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Preparing 4th Generation Growth
The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests
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Sumeet Nath has grown his 3rd generation business into a leading group of factories with 6,000 employees. Each generation worked to keep the business relevant by updating product mix, customer mix, organization and indeed ownership.
3:52 – after Sumeet walked me through a short historic overview how the Indian region of Panipat became a trade center for textiles, and the company’s change after WW2 when in 1945 “the company had to morph, had to have a reality check, that’s how we started spinning wool and yarn.”
4:52 – “I wanted to start a different aspect of the company… that how we started making carpets, in 1991.”
5:44 – “You should never be satisfied with the situation, because you never know what happens the next day.”
7:25 – “Everything is going so great… you think you’re a genius… then the wheels come off and you commit to never being caught with customer concentration.”
9:20 – “Fashion having become a part of the rug business (unlike decades ago), now sustainability and eco-friendly thought process is on the consumers’ minds, how does that effect your business, how your product evolves?”
10:33 – “Five of our factories are converted to 100% solar.”
14:15 – “We saw that opportunity… that raised my curiosity… a good businessman always follows their instincts.”
16:19 – “If there is something new, unless it is tried, you will never know if it’s helpful or not.”
17:56 – Sumeet shares how he is preparing the organization for the 4th generation (including possibly an ESOP – employee stock ownership plan) and at 20:26 – “we have to prepare that Raj lives much beyond the family. We are responsible for 6000 people.”
23:23 – “I believe in baby steps, and we started to take baby steps decades ago.”
24:04 – “Stay nimble, stay humble, and take every day to learn something.”
You can find Sumeet Nath on LinkedIn, or you can reach him at sumeet@rajgroup.in.
Always growing.
Benno Duenkelsbuehler
CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN
