Textile scion's mantra for success - 'Know your business'
12 Aug '11
10 min read
In Ahmedabad, the Sharda Trust set up by the Lalbhai's, provides extra guidance and education to students studying in municipal schools from economically weaker sections of society, which enables them later on, to get admitted to reputed schools. He expects that CSR activities from Arvind may become bigger and larger in the days to come.
Kulin's mantra for success – 'Know your business'. He explains, “One needs to understand every nuance of the business to attain success. The ability to see through and take the right decisions rather than falling back on someone can happen only when, you know your business in and out.
“The second most important is leadership with an ability to guide, inspire and galvanise everyone towards a common goal or direction and get the best out of everyone”. In the same vein, he adds, “One has to know first hand, the pulse of the market or otherwise one always remains a boardroom leader”.
We wrapped up this very informative and hour-long chat by asking him to tender his parting words of advice to the second or third generation of textile leaders.
He said, 'Dream, Think and Do Big'. He feels that the biggest challenge for the ilk in his generation is to shake off the unwanted baggage of the textile sector being called 'unglamorous', since outsiders do not consider the textile sector as a value creating business.
His second advice is to invest in excellence. He says, “Unless we do not attract and employ the best management practices, processes and systems, technologies and apply that properly, we will never be able to make a place for our selves in the world.
He feels that the next generation of textile industry leaders also needs to attract talent and world-class professionals to manage their organisations. He wraps up by saying, “In the textile sector, there is no space for boardroom leaders; you need to have a hand on the pulse and understand it end-to-end.”