WHAT I LEARNT FROM MY COMPETITOR(30)
“HUL, ITC, HDFC Taught us the
Intrapreneurship Culture“
R Venkataraman, Managing Director and Copromoter, IIFL Group
CLAIM TO FAME: Has close to
two dec ades of experience in financial ser vices, having worked at ICICI, GE
Capital and BZW, amongst other firms THE LESSON: Being part of an exciting
journey in IIFL, it has been a continuous learning curve. We picked up a lot of
strat egies based on hits and misses in our own experiences besides of course
learning from the mistakes of others. In our initial days, our founder Nirmal
(Jain) was very process-driven given what he had picked up during his stint at
HUL.
As our business grew, we
were inspired by the systems and processes in HDFC Bank and by the leadership
of Aditya Puri who redefined industry parameters, chal lenging fossilised
thought processes and archaic work methods. Employee ownership was something we
happily borrowed from successful entrepreneurs as we saw the success it gave to
firms like Infosys.
Nirmal was also very
impressed by the culture of intrapreneurship in organisations like HUL, ITC,
HDFC where the intrapreneurs led the show. It led us to create a culture of
intrapreneurship within IIFL, which has been very fulfilling.
When markets were in a
downcycle, we saw many leading brokers succumb to the pressures of competition
and the bear market. We managed to successfully diversify into various
verticals but always keeping our focus on the financial space. We have seen
players diversify randomly into unrelated businesses and lose whatever they had
built in their core business. So even today we remain completely focused on the
financial service space.
(As told to Suman Layak)
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G Seetharaman
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ETM27DEC15
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