The Fastest Growing Mid-Sized Companies in India

5th Annual Ranking 2013 SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE The Magazine for Growing Companies

THE

FASTEST

GROWING MID-SIZED COMPANIES IN INDIA

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 | 150 | Volume 04 | Issue 09 A 9.9 Media Publication | inc.com Facebook.com/Inc @inc

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september/october 2013 | INC. | 9

September/October 2013

34

The 5th Annual Inc. India 500

Presenting India’s fastest growing mid-sized companies

3

the class of 2013 The complete list

5

hall of fame

A quick glance at the winners of the past and the present lists, and how our ranking methodology has evolved over the years

62

by the numbers

Some insights into the Inc. India 500 companies using revenue categories

64

top 10 Cities

A look at the cities where most Inc. India 500 companies are based

66

Delving deep into the top 5 sectors of the Inc. India 500 and the companies that make them that

Fortune Swinger How Orient Bell’s Madhur Daga, No. 134 on the list, made his company a pan-India player overnight. Read his story on page 70.

This edition of Inc. magazine is published under license from Mansueto Ventures LLC, New York, New York. Editorial items appearing on pages 8,18, 28-33 were all originally published in the United States edition of Inc. magazine and are the copyright property of Mansueto Ventures, LLC, which reserves all rights. Copyright © 2009 and 2010 Mansueto Ventures, LLC. The following are trademarks of Mansueto Ventures, LLC: Inc., Inc. 500.

Cover design by PETERSON PJ.

2 | INC. | september/october 2013

photograph by subhojit paul

top 5 sectors

contents

September/October 2013

people at work A closer look at our top of the heap. Here are the 10 fastestgrowing companies among the Inc. India 500.

48 The Other Iron Man Puneet Arya, Arya Iron & Steel Company 54 The Growth Chaser Prashant Puri, Adlift Marketing

women entrepreneurs The most accomplished Inc. India 500 companies run by women

80 The Glow of Ambition Vandana Luthra, VLCC Healthcare

the kickstarters Companies that are less than 10 years old and are growing faster than the average Inc. India 500 honouree

84 A Versatile Businessman Anuj Saxena, Elder Health Care

90 The Travel Rangers Rikant and Nishant Pitti, Easy Trip Planners

the dependables

Meet some of the habitual winners on the list. These companies have made it to the list more than once.

96 On Top of the World Vinod Saraf, Vinati Organics 102 A Fit Business Prashant Talwalkar, Talwalkars Better Value Fitness

companies we find exciting

Our research team’s pick of the most exciting companies on the list. Thanks to our jury, we found some great names

70 The Right Swing Madhur Daga, Orient Bell

74 The Maverick Restaurateur Amit Burman, Lite Bite Foods 4 | INC. | september/october 2013

78 KL Rathi Steels 106 Bharat Serums & Vaccines

94 fan fiction

We asked some of our Inc. India 500 CEOs to tell us which fictional character they would love to go into business with, and why.

Here’s who they picked.

108 office quirks

An Inc. India 500 CEO survey on office items that never fail to catch visitors’ attention

photograph by jiten gandhi

the top 10

A photo portfolio of Inc. India 500 employees at their workplaces

contents

September/October 2013 20

28

13

14

09 Editor’s Letter

11 Launch

India and the Gender Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index: Not a very healthy relationship Why humans and robots should swap jobs Reflections of a mentor on guiding entrepreneurs through daily business dilemmas

14 All Things People

By Hari TN Organisational structures, by definition, appear rigid. But they don’t have to be. Here’s how to find the right one for your company.

Five brands. Two experts. A battle-off on what works and what doesn’t when you’re naming your brand

By Ira Swasti

18 Get Real

By Jason Fried Getting to know—really know— your customers

20 Innovation

Solving the energy crisis through this waste to energy reactor

6 | INC. | september/october 2013

23 What Makes a Brand Name

28 The Price

No one said entrepreneurship was easy. But it’s time to be honest about the real psychological cost.

By Jessica Bruder

inc.com

Contents

inc.com/sales and marketing

Three Reasons Most Presentations Fail

A great product won’t go far if the sales pitch is lackluster—and most pitches are, says Inc.com columnist Geoffrey James. Here are three common mistakes to avoid.

MANAGING DIRECTOR: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Anuradha Das Mathur Editorial managing Editor: shreyasi singh assistant editor: Sonal Khetarpal feature writer: ira swasti research head: john khiangte manager: aman shukla DEsign Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Sr. Art Director: Anil VK Associate Art Director: Anil T Sr. Visualisers: Manav Sachdev Shokeen Saifi & Sristi Maurya Visualiser: NV Baiju Sr. Designers: Shigil Narayanan Haridas Balan & Manoj Kumar VP Designers: Charu Dwivedi, Peterson PJ Pradeep G Nair, Dinesh Devgan & Vikas Sharma MARCOM Designer: Rahul Babu STUDIO Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Sr. Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

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2

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Don’t describe every one of your products in painstaking detail. No one cares. Prospective customers want to know what your solution can mean to their lives. So try to make an emotional impact.

If your pitch consists of a story about how long you have been in business and a laundry list of clients, you’re coming at it all wrong. Instead, make a connection by taking the customer’s point of view.

If you can’t articulate the difference between you and your competitors, why should a prospective customer pick you? Talk about what you do better than anyone else— and have examples to prove it.

photos.com

Too much information

The wrong point of view

the same old, same old

Content Marketing Mistakes Leading expert Dave Kerpen explains the most common content marketing mistakes he’s observed people make. Here they are: 1. They have no subscription strategy 2. They fail to inspire brand evangelists.

3. They still keep their content creators in silos.

4. They place traditional marketers in content roles.

5. They overlook internal marketing goals.

6. They miss out on opportunities to partner with traditional media.

8 | INC. | september/october 2013

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editor’s letter

Battle-scarred, War-ready Entrepreneurs tell us all the time that the journey of building a business is charged with emotions—the highs are highs, but the lows are much lower. Yet, most won’t confess that this cocktail of extremes—precariously balanced between failure and success, jubilation and despair—often within a matter of days (or, even minutes!) has changed them as people, and left deep gashes on their psyche.

In her absolutely must-read article on Page 28, Jessica Bruder calls this impact the psychological price of entrepreneurship—“a price so many founders secretly pay”—even as they bravely put on their positive, raring-to-go faces at client pitches, industry conferences and employee meets.

At a panel discussion on profitable growth for foundermanagers that I moderated recently in Vododara, I saw this brave face slip away. Just as we were about to conclude the event, the founder of a manufacturing company who so for had listened quietly, lashed out at our panel speakers. He felt their presentations on benchmark efficiency, supply chain metrics and employee motivation were far removed from an entrepreneur’s every day fires—longer credit cycles, clients who refused to pay up and bankers who continued to seek collateral to extend loans or credit limits.

His anger was laced with anguish and frustration. While he spoke though, it was incredible to see 80 other heads (all entrepreneurs also) in the audience nod in complete agreement, and applaud his ability to articulate what each of them felt, but never said.

Bruder’s moving article, and the incident in Vadodara were mulling in my head as I read the stories Sonal Khetarpal and Ira Swasti filed for this special issue—our annual ranking of India’s fastest growing mid-sized enterprises. At several points,

I couldn’t help but wonder what our winning entrepreneurs weren’t telling us when they talked about setting up a new plant, bringing in a private equity investor, or handling a factory lock-out. Had they merely forgotten the pain, or was it just too personal to lay it out for everybody to see?

Thanks to my entrepreneur husband, these experiences are part of my everyday life. Over the past few years, I’ve seen his battles grow more challenging—investor expectations, demanding clients, and the sense of responsibility to his talented team. His journey hasn’t been easy, like it wasn’t for the gentleman in Vadodara, or undoubtedly for any of our Inc. India 500 honouress.

Awards and recognition are the happy by-products of this bruising course though. So, congratulations to all our Inc. India 500 winners. Needless to say, your growth and ambitions impress us, especially in an economic environment as tough as this. But, more importantly, we recognise the price you (and your families) might have paid to get here. For that, we salute you. May you all win your many wars!

Shreyasi Singh shreyasi.singh@9dot9.in

september/october 2013 | INC. | 9

We cannot create water But Yes! Surely we can save water

You can also save water....... in your homes, schools, factories, institutions & villages For more information, please email to

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News, Ideas & Trends in Brief

launch

Gender Blues India scores low on female entrepreneurship index It isn’t surprising that India comes in at

16th place in a ranking of 17 nations for providing a healthy female entrepreneurship ecosystem in the country, according to The Gender Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI), produced by Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit research and consulting organisation Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute. The preliminary results of the ranking were announced at the annual Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network event in Istanbul in June.

The Gender-GEDI Index is made up of

30 indicators and ranks 17 countries. The index is based on individual aspirations, business environments and entrepreneurial ecosystems, and measures high-potential women entrepreneurs who are defined as innovative, market expanding and export-oriented.

At number 16, India trailed behind other developing economies such as Mexico (No. 5), Morocco (No. 13), Brazil (No. 14) and Egypt (No. 15), while coming just ahead of last-placed Uganda. The No. 1 country was the US. Other top-ranking countries included Australia (No. 2), Ger-

many (No. 3) and France (No. 4).

Ruta Aidis, project director, GenderGEDI, said that one of the reasons why India ranked so far behind was that the index did not cover the informal sector— where so many Indian women entrepreneurs are engaged in small and medium scale businesses. Here are the key findings of the report.

Economic development is not enough:

The report suggests that even if the country is economically developed with a strong foothold in areas such as legal september/october 2013 | INC. | 11

launch

Gender-GEDI Overall Country Scores and Sub index Scores

90

Gender-GEDI

80

Environment

70

Eco-System

60 research corner

Humans and Robots Should Swap

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september/october 2013

40 30 20 10

St a Au tes st ra Ge lia rm an Fr y an ce Un ite Me xic d Ki n o So gd ut om h Af ric a Ch i n M al a ay sia Ru ss ia Tu rk ey Ja pa n M or oc co Br az il Eg yp t In di Ug a an da

0

Un ite d

You'll never understand your robot until you walk a mile in his screws. A new MIT study reveals that when co-working humans and robots cross-train, productivity improves.

Robots already perform rote tasks and heavy lifting alongside humans in the manufacturing world. But increasingly, robots are partnering with people in places as complex and critical as the operating room and outer space, says Stefanos Nikolaidis, a Ph.D. student who co-authored the study with Julie Shah, head of MIT's Interactive Robotics Group.

In the study, a human and a robot (a big orange mechanical arm) had to work together on a task. The human placed screws in holes, and the robot drilled them in. Then, the pair swapped roles, via a computer simulation. Afterward, the pair returned to their original realworld tasks.

The scientists designed an algorithm that let robots perceive human preferences (for example, whether screws should be drilled immediately or whether they should be done in batches).

The cross-trained teams were 71 per cent more productive than teams that used other training strategies. Crosstrained humans also reported a higher level of trust in their wired partner.

"Whether we are talking about human teammates or humanrobot teams," says Nikolaidis, "jobs are done better when there is understanding and trust between teammates."

—Reshma Menon Yaqub

Aspiration

50

Source: Gender-GEDI Index (2013)

GENDER-GEDI Rankings 1

USA

10

Russia

2 3

Australia

11

Turkey

Germany

12

Japan

4

France

13

Morocco

5

Mexico

14

Brazil

6

UK

15

Egypt

7

South Africa

16

India

8

China

17

Uganda

9

Malaysia

rights, education and access to finance, it might not necessarily result in a healthy ecosystem for women. Sometimes social and cultural norms make it less conducive for women to become entrepreneurs. Both India and Malaysia impose additional gendered restrictions on women, in terms of limited freedom of movement outside the home, restrictions to working hours, and working in certain industries which lowers the score of these countries.

No single determinant of success:

India scored relatively high for opportunity recognition, suggesting that the female population recognises good opportunities for businesses where they live. However, it received low scores relating to institutional foundations—that is, insufficient training and skill set—which limit women’s ability to act on those perceived opportunities.

Access to finance is crucial: Few women have bank accounts in low-performing countries. India has only 26 per cent of women who have bank accounts compared to almost 100 per cent access to finance in the top-performing countries, other than Mexico (22 per cent).

Effective networking can open doors:

Networking with other entrepreneurs and having access to the internet helps create opportunities for female entrepreneurs.

Internet provides new ways of networking that eliminate temporal and geographic, as well as gendered social constraints, that can limit women’s access to information and resources. In the UK, 78 per cent of internet users are women, compared with less than 7 per cent in India and Uganda.

Gender-GEDI research demonstrates that the determinants of success for female entrepreneurship are not just personal strengths and aspirations, but a result of the environment in which they operate.

“The research clearly supports the assertion that key things need to be fixed in order for female entrepreneurship to survive and flourish,” said Karen Quintos, chief marketing officer (CMO) and senior vice president, Dell. “Increased access to knowledge, networks, capital and technology are critical if countries are to empower female entrepreneurship and create a culture of success.”

Executive coach VK Madhav Mohan reflects on his experiences of mentoring over 100 entrepreneurs.

words and decisions with it. A good leader has the internal strength to understand that she cannot control people’s perceptions of her. Only 10 out of 100 CEOs really understand leadership, in my experience. I call it the leadership deficit—the difference between the quality of leadership that needs to be delivered and the actual quality of leadership delivered. In most organisations, there is a huge gap between the two.

Q: How much does the right attitude to making mistakes determine what kind of a leader one is?

A: Mistakes are an inevitable step towards the growth of any

Leadership Dilemmas A mentor’s guide to personal growth According to management expert and mentor V.K. Madhav Mohan, a leader is always treading the subtle boundary between what is right, expedient, necessary and sustainable.

His book Lonely at the Top: Reflections of a Mentor provides valuable insights into dealing with the common dilemmas entrepreneurs face every day. Deeply rooted in Indian philosophy, the book lays down tips and tools to build an environment of trust and collaboration at the workplace. Here are some excerpts from our conversation with the author.

—Ira Swasti Q: A leader’s every word and action is deeply scrutinised. In that context, how should a CEO make sure her ability to take tough decisions is not hampered by her fear of being judged?

A: Leadership expert Warren G. Bennis once said—managers

are people who do things right; leaders are people who do the right thing. By virtue of their position at the top of the totem pole, CEOs are easy targets for judgment, irrespective of what they do. But a leader’s goal should only be to chalk out a sustainable path for the organisation and align her thoughts,

individual but most CEOs are not able to handle it well when a colleague makes a mistake. The first thing a CEO needs to do is separate the person from the behaviour. In other words, it’s important to say—“I love you. But I won’t tolerate you coming late again.” Secondly, when a mistake happens, don’t question the integrity or competence of the person who has made the mistake. If you do that, you will completely demoralise the person and rob her of all initiative and creativity because she may never try anything new again, for the fear of making a mistake. Thirdly, when a mistake is made, instead of asking who made the mistake, ask what happened, how it happened and how to prevent it in the future.

Q: Every organisation suffers from the dilemma that when you are at the top, people only tell you what you want to hear. How does a good leader bridge that gap?

A: Most leaders are not aware of this dilemma. They go with

what people tell them as the gospel truth because they are not really listening. A good leader understands that everyone who is telling her something is coming from a different angle and has different concerns and interests. Also, to understand their perspectives, you have to learn to listen very carefully. I have yet to come across a CEO who is a fine practitioner of the art of listening. The more you succeed, the less you tend to listen. Like everything else, the less you use this faculty, the more you lose it.

I call it the Talk-Listen Ratio. This ratio could be a powerful metric to help one become a good listener. It refers to the amount of time that you talk in a conversation relative to the amount of time you listen. Ideally, I would recommend a Talk-Listen Ratio of around 0.25 i.e. spend about 25 per cent of the time you spend listening on talking. september/october 2013 | INC. | 13

All Things People BY

HARI TN

Hari TN is the global head of human resources at Amba Research, a Bangalore-based investment research outsourcing firm.

A Sound Structure Ambitious CEOs must be supported by right-fit organisational structures

One of the questions that has bothered

senior managers in most high-growth, scale-up firms is—what is the right way to structure the firm? Debates around organisation structure often go around in circles because other parameters that play a role in organisational effectiveness such as strategy, quality of people and processes and incentive plans are brought into these debates without a sufficient understanding of the interplay between these parameters and “structure”.

For one, organisational structures are not cast in stone. They need to be dynamic and reflect the current situation and the problems the company is grappling with.

For instance, structuring for growth is very different from structuring for efficiency or innovation. Whatever the imperative, it is helpful to have a working knowledge of the principles of organisation design. In my experience with working with a range of organisations, four dimensions of organisation structure come up most frequently: Span refers to the number of direct reports that any role holder or individual can manage effectively. So, what is an appropriate span? Is there a number that one should aim for or does it, as most things in management science, depend upon a host of other factors? The span depends primarily upon how a team is

14 | INC. | september/october 2013

expected to be managed (hands-on versus delegation) and the quality and capabilities of the direct reports. If the approach to managing the team is hands-on, involving intense supervision and review, the span should be small. If the team comprises

individuals who need constant coaching and decision support, the span should be small. On the contrary, if the team comprises people who are competent, require and ask for a lot of head room and independence, but need support on an excepillustration by Manav Sachdev

ALL THINGS PEOPLE

tion basis, the span could be very large. It also depends upon what a company is trying to accomplish. If efficiency and profitability is a key goal, the trade-off is in favor of a larger span. If the goal is rapid growth, then the bias should be to keep smaller spans, hire direct reports who are independent and thus force the senior managers to get out of day to day management to find the time to think and execute strategically.

Secondly, all companies start small with simple structures which invariably get larger and more complex. Dual reporting is very common, as are the issues that surround it—for instance, should a regional finance manager have a firm line to the regional business head with a dotted line to the country finance manager, or vice-versa? Questions like these get more importance than they deserve simply because most people involved in designing organisation structures would like to believe that of the two alternatives, one is right and the other is wrong, and therefore, if you can figure out the right one, then all problems would disappear. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is true that one of the two alternatives may be superior to the other in a particular situation, but even this superior alternative calls for getting a lot of other things right for it to work. In fact, the less superior alternative is likely to work better if one can get the other things right. What really happens in most companies when it comes to dual reporting relationships is that the two managers (in the above case, the country finance head and the regional business head) often don’t seriously stay in touch with each other on their common reportee. So, each is likely to have a view (at times divergent) and they will carry their respective views without bothering to actually verify or compare notes with their colleague. In reality, the manager to whom there is a firm line of reporting ends up appraising her reportee’s performance without seeking serious inputs from the other manager. No structure will obviate the need for regular feedback to the individual by the two managers and calibration between them on all important issues relating to their direct report. If this is addressed, the firm line versus dotted 16 | INC. | september/october 2013

A sub-optimal structure with the right commitment to making the other parts work is more likely to succeed than an optimal structure without this understanding. line reporting becomes relatively insignificant. If these issues are not addressed, no amount of tinkering between the firm line and dotted line will solve the problems because the problem does not lie in the structure at all.

Another key decision when it comes to structuring is whether to structure by capabilities, or client segments. Companies in the services space especially face this situation. There is no right or wrong answer which is why I will just lay out the different philosophies and the subsequent trade-offs involved. What kind of companies should structure according to capabilities? As a broad guideline, organisations that rely on deep expertise or specialisation in different capabilities (such as hospitals divided on different departments, or consulting organisations structured around practices) to deliver customer satisfaction are better off structuring around practice or capability. On the contrary, when customer satisfaction is driven by an integrated response and an overall point of accountability for their problems rather than the depth of expertise, the company is better off structuring primarily around clients and adding an overlay of expertise at the back-end that may not be visible to the client. Whichever structure one might choose, as organisations scale up, they may not have a choice between capability focus and client focus.

Therefore, there is a primary dimension of organisation and a secondary dimension; if the primary dimension of organisation is capability the secondary dimension is client segment and vice-versa.

Finally, as a firm scales up, one of the key choices as far as structure goes is often about sharing of resources. Should you go

the business unit way, where each unit is fairly autonomous and usually does not share resources? If the firm is focused on growth, and has already achieved a certain scale, a structure centered round autonomous business units is a smart choice.

When it comes to organising around business units, scale is crucial because without the advantage of scale, a company is unlikely to have the management calibre that can navigate a business independently.

It’s always good to remember that autonomy supports growth only when your business units have the right leaders. There are several advantages to having business units, including faster decision making and a more vigorous entrepreneurial culture.

On the flipside, cost inefficiencies owing to excess capacity in one unit, and shortage in another do crop up in this organisation design. So, if you’re redesigning to improve profitability, this is not the right structure and it is helpful to move to a functional structure where resources are shared as much as possible.

In summary, keep the structure simple wherever possible. Introduce complexity only when you can’t do without it. Understand that a sub-optimal structure with the right commitment to making the other parts work smoothly (feedback loop, communication between the two reporting managers wherever dual reporting is involved etc) is more likely to succeed than an optimal structure without an understanding of what it takes for a structure to succeed.

Contact Hari TN at haritn@ambaresearch.com.

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Get Real

BY

Jason Fried

Jason Fried is co-founder of 37signals, a Chicago-based software company.

He is a man, not a machine.

Do You Really Know Your Customers?

I don’t know mine. But now I’m determined to get up close and personal I do most of my grocery shopping at a place called Olivia’s Market, a small grocer in my neighbourhood. In fact, I stop in at least three times a week, so I’ve gotten to know the owner, Bill Maheras, fairly well.

Now, I’m not saying we’re best friends, but over the years we’ve traded a bunch of emails and had coffee down the street, and he’s even offered me some choice Bulls tickets. Good guy, this Bill.

We also enjoy talking shop. To say that the grocery business is cut-throat would be a major understatement. Every day, Bill has to contend with slim margins, lots of competitors, scores of suppliers, and high inventory costs. No surprise, then, that Bill always tells me how lucky I am to run a software company. With high margins, no spoilage, and no inventory, our businesses are polar opposites.

But I always remind Bill how in at least one respect, he is far luckier than I: He actually knows his customers.

In today’s hundred-data-points-on-your-customer world of online business, Bill has one data point that really matters: He can recognise a customer if he sees her walking down the street. Can you say that about your company? I know I can’t.

We owners of web-based businesses love to gloat about how many customers (make that users) we have. But do we really know any of them? Sure, we can calculate their lifetime value and figure out how many times they’ve logged in over the past 90 days, what brand of mobile phone they use, and how much they spend a month. But we wouldn’t know who they were if they walked in our front doors.

The owners of such locally based businesses as Olivia’s don’t get glossy magazine covers, and industry websites never claim that they are changing the world. But I am more convinced than ever that we can learn a lot from the Bill Maherases out there.

Why don’t I know my customers the way Bill does? Obviously,

18 | INC. | september/october 2013

scale is one reason: We have tens of thousands of individual paying customers. Another is geography; we have users in more than 50 countries, and it’s not so easy to strike up individual relationships with them.

But the main reason is that our business is built on self-service.

Customers buy Basecamp without ever having to interact with us. If they do have a question, we handle everything via email. We’ve been in the business of automation. We’ve never really valued full service.

There is nothing wrong with this. Our customers love our product.

And they love that they don’t have to talk to sales people, make any phone calls, or wait for someone to approve their purchase to sign up.

But what if we tried to run our business more as Bill does? Is it possible to create a model in which we get to see—or at least hear—our customers on a regular basis; in which we know their names, their businesses, their stories; in which we might even recognise them if we bumped into them on the street?

I want to see if we can do this kind of thing at 37signals. How much better can we be if we know our customers for real, not just as data points?

So that’s what we’re going to do with our next product. It won’t be self-service; it’ll be full service. Rather than no touch, it’ll be high touch. If you want to buy it, I want to get to know you a little first. A phone call, a videoconference, whatever—I just want to know who my customers are so I can really understand why they want to buy. I want to know if I can really help them.

What’s this product? Well, that’ll have to wait for my next column. Until then, go meet your local grocer, dry cleaner, and shop owner. Really talk to them. And let them inspire you.

Follow Jason Fried on Twitter: @jasonfried. illustration by Manav Sachdev

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innovation

Companies on the Cutting Edge

“We aim to solve the problem of waste segregation in India by handling waste at its source.”

—Sreekrishna Sankar, co-founder, GPS Renewables

2 0 | INC. |

september/october 2013

BioOrja

GPS Renewables

From waste to energy

As Sreekrishna Sankar and Mainak Chakraborty were scouting for ideas to start a clean energy business after graduating from IIM Bangalore, they learnt that more than 60 per cent of all waste-to-energy plants in India are defunct. There is just no provider with the biotechnology know-how to run these systems efficiently, says Sankar. It was then that they stumbled upon the high-temperature biogas plants at Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. Based on that model, the duo built BioOrja, a waste-to-energy reactor fit for Indian conditions. It took the duo over one and a half years to come up with the patented heating system that makes BioOrja 40 per cent more efficient than conventional biogas plants (at room temperature). Also, BioOrja requires absolutely no water to run, unlike conventional plants which are water guzzlers. This has drastically reduced the reactor’s operational cost and size. It offers other advantages too—easy on-site assembly; portability and zero-odour which makes installation viable in apartment complexes, hospitals, corporates and restaurants. BioOrja can be customised to handle 100 kg to 5,000 kg of biowaste. Since its commercialisation in September 2012, BioOrja has been deployed in five locations. Price: `6-40 lakh, depending on its size.

Recognitions received 50 Most Promising Start-ups, Kauffman Foundation Winner, Cleantech Category 2013, Sankalp Award Top Innovators India (under the age of 35), MIT Technology Review

Advantages Allows customisation 2.5 times faster waste digestion Requires an area of 10 to 20 sq metres No civil work required

photograph by pauloumi

reported by Sonal Khetarpal

Business grows

with www.essindia.com

ebizframeERP

What makes a

Name?

Two branding experts break it down for us

by Ira Swasti

september/october 2013 | INC. | 2 3

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M

ost brand names of traditional businesses in India can be broken down into three categories: the owner’s family name, some combination of her son’s, daughter’s or spouse’s name and a God or Goddess’ name. More often than not, these names are followed by more uninspiring and cumbersome words such as “construction equipmens”, “textiles and industries” or “banquets and hotels”. Names that leave no scope for imagination or innovative brand communication. Then, there is a new breed of e-commerce and young tech entrepreneurs who usually rely on friends and family to come up with a name that is “catchy”, “sounds” nice and has a domain name available. But there’s no clear method to this brand naming process and even less thought goes into how the name may be perceived by potential customers. So how does one go about naming a brand?

While parameters for good brand names vary across categories, there are some qualities that are common to all good brand names. “A name with freshness, communication possibilities, evocativeness and ease of pronunciation can work wonders,” says PC Muralidharan, cofounder of the Chennai-based naming consultancy Albert Dali. “It may or may not cue the service or the product. If a fashion brand can be named Diesel, a tech company be named Yahoo and both work so

What makes a Brand Name?

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Brand: Ira Thing

The product: It’s a budget education tablet that supports course materials for CBSE, ICSE and IIT JEE in English, Hindi and other regional dialects of the country.

Founder’s Take Milind Shah, founder, Wishtel (makers of tablet Ira Thing): Ira is another name for Goddess Saraswati, the Goddess of knowledge, in Sanskrit. As we were building a knowledge product, we wanted a name that symbolised that.

We also needed a name that was short, sounded trendy, was easy to identify and could be associated to an IT product. Once Ira was identified, we wanted a suitable brand extension for our entry level product as it was targeted towards the youth. The word “thing” is a slang used by youngsters these days, so we thought it made a good brand extension.

We wanted people to talk about that new Ira Thing in the market.

Expert take K Pradeep, founder, Niyati: Ira is great.

But the ‘’Thing’’ doesn’t really go well for a brand name. I did like their rationale to connect with the in-thing of today’s generation. May be a hyphenated name IraThing would have helped, although I

would still prefer something more jazzy.

Moreover, Ira works when it is small letters or mixed case, but not when it is in all caps, as IRA abbreviates to a lot of institutions and organisations that are misleading (about 67 crore matches for IRA on Google and Goddess Saraswati is not on the top of those matches). A nice fusion of mythology (Ira for Goddess Saraswati), and modernity (Tab, Social, Connect etc) could have worked, something like Tabira comes to mind.

Easy to remember Conveys brand value Hints at the service/product Innovative

PC Muralidharan, founder, Albert Dali: An ethnic name such as ‘Ira’ works reasonably well here as it clearly targets the Indian market. While Ira seems to be pretty fresh, the addition of Thing, however much they try to portray it as a youth lingo, somehow brings the uniqueness level down a tad bit. But overall, the name is fairly decent to evoke curiosity.

Freshness Communication possibilities Evocative Easy to pronounce

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well, we have something to learn from that,” he says. His brand naming philosophy is clearly visible in his company’s name itself.

Albert Dali comes from the combination of the names of Albert Einstein and Salvador Dali, to highlight a perfect blend of the left and the right brain. It is complemented with a logo of Dali’s iconic moustache and Einstein’s pulled-out tongue.

But, just as names are subjective; so is the approach to naming. K Pradeep, founder of the brand identity consultancy Niyati believes that it is better to have a name that refers to the product or service.

“If the brand name could convey what the product or service does or at least convey the values of the company, it becomes easier for people to catch on to it,” he says. The brand naming business of his company is called Nameow!; a pretty straight forward name with a logo of a cat next to it.

Typically, for agencies such as these, the brand naming process begins with a client brief, which can be as short as a oneline e-mail saying “We need a name. We’re starting a company” to one with a more detailed description that outlines the specifics of the company, its products, and even what letter the name should start with (for those into numerology).

Yet, most entrepreneurs underestimate what all needs to be considered before coming up with a suitable name, Muralidharan and Pradeep say. So they send their clients questionnaires containing up to 50 questions such as why the company is different from its competition, what the competition is, what the company’s core values are, whether the business is offline or online and whether the owner aims to take it global or keep it local.

After this detailed interrogation, names are legally vetted for trademarks and available domain names and this entire process may take up to 10-15 days for small companies or a few months for bigger ones.

At the end of the day, while the approach to naming brands may differ (there could be 600 styles of naming, if the Dali founders were to believed), a memorable brand name is one that evokes emotion and has a story to tell.

We decided to put these wordsmiths to work by getting them to evaluate five “live” brand names. To be fair, we gave the owners of these brands an opportunity to tell their stories too. The stand-off is ready. We’ll leave it up to you to judge:

What makes a Brand Name?

Brand: V Resorts

The service: A chain of budget resorts that provides elegant but limited services to its guests such as no service after 10pm, only buffet-style dining and no promise of an intercom or WiFi. Founder’s Take Vaibhav Dayal, founder, V Resorts: The resorts are not named after my initials. The brand name stands for three things that describe the resorts. View: All our properties promise a great view from each room. Value for Money: These are budget category resorts. Vacation: All our properties are in offbeat locations that promise a unique vacation with various adventurous activities.

Expert Take: K Pradeep: The name can’t get any shorter. What works is that it’s simple and straight to the point.

The rationale of the three Vs (view, value, vacation) also goes well. The logo could have been better. In all, it adds to another V for Victory. The flipside however is that there is competition and copycats in all sizes. V Holidays, V Travels, and V for Virgin (the big daddy of branding in airlines, travel).

Easy to remember Conveys brand value Hints at the service/product

Innovative PC Muralidharan: I’ll call this a bland name, not a brand name. It achieves nothing. It’s not memorable. It neither has communication possibilities nor does it evoke a feeling inside you. The fact that a letter ‘V’ can convey all these multiple things is just in the minds of the founders. Moreover, the possibilities of coming up with absolutely splendid names is high in the category of leisure and travel.

They should have taken advantage of that.

Freshness Communication possibilities Evocative Easy to pronounce

Brand: Joognu

The service: It’s an online platform where parents can save memories of their child from the time she is born till she grows up— in the form of photos, videos, diary entries and more. Parents can then share the password as a gift on the child’s 18th birthday.

Founder’s Take Anirvan Dam, founder, Joognu: Joognu means a firefly in Hindi. It is the only bioluminescent known to mankind, the one which glows within. We believe that when parents share the child’s memories with her as she grows up, they spread the glow of happiness in their child, thus becoming Joognu themselves in the child’s life. We think the name is catchy.

Since it’s a single word, brand recall is good and it communicates the essence of the idea, even if not in the literal sense.

Expert Take K Pradeep: Jugnu sounds better than Joognu, but probably the domain name wasn’t available.

Their analogy to a firefly and its scientific properties seems to be a force fit to the rationale. I believe

there are more creative names to call this unique photo memory timeline service. The plus that I saw was the firefly character sitting somewhere in the footer of the web page. I wonder why this mascot was not taken seriously into the branding. The name and the mascot together could be a cartoon blockbuster, but definitely not an online photo album service.

Easy to remember Hints at the service/product Conveys brand value Innovative PC Muralidharan: For starters, the name is fresh. It’s interesting enough for people to connect to the service they provide. The pitfall is that it’s a vernacular name. Vernacular names may not be the best bet, especially if one’s business model is to operate out of the World Wide Web. The name needs to have a global appeal. For that matter, even in India, it will resonate only with the Hindi-speaking audience.

Freshness Communication possibilities Evocative Easy to pronounce september/october 2013 | INC. | 2 5

What makes a Brand Name?

Some famous brands that changed names Google: It’s common knowledge that the name Google evolved from “googol”. But not many people know that even before that, the search engine ran as ‘BackRub’ for a year until the founders changed the name in 1997.

Founder’s Take: Sujayath Ali, co-founder, Voonik: We got “Voonik” as a play on the word “unique” and quite liked it. We wanted a name that was a single word, unique, memorable, had a domain name available, preferably not a dictionary word, had a bit of coolness when pronounced and the ability to become a verb (like Google). We had a few fashion related names such as shopmirchi.com but we rejected them because they did not allow us to pivot if our initial business model doesn’t work out.

Expert Take K Pradeep: Good thinking! The name matches the requirements laid out by the team to the T. It also has a global appeal. It is a good idea to bring the name into the functionality of the website—as in Vooniked by customer name.

What would work is if their products and delivery culture is as voonik as its online service.

Easy to remember Conveys brand value Hints at the service/product Innovative PC Muralidharan: How is Voonik reminiscent of unique, even if it is a laborious play on the word? In any case, the popular Japanese apparel brand Uniqlo does the job tad better. They promise unique clothing. In fact, Voonik offers much more as a business idea. They appear almost as a bespoke stylist offering their services online. With Voonik, it’s a fabulous idea clogged inside a tenuous brand name.

Freshness Communication possibilities Evocative Easy to pronounce

2 6 | INC. | september/october 2013

Oracle: Earlier known as

Pepsi-Cola: In 1893, Caleb Bradham, the young pharmacist from North Carolina began experimenting with a variety of soft drink recipes— one of them made of carbonated water, sugar, vanilla, rare oils and cola nuts. He called it Brad’s Drink. In 1898, Brad’s Drink was renamed “Pepsi-Cola.

Brand: Gelitalia

The service: A popular ice cream parlour in Mumbai that sells gelatos.

Founder’s Take Chaitali Bajaj, owner, Gelitalia: Gelitalia sells gelatos—ice creams with little or no air— and Italian gelatos. So if you break down the name, gel comes from gelatos and Italia comes from Italy.

Gelato in Italian also means ice creams. So it’s an apt name for our ice cream parlour which has an extensive variety of gelato flavours.

Expert Take K Pradeep: No amount of rationale can actually convince (forget justifying) that it is not genitalia, but gelitalia unless the client intentionally wanted to bring a sexual connotation to their brand. Even then, it is unacceptable. If they did want to pur-

sue the story about fine Italian gelatos, they should have tried better word-matching than zero in on this one. Something like an iGel or Gely, or an abridged version Gelita would have been better, if available.

Easy to remember Conveys brand value Hints at the service/ product Innovative

PC Muralidharan: My suspicion is that the owners have come up

with this coinage knowing fully well that it would rake up some issues. There are certain categories where such play-on-word names can make sense and would work well. But food is not one of them. One always needs to check the connotation of a name from every possible angle before finalising it. Else, it may backfire badly and affect the brand’s long term growth or vision.

Freshness Communication possibilities Evocative

Easy to pronounce

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Brand: Voonik

The service: An online personal stylist service that handpicks the best clothes for customers, based on their body type and style preferences. It provides instant recommendations from stylists on what kind of clothes, jewellery and accessories will suit the buyer, how to wear them, and what to pair them with.

St George Umbrella: The famous umbrella brand founded over five decades ago in Kerala changed its name after the family business of umbrellas split among the founder’s two sons. One son changed the brand name to Popy and the other to John’s.

Relational Software, the company officially switched names to Oracle Systems in 1982. The change was prompted because the company’s most successful product, the Oracle Database, had become more popular than the actual company.

2 8 | INC. | september/october 2013

THE PRICE No one said building a company was easy. But it’s time to be honest about how psychologically brutal it really is—and about the price so many founders secretly pay

By Jessica Bruder IllustrationS BY SHIGIL NARAYANAN

By all counts and measures, Bradley Smith is an unequivocal business success. He’s CEO of Rescue One Financial, an Irvine, California–based financial services company that had sales of nearly $32 million last year.

Smith’s company has grown some 1,400 per cent in the last three years, landing it at No. 310 on this year’s Inc. 500. So you might never guess that just five years ago, Smith was on the brink of financial ruin—and mental collapse. Back in 2008, Smith was working long hours counseling nervous clients about getting out of debt. But his calm demeanor masked a secret: He shared their fears. Like them, Smith was sinking deeper and deeper into debt. He had driven himself far into the red starting—of all things—a debtsettlement company. “I was hearing how depressed and strung out my clients were, but in the back of my mind I was thinking to myself, I’ve got twice as much debt as you do,” Smith recalls. september/october 2013 | INC. | 2 9

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He had cashed in his 401(k) and maxed out a $60,000 line of credit. He had sold the Rolex he bought with his first-ever paycheck during an earlier career as a stockbroker. And he had humbled himself before his father—the man who raised him on maxims such as “money doesn’t grow on trees” and “never do business with family”—by asking for $10,000, which he received at 5 per cent interest after signing a promissory note. Smith projected optimism to his co-founders and 10 employees, but his nerves were shot.

“My wife and I would share a bottle of $5 wine for dinner and just kind of look at each other,” Smith says. “We knew we were close to the edge.” Then the pressure got worse: The couple learned they were expecting their first child. “There were sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling,” Smith recalls. “I’d wake up at 4 in the morning with my mind racing, thinking about this and that, not being able to shut it off, wondering, When is this thing going to turn?” After eight months of constant anxiety, Smith’s company finally began making money.

Successful entrepreneurs achieve hero status in our culture. We idolize the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Elon Musks.

And we celebrate the blazingly fast growth of the Inc. 500 companies. But many of those entrepreneurs, like Smith, harbor secret demons: Before they made it big, they struggled through moments of near-debilitating anxiety and despair—times when it seemed everything might crumble.

Until recently, admitting such sentiments was taboo. Rather than showing vulnerability, business leaders have practiced what social psychiatrists call impression management—also known as “fake it till you make it.” Toby Thomas, CEO of EnSite Solutions (No. 188 on the Inc. 500), explains the phenomenon with his favorite analogy: a man riding a lion. “People look at him and think, This guy’s really got it together! He’s brave!” says Thomas. “And the man riding the lion is thinking, How the hell did I get on a lion, and how do I keep from getting eaten?”

Not everyone who walks through darkness makes it out.

In January, well-known founder Jody Sherman, 47, of the e-commerce site Ecomom took his own life. His death shook the start-up community. It also reignited a discussion about entrepreneurship and mental health that began two years earlier after the 3 0 | INC. | september/october 2013

“It’s like a man riding a lion.

People think, ‘This guy’s brave.’ And he’s thinking, ‘How the hell did I get on a lion, and how do I keep from getting eaten?’ ” suicide of Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the 22-year-old co-founder of Diaspora, a social networking site.

Lately, more entrepreneurs have begun speaking out about their internal struggles in an attempt to combat the stigma on depression and anxiety that makes it hard for sufferers to seek help. In a deeply personal post called “When Death Feels Like a Good Option,” Ben Huh, the CEO of the Cheezburger Network humor websites, wrote about his suicidal thoughts following a failed start-up in 2001. Sean Percival, a former MySpace vice president and co-founder of the children’s clothing start-up Wittlebee, penned a piece called “When It’s Not All Good, Ask for Help” on his website. “I was to the edge and back a few times this past year with my business and own depression,” he wrote. “If you’re about to lose it, please contact me.”

Brad Feld, a managing director of the Foundry Group, started blogging in October about his latest episode of depression. The problem wasn’t new—the prominent venture capitalist had struggled with mood disorders throughout his adult life—and he didn’t expect much of a response. But then came the emails. Hundreds of them. Many were from entrepreneurs who had also wrestled with anxiety and despair. “If you saw the list of names, it would surprise

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out of the darkness

Inc. 500 CEOs share some of their most emotionally trying moments—and their advice for getting through tough times.

Cindy Tysinger GSATi (No. 170 on the Inc. 500) When cash got tight, Tysinger’s son invested $250,000 in her company.

“That was the hardest thing ever, going to my son to borrow money,” she says. “Humbling yourself to that point is difficult. I just want to take care of everybody, you know?” Around that time, anxiety made it hard to sleep and blunted her appetite. She lost 30 pounds. Her family tried to make her take breaks by unplugging the home internet connection.

What she’s learned: Get outside. “I love to walk,” she says. “Even if I was thinking about things I needed to do, I was in fresh air, nature.”

Toby Thomas EnSite Solutions (No. 188) Thomas started his company with two partners who, he claims, did not do their share of the workload. Six months later, he bought them out. “That was a very scary point,” he recalls. “When you go into a business with partners, you’re spreading the risk out. But when you suddenly don’t have that support system, it’s like you’re in a black hole.”

What he’s learned: Find a CEO support group. Thomas is a member of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a global nonprofit founders’ network. “It’s very Skull and Bones,” he says. “People completely open up. You have to sign a constitution that says you can’t even tell your wife about what you talk about.”

Grier Allen BoomTown (No. 433) A publicly traded company bought Allen’s main competitor and rebranded its entire business around that company’s technology. Allen tried to stay calm and focus on the market segment where BoomTown was strongest, a strategy that later paid off. But the stress was getting to him and shortening his temper.

What he’s learned: Jog it off. “Running releases a lot of stress,” he says.

“It clears my mind and lets me detach from the digital world for a little while. If I don’t get out and run at least twice or three times a week, I just start feeling crazy.”

Yisroel Bruce Krinsky Renegade Furniture Group (No. 127) Krinsky’s first venture, at 21, was importing dried-fruit energy bars from South Africa. He got the product into 200 stores, but there were no repeat orders, and the company flopped. “It was heartbreaking,” he says. “Every time I went to check on the product with a big smile on my face, it was all still sitting on the shelf. I was really upset, and I felt kind of like a loser.”

What he’s learned: Play the long game. “If you can think of any problem you have today, picture your reaction in seven years,” he suggests. “Will it be affecting you then?”

Andrew Laffoon Mixbook (No. 177) Mixbook nearly ran out of cash three times before getting venture capital funding. “We were pitching VCs day in and day out,” Laffoon recalls. “We got a lot of soft nos. I was sick to my stomach for weeks.”

What he’s learned: Remember that you’re not the business. “If your identity is all wrapped up in this company you’ve built,” says Laffoon, “when someone rejects it, they’re rejecting you.”

you a great deal,” says Feld. “They are very successful people, very visible, very charismatic—yet they’ve struggled with this silently.

There’s a sense that they can’t talk about it, that it’s a weakness or a shame or something. They feel like they’re hiding, which makes the whole thing worse.”

If you run a business, that probably all sounds familiar. It’s a stressful job that can create emotional turbulence. For starters, there’s the high risk of failure. Three out of four venture-backed start-ups fail, according to research by Shikhar Ghosh, a Harvard Business School lecturer. Ghosh also found that more than 95 per cent of start-ups fall short of their initial projections.

Entrepreneurs often juggle many roles and face countless setbacks—lost customers, disputes with partners, increased competition, staffing problems—all while struggling to make payroll. “There are traumatic events all the way along the line,” says psychiatrist and former entrepreneur Michael A. Freeman, who is researching mental health and entrepreneurship. Complicating matters, new entrepreneurs often make themselves less resilient by neglecting their health. They eat too much or too little. They don’t get enough sleep.

They fail to exercise. “You can get into a start-up mode, where you push yourself and abuse your body,” Freeman says. “That can trigger mood vulnerability.”

So it should come as little surprise that entrepreneurs experience more anxiety than employees. In the latest Gallup-Healthways WellBeing Index, 34 per cent of entrepreneurs—4 percentage points more than other workers—reported they were worried. And 45 percent of entrepreneurs said they were stressed, 3 percentage points more than other workers.

But it may be more than a stressful job that pushes some founders over the edge. According to researchers, many entrepreneurs share innate character traits that make them more vulnerable to mood swings. “People who are on the energetic, motivated, and creative side are both more likely to be entrepreneurial and more likely to have strong emotional states,” says Freeman. Those states may include depression, despair, hopelessness, worthlessness, loss of motivation, and suicidal thinking.

Call it the downside of being up. The same passionate dispositions that drive founders heedlessly toward success can sometimes consume them. Business owners are “vulnerable to the dark side of obsession,” suggest researchers from the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. They conducted interviews with founders for a study about entrepreneurial passion. The researchers found that many subjects displayed signs of clinical obsession, including strong feelings of distress and anxiety, which have “the potential to lead to impaired functioning,” they wrote in a paper published in the Entrepreneurship Research Journal in April.

Reinforcing that message is John Gartner, a practicing psychologist who teaches at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. In his book The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America, Gartner argues that an often-overlooked temperament—hypomania—may be responsible for some entrepreneurs’ strengths as well as their flaws. A milder version of mania, hypomania often occurs in the relatives of manic-depressives september/october 2013 | INC. | 3 1

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and affects an estimated 5 per cent to 10 per cent of Americans. “If you’re manic, you think you’re Jesus,” says Gartner. “If you’re hypomanic, you think you’re God’s gift to technology investing. We’re talking about different levels of grandiosity but the same symptoms.”

Gartner theorises that there are so many hypomanics—and so many entrepreneurs—in the US because our country’s national character rose on waves of immigration. “We’re a self-selected population,” he says. “Immigrants have unusual ambition, energy, drive, and risk tolerance, which lets them take a chance on moving for a better opportunity. These are biologically based temperament traits. If you seed an entire continent with them, you’re going to get a nation of entrepreneurs.”

Though driven and innovative, hypomanics are at much higher risk for depression than the general population, notes Gartner. Failure can spark these depressive episodes, of course, but so can anything that slows a hypomanic’s momentum. “They’re like border collies—they have to run,” says Gartner. “If you keep them inside, they chew up the furniture. They go crazy; they just pace around. That’s what hypomanics do. They need to be busy, active, overworking.”

“Entrepreneurs have struggled silently.

There’s a sense that they can’t talk about it, that it’s a weakness.”

o matter what your psychological makeup, big setbacks in your business can knock you flat.

Even experienced entrepreneurs have had the rug pulled out from under them. Mark Woeppel launched Pinnacle Strategies, a management consulting firm, in 1992. In 2009, his phone stopped ringing. Caught in the global financial crisis, his customers were suddenly more concerned with survival than with boosting their output. Sales plummeted 75 per cent. Woeppel laid off his half-dozen employees. Before long, he had exhausted his assets: cars, jewelry, anything that could go. His supply of confidence was dwindling, too. “As CEO, you have this self-image—you’re the master of the universe,” he says. “Then all of a sudden, you are not.”

3 2 | INC. | september/october 2013

Woeppel stopped leaving his house. Anxious and low on selfesteem, he started eating too much—and put on 50 pounds. Sometimes he sought temporary relief in an old addiction: playing the guitar. Locked in a room, he practiced solos by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Chet Atkins. “It was something I could do just for the love of doing it,” he recalls. “Then there was nothing but me, the guitar, and the peace.”

Through it all, he kept working to develop new services. He just hoped his company would hang on long enough to sell them. In 2010, customers started to return. Pinnacle scored its biggest-ever contract, with an aerospace manufacturer, on the basis of a white paper Woeppel had written during the downturn. Last year, Pinnacle’s revenue hit $7 million. Sales are up more than 5,000 per cent since 2009, earning the company a spot at No. 57 on 2013 Inc. 500.

Woeppel says he’s more resilient now, tempered by tough times.

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“I used to be like, ‘My work is me,’ ” he says. “Then you fail. And you find out that your kids still love you. Your wife still loves you. Your dog still loves you.”

But for many entrepreneurs, the battle wounds never fully heal. That was the case for John Pope, CEO of WellDog, a Laramie, Wyoming–based energy technology firm. On Dec. 11, 2002, Pope had exactly $8.42 in the bank. He was 90 days late on his car payment. He was 75 days behind on the mortgage. The IRS had filed a lien against him. His home phone, cell phone, and cable TV had all been turned off. In less than a week, the natural-gas company was scheduled to suspend service to the house he shared with his wife and daughters. Then there would be no heat. His company was expecting a wire transfer from the oil company Shell, a strategic investor, after months of negotiations had ended with a signed 380page contract. So Pope waited.

The wire arrived the next day. Pope—along with his company— was saved. Afterward, he made a list of all the ways in which he had financially overreached. “I’m going to remember this,” he recalls thinking. “It’s the farthest I’m willing to go.”

Since then, WellDog has taken off: In the past three years, sales grew more than 3,700 per cent, to $8 million, making the company No. 89 on the Inc. 500. But emotional residue from the years of tumult still lingers. “There’s always that feeling of being overextended, of never being able to relax,” says Pope. “You end up with a serious confidence problem. You feel like every time you build up security, something happens to take it away.”

Pope sometimes catches himself emotionally overreacting to small things. It’s a behavior pattern that reminds him of posttraumatic stress disorder. “Something happens, and you freak out about it,” he says. “But the scale of the problem is a lot less than the scale of your emotional reaction. That just comes with the scar tissue of going through these things.”

Though launching a company will always be a wild ride, full of ups and downs, there are things entrepreneurs can do to help keep their lives from spiraling out of control, say experts. Most important, make time for your loved ones, suggests Freeman. “Don’t let your business squeeze out your connections with human beings,” he says. When it comes to fighting off depression, relationships with friends and family can be powerful weapons. And don’t be afraid to ask for help— see a mental health professional if you are experiencing symptoms of significant anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, or depression.

Freeman also advises that entrepreneurs limit their financial exposure. When it comes to assessing risk, entrepreneurs’ blind spots are often big enough to drive a Mack truck through, he says. The consequences can rock not only your bank account but also your

“ If you’re manic, you think you’re Jesus. If you’re hypomanic, you think you’re God’s gift to technology investing.” stress levels. So set a limit for how much of your own money you’re prepared to invest. And don’t let friends and family kick in more than they can afford to lose.

Cardiovascular exercise, a healthful diet, and adequate sleep all help, too. So does cultivating an identity apart from your company.

“Build a life centered on the belief that self-worth is not the same as net worth,” says Freeman. “Other dimensions of your life should be part of your identity.” Whether you’re raising a family, sitting on the board of a local charity, building model rockets in the backyard, or going swing dancing on weekends, it’s important to feel successful in areas unrelated to work.

The ability to reframe failure and loss can also help leaders maintain good mental health. “Instead of telling yourself, ‘I failed, the business failed, I’m a loser,’ ” says Freeman, “look at the data from a different perspective: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Life is a constant process of trial and error. Don’t exaggerate the experience.”

Last, be open about your feelings—don’t mask your emotions, even at the office, suggests Brad Feld. When you are willing to be emotionally honest, he says, you can connect more deeply with the people around you. “When you deny yourself and you deny what you’re about, people can see through that,” says Feld. “Willingness to be vulnerable is very powerful for a leader.” september/october 2013 | INC. | 3 3

Slow, but Steady 3 4 | INC. | september/october 2013

In the gloomy din of today’s economic environment, our 2013 batch of honourees offer a ray of hope. The average growth might have been conservative this year, but these companies know battling on is half the war won.

3-D 500 and IMAGING BY peterson pj

september/october 2013 | INC. | 3 5

sLOW, but sTEADY

5 Yea

of Celebrating Entrepreneurship

At 37.55 per cent, our 2013 winners have registered the slowest rate of growth among all five Inc. India 500 rankings. That might not seem a great peg for an anniversary celebration but the resilience and robustness of these companies still make for a great source of inspiration.

e are proud to present our fifth annual ranking of India’s fastest growing mid-size enterprises.

When we launched the ranking in 2009, we had no idea how our entrepreneur readers, or the larger community would respond. But, our past winners have shown us that the rankings have slowly grown to be an industry benchmark that entrepreneurs aspire to be a part of. As our two-time winner Vijay Shekhar Sharma, chairman and MD of One97 Communications puts it, “The Inc. India 500 is to high growth mid-size companies what the Fortune 500 is for large enterprises.”

As a researcher, though, what is most fascinating about our 3 6 | INC. | september/october 2013

ranking campaign is that it provides a vivid snapshot of the relationship between individual company growth, and the economy at large. Each year, our list mirrors the country’s economic climate, and equips us with a deeper understanding of it. Expectedly, an important observation in this year’s ranking is the slowdown in the average growth rate of our Inc India 500. From 41 per cent in 2012, the average growth rate has fallen to 37.55 per cent this year. This is the lowest growth rate from the five years, and a huge mark down from the high of 2010 when the average growth rate was an impressive 143.66 per cent.

Consequently, the share of real estate and other sectors that flourished during the high growth years has dropped in consequence. Steel & Ferrous Metal has maintained its place though, and the Textiles sector continues to do even better. In this year’s ranking, the Textiles & Garment sector tops with a total of 59 companies. Interestingly, almost half (43 per cent) of the Inc.

sLOW, but sTEADY

ars Average Growth Rate (%) Over Five Years

Growth rate in %

143.66

150

Textiles & Garment

120

Food & Beverage Steel & Ferrous Metal

90

60

Growth rate of Top 5 sectors compared

52.7

62.45

IT & ITEs

41

37.55

30 2009

2010

2011

2012

Chemicals

22

2012

2013

42

26

79

33 40 45 45 32 33

2013

India 500 fall under the Top 5 performing sectors—Textiles & Garment, Food & Beverage, Steel & Ferrous Metal, Chemicals, and IT&ITeS. These sectors also contribute 42 per cent of the total sales of the Inc. India 500 honourees.

Pincon Spirit, a Kolkata-based liquor manufacturer, and our No. 1 company this year trumps some of the moderation that the 2013 edition of our ranking stands for. Pincon has a whopping 2,200 per cent CAGR over the past three years. Interestingly, the No. 1 company has belonged to a different sector in each of our five lists so far.

As always, this year’s ranking also represents the dynamism prevalent in India’s mid-size segment. So, even while as many as 158 companies from last year’s ranking continue to be on the 2013 list, the list has witnessed some substantial changes. For instance, the number of companies in the lowest revenue bracket (between `50 crore and `100 crore) has gone down by

20 per cent when compared to our 2012 ranking. This offers a glimmer of good news, and suggests that several of these companies have grown bigger and moved up the revenue category. In keeping with the good news, the number of companies in the `501 to `1,000 crore category has upped by 13 per cent from last year.

The fifth anniversary of the ranking also prompted us to look at the loyalty factor. We weren’t disappointed. An incredible 126 companies have appeared on our list three times, 47 companies four times, and there are 23 companies that have made an outing in each of our five rankings.

As each year, we try to bring forth a new insight into the rankings, this year we have a special category for women-led businesses. There are only five such companies on the list this year (see page 80) but we hope to see more of these hidden gems in the years to come. —Aman Shukla september/october 2013 | INC. | 3 7

The class of 2013

The Class of 2013 The Honourees

500 reasons to be optimistic about India’s growth story

31

per cent is the

average growth rate of Inc. India 500 companies in the ` 50 to ` 100 crore revenue category.

CAGR (%)

NO.

COMPANY

11

Pincon Spirit

2204.09

2

Techno Electric & Engineering Company

556.07

3

Urja Global

507.74

4

4G Identity Solutions

379.14

5

VMS Industries

332.37

6

Ashok Alco-Chem

271.11

7

Nouveau Global Ventures

244.01

8

AdLift Marketing

200.00

9

Arya Iron & Steel Company

185.45

10

VKS Projects

141.42

11

Easy Trip Planners

122.60

12

Edserv Softsystems

116.22

13

Lite Bite Foods

110.86

14

Mohan Steels

107.51

15

Southern Ispat & Energy

102.98

16

Tree House Education & Accessories

95.90

3 8 | INC. | september/october 2013

17

Rishiroop Rubber (International)

90.96

18

Shree Surgovind Tradelink

87.21

19

Harvel Agua India

80.53

20

DSMAX Properties

76.83

21

Oberoi Realty

76.73

22

Arcotech

76.15

23

Hythro Power Corporation

75.32

24

Sumeet Industries

73.53

25

Taksheel Solutions

73.08

26

Bhanot Construction & Housing

72.11

27

AISECT

70.52

28

CE Info Systems

68.78

29

Aarey Drugs & Pharmaceuticals

67.98

30

Veritas (India)

66.90

31

Vakrangee Softwares

66.24

32

Vikas GlobalOne

66.11

33

Pentokey Organy (India)

65.81

The class of 2013

34

Kothari Industrial Corporation

65.76

75

Vidhi Dyestuffs Manufacturing

42.85

35

Ontrack Systems

62.23

76

Vikas Wsp

42.82

36

Commercial Engineers & Body Builders Company

61.12

77

Net 4 India

42.41

37

Shelter Infra Projects

60.89

78

NILE

42.26

38

Vijay Shanthi Builders

60.76

79

MakeMyTrip India

42.08

39

India Steel Works

60.73

80

Ganesha Ecosphere

41.74

40

SRL

57.18

81

Globus Spirits

41.61

41

Linkson International

54.99

82

Adi Finechem

41.55

42

Walsons Services

53.79

83

Indag Rubber

41.52

43

Surin Automotive

53.34

84

b4S Solutions

41.44

44

Texmo Pipes & Products

53.23

85

Smruthi Organics

41.38

45

Eastern Gases

52.96

86

SOM Distilleries & Breweries

41.14

46

Enaltec Labs

52.96

87

Pondy Oxides & Chemicals

41.07

47

Hariyana Ship Breakers

52.29

88

Gayatri Bio Organics

40.79

48

Oswal Green Tech

52.12

89

Mayur Uniquoters

40.27

49

Veer Energy & Infrastructure

51.75

90

Spectacle Infotek

40.05

50

BS Ltd

50.72

91

First Winner Industries

39.94

51

Unique Organics

50.17

92

Sankalp Engineering & Services

39.76

52

Gravita India

49.94

93

Supreme Tex Mart

39.61

53

Synergy Property Development Services

49.60

94

Shekhawati Poly-Yarn

39.35

54

Coastal Corporation

48.95

95

Karma Industries

39.21

55

Parekh Aluminex

48.15

96

Ozone Overseas

39.06

56

Cameo Corporate Services

48.14

97

Aurionpro Solutions

38.89

57

Shree Global Tradefin

47.82

98

Infinite Computer Solutions India

38.84

58

Vikas Granaries

47.69

99

Neha International

38.61

59

Enzen Global Solutions

47.61

100

Tirupati Sarjan

38.32

60

Tirupati Inks

46.94

101

Bafna Pharmaceuticals

38.23

61

Sharp Industries

46.88

102

Dr Lal Pathlabs

37.71

62

Stovekraft

46.85

103

Shri Jagdamba Polymers

37.68

63

Sequent Scientific

46.35

104

Nitin Fire Protection Industries

37.67

64

Ganesh Housing Corporation

45.92

105

Kanani Industries

37.24

65

Elder Heath Care

44.96

106

Emmbi Polyarns

37.03

66

New Delhi Centre for Sight

44.95

107

Sarthak Industries

36.85

67

Kaveri Seed Company

44.61

108

Rainbow Papers

36.76

68

Kejriwal Bee Care India

44.53

109

Bothra Metals & Alloys

36.71

69

Astral Poly Technik

44.22

110

Prakash Constrowell

36.68

70

Himadri Chemicals & Industries

44.14

111

Atul Auto

36.50

71

Winsome Yarns

43.57

112

Shree Ajit Pulp & Paper

36.41

72

Omnitech InfoSolutions

43.28

113

Keerthi Industries

36.37

Marsons

43.12

CORE Education & Technologies

36.33

— Prashant Puri, Adlift Marketing

73

114

74

V-Guard Industries

42.99

115

Real Ispat And Power

36.26

See full story on page 54

116

Vivimed Labs

36.22

“In my whole journey of setting up Arya, land acquisition in Orissa was definitely the hardest thing I had to do.”

— Puneet Arya, Arya Iron and Steel Company See full story on page 48

“People find it strange but it’s true. So far, we’ve never had a sales team in our company.”

september/october 2013 | INC. | 3 9

The class of 2013

CAGR (%)

No.

COMPANY

117

Technofab Engineering

36.21

118

Apcotex Industries

36.13

119

Manjushree Technopack

36.09

120

Vishnu Chemicals

36.04

121

Sakuma Exports

35.91

122

Kemrock Industries & Exports

35.87

123

Camlin Fine Sciences

35.87

124

Responsive Industries

35.85

125

Narayana Hrudayalaya

35.69

126

India Techs

35.68

127

Tirumala Milk Products

35.51

128

Texplast Industries

35.36

129

MBL Infrastructures

35.25

130

Gateway Rail Freight

35.22

131

Real Strips

35.21

132

Kamadgiri Fashion

35.13

133

Tera Software

34.90

134

Orient Bell

34.57

135

Modern Denim

34.44

136

Catwalk Worldwide

34.20

137

Orbit Exports

34.02

138

eClerx Services

33.91

139

Mittal Corp

33.79

140

Bhagwati Banquets & Hotels

33.71

141

Flexituff International

33.55

142

Elitecore Technologies

33.28

143

Tulsi Extrusions

33.25

144

Vinati Organics

32.93

145

Regency Hospital

32.93

“Acting in movies and TV shows has taught me patience, which is very useful in running a business.”

146

Parabolic Drugs

32.77

147

Setco Automotive

32.53

148

Suprajit Engineering

32.31

149

Rungta Irrigation

32.28

150

Southern Online Bio Technologies

32.22

151

Arshiya International

32.15

152

Galaxy Surfactants

32.03

— Anuj Saxena, Elder Health Care

153

Shaily Engineering Plastics

31.95

154

Annik Technology Services

31.93

155

Anjani Portland Cement

31.85

44

per cent is the average growth rate of Inc. India 500 companies in the ` 101 to ` 500 revenue category.

See full story on page 84

4 0 | INC. | september/october 2013

156

J Kumar Infraprojects

31.85

157

Interport Global Logistics

31.57

158

Camson Bio Technologies

31.45

159

Mantri Developers

31.10

160

Diamines & Chemicals

30.68

161

Radhakrishna Foodland

30.50

162

Neo Corp International

30.49

163

Inani Marbles & Industries

30.48

164

DFM Foods

30.34

165

Rishabhdev Technocable

30.19

166

KIC Metaliks

30.06

167

Phoenix Mills

30.00

168

HSIL

29.93

169

Ramkrishna Forgings

29.82

170

Tab Marketing Services

29.69

171

Anil Ltd.

29.65

172

Jaihind Projects

29.50

173

Raj Rayon Industries

29.48

174

Future Focus Infotech

29.29

175

Syncom Formulations (India)

29.23

176

Sicagen India

29.06

177

Wim Plast

28.97

178

Aseem Global

28.70

179

Eastern Treads

28.55

180

Relaxo Footwears

28.51

181

Mandhana Industries

28.32

182

Shilpa Medicare

28.29

183

Indian Wood Products Co

28.25

184

Modison Metals

28.17

185

Universal Starch Chem Allied

28.12

186

Lotus Chocolate Company

28.08

187

AcroPetal Technologies

28.05

188

Arch Pharmalabs

27.94

189

Midfield Industries

27.89

190

Nissan Copper

27.87

191

Kewal Kiran Clothing

27.82

192

T & I Global

27.79

193

Asahi Songwon Colors

27.55

194

Seed Infotech

27.51

195

Aarvee Denims & Exports

27.44

196

Premier Ltd.

27.36

The class of 2013

197

Donear Industries

26.92

237

San Engineering & Locomotive Company

23.99

198

Richa Industries

26.90

238

Kalptaru Papers

23.98

199

Stylam Industries

26.58

239

Sah Petroleums

23.91

200

Paladion Networks

26.50

240

ARSS Infrastructure Projects

23.91

201

Jocil Ltd.

26.49

241

Total Logistics (India)

23.80

202

Kovai Medical Center & Hospital

26.31

242

Gandhi Special Tubes

23.77

203

Symphony

26.28

243

Sangam (India)

23.73

204

Samkrg Pistons & Rings

26.22

244

Chartered Logistics

23.71

205

Samrat Pharmachem

26.15

245

Frick India

23.70

206

Jyoti Ltd.

26.12

246

TPL Plastech

23.68

207

Bliss GVS Pharma

26.11

247

Milton Cycle Industries

23.66

208

Arvind Remedies

26.07

248

Taparia Tools

23.63

209

Cera Sanitaryware

25.98

249

Tilaknagar Industries

23.61

210

Easun Reyrolle

25.98

250

Insecticides (India)

23.52

211

Action Construction Equipments

25.92

251

Aparajitha Corporate Services

23.51

212

Satra Properties (India)

25.91

252

Himalya International

23.47

213

North Eastern Carrying Corporation

25.70

253

Modern India

23.40

214

V-Mart Retail

25.58

254

Kanpur Plastipack

23.38

215

Micro Technologies (India)

25.46

255

Ecoplast

23.36

216

Twilight Litaka Pharma

25.38

256

Anuh Pharma

23.36

217

Beekay Steel Industries

25.32

257

Hexaware Technologies

23.34

218

GPT Infraprojects

25.06

258

Associated Soaptone Dist Co

23.33

219

Nila Infrastructures

25.00

259

Lux Industries

23.32

220

Siddhartha Tubes

25.00

260

Sharon Bio-Medicine

23.20

221

Century Extrusions

24.99

261

Talwalkars Better value Fitness

23.13

222

GTN Industries

24.90

262

Bharat Serums and Vaccines

23.11

223

Banco Products (India)

24.80

263

Poly Medicure

23.07

224

Ajanta Pharma

24.72

264

CCL Products (India)

22.86

225

Sterling Tools

24.69

265

Empire Industries

22.85

226

JSL Industries

24.64

266

Steelcast

22.85

227

Damodar Threads

24.61

267

PI Industries

22.83

228

Tasty Bite Eatables

24.58

268

Shiv-Vani Oil & Gas Exploration Services

22.78

229

Advanced Enzyme Technologies

24.56

269

Kavveri Telecom Products

22.76

230

Marvel Vinyls

24.40

270

Ram Ratna Wires

22.67

231

JMT Auto

24.40

271

Autocomp Corporation Panse

22.56

232

Cerebra Integrated Technologies

24.34

272

Jindal Cotex

22.55

233

KL Rathi Steels

24.33

273

Triton Valves

22.46

234

Lovable Lingerie

24.30

274

Vadilal Enterprises

22.40

— Madhur Daga, Orient Bell

235

Kisan Mouldings

24.26

275

IRM Offshore and Marine Engineers

22.34

See full story on page 70

236

Eka Software Solutions

24.19

276

Amar Remedies

22.24

31

per cent is the average growth rate of Inc. India 500 companies in the ` 501 to ` 1,000 revenue category.

“Over the past year and a half, this is the first time I have had an executive assistant who calls me by my first name.

Now there are 10 people in the company who do that. I love it.”

september/october 2013 | INC. | 41

The class of 2013

No.

“Our biggest challenge in starting the business was that travel agents did not take us seriously.

Nishant was 19 and I was 17.

They were hesistant about signing up with two kids.”

—Rikant Pitti, Easy Trip Planners See full story on 90

“I get involved in the most trivial problems at our restaurants, even if it is a leaking tap.”

— Amit Burman, Lite Bite Foods See full story on page 74

COMPANY

CAGR (%)

277

Gloster

22.19

278

Tara Jewels

22.16

279

DTDC Courier & Cargo

21.93

280

Shakti Pumps (India)

21.84

281

Nectar Lifescience

21.73

282

Ashoka Buildcon

21.70

283

TCPL Packaging

21.69

284

Hindustan Hardy Spicer

21.56

285

Tulsyan NEC

21.52

286

Sri Chamundeswari Sugars

21.51

287

Balaji Amines

21.32

288

L G Balakrishnan & Bros

21.26

289

Gyscoal Alloys

21.25

290

Career Point

21.14

291

Polson

21.13

292

Jyothy Laboratories

21.11

293

Control Print

21.04

294

Sanghvi Forging & Engineering

20.93

295

Ruchira Papers

20.87

296

Plastene India

20.82

297

Time Technoplast

20.79

298

CHD Developers

20.78

299

Aries Agro

20.77

300

Geodesic

20.75

301

Veto Switchgears & Cables

20.74

302

Lakshmi Energy & Foods

20.52

303

Rajasthan Tube Manufacturing Co

20.49

304

Rushil Decor

20.44

305

VRL Logistics

20.42

306

Mold-Tek Packaging

20.39

307

Sukhjit Starch & Chemicals

20.38

308

K G Denim

20.35

309

Bheema Cements

20.32

310

Venkys (India)

20.27

311

Precision Wires India

20.22

312

Apollo Sindoori Hotel

20.14

313

Hitech Plast

19.87

314

MSP Steel & Power

19.76

315

Siyaram Silk Mills

19.74

4 2 | INC. | september/october 2013

316

Solar Industries India

19.73

317

Walchandnagar Industries

19.68

318

Raunaq Automotive Components

19.54

319

Josts Engineering Company

19.37

320

Cords Cable Industries

19.35

321

Hi-Tech Gears

19.31

322

Rupa & Co

19.27

323

Soma Textiles & Industries

19.22

324

T T Textiles

19.13

325

Haldyn Glass

19.11

326

Pioneer Embroideries

19.10

327

Dynemic Products

19.08

328

Suryavanshi Spinning Mills

19.05

329

Patton International

19.03

330

EMI Transmission

18.93

331

Signet Industries

18.90

332

Supertex Industries

18.82

333

VIP Industries

18.81

334

Eros International Media

18.76

335

Everest Industries

18.76

336

Ugar Sugar Works

18.66

337

KPR Mill

18.60

338

Anu’s Laboratories

18.57

339

Vamshi Rubber

18.53

340

Transasia Bio-Medicals

18.52

341

Sarda Plywood Industries

18.48

342

Ludlow Jute & Specialities

18.39

343

Sudarshan Chemical Industries

18.26

344

R S Software (India)

18.22

345

Sharda Motor Industries

18.19

346

COSCO (India)

18.12

347

Vaswani Industries

18.05

348

NCL Industries

18.05

349

Jai Corp

18.05

350

Autolite (India)

18.04

351

Commtel Networks

17.94

352

Shriram Pistons & Rings

17.93

353

Ginni International

17.89

354

Goldiam International

17.86

355

Nitin Spinners

17.77

356

Ganga Papers India

17.73

The class of 2013

357

CavinKare

17.72

398

Acknit Industries

15.70

358

Piccadily Agro Industries

17.66

399

Raychem RPG P

15.63

Simplex Projects

15.63

359

Shankar Packagings

17.64

400

360

Spark Technolgies

17.61

401

Hindustan Composites

15.60

361

Manali Petrochemicals

17.57

402

Premier Explosives

15.55

Accel Frontline

15.51

362

Gufic BioSciences

17.46

403

363

Confidence Petroleum India

17.40

404

Info Edge (India)

15.43

Venus Remedies

15.34

364

Keltech Energies

17.38

405

365

Zen Technologies

17.31

406

C & C Constructions

15.25

366

Indofil Industries

17.31

407

Lincoln Pharmaceuticals

15.17

Dynamatic Technologies

15.15

367

Sudal Industries

17.28

408

368

Associated Pigments

17.28

409

Direct Logistics India

15.14

369

Shasun Pharmaceuticals

17.13

410

Shilp Gravures

15.09

Hawkins Cooker

15.03

370

Dutron Polymers

17.10

411

371

Jullundur Motor Agency (Delhi)

17.08

412

Terai Tea Co

15.01

Jasch Industries

14.97

372

Indoco Remedies

17.01

413

373

PBM Polytex

17.00

414

Dhanuka Agritech

14.87

374

Akar Tools

16.89

415

Suraj Products

14.85

Dwarikesh Sugar Industries

14.79

375

Bilcare

16.88

416

376

Liberty Phosphate

16.86

417

Avon Corporation

14.78

377

Suryalata Spinning Mills

16.82

418

Kohinoor Foods

14.77

Jagran Prakashan

14.76

378

I G Petrochemicals

16.77

419

379

Salona Cotspin

16.69

420

Kalpena Industries

14.72

Jotindra Steel & Tubes

14.70

380

Glory Polyfilms

16.54

421

381

Ess Dee Aluminium

16.43

422

Nesco

14.62

382

Lambodhara Textiles

16.39

423

Camphor & Allied Products

14.52

Pricol

14.50

383

TalentPro India HR

16.30

424

384

Maris Spinners

16.23

425

Polyspin Exports

14.45

385

Pennar Industries

16.18

426

Sarla Performance Fibers

14.39

Sunshield Chemicals

14.36

386

Choksi Imaging

16.07

427

387

Sambandam Spinning Mills

16.03

428

Petron Engineering Construction

14.21 14.13

388

Carnation Industries

16.01

429

KDDL

389

Manjeera Constructions

16.01

430

Imperial Life Sciences

14.06

390

Srinivasa Hatcheries

15.96

431

Bodal Chemicals

14.03

Go Go International

14.02

“My late grandfather Vishnu Talwalkar imposed a strict rule—not to take any managerial role until I learnt the art and science of the fitness business.”

391

Wires & Fabriks (SA)

15.92

432

392

Samrat Forgings

15.89

433

13.99

393

Rai Saheb Rekhchand Mohota Spinning & Weaving Mills

VLCC Healthcare

15.86

IMP Powers

13.97

394

434

Cheviot Company

15.83

Bartronics India

13.95

395

435

— Prashant Talwalkar, Talwalkars Better Value Fitness

Rungta Projects

15.78

436

Facor Alloys

13.90

396

Dankuni Steels

15.72

See full story on page 102

UP Twiga Fiber glass

13.74

397

437

KSE

15.70

september/october 2013 | INC. | 4 3

The class of 2013

No.

27

per cent is the average growth rate of Inc. India 500 companies in the ` 1001 to ` 1500 revenue category.

COMPANY

CAGR (%)

477

Aarvi Encon

12.15

478

Impex Ferro Tech

12.12

438

Visesh Infotecnics

13.69

479

Goodluck Steel Tubes

12.11

439

Khoday India

13.65

480

Nitco

12.06

440

H P Cotton Textile Mills

13.63

481

Super Sales India

12.03

Valson Industries

12.01

441

B&A Ltd.

13.63

482

442

Spentex Industries

13.54

483

Lakshmi Mills Company

11.94

Pearl Polymers

11.74

443

Roto Pumps

13.49

484

444

Manipal Acunova

13.44

485

Rajapalayam Mills

11.70

445

Spanco

13.34

486

Tantia Constructions

11.69

HIL Ltd

11.50

446

Sanjivani Paranteral

13.33

487

447

Aqua Logistics

13.30

488

KLRF

11.49

448

A2Z Maintenance & Engineering Services 13.28

489

Shakti Met-dor

11.47

449

Archies

13.23

490

Gulshan Polyols

11.47

450

Uniply Industries

13.23

491

AIA Engineering

11.35

Deepak Nitrite

11.34

451

Cotmac Electronics

13.20

492

452

Precision Pipes & Profiles Company

13.16

493

Bharati Shipyard

11.33

453

Kandagiri Spinning Mills

13.14

494

Sita Shree Food Products

11.32

Maveric Systems

11.22

454

Mahamaya Steel Industries

13.05

495

455

Sree Sakthi Paper Mills

13.04

496

Scotts Garments

11.19

456

Garware Polyester

12.95

497

Indian Acrylics

11.18

Prima Plastics

11.18

457

Merino Industries

12.91

498

458

Sunil Agro Foods

12.72

499

Accutest Research Laboratories (India)

10.81

500

South India Paper Mills

10.60

459

Zenith Fibres

12.71

460

DPSC

12.61

461

Chamanlal Setia Exports

12.47

462

Dr Agarwal's Eye Hospital

12.46

463

Mohindra Fasteners

12.46

464

Bedmutha Industries

12.46

465

Amira Pure Foods

12.44

466

GEE Ltd.

12.39

467

Coastal Roadways

12.38

468

Brandhouse Retails

12.36

469

LT Foods

12.35

470

Syncom Healthcare

12.33

471

Konark Synthetic

12.33

472

Indus Fila

12.31

473

Revathi Equipment

12.29

474

Kolte-Patil developers

12.26

Over these five years of the Inc. India 500 rankings, we have come across several companies that have showcased consistent performance.

Sample this: 23 companies have made it to the list five times, about 47 companies four times and another 126 companies three times!

475

International Conveyors

12.19

Go to page 96 to meet some of them

476

Sangal Papers

12.15

4 4 | INC. | september/october 2013

Product Showcase

F

or any medium to large organization, managing IT risks involves significant time, effort and cost. Automation of this is going to be the key in evaluating how smart an organization is in evolving its security & IT risk practices Paladion’s award winning RiskDefense product suite is an easy way for organizations to manage IT risks and compliances with a

life cycle approach. It brings together all risk management processes-identification, analysis, implementation, monitoring and reporting into a single integrated platform with built in library of risks, controls and workflows. Implementing the product is fairly simple and businesses can start seeing benefits of better risk management at lower cost and effort immediately after implementing RiskDefense suite.

Current Challenges in IT Risk & Compliance Management • Risk assessments with excel sheets and manual input for threats, vulnerabilities, likelihood and impact • Monitoring and tracking risk closure status with spreadsheets, emails and telephone calls • Conducting system audit and configuration review through manual reviews • Auditor and auditee coordination, communication and resolution over several meetings and calls • Report preparation for audits, risk assessment, current status or management updates through word or excel or Power Point templates • Manual process for collecting, storing and analyzing security data for higher level metrics RiskDefense automates several tasks, including those mentioned above, thereby increasing efficiency of risk management. On an average, the organizations implementing RiskDefense have witnessed 20% reduction in effort within first year.

The main benefit of RiskDefense though is not in reducing time and effort in risk management. It is in standardizing the processes and improving both risk identification and mitigation. With its repository of risks, compliance & regulations, audit checklists, controls & best

practices, RiskDefense’s risk identification and control selection is much more effective than relying on the knowledge of few individuals in risk team. It also helps in centralized storage of all security and risk data and has smart analytical tools to derive greater risk insights that can enable better prioritization of risk treatment activities.

RiskDefense is also equipped to collect and correlate business information together with risk data to provide higher level, strategic risk reporting required by today’s senior management.

The main components of RiskDefense suite are 1. Business Context a. Asset and process inventory b. Business valuation c. Business objectives

2. Risk Manager a. Risk repository b. Risk assessment c. Risk Treatment d. Control management e. Reporting

3. Audit and Compliance Manager a. Compliance repository b. Audit checklists c. Audit planning and scheduling d. Audit execution e. Mitigation tracking f. Reporting

4. Technical audits a. Security scanning b. Configuration audit c. Solution repository d. Mitigation tracking e. Reporting

5. User risk management a. Role definition b. User access review c. User awareness d. Mitigation tracking e. Reporting

6. Risk Intelligence a. Centralized risk data b. Discovery and predict analytics c. User generated reports d. Advanced visualization e. Integrated response

RiskDefense is highly modular and organizations can implement individual modules to begin and transition to full suite over time for maximum benefit. Today it is being used by over 2000 users spread across multiple organizations in financial sector, IT & ITES and large conglomerates globally. Over last 3 years, the product has received several awards for its technology innovation

Contact info@paladion.net for any queries on RiskDefense.

Categorising Success

Cate oris

Succe Our six-month long research campaign to bring out this annual issue has lead to a wealth of information and insights. We’ve taken the help of these categories to help you get acquainted with the high potential companies that have made it to this year’s list.

The Top 10

The Kickstarters

Women Entrepreneurs

The Dependables

Which are the top 10 companies from our list of 500 bright stars this year? What do they do? How have they grown in the past three years?

Here’s a closer look at the fastest of the fast-growing Inc. India 500 companies.

Page 48—57

India ranks quite low on the Gender Entrepreneurship and Development Index globally (see report on page 11). And our Inc. India 500 list goes on to prove that further. From our list of 500 companies, we found only five companies that were led by women entrepreneurs. These outliers surely deserve special mention.

Page 80—83 4 6 | INC. | september/october 2013

Meet our crop of trailblazers. They have breached the formidable walls of the Inc. India 500 with both speed and confidence. Not only have these young and restless companies grown more than the average growth rate of the Inc. India 500 honourees (37.55 per cent), they’re also less than 10 years old.

Page 84—93

These companies have been an epitome of consistency and performance over the past five years of the rankings. Our research reveals that about 23 companies have featured on our list five times, 47 companies have featured four times, and 126 companies have featured three times. Take a look at what keeps these businesses going.

Page 96—105

Categorising Success

sin

ess

Page

48

Page

54

Page

70

Page

74

Page

80

Page

84

Companies We Find Exciting

We asked our research team to pick their favourites from the Inc. India 500 companies. Whether it was unconventional company policies such as the anti-bribery policy for Orient Bell employees or how Lite Bite Foods keeps its rental costs lower than half of the industry average (20 per cent), our team found these 10 unique gems that show immense potential for growth.

Page 70—77 Of course, none of this would have been possible without the unstinting support and valuable insights of our eminent jury. We’d like to thank Narayan Seshadri, chairman, Tranzmute Capital & Management, Kavil Ramachandran, Thomas Schmidheiny chair professor of family business and wealth management at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and Giri Giridhar, senior director, finance, at Merck, Sharpe & Dohme for their time and guidance.

Page

90

Page 102

Page

96

september/october 2013 | INC. | 47

nO.9 Top 10

Arya Iron and Steel Company

Sector: Steel & Ferrous Metal Location: Mumbai CAGR: 185.45% 2012 Revenue: `612 crore

the top 10 No.

Company

CAGR (%)

1

Pincon Spirit

2204.09

2

Techno Electric & Engineering Company

556.07

3

Urja Global

507.74

4

4G Identity Solutions

379.14

5

VMS Industries

332.37

6

Ashok Alco-Chem

271.11

7

Nouveau Global Ventures

244.01

8

AdLift Marketing

200

9

Arya Iron & Steel Company

185.45

10

VKS Projects

141.42

4 8 | INC. | september/october 2013

The Other Iron Man

Man of Steel Running the family business wasn’t enough for Puneet Arya. He had to build his own company, even if it meant working in the remote regions of Orissa for years.

Like most business scions, Puneet Arya always had the urge to create his own mark as an entrepreneur, even as he worked to expand his inheritance. Keen to start something different from the family’s ship breaking business, Arya founded the group’s manufacturing arm—the Arya Iron and Steel Company—in 2004. Within 10 years, this iron ore pellet maker has grown from one to 250 people with a production capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of pellets per year. This rapid growth has propelled them to become one of the Top 10 companies in this year’s Inc. India 500 ranking.

As told to ira swasti | Photograph by jiten gandhi

september/october 2013 | INC. | 49

Top 10

fter completing my bachelors in business management from Rochester Institute of Technology, USA in 2002, I joined my family business of ship breaking. While it was an exciting business I couldn’t see myself doing it all my life.

I was more inclined towards manufacturing and after working with my father for two years, I was constantly on the lookout for related industries to start a manufacturing business in.

NO.1 Pincon Spirit

Sector: Food and Beverage Location: Kolkata CAGR: 2204.09% 2012 Revenue: `244 crore Incorporated in 1978, Pincon Spirit is engaged in the blending, bottling and wholesale distribution of alcoholic beverages. The company also has an FMCG products wing that manufactures pickles, edible oil, jams and spices.

5 0 | INC. | september/october 2013

India had huge reserves of iron ore at the time, as it does today. But there weren’t many companies producing iron ore pellets in the country. There were three major players—JSW, Essar and Kudremukh— who either produced the pellets for consumption in their own steel plants or exported it to China, Japan or Korea. I realised that iron pellets would be the future of the steel industry and decided to bridge this gap in the market.

It was the first time our group was getting into manufacturing so it felt like a big risk. I was ready to prove myself by taking up a project that was different from our traditional family business. That is how Arya Iron and Steel was incorporated in 2004.

The region around Barbil in Orissa, has the fifth largest deposit of iron ore in the world. We wanted to be the closest possible to our raw material. I was just 24 years old when I went to Barbil to scout out the best location for our plant. During that time, our family business employed only 25-30 people because ship breaking is a contract based industry and nobody in our team was experienced in manufacturing. So I had to take the help of some Jindal Steel officials working in Orissa to guide me.

It was the early 2000s but this area was very remote almost as if it was another country. In fact, there was no railway platform at Barbil, and we had to jump off the train at the station! Also, there was no cell phone network in that region then, and I had no way to communicate with either office or home for days. We spent three days driving around for hours on roads that were almost non-existent to identify the land. It was backbreaking work.

But, that was just the beginning. Once

we had identified the land, it took us another year to get the approval from the government, and build buy-in with the area’s tribal population. Arya wasn’t a wellknow business group then. Plus, the grate kiln technology we were planning to install hadn’t been used in India before. We had our task with the government cut out—to convince them that the technology risk would be completely borne by the company and we only needed support for land, power and water. Things became a little easier when we made the government officials realise that India was exporting more than 40 million tonnes of iron ore fine when we could have used that for our domestic economy. In contrast, Arya’s aim was to produce iron ore pellets only for domestic producers.

The government finally allotted us the land in 2005 but our next challenge was to work with local villagers to convince them to vacate the land. We would sit down with the villagers telling them that the plant would also benefit their families through employment. We hired a lot of local people to work on the plant. But in my whole journey of setting up Arya, land acquisition in Orissa was definitely the hardest thing I had to do.

Unless I had the land, nothing would have moved forward. At last in 2006, we got the site cleared and the production work started. Physically standing at the site and seeing the pellets roll out was probably one of the most exciting days of my life. But soon after, I had the task of educating the domestic market to use iron ore pellets. As I mentioned earlier, pellets were not being sold in the domestic market until we came onto the scene. Indian DRI (direct reduced

Top 10

iron) manufacturers had read about them and theoretically studied its benefits but they had never used them. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do much of the convincing because I didn’t have the right technical expertise in that area. My father always says—let the experts handle the situation.

So I found the best talent in the industry to do the convincing. I just sold the pellets at a cheaper rate than we should have to get people to use it in the beginning. And once they saw its benefits, they would come back for more. Commissioning and stabilising the plant in those first few years of business took us longer than we had expected but things at Arya have become rather smooth since then. Till 2010, I used to travel to Barbil every alternate week but now I need to be there only once a month. The processes have been streamlined and professional management has been running the show. I am mostly involved in sales and purchases now.

Arya still sells pellets to the domestic market only, even after nine years of starting the company. We don’t export iron ore pellets at all. That has always been our underlying philosophy at Arya. When the domestic steel industry is suffering for want of cheap and good quality iron ore pellets, why should we focus on exports?

The government is contemplating to reduce the export duty on iron ore. But that will only encourage domestic iron ore pellet makers to export instead of sell in the domestic market, even as Indian manufacturers bear the brunt. The government should seriously look into this.

I believe the reason why Arya has grown so fast in under 10 years is the precedence given to quality over quantity. Not just in manufacturing pellets but also in real life. Before I ask how much production has taken place in a day, I ask my people about the housekeeping and hygiene conditions at the plant. I have always focused on the work environment first and then the production. I started this company with only one employee and today I have 250plus employees and more than 500 contract workers. I see my company taking shape every single day and I strive to only make it better in the coming years.

NO.2

Techno Electric and Engineering Company Sector: Electrical Equipment Location: Kolkata CAGR: 556.07% 2012 Revenue: `726 crore Founded in 1983, it provides engineering, procurement and construction services for the power sector. It has also set up over 50 per cent of India’s thermal power generating capacity and a major portion of the national power grid.

NO.3 Urja Global

Sector: Power and Energy Location: Delhi CAGR: 507.74% 2012 Revenue: `106 crore Started in 1992, it provides solar and renewable energy products such as solar street lights, solar panels, solar inverters etc for commercial, government and residential purposes.

NO.4 4G Identity Solutions

Sector: IT & ITeS Location: Hyderabad CAGR: 379.14% 2012 Revenue: `110 crore Incorporated in 2001, it provides large scale identity management solutions for government, corporate, banking and defence sectors through their smart cards and biometric technologies.

september/october 2013 | INC. | 5 3

nO. THE TOP 10

AdLift Marketing

Sector: Services Location: Gurgaon CAGR: 200% 2012 Revenue: `54 crore

The Growth Chaser Thanks to the explosion of internet, companies in the digital media and search engine optimisation space have almost become commodities. But, AdLift, a Gurgaon and Palo Alto, California-based SEO agency seems to have broken through the clutter. Prashant Puri, the company’s co-founder & CEO admits the company’s current annual turnover of `54 crore has “exceeded” the expectations they began with in April 2009. Puri was certainly well-equipped to power this growth with his experience of growing websites such as Shopping. com and Yahoo! But, he quickly demystifies the Keep It Simple, Silly philosophy—dogged monitoring of margins, a strict focus on the task at hand, and not having a sales team (yes, you heard that right, no sales team!).

As told to Shreyasi Singh | Photograph by Anubhav Das 5 4 | INC. | september/october 2013

Racing Ahead Prashant Puri realised his “sky-high dream” of making $12 million in revenue by focusing on bootstrapping, instead of investments.

september/october 2013 | INC. | 5 5

eople find it strange but it’s true—so far, we’ve never invested in a sales force. When my co-founder Vivek Pahwa and I began AdLift in 2009, we believed that if you say what you do, you deliver what you’ve put down on paper, and you do good work, you should be able to scale existing clients, and grow by word of mouth. The inspiration for that really was the Google story. Look at them, they’ve been in business for nearly 15 years, but it’s only in the last year, or

NO.5 VMS Industries

Sector: Services Location: Ahmedabad CAGR: 332.37% 2012 Revenue: `116.3 crore When the company started in 1991, it only provided consultancy and IT services. But in 2006-07, it diversified its business into dealership of Honda’s twowheelers, and later entered into the business of shipbreaking and export of ship items in 2009.

5 6 | INC. | september/october 2013

year and a half, that they have spent money on advertising. Otherwise, although they were at the centre of the advertising ecosystem, they themselves never advertised. So, even though we are not a B2C company like them, that philosophy can still work.

See, search marketing is a pretty small world. In the industry, people will find out if you’re doing good work. And, if your name comes up in a conversation, that’s way more valuable than 35 people pounding the phone with cold calls.

So, even today, we’ve got one person who is the VP, sales. Otherwise, our account management team is at the forefront interacting with the client. We have a 90 per cent client retention rate, and the top reason for actually losing a client would be that a client’s budget has been squeezed.

We internally don’t have much control over that. Needless to say, not having a bigger business development team isn’t something that is going to be a reality forever. It’s been the reality so far. But, we are toying with the idea of expanding our business development team now. That should happen at the end of this year because we’re looking at several strategic partnerships in 2014, and also want to scale up across multiple geographies simultaneously.

When we started out though, we kept things real. I think entrepreneurs can get lost in all the big talk about valuations and investments. I’ve seen that in the many years I spent in the Silicon Valley ecosystem. But, that is not the approach we took.

We bootstrapped AdLift, we built it on profitability. In fact, we were profitable from the second month itself. The only negative month we’ve had in four years was our first month.

Margin has been a key focus for us throughout. We hired people as we brought in clients. Actually, just-in-time hiring really worked for us—it allowed us to hire the right people for the right clients.

Up until now, we haven’t really worried about growth rates, although growth has been pretty astounding at 185 to 200 per cent CAGR, year on year. But, till 2011, we didn’t even put in business projections in place, however when we were starting out, it was our sky-high, almost unreal dream to see if we could grow a search marketing firm to $10-12 million in revenue in a short period of time. But, that wasn’t our focus.

We were hands down in getting the work done. Thankfully, we managed to sign on great clients—companies such as eBay, Barnes & Noble, Maclaren and PayPal. When we began AdLift in 2009, there was also an option of doing business in India, and expanding here. But, when we started speaking to various companies in India, we realised there was a price disconnect. We were data-driven, and confident of the ROI from our services. But, at that time, the understanding and market for search marketing wasn’t very mature in India. The next agency would be offering seemingly same service at 1/10th the price. We didn’t want to be in that zone.

The potential clients we were pitching to would ask—why are you asking for 5x more, when you’re offering the same thing? In fact, that pricing war has led many e-commerce companies and sites in India to burn their fingers. Slowly, they realised why a premium service comes at a premium cost.

Around 2011, we got back into the Indian market again. Today, we work with

THE TOP 10

We kept things simple by focussing on getting work, doing it well, and keeping a close eye on margins. companies such as Nestle and the entire InfoEdge group. We see a lot of potential here now. Over the next two years, we might even have an equal distribution of revenue between US and India. Working with Indian clients has meant a certain level of cultural acclimatisation for our teams. For example, when I started spending more time pitching to clients here, I realised that a “no” in India doesn’t really mean a “no”. In the US, if somebody has said no, they’ve pretty much thought it through, and there’s no going back. But, in India, you don’t know for sure—maybe it’s a price negotiation tactic, or there’s something else going on!

It’s also interesting to see if we can bring the strengths of our US team to India, and vice versa. We have 40 people in India, and 15 in the US. Actually, what helps us stand apart is our training and experience in the US market. Based on our experience abroad, we’ve brought to India a lot of project management tools popular in the US but are rarely used here. Another thing I’d like to transport from the US to here is the sense of accountability—of timelines and deliverables—that our team there has.

Everybody feels such ownership to what they do. Our Indian team, on the other hand, constantly surprises me by how fast they catch on to something. From an efficiency point of view, the team in India sometimes manages to achieve a lot in a shorter span of time. We are trying to examine how they do that here, and take it to Palo Alto. That will be hugely helpful to power our ambitions now—to become a 200-300 people firm, and target a turnover growth of five to ten times over the next three years.

NO.6 Ashok Alco-Chem

Sector: Chemicals Location: Mumbai CAGR: 271.11% 2012 Revenue: `321 crore Founded in 1992, the company manufactures and markets industrial alcohol, acetic acid and ethyl acetate for inks, paints, resins and flexi-packaging. It also started trading in mineral products for exports in 2009.

NO.7 Nouveau Global Ventures

Sector: Trading Location: Mumbai CAGR: 244.01% 2012 Revenue: `198 crore Founded in 1988, the company is engaged in trading activities in the following verticals— automation, multimedia, real estate and infrastructure, electronics and agriculture.

NO.10 VKS Projects

Sector: Construction Location: Mumbai CAGR: 141.42% 2012 Revenue: `144 crore Started in 1998 , it is a civil engineering construction company that also manufacturers chemical equipment and commissions chemical plants in the fields of chemicals, oil and gas, and pharmaceuticals among others.

september/october 2013 | INC. | 5 7

5 YEARS, 5 TOPPERS

YEA TOP Our Hall

of Fame As we mark the fifth anniversary of our annual Inc. India 500 rankings, we decided to look back at the winners of the past. Although our goal of discovering the country’s most promising midsize companies has always remained constant, this journey is a good showcase of how our rankings and methodology have evolved over the years. Read on to know more about the No. 1 companies on our five Inc. India 500 lists so far.

5 8 | INC. | september/october 2013

5 YEARS, 5 TOPPERS

ARS, PERS 2009 Winner Sun TV Network

Sector: Media & Entertainment Location: Chennai CAGR: 64% 2008 Revenue: `861 crore Sun TV Network was the No. 1 company on our first Inc. India 500 ranking in 2009. Founded in 1993 by Kalanithi Maran, Sun TV is the flagship property of the Chennaibased media group Sun Network. The business has come a long way from television, newspapers and magazines.

Today, it also runs a radio station (Red FM), a movie production house (Sun Pictures), a budget airlines (SpiceJet) and an IPL franchise (Sunrisers Hyderabad).

Methodology for the 2009 Inc. India 500 ranking: We assessed the performance of high growth companies with net sales between `50 and `1,500 crore that closed their financials in 2008 on the following parameters: Size—Calculated by taking the simple average of net sales and total assets of the company Top line growth and bottom line growth—Calculated by the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of net sales and net profits for 2005 through 2008 Profitability—Calculated by taking a simple average of net profit margins and operating profit margins Returns—It is an average of return on capital employed and return on equity.

The ranking model gave equal weight to each of these parameters.

september/october 2013 | INC. | 5 9

5 YEARS, 5 TOPPERS

2011 Winner Vikas Global One

Sector: Oil & Gas Location: New Delhi CAGR: 631% 2010 Revenue: `63 crore This was the year when we changed our ranking methodology significantly to showcase unlisted and privately held businesses. And the company that took home the Inc. India 500 No. 1 company position that year was the Delhi-based Vikas Global One. Founded by Nand Kishore Garg in 1984, this petrochemical products company is run by his son Vikas Garg. Started as a trading business, the company has since entered manufacturing of high end products used in plastic, rubber, footwear and packaging industries.

2010 Winner

Nava Bharat Ventures Sector: Diversified Location: Hyderabad CAGR: 23% 2009 Revenue: `1,161 crore

Methodology for the 2010 Inc. India 500 ranking: The methodology remained the same as in 2009 except the following changes: Each parameter was converted to a scale of 0 to 100 for comparison purposes using the following equation: ith company’s score on jth parameter = 50 * parameter j/parameter j’s universe average.

Instead of equal weightage as earlier, the ranking used weighted average to calculate scores for each parameter.

6 0 | INC. | september/october 2013

Methodology for the 2011 Inc. India 500 ranking: While there are more than 8.5 lakh registered companies in the country we only get to hear about the 7,000-odd listed ones. So to allow a wider coverage of unlisted and privately held businesses, we changed our approach to the following. We created three master lists—one for each public listed companies, public unlisted companies and privately held businesses which had sales between `50 to `1,500 crore. These companies were then assessed on the following parameters: Digital presence—Each company was assessed on a scale of 1 to 5 on its ability to use digital platforms such as the internet to showcase information about the company and its leadership Year of incorporation and the line of business Compound annual growth rate of net sales of the last four financial years PHOTOS.COM

The No. 1 company on our second Inc. India 500 ranking has a diversity similar to its predecessor. Nava Bharat Ventures has several business interests that span across power generation, ferrous alloys, mining and agri-business with multinational operations in India, South East Asia and Africa. Founded in 1972 by Dr D. SubbaRao, Sri P. Punnaiah and Sri A.S. Chowdhri, the firm is run by Ashok Devineni today.

5 YEARS, 5 TOPPERS

2013 Winner Pincon Spirit

2012 Winner

Arunjyoti Enterprises Sector: Retail Location: Hyderabad CAGR: 1,231% 2011 Revenue: `71 crore

Sector: Food & Beverage Location: Kolkata CAGR: 2,204% 2012 Revenue: `244 crore Incorporated in 1978, the company is engaged in the blending, bottling and distribution of Indian made foreign liquor. Led by Manoranjan Roy, the company is listed on the Calcutta stock exchange.

Arunjyoti Enterprises runs the Taaza brand of convenient stores in south India. It was bought over by P. Ravinder Rao with his own personal savings and a loan from his family in 2008. Back then, it was a finance company dealing in investments but Rao turned the business into trading of agribased products. The company showed an impressive growth path of 1,231% per cent for the next three years (FY 2008-09 to FY 10-11) and was ranked as the No. 1 company on our fourth Inc. India 500 list.

Methodology for the 2012 Inc. India 500 ranking: For the first time ever, we introduced a four people jury to help us find our Inc. India 500.

We strengthened our online media campaign to invite nominations from companies, industry associations and PE firms to send in their nominations for the Inc. India 500 rankings.

These nominated companies along with the companies from our internal database, with sales turnover between `50 crore and `1500 crore, were assessed on the same parameters as the 2011 rankings, namely: the company’s line of business, its year of incorporation and leadership and CAGR of the last four financial years. However, we had dropped the digital presence parameter from last year.

Methodology for the 2013 Inc. India 500 Ranking: This year’s methodology mostly remains the same as the previous year’s.

However, given the volatile market conditions and a recessionary economy, we realised that growth in such times is a significant enough parameter.

We primarily focused on the growth rate of the company’s net sales in the last four financial years.

We had a three-member jury to help us pick the best of the best. Know more about them on page 47.

—Compiled by Ira Swasti

Note: In all our five rankings, we have excluded BFSIs and PSUs, as it’s difficult to define revenue for the former, and PSUs can hardly be considered independent entities with commercial objectives. september/october 2013 | INC. | 61

BY THE NUMBERS We divided the Inc. India 500 into four revenue categories.

Here’s how the share of companies in each category has fared over the years.

3

Average growth rate of Inc. India 500 companies

31.03 43.50 30.89 27.03

per cent is the average growth rate of companies in the `50 to `100 crore revenue category

per cent is the average growth rate of companies in the `101 to `500 crore revenue category

per cent is the average growth rate of companies in the `501 to `1,000 crore revenue category

No. of companies in the `50 to `100 crore revenue category

96

2013

top 10 COMPANies (`50-100 cr category)

76

2009

48

2010

115

2012

140

2011

6 2 | INC. | september/october 2013

per cent is the average growth rate of companies in the `1,001 to `1,500 crore revenue category

NO.

Company

CAGR (%)

8

AdLift Marketing

200.00

12

Edserv Softsystems

116.22

13

Lite Bite Foods

110.86

16

Tree House Education and Accessories

95.90

17

Rishiroop Rubber (International)

90.96

18

Shree Surgovind Tradelink

87.21

19

Harvel Agua India

80.53

20

DSMAX Properties

76.83

28

CE Info Systems

68.78

33

Pentokey Organy (India)

65.81

by the NUMBERS

No of companies in `101 to `500 crore category

270 2013

259 2012

top 10 COMPANies (`101-500 cr category)

239

2013

2204.09 507.74 379.14

5

VMS Industries

332.37

244

6

Ashok Alco-Chem

271.11

2010

7

Nouveau Global Ventures

244.01

224

10

VKS Projects

141.42

11

Easy Trip Planners

122.60

2011

14

Mohan Steels

107.51

15

Southern Ispat & Energy

102.98

top 10 COMPANies (`501-1000 cr category)

129

143

2010

2011

NO.

Company

CAGR (%)

2

Techno Electric & Engineering

556.07

9

Arya Iron & Steel

185.45

24

Sumeet Industries

73.53

39

India Steel Works

60.73

40

SRL

57.18

47

Hariyana Ship Breakers

52.29

57

Shree Global Tradefin

47.82

62

Stovekraft

46.85

69

Astral Poly Technik

44.22

72

Omnitech InfoSolutions

43.28

top 10 COMPANies (`1001-1500 cr category)

No of companies in `1,001 to `1,500 crore category

30

56

2009

34

2012

2011

Pincon Spirit Urja Global

2012

42

1

4G Identity Solutions

92

2013

CAGR (%)

3

2009

94

Company

4

2009

No of companies in `501 to `1,000 crore category

104

NO.

65

2010

NO.

Company

CAGR (%)

31

Vakrangee Softwares

66.24

50

BS Ltd

50.72

55

Parekh Aluminex

48.15

70

Himadri Chemicals and Industries

44.14

76

Vikas Wsp

42.82

79

MakeMyTrip India

42.08

124

Responsive Industries

35.85

127

Tirumala Milk Products

35.51

129

MBL Infrastructures

35.25

152

Galaxy Surfactants

32.03

The Top 10 companies of each category are for the FY 2011-12.

TOP 10 CITIES

Top 10 Cities Travel through the the top business hubs in the country.

They corner much of the action. And, Mumbai continues to dominate India Inc. with Delhi NCR following close behind.

Chandigarh

3

Delhi NCR

21

Ahmedabad

Kolkata

7

5 Mumbai

30 Revenue

Pune

3

Share (%)

Hyderabad

Bangalore

5

5

Coimbatore

2

Chennai

4

No. of Companies Mumbai

Delhi NCR

Kolkata

Hyderabad

Chennai

Pune

140 5 36 27 20 12 6 4 | INC. | september/october 2013

Bangalore

Ahmedabad

31

2

Chandigarh

Coimbatore

TOP

5

TEXTILES FOOD & BEVERAGE STEEL & FERROUS METAL IT & ITeS CHEMICALS

Sectors Percentage of companies in the Inc. India 500

Average growth rate of top 5 sectors (FY 2011-12) 22%

11.8% Textiles

Textiles

8.6% Food & Beverage

79% Food & Beverage

40%

8% Steel & Ferrous Metal

Steel & Ferrous Metal

33%

7.6% Chemicals

Chemicals

7% IT & ITEs

6 6 | INC. | september/october 2013

45% IT & ITEs

TOP 5 SECTORS

1, 7,235 cr 7 ,552 cr

Total sales of Inc. India 500 (FY 2011-12)

Total sales of Top 5 sectors (FY 2011-12)

43 42 of the companies fall in top 5 sectors

Contribution of Top 5 sectors to the total sales of Inc. India 500, 2013

Textiles No. of Companies 59 Total Revenue `22,292 crore CAGR 22.14% Average Turnover `378 crore Top Player Sumeet Industries Ltd Top 10 Companies in textiles

Number of companies & sectoral growth rate 59

57 42 34

41 42

29 22

20 14

2009

2010

No of Companies

2011 Growth Rate %

2012

2013

No.

Company

CAGR (%)

24

Sumeet Industries

73.53

71

Winsome Yarns

43.57

80

Ganesha Ecosphere

41.74

91

First Winner Industries

39.94

93

Supreme Tex Mart

39.61

94

Shekhawati Poly-Yarn

39.35

132

Kamadgiri Fashion

35.13

135

Modern Denim

34.44

137

Orbit Exports

34.02

173

Raj Rayon Industries

29.48

september/october 2013 | INC. | 67

Food & Beverage No of Companies 43 Total Revenue `14,684 crore CAGR 79.31% Average Turnover `341 crore Top Player Pincon Spirit

Number of companies & sectoral growth rate

Top 10 Companies in food & beverage

84

55

49 37 13 2009

19

2010

No of Companies

37

35

26

19

2011

2012

2013

Growth Rate %

No.

Company

CAGR (%)

1

Pincon Spirit

2204.09

17

Rishiroop Rubber (International)

90.96

51

Unique Organics

50.17

54

Costal Corporation

48.95

58

Vikas Granaries

47.69

67

Kaveri Seed Company

44.61

68

Kejriwal Bee Care India

44.53

76

Vikas Wsp

42.82

81

Globus Spirits

41.61

86

SOM Distilleries & Breweries

41.14

Steel & Ferrous Metal No of Companies 40 Total Revenue `16,026 crore CAGR 30.31% Average Turnover `401 crore Top Player Arya Iron & Steel Company Top 10 Companies in steel & ferrous METAL

130

Number of companies & sectoral growth rate 5449

47 47 29

2009

2010

No of Companies

42 33

2011 Growth Rate %

6 8 | INC. | september/october 2013

2012

40 30

2013

No.

Company

CAGR (%)

9

Arya Iron & Steel Company

185.45

14

Mohan Steels

107.51

15

Southern Ispat & Energy

102.98

39

India Steel Works

60.73

107

Sarthak Industries

36.85

115

Real Ispat And Power

36.26

131

Real Strips

35.21

139

Mittal Corp

33.79

166

KIC Metaliks

30.06

169

Ramkrishna Forgings

29.82

TOP 5 SECTORS

IT & ITeS No of Companies 35 Total Revenue `10,700 crore CAGR 45.17% Average Turnover `306 crore Top Player 4G Identity Solutions

Number of companies & sectoral growth rate 58

57

63

49

48

Top 10 Companies in IT & ITeS

47 45

32

2009

2010

No of Companies

2011

2012

45 35

2013

No.

Company

CAGR (%)

4

4G Identity Solutions

379.14

12

Edserv Softsystems

116.22

25

Taksheel Solutions

73.08

27

AISECT

70.52

28

CE Info Systems

68.78

31

Vakrangee Softwares

66.24

35

Ontrack Systems

62.23

72

Omnitech InfoSolutions

43.28

77

Net 4 India

42.41

84

b4S Solutions

41.44

Growth Rate %

Chemicals No of Companies 38 Total Revenue `14,851 crore CAGR 33.49% Average Turnover `391 crore Top Player Ashok Alco-Chem Top 10 Companies in chemicals

77

Number of companies & sectoral growth rate 46

18 2009

32

30

2010

No of Companies

24 2011 Growth Rate %

31

32

2012

33 38 2013

No.

Company

CAGR (%)

6

Ashok Alco-Chem

271.11

33

Pentokey Organy (India)

65.81

34

Kothari Industrial Corporation

65.76

60

Tirupati Inks

46.94

70

Himadri Chemicals and Industries

44.14

75

Vidhi Dyestuffs Manufacturing

42.85

82

Adi Finechem

41.55

87

Pondy Oxides & Chemicals

41.07

88

Gayatri Bio Organics

40.79

116

Vivimed Labs

36.22

september/october 2013 | INC. | 69

nO.134 Companies We Find Exciting

Orient Bell

Sector: Cement & Ceramic Products Location: Delhi CAGR: 34.57% 2012 Revenue: `546 crore

Companies We Find Exciting No.

COMPANY

CAGR (%)

13

Lite Bite Foods

110.86

19

Harvel Agua

80.53

25

Taksheel Solutions

73.08

37

Shelter Infra Projects

60.89

89

Mayur Uniquoters

40.27

95

Karma Industries

39.21

102

Dr Lal Pathlabs

37.71

134

Orient Bell

34.57

139

Mittal Corp

33.79

228

Tasty Bite Eatables

24.58

7 0 | INC. | september/october 2013

The Right Swing

Doing Right Daga believes in always taking a justifiable action towards people. It sets a good precedent, he says.

It’s easy to spot Madhur Daga’s passion. Articulate and spirited, the executive director of Orient Bell Limited (OBL) is a great interview subject in any case. But, it’s when talking innovations and patents that he gets most animated. Little surprise then that Orient Bell, has four patent-pending tile products, the uniqueness of which Daga is wont to explain in vivid details. Much like OBL’s tiles have laid out floors in buildings such as the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the company seems to be patterning its rich 40-year old history with bold strokes of growth with acquisitions, contract manufacturing and a pipeline of imaginative products. OBL also stands out for its well-articulated anti-bribery and whistle blower policies. In a conversation at his company’s Greater Kailash showroom in New Delhi, Daga talks freeely on much of this.

As told to Shreyasi Singh | Photograph by Subhojit Paul september/october 2013 | INC. | 7 1

nO. 9 Mayur Uniquoters

Sector: Plastic Products Location: Jaipur CAGR: 40.27% 2012 Revenue: `317 crore

“If you want something done, be after its execution as if it was supposed to be finished yesterday. You are already late because time is money and you cannot buy it once it’s lost.”

— suresh Kumar poddar, CMD Founded in 1994, this manufacturer of artificial leather has an installed capacity of 1.9 million linear meters per month.

7 2 | INC. | september/october 2013

he past three years have been very significant for us. To begin with, we made our first acquisition in December 2010 when we bought over Bell Ceramics, a tile player with a strong base in the West, and a network in the South for `120 crore. Orient Ceramics, which is what we were called then, was primarily a North India company. It’s why the Bell deal was so compelling for us—overnight, we became a pan India player with three manufacturing bases in Hoskote, Secunderabad and Dora. Anyone who knows about the tile business will tell you that since tiles are so heavy, no one has been able to figure out a cheaper way (other than incurring a huge amount of freight charges) to send tiles from Point A to Point B. You have no choice but to be close to your consuming geography. The south and the west of the country are both deep, rich consumers of tiles, and buying Bell Ceramics gave us a way to tap this demand with the lowest time to market, and lowest freight costs.

Needless to say, the integration was a challenge. Human beings are generally resistant towards change. But, I’ve figured out that education is what beats that anxiety. To educate the people about what the future has in store for them, it’s important to talk to them, to engage with them. We did exactly that.

Also, one of the things that really helped, I think, was that apart from our management teams going to the plants, I would make it a point to visit them once a month. I still do. For the Bell team, that was a surprise. The earlier promoter family wasn’t involved in the plant. They had several other business interests, including running the Hyatt hotels, and the Four Seasons in Goa. Their energies were focused on that business, and Bell was actually on autopilot; it wasn’t a priority. The employees never saw the promoters.

You know, it’s great to be completely professionally managed but with that if the promoter demonstrates interest in the business, it creates an instant and abiding engagement. Because the people at the plants saw me every month, and knew I

took the time out to visit them even though I lived in Delhi, not only did it create the bonding we wanted, they also realised how central their efforts were to the company. Through this integration, I’ve learnt a key business lesson—communication can change businesses and transform companies.

Because we communicated clearly, and often, we could articulate that we weren’t going to lay people off. We didn’t want to eliminate or eradicate jobs. Instead, the company was bought because we believed in the synergies there were, and the competence of the team at Bell. When you are transparent and let people know what lies in store for them, they respond positively.

At the same time, within a few months, people understood we were not very tolerant to those people who became stumbling blocks to a smooth integration.

Those people were let go off. When you take action towards people justifiably, it sets a good precedent.

Another thing that worked in the integration process was the company being renamed Orient Bell. The Bell brand had a lot of goodwill in areas where Orient wasn’t strong. So, we had a choice, either we could invest money in making the Orient brand stronger in our new markets, or we could invest a little bit of money in making sure the Bell brand sustains and strengthens. We decided to name the company Orient Bell. It demonstrated our respect for Bell, and the company became a permanent part.

Fortunately, our strategy and our plans worked. Within the first year after the acquisition, Bell and OBL consolidation was in the black. Also, Bell which was in

Companies We Find Exciting

the red turned a corner. I think that was a tremendous achievement for us.

But, the excitement at Orient Bell isn’t limited to merged balanced sheets, and positive numbers. I am a product development guy at heart. For me, no matter how good our balance sheet is, or how many cool write ups we get in the media, the most important bit is how you touch us through our product when you come to our showroom. Our customers don’t care who Madhur Daga is. They don’t care about our anti-bribery and whistleblower policy, all they care about is—do I want this product in my bathroom and bedroom?

That’s my role at the company—to make sure our products are current and we stay with the time. So, we very proudly claim that we have four patent-pending tile technologies such as our Forever Tiles (our highly abrasive resistant, stain resistant and long-lasting), Germ Free Tiles (anti-microbial), Cool Tiles (invented to reflect back solar heat, and reduce a building’s cooling requirements), and Life Tiles (that removes noxious gases from inside a building). That is the excitement for me—this marriage of creative technology and creative design from our partnerships with design studios in Europe, and our local engineering.

I’m glad that over the past few years, I’ve been able to focus more and more on products. Our CEO, Vijay Shankar Sharma, focuses on the strategy, and the operations. And, because I have him and his great team to do that, I can sit back and look at what we should develop next. Ultimately, you have to play to your strengths, and R&D is mine. That strength can differ from MD to MD, CEO to CEO. You have to know yours.

Beyond that, what gives me most satisfaction are the reinforcements we’ve made in the values we believe in. On the context of corporate governance, I can tell you unequivocally that we would be the best in the industry. I believe that. My father, who founded the company, brought us up to believe that no matter how much money you make or don’t make, you need a good night’s sleep. You cannot be going to bed thinking that regulators, or press reporters

will be at your doorstep next morning.

In the market and an environment like India, slipping up on corporate governance can very easily happen. You get tempted because apparently everyone does it. We have a simple acronym for the set of values we believe in—IQCAPP, which stands for integrity, quality, customers, agility, partners and performance.

Our anti-bribery and whistleblower policies are a continuation of our focus on integrity. I don’t want people to think that someone in the company read something cool online, and we said, let’s do it. No, this is something that began in 1970 without a policy, then refined itself when we articulated our core values of IQCAPP, and then we felt a policy that puts forth our beliefs was important.

See, in every company in any industry, especially in manufacturing, the purchase department has the most dirt thrown on it. We wanted to address that. Of course, I’m not saying that just because we have an antibribery policy, no one in our company will ever take a bribe. That’s impossible to claim—just because you have a lock at home doesn’t mean someone is not going to break it. But, laying the policy out has told everybody about the consequences of slipping up. Real disincentives are very valuable.

So, once the policy got formed in early 2012, and we got approval from our Board, it was circulated to all employees with a note from our CEO saying, “Go through it, your life depends on it.” We are very proud of having done this. We don’t want people to think that Orient Bell has implemented this because bribes were rampant in our company. That’s not true at all. The policy is pro-active. It shows the strength of our commitment to our people, and tells them, “Management believes in you, go do the right thing.”

Now, when someone takes a bribe or thinks about taking one, he, at least, has the thought that he is breaking a golden tenet that in this company is written in blood and stone. There is no ambiguity.

Often, people get tempted because there is no one to watch over them. We also have the Whistleblowers Policy, a five-page document that has also been approved by the Board. Anybody can write to the audit committee, or to the chairman directly, and be assured that their input would be completely anonymous, and their interests protected.

I’m confident that our people will feel empowered to do this. That is definitely in transition. If you ask me, is everyone in your company empowered? Yes, they are empowered but do they have the mindset to do it, to speak up, to stand out? Maybe

It’s great to be professionally managed but with that if the entrepreneur demonstrates interest in the business, it creates an instant and abiding engagement. not everybody! But how can I change that other than by reiterating and repeating that they can come talk to me.

Things are changing—for example, I’ve had various executive assistants for the past 12 years. Over the past year and a half, this is the first time I have had an executive assistant who calls me by my first name. I love that. I have tried it in the past but then I can’t put a gun on our head and say, “Don’t call me sir!” Now, there are 10 people in the company who call me by my first name. There are 950 people who don’t but I won’t accept that it’s not because I don’t want them to. september/october 2013 | INC. | 7 3

nO.13 COMPANIES WE FIND EXCITING

Lite Bite Foods

Sector: Services Location: Gurgaon CAGR: 110.86% 2012 Revenue: `75 crore

The Maverick Restaurateur 74 | INC. | september/october 2013

A Full-time Foodie Burman loves to eat out at different restaurants. If he likes something, he always brings it back for his chefs to relish.

Amit Burman was born into money, as they say. For this fifth generation heir of the `6,800crore Dabur Group, savouring his bountiful inheritance wasn’t enough. While Burman continues to be the FMCG giant’s vice chairman, he has dabbled in entrepreneurial ventures outside his family-controlled business empire. Unfortunately, none of the businesses across the different segments he tried—internet, car dealership and health care—worked out. Burman finally tasted success with Lite Bite, a casual dining and QSR brands company that he founded with his friend Rohit Agarwal in 2001. Today, Lite Bite has 65 outlets across 12 restaurant brands. Yet, Burman’s business appetite is far from satiated. Over the next three years, he plans to invest an additional `100 crore and add 100 more outlets.

As told to Sonal Khetarpal | Photograph by Subhojit Paul september/october 2013 | INC. | 7 5

y day starts very early. I get up around 6.30am and leave home around 7.30am.

This one hour is always a big frenzy at home as my 11-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter also wake up at the same time. The focus is on all of us getting ready and finishing breakfast on time.

Then, our driver drops the three of us at my kids’ school. I walk to my office which is right across the road.

NO. 139 Mittal Corp

Sector: Steel and Ferrous Metal Location: Indore CAGR: 33.7% 2012 Revenue: `667 crore

“A dynamic leader is one who has the ability to be a good team member as well.

Leadership is not just about leading; it is as much about following too.”

—Karan Mittal, MD The company manufactures construction material such as steel and steel bars, wire rods, angles, billets etc. and has featured four out of five times on the Inc. India 500 ranking.

76 | INC. | september/october 2013

I am in the office latest by 8.05am.

Before I start work, I say a little prayer; and then organise all my devices around me— my laptop, iPad and BlackBerry. We have an 8.30am meeting every alternate day with all the department heads. I always, always attend that. When I first started Lite Bite, it did feel strange to be so involved in the dayto-day functioning of the business. I was used to Dabur where my work role was more strategic. I was mostly involved in exploring or closing M&A opportunities and quarterly reviews. Yes, I had started Dabur Foods, the processed food division of Dabur India in 1999. But, really, all I had to set up from scratch was a new sales and marketing team. We relied on the parent company for the rest of the infrastructure.

Starting up at Lite Bite literally meant starting from ground zero. It wasn’t easy, not for me, or many of the people we hired, most of who were from large hospitality chains. Much like me, they were also used to having the back end being taken care of.

But, a growing F&B retail business cannot take those things for granted. We couldn’t wait for the infrastructure and processes to be totally set up. If a light bulb wasn’t working, we couldn’t wait for the scheduled maintenance contractor to come fix it. We needed to be responsive, and solve problems quickly. To make sure that becomes the way Lite Bite worked, I realised I had to step out of my cubicle. I began to get involved in the most trivial problems, even if it was a leaking tap. And, gradually saw everyone following the lead.

Even though the company is 12 years old now, I still maintain this attitude. We currently have 65 casual dining and quick service restaurants—Punjab Grill for north Indian cuisine, Zambar for coastal food,

Asia 7 for South East Asian, Fresc Co for Italian and Mediterranean, Pino’s for pasta and pizza, and cafeteria formats Baker Street and Street Foods of India. Almost 70 per cent of my time goes in looking after these brands.

At Lite Bite, I really feel for the first time that all the responsibility is purely Rohit’s and mine. We don’t have the comfort of board members monitoring our decisions, or helping us think through ideas. At Dabur, I had never taken a decision alone.

Now, it’s both scary and empowering. You can really be your own person. I remember when I started Dabur Foods, I wanted to include pink guava and lychee juice in our packaged juice range. But, the board was against that. So, we introduced the regular orange, pineapple and mango flavours only.

But, because there is no board at Lite Bite, we can work with an open mind. If I had the same board at Lite Bite, they would have never let me bid to open restaurants at airports. They would insist we concentrate on our existing model of opening restaurants in shopping malls. Obviously, not having that kind of counsel makes our risks higher. So far, things have gone our way. We are growing fast, and well. In fact, we intend to open 30 restaurants at the Mumbai airport this year.

We’ve made up for the absence of a board by working closely with all our teams. In fact, I never take any decision without involving them. This is my first venture on my own, that too in a new industry and I value the feedback of our professionals highly. Such collective decision making is mostly peaceful, but there have been cases of massive arguments as well, mostly with the chefs in our restaurants! They are creative people and aren’t

COMPANIES WE FIND EXCITING

always business-oriented. Their top priority is to experiment with food. We have to constantly pull them back to reality that their experimental food might not work with customers. However, every Wednesday we give them a chance to showcase their creative potential and cook for Rohit and me. This gives us a lot of ideas about organising different food festivals and making changes to the current menu. It was after such innovative food buffets that we organised a tomato festival at Fresc Co and a Biryani festival at Zambar.

Getting to eat different varieties of food is the favourite part of my job. I am a complete foodie. Whenever I travel, I always try out different restaurants. If I like a particular dish, I bring it back for our chefs. We then try to replicate it in our restaurants.

The hamburgers at Fresc Co are inspired from the burgers of London-based fast food chain Patty & Bun which I simply love. I also keep an eye on what other restaurants are doing—how the service is,

crore in Lite Bite to finance our expansion plan. In the next three years, I want to add another 100 outlets and achieve revenues of `500 crore. Instead of adding individual restaurants at different locations, we want to now focus on opening a few brands together at a single location. Doing this helps us save on space and rent. Each outlet can have its individual kitchen but they can share space for cutting vegetables, preparing sauces and even staff area. This is important as rentals in malls are a killer.

They take up to 20 per cent of a restaurant’s operating cost. But this strategy has kept our rental cost at eight per cent, which is much lower than the average industry rate.

At Ambience Mall in Gurgaon, three of our brands—Punjab Grill, Asia 7 and Fresc Co—are situated next to each other with common backrooms and we have six quick service restaurants at its 15-stall food court.

We are also implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) in our office. It would help us to work on a single platform for all our brands. This is our first step towards corporatisation. To be honest, we are already delayed by three months; so I have started micro-managing this project. I’ll leave it to others after it stabilises. If we are able to integrate it well with our current business, we will emerge as a winner as there are not many companies in the F&B space that use ERP solution.

I like being organised. It’s what I want my business to be too. I’m very disciplined when it comes to me—things shouldn’t extend beyond their stipulated time. I never have an unanswered mail in my inbox for more than 24 hours. If a meeting has to end in an hour, it should. I don’t like our employees to stay back late at work. In fact, the office bus leaves at 5pm sharp. I also leave around that time. Of late, though, I’ve begun to realise that my need to always have an agenda, a line up of tasks to be achieved every day, is a hang-up I should let go off once in a while. Otherwise, even on vacation, I have to know what I’m doing next.

My need to always have an agenda, a line up of tasks to be achieved every day, is a hang-up I should let go off. what is the spacial layout, overall ambience, placement of cutlery, use of lighting, and the footfall they attract. The five-minute menu at our Fresc Co outlet at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi is inspired from one of the fine dining restaurants at Changi Airport, Singapore. They had mentioned preparation time alongside every dish they offer. Picking up new concepts and understanding them gives great insights. Incorporating such best practices has a comfort factor too. If it worked for them, it might increase our footfall as well.

Increasing our customer base and building their loyalty is all the more important now as I plan to invest another `100

NO. 19 Harvel Agua India

Sector: Plastic Products Location: Delhi CAGR: 80.5% 2012 Revenue: `64 crore

“I admire Miguel Oton, the chairman of our partner company in Spain, for his ability and immense capacity to listen. I have seen him listening patiently to deliberations, silently taking notes and speaking only when necessary. Never have I found him leveraging his position to offer unsolicited gyaan.”

—Primal Oswal, MD The company manufacturers and offers micro irrigation systems, filtration systems and technical knowhow on intensive agriculture including turnkey contracts for building protected cultivation projects.

september/october 2013 | INC. | 7 7

people AT WORK

7 8 | INC. | september/october 2013

KL Rathi Steels This 350-people company employs about 85 workers at its main rolling mill in Greater Noida, several of whom have been working with the company for nearly three decades. The average age of these workers is between 45 and 50 and most of them are immigrants who have been living in Delhi for years now. This family enterprise was founded by the late Hari Kishan Rathi and his brother in 1942, and is today led by Kishan’s son Deepak Rathi. After operating for 54 years in Shahdara, Delhi, the mill was relocated to Greater Noida in 1999.

No: 233 CAGR: 24.33% 2012 Revenue: `716 crore Location: Delhi NCR Sector: Steel & Ferrous Metal

photograph by subhojit paul

Reported by ira Swasti

nO.393 Women Entrepreneurs

VLCC Healthcare

Sector: FMCG Location: Delhi NCR CAGR: 15.86% 2012 Revenue: `476 crore

The Glow of Ambition

Companies with Women Entrepreneurs No.

COMPANY

CAGR (%)

58

Vikas Granaries

47.69

178

Aseem Global

28.7

193

Asahi Songwon Color

27.55

310

Venkys (India)

20.27

393 VLCC Healthcare

15.86

8 0 | INC. | september/october 2013

That each year, our ranking throws up only a handful of women-founded companies is possibly the worst metric we deal with. Meeting Vandana Luthra, founder and mentor, VLCC, a beauty and wellness products and services company, made up for much of that despair this year though. VLCC is on a roll this year with a string of foreign acquisitions, partnerships and investments in Singapore, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Kenya. Yet, it’s Luthra’s unapologetic ambition to grow even faster that is the interview’s most memorable takeaway. It isn’t often that women leaders tell you that money motivates them, and that sometimes she intentionally gives those around her—including her husband Mukesh Bansal, the company’s chairman—a tough time because she wants to show that women have the right to stand up, and “say yes to yes, and no to no.” It’s a lesson she hopes her team of 4,000 women at VLCC’s 300 outlets across 121 cities in 16 countries pick up from. Beyond the impressive business growth, Luthra’s is a story worth telling for her self-belief and can-do, and why she believes women should be more ambitious.

As told to Shreyasi Singh | photoGRAPH courTESY SUBJECT

Standing Proud Vandana Luthra confesses that she acts stubborn sometimes to show that women can stand up for something and put their foot down too.

september/october 2013 | INC. | 8 1

NO. 17 Aseem Global

Sector: Trading Location: Delhi CAGR: 28.7% 2012 Revenue: `260.9 crore Ira Rastogi is a rarity in the field of business—a married woman to have started a metals business in the metal trading hub of Delhi—Sadar Bazaar— way back in the 1980s. Her company manufactures zinc and aluminum alloys and it went public in July 2012.

NO. 5 Vikas Granaries

Sector: FMCG Location: Hisar, Haryana CAGR: 47.69% 2012 Revenue: `114.8 crore Bimla Devi Jindal has been running this Hisar-based company since it was incorporated in 1995. The Guar Gum Powder manufacturer has a plant with 4050 MT capacity in Chandisar, Gujarat.

8 2 | INC. | september/october 2013

really believe every woman has an ambition. In fact, we are more ambitious than men in whatever we do—we have higher standards for ourselves, and those around us. Even an uneducated housewife will want to do her best when it comes to feeding her children, or tying to educate them. But, our culture is such that the women are sidetracked. So, we have to fight for it. I did that. From a very cosmopolitan and educated family, I was married into a very conservative family. I got married when I was 21 and a half years old (despite my parents discouragement), and had my first daughter very quickly.

I was at home for the first few years so I went through the frustrations and difficulties that other women go through.

But, I always kept my ambition on fire— to create wellness centres for women. I could’ve been stuck at home forever, but I didn’t let myself be.

Thanks to my broad-minded parents (especially my father who travelled abroad a lot), and my liberal arts education at Delhi University, I had a great exposure. I was very ambitious even growing up. My brother Nishit Arora, who today runs a publishing house, got a job with Lintas after he graduated from St. Stephen’s to work with Alyque Padamsee. But, I was very sure—I said I don’t want to work for anyone. I will start my own business, to create my own company. I always wanted to be in wellness— I always wanted to create something where I would make people feel transformed. I didn’t want to start a beauty salon or a hair salon. I wanted a wellness centre with cosmetologists, dermatologists doing advanced procedures. I thought about doing very high-end medical treatments. I’m a technical resource—I did courses in Paris, Vidal Sasoon, I studied nutrition in Germany.

I knew I could do this.

I started with a ‘transformation’ centre in Delhi in 1989. My husband informally assisted me from the start but

officially joined the company much later, in 2000. When we saw the huge opportunities and potential the business had, we knew it could be taken places. By then, I knew my strength—I am an out-and-out operations person. I’m not involved in operations at all now, but it comes naturally to me whatever the scale of the business. I love being on the field, and working with the people. Mukesh brought in a whole other set of skill sets.

Best of all, he’s been a great partner.

Usually, we never take a decision single-handedly. We always check with each other. But, sometimes, I still might take a decision alone without checking with him. He never does that—he appreciates that I’ve started the business, that I have the pulse of the business, and that it comes very naturally to me. Let me tell you, that he would certainly not take a decision alone. I still could. But, he’s very clear about the fact that he won’t. That wouldn’t be fair to me.

To be honest, I’m very conscious about the fact that I am a woman, and that wherever I am, I’m representing women. Sometimes, I get stubborn because I think women need to demonstrate that they can stand up for something and put their foot down.

Sometimes I do this just to prove a point.

In the first couple of years when we were working together, I put my foot down a

Women Entrepreneurs

lot. We had arguments but he let me lead, let me have my way.

Thankfully, in the kind of profession I’m in, at the front end, there are mostly women. People always quip that two women can’t live in one house together but I’m very proud to show that at VLCC there are 4,000 women working together! Yes, it’s true that this mix doesn’t reflect as well on the corporate level. There we have 70 per cent men, 30 per cent women. See, to be honest, if I’m scouting for a head of HR, I might not get too many women candidates in my talent hunt pool. And, I’ve seen that even when we have got women for these roles, often it does not work out. My husband actually aske me recently—you fight for women all the time but when it comes to hiring for the corporate office, why do you say, let’s hire more men? See, any CEO who runs a services company, has to micromanage, especially when you are in the hospitality and services business.

As entrepreneurs, women can bring a lot to the workplace. One of the key qualities of a good entrepreneur is the ability to balance the head and the heart.

Women do that effortlessly—as they manage relationships and homes. They are great team builders. Not many male bosses love their colleagues! Women do— they actually love their team members.

These days, people ask me—where will you stop? We’ve had quite a year at VLCC. In July 2013, we bought controlling stake in Singapore-based company, GVig (Global Vantage Innovative Group), which manufactures and retails beauty and wellness products. In November 2012, we acquired Malaysia’s Wyann International. They operate 22 outlets across Malaysia, and fortunately the integration process has been very smooth. Then, in early September, we entered into a JV with Kenya’s Sameer Group, and by early next year, we should have our first VLCC centre in Kenya, Africa. We’ve also recently set up a manufacturing facility in Bangladesh. We expect a turnover of `1,000 crore by the end of 2013. Our global expansion should get us to `1,500 crore within two years.

But, you never reach where you want to. We’re going to go very fast now—may be seal up more deals, including in the UK and India. Why should I go slow? My daughters are grown up, and are busy in their lives. I’m 54 years old—I’m very passionate, very ambitious, and so is my husband. Together, we’re a house on fire. I’m also really looking forward to both my daughters (they are 33 and 29) joining the business, and making things more exciting. But, they are both raising young children right now. To be honest, more than even joining the business, both Mukesh and I really want them to work, to build strong careers.

I am very passionate, very ambitious, and so is my husband.

Together, we’re a house on fire.

So, I would love to have a female CEO, she would have connected better to the women staff in our salons but I have not been able to identify anybody. And, even if I have, they have some reservations— some problems (school, child or in-laws issue), or don’t want to travel 20 days a month which is what you need to do when you are running a company like this. I do it, have always done it. That drive is sometimes missing in others.

NO. 193 Asahi Songwon Colors

Sector: Chemicals Location: Mehsana, Gujarat CAGR: 27.5 % 2012 Revenue: `233.6 crore Paru Jaykrishna married into a multimillionaire family but started her own business of manufacturing pigments for ink, paints, textiles and rubber, without asking for any monetary help from her in-laws. Under her leadership, the company’s manufacturing plant in Mehsana that had started with a production capacity of just 5 MT, today has a capacity of 14,500 MT.

NO. 310 Venkys (India)

Sector: Food & Beverage Location: Viththalwadi, Maharashtra CAGR: 20.2 % 2012 Revenue: `990.2 crore Anuradha Desai practically grew up on her mother’s farm. Her father, the late Dr B.V. Rao converted the farm into a hatchery and set up the Venkateshwara Hatcheries business in 1971. Soon after his death, Desai took over the reins of the family business of producing eggs, egg powder, animal feed, vaccines etc.

september/october 2013 | INC. | 8 3

nO.65 The Kickstarters

Elder Health Care

Sector: Pharmaceuticals Location: Mumbai CAGR: 44.96% 2012 Revenue: `151 crore

The Kickstarters

No.

Company

CAGR (%)

Founded in

8

AdLift Marketing

200

2009

11

Easy Trip Planners

122.6

2008

20

DSMAX Properties

76.83

2007

43

Surin Automotive

53.34

2007

44

Texmo Pipes & Products

53.23

2008

46

Enaltec Labs

52.96

2006

50

BS

50.72

2004

59

Enzen Global Solutions

47.61

2006

65

Elder Heath Care

44.96

2006

130

Gateway Rail Freight

35.22

2005

8 4 | INC. | september/october 2013

Lights, Camera, Business Anuj Saxena has an on and off love affair with acting.

That is, when he’s not busy building the Elder brand in India and overseas.

A Versatile Businessman

Anuj Saxena is a doctor by education, an actor and movie producer by passion and the MD of Elder Health Care by profession. Many of these roles were rather unplanned. His father Jagdish Saxena had started Elder Pharma in 1987 after his former employer Walter Bushnell, a Delhi-based pharma company, shut down some of its plants and laid off 300 people. As the MD of the company, Jagdish Saxena felt responsible for the lost livelihoods and he quit to start Elder Pharma, to employ those who had lost their jobs. Anuj, who earlier had dreams of becoming a doctor, felt pulled towards helping his father establish the business.

Yet, for somebody who never wanted to be an entrepreneur, Anuj has demonstrated quite a knack for building businesses. He runs three of them today.

As told to Ira swasti | Photograph by Jiten Gandhi september/october 2013 | INC. | 8 5

NO. 43 Surin Automative

Sector: Auto Ancilliaries Location: Bangalore CAGR: 53.34% 2012 Revenue: `375 crore

“Focus more on the important and less on the urgent. It helps you focus on the long term goals even when the short term outlook looks difficult.”

— Aman Choudhari, Joint MD Demerged from Krishna Fabrications in 2007, the company manufactures assemblies such as cabins, half-cabins, fuel tanks, fenders and counter weights for the automative, constructive and farm industry.

8 6 | INC. | september/october 2013

rowing up, I always wanted to be a doctor. But after studying medicine for six and a half years at Grant Medical College in Mumbai, I didn’t find it as fascinating as I thought it would be. Coincidently, while I was wrapping up my studies, my father was building Elder Pharmaceuticals. Much like my father, who never thought he’d be an entrepreneur at 50, I had never imagined I’d be involved in business. But, I think that was what destiny had in store for both of us. After he began the business, my father was very keen that my brother Alok, my sister Shalini and I join him too. So, in 1991, after completing my MBBS, I joined Elder Pharma.

For the first two years, I handled the marketing and sales of Elder Pharma’s anticancer products to hospitals and medical institutions. I even introduced a few new brands such as Japan’s Tanave hypertensive drug, its antibiotic Suprax and our own vitamin supplement brand Ivit. We were growing at 20 per cent year on year at that time. While working at Elder Pharma, I realised I was more of a marketing guy than a sales guy and concept selling interested me more than anything else. So I headed marketing for Elder Pharma for another 16 years or so.

Around 2001, I took a short detour from running the family business. I was cast as the lead in a Balaji Telefilms show Kkusum that aired on Sony from 2001 to 2006. I hadn’t planned this. I was acting in a few TV shows on and off during the 90s, just for fun. I had even done a few modeling assignments in college. But I never thought of acting as a profession until Kkusum became a hit and I had to take a break from my work at Elder for a year and a half because of the gruelling shooting schedules.

That’s when I realised that acting is something I really enjoyed doing and would never give up. It makes me feel alive and creative. It also taught me to be patient because a lot of times, I just had to wait for eight to nine hours on the set for my shot to be ready. At those times, I would work from my vanity van and be in touch with my teams at Elder Pharma through e-mails or over the phone. Even though I had a great time shooting, I was certain acting

could never be a full-time career for me. It doesn’t pay enough! So, when the show ended in 2006, I returned to head marketing at Elder Pharma.

Around then, my father was planning to expand our branch of over-the-counter products. While the products already existed for our FMCG segment, we weren’t doing enough in terms of sales and marketing to push them. It was only when Shahnaz Hussain approached us for the marketing of her range of fairness products that we realised FMCG could offer us great opportunities for growth. I decided to switch over to take charge of the subsidiary we set up for the FMCG business—Elder Health Care (EHC). Today, EHC has a wide portfolio of self-manufactured and in-licensed personal care and grooming products such as deodorants, fairness creams, balms and make-up.

Building the new subsidiary from scratch was a challenge. For one, I had to work hard to change people’s mindset in our parent company. At Elder Pharma, the approach, people policies and distribution systems were geared towards a pharmaceutical company. Running an FMCG company required a completely different model in terms of distribution, marketing and investments. From selling to doctors and hospitals, we had to develop a whole new distribution model that targeted chemists and kirana stores. In the pharma business, the company’s medical representatives would get prescriptions from doctors and sales would come in soon after. But FMCG

The Kickstarters

products require huge investments upfront for branding and marketing campaigns to create product visibility among consumers and then there’s a long waiting period for sales to come in.

At the end of the day, the funds for EHC were to come from the parent company and it was tough to convince the finance team at Elder Pharma, including my father and my brother, to shell out money for marketing FMCG products.

Eventually, I realised that it would be better to hire new teams—especially, in marketing, sales and HR—who understood this space. So, today, while EHC is a group company of Elder Pharma with 580 people of its own, in many ways, it functions as a completely different entity. Even as I build a separate identity for my business, I apply a lot of things I picked up from my father.

He always says that to understand what is going wrong in your business, you should be in touch with the people working on the ground. You should be accessible and open

business to make movies. As far as the restaurant business is concerned, it was more of my dad’s passion to have a restaurant, although I am the one who runs it.

I have so much going on simultaneously that I only sleep for three to four hours a day and spend rest of the time at work. You could call me a workaholic.

Most of my evenings and nights are spent at Maverick and most of my day at Elder, which is still in its growth stage. In fact, we entered the overseas market only in 2009 when we had launched some of our skin treatment products in Malawi and Zambia in Africa. We have received a good response for our vaporub brand Solo, Elder Balm and Respite Muscle Rub. The idea was to get local distributors in these countries to invest in the brands along with us so that marketing would be easier. We avoided entering countries where the market for Indian brands was very regulated or the registration of products was difficult. We chose to enter countries where a considerable percentage of its population had similar skin conditions as Indians do so that the people there could easily identify with our products.

Six months ago, we launched fairness products in South East Asia under the brand name Go Fair and the interesting thing is that even in Korea and Japan, whitening products are hugely successful. People there are already fair but they still want to be fairer. And a lot of darker skinned people want their skin to glow. It’s all psychological—people everywhere want to feel good about themselves.

Our success abroad has helped us achieve my first big goal for the company— a turnover of more than `100 crore. We closed FY 2011-12 with `151 crore in sales.

My next goal is to take the company to `500 crore. We should get there in the next three to four years. My task is cut out. But, what gives me a lot of pride today is that EHC is looked at as being the future of the whole group.

Acting has taught me patience. I used to work for hours in my vanity van while waiting for my shot to be ready. for anybody in your organisation to come and approach you with any problem. I think I have inherited another quality of his which I am not very fond of. We both are very emotional about letting people go, especially those who have worked with us for years. But I am working to change that.

In 2006, when I took charge of EHC, I also started two other businesses—Maverick Productions, a movie production house that makes regional as well as Bollywood movies (it has made movies like Aloo Chat, Chase and Dulha Mil Gaya) and a restaurant called Blue Waters. Since I have always been involved in acting, it was a natural progression to enter the entertainment

NO. 46 Enaltec Labs

Sector: Pharmaceuticals Location: Mumbai CAGR: 52.96% 2012 Revenue: `68 crore

“Meeting your customer in person instead of over email or a conference call, even without a fixed agenda, helps build relationships that can turn into crucial business thereafter.”

—Anand Shah, founder This Mumbai-based company was founded in 2006 and produces APIs or substances used to manufacture antibiotic, antiasthmatic and antipsychotic drugs, among others.

september/october 2013 | INC. | 8 9

nO.11 The Kickstarters

Easy Trip Planners

Sector: Services Location: New Delhi CAGR: 122.60% 2012 Revenue: `364 crore

The Travel Rangers If there was a genre such as business fantasy, Nishant and Rikant Pitti’s journey of building Easy Trip Planners would be a bestseller. Think about it. How often does a lark of an idea between two teenage brothers become a business that closed its latest financial year with `620 crore in sales? In 2004, the Pitti brothers were on summer holiday from school and college when the first dabbled in booking airline tickets online for their friends and family—for fun. Those heady summer wins finally led the brothers to start a travel company out of their home four years later, in 2008. Today, Easy Trip Planners claims to be India’s No. 5 travel agency with a network of 35,000 travel agents. Yet, the duo is far from done. Still in their mid-20s, their next destination is— sales upwards of `1,400 crore by March 2014.

As told to Sonal Khetarpal | Photograph by Subhojit Paul 9 0 | INC. | september/october 2013

Driving Growth Embarked on the journey to make Easy Trip Planners the No. 1 travel company, Nishant (left) and Rikant Pitti (right) plan to cross a `1,400 crore turnover by next year.

september/october 2013 | INC. | 9 1

ishant Pitti: It all started during the summer break of my first year in college in June 2004. Our father used to travel a lot for his coal supply business. So, instead of going to travel agents, we started booking his tickets directly from the airlines’ website. It would save him `300 to `500 per ticket. Proudly, he spread the word amongst our relatives and all his business associates.

Rikant Pitti: Soon, our relatives began to call us to buy their tickets too. I was in school then—Class 11—but couldn’t keep myself away from the excitement. In no time, we were booking 10-15 tickets every day. My school friends also started asking us to book their tickets. That’s when we stopped to think—we couldn’t just continue to do this for free. We began to charge `200 per ticket from our friends. However, we continued to book for free for our extended family. On an average, we would make `600 daily. That was a lot of money for us then. We got so involved in our “business” of sorts that the two of us made a pact—we ensured one of us was always at home in case booking requests came up.

NO. 59 Enzen Global Solutions

Sector: Utilities Location: Bangalore CAGR: 47.61% 2012 Revenue: `275 crore Founded in 2006, it is a consulting and services company working in the energy and utilities space, primarily in India and the UK.

9 2 | INC. | september/october 2013

NP: As our volumes picked up, an airline noticed that our IP address was making these many bookings. They offered to make us their travel partners. We were thrilled. Generally, airlines give a five per cent incentive to the agent on selling one ticket. We persuaded them to give us six per cent. However, there was a catch. We had to deposit `25 lakh with them and sell tickets worth that amount in two months.

RP: In our naive enthusiasm, we agreed and persuaded our father to help us with the money. But, we could not even sell tickets worth `2 lakh in the first two weeks.

The `25 lakh target seemed far-fetched. We were stuck. We turned to our father for help again. He had good contacts in Srinagar and Guwahati. Through him, we managed to get two agents in each city who agreed to sell tickets for us using our agent’s ID. Within five days, they sold tickets worth `10 lakh. We sold the remaining `13 lakh in over a month.

NP: When college resumed, we completely stopped this makeshift business. But, entrepreneurship never left our minds. The keeda bit us again at the end of 2005. This time we wanted to focus only on the B2B segment. We talked to a few airlines and became their travel agents. The cost of partnering with each airline generally costs `20-25 lakh. That is a lot of money. And, small travel agents couldn’t afford to have accounts with multiple airlines. So we thought we would book tickets for such travel agents and offer them a commission for each ticket sold. They could deposit the ticket amount later in our bank. That way, they need not make an investment with any of the airlines. This is how Duke Travels, our travel agency, started from one room in our house.

RP: Our big problem was that agents did not take us seriously because Nishant was 19, and I was 17. They were hesitant about signing up with two kids. So, we focussed on expanding our reach in Srinagar and Guhawati since we already knew several agents there. In smaller centres like these, references of our existing travel agents worked very well. Within six months, by July 2006, we had 80 travel agents working for us in Srinagar and Guwahati.

NP: To increase our network, we would use Justdial to get contact numbers of travel agents in an area and cold call them to become our travel partners. What we also started doing was persuading phone booth owners, cyber cafe owners—basically any place with more footfall—to become our travel partners. By the end of 2007, we had 400 travel agents across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Gujarat and

The Kickstarters

Kolkata. We were processing around 30-40 tickets daily.

RP: We couldn’t keep up with this quick expansion. We had just five people in our Delhi office to handle all the requests from our agents. It wasn’t feasible, and there were many glitches. Sometimes the amount billed was wrong or the traveller’s name was misspelt. To ease the booking process, we started working on a B2B website so the agents could book tickets themselves. We worked up to18 hours a day studying different websites, evaluating the functionalities we required, and what we should and shouldn’t offer. We finally launched the website EaseMyTrip.com in July 2008.

As Rikant worked on improving technology, I contacted potential agents to grow our network. We used cheaper advertising modes such as Google adverts, e-mailers and SMSes to expand our reach.

In the first year, we had a turnover of `33 crore. And, by the year end, we had 2,500 agents and 15 employees.

RP: We could no longer work from a small space and we had already occupied three rooms in our house. The time seemed right to move out before we took over the entire house! In 2009, we moved to a 600 square feet office so we could hire more people to support the expanding network of agents.

NP: We also wanted to start creating a sales

My only regret is that we should have launched our B2C website in 2005 when we had started Duke Travels. If we had done that, we would have been India’s No. 1 travel company by now.

NP: We knew the name was similar to the leading travel company in those years. But, we were so neck deep in getting the company up and running that we just could not spend time on getting a different name. Honestly, we wanted to go ahead with an easy option.

RP: At that time, we weren’t really thinking about long term plans for the company. We would concentrate on a very short term plan—mostly the “to-do” list for the next day—the airlines we should talk to, the kind of offers we should put up, and the travel agents we could target.

NP: We devised a simple division of work.

I would handle the contracts with different airlines and work on increasing the agents network while Rikant concentrated on the operations, marketing and technology part of the business. We still follow the same bifurcation of roles.

team, all of whom were hired on a revenue sharing basis to help increase our network of travel agents. We had 30 sales people in 2010. Currently, the team has 280 people across India.

RP: 2010 was a big year for us in other ways also. We crossed the `100-crore turnover threshold. So, we continued with the hiring spree as we were planning to diversify our business. We started working on a B2C website to sell air tickets directly to consumers. We finally launched it on March 2010.

Of course, building the website wasn’t without great anxieties and pain. Our biggest challenge that year was to streamline the operations for the existing B2B and the new B2C website. Initially, it was the same team that was handling both the sites. That was a bad decision. Our operations were one big mess. We hired more

people and gradually formed separate teams for both the websites.

As we were fixing the operations, in June 2011, the website was hacked into. It was the peak season, and we were ground to a halt! No agent or customer could make bookings. Our agents were calling us non-stop. I was literally in tears. It felt as if all was lost and we will have to start from scratch. Thankfully, we retrieved the website after 12 long hours.

NP: Till 2011, we would get 20 per cent of our total business from the B2C segment.

To expand our reach we started using mass advertisement mediums, especially radio to gain more visibility.

Last year, Rikant came up with the idea to get linked with movies by becoming their travel partner. We signed a barter agreement with various production houses where we would sponsor tickets for the movie crew, and in return they would mention us in movie credits. We have done 17 movies in just over a year and a half. Housefull 2 mentions our company as their travel partner in their opening credentials. Also, at the opening ceremony of the movie Once Upon a Time in Mumbai Dobaara!, Imran Khan thanked our company for associating with his film. I have put that video on my website. Such initiatives have certainly helped us expand our reach.

By 2012, we were able to increase our travel partners to almost 25,000. Our B2C business improved too. 25,000 visitors visit our B2C website daily. In fact, our business is evenly split between the B2B and B2C segment. We do a total of 2,5003,000 transactions every day across the two verticals.

RP: What makes us the most proud is that around 70 per cent of our customers have booked tickets with us at least three times. On the loyalty count, I think we beat all other travel portals. My only regret is that we didn’t launch our website earlier. If we had launched it in 2005 when we had started Duke Travels, we would have been India’s No. 1 travel company by now. september/october 2013 | INC. | 9 3

FAN Fiction Which fictional character (from a cartoon, movie or a novel) would you like to go into business with?

“I am quite influenced by the Hollywood movie The Godfather released in the year 1972. I especially like that one line from the movie—I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

—J. K. Arora, CMD, SOM Distilleries & Breweries, No. 86

“That would have to be Birbal.

He was great at coming up with simple solutions for complex problems.”

—Aman Choudhari joint MD, Surin Automotive, No. 43

94 | INC. | september/october 2013

“My dream business partner would be Patek Philippe, the world’s greatest watch maker. The brand’s advertising punch line says ‘You never actually own a Patek Philippe, you merely look after it for the next generation’.

We want to model Cameo similarly— solidly built, worthy of being handed over from generation to generation.”

—Jawahar Vadivelu chairman, Cameo Corporate Services, No. 56

Fan Fiction

“I would like to do business with Scrooge McDuck, the richest duck in the world. As a businessman and a treasure hunter, Scrooge is noted for his drive to set new goals and face new challenges.

Scrooge’s motto is Work Smarter, Not Harder. He also maintains a personal code of honesty and often sacrifices his goals to remain within the principles he has set for himself.”

—Karan Mittal MD, Mittal Corp, No. 139

“I would like to go into business with Asterix, the titular hero of the French comic book series The Adventures of Asterix. Daring, adventurous, shrewd and quick witted, Asterix will make a great business partner.”

—Sankey Prasad, CMD, Synergy Property Development Services, No. 53

“I’d like to go into business with Bugs Bunny. No matter what happens, he always gets out of sticky situations and comes out on top. In business, even with all the planning and processes, you sometimes need a little bit of luck.

Also, he’s got a rabbit’s foot with him all the time so he would be a great business partner.”

—Rahul Sahgal, founder & CEO, Annik Technology Services, No. 154

“My favourite character would be Tintin. His presence of mind, and his ability to think his way out of difficult situations would be an asset in the real business world.”

—K. V. Vishnu Raju, CMD, Anjani Portland Cement, No. 155

“If I was ever to talk shop with a fictional character it would have to be the late martial arts legend and Hollywood superstar Bruce Lee from the feature film Enter the Dragon. As an individual, he is humble and patient. His lack of ego in decision making, focused dedication, and the uniqueness of his work are the greatest assets that one can want in a business partner.”

—Santosh Kumar Choubey, chairman & founder, AISECT, No. 27 september/october 2013 | INC. | 9 5

the dependables

nO.144

Vinati Organics

Sector: Pharmaceutical Location: Mumbai CAGR: 32.9% 2012 Revenue: `447 crore

On Top of the World Read this exciting account of the modern David vs Goliath business tale. Vinod Saraf started Vinati Organics in 1990 to manufature Iso Butyl Benzene (IBB), the raw material used to manufacture the painkiller Ibuprofen. The market for IBB was then dominated by a handful of companies in the US and China. But, in 15 years, Saraf ousted the biggies from the game. By 2006, Vinati became the largest producer of IBB in the world. Check out his formula for success.

As told to Sonal Khetarpal | ILLUSTRATION by Manav Sachdev

23 47 126 companies have made it to all five of our lists

9 6 | INC. | september/october 2013

companies have appeared four times on our lists

companies have featured three times on our lists

At the Inc. India 500 Awards Ceremony: Sonal Khetarpal in conversation with Vinod Saraf, founder, Vinati Organics

Mr Saraf, take us right to the beginning. How did it all start?

Like a true Marwari, I always wanted to start my own business even when I was working at the Aditya Birla Group.

Mumbai, Aditya Birla Group (1990): Saraf finds out that the French Institute of Petroleum (IFP) has a technology to produce IBB at lab scale.

Wow, you need IBB to produce Ibuprofen. If I can bring this technology to India, it could be a brilliant business. september/october 2013 | INC. | 9 7

the dependables

Travels to IFP plant, Lyon

With IFP’s consent to be my technology partner, one hurdle is down.

Now, its money?!?

Saraf pitches to Maharashtra Petro Chemical Ltd (MPCL) to invest in the project. He is successful in doing so.

You didn’t have competitors in India. But, who were the major global manufacturers of IBB?

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In December 1990, Saraf resigns from Aditya Birla. He forms a JV with MPCL. MPCL has 26% equity, Saraf 25%, and the rest they open to the public.

Mainly US and China.

But, China would export IBB to India at a very low price.

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Vinati Factory Meeting, 1995.

How can we beat Chinese prices? It seems impossible.

Govt. office, Mumbai: Saraf asking to impose anti-dumping duty.

By late 90s, Saraf buys back MPCL’s shares and starts exporting to China.

Great production!

6,000 tonnes

of IBB!

The factory of the main IBB player, Jilin in China.

Profits!

India is a great market—keep pushing!

Great meeting. I finally see hope for manufacturers like us. Let me show the Chinese now.

Jilin stops exporting to India in 1998 and shuts shop in mid-2000s.

Oh damn, Vinati has turned the tables.

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the dependables

Vinati works to increase its IBB production capacity.

Buck up guys!

We still have a long way to go from here.

The next big market is the USA. Now, since we have captured the China market, I will target other markets.

Saraf invites the largest consumer of IBB in the world from the US, a client of Chevron Phillips, to India to show him his production plant at Mahad, 2006.

Very impressive!

You can supply us 4,000 tonnes which is 80% of our IBB demand.

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the dependables

Vinati’s IBB plant in Mahad prospering

As Vinati got the deal from the US consumer, Chevron Phillips had to stop its IBB division.

With the closure of major players in the US and China, Vinati became the only producer of IBB in the world for merchant consumption.

Now, I can say with great pride that Vinati Organics is the largest manufacturer of IBB producing 16,000 tonnes annually.

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nO.261 The Dependables

Talwalkars Better Value Fitness

Sector: Health care & Diagnostics Location: Mumbai CAGR: 23.13% Revenue: `100 crore

A Fit Business Even after 70 years of being in business, Talwalkars Gymnasium was a local gym chain with 16 stores across Mumbai. But, the story changed dramatically in 2003 when the family-run business was rechristened as Talwalkars Better Value Fitness (TBVF). In the 10 years since, TBVF has muscled up—and how! It today has a turnover of `165-crore and over 145 state-of-the-art health clubs, spas and zumba studios across 70 cities in the country. More than 1,25,000 people across India have Talwalkar memberships. Yet, this high-powered growth routine is only the beginning, says Prashant Talwalkar, the company’s 50-year-old MD and CEO, who is also trained to be a fitness instructor and masseur. In the works is a plan to strengthen the fitness chain by adding 400 health care centres, and to introduce new leisure and sports clubs.

As told to Sonal Khetarpal | Photograph by Jiten Gandhi 10 2 | INC. | september/october 2013

Going Strong After targeting smaller urban areas through Hi-Fi gyms, Talwalkar is working on capturing the premium segment through TBVF’s sports clubs.

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nheritance isn’t something I was allowed to take for granted. My family had 11 gyms in 1982 when I graduated from Jai Hind College, Mumbai. But, my late grandfather Vishnu Talwalkar imposed a strict rule—not to take any managerial role until I learnt all aspects of the trade. So, at the age of 19, I started as a housekeeper at one of our gyms in Mumbai. For two years, our fitness trainers, dieticians, masseurs, orthopedics, accountants and gym managers drilled into me

NO. 154 Annik Technology Services

Sector: IT & ITeS Location: Gurgaon CAGR: 31.9% 2012 Revenue: `77 crore

“An old boss, when facing a crisis situation instigated by an individual said, never let them have free rent inside your head.”

This taught me to not let anything get to me and stay calm during difficult times.”

—Rahul Sahgal founder & CEO Annik has featured three times on the Inc. India 500 list.

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the art and science of the fitness business.

It was in 1984 that I became a manager at the Mahim branch in Mumbai. Like our other employees, I had to work my way up in the company. It was only after a decade, in 1993, that I became a partner in the family business. We had 13 branches at that time. We grew at a snail’s pace because we could manage to open an outlet only once in two or three years due to limited finances. But, my uncle Madhukar Talwalkar, who was also the chairman, had worked out bigger plans for the family business. He wanted us to think about growing exponentially.

Under his stewardship, in 2003, we started looking for collaborators, investors and partners. We received interest from Vinayak Gawande and Anand Gawande, the promoters of Mumbai-based financial consultancy firm Better Value, and Harsha Bhatkal, publisher of the Mumbai-based Popular Prakashan. Together with them, my uncle, his son, Girish and I incorporated Talwalkars Better Value Fitness (TBVF) in 2003.

There has been no looking back since.

In the first five years, we opened 35 new gyms. We added spas to our brand portfolio after that, and have 11 spas now. In 2007 in Mumbai, we started our own training academy for health and fitness professionals. Other than marrying my wife, opening this centre was the best thing that has ever happened to me! It is the pivot that has helped us grow and reach out to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.

By 2010, we had grown to 40 gyms in India. That was also the year we got listed at Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange in the month of May and

were oversubscribed by 28 times. We raised `77 crores which we used to expand and launch weight loss programmes. We went on a major expansion spree and opened 50 more gyms in the next two years. March 16, 2010 is a symbol of that growth. On that day, we opened five gyms across India.

We also introduced NuForm, an EMS (Electro Muscle Stimulation) training which requires only 20 minutes of workout per week. It is designed especially for those people who do not like exercising and are always short of time. We now have eight NuForm studios in India.

We were focused on innovation and research, and after a successful trial on 1,200 people, we also introduced a dietbased weight loss programme in 2012 called REDUCE that provides low-calorie, balanced meals for people who do not want to cook. TBVF is the first company in India to have launched such programmes.

To add more variety to the workout options available, we introduced Latininspired dance-fitness programme Zumba, and have 350 trainers and 25 Zumba studios. It has helped us to capture the growing number of health-conscious women.

In the mid-90s, there were hardly 30 per cent ladies in our gym. Now, it is almost 50 per cent, and in weight loss category, their percentage is more than 85. Also, the increasing fashion consciousness has worked in favour of the fitness industry.

Every time Salman Khan or Hrithik Roshan remove their shirts in a movie, footfall increases in our gym.

Concentrating on different lifestyles was not enough. In India, fitness is a `5,000-crore plus business and the oppor-

The Dependables

tunity is huge. Currently, we are close to 20 per cent share of the organised fitness market. We wanted to reach out to different social segments as well. In 2011, we introduced Hi-Fi (Healthy India Fit India), a health movement to promote fitness by opening franchisee-based no-frill fitness centres in smaller towns and cities.

As we opened our gym in Guntur, a journalist asked me the reason for opening a branch in a place that many Indians can’t even locate on a map. But, we got a grand response, much better than many of our gyms in Mumbai. This is the story of India.

It is growing not only in metros, but also in smaller urban centres. We currently have 15 Hi-Fi gyms and will open another 40 by the end of this year.

As we concentrate on towns and cities, we want to capture the premium segment, too. For that, last year we partnered with London-based sports club company, David Lloyd Leisure to open leisure and sports clubs in India. We are in the process of

Increasing fashion consciousness has worked in favour of fitness industry. Every time Salman Khan or Hrithik Roshan remove their shirts in a movie, footfall increases in our gym.

NO.53 Synergy Property Development Services

Sector: Real Estate & Construction Location: Bangalore CAGR: 49.60% 2012 Revenue: `270 crore

“l have a plaque in my office that reads Never Fail To Plan, Unless You Plan To Fail. I collected it when I had started my entrepreneurial career and I have had it for almost 15 years to keep me on track.” — Sankey Prasad, CMD Synergy has featured twice on the Inc. India 500 list.

NO.56 Cameo Corporate Services

acquiring land in Pune and it will take another year or two to launch our first club of this sort. Such persistent growth has been possible because of the goodwill our family has generated in running this business for eight decades.

A year ago an 18-year-old told me that his great grandfather, grandfather and father had all trained at Talwalkar’s. He is the fourth generation to train at our gyms because his grandfather insisted that he should continue to be with us. This is the value of legacy that I cherish.

Sector: Services Location: Chennai CAGR: 48.1% 2012 Revenue: `79 crore

“Businesses that can grow organically, and at a steady yet robust pace, are better placed to be amongst the winners in fiercely competitive markets, than businesses that rush headlong to frenetic expansion, only to find themselves in all sorts of tangles.”— Jawahar Vadivelu, chairman Cameo has featured five times on the Inc. India 500 list.

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PEOPLE AT WORK

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Bharat Serums & Vaccines Founded by Dr Vinod Daftary in 1971, this biopharmaceutical company is today run by his two sons Bharat Daftary and Gautam Daftary. From the time Bharat took charge of the company in 1989, the workforce has grown from just 120 people to 1,350 today. “Over the years, I have learnt the best way to motivate people is to expand their minds like a rubber band that does not shrink back—to help them achieve beyond what they think they are capable of,” says Daftary, chairman and managing director of the company. While the injectable plant (shown here) employs about 221 people, the company’s horse farm has 70. The average age of their employees is 33.

No: 262 CAGR: 23.11% 2012 Revenue: `278 crore Location: Mumbai Sector: Pharmaceutical

photograph by jiten Gandhi

Reported by ira Swasti

office quirks

office quirks What is that one thing in your office, or on your desk that catches people’s attention?

“A luminous, automated rotating globe bought by my daughter from Turkey.

According to Vaastu, having a globe in the office improves the chances of increasing exports and making a global presence.”

–Ajay Goenka, CMD, Rainbow Papers, No. 108

“My desk has a paper weight shaped as a miniature sprinkler.

Since we are in the irrigation business, we had them made as souvenirs a few years back.”

–Primal Oswal, MD, Harvel Agua India, No. 19

“Because I used to be the president of the PHD Chamber of Commerce, they sent me a pencil sketch of myself. It stands out because it is so lifelike. What makes it even more exceptional is that it isn’t drawn by a professional artist, but by a staff member at PHD.” –R. K. Somany, CMD, HSIL, No. 168 Continued on page 110 10 8 | INC. | september/october 2013

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office quirks Continued from page 108

“It is a quote from Mr Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System.

These lines reflect my personal philosophy and tells my managers what I want, and how I want them to be done.”

What we want to do, How we want to do, Who will do, When he will do.

“Motivating lines from my Guruji which has deeply impacted my life. On my request, Guruji wrote those lines on a paper and gifted it to me. I got it framed and placed it on my desk.

Wo chaal chal ki umra khushi se kate teri, Wo kaam kar ki yaad tujhe sab kiya kare, Janha jikar ho tera, to jikare khair ho, Yaad tujhe sab kare to adab se kiya kare.”

–Suresh Poddar, CMD, Mayur Uniquoters, No. 89

–J. K. Arora CMD, SOM Distilleries & Breweries, No. 86

“The Certificate of Excellence received from Inc. India 500 for the year 2011. It is centrally placed and is the first thing anyone would notice on entering my office.”

–Radhey Shyam Jalan, CMD, KIC Metaliks, No. 166

“The huge idol of Maa Durga at the entrance of our office. Many visitors have told us that there is something in the captivating eyes of the idol. It has an instantly calming effect. In fact, the area is a hot spot for important discussions and meetings, especially in the postoffice hours.”

–Dhirendra Kumar, MD, Camson Bio Technologies, No. 158

“A coffee mug that says There is no success without U. In a diagnostics business as ours, even one mistake can lead to serious consequences. Each of our employees is trained to get things right, first time and every time. This mug serves to remind everyone about the cardinal lesson of teamwork.”

–Dr Sanjeev K. Chaudhry, MD, SRL, No. 40

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“A framed photograph of London’s Piccadilly Circus behind my office desk. I bought at a flea market in Piccadilly. While the photograph is in black and white, a bus in the picture is captured in bright red. The contrast between black and white, and the red makes for a very interesting composition. It always catches people’s eye.”

–Jawahar Vadivelu chairman, Cameo Corporate Services, No. 56

“I have a manual voice amplifier with the words Director written in bold on it. I got it from Universal Studios Hollywood. This reminds everyone, including me, that I’m the boss and the buck stops with me.”

–Rahul Sahgal president & CEO, Annik Technology Services, No. 154