Job Creation Is Our Biggest Challenge Today: Sunil Kant Munjal
Excerpts:
What is Sunil Kant Munjal passionate about?
That is a difficult question to answer. But if one is passionate about life, one tends to do things that meld into each other over a period of time. So, I enjoy what I do, regardless of what I am doing and where I am doing it. It is difficult to answer it in a single line because over a period of time I have done many things and I have continued to enjoy each one of them, as I did them.
Being an educator and having set up institutions, you got into skill building 13 years back by setting up Mindmine institute. You started Hero Mindmine summit to create a think tank that guides the government. You have invested in social impact fund; you are also an angle investor. So, are education, skill building and creating social impact is the most important agenda for you?
I am very blessed. I didn’t do anything to be born in the kind of family I was born in. I got a lot of opportunities and availability of jobs. So, I have a responsibility, in a country where 250 million people don’t get 2 meals a day. It is unfair if people like you and me don’t do anything beyond what we usually do as a business for ourselves. So, we have launched multiple initiatives on education, training, skills, healthcare, clean drinking water. This is how the Mindmine summit came about. The summit is in its 11th year now. I did a report when the summit started that India is likely to face serious constraint of people with requisite skills and the right attitude to grow India’s economy. That was a time when we were really on an upswing and it seemed like nothing could go wrong. But, pretty soon we hit a wall in terms of capacity of our ability to execute because we had not trained our people with the right skills.
Are you of the view that we will achieve the target of 50 million jobs by 2030?
This is one of the biggest challenges for us as a nation. Though, there are a lot of things going in our favour, but we need to ensure that we keep an eye on the big problems. Very often we talk about India’s great demographic dividend that we see. Interestingly, if you talk about 50 years back, we used to address India’s population as a problem. But, in the last 20 years, we have started using this as our biggest asset because the Indian minds have done amazing things around the world. We use to talk about the trickle-down effect in economy where the benefit starts from the top and continues to go to the bottom. But, we don’t have the patience to wait for the effect to trickle all the way to the bottom. There are large numbers of people who don’t have access to the economic miracle taking place. We need to figure out a way to accelerate this whole process. What you need is productive sustainable opportunities.
What are the most important things that the Prime Minister is tackling or needs to tackle?
These three are the most important ones; education, health and economic opportunities. But, if you look at the circle around this, things like improving productivity in farms and industry. The good thing is that we will be globally competitive; the bad thing is automation will cut some jobs. Many of the jobs which are today done by people will get automated. Urbanization will come into play and we genuinely need to go out there and build the 100 smart cities we were taking about. We are also going to see the world’s largest migration; from rural areas to small towns, from small towns to big cities and I am not sure we are prepared for that yet.
You are a second generation entrepreneur. What is your advice to first generation entrepreneurs?
If you find a way to do things that you are passionate about, your ability to be effective is many times higher. You have to commit yourself to the cause you have chosen. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. If you are not making mistakes, you are not on the right track. Since your question is about business, whatever you do must have a need. If you want your service to grow, it has to meet a felt need. You must influence people around you in a positive way.
You are also the president of AIMA. What is your advice to the CEOs running companies?
Availability and access of information of every individual has increased many folds. If you are a leader, you have to realise that you are not the custodian to all of the information in that organization. There are other people who will know as much as you and there will be people knowing much more than you. This is why the value system becomes more important. As a leader you have to do the right thing in the right way. You are not just looking for the destination; you have to enjoy the journey as well.
For you making social impact is equally important as setting up a profitable and sustainable business. Where does that come from?
It is mainly the family upbringing. What we saw from our parents and grand-parents. It is important for you to work hard for your business because only if you are profitable, you can be charitable. You just can’t start giving away the money if you don’t have it. The more important thing in charity is giving off your-self. There are people who will just write checks, but we have chosen the path where we participate.
There is a new normal, whether you look at the leadership of nation, enterprising, technology. What is your advice to the existing industrialists who are planning to make a leap in this new normal?
The new normal is the ability to see far ahead from where we are today. But, it is also about understanding that the challenges will be very rapid. The pace of change itself has changed. There is something with the new technology, it gets out-dated very quickly. The new normal requires keeping an eye on everyday normal incremental changes and also keeping an eye on the big changes taking place. The smarter leaders are saying, ‘I will not only look out for today, but I will position my-self to where the business might get in the next few years’.
Your father has had a huge impact on who you are and your philosophy. Who are the other people that Mr. Munjal looks up to?
My father and my 2 uncles have been a hero for me. They were quite unique in individual functionality and collective functionality. There are also other people who inspire you though you may have never met them. There are people like Mahatama Gandhi, C.K. Praladh and Arun Maira. I have found that I learn from many people I meet and they don’t necessarily have to be older than me. I have met many younger people who are smarter than me.
Our current Prime Minister is a transformational leader. What do you think about the progress this Prime Minister and the government has made and where is the government heading?
The government is doing something absolutely transformational for this country. Nowhere in a Democracy, have I seen a leader take decision whose result is not visible 2 or 3 years out. But, here is a leader taking decisions whose results will take 5, 10 or even 20 years to be out. The government is trying to pull India out in the next century. India will not be recognized as the same country it is today. The world has noticed, everyone knows that something is going on in India. Our communication still needs to transform as we are doing other works. We want to send our people out in the world. Government’s job is to facilitate. It is us as people and organizations that need to get the job done. India is getting really better in the Ease of doing business. If we create facilitating environment for the individual enterprises, it will take us to where we need to get to, which is clearly among the leading nations in the world.
Make in India is something that is a part of Prime Minister’s policy to make manufacturing more competitive. How do you see Make in India panning out on ground?
Make in India is a brilliant idea, but people need to understand that it is not like a magic button, which you push and the manufacturing will start. A series of actions need to take place at the Center and at the States. Services have leaded our economy and we have done very well, but there are potentials that have not been fully tapped like Tourism. But, the big potential for growth lies in manufacturing. We have three kinds of opportunities, first building the businesses that can become global leaders like the automotive and steel industries. Second set is those which have massive multipliers in terms of job creation and economic activity like the real-estate sector. There are 154 industries directly connected with home constructions only. For one manufacturing job, you create 3-5 service jobs as well. If you look at big enterprises around the world, you will always find real-estate in the category. The third set of opportunity we need to focus on is the declining and dying industry. We must have the ability to handle problems quickly. All our three engines have to fire to be more efficient.
While we talk about GST, the IBC is a big game changer. It allows for unused assets to be freed. Can you please tell how IBC can be a big game changer and help the ease of doing business index?
We have a cultural issue in India, we look down upon failure. We have, for a long time, looked down at any person or organization, who fails at doing something. If we look at California, the place where most of the start-ups are born, they celebrate failure. In India, what happens is that if something fails, it gets locked up; the organization can no more use the resources. So, this act requires settlement of bankruptcy which has to be done within a time bound manner and those resources freed up to be re-used effectively. We have got a log jam in many of the projects, some of which have started 10-15 years ago. India’s potential is enormous, but we tend to underplay ourselves. Our ability to grow at more than 10 per cent is very real.
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