The Reluctant Billionaire by Soma Das

Author:Soma Das
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353055417
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Mr Fixit for All Things Else

Sometime after 1996, Valia, in addition to finance, started taking an active interest in other areas. ‘Eventually I discovered Sudhir-bhai’s distinct ability to juggle multiple priorities at the same time effectively and his great execution capabilities. A lot of Sun’s efficiency (in arms other than product and marketing) has been (with the help of) Sudhir-bhai’s execution, and in time these turned into work habits which are internalized as the organizational culture,’ Shanghvi said.

Valia’s entry into other areas of Sun wasn’t as easy as it sounds, given his quirky, spontaneous, undiplomatic disposition. By 1996, Sun had a decent number of professionals heading important functions, who didn’t fancy their turfs getting breached by a family member of the owner whom they had till now seen as a ‘money manager’. As far as Valia was concerned, he was simply stating what he thought, and solving problems he saw.

He started his rounds with manufacturing, walking into meetings, on occasions unannounced, trying to grasp the dynamics of it. Manufacturing at the time was being headed by a professional who had come from Glaxo at what was considered in Sun a fat pay cheque.

Valia during his unannounced rounds asked basic questions to understand the processes behind manufacturing and figured out that there was huge backlog in sampling and generating analyst reports, a mandatory exercise before the raw materials could be ticked off as standard to pass for manufacturing.

Valia asked for minimum time needed for that work, to which someone replied forty-five days. He made queries to zero down on the logic of forty-five days. ‘We have the stuff on a credit cycle of forty-five days, so we would complete the task before that period is over,’ came one response.

Baffled, he made them conduct sampling and report generation between the third and seventh day of the raw material’s arrival in the facility. Anything beyond had to be reported with reasons to the head office. Additional manpower was provided to clear the backlog.

‘These factory people have no clue of interest payment. They claim money is available to them for forty-five days, so they have no urgency to complete,’ Valia, still aghast, told Shanghvi.

He shared how he planned to organize the production and distribution of all the batches into three buckets based on the cost of the material. ‘The priciest of material can arrive in the last ten days of the month, and dispatched in the first ten days of the following month.’ Shanghvi green-signalled the idea instantly, but smiled back at him, ‘Sudhir-bhai, you are actually talking of the formulations guys being clueless about interest costs, you should make a trip to our bulk drug factory and see the kind of exorbitant interests amount we are paying there.’

He hopped on to a bulk drug plant next, again unannounced, to face a question: ‘Who are you?’ No one recognized him there. Once they got to know who he was, Valia got down to business and discussed Pentoxifylline which was their main product, of which they churned out a tonne a month.

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