Working for a smaller company as the CFO involves the same nuances as that for a larger organization. If you go to a bigger company the ticket size of the transaction might perhaps increase but the challenges you face are almost similar
Success is a not an easy hill to climb. It requires passion, dedication and an insatiable ability to learn. Add to this recipe a dash of humility, and you have Sanjay Bhutani, Country Manager at Bausch & Lomb, India. Sanjay is articulate, outspoken and possesses a wealth of knowledge from his spectacular climb up the corporate ladder. Corporate Citizen met Sanjay over coffee as he shared his views on his career, the need to always up skill yourself, and the formula for success in the corporate world
I am a cost account company secretary by education. I have done law and I have also done global business management from IIM Calcutta. My journey started as a management trainee in the year 1989. I was also pursuing company secretary and law that time and when I acquired my degrees, I thought why not look at something where I can make use of my both qualifications as well as the cost accountancy. I got an offer from a very small company which was coming out with a public issue. And I was still young and not married at that time so my parents were skeptical about my decision to leave then. You will not get a girl to get married to if you go to a small company, they said. But the way I looked at it, the opportunity to grow in a smaller company was much higher than that in a larger one. So I took the plunge and I straightaway went from an assistant manager to the CFO of the company. When the company went public in 1995, that public issue was oversubscribed by eight and a half times at those times. This was a massive success. My gamble paid off in a big way.
Working for a smaller company as the CFO involves the same nuances as that for a larger organization. If you go to a bigger company the ticket size of the transaction might perhaps increase but the challenges you face are almost similar. At that time, there was a craze of people working for multi-national companies, especially amongst people working in domestic companies, so I thought that I should go and work for a multi-national as well. MNCs are where you got to know how the Industry outside India works and where are we are lacking, because you have a certain thought process while you were working for a domestic company which is poles apart from the train of thought and functioning style of MNCs.
I got an offer from Schlumberger which was into oil and IT. And Schlumberger was a company where people would give up their arm and leg to get a job. I joined as India’s CFO for a couple of years and then Schlumberger sold off that business because it was more of an oil company and they didn’t kind of understand what the IT is, so they weren’t able to make it very successful. Then I joined a distribution company which was in telecom where we were the largest distributor for mobiles and the wireless equipment for Nokia. I joined there as CFO and this is where I learned how you can grow the company.
The company had about 25 million dollars in revenue when I joined in 2004-05 and we took that company to 250 million dollars in the top line in a remarkably short time. So the speed and execution is very important and when you’re growing so fast from 25 million to 250 million, your credit policies and other metrics have to be very strong. This discipline helped me when I moved to Bausch & Lomb.
I started as the India CFO and I always had the passion for business. So I used to always work with the sales team, the business team and with HR to determine how we can improve the business outcomes. Even if I was making policies, I always ensured that the market share or sales should not get impacted. For that, you need to meet customers, understand what the sales team wants so that also helped me connect better with my employees. I went on to win the award from Global CFO in 2007. So thereafter my role expanded and I started looking into different countries like Thailand, Vietnam, The Philippines, Pakistan, and Indonesia etc. Then I thought of enhancing my education because once you’re getting into more global roles you need to go back to school and learn the nuances for managing a global business.
So I went to IIM Calcutta, did a two year global business management executive course from there which really helped me to understand how people in Japan think or how people in Singapore or Malaysia think. If you say something to them it might have a different meaning in Japan. Different cultures perceive the same actions differently. This insight helped me a lot and thereafter I became the Asia-Pacific finance director. But always in my heart, I wanted to do a commercial role. Then Bausch & Lomb was acquired by a company called Valeant and then where this opportunity came. I am in this role for the last five years and very passionate about what we do.
We are the market leaders in India by far. We’ve got about 60% share in contact lenses and about 80% in the solution.
India is a huge market also.
It is indeed a huge market but it is still untapped to a large degree. The potential is huge and that’s why we are very optimistic.
In MNCs you don’t have a personal relationship with people and people keep changing across the world, so who’s your boss today may not be your boss tomorrow. But if you’re working for a domestic company you interact with them on a daily basis and there is a personal relationship
I don’t know as of now because I have been working with multi-nationals for the past twenty years now and maybe if I compare that time to now, I feel we have got more autonomy, more independence when you’re working for a multi-national company compared to when you’re working for a domestic company. But having said that, in multi-nationals if you’ve got independence and autonomy you also have got a lot of accountability. So if you don’t deliver in one or two years then you’re not delivering, and the road ahead is bleak. In MNCs you don’t have a personal relationship with people and people keep changing across the world, so who’s your boss today may not be your boss tomorrow. But if you’re working for a domestic company you interact with them on a daily basis and also there is a personal relationship. You have a personal equation with management in domestic companies which is not there with MNCs. There are pros and cons to both; it just depends on how one chooses to look at it.
I would not say there is a gap but I think the education and industry need to work together. You can’t work in isolation. For example, industry needs more people coming on board. You can’t run companies without people. So industries need to participate and interact with the students, help them by giving internships and on the other side, institutes need to understand that the business environment is changing almost on a daily basis. So you need to keep revising the syllabus you teach to the kids. It should not be running the same old courses that were there 20 years ago. And believe me, when I went back to college everything had changed from when I graduated. For example, when we passed out we used to have vertical structures and you are taught how to manage a vertical structure. But they are not there anymore. You have flat organizations. So how do you manage a flat organizations is very different from what was taught to us. I advocate that even if you’re working, every five years you should go back to the school. One should always be open to learning, no matter what point in their career they are at.
That’s really incredible because most successful corporates have a kind of hesitancy going back to school.
It’s because when I went back to school, I acquired knowledge which helped me handle diverse countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan apart from India.
It depends, for example, Asia right now is growing so you need to have different strategies for Asia versus the mature markets of the US. Also, there needs to be a price difference because there is an affordability issue. So what sells or people can afford in the US, might not be affordable here. So each market has to be approached differently. Cultural nuances must also be considered while marketing the products in different markets.
I believe in it but I still carry work back home. You have to do it because at times you’ve got boundaries and stretched targets so shutting off from work is unavoidable. However, ideally I do advocate a demarcation. You shouldn’t compromise on time spent with family.
Not really. But we are getting there. Our target is to increase diversity by 1% every year. So we were about 8-9% now, but we still have a long way to go. Hopefully, we shall bridge the gap in the coming years.
I believe meeting customers is very important. And if you are not thinking out of the box then you will be obsolete. All these ideas come from the brand. It’s important to be in touch with the people. So for example recently in Bausch & Lomb, we were losing market share. We went to the market to try and understand what is happening. The sales people told us that, ‘sir, you make only one delivery in a day and J and J, is giving us two deliveries in a day’. Generally if the customer comes in they would call the distributor and they will call the company and then ship the product. So if they want to close the deal they have to wait till evening. To combat this, we extended the time for our warehouse from 3:30 PM to 5 PM. We also introduced our mobile app, which has made it much more convenient for people to book their orders 24/7.
Continuous interaction with customers and changing with the times is essential for success.
Not completely. Let me give you some numbers. In the US, among people requiring vision correction,70% wear lenses. In Japan, I think maybe 40%of people wear contact lenses. China would be about 30%, Singapore would be 35%, but India is only like 5-6%.
I think the awareness is lacking. People think lenses are more expensive and difficult to put it in. People in the US know if you wear contact lenses you get a better vision. If I am wearing glasses my side vision is partly compromised. If you’re wearing contact lenses it is much better. If you’re playing sports, spectacles can’t be used. So contact lenses like that are much better. Also, people often tend to forget their glasses. With lenses, you don’t have to worry about misplacing them while travelling.
When I have time to myself, I just prefer to do nothing (laughs).
Do what you are passionate about.
By Neeraj Varty
