A Winter Of Hope
“The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.”
— Marion Zimmer Bradley
The worst, it seems, is over. After clocking 5.7 per cent last quarter, things are looking up for the economy with the quarterly growth at 6.3 per cent. Post-demonetisation and GST implementation hiccups, this should cheer up the union government.
This momentum needs to be maintained. India must grow consistently at 8 to 10 per cent per annum to ensure poverty and unemployment are banished. As we have maintained in the past issues, the two transformational changes may have induced short-term pain, but they are for our long-term gain.
This past week India made headlines due to another event — the Global Entrepreneurs’ Summit in Hyderabad — that saw the participation of US President Donald Trump’s daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump, and some 1,500 entrepreneurs from 170 countries. Manoj Ladwa, who has worked closely with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the past, and was one of the participants at the event, writes in this issue about the key takeaways from the three-day event.
This is also the time of the year that is politically charged. Election campaign in the crucial state of Gujarat is in full swing. We brought to you two poll surveys, and a ready reckoner, in one of the past issues.
In this issue of BW Businessworld, our focus, however, remains on corporate coverage.
The first cover of this issue is on Arvind, the iconic textiles group that began operations in the 1890s. In the last one decade or so, the Lalbhai group has spawned Internet platforms for others to sell their wares, specialised engineering, water solutions, real estate and apparel retailing.
For the cover story, our Mumbai bureau chief Clifford Alvares spent time in Ahmedabad, talking to the group patriarch Sanjay Lalbhai and his sons Punit and Kulin, both of whom are executive directors in the company.
Apart from capturing the group’s foray into diverse businesses, the package has an interview with the trio. The company chairman and managing director Sanjay Lalbhai says, “Unless you reinvent yourself, you cannot create shareholder value”.
In our second cover, we focus on the Sanjiv Goenka led RP-SG Group. While power generation and distribution remains the dominant business of the group, Goenka, and son Shashwat, are aiming to make the company relevant for the new age consumer. The revenues from its music production arm, Saregama, have increased 134 per cent, but what’s interesting is the group’s foray into FMCG. This step of the group would be watched. The package, anchored by Himani Chandna, also includes interviews with Sanjiv and Shashwat.
The third cover is a trend story that some of us may have missed. We all know that we live in a digital-first era. This applies especially to the media world where digital ventures are flourishing, print publications are getting digital avatars, and those who are not, are becoming extinct. The Indian language media in India, however, has defied the trend. Language dailies such as Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Malayala Manorama, and Lokmat are growing when many thought print was dying. The package has been anchored by Noor Fathima Warsia and Ruhail Amin.
The issue comes with more interesting stories and all other regular features. In one of such features for instance, Last Word on John Mattone, who worked as coach to Steve Jobs, he says that Jobs was not a great leader at all!
Happy reading! And do keep sending in your feedback.
