- 3 years ago
Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director, Bajaj Auto shares intimate moments and reflections from his personal and professional life in an up close conversation with N Mahalakshmi, Editor, Outlook Business.
For more insights, log on to https://www.outlookbusiness.com/
#BajajAuto #Entrepreneur #RajivBajaj #Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
For more insights, log on to https://www.outlookbusiness.com/
#BajajAuto #Entrepreneur #RajivBajaj #Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 In 1985, my parents sent me off to spend five weeks
00:28 in Denver, Colorado, with a family called the Hoff family,
00:32 H-O-F-F. Because Paul Hoff had been to Harvard Business
00:36 School with my father.
00:38 And Paul Hoff was a typical rags to riches story,
00:42 because he was a bricklayer's son who joined the US Navy--
00:49 Naval Academy, I believe.
00:51 He used to fly in the Navy.
00:55 So when you think of people who fly planes,
00:58 you have a certain impression about them.
01:00 And then he went on to do his MBA,
01:02 and he was very successful in his business.
01:06 So he may have had a tough upbringing.
01:07 He may have been a pilot.
01:09 He may have been to a cutthroat business school
01:12 and been a businessman.
01:13 But he was the softest person that I ever knew.
01:18 And he was the best mentor any child could have.
01:23 So in fact, he kind of adopted me.
01:25 So I used to call him Dad.
01:26 I used to call his wife Mom.
01:29 Unfortunately for me, he passed away very young in 2001.
01:33 Sudden heart attack, walking in New York.
01:36 So it was very, very sudden and shocking.
01:39 But he is the one--
01:42 I would say the role that perhaps my father could not
01:44 play at that time for whatever reason.
01:47 Paul Hoff played.
01:48 And he would come at least once a year to India to see me.
01:51 I would go often to see him.
01:54 And so his kids were my friends.
02:00 I spent a lot of time there, five weeks with him in Denver.
02:04 So he was another life guru, like my mother.
02:09 And I think just in terms of being human and dealing
02:16 with people in a human way is what I learned from him.
02:22 Because in spite of all that he had achieved,
02:24 he was just, as I say, the nicest and--
02:27 I like to say the softest person ever.
02:30 Because for me, the most important quality
02:32 in a human being is softness.
02:34 I'm not looking for intelligence, ambition,
02:37 tenacity, stuff like that.
02:42 Even integrity.
02:43 For me, the most important is softness.
02:45 And that softness, I think everything resides.
02:49 And Paul Hoff was that person for me.
02:52 So in his soft way, for example, he
02:53 would say to me in terms of doing something
02:57 after I'd finished studying, coming back, et cetera,
03:00 he would always say, go out on a limb,
03:03 because that's where all the food is.
03:05 So that was his soft way of pushing me
03:08 to do something different, to take a risk,
03:11 to push the envelope, to test the edge,
03:14 that sort of thing.
03:20 So I joined in 1990.
03:24 So the first five years, I was working at the most junior level
03:28 possible, as an engineer or as a first among equals
03:32 with engineers.
03:35 So at that time, my interaction with my father
03:36 was very limited, because I was not
03:39 dealing with issues of strategy, technology, quality, marketing,
03:44 whatever.
03:46 It was only from around '94 onwards
03:48 when I started finding my way into product development,
03:51 marketing, et cetera.
03:53 Then the whole alpha male syndrome begins, right?
03:59 And you're never prepared for it.
04:01 So then that relationship changes.
04:02 When I started working here, the one senior person
04:14 from my father's team, 90% of the people that
04:18 worked with my father, I personally
04:20 felt that they were not really with it.
04:25 And one of the most remarkable was a gentleman
04:27 called Mr. Jen.
04:30 So Mr. Jen is now about 87.
04:32 In fact, he used to come to lunch at 1 o'clock.
04:35 And so he coached me from a business point of view.
04:42 So he's the one that helped me understand
04:46 we should be global.
04:47 We should do one thing right, put everything
04:50 behind motorcycles.
04:53 And the most important thing he told me
04:54 was that we may have started scooters with Vespa,
04:59 and we may have started motorcycles with Kawasaki.
05:04 It was a very simple lesson, but I think it is so important.
05:07 He said, do you really think you can go through life standing
05:09 on somebody else's feet?
05:10 It's not possible.
05:11 You have to learn to stand on your own feet.
05:13 Unless-- he said, we have no R&D in this company.
05:16 There's no technology in this company.
05:18 There's no quality in this company.
05:19 There's no productivity in this company.
05:22 So OK, we did relatively much better than others.
05:25 But he was talking from a global perspective.
05:28 He took me around the world.
05:29 He took me to shows in Italy, in Germany.
05:33 He took me to Japan.
05:34 I think I must have been to Japan 50 times,
05:37 out of which Mr. Jen must have come at least 10 times.
05:40 Ravi was always there.
05:42 He would say, see, this is what is called world class,
05:46 whether it's in terms of product, the design, the finish,
05:49 the quality, et cetera.
05:51 He used to take me to our dealerships.
05:55 And I remember one dealership--
05:56 I will not name it--
05:57 in Pune.
05:58 He took me to the workshop.
06:00 And that same infamous M50 that my brother and I were riding,
06:03 somebody's vehicle was there.
06:06 It was lying outside the workshop on the footpath
06:09 with the engine cover open and with the rain
06:11 falling into the crankcase.
06:13 And he said, this is Bajaj.
06:16 See, customers have no choice.
06:18 So they accept this.
06:21 But do you really think this will be accepted tomorrow?
06:24 But that was the status quo at that time.
06:26 Everybody thought that was normal.
06:28 And I'm sure it was not the case only with Bajaj.
06:30 It was with perhaps every other Indian auto and engineering
06:33 company.
06:35 That's why how many of us are world class
06:38 and are able to export even today.
06:39 That mindset has not changed by enough.
06:41 So Mr. Jain is the one who showed me the world,
06:46 opened up my eyes.
06:48 And he said, you have to stand on your own feet.
06:50 And he said, you're the only one who can do it.
06:52 He said, otherwise, this company is so confident of itself.
06:56 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
06:58 [MUSIC PLAYING]
07:02 I'll tell you a funny story about Jain.
07:06 So I have a dear friend called Ajay Bhai Patni, Ajay Patni,
07:09 from Nagpur.
07:10 He's our dealer.
07:12 And he still comes and meets me.
07:14 And I would say I learned a lot from him also.
07:19 And a couple of other dealer friends of mine.
07:22 So I used to ask Ajay Bhai sometimes.
07:24 He's not much older than me.
07:28 Was Bajaj such an arrogant company?
07:30 Because I knew one thing, that my father was very fair.
07:33 He never overcharged consumers.
07:36 That's a very well-known story.
07:37 He kept the prices low as possible.
07:39 He treated his people well.
07:41 He believed in quality.
07:42 He believed in productivity.
07:44 He believed in hard work.
07:45 He believed in being world class.
07:46 He always talked about exports.
07:49 It is not his mistake that he went and did a goddamn MBA
07:52 at Harvard.
07:53 I think that was the problem.
07:56 I firmly believe, you know.
07:58 Because I don't think management is a science
08:01 you can learn in a classroom.
08:02 It's a behavior that you learn while you practice a science.
08:06 That science has to be something else,
08:08 like engineering or something.
08:09 So anyway, that is one of our longstanding points
08:12 of divergence.
08:13 So coming back to Ajay Bhai, so I asked him this.
08:16 How can it be that when the man at the top
08:18 was not arrogant at all, and he genuinely wanted excellence,
08:24 how can--
08:26 is it really true the stories I hear?
08:28 He said, Rajiv Bhai, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
08:31 He said, in my own dealership, one fellow
08:33 came in one day, scrambled through the door.
08:36 And he said that, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
08:40 When was it booked?
08:41 He said, 10 years ago.
08:43 And it was in anticipation of his daughter getting married.
08:46 That was one of the famous stories about Bajaj.
08:48 If your daughter was going to get married in 10 years time,
08:52 then this is one of the things you bought for the groom.
08:55 So he said, I booked it 10 years ago.
08:58 And I received a letter saying that the vehicle is here.
09:02 So he said, then what's the problem?
09:05 But, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] on that scooter,
09:08 there is only one rear view mirror.
09:11 So Ajay Bhai says, it's a first-hand thing.
09:13 Ajay Bhai says, so what's the problem?
09:16 So the man showed him the catalog from 10 years ago.
09:19 He said, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
09:23 At least you deliver the full scooter.
09:26 So we used to do anything.
09:27 Even without spare wheel, we used to ship it out.
09:29 Without a mirror, there's that.
09:30 And consumers also were keen to get the product and get going.
09:35 So Ajay Bhai says, see what he says to him.
09:38 He tells him, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
09:43 Now are you going to ask me for that also?
09:47 This is the story of arrogance of a Bajaj dealer in sales.
09:52 This is the story of arrogance, or whatever
09:54 you may want to call it, incompetence
09:55 of a dealer in service.
09:57 That a automobile is lying with its engine open.
10:00 And I'm telling you this story is around 1994, '95.
10:06 The country had already opened up.
10:08 Hero Honda had happened in '82 or '83, if I'm not wrong.
10:11 So in Suzuki, now TVS Suzuki, or later on, et cetera, et
10:15 cetera.
10:16 12 years after that, this was the behavior of the company.
10:21 That is why Mr. Jain was so important to me.
10:23 Because he was one person who did not get colored
10:29 by that environment.
10:31 And I think it's very remarkable.
10:33 See, today I'm working in a certain ecosystem,
10:35 we call-- we use such big words.
10:38 I'm totally calibrated and conditioned by it.
10:40 I will never be able to think outside of it, I'm sure.
10:44 I don't have that ability.
10:45 But Mr. Jain had that.
10:46 And he could think world class at a time
10:49 when this is the state of affairs.
10:52 [MUSIC PLAYING]
10:54 My next great teacher was the Japanese professor Yamaguchi-san.
11:01 This story I've told on YouTube a million times.
11:05 And one of the wonderful things that Yamaguchi-san told us
11:08 in a certain moment of frustration with us
11:10 when he was trying to teach us-- every three months,
11:13 he used to threaten to leave us.
11:15 Because we were useless students.
11:17 This is from '96 onwards.
11:19 Till about 2016, he came.
11:21 20 years he had to teach us.
11:22 20 years Mr. Jain had to teach us.
11:24 We were that proverbial [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
11:27 It took a long time to straighten us out.
11:29 So in his frustration, Yamaguchi-san said once,
11:33 business starts when the customer says no.
11:37 This is important to understand.
11:38 If the scooter is selling-- see, my father
11:40 gets very allergic to this.
11:41 It is him sometimes.
11:43 Oh, monopoly, waiting period, this, that.
11:45 Then he reels off a list of 20 companies.
11:48 Oh, Kinetic was there, TVS was there,
11:49 Kerala Automobile was there, Andhra Pradesh Scooter was there,
11:51 Gujarat Narmada was there, this one,
11:53 Lambretta, Sharmletta, all that.
11:54 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
11:55 All that was there.
11:56 But the reality is, consumers still
11:58 waited 10 years, five years, three years.
12:00 When I joined the company, there was mild panic
12:02 in the company in December 1990.
12:05 Because the waiting period was down to 18 months.
12:07 I cannot conceive of creating a product which
12:10 has an 18-month period and not celebrating
12:13 in some part of the world.
12:14 I mean, imagine if I had that good fortune, which
12:16 I have never had, actually.
12:19 So I understood what Yamaguchi-san meant,
12:22 that really the mindset changes when
12:25 you have product on the shelf, whether it's
12:27 a magazine or a motorcycle.
12:28 And nobody wants to buy it.
12:30 That is when you have to change, or that's the end.
12:32 There's only two choices.
12:34 So I think that was a period of time
12:35 when there's no product on the shelf.
12:37 There's no back pressure from the market at all.
12:40 So why would anybody listen to Mr. Jain?
12:42 And I would say I have been in many of those meetings
12:45 without being critical or unkind.
12:47 I would say that--
12:48 and I've said this to my father openly--
12:50 that he only paid lip service to it.
12:51 In a sense, he would always say, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
12:56 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
12:58 But as Dr. Rajan just told me the other day, my own opinion,
13:02 the world is not changed by your opinion.
13:05 It is changed by your action.
13:06 So what is the action you have taken?
13:09 That is important.
13:10 There's no question of taking action.
13:11 All you have to do is produce more so that you can sell more.
13:14 Customers are waiting in a queue.
13:16 So Mr. Jain somehow was--
13:20 Mr. Jain and Dr. Wallace said the same thing, which I say--
13:25 I'm saying this now because it's very embarrassing for me--
13:28 that they both told my father that this boy is
13:33 this company's only hope.
13:35 And that's not something I like to say to people
13:37 because it gives the wrong picture.
13:39 But in 1992 or '93, after I'd worked for two, three years,
13:44 my father was very keen that I should go to Harvard Business
13:46 School.
13:47 It was a family tradition--
13:49 my father, my uncle.
13:50 So I went there for a day to see what
13:52 it was like for the experience.
13:54 I was not enamored.
13:55 But anyway, it's horses for courses.
13:58 So he was very keen that I should go.
14:00 And I still remember, Dr. Wallace was older than my father.
14:03 He's still alive in the UK.
14:04 He's over 90 now.
14:06 And he was a typical feisty Englishman,
14:10 who my father loved, actually.
14:11 My father only brought him as a consultant to Bajaj
14:15 in the '80s, even before I was in the company.
14:19 I remember Dr. Wallace sitting across my father's table
14:23 in his office, same office.
14:24 I was sitting next to him.
14:26 And he wagged his finger at my father.
14:27 And he said, if this boy goes to Harvard,
14:31 there will be no company left by the time he's back.
14:35 This is what he said.
14:37 And both he and Mr. Jain were there that day.
14:40 Both felt that I was their vehicle
14:43 for implementing the changes.
14:45 With having studied at Warwick, see,
14:48 there was nothing at all special about me
14:49 except the exposure I had had.
14:51 I had been to the Mass Effervescent plant.
14:53 I had been to the Honda plant at Swindon.
14:57 I had, of course, been to all our labs and workshops.
14:59 I knew what real manufacturing was about,
15:02 what real quality was about.
15:04 So I could see that what we were doing
15:08 is completely mediocre.
15:10 And that was a great joy for me and a great opportunity
15:13 because, you see, unlike product development or marketing,
15:16 where there's a long period of gestation between what you do
15:19 and the result--
15:20 I mean, if I start designing something now,
15:22 it'll come out in three years' time.
15:23 With manufacturing, you do something now,
15:25 you can see the result in two minutes.
15:28 If I reduce the cycle time of a machine by 10 seconds,
15:31 from one minute to 50 seconds,
15:32 it is producing a job faster the very next minute.
15:36 So for an engineer, there is nothing more gratifying
15:39 than to see that something you do in the morning
15:42 yields a result one hour later.
15:46 So when I started working,
15:49 my only job in this company, actually,
15:51 was to teach others at the age of 23.
15:53 And that is how I met some of my most competent colleagues
15:57 who have risen through the ranks from there,
16:00 like Ravi, or like Joe, like Pradeep, et cetera,
16:03 who had the various most important functions.
16:06 Because if I had not worked ground up,
16:10 I would never have met the real talent that existed in Bajaj.
16:14 I would have only met the senior people.
16:16 The real gems were on the floor, the juniors,
16:20 and across, not just in production,
16:23 across all functions.
16:25 And so that's where then I could--
16:28 I think at that time, I got about 200 people together.
16:33 And we called it a streamlined manufacturing systems group.
16:37 SMS, it was called.
16:39 So I used to be part of that across these two plants
16:42 we had in Pune and Aurangabad at that time.
16:46 And they were just engineers who were already
16:48 working in different departments.
16:50 I was bringing them in, sharing some knowledge, information,
16:54 books, and articles with them, putting them back,
16:57 and then supporting them.
16:58 See, everybody knew, even though I was 23, or 24, or 25,
17:02 everybody knew that, quote unquote,
17:03 "the boss's son is standing behind this guy."
17:06 And that's the ironical thing.
17:08 Everybody knew that we were no good.
17:11 Everybody knew what we could do was much better.
17:13 When Dr. Wallace was brought in as head of a consultancy
17:22 called Coopers and Lebrant by my father, C&L,
17:25 it used to be called.
17:27 I think they hit their head and they charged us,
17:29 God knows how many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
17:32 But they could make no improvement.
17:33 Because as one of the other senior colleagues of my father
17:37 called V.M. Rao, who was a brilliant engineer,
17:39 told me, "We have taught them everything.
17:42 "But I've also taught C&L everything and sent them back.
17:45 "There's no question of learning from them."
17:48 So that's how my father packed off the consultants.
17:50 Because he said that, "I'm only paying you,
17:51 "nothing's happening."
17:52 He only kept the head of the team, Dr. Wallace,
17:54 because he had a personal chemistry with them.
17:57 He became a friend, like a family friend almost.
17:59 So that's how Dr. Wallace stayed on,
18:02 to try and make a change.
18:05 And Dr. Wallace used to not say that this can be 10% better.
18:07 This can be 300% better.
18:10 It was inconceivable.
18:11 People used to faint, you know,
18:13 that if I try to tell the workmen
18:15 to make something 5% better,
18:17 they will put the tools down.
18:19 And this fellow's talking 500% better.
18:21 They couldn't believe it.
18:22 When he used to say, "This paint shop is producing
18:24 "600 per day, scooters.
18:26 "This should be..."
18:27 He used to just take a look at it.
18:28 I mean, he had that eye.
18:29 We call it Kaizen eye.
18:31 You know, one look he could...
18:32 "This should make 2,000."
18:34 And we used to be so excited, you know, as young engineers.
18:36 And we used to do it.
18:38 The lines that used to produce, I remember,
18:41 128 scooters a shift, if I'm not wrong.
18:46 And because we tried to change it,
18:48 there was a strike.
18:49 And when we tried to move output from 128
18:54 to, I think, 150 or 160,
18:57 and then to 210,
18:59 it was unheard of in those days.
19:02 And no Mahindra, no Tata,
19:04 nobody was doing that kind of stuff.
19:06 Lines of...
19:08 Assembly lines of similar length
19:10 are today in Bajaj producing 1,200 vehicles a shift.
19:15 Now, where was 100 and something,
19:17 where is 1,200?
19:18 I mean, a big number I can give you is that
19:21 around the time I joined,
19:22 all of Bajaj Auto was about 23,000 people,
19:26 including a lot of temporary people, contract people.
19:30 Producing about 923,000 vehicles total in that year.
19:36 So a little under a million,
19:39 and produced by 23,000 people.
19:41 Our Panthanagar plant today
19:45 can produce well over a million.
19:46 I think it can produce, in fact,
19:48 close to two million vehicles.
19:50 And I think there are only 1,000 people.
19:52 Now, the two things are not comparable
19:54 because that's just a plant,
19:55 this had corporate staff also,
19:57 the make-buy has changed,
19:59 automation has changed, et cetera.
20:00 But the point is,
20:01 look at the difference,
20:02 23,000 versus 1,000.
20:05 And not even one million versus perhaps
20:06 one and a half, two million.
20:08 So that was the scope to improve productivity.
20:10 There was a similar scope to improve quality
20:14 by similar magnitude.
20:16 To improve technology, to improve automation,
20:18 all of that was there.
20:19 Mr. Jain used to always tell me,
20:27 "You have to stand on your own feet."
20:31 And Dr. Wallace said the same thing
20:33 in a different way to me.
20:34 These sentences I will never forget.
20:36 He told me only once,
20:38 in a certain context of a work
20:42 we were doing in the press shop,
20:45 he said, "Don't defend the past,
20:46 attack the future."
20:47 And today, when we have made a bold move
20:52 with the electric Chetak, for example,
20:54 when everybody knows that electric vehicles
20:56 are not viable, you lose money,
21:00 and there are so many anxieties around them.
21:03 But I will never forget this lesson
21:04 because I have learned the hard way
21:07 that Bajaj Auto missed two big buses
21:10 in the '80s.
21:11 One was the automatic scooter,
21:14 where Kinetic Honda did so well,
21:16 and we have lost out on that market completely.
21:19 And the second was the 100cc motorcycle
21:21 where Hero Honda did so well.
21:22 And I have learned the hard way
21:24 that in this market, what matters more
21:26 than anything else is the first mover's advantage.
21:31 Because if you are first to market with something,
21:34 for which apparently there is no market,
21:37 all my dealers used to tell me,
21:38 "Hero Honda's car will never sell."
21:41 That's why till today, not in a bad sense,
21:43 but I tell my marketing and sales people
21:45 to look at it today,
21:46 "Dealer opinion counts for nothing."
21:48 Because as my marketing guru, Jack Trout,
21:51 always told me, "People buy what other people buy."
21:54 The dealer only talks about herd mentality.
21:57 He's not going to have the heart
21:58 to bet on differentiation.
22:00 So you have to start something new.
22:02 You have to create products that create segments.
22:05 And when you don't do that,
22:07 and you are late to market,
22:08 then you are only seen as a cloner.
22:11 And that taught me that it is better to try
22:14 and fail for being wrong than not to try,
22:17 because the cost of being wrong is very small.
22:21 The cost of being late is huge.
22:23 Probably, Bajaj Auto, in my estimate runs,
22:28 has lost 30,000, 40,000 crores of rupees
22:31 that it would have made
22:32 if instead of Hero Honda,
22:33 we would have made the 100cc four-stroke motorcycle first.
22:37 When we made the Pulsar first,
22:38 when we made the three-wheeler first,
22:40 when we made the scooter almost first.
22:43 See, we are not really in an industry
22:46 which is driven by technology.
22:47 Because if you look at a car today
22:50 versus a car 20 years back,
22:52 there's not much that's different.
22:53 The first electric car was put together
22:55 more than 100 years ago.
22:56 Electric scooters, I mean,
22:58 a TVS made an electric scooty
23:00 15 years ago in this country.
23:03 So I would still argue that it's more of an evolution
23:06 than a revolution.
23:08 And in that sense,
23:10 it is very important to be there first.
23:14 Now, one doesn't have to take it literally.
23:17 I mean, for example, I would say we are,
23:21 we are an early starter with the electric scooter.
23:23 I don't think we are late with that.
23:25 Now, TVS may have done something 15 years back
23:28 which faded away for whatever reason.
23:30 Ather, of course, has done very well
23:31 in the last couple of years, etc.
23:34 The problem is when you have a matured
23:37 competitor like Honda come with Hero,
23:41 and you come out with something 10 years after that,
23:44 nobody's interested.
23:45 Because there is not enough elbow room in technology
23:49 to make something far superior.
23:51 The problem with engineers is
23:52 they only think in terms of better.
23:55 Engineers think like this,
23:56 that if somebody gives you 10 kilometers a liter
23:58 and I give you 11, you should buy me.
24:01 But it doesn't happen because for one kilometer a liter,
24:03 consumers are not willing,
24:05 the herd is not willing to shift.
24:06 So knowing the difference between what is better
24:11 and what is different is intrinsic to marketing.
24:15 That is how I learned the importance
24:17 of being first to market.
24:19 And in that context, Dr. Wallace used to tell me
24:24 that you must attack the future,
24:26 don't defend the past.
24:27 Yamaguchi-san, I mean, my most important
24:36 business lesson perhaps.
24:37 I've told this story many times,
24:40 about what is your job.
24:42 I could never answer the question.
24:48 He kept asking me, "What is your job?"
24:49 I kept telling him my designation.
24:51 He would say, "That's your designation,
24:52 "what is your job?"
24:53 And I would say, "I do this."
24:54 Then he said, "Do you actually design?"
24:56 I said, "No."
24:57 "Do you actually make?"
24:57 "No."
24:58 "Do you actually sell?"
24:59 "No."
25:00 He said, "Then you're just over it,
25:01 "what is your job?"
25:02 This conversation took place sitting here
25:03 at this very place.
25:05 And then he told me that people like you
25:07 who sit up in the corporate hierarchy,
25:09 you fellows don't do anything with your own hands.
25:12 And this is true of all people who are not
25:14 doing anything with their own hands.
25:15 I always tell my people that,
25:18 if you're Mahendra Singh Dhoni,
25:19 you have to still slog it out.
25:20 If you're a great surgeon,
25:22 you have to still bend over nine hours
25:24 doing the surgery yourself.
25:26 And if you're a painter,
25:28 you have no choice but to paint.
25:29 But we are the only people,
25:32 the so-called managers,
25:33 we are the only category of people
25:35 who have to do nothing.
25:36 You sit in an air-conditioned room,
25:38 you drink your coffee,
25:39 you look at the PPT,
25:40 you sign a few papers,
25:42 and you do blah blah all day long.
25:43 This is all you do.
25:44 So then he told me that,
25:46 "This is not your job."
25:47 He used to always say,
25:48 "You think only talking is your job."
25:50 Then he said, "No, talking is not your job,
25:52 "improvement is your job."
25:54 He taught me then that,
25:55 you have to always have this mindset of improvement.
25:58 And you have to go to work every day
26:01 telling yourself,
26:03 "You will improve something today."
26:05 And by the end of the day,
26:09 you should feel that you have done that.
26:11 So at least if you improve one thing every day.
26:13 And I think that is the success of the Japanese.
26:16 That is the culture of the Japanese.
26:18 And I would like to believe that
26:20 that's the kind of culture we are
26:21 developing or enabling in Bajaj Auto,
26:24 where everybody who comes to work must feel
26:27 that I have improved something.
26:29 Because we used to always get this question
26:31 in those days when we pushed for productivity,
26:33 improvement, et cetera.
26:35 Which culminated with a big VRS here,
26:38 the big thing getting rid of so many people.
26:41 And the standard question used to always be,
26:44 which initially I was never able to answer.
26:47 "What's in it for me?"
26:48 So the workman or the supervisor will say,
26:53 "My salary is the same."
26:56 So my future is not anymore assured.
26:59 You are not saying because of this,
27:00 you will employ my son.
27:02 But the answer came to me again in 2017 May
27:04 from Dr. Rajan.
27:06 When again, in a certain context, he told me,
27:10 "The true reward for man's toil
27:14 "is not what he gets for it,
27:18 "but what he becomes of it."
27:21 So each person has to experience that for himself.
27:25 That whatever I'm doing,
27:26 if I do it by attacking the future,
27:29 if I do it so that the world flies,
27:31 if I do it in a manner that exhibits continuous improvement,
27:36 what is it that it does to me?
27:38 I think you can reflect and you can sense what it does to you.
27:43 I think that is the true reward.
27:44 That is something that money cannot buy, so to speak.
27:49 So I was not wise enough to give them this answer that day.
27:53 But in recent years, this is the answer I give them.
27:55 That you ask yourself,
27:57 are you the same person you were when you were doing that?
28:00 And now you are doing this.
28:01 And then people understand.
28:04 A labourer dispute has to be sorted out
28:13 in the chambers of Bal Thackeray.
28:15 But I remember we were taken there,
28:17 I remember the house.
28:18 A lot of our workmen, union people were outside.
28:22 Then we were taken inside.
28:25 And there were, I would say, stories in two parts.
28:30 So one part is that,
28:31 apparently when Bal Thackeray came to Mumbai,
28:33 and when he was a "nobody" initially,
28:36 so my grand-uncle Ramkrishanji apparently had taken a liking to him
28:39 for whatever that cartoon business and all, whatever he used to do.
28:43 And he kind of supported him in some fashion, I am not sure how.
28:46 So Bal Thackeray always had great regard, respect and affection for him,
28:50 and therefore for the family.
28:53 So it was very clear that he was not going to be rough with us.
28:57 But at the same time, it was his union.
28:59 So, and he was obviously the big boss.
29:02 My father was not the big boss in that room that day, it was him.
29:05 So he was going to call it.
29:08 So it was very nice to see how the dynamics played out.
29:11 And it was good training for me,
29:13 because I asked myself 20 times,
29:15 "What will I do in such a situation?"
29:17 I don't want to agree, because they have beaten up my people.
29:20 I got very emotional about it,
29:21 because some of my supervisors got beaten up, etc.
29:24 There was violence.
29:24 So people have to lose their job.
29:26 And there was one particularly troublesome character.
29:28 And at that time, my attitude as a young person was,
29:31 "He has done this, he should be sacked."
29:34 "He should be punished."
29:35 That was my attitude.
29:37 And I told my father very clearly,
29:38 "You can't step back from this."
29:41 So my father had tried very hard to tell them here,
29:43 that they go,
29:44 "This time, he's also dug his heels in, etc."
29:47 But obviously a union will not allow somebody to be sacked.
29:50 And he was a union leader, senior person.
29:53 So that's why there was a stalemate,
29:55 and we had to go to the power centre,
29:58 or to the remote control, or whatever it was.
30:01 So I was asking myself, "What will my father do?"
30:03 Because if Bal Thackeray says no,
30:05 that means that's the end of it then.
30:07 So my father was very clever.
30:09 So he told Bal Thackeray,
30:11 he gave him the background,
30:13 "This has happened."
30:14 "Now he says this, your people say that."
30:17 "So I'll do one thing."
30:18 "These are the keys of the gate."
30:20 "I'll give you the keys."
30:22 "You only manage the company now."
30:23 "Because I can't do it."
30:25 "On the one hand, it's like the devil in deep blue sea."
30:28 "This son of mine also won't relent."
30:31 "The unrelenting force met the irresistible force."
30:35 "Met the unrelenting object."
30:37 "And your fellows also won't listen."
30:38 "So you keep the keys."
30:40 So very cleverly, he got out of that situation.
30:44 Bal Thackeray is sitting there nicely.
30:46 And something happened, he offered,
30:47 "How he changes the subject?"
30:49 He said,
30:51 "Don't take stress."
30:52 "Will you have beer?"
30:54 So my father was quite surprised.
30:56 It was middle of the day, it was about lunch time.
30:59 So my father says, "No."
31:00 My father generally doesn't drink at all.
31:03 And certainly not in the day.
31:05 So he said, "No, no, I don't drink."
31:07 And he never used to drink beer, I think.
31:09 So Bal Thackeray said, "Don't you drink beer?"
31:11 So I'm thinking this is like a labor negotiation going on here.
31:16 So he says, "No."
31:19 "See, that's why you have so much tension in life."
31:23 "And then you'll have health problems later."
31:25 "Drinking beer is very important."
31:27 "All problems get solved."
31:29 You know, like this he went on.
31:30 So he lightened the whole thing.
31:33 Then he gestured to some of his people in the room.
31:36 I remember the names of some of the senior ones,
31:39 but I don't want to say them
31:40 because some of them are ministers now.
31:42 And he said, "So has that person done what this boy is saying?"
31:47 He pointed to me.
31:48 "Have they really beaten up that fellow like that?"
31:50 "Is he a repeat offender like that?"
31:52 So they said, "Yes."
31:53 "That it is."
31:55 "Kaadun takatela."
31:56 "Off with his head."
31:57 "In one sentence."
31:59 So they were all shocked.
32:00 So this power of being decisive, you know.
32:03 This, okay, it suited me.
32:05 So I was for it.
32:07 But I saw this, that, you know,
32:09 I think today's time, the politicians we have and all,
32:12 they are not decisive, actually.
32:14 You know?
32:15 And that is why we have also ended up
32:17 with some of the people that we have.
32:19 So how to be decisive?
32:20 Not that, you know, one person can usurp
32:23 the discipline of the party or something like this.
32:26 I mean, here was a leader who was very fair, very open.
32:29 He has given time.
32:30 He has invited the feedback.
32:32 But then he is able to stand up and do the right thing.
32:34 And he said, "Out."
32:36 And he told my father.
32:37 And yet, how he did it with the velvet glove,
32:41 he told us, "You give him one auto rickshaw free of cost."
32:46 Because with the auto rickshaw, you can start earning tomorrow.
32:48 You know?
32:50 So he said that his family should not suffer.
32:53 You give him auto rickshaw free of cost.
32:55 So from tomorrow, if he's willing to work eight hours a day,
32:58 he has to stop beating up people and all.
33:00 He can start earning.
33:02 And then the matter's over.
33:05 So this is a big lesson to me,
33:08 that, you know, from where this solution has been plucked out
33:12 is so contra-intuitive, so unusual.
33:14 The way my father made his case clear,
33:17 with absolute respect,
33:19 in front of a fellow who everybody feared.
33:22 And yet that person, how he lightened it
33:24 and brought everybody around to the correct decision.
33:27 It was very remarkable for me.
33:31 And by the time we came out, there was celebration, actually.
33:34 All the people, they were putting garlands on my father's car,
33:38 offering us laddus, bursting crackers, all this.
33:41 Great Indian tamasha.
33:42 [MUSIC PLAYING]
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