ET Awards 2018 for Lifetime Achievement: Adi Godrej, Chairman, Godrej Group
The 76-year-old’s five-decade-old entrepreneurial journey had begun with a small entity with a turnover of Rs 10 crore. He has built it into a Rs 32,000-crore conglomerate.
By ET Bureau | Updated:
Adi Godrej honoured with ET Lifetime Achievement award
A Rs 32,000-crore journey of business with integrity
Adi Godrej, patriarch of the 120-year-old Godrej Group, announced last year that he would stay away from dayto-day operations of group companies and take up a more mentoring role.
The 76-year-old’s five-decade-old entrepreneurial journey had begun with a small entity with a turnover of Rs 10 crore. He has built it into a Rs 32,000-crore conglomerate. The jury felt the award will be a fitting celebration of his achievements. Responding to the news, Godrej, who is in the US, said he was “honoured”.
Godrej, whom Forbes in 2017 listed as the sixth-richest Indian with an estimated family wealth of $14.2 billion, joined the family business in 1963, after graduating from MIT Sloan School of Management in the US.
At the group, Godrej brought in management thinking, cut costs and introduced practices such as cost accounting and human resources management. He hired management graduates and restructured the organisation to make it more efficient and marketing-oriented. In corporate India, he’s known as a man of integrity who follows the best practises in corporate governance.
As chairman-emeritus of Godrej Consumer Products and Godrej Properties, he is mentoring his three children and other senior executives to ensure a fine collaboration between family and non-family professionals. But he has made it clear that if family members were not competent to handle the business, they should remain shareholders and let professionals run it.
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Oscars of India Inc: Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence 2018
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With India's top policymakers and industry doyens under one roof, the ET Awards 2018 function was a star-studded affair.
With India's top policymakers and industry doyens under one roof, the ET Awards 2018 function was a star-studded affair.
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Don’t kill growth by squeezing liquidity, he exhorted, setting the stage for what could be an explosive face-off with RBI board.
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Nitin Gadkari talked of a sector beset with crippling fund crunch, harping on what India needed to do to get past the roadblocks it is facing.
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Piyush Goyal made a strong case for what the govt is doing to put India firmly on the infra superhighway.
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The Lifetime Achivement award went to Adi Godrej, the patriarch of the 120-year-old Godrej Group, who now performs more of a mentoring role having decided to stay away from day-to-day ops.
The jury felt the award would be a fitting celebration of the deeds of a man whose journey began with a small entity with a Rs 10-cr turnover, which over time transformed into a Rs 32,000-cr behemoth.
The Lifetime Achivement award went to Adi Godrej, the patriarch of the 120-year-old Godrej Group, who now performs more of a mentoring role having decided to stay away from day-to-day ops.
The jury ..
Read More
When Sanjiv Bajaj, the younger son of Bajaj Group chairman Rahul Bajaj, took the reins of the group’s newly spun off financial service division 10 years ago, the business was completely new to him. Yet, over the past decade, he has turned the business, comprising Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Finserv, into a moneymaking machine for the group.
While selecting Bajaj as the Business Leader of the Year, the jury pointed out he entered a highrisk business category and fundamentally altered the consumer finance business both through the use of technology and through execution, with even leading banks later replicating his model.
“I am both excited and humbled to be awarded the Business Leader of the Year,” said Bajaj, managing director at Bajaj Finserv.
(In pic: Venkaiah Naidu presenting the Business Leader of the year Award to Shri Sanjiv Bajaj at the ET Awards for Corporate Excellence in Mumbai)
When Sanjiv Bajaj, the younger son of Bajaj Group chairman Rahul Bajaj, took the reins of the group’s newly spun off financial service division 10 years ago, the business was completely new to him. Y..
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Sumant Sinha has led ReNew Power Ventures to the position of India’s largest clean energy company in a short span of time, overtaking older rivals on the way with a mix of mostly organic growth and a major acquisition in the rapidly growing but extremely competitive sector.
The entrepreneurship and leadership of Sinha, an alumnus of IIT-Delhi, IIM-Calcutta and Columbia University, has helped ReNew Power become India’s No. 1 renewable energy company.
Sinha dedicated the award to his team at ReNew Power.
(In pic: Nitin Gadkari presenting Entrepreneur of the Year Award to Sumant Sinha at the ET Awards for Corporate Excellence in Mumbai)
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It reflected investor confidence on Shantanu Narayen, the 56-year-old chief executive of Adobe, who helped the maker of the PDF file format transition to a cloud-based subscription model that ensured recurring income, instead of one-time licensing of its software.
He also created a multibillion-dollar business at the company by developing tools for digital marketing, sensing the shifting of advertising from traditional platforms to digital.
Narayen’s career took off with Apple, and he also served as the director for desktop and collaboration products at Silicon Graphics. He cofounded Pictra Inc, which is said to have pioneered digital photo sharing on the Internet.
(In pic: Piyush Goyal presenting Global Indian of the Year Award to Shantanu Narayen at the ET Awards for Corporate Excellence in Mumbai)
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As the first chief minister of India’s youngest state, the immediate concern for Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao, who spearheaded a prolonged agitation for a separate state, Telangana, was to restrain flight of capital and instil confidence among businesses. Another was to address the acute power shortage in the state.
After initiating steps to tackle these issues, KCR attracted global attention by announcing the world’s first automatic industrial approvals policy TS-iPASS.
Under this, approvals are granted within 15 days of application for setting up industries, failing which clearance will be deemed conferred with self-certification from the enterprises.
(In pic: Venkaiah Naidu Presenting the Business Reformer of the year Award of Shri K. Chandrashekar Rao and received by Shri KT Rama Rao at at the ET Awards for Corporate Excellence in Mumbai)
As the first chief minister of India’s youngest state, the immediate concern for Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao, who spearheaded a prolonged agitation for a separate state, Telangana, was to restrain ..
The main objective behind his transformation from manager to mentor, Godrej has said, was to give the next generation firsthand experience at handling bigger responsibilities.
Today, with multiple businesses such as consumer durables, real estate, furniture, chemicals, aerospace and animal feed, the Godrej Group enjoys the patronage of 110 crore consumers. The conglomerate is on track to meet its ‘2020 Vision’ to become a $10-billion entity.
Under Godrej, a Padma Bhushan awardee, the group is active in philanthropic and social activities. About 23% of the promoter holding is in trusts that invest in environment, health and education. The group has a ‘Good & Green’ strategy to create a more inclusive and greener India.
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