Good leaders should be able to lead almost any business: Jamshyd Godrej

The chairman of Godrej & Boyce, takes time out from a fam jam, to reminisce about his late father’s spirit of innovation and the company’s way forward

Mumbai: The Godrej clan converged at the premises of Godrej & Boyce, (G&B) Vikhroli, last week for the launch of ‘Naval Godrej: Pioneer of progress’. While biographies usually manifest themselves in weighty hardbound books published by tony publishing houses, the Godrej family picked a homegrown publisher and a comic book format because of two factors – one that the story was intended to be consumed by a wide and younger audience that was easily reachable and second that Amar Chitra Katha was best positioned to tell the story of an Indian business leader for Indian audiences.

The fam jam included 100-odd people from the clan and friends, prominent among them, Godrej Group Chairman Emeritus, Adi Godrej, G&B Chairman Jamshyd Godrej, Godrej Industries Managing Director Nadir Godrej and their sister Smita Crishna Godrej, as also younger generation leaders Nyrika Holkar, Navroze Godrej and Freyan Crishna Bieri. (Sachin Haralkar)

The fam jam included 100-odd people from the clan and friends, prominent among them, Godrej Group Emeritus Chairman Adi Godrej, G&B Chairman Jamshyd Godrej, Godrej Industries Managing Director Nadir Godrej and their sister Smita Crishna Godrej, as also younger generation leaders Nyrika Holkar, Navroze Godrej and Freyan Crishna Bieri.

Jamshyd Godrej presided over discussions tracing the life of his late father, Naval Godrej, and how he built businesses at the house of Godrej. A common refrain embedded in his memory is that of his father saying in Gujarati when he was a mere boy, “Aaje navu su kidhu” which translates to, had he done anything new that day? It was a call to constantly find ways to innovate while in business -- something Godrej’s father told everyone, adding, “You can’t stand still, you have to be doing something new every day.”

Transforming households

Indeed, the consistent theme for the 125-year-old group has been innovation – the results of which are visible in every Indian household. “Back then they found that padlocks that were made in the UK and sold in India, weren’t of good quality, and expensive, so the idea was to make better products at a reasonable price. That established our reputation. It went from locks to safes to furniture, and then other machinery items. My father’s first big win was to make ballot boxes for India’s first elections,” said the silver-haired 73-year-old Jamshyd Godrej, a mechanical engineer by training and a Padma Bhushan awardee.

As a business family, the Godrejs have long-standing, deep connections to Mumbai. While members of the family are consistently featured on billionaire rankings and rich lists, they are known for keeping a low-profile despite being one of the largest land-owners in the city by virtue of their holdings in Vikhroli, where their offices are.

Real estate experts, who have consistently tracked the Group, say G&B has in the past handed over 500 acres of land for public purposes, including almost 400 acres for the sewage treatment plant for the city. Godrej however, declined to comment on ongoing negotiations with the government for Godrej land for developing pathways for a state-sponsored Bullet train, citing that the matter is subjudice and a judgment is awaited in around three weeks.

While the $4.1 billion Group’s journey started with the everyday business of making locks for household usage, in its modern avatar it straddles 15 different business areas through eight companies, of which four are publicly listed.

Godrej, who has been a past president at the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), recalled the time when Mahatma Gandhi urged India to industrialise and be less dependent on imports – “a themethat has become resurgent now”.

Today G&B makes refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, furniture; security equipment for banks, locks and latches, forklift trucks and warehousing equipment, for chemical, petrochemical, refineries and allied industries, precision tools for sheet metal, zinc, aluminium, real estate development. The company also engages in engineering services and makes products for India’s defence and space programmes and generated revenue of ₹12,520 crore last year.

Ready to face storms

Godrej, an avid sailor who spends time yachting, is accustomed to choppy weather and is not fazed by ongoing global disruptions.

“The pandemic, has put a little bit of a damper on consumer products, whether it was FMCG or consumer durables. All of it was somewhat impacted, but it was the same time when there was a great push by the government whether it was space programme, defence and nuclear energy, and so, as a result we have grown rapidly in capital goods that we make,” Godrej said. “In the next few years there should be good even demand, and consumer durables, industrial products, real estate will grow significantly.”

Godrej CEOs are known to have risen from the ranks from within its companies. As he said, “I prefer to find talent within the organisation, and so far, we’ve been quite successful doing that. Almost all our business heads, our business unit heads are people who have grown with the company over time. I am open to hiring from outside, but my preference has always been to find and nurture talent from within the organisation.”

His point is that “good leaders should be able to lead almost any business.”

New businesses

While G&B is invested in old economy business as well as contemporary ones, it’s also looking at setting up new-age ventures. The Group has invested in two start-ups, both in the US, “one around batteries which is a very different chemistry”. “It’s not normal lead-acid or lithium ion, etc,” he explained. “It is a different chemistry based on zinc and manganese, and is rather highly suited for backup power. All data centres, for instance, need a backup power and the battery becomes a conditioner. Given the fluctuations, these data centres are so sensitive that they need constant intervention to keep them at the right level so that data doesn’t get corrupted.” A pilot plant has been set up in India, which will in the next year, also run pilot projects.

The second project uses a technology that changes how industrial cooling is done. “So for instance, today, for cooling, you have to use a compressor, and they are not environmentally friendly, and use high energy. So this is a solid-state device, just like a semiconductor, but the purpose is either heating or cooling or even producing power. For instance, if you put one of these semiconductors on a hot pipe, you can actually kind of get some power out of it,” Godrej said, adding that the technology may be brought to India as well.

Godrej sees his company’s growth trajectory between 12 and 15 per cent a year, which was the pre-pandemic pace. With projections of an imminent economic downturn, Godrej said, “We are not getting away from disrupters easily but my feeling is that we are doing a reasonably good job on managing the economy. Many products such as home appliances, have penetration levels that are still very low. Take air conditioners, for instance, which have just a two to three per cent market presence. So there’s a huge opportunity there.”

If his father’s vision of innovation shepherded the Group in the last century, what is Godrej’s guiding advice for those now running the company and who will take it over in the next century?

“A combination of innovation and sustainability is extremely powerful, and there are huge opportunities there,” he said.