Thursday, January 28, 2016

PERSONAL /COMPETITOR SPECIAL................. WHAT I LEARNT FROM MY COMPETITOR(30)

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)
G Seetharaman

ETM27DEC15            

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