Corporate Lecture By Mr Ajay Kaul, CEO, Jubilant Foodworks

Jubliant Foodworks, the Franchisee for Domino's India and recently Dunkin Donuts, is recognized worldwide as one of the best franchisee for Domino's and one of the reason for the same has been the leadership of Mr Ajay Kaul.

Mr Kaul, an IIT-D alumnus, was invited to the campus of IIM Raipur as a part of the Corporate Guest Lecture series. Mr Kaul’s lecture was focused on how the concept had to be ingrained into the psyche of Indian Consumers for whom both pizza and home delivery were alien concept. He began his presentation by highlighting the challenges the brand faced in the beginning. He told how in the beginning Pizza was considered a ‘snack’ which would be consumed between meals.

In a highly interactive session he delineated how the brand used the concepts of emotional and functional laddering to affix its position into the minds and phone books of Indian consumers. Through a series of TV adverts he showed how the brand migrated from its famed 30 minute home delivery to the more subtle “Khushiyon ki Home delivery”. The success of the brand is evident, it has registered  31% same store growth, 53% system level growth last year.

The next part of the discussion was the operation and logistics part of the 30 minute delivery that from USP has become a UBP for the brand. Mr. Kaul recalled the biggest challenge in implementing this meant that the store had to say no to business. He told for a store manager this would have been a precarious situation as on one hand there were sales targets and on the other hand this meant people who were outside the 2.5 km range ( or Lakshman Rekha in company parlance) the store owner was supposed to say no. The company trained its store staff on lines military training to ensure a strong store discipline. He told that even today once in the year the senior management in supposed to work in the store to remember this regime and also understand consumers better. Another part was to celebrate the first free delivery to get the stigma out of free delivery and also wearing a badge that said “I won’t be fined for delivering free”, thus taking the loss on company’s books. This also discourages any practice where people may still pay out of pity.Upon being asked how much the loss would was he indicated it to be around 1% of all pizza’s delivered were free.

In the final part of the lecture he talked about the future strategy of Jubilant Foodworks which has now over 400 stores all over the country. He refused to divulge any strategy for Dunkin’ Donuts which is expected to be launched in 2012. Upon being asked where would the focus be for next few years. He indicated that the roll strategy for new stores and the roadmap for the next 2-3 years has already been charted out and the company is well in line to deliver the phenomenal growth it has been clocking for all these years.

Our director, Prof B S Sahay, keenly took part in session and invited Mr Ajay Kaul to write for the Operations Club Magazine Strive and thanked him for interacting with the students of IIM Raipur.

Dr Bhave , VP, HR, Bharat Forge visits IIM Raipur

Dr. S V Bhave , Vice President , HR , Bharat Forge visited the campus of IIM Raipur on 6th December , 2011 to have an interaction with the students of the premier B-School. Prior to working for Bharat Forge, Dr. Bhave plied his trade at Indian Organic Chemical based in Pune.
From the moment Dr. Bhave entered the hall , he looked as enthusiastic and excited as the students.he commanded an affirmative reply from the students. For a start , the students were not expecting the way the proceedings began. Dr. Bhave began by proudly showcasing the shirt he wore which showcased an embroidery of the company’s name. He pointed out that every employee working for the company wore a similar uniform regardless of his status in as per the hierarchy of responsibility in the organization. This denoted the equality represented in the organization.
“Bharat Forge believed in competing but was ruthless in cancelling out any competition. He marked out the four pillars on which formed the base of the stupendous growth of Bharat Forge. These were :
. Strategy
. Technology
. Productivity
. Skill and talent of HR
Throughout his interaction, Dr. Bhave stressed on the deep importance of a skilled and talented HR, i.e. Human Resource in the growth of an organization. But he also notified the difficulties of having a talented bunch of people. Recruiting skilled and talented HR was a difficult and important task. But retaining them was even tougher. The competition of the ever growing market added to the woes of an HR.
But Bharat Forge was well equipped to take care of this situation. Facilities were the core strength of Bharat Forge. It had a “Talent Pipeline Programme” in place to meet the needs of higher education of it’s newly recruited graduates. Pertaining to this programme, any of it’s employees could pursue education in any of the universities which had tie-ups with it. It had based it’s offices within the areas of three universities, namely, IIT Bombay, BITS Pilani, Warwick University. it even gave the employees a chance to join other organizations after the successful completion of their courses thus not hampering or restricting their future growth. This strengthened the relationship of the employees with the company and increased the feel of loyalty within each and every employee.
This led to an envious list of clients which included international companies like Alstom, David Brown, AUDI, TOYOTA, Honda, TATA, etc. in the Auto sector. the clients in the non-auto sector included Siemens, BHEL, Cameron , GE, etc.
Through the years Bharat Forge has succeeded in becoming :
The largest forging capacity in the world
The no. 1 axle aggregator in India
The no.1 exporter of wheels in India


Besides this, it has manufacturing plants in India, China, Europe and US.
This has catapulted Bharat Forge to the status of winner and it has succeeded in winning :
National Award for Best HR Practices in 2009
Golden Peacock Award for Best HR Practices in 2011




The students were particularly curious about how the company has grown multi fold in a short span of 8 years and the HR challenges for Bharat Forge. Mr Bhave highlighted the Global Talent Pool that Bharat Forge is now creating to address the challenges of a global business and also how learning were being taken from the German Plant. The company is presently cash rich and trying to diversify into non auto segments so some felt that the compnay was looking for acqusition. Mr Bhave without going into specifics maintained that the company may not go upstream and strengthen its core competency.

Corporate Talk By Executive Director, HR, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd

Mr. Manish Kharbanda , Executive Director , HR , Jindal Steel and Power Limited visited the IIM Raipur campus on 1st November , 2010. His maintained his main motives behind this visit  as being the interaction with the students.
Mr. Manish Kharbanda has several years of experience in which he has managed large teams and spearheaded overall strategic and human resource operations. In short, he has been working in tandem with the executives of the respective companies and the employees. He has worked in diverse cultures and with companies having diverse backgrounds.
Prior to working for Jindal Steel & Power Ltd , Mr. Kharbanda had held senior positions in human resource with companies like Airtel, Reliance Petroleum, Reliance Communication, Escotel( which is now Idea Cellular) and , Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd , being the latest recipient of his services where held the position of the Chief Human Resource Officer.
Mr. Kharbanda began by highlighting his humble beginnings and how it has helped him in achieving phenomenal success at an early age. He also stressed that humility was necessary for a professional to be successful. He also showcased humour by stating that he became an HR , only by chance , as he never studied or prepared for it. He was pushed into the job as the respective HR of the concerned company in which he was working at that time resigned from the job. This began his career as an HR.
He then described the model on which JSPL was based upon. He explained every detail pinpointing the “sustainable development” as a very important parameter for every company. “Sustainable Development” is the execution of a company’s social responsibilities which is better known as Corporate Social Responsibility. This formed the base of a company’s success anywhere. He stressed it’s importance from the point of view of the Head of HR operations. This was necessary as it could bolster the belief of the locals in a region on any company operating in it’s lands. This would in return decrease the amount of labour unrest , which could otherwise be prevalent because of disparity.
After giving his point of view on the operating procedure of JSPL , Mr. Kharbanda welcomed queries from the side of the students. He received a whole lot of questions regarding the difficulties of operation in different areas of the world. Most of the employees that seek to go to a foreign land expect a raise in salary and responsibility. Most of the companies do offer these but still, some problems hinders along. The different difficulties could arise due to :

• Law and order problems
• Environmental problems
• Bureaucracy problems

                                                                                                                                                                        

According to Mr. Kharbanda the root of these problems was the hindrances due to adaptability to different cultures. He pointed out that problems could be made simpler if not solved if people could unhesitatingly adapt to different cultures and accept the mindsets of people.
To solve this problem, JSPL has chalked out a plan to show it’s employees the situations that could arise in the region where he/she intends to go for work in co-ordination with the company. It has decided to counsel the families also as they would also need to adjust. This could help the employees in getting first hand knowledge of another nation , which would hold them in good stead in the future.
Besides this point he was asked the latest trends in the market to which he replied that hydro power was the way forward for a better and smarter production of power. JSPL has invested in a huge hydro project amounting to USD 8.2 billion in Arunachal Pradesh , keeping in mind this very reason.
Along with this he gave his reasons for the satisfaction of employees at JSPL and ended with showcasing his expectations towards us for building this world towards a better future.

KPMG Associate Director & Head, Analytics talks about Analytics and Data Modeling.

Dr. Nitin Singh ,Associate Director & Head, Analytics, KPMG on his visit to the IIM Raipur campus on 24^th September,2011as a part of Corporate Interaction Program, briefed the students about analytics and consulting as a career.

He explained the job roles which a candidate would have to undertake in the field of Analytics. The candidates have to work effectively with personnel from a variety of disciplines to provide data analytics driven advisory solutions to a variety of business challenges.

The need to understand complex issues, business processes and risks and determining how internal and external data can be used with other analytical procedures to perform investigations.

There is lot of interaction with clients and other external sources to obtain relevant data and documents in required forms which would be needed in their projects. There is also a need of data cleansing and preparation techniques to achieve necessary results.

The job role of analytics also involves performing sophisticated analyses on large and complex data and then determine  and execute follow-up with various personnel to discover transaction patterns,to examine financial data and resolve issues.

He also talked about KPMG’s forensic data analysis and the recent assignment to KPMG of probing into the issues related to the organizing and conduct of Commonwealth Games,2010.