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SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH ADVISORY ROLE

 

To be successful, you have to have your heart in the business

and the business in your heart.

Thomas J Watson Sr. former CEO of IBM (1874- 1956) 

Jeevan joined the company of which I was one of the two founder-directors as commercial manager in 1986. Earlier to that, after completing B.Com (1978) from Ramnarayan Chellaram College of Commerce, Jeevan worked for TVS Madras Auto Service, Bangalore in the accounts department for three years and in the Sales department for a couple of years. Having worked in the two key areas of business – finance and sales, Jeevan decided to join hands with three of his colleagues to establish an enterprise to market Auto Spare parts in 1983. Even after three years of company’s existence Jeevan did not see the needed passion in his three partners to grow the business and hence decided to take up employment again that was offered by my fellow founder-director. Because of his entrepreneurial nature, from the day he joined, he took lot of initiative in carrying out the tasks given to him, immaterial of the nature of the task; may it be procurement of raw materials or payment follow-up with customers, coordinating with production or logistics arrangement to clear the capital goods from the customs and many more.

Jeevan Guruprasad Rao Sahib (b.1958) hails from a family having historic and traditional background. Rao Sahib became a family title when the Sultanate of Bijapur conferred it on his ancestor Vedaji Bhaskar Rao Pant, who was granted the Arni Jagir by the great Maratta leader Shahjee (father of Chatrapathi Shivaji) for services in war rendered in his campaign to the Carnatic back in 1640. Rao Sahib family members were Jagirdars[1] of Arni, Colathur and Ranganathapuram. Srinivasa IV Rao Sahib (1904-89) was the twelfth and last Jagirdar of Arni jagir (1931-48) in North Arcot, Madras Presidency during the British reign. Subsequently some of the family members like Colathur Rama Krishnaswamy Rao Sahib (1927-2013), a cousin of Jeevan’s father Ranganatha Rao Sahib (1921-96) rose to the position of Cabinet Secretary of Government of India (1981-85) and was awarded Padma Vibushan, the second highest civilian honour of India in 1985, besides the Great Maratha Award in 2009. Krishanaswamy was nephew of Raghunath Rao Ramachandra Rao (1871-1936), who as Collector of Nellore helped Srinivasa Ramanujam, the internationally renowned mathematician in his formative years.

Jeevan is a keen learner and complies with established personal and professional values. From the lessons that he had learnt during his employment in the Auto industry (1978-83), electronics industry (1986-91), leather garments industry (1991-94) and logistics services industry[2] (1994-2000), he established an enterprise, Indelox Services Private Limited to provide Third Party logistics services. Though I had lost touch with Jeevan since 1993, I connected with him again during early 2000 with a view to make him a member of the Rotary club of which I was taking over as the President during 2000-1. Though he joined Rotary on my request, within a year he resigned his membership due to his work commitments.

However, right from the time of establishing Indelox Services in 2000, Jeevan involved me in some role or other – to start with as a guest to inaugurate the office premises, later as a trainer to train and guide his staff, as an independent evaluator to measure the performance of his employees, and in 2009 he appointed me as a Non-Executive director cum Mentor. As I turned seventy in 2020 I informed Jeevan that I’d like to retire and he gracefully accepted.

Jeevan’s approach to business was more pragmatic, driven by systems. He never hesitated in investing time and money in training his staff at all levels. In 2007 he himself joined one year Post-graduate programme in management offered by Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) exclusively for entrepreneurs. Attending this programme only reassured Jeevan’s strong belief that organisation’s health solely depends on its policies, processes and systems. Since 2008 he initiated building Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system[3] and it took almost six years to stabilise. It helped Indelox managing day-to-day operations efficiently even during the pandemic time.

To bench-mark Indelox with the best in the country, Jeevan started applying for some of the national level business excellence awards which started yielding results from 2009 and with constant improvements, Indelox received CII-Exim Business Excellence Award in the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) category in 2013 and for the first time a Supply-Chain company received such an award! Since then Indelox has never looked back and has been recognised by several institutions and government bodies, the recent one being, One Star Export House recognition by Director General of Foreign Trade in 2023. 

Though World Trade Organisation (WTO) came into existence for facilitating international trades with nominal customs duty in 1995, only after 2008, World Customs Organisation[4] (WCO) was given larger responsibility to promote cross- border trade. One such programme launched by WCO was Authorised Economic Operator, a system to provide recognition. WCO also formed consultative committee comprising members from private sector. Jeevan actively participated in all international meetings of WCO from 2012 and has been contributing his expertise both at National and International levels. 

Giving back to society being close to his heart, Jeevan ensures that as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities Indelox supports economically underprivileged students by providing uniform and books. Indelox also has established an NGO – Colours of Life that supports students of economically lower strata to take academic work seriously apart from managing inventory of books and uniforms at a subsidised cost. Jeevan is also working on preventing blindness and rehabilitating blind through Rotary Avoidable Blindness Foundation. 

As I reflect, during the twenty years of my association with Indelox, I have learnt a lot from Jeevan, whether his approach to business or managing employees, much more than what he’d have learnt from me during his tenure of five years as Commercial Manager.

[1]Jagirdars were class of people who collected taxes as a form of revenue. 

[2] Logistics services include all the elements of Supply Chain, from manufacturing factory to end customer, including transportation, clearing from customs (this service sometimes outsourced to authorised agents), warehousing and fulfilment of delivery.

[3] ERP is a software system that helps business to manage their core processes. 

[4]The WCO is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. The WCO works on customs-related matters including the development of international conventions, instruments, and tools on topics such as commodity classification, valuation, rules of origin, collection of customs revenue, supply chain security, international trade facilitation, customs enforcement activities, combating counterfeiting in support of intellectual property rights (IPR), illegal drug enforcement, combating counterfeiting of medicinal drugs illegal weapons trading, integrity promotion, and delivering sustainable capacity building to assist with customs reforms and modernization. The WCO maintains the international Harmonized System (HS) goods nomenclature, and administers the technical aspects of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreements on Customs Valuation and Rules of Origin. 

October 08 , 2024 | Ravi 87

 



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