This book review was first published in the Financial Express on June 27, 2022, https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/book-review-the-ambuja-story-how-a-group-of-ordinary-men-created-an-extraordinary-company-by-narotam-sekhsaria/2573658/
Book: The
Ambuja Story: How a Group of Ordinary Men Created an Extraordinary Company
Author: Narotam Sekhsaria
Price: 699/-
Pages: 368
Year: 2022
Publisher: Harper Business, India
Once upon a
time, there was a boy, named Narotam. He was born in a Marwari family in
Chirawa, Rajasthan. His family took him to Bombay (now Mumbai) when he was
three. There, he was adopted by his grandfather’s younger brother who did not
have a son of his own. This practice was a way to ensure the continuity of
lineage in a patrilineal society. Destiny had plans for him. This is his story
and the story of the company that he built.
Ordinary
is relative
Narotam and
his family were ordinary. Ordinary compared to the Bajaj’s who were their
neighbors. But living in the same building as the Bajajs, who owned and managed
one of the biggest business houses in the country then and now, cannot be
ordinary for sure. Similarly, Narotam had an ordinary upbringing. A boy next
door. He struggled at school yet finished at the top of the class. Was aimless
and non-ambitious yet went on to study at some of the top colleges in Bombay.
Joining the
civil services or getting a job in a bank or a multinational company was the
dream career for those joining the workforce in the India of 1960s and 1970s.
Not so for a lad growing up in a Marwari household. Working for someone else
was unthinkable. So, he joined his family’s typical cotton trading business. He
proved his mettle in various ways. Whether it was getting orders from Finlay,
having the foresight to buy extra for his customer when prices started to rise
and the customer was holidaying, being fair even when he could have made much
more money, and making, maintaining, and tapping into social networks, were at
display in the way he functioned.
Nothing
that he did was extraordinary. Just ordinary things done well to achieve
extraordinary results.
Bigger shores
beckoned
Narotam’s
“dil” wanted more. Forty years back, entrepreneurship was not a buzz word. Nor
was ease of doing business. The Ambuja Story is not the usual start-up story
that we are used to reading in the twenty first century.
Narotam
grew up in a family of traders. The DNA needed to manufacture is very different
from that for trading. After spending a decade being a trader himself, to set
up a manufacturing unit for a commodity product about which he knew nothing,
could not have been easy. And it was not.
The book
brings out the vulnerabilities and the many uncertainties faced by the founder.
It also shows how he adapted at each step of the way. He recruited the best,
treated them with respect, and retained them. Did not compromise on quality of
the plant, even though he placed his trust in newcomers, rather than well
established players. Financial management, credit policy, and high ethical
standards were all consciously made a part of setting up Ambuja. While there
are many learnings from the story, the three that I would like to highlight
here are efficiency, innovation, and brand building.
Efficiency: Cement is a commodity. There is
little scope to differentiate the product itself. But there is ample scope to
differentiate on efficiency. Efficiency in processes, tweaking the plants to
enhance productivity, dust management systems, and each person doing their job
well, are just a few examples. The company has efficiency written all over it.
Innovation: Innovation does not mean usage of
artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve problems with digital
solutions only. Innovating, doing things differently, to achieve better or
cost-efficient solutions such as transporting cement through sea when no one
else was doing it in India, and making small changes to the plants to achieve
big impact, played a big role in making Ambuja profitable from the very
beginning.
Branding: In a product where it was
difficult to charge a premium, the investment in brand building from the very
beginning, like it was a consumer product, helped Ambuja establish itself even
in the presence of existing giants. Ambuja kept building and improvising on its
branding as they grew. The results were all too visible.
Values
and responsibility
Being born
in a Marwari family, I have often heard about and witnessed philanthropy
without anyone knowing about it. Left hand should not know if the right hand is
giving. Such beliefs leave an indelible mark on everyone around. It was no
different for Narotam. He writes of how the values and spirituality kept him
“calm and centred even in the most turbulent of times. The values of ethics and
compassion that he [his father] taught me steered me in everything that I did
in my career” (Pg. 134). The Ambuja Cement Foundation has been way ahead of its
times in adopting impactful corporate social responsibility projects and transforming
the lives of communities around which they operate and going beyond those
communities.
Resilience
An
entrepreneur starts when he spots an opportunity. But the time at which he/she
should exit is also important. Exit does not only mean selling the business. It
could also mean redefining the role of the founder to ensure continuity beyond
him/her. The confidence that the company would survive beyond the founder is
what makes them long-lasting. Even without planning for it, Narotam had built a
company that did not need him on a day-to-day basis when he had cancer.
Conclusion
There are
many books on industrialists and entrepreneurs. Not many of them go into so
much detailing regarding the thought process on each aspect of setting up and
running of the business. This book is focused on the building of Ambuja, easy
to read, comprehensive, and depicts the trials, turbulations, and triumphs at
each step.
