Dipak Sanghavi followed his business canny to give a tangy kick to his family firm

Founded by my father, Late Suresh Sanghavi, in 1962, Nilon’s has come a long way since its cottage industry days. Today, it is the largest producer and marketer of pickles globally. I believe that I have grown up with the company and that the two (my life and the company’s recent growth) are tied together. I must admit that I am more ambitious than my father ever was. When I took over the family business I was all of 24 years. My father had just passed away. It is not that I was forced into it. It meant a lot to my family and me. My father was a gutsy risk-taker in his early days. But, by his mid-40s, he gravitated towards spirituality. Nilon’s growth slowed down in those days. The company was put on autopilot mode, managed almost entirely by the senior management. When I joined Nilon’s in 2002 after my father’s demise, I realised our senior managers were not ambitious enough. My father used to say—find people better than you to run the company. I set about to do that. It took me 18 months to find the right person. My professor from IIM Ahmedabad introduced me to Rajheev Agarwal. In 2004, he joined us as the company’s director and CEO. That year proved to be the turning point for Nilon’s. We were making `10 crore till then. Within a year, we had doubled that to `22 crore. Since then, Nilon’s has been growing at a CAGR of 55 per cent. Of course, I have inherited my business acumen from my father. But a lot of the lessons also came from colleagues. When you grow up in a family-run business, you only have one perspective. Many secondgeneration entrepreneurs these days work for four to five years in different companies to get different perspectives, before they plunge into their family business. I did not get that chance because I joined Nilon’s right after college. Working with Rajheev exposed me to different insights. We make a good team. My advice to people who are hoping to enter into the entreprenuership field; do not enter the business with the thought that you own it. Learn from those around you. You can turn your ambitions into reality only if you take people along with you. The way Nilon’s is run today is significantly different from the way my father operated it. I take more risks than my father did. We are much more aggressive and have been so since 2004. We are also more customer-focused. Earlier, we sold products we made. Now, we find out what our consumers want and develop products accordingly with strict quality control. I did not want Nilon’s to remain a pickle company, I wanted it to be known as a processed-food company. So, we diversified our product portfolio to include instant mixes, ginger-garlic pastes and spices. Pickles are still our mainstay. But, they constitute only 45 per cent of our total business today, compared to the 90 per cent. Also, we retail from more than four lakh outlets, compared to just 35,000 in 2004. To ensure that the best quality reaches our consumers we installed state-of-the-art microbial labs. We already had manufacturing plants in Maharashtra and Assam, now we are planning facilities in south and north India to serve more regionally suitable food products. Today our products travel to Japan, France, the US, South Africa, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Canada. I am happy with our recent journey. Honestly, I would have been happier if Nilon’s had been as aggressive about branding and distribution before I entered the scene. When you join a family business, comparisons between the father and son are bound to happen. In my case, these comparisons are not about business performance, but about whether I have retained my father’s values or not. I might have expanded the company, but people want to know whether I treat our employees the way my father did. He was a pious man. I have strived to continue to treat our employees with the same dignity. If I ever come to know of people, who think otherwise, I introspect to see if I am following in my father’s footsteps. If not, I make a conscious effort to better my performance. The most important ingredient for a successful business is to put the right people on top. Once you have that, rest of the things just fall in place. Over the next three years, Nilon’s is targeting to become a `500-crore company.

Looking Back

Even if I had not been born into a business family, I would have done something of my own. It is great to know that I provide so many people with employment.