Memoirs.....Musings of a sales guy at heart.....

Episode 25...

IDV----journey continues....

The international brands division started delivering more than expectations and how.. 1) we plugged the loopholes in our distribution and RTM 2) Made major inroads in to Alpha-Colombo and ITDC 3) Managed the Delhi, Chennai and Bombay bonders...we had one in Calcutta too....4) In the domestic front, since there was no volume pressure could manage the receivables well and inventories with our distributors and focus on the 20:80 formula well....and more than anything the domestic team was so upbeat being called as the JW team....for many it was a kind of dream come true....

Nepal we had an agent only to manage the DF, as mentioned earlier, a local man and very elderly. Once I was in Trivandrum to visit the DF at the airport and I got a call from DR that I have to come to Delhi next day and fly out to Kathmandu to meet this person. I had to meet another important customer that evening in Cochin and drove down to Cochin from TVM and met this customer late evening and next day morning to Delhi to Kathmandu. Nepal DF is run by the government but this gentleman was our agent for ages (appointed by UD---those days, as mentioned earlier, UD never used to visit market and managed many a markets thru their distributors and agents only due to the size of the business). Oh what a meeting it turned out to be....our idea was to sack this person and appoint our local distributor to look after the DF too, as this person was unable to deliver..he brought his friend for the meeting and he acted as his spokesperson (excellent guy) and somehow he convinced DR that he is the best option we have in Nepal to manage the DF....hah.....back to square one....we will discuss this Nepal later...

The rumour on Diageo hiving off the domestic division in India started gaining momentum and we started getting visitors from UK but all hush hush....one guy who was kept on his toes was Rodney as he was privy to what was happening. Diageo HQ announced finally their decision to sell off domestic portfolio of Gilbey's range, polychem brands along with the bottling unit at Nira-Maharashtra.....and appointed a consulting firm to oversee the process..forgot the name of the company. The moment it got announced DR had expressed his intent to bid and Diageo decided that as an insider it would be conflict of interest and hence DR had to resign his job....that was a tough moment for all of us-the entire team....my association with DR dates back to 1988 from my AP days in HL..I still remember his first visit to Hyderabad as VP HL and our instant bonding...he came home for a cup of coffee.....our families also bonded well.....he was my mentor and played a major role in shaping me up and also in every movement of mine and had so much of confidence in my skills and capabilities and potential. Another thing which upset the apple cart was the insecurity it had created with the entire team....everyone knew that once the domestic brands are gone along with the plant there would be lots of pink slips...

And the parleys have started....every news was from the grapevine and nothing official. DR had to have partners to bid and he started approaching all his known contacts and few had shown interest but it kept fizzling out at the last minute....DR also got relieved from Diageo and all his time and focus was to get the right kind of partner...many other domestic companies were also in the run but finally when it got announced, we all got totally taken aback....DR pulled it off in partnership with VJM..this was the twist.....DR was jubilant as the final amount paid to Diageo was zilch.....from what Diageo started as first quote and what they finally got (!).....and DR named his new company as Triumph Distillers and Vintners (TDV) and set up a fantastic office in Parel....with the full backing of VJMs brand value....Bhanu Kaila our ex employee joined him as sales head and Rahul Tandon as head of marketing....I used to visit his office regularly and spend time with him as it was always a nice feeling to be with him sans the 'deliverance' pressures!!!

Amar Raj Singh, who was handling EA in Diageo India, under DR, was promoted as CEO...Amar was such an excellent boss to work with....completely hands off and left everything to the department heads and we need to only report to him if there were some issues. He didnt shift to Bombay but used to come on Tuesday morning and leave either on Friday morning or evening. He stayed few buildings away from our office in the guest house, earlier taken for our visiting managers....and it used to be always fun. He was a total contrast to DR....the office atmosphere became lighter....

Rodney left and Sridhar Iyer got promoted as head of finance...another great guy to work with...he is heading Pfizer India as CEO now...John George got promoted as head of manufacturing (Dr Puri left)....and the new leadership felt Anupam Datta of no great shake and hence he left and in his place Santosh Kanekar got recruited as head of marketing...Sudeep was promoted as National Sales manager...Ashu as head of West and East and Gaurav Sabarwal as head of North and East....the leadership was ably assisted at HO level in all departments...we had some excellent guys in finance in Pramod Menon (he got transferred to Diageo Dubai, later), Atul (he is still with Diageo in Taiwan), Jayesh....and in manufacturing we recruited some new faces too... Satwinder Singh was one of them...HR was also pruned down...Paul Varghese and Roland part of HR....two great guys...Rajinder Rao as head of IT...Pervin Setna left and joined DR at TDV...and we recruited Andria as Amar's secretary...young and full of energy....Maria continued as my secretary...Yasmin continued to look after the logistics of DF and international imports...Sarah continued as Sridhar's secretary....Asha part of HR and admin....Ashish Monga as head of Bombay sales ably assisted by Rustom and Rajesh Israni....Rustom another rock star and currently he is based at HK and managing the DF business for PRG....Sandeep Damdare was made the ASM for rest of Maharashtra based at Pune....As Daman and MP were small business, it was directly under Ashu..

Nalin recruited Darpan Kaur as BM for SMV and white spirits....another great find...Darpan came with full of ideas and she immediately jelled with the team well....it was more of quality selling with focus on visibility and consumer pull and trade promotions....this doesn't mean there was no pressure on volumes but the quantum was lesser....Darpan was ably assisted by Gaurav Rao....(Darpan went on a transfer to Diageo Singapore and later came back to India and happily settled down well in Goa now)

(This is something I forgot in my earlier posts and hence doing it now....I recruited Vikas Bhatia when I got transferred to Bombay in 95 as TSE for Bombay...this guy came down to Bombay and his dream was to act in films....but that didnt work out...but this guy was a huge Rajesh Khanna fan and in all our meetings he used to imitate kaka and make us all laugh. He did very well in his role and got transferred to Delhi as RSE....and later left and joined Red Bull and still continuing there....)

Jasraj wanted to come back to Bombay and we had to oblige and transferred Rahul to SL....another great guy...full of energy and pleasing personality....he immediately settled down in Colombo and became a darling of the Alpha team....retained Ravinder at Kathmandu....

I was given the task of who has to stay and who has to go...Nalin and me worked this out well and Nalin was very supportive and with great inputs...also Sridhar...he almost knew everyone in the company as he was also part of the system for quite some time.....calling someone and telling them that they do not have a space in the company and made redundant is something which doesn't go well with many people...as the news breaker you have to be totally composed and listen...mind you, this is not on performance based...its more of redundancy.... Sudeep as National sales manager also took some responsibilities in terms of communication to the employees.. one of the toughest task I encountered in my career but I think I handled it well with the total support of the leadership team. Every department had to break this news to their team but the difference was that in sales the numbers were much higher and the bonding ran much deeper...but what helped me was also the high probability of TDL absorbing many of our front line guys...Arunkumar, who was looking after DF, left and we recruited Krithivasan. Krithi and self were friends from my HL Madurai days....Krithi was with McD then...Krithi from Mcd shifted to Parry to Titan and later to a company based at Singapore with HQ as HCM city in Vietnam. He wanted to come back to India (this was around 2001 I think) and that time I put a word with Venky who was heading South for SAB Miller....Krithi got the job and was based at Bangalore, and was happy too selling beer....I felt Krithi would fit the DF job well and without any second thoughts, I called Krithi as soon as Arun left and  briefed him on the position....after some dithering finally he joined us....Rajkumar another great sales guy, got shifted to Bombay to look after CSD business....

We made Krishnakumar as head of South with just a 3 members team in KTK, 2 in AP and 1 in Chennai to look after the small BII business in TN and UT...We had George, Kannan and Mudhappa in Blr....Transferred Vipin to AP to work under Srinivas who was made ASE for AP....Vipin another great guy....very sharp and clear communications....he is currently managing the DF business for PRG based at DxB....We also had Binoy Karunakaran as part of our team in Bombay....another fantastic guy....he left Diageo later and joined PRG in India and had a stint in DxB looking after their domestic business in UAE...sadly I could not accomodate KGR. And he wanted to try his hand on some business in AP but with in few months he realised thats not his forte...I spoke to Rajasekar who was in SWC-Bombay that time for KGR and KGR got a job with SWC based at Blr....this was a major relief for me as I felt I let him down at that time.

The team was small and set...after a long wait, I got promoted as COO.....that was out of blue in terms of timing and of course, I was  much elated...Amar and Nalin were instrumental in that...another thing here...Nalin, as soon as he joined looked at my CTC and felt so embarrassed that a senior guy in Diageo was paid pittance.....he corrected my CTC-and it was a huge jump- and also that of Sudeep and some other key guys....the day I got promoted as COO, the announcement came in the evening around 5ish...and we had some event in the evening at Taj......DR was an invitee there and he called me aside and congratulated me on my promotion....I should have called him and conveyed this but it just slipped my mind due to some pressure in the office that day and he felt very hurt that he has to hear it from someone else and not me.

Diageo PLC those days had grouped the markets in to Major, key and emerging markets....and each of these were handled by very able guys...Ivan who was instrumental in the Diageo-PRG-Seagram brands integration got promoted and was sent to US to head the Americas....Andrew Morgan became the boss of emerging markets,  based at 8, HP, London...Simon, Nalin's functional boss, was the HR head...and we got in to the good books of Simon, thanks to Nalin's way of handling.......Paul Walch was the CEO of Diageo PLC and Nick Ross was the CFO...great team....and there was also this policing division to keep a track of global movement of stocks and to stop parallel sales...every bottle of Diageo brands had a tracking number and our job was, whenever anything suspicious, to pick the tracking number and pass on to the team in UK and with in a maximum of 48 hours we would know from which market the stocks landed at this shelf....such an efficient team but they could not stop parallel movements.... 

Finally things started settling down with the new team in place. We need to get better numbers for JW series and other BIO global brands..we also got some French wines (B&G) in to our portfolio and slowly everyone outside India started looking at India with keen interest...We made huge inroads in to the DF business. Flemingo international a DxB based trading company entered the Indian DF business in partnership with the Ahujas of Bombay. They got their first DF shop in Trivandrum and later in Chennai, Calicut, Mangalore et al....Thampi of Holiday Marine in Ajman, set up his bond in Cochin and we started getting some business from him but we had to tread carefully as these customers are known for parallel trading....Even stocks supplied to Flemingo came under radar due to their trading connections....

Those 9 to 12 months was very exciting as well as emotionally draining due to the pruning down and integration....

So Diageo India finally became a true Global brands company.....

Lots of new things and how we went about carving out new business and starting of KAM and our local bottling of SMV in SL....in the next episode....

Till then keep safe!!!