Fire Chat Interview: HARSH MARIWAL

The event began with an Inaugural Address by Shantanu, XLRI Jamshedpur, who welcomed the guest speaker, Mr. Harsh Mariwala, along with Prof. Sanjay Patro, Dean Academics and Professor of Marketing, and with other XLRI Professors.

The session’s guest was Mr. Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico.

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. And if you want to succeed you have to be patient, persistent, and flexible.

Harsh 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/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.

“If the strategy is strong and the culture is weak that will not work. Learning from failures is very crucial to succeed in the market. If you have to win the marketplace you have to innovate concepts that are pioneering through maximum interaction with customers and keep track of market scenarios,” added Mariwala. He suggests that you need to identify what is unique and keep on innovating to become a differentiator. He said that the biggest bottleneck for innovation is the fear of failure and if people in the organization will stop taking risks, then innovation will not happen.

He also emphasized focusing on team innovation rather than promoting individual innovation. 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.

Harsh suggested that to have an aligned set of values you need to create an open organization and training programs to create an open culture giving multiple messages that the organization trusts you. In this business era, it is important for senior managers to understand geopolitics, technology, and disruption and do scenario planning to protect the current brand.