Good Luck

Dear Students

 Best of Luck For Koshish
Gautam Bansal

Evaluation Criterion

Total Marks for the subject 100:

Broadly the students will be evaluated on the following Criterion.

1.     End trimester Exams-35 Marks
2.    Mid trimester Exams-15 Marks
3.  Assignments( Minimum 2)- 10 Marks
4. Term Papers: 10 Marks
5. Presentation:10 Marks
6. Case studies-5 Marks
7. Participation in  Class discussions(7) / written Comments( Minimum 2 with  four Marks each))/-15 Marks

 Hello Students,

 Another very good example of CSR.

Enjoy Reading.

Gautam Bansal

 Elin Appliances

AT first sight, Elin Appliances appears to be run by nature lovers rather than clever marketers. From managers to peons to security guards, ask any worker about the importance of safeguarding the environment and they will gush forth with a brilliant exposition. It all started in 2004, when Elin set up its facilities at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh.

J.S. Kang, factory manager at the Baddi plant, was worried that five trees were to be cut down to make way for the plant. Kang’s boss Sanjeev Sethia had a cure for his discomfort: add up the age of the trees and multiply by 10 and then plant that many trees. That is how Elin started the ‘Go Green’ initiative at Baddi. It plans to plant about 10,000 trees by the end of next year under the scheme.

FOREST CITY: Elin Appliances has planted thousands of trees all along the roads of Baddi (BW pic by Tribhuwan Sharma)So far, Elin has planted thousands of trees and plants along Baddi roads, where bigger factories with large funds are located. Some of the beneficiaries of Elin’s green initiative are the local panchayat office at Sanedh, a gaushala (cow barn), and some schools, where about 500 fruit trees have been planted. At Nalagarh, Elin has built a neat little park — Van Vihar — within the forest department’s area. The park is a popular pathway for joggers.

The company’s sincere effort towards greening is unmistakable. Notably, Elin has also educated its workers on the benefits of re-greening the planet. Every employee gets two plants each to take home to plant on their land. The workers also participate enthusiastically in drawing competitions on environment. All the paintings, even those that look childish, are prominently displayed on the notice board.

Surprisingly, the company did all this without having a clear-cut CSR policy. In fact, a CSR policy has just been developed and is yet to be formally vetted by the management. The company has even hired a consulting agency, to help it better define its CSR initiatives.

Elin’s other CSR initiatives are a far cry from ‘Go Green’. The company trains its employees on fire fighting, encourages skill upgradation and routinely organises blood donation camps. So successful was the last blood donation camp that many volunteers had to be turned down. Elin staffers’ expertise in firefighting is well known in the area: when a fire broke out at a nearby factory, it was Elin employees who rushed to douse the fires. The workers are not just trained, but actually organised in teams, and  put on alert in rotation so that they are available 24X7 in case of an eventuality. To give credence to the mettle of its employees, Elin has a tie-up with Chitkara University, which provides a certificate course to its employees in firefighting.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Dear students

Good example of CSR

Gautam Bansal

Tata Steel

In the large enterprises category, it was Tata Steel’s CSR initiative in Orissa that was adjudged the best. What makes it different from other corporations is the way such efforts are perceived. CSR does not pose a conflict of interest on the balance sheet.

 “CSR is not a post-profit activity but a pre-profit activity, seen as part of the cost of steel making,” says Sanjiv Paul, vice-president (corporate services) at Tata Steel. The company introduced workmen’s compensation as early as in 1920 and maternity benefit in 1928. He, however, acknowledges that the recent tussle between large industries and land owners has led to CSR activities being seen as a gimmick to win over public opinion. In Orissa, for example, Tata Steel’s integrated greenfield steel plant at Kalinganagar has been inordinately delayed. Land acquisition has not been smooth for the company’s other projects in the state, such as the deep-sea port at Dhamra or the special economic zone at Gopalpur in Ganjam district. While Tata Steel’s project in Ganjam is stuck, the projects of other steel makers, too, have faced tough resistance.

This hasn’t deterred the company from giving its due to the society. In the coastal town of Gopalpur, for example, Tata Steel’s help was sought by the Orissa Lift Irrigation Corporation (OLIC) to resurrect defunct irrigation systems at the four blocks of Hinjilicut, Chatrapur, Seragada and Degopahndi. OLIC’s irrigation projects, which were initiated in 1968, had failed when water levels fell from 30-40 ft to 70 ft in 1985. OLIC installed new submersible pumps, but corrosion of pipes and silted channels, coupled with sheer lack of maintenance, dried up the project.

Tata Steel Rural Development Society, which works under Tata Steel’s social responsibility wing, undertook the responsibility of reviving some of these irrigation lifts. The idea was to increase yield and income from agriculture and check the distress migration of youth to places such as Mumbai and Surat. An assessment of phase-1 showed a profit of Rs 10.40 lakh in rabi production through improved irrigation methods, benefiting 107 households and covering an area of 30 acres. From a single kharif crop that sometimes failed them, farmers now reap multiple crops such as chilli and groundnut, which fetch more revenues. After Tata Steel stepped into these blocks in Orissa, annual income from a hectare has gone up to Rs 45,000 thanks to improved irrigation.

Tough times breed good leaders

Dear students

You want to be competitive . Here are some tips to learn.

Gautam Bansal

Probably, the world outside India is still passing through one of the toughest times of our lifetime. Trillions of dollars are getting eroded, the wealthiest of nations are going bankrupt and the leaders whom we thought to be the greatest of our times are proving that there is indeed only a single step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Tough times breed good leaders. This is quite contrary to the boom time, where every other corporate manager appears like a leader, despite real competencies, because people are caught up in the momentum of high growth and easy success.

History has demonstrated time and again that effective leaders—, who can mobilize people, tackle tough problems and can spot opportunities in crises — are most apparent in times of great stress, change and uncertainty.

As former Mayor of New York city Rudolph Giuliani said, “It is of times of crisis that good leaders emerge”. The greatest testimony to this is Giuliani himself, who was once a lame duck philandering husband but went on to be the embodiment of an indomitable spirit in a time of great crisis.

Another good example is Barun Kumar “Bicky” Chakraborty, who as a student arrived in Sweden and started tinkering around with his entrepreneurship dreams. He was soon caught up in a slowing economy.

But Bicky decided to get going as the going got tougher. He mobilised some resources to start a pub, because he realised that during recession time professionals did not like to be seen at upmarket restaurants. “I opened pubs when the economy was slow and gloomy. I cashed in on the gloom”, he says. Today, he has 30 pubs, owns Sweden’s most popular chain of budget hotels and pubs and is one of the richest men in Scandinavia.

According to consulting firm McKinsey, almost 40% of the leading US industrial companies toppled from the first quartile of their sectors during the 2000-01 recessions. A third of leading US banks met the same fate. Ironically, during the same time, 15% of companies that were not industry leaders prior to the recession, vaulted into that position. Bad times are good times for people who have the resolve to emerge leaders.

Leadership Takeaway: The Chinese character for “crisis” consists of two symbols. One means “danger,” the other “opportunity.” Every bad time hides an opportunity in it. It would be visible only to those people who really want it to see it. Use the current recession to your advantage to hone your leadership skills and to elevate your team to the next level.

Bisleri boss Ramesh Chauhan plots new rags-to-riches story

Dear students

  Good news to understand social responsibility of business  and  tapping business oppurtunity

Gautam Bansal

MUMBAI: Early this year, a bunch of unlikely ‘business associates’ trooped into the Andheri, Mumbai office of Bisleri International chairman, Ramesh Chauhan. As they cast nervous, furtive glances, it was evident they were uncomfortable in the classy confines of the headquarters. After all, they were more familiar with Mumbai’s streets that they scour for many hours daily. They were rag pickers. They had come to meet Mr Chauhan to review the progress of a ‘business alliance’ that the chairman-and-rag-picker combine had co-created a couple of years ago.

Mr Chauhan, the diminutive, yet feisty entrepreneur, had initiated this partnership to tackle an environmental hazard — over 3 lakh tonnes of PET containers are used and discarded every year. Polyethylene Terephthalate, popularly known as PET, is a non-biodegradable plastic used to package drinking water, carbonated drinks and juices.

Till recently, PET scrap was considered worthless even by rag pickers. Hardly anyone in India’s vibrant raddi market would buy it, leaving the unsightly garbage littered all over. So, Mr Chauhan stepped in and built a partnership with rag pickers, announced attractive prices for PET garbage, commissioned collection centres, purchased about 5000 kg every month, processed it and sold it to companies like Reliance Industries. His intervention birthed an entire PET recycling ecosystem that now collects about 1,200 tonnes of PET waste from Mumbai’s streets every day, according to industry estimates. Another 700 tonnes are collected from the rest of Maharashtra.

Mr Chauhan’s review meeting with the rag pickers that day was to take stock of how profitable the whole initiative was for them.

Rag pickers get other jobs

“Look,” says Mr Chauhan, “rag pickers are no invention by Bisleri. We only tapped the community to recycle PET scrap. And this is a business transaction — the focus is to make it a viable venture for the rag pickers.”

After the success of this pilot project, Mr Chauhan is now replicating it nationally. He has charged his army of 1,500 distributors and 2,300 odd sales staff across the country with the responsibility of seeding and setting up similar PET waste recycling ecosystems in their geographies.

They will do what Mr Chauhan did in Mumbai — establish such ecosystems, buy scrap from rag pickers through an elaborate distribution chain, identify users for the scrap, and gradually pull out once a self-sustaining cycle has kicked-in. Like Mr Chauhan does now, they too will continue to oversee this ecosystem ensuring it works smoothly.

The total organised bottled water market is estimated to be about `3,000 crore and is growing at 30% annually. Bisleri has a 60% market share. It’s a `10,000-crore market, including the unorganized sector.

“Of course, there are other competitors (who also generate PET waste). But as the largest corporate player, the responsibility rested with us,” says Mr Chauhan. Bisleri encourages rag pickers to pick up any PET bottles, including that of competitors.

PET waste can be recycled into carpets, car parts, fabrics, Fiberfil (for products like pillows and jackets), and also for roads where the recycled plastic is mixed with asphalt. The PET powder enhances the bonding ability of asphalt which strengthens the roads.

Stitching together a partnership with rag pickers wasn’t easy. They are a close-knit community that’s driven by trust and fear. Each rag picker has his turf marked out and no one ventures outside it without the leader’s permission. And if one of the members violates the unwritten code, the whole fraternity disowns him or her.

To begin with, a couple of Bisleri employees gingerly made contact with a few rag pickers in Dharavi. “We requested them to help us clean up the environment by working out a profitable model for them. We spent hours explaining everything,” says Ms Joyce Fernandes, a senior Bisleri executive closely associated with the entire project. Mr Chauhan, who once built iconic brands like Goldspot, Thums Up, Limca and Maaza (he sold these to Coca-Cola in 1993) then roped in the Indian Education Society’s management and research centre’s student body called RHYTHM. It studied 56 rag pickers and 38 scrap dealers (bhangarwallas) and found that the rag-picking community chose PVC waste over PET. The former was easier to recycle and re-mould. PET scrap, on the other hand, had no buyers.