 First up is a brand that started out as a laboratory glassware company, then transformed itself to become a kitchenware company and is today has innovated to become a lifestyle brand with a large product range. A bit credit goes out to our speaker for the day, Srivar Kheruka, CEO and MD, Borosil Limited, who helped turn the fortunes of the company around by adopting a new low cost manufacturing business model and diversifying into other segments. Joining Srivar Kheruka is our session chair, Dr. Anurag Batra, Chairman, Editor-in-Chief of BW Business World and Exchange for Media Group in a special fireside chat on the topic stirring the pot beyond the Indian kitchen. It's going to be absolutely cracker of a conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, please pay a lot of attention. Let me quickly go to Batra. I'll hand it over to you. Ravi, when you have the kind and they say being kind is more important than being wise or being rich, being smart. So kindness is a big attribute. The business owner and the brand owner that I'm going to talk to you has not only talked about kindness, but has exhibited kindness in more ways than one. Let me welcome Mr. Srivar Kheruka, who is the CEO and MD of Borosil Limited. Srivar, thank you for joining the pitch brand talk. We're delighted that we're talking to you. First of all, let me start by asking you a question that I ask everyone. I have a conversation. How have been the last 17 months for you both personally and professionally? Well, thanks for having me here. And I think it's been a challenging but still rewarding period of 17 months. And the reason for that is obviously the challenge everyone knows. But why do I say rewarding? Because I think we've questioned almost all the things that we have taken for granted or we've questioned every aspect of our lives, whether it's professional or personal, why are we around here? What is our role? We have to play in society or our business, for our families. And for this reason, I believe that there are many answers which have come out, which will make us a better society going forward and also make us better companies and leaders as well going forward. Thank you, Srivar. I would say it's been a mixed bag, as you rightly said. We've seen pain, we've seen our lives, we've seen loss of livelihood. But we've also come back to basics and we start as you talked about what is our purpose as an individual? What is our purpose? It's an organization and we started to focus on family, health, mindfulness and most importantly, living in the moment. Sometimes you plan very long. We still continue to do that, but we take every day as it comes. Now, let me get into more nuanced conversations about Borosil and brand leadership. Now, Borosil is a business you and your family acquired, right? And then you nurtured it for many years. You were the sense of the journey at Borosil. So as far as Borosil is concerned, my family, we bought the shareholding in back in 1988 from Corning. Corning is even today a global, you know, maybe Fortune 50 company. And I joined the business in 2006. When we joined, when I joined the business, it was very, let's say inside out focused. We were good at what we did. We are, you know, hardcore manufacturing company. We had a brand and because the product, like with any brand, I think the first and most important thing is the product quality and the product quality was always great. What we did not really do that great was really understanding what our customers needs were. So we had a brand in a very niche market or very niche sense of the word. And I think the last 15 years, the first few years were spent in trying to understand what we had, like what really Borosil meant. And then after that, when I understood what it meant, I think it was driving a team and an organization culture to becoming customer centric and not focused internally, but focused externally. And how do we get the voice of our customers inside the organization and how do we live and breathe to make our customers happier, give them delight and, you know, thereby, you know, grow our organization. And, you know, here I say that a lot of, you know, mission statement, vision statement were for many years, the guiding principle. But, you know, we were following some of them. We were not following some of that, especially in the last 17 months, Borosil as a business, you as a business leader, really in some way, as I keep saying, it's a compassionate economy, became the torchbearers for that passionate economy. You let from the heart and not just from the mind. So give us a sense of why do brands, both internally and externally, need to lead with the heart as much as they need to lead with the mind? Look, I think the important thing for any person, any leader, any company is to be authentic, OK, and we have to do what we feel is the right thing to do. And if you if you refer, I guess you're referring to our, you know, what we did for our employees a couple of months ago during the heart of the second wave of COVID because that was much publicized. But the the real thing was that was not an ad hoc or a random decision. That's really how we've been living our lives or how we deal with our people as well as our customers or supplies or any stakeholders for many years now. And this was an outcome of that. So I would say that for any brand, it's important to be authentic because you can't pretend to be somebody else or you can't pretend to be someone, you know, some other thing, which you're not. And I think what we've learned, we learned a lot about ourselves over the many years and we are now authentic to ourselves and therefore actions that we take are authentic to that point. It's not a manufactured action to achieve a end objective. It is to be true to what we believe are the value systems that we should be living by. And that was really what was what we have been doing. And it's not a COVID thing. It's been happening a lot before. OK, you know, I've been saying that brands need to appeal to profits, but for them, people and planet should equally be important, if not more important. Now, when it comes to Borosil and when it comes to you, you embrace the philosophy of sustainability long before it was fashionable to do it for more than a decade. You've been championing sustainability. And a while it helps your business because the more glass is used, possibly Borosil will be used. But give us a sense of how did you embark on the journey of sustainability and what does it mean for you? So when I was growing up, my my grandmother would always talk to me about how tough life she was from Rajasthan, she grew up in Rajasthan, how tough life was there, what little resources that we had as a family. And therefore, in order to, you know, you have to use the resources very wisely. And of course, when we were growing up, you know, already people have started talking about global warming. So these two separate kind of conversations had a big impact on me personally. And sustainability was always an aspect that I deeply cared about from my own upbringing, I would say. And therefore it's very natural that there should be a circular economy that whatever we use our products should not end up in a landfill somewhere and just pollute the earth or end up, you know, as a, you know, as garbage in the ocean. So this was a it was not a marketing tool. Maybe recently it's become a marketing tool, but it was it was a practical way of living life again, coming back to authenticity. This is what it was. And this is how it should be that whatever products we use to come back, you know, should should go back into raw material and again, come back as a finished goods, you know. So I think sustainability is not let's say a key word. It's the way we have to live our life. Otherwise, our children and our grandchildren will not have much of a you know, planet to live on. And that was really again, the the the spounding point of, you know, increasing our presence and consumer competing with plastic because glass is 100 percent recyclable. It's a it's a fact. You can you can keep reusing glass. You can melt it and, you know, remelt it and put it in different forms. So if a product doesn't suit your needs, it can be reformed. And it's a new product. Whereas a plastic product once made, formed, you cannot reform it. You know, it goes into waste and plastic doesn't decompose. It takes many, many or many years, centuries to decompose. So this was just it was it naturally drew us to that. We also had opportunities to enter into plastics. By the way, we did that also. And within a couple of months of doing it, we all felt we were doing the wrong thing. So as a company, even though it cost us some money, we actually backed out of that of that industry because we, you know, for us entry to plastics would be logical because it's all our retailers use, you know, sell lots of plastics and all our end customers use plastic in their homes. So it was an easy extension of our product portfolio, but we chose not to do it. You know, again, brands are the purpose. Brands who really serve communities has become the overarching team of the last 18 months. Brands have gone and provided oxygen. Brands have gone and built beds, which were not. Tell us why you looked after your internal stakeholders. And as you said, it was part of a continuing mission. Tell us how does brand borosil see itself in a post pandemic scenario and health and humanity have taken a new meaning. Fresh food has taken a new meaning. So give us a sense, both in a functional way and in a philosophical way. So OK, I'll talk philosophical first. And then because the philosophy then drives down to the functionality. We always believe that it's our duty to take care of our own people first and those who are associated with us first and then do something for, you know, outsiders or when I say outsiders, then do something for the broader, let's say, community. So whatever we did first was for our employees, as an example, making sure that we had a set up to deal with even employees, you know, relatives. You know, anyone was in trouble. We had a team teams across the board, across all our locations, making sure we had a hospital beds available or oxygen available or, you know, making sure that they had their, you know, the insurance or even emergency money required, they had access within 12 hours. People are getting funding if required. And then, of course, the next step was what happens if, you know, someone passes away and I think that's already been spoken of. But in general, what we also felt from a broader society point of view that there were many first responders that needed help. OK, and these are people such as the police police or, you know, ambulance drivers or even the people in the morgues who are, you know, take care of the, you know, the those who have passed the dead bodies. So we set up entirely, you know, let's call them packets or packages for all of them to get, let's say that because these people are working 12, 18 hours a day, they're not doing cook food or they're at home. So giving them care packages every day so that they could eat, giving them basic PPEs, which I think took a long time, you know, from bureaucratic point of view to come down to the trenches. So I think helping the first responders was something we focused our attention on. And again, the same thing was the same principle applied. We were doing it in areas where we already have, you know, operations or whether it's Gujarat or Jaipur or Mumbai, Nasek, you know, in these areas where we had operations and that has been really the thrust of what we have tried to do on from a pandemic point of view. To be beautifully outlined in the fact that the first responders needed help and whatever you could do as a business is a brand you did. Now, tell us when it comes to adoption of glass and you already talked about the fact that it's most sustainable, it's recyclable, it keeps the food fresh. There's no order. So glass has its advantages. Tell us with some numbers, give us a sense of adoption of glass. What is helping it and what needs to be done more to increase the adoption because the more the pie grows, the business and the brand will grow. So give us a sense through numbers of the adoption of glass, but what still needs to be covered? So I think the numbers are very low. So if I look at glass as a percentage in the kitchen for basically storage, let's talk about the area of storage, I would say glass, maybe 5%. And 95% is steel and all plastic. And I think here the onus is squarely on us as a leader to come up with products which are attractive and at the same time competitive from a pricing point of view, because India is not a very rich country. We have customers who need affordability. And how do we drive down the pricing of glass to make it competitive so that the average Indian household can afford to buy glass containers and not plastic ones? So a lot of product development, product innovation, technology, we are trying to deploy to arrive at that end goal. Given I mean, the glass look at certain disadvantages also, but let's be clear, it's heavier than plastic, it can break. So, you know, kids, most people would have a challenge to allow their kids to use glass. So those challenges remain and in those areas, instead of using plastic, we have launched steel products because that's a, you know, that's still also the very good material from a sustainability point of view, as well as from a health point of view. Steel has many characteristics which are similar to glass, although steel can't be microwaved, which is a disadvantage. And you can't see through steel. So therefore what's inside the container, whatever you have, you have to open it to see what's inside. So those kinds of disadvantage steel has. But we are trying to make glass more affordable. And I think that, like I said, the onus is on us. If we make glass more affordable for the masses, I think that 5% number will become 20% in the next, you know, five, seven years. Now, let me ask you about brand building in a post-pandemic world. Now, clearly you advertise, you build the brand. How has the media mix in the, you know, brand spends change in the last 18 months or so? Yeah, I think it's actually, this has been traumatic to change. I think a lot of it has gone online, which because there were even in the pandemic, there were many months, let's say where, you know, retail outlets were not allowed to open and but online stores were still allowed. Some of our products were coming under essential categories, especially our appliances. And therefore it made sense to advertise online rather than TV or because there was nobody going to shops. So I think online, as a trend, e-commerce sales have increased a lot and therefore the advertising spend has, is, you know, kind of representing that. Well, big chunk has moved towards the online media as well as social media. So it could be on Amazon, which is the point of purchase, or it could be on, you know, YouTube or, let's say, Facebook or Instagram, those kinds of places. So that's one big change, let's say, from the past. The other trend that I think is here for all to see is that, you know, there has been a decline in circulation of newspapers, that at least my understanding of the situation. So, you know, newspaper advertising has taken a backseat. Now that may come back, depending on how things evolve. But I think a lot of the pandemic has driven people also to, you know, to drop the habit of using a newspaper and moving to a mobile phone or, you know, your computer for reading the news. So that itself is a big change. Earlier, we used to do a lot more advertising in print media, which seems to have taken a backseat. TV advertising still, I think, is there. But again, the percentage may have reduced compared to online. I just, in defense of my fellow publishers, I can say that most newspapers have also very robust digital platforms, some featuring in the top 10 in ComScore. So newspapers are not in the business of news and paper. They're in the business of news and they have used digitally to be in that business and done well. So clearly, you can advertise on some newspaper websites. I'm going to say the websites, we are still doing websites. So, you know, many news websites are still up for, they're doing very well. So, you know, many of the platforms are excellent. And, you know, we see that the advertising there is increasing. But the physical paper has been a challenge. OK. Now, let me move into... See, one of the things we learned in pandemic is never say never. The other we learned is less is more. So tell me, in terms of your marketing spends and advertising spends, do we see an increase in your budgets or do we see an increase in redistribution? No, they're both. So there will be an increase in redistribution, but there will also be an increase in budgets because I see this entire trend of pandemic in the short run, of course, very negative for all industries or for many industries. But cooking from home, in my view, is a long term trend, which has come. And because of that cooking from home trend, I think getting the mind space of the consumer and now it's both men and women. Earlier cooking used to be more dominated by women. But now we see when we see our own, you know, analytics for a website, almost 45 percent of the people on our website are men now, because even men have sitting at home become interested to go into the kitchen and cook, which was not traditionally done in Eastern India. So I think the requirement to spend money has increased as an overall number. And, you know, I see that will continue. So advertising spends will go up. For sure. Sure. Let's talk of three, five years. These days, we tend to talk more in terms of three months, six months, nine months, sometimes weeks. But let me ask you all the next three to five years, where do we see Borosil as a business headed? And the Borosil brand, you talk about Steels because it's a very strong brand, seen as a, you know, leader brand, seen as a credible brand, seen as a very good product at the end of the day, as we say, between the product and the brand. Where do you see the Borosil business in the next three to five years? Look, I think the business we should look the way we go about things is growth is a very important aspect of our kind of life here. And we would hope that in the next three to five years, we'd at least double our revenues to be specific on our business. As far as a brand, if you're talking about products, you know, we have a very strong product development team. And if I look at the products we're developing, they're very exciting. It's in the area of appliances, home appliances. Yeah, you're clearly from a glassware company. In the last few years, you've become a kitchenware company. And you know, whatever is needed in the kitchen, because really the distribution channel is the same. The DCN maker on buying is the same. And clearly the do-it-yourself movement, which in the last 17 months, you know, we saw a lot of do-it-yourself chefs, you know, a lot of CEOs cooking because we were at home more. So clearly, I understand where you're going. Yeah, keep going. Thank you. So you were sharing with us. And again, you talked about the fact that, you know, you're taking more and more space in the kitchen, more and more usages to build on that. Frankly, we are not a top-down company. We are a bottom-up company, which means to say that the ideas for growth come from the people who interact with the customers most, which are sales teams. Our sales teams are actually every day meeting six to seven customers, minimum, and they get incredible amounts of information from those customer visits. And as a result of that, we allow our sales team to drive decision-making on product development. And that's something that, so even I don't know many times what products we're going to come up with in the next six months, because this is, you know, I let them be. So in general, our vision to be the most customer-centric company is something that I would certainly drive. But within that, how to approach or which product to get into, that's something that I don't, you know, get too deeply involved with. We have certain parameters of quality and service that we and aesthetics that we need for a product. Each product must, you know, kind of comply to that. But outside of that, you know, whether to launch a gas stove or to launch a steel burny, these are things which I leave to my team to decide. In general, we'll stay away from plastics because of the, you know, the pollution and the health hazards of it. But outside of some things we won't do, there's very little else that is constraining us and all of this with our distribution strength and our, you know, our team, actually, the biggest strength is our team, frankly. Everything else can be replicated. And that's what I believe is I'm backing and we should double, we should at least double in the next three to five years. Thank you so much. And, you know, when Streeward says that he's put his money where his mouth is. And I just want to say that he's being humble. He hasn't been talking about it. But he was, he and his company were among the first to announce employee initiatives of funding children education, two years salary during the second wave for which you were rightly applauded. Streeward, now let me move into what were your challenges in the last 16, 17 months and how did you overcome them? You already talked about the fact that distribution was closed. So you had to go online that you addressed. But take us through other challenges. They were supply side issues. And how did you kind of triumph them and move forward? Look, the challenges were many, but I'll talk about the most the most basic ones of the most basic challenges, say, from a production point of view was even getting people to to our production units. And even that there were multiple challenges. People's families didn't want them to come. That was one challenge. Another challenge is those who are coming. So I'm talking about the first wave, first phase, where it was not clear what COVID was even at that time, you know, they were getting stopped by the local administration because, you know, they were not allowed to go to factories. So even keeping the operations running was a big, big challenge. There was a lot of fear amongst people in, you know, employees, their families, customers, you know, what is this? How will it impact us? So I would say that dealing with the fear was the biggest challenge for us. And I think what we tried to do was whenever there's a problem over communicate, communicate, communicate, communicate. So I was having, you know, meetings monthly with my entire team on Zoom, every person, like any, we would send mass emails out to the entire Boris's group and anyone, we encourage everyone to join and open meetings where anyone can ask any question, as an example, like a town hall as we called it town hall. So the idea here and also communicating what we're doing. So we'd make a short presentation, communicate what we're doing. How are we going to keep the company running? You know, there's a lot of fear. Many people are losing their jobs, not in our company, but in other companies. So naturally people fear ki, I'll be, you know, what if I lose my job? Where I get money from. There was that kind of fear. There was so lively, how do you mention at the very beginning? There was a fear of life itself, which we saw more in the second phase of wave than in the first. There was the practical problems of keeping the plants and the supply chain running. We were getting, we import some products. And even the imported countries, you know, there was a very big challenge of moving freight, you couldn't travel. Many employees are not set up to work from home. You know, most, most people in our, at least in Mumbai, have homes which are rather small. And there your, you know, your kids are going to school. Your wife is working. You are working. Your parents are aged, you know, and all within a small square footage. So how do you even get on an online meeting with all this background noise? So those small practical things were there. So, you know, some of them we could solve, some we couldn't solve even frankly, and but I would say that the biggest revelation for me was how people have stepped up and people have really come up with innovative solutions for all these problems. And today, the company is operating fine, even though people are still, we still don't have come, you know, we have no compulsory office even today. Everybody's allowed to work from home. People have started coming to office, but of their own, of their own, you know, voluntary will, but I do believe that we've been able to stretch our thought process to do things which would not have been imaginable two years ago. And that itself is great. Absolutely. Let me ask you my last question before we end this conversation. As a leader, as an entrepreneur, what are your biggest learnings and takeaways from the last 18 months? Well, I think stick to the basics is really the biggest learning, right? Don't over complicate life and stick to the basics. The second thing is be grateful for what you have. I think all of us obviously it's good to want more, but one should just take a step back once in a while and say thank you to God for what you have, because we have more than most. And third thing if I had to pick was communication is probably the most important tool we have at disposal to keep moving forward. And you assume that people know many things and they assume you know many things. So the more we communicate, we come on the same page. And once you're on the same page, then it's easy to take decisions. So I would say these are two or three things that I've learned. Absolutely, Shriva, I agree with you that one needs to be grateful for one has while trying to get more second, never say never. Third, less is more. Fourth is go back to basics, question all assumptions. And last but the least, the more you do for others comes back to you. So thank you so much for living what you say and what doing what you do. I just want to say to our viewer that, you know, Shriva, when he came back and joined the family business, there were lots of decisions he took which are really looking good today, whether he takes the credit for it or, you know, he gives it to other example in 2000. He entered the microwave segment where you're a leader now, right? It's a very big category. So congratulations, Shriva, on the success of Boracil. I'm sure you'll continue to make an impact internally and externally. I'm clearly a consumer of Boracil in my home. And I'm sure we'll do many more conversations with you and understand where you're headed and keep track of the milestones that you and Boracil achieve. All the best. This is Mr. Shriva Kheruka, CUNMD Boracil Limited talking to Pitch in exchange for media at the Pitch Brand Talk. Those of you who missed the conversation can visit the YouTube channel of Exchange for Media or Pitch to view the complete conversation or read it on the pitchonnet.com or exchangeformedia.com sites tomorrow morning. Thank you so much. I'll hand it back over to Ravind for the next set of conversations. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Batra. And if you still have Mr. Kheruka here, we have a few questions that just popped up from the audiences. Paul, you've already answered and touched upon them a little bit. But since I have it here, I would be very happy if you can answer them. So Boracil is synonymous with microwaveable bounce. How have you extended brand salience when you extended your portfolio? That's the question. So like I said, we went the product, new product introduction was never top down with all its bottom up. So there is no substitute to, you know, feet on the street. We have large sales teams and, you know, just juta gisai, good old fashioned juta gisai. They would go to the market and talk about our new introductions. And we had very good relationships. You know, we make sure we have very good relationships with our channel partners. And most of them were happy to launch or let's say, introduce new products from our, let's say, Kitty in their in their retail outfits. And so that was one aspect. And the second aspect was the quality. We never compromised on any product quality. So these were two things that we focused on. And we were not, we were, we were patient. He, when we have launched a quality product, we have good relationships. Then, you know, I just, we'll find success. And I think we just kept at it. And I think that's the reason we've been able to get into new product categories. But there's no, there's no secret sauce per se. Just, you know, good old fashioned, like I said, juta gisai hard work. Right. And thank you so much once again, Mr. Kerukha for being here with us. And as Dr. Batra already said, you have been doing a phenomenal work in terms of the empathy that you're extending to the whole family of people working at Borosu. We wish you more power. Thank you so much once again for joining us. It was a lovely conversation. Thank you.