Book Review - 'Harsh Realities: The Making of Marico’

 

Book Review - 'Harsh Realities: The Making of Marico’

 

 

 

I enjoyed reading 'Harsh Realities: The Making of Marico’ - co-authored by Harsh Mariwala, the founder of Marico and Prof Ram Charan, the legendary management Guru.

In less than 300 pages, the book presents a fascinating tale of how Harsh Mariwala built MARICO. The author presents the various challenges of transforming a joint family- owned traditional business in commodities into an inspiring world-class FMCG organisation having multiple brands - products and services.

The book starts with the history of Mariwala joint family and provides information about their traditional oil and spice business. It narrates the family separation and how the third generation of entrepreneurs decided to come out on their own. The book predominantly focusses on the challenges of building Marico across the pre and post liberalization era along with various learnings shared by the authors.

There are excellent lessons in leadership including ideas on how to create and build an organization with Purpose - one that would not just cater to profits but more importantly care for society and all stakeholders. The importance of Leadership, Culture, Values, Transparency, Trust , Strategy, HR, Talent Management, Financial Management, Marketing, Branding, Communication, Technology, and the role of leader/ entrepreneur is succinctly emphasized.

Often strategy is about deciding where to compete and where not to compete. The author says, “Looking back, basing my business ideas on my strengths and interests, and staying away from areas where I could have been somewhat challenged, was probably what led me to success.” 

The book teaches lessons in competitive intelligence and strategy pertaining to consumer marketing , branding, packaging and price wars. Various examples of experimenting, risk taking, failing, and scaling to increase product range and capture market share are insightful.

The chapter titled ‘ Angels and Predators’ present the corporate battle between David V/s Goliath and clearly highlights the leadership conviction and some unconventional strategies to face the mighty Hindustan Lever ( now Unilever) and other competitors. The various anecdotes and real-life situation present an engrossing tale and are truly educative coupled with some incisive advice from Prof Ram Charan. Relentlessly focusing on enhancing the core business of hair and cooking oil, gradually capturing various other brands, and increasing market share in that category and later diversifying into beauty and skin care business makes for an interesting reading.

The author reiterates the role of a Leader to sustain and constantly enhance the organisation culture. Harsh tells us about Marico Leadership Competency Framework which has a strong linkage to its core values and shares about the organization’s continuous improvement through the 5E Model: Educate, Engage, Enable, Evaluate and Evolve.

I was very impressed with the chapter, ‘ Governance: Building the Board”. This chapter is not to be missed as it perspicaciously provides information about the role of Board and Corporate Governance. It provides insights on selecting professional board members, their duties, responsibilities, and active involvement in the growth of organisation and not just attending quarterly meetings and merely finding faults. What is interesting is the clear demarcation of the responsibilities between board members and management and why boards must not get involved in strategic planning.

It is always difficult and daunting for any entrepreneur to hand over the control of their business to any professional especially who is not from the entrepreneur family. However, it is very inspiring to learn how Mr. Harsh Mariwala seamlessly passed on the baton to a professional leader.

Overall, the book is enjoyable, educative, encouraging and a must read for all entrepreneurs and professionals.