to the AG factory at Hyderabad. Along with Mr. Rao, the Factory Manager, we methodically developed remedial measures for each of the quality problems. Mr. Rao was v constructive about it and set to implement the same. It helps if your career depends on the product.

We also sensed that unlike Vacuum Cleaners, AquaGuard will need a strong ‘After sales service’ and we tasked Madhav Joshi to set up Service Infrastructure.

Sometime in 1984, Nemmie Josiah left the country and Akhil got charge of the thriving Vacuum Cleaner business.

The AG sale had been re-launched, but complaints kept cropping up. The Chairman again stopped sale of AG. Akhil was less than enthusiastic about the product and was willing to let the product die. I had the conviction that good drinking water was a crying need in India and AG will have a large market. Therefore I was keen not to let the product die. After some more debugging of the product and strengthening of the Service organization, the Aquaguard business started to expand. We did have some more hiccups along the way, but AG plodded along.

I do regard my self as the Godfather of AquaGuard and feel proud of the fact that Eureka Forbes’ successive Managements have taken this product and the Company to great heights.

The direct sale model of business puts a lot of emphasis on Salesman and his motivation. Therefore Eureka Forbes would have periodic ‘award’ functions to honor high performers who were achieving ever growing milestones. The purpose was both to reward high performance and to promote the spirit of competition not only among the salesmen but also their Branch Managers n Regional Managers.

When a company is in the growth period, %age growth seems meaningless. Akhil and I would set some growth targets for the next quarter and they would be overtaken by a mile.

It was therefore in fitness of things that we should recognize the performance of the President. Therefore at each Annual Conference of EFL, which was a mega prize distribution ceremony, I would carry a silver salver for the Chairman to present to Akhil to great applause.

At the introduction of the Chairman, a private businessman got us to market a plastic tub washing machine of French design. He had set up a small unit in Hyderabad to manufacture these units. They were effective but not very sturdy and after a while the business petered out.

Photo Gallery follows.

Pls forgive any caption errors

But do please point out the errors.

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