PINAKI MAJUMDAR
Jamshedpur, April 7: XLRI today completed the CXO Series with Marico Limited chairman Harsh Mariwal addressing the session.
Over the last three decades, Mariwal has transformed a traditional commodity-driven business into a leading consumer products company, in the beauty and wellness space.
Marico markets leading brands such as Parachute Advansed, Saffola, Mediker, Revive, Setwet, and Livon among others. Today one out of three Indians is a Marico consumer. Marico has also established strong consumer franchises in its overseas markets in Asia and Africa.
Harsh’s passion for innovation, enthused him to establish the Marico Innovation Foundation in 2003 which works towards nurturing innovations in India.
As an expression of his Personal Social Responsibility, in 2012, he launched ASCENT Foundation – Accelerating the Scaling up of Enterprises -a peer-learning entrepreneurial platform. He is also the Chairman and Managing Director of Kaya Limited. Sharrp Ventures is the Family Office of the Harsh Mariwala Family. He also founded the Mariwala Health Initiative (MHI) in 2015, with the philanthropic aim of giving back to society. He was recently bestowed with the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2020 for India.
Harsh Mariwala gave insights into how companies create the “Right to Win”. He talked about how important it is to have the willingness to learn and show a high degree of curiosity to learn from anybody as learning comes from the bottommost level and they do give you the best advice that helps you grow.
Mariwala is a big believer in consumer insights. He suggested that you need to go deep into consumers’ minds and have to unearth the nuggets in consumers’ minds as it is the key to improving any business.
He said every brand and business is to go on innovation on a perpetual basis to gain success and it should be built into your culture. He said that culture should work in tandem with strategy and culture is based on trust and empowering the workforce.
He also talked about how earlier talent was about purchasing but now talent acquisition is done by leveraging the marketplace and talent is not the responsibility of HR, but it is the responsibility of everyone in the company to evaluate any budding talent and offer it to the company to meet its goals.
