Embrace challenges and unlock opportunities for Growth

Widely recognised as the mastermind behind his company’s innovative practices, Dinesh Gulati, COO, IndiaMART, is also known for his ability to openly discuss both his successes and failures. And despite all of his accomplishments, he remains grounded and humble. His impressive track record helps Dinesh remain committed to continuous learning and development, always looking for new ways to improve and evolve. In a recent interview with Corporate Citizen, Dinesh shared insights into his educational background, upbringing, experiences in the industry, and more

Corporate Citizen (CC): Tell us about your growing up days.

Dinesh Gulati: I was born and raised in a humble middle-class family in Delhi. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the capital city of Delhi, which was quaint, where streets were filled with trees, had open parks, was friendly and had caring neighborhoods. It was a time when life was peaceful and less complex. I grew up with many friends who were into tons of outdoor activities and games. All of these have a huge bearing on my upbringing and the person that I am today. All the virtues and traits that I have, are courtesy of my upbringing and the experiences that I have gone through in my life. Now, the times have changed. Delhi isn’t what it was before. Delhi has become busy, overwhelmingly crowded and full of traffic chaos. I guess that is the law of nature.

Impactful educational journey

Getting admission in Navayug School, in Sarojini Nagar, a day boarding school, was one of the life-changing moments. It wasn’t quite commonplace in those days, as getting into that school was a difficult task. Being a day boarding school, it was like a second home. This experience imbibed various values in me. The tutelage of our visionary teachers encouraged us to be curious and to ask questions. As I progressed through my education, I discovered my love for science and maths. I realised that I had a deep fascination for problem-solving and critical thinking.

Family matters

Throughout all this, my family played an instrumental role, serving their unwavering support. My parents always encouraged me and my siblings to dream big. They went through many hardships to help us provide the best education and instilled strong values. I have two younger siblings, a brother and a sister. Being the eldest, I always had the additional responsibility and inner urge to take care of them. My best moments with them were the childhood days, when we learned to ride bicycles together and play gully cricket. Overall, my upbringing and educational journey have shaped me into the person I am today, high on passion, life and integrity, which have led each of us to lead successful and self- reliant lives.

CC: How has the education that you’ve garnered, shaped you into a better person and led you to take on the challenges of the corporate world?

To be able to break down and analyse intricate situations, one needs to possess an analytical mind and has to be a problem solver. Engineering makes you analytical and detailed oriented. In all honesty, that is precisely what I learned during my four years of engineering. Besides academics, my college days were full of fun, camaraderie and bonding with fellow students from all over the country, who also ended up becoming my friends for life. And living in a hostel was the best way to spend my graduation days, as it helped me a lot to become the independent and confident person that I am today.

Post my engineering, I went for my MBA at Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi, which acted as a turning point for me. The FMS stint gave me a deeper understanding of business concepts and broadened my horizon to a great extent. This combination of engineering and MBA gave me umpteen opportunities to work on various projects and internships that helped me to learn and improve on multiple aspects of the corporate world, such as synchronized teamwork, clear communication, people management, prioritisation, time management, delegation and all other essentials of being a future leader.

I attribute my success to my passion for problem-solving, a customer-centric approach, working closely with people, building passionate teams, and my willingness to take on new challenges. Working with incredible teams and leaders has taught me a lot about what it takes to succeed

-Dinesh Gulati

CC: What made you choose to do what you do?

Now when I look back, I see, how my journey was enriching and how things happened for a reason to build a better version of myself. The things that I did while growing up, were meaningful. For instance, the family values that I inculcated, fuelled my urgency to achieve something great. My educational journey made me a better analytical thinker and a problem- solver. This further stimulated my career choices and the roles that I picked. My stint at Eastman Kodak, a Fortune 500 company back then, was quite comfortable and gratifying. However, my curious nature and insatiable hunger for knowledge and novelty propelled me to join hands with a company in the mobile telephony industry, which was in its nascent stage back then. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life and I became a significant contributor to telecom industry that has played a vital role in the last two decades to the country’s infrastructure growth.

Following the experience that I backed, I realised my calling was in building brands, scaling businesses, and creating value for all the stakeholders, be it the employees, customers, or investors. This led me to shift my focus toward more strategic and P&L roles since 2001. My ability to combine passion into my job, regardless of the industry I have been in, provides me immense satisfaction and offers me a good night’s sleep. I do what I love, and with that, I also add value to people’s lives. What more can I ask for?

During the pandemic, we all were struggling together to take necessary measures to safeguard everyone’s interests. Navigating through such an unexpected turn of events, gave me the confidence that if we are well-prepared and ready to pivot, we can accomplish anything and deal with any kind of difficulties

CC: Your corporate journey has been fabulous, ranging from different arenas and various roles. Tell us about your journey.

I kick-started my career in the early 90s with Jenson & Nicholson as a management trainee. I undertook several other challenging roles in sales, marketing, and operations. As a result, I moved up the ranks. Soon after that, I joined Kodak India Ltd, to manage their Consumer Business for North India. The icing on the cake was traveling to rural India, and setting up FMCG distribution for photography products helped me. That experience gave me the essence of our ‘Bharat’ to a great extent.

Rising up the ranks

From there on I held various leadership roles across multiple industry giants such as Bharti – Airtel, Reliance Communication and The Indian Express Group. The telecom journey had been a spectacular one as I was able to contribute significantly to every leg of the industry, be it marketing, sales, distribution, technology, outsourcing, vendor management, BPO partners, and created the desired momentum and scale that Telecom sector experienced from 2000 to 2015. This period also gave me an enviable opportunity to work very closely with Shri Mukesh Ambani and I must acknowledge that it was a huge learning experience that can’t be described in words. While working with Reliance Communication, I grew rapidly and became one of the youngest leaders heading entire Western India with a revenue of more than USD 0.5bn along with healthy profitability.

When I joined IndiaMART, I was surprised to witness the status of small businesses and the basic challenges being faced by them. The business owner like a one-man army had to work twice as hard as anyone else to keep his company afloat. Struggling to source raw materials from limited suppliers, coordinating with labourers to produce goods, rushing to banks to manage payments and/ or depositing cash, and following up with vendors during the day, were and are just some of his daily challenges. We at IndiaMART, knew we had an extremely challenging but equally exciting problem to solve for the country. Since then with the vision of bringing ease-of-doing-business through technology, we have been doing the role of an evangelist, connecting with MSMEs, educating them on digital and tech interventions, and helping them adopt and use technology that would take their businesses to the growth path. Demonetization, GST implementation and Covid 19, further accentuated the need for businesses to adopt technology and go digital.

Throughout my journey, I have not only gained experience in building profitable businesses from scratch, but I have also invested in and mentored various startups in the tech space. I attribute my success to my passion for problem-solving, a customer- centric approach, working closely with people, building passionate teams, and my willingness to take on new challenges. Working with incredible teams and leaders has taught me a lot about what it takes to succeed, and I am grateful for the continuous learning and growth opportunities that I have had.

CC: As a COO what are your responsibilities?

As a COO of IndiaMART, the core responsibility remains to keep the entire organisation aligned with our vision of ‘make doing business easy’ through continuous innovations and digital transformation of Indian Businesses. The role involves building products, processes and people, and developing core strategies to improve customer experience, create efficiencies, build up scale, reduce costs, enhance revenues and profitability, drive innovation and change, identify new growth opportunities and work towards them. All this calls for essentially building a high-potential, empowered team.

CC: What do you love most about the experiences you’ve had in your career, and what has been your most memorable milestone?

Every stint of mine has been full of excitement, offering new challenges, opportunities and learnings. Similarly, every stint had different goals and milestones. In my Telecom experience, the joy of the first 100 cell sites, reaching the first 1 lakh customers within a few months of launch in Maharashtra and Goa circle are the ones which have been etched forever in my memory.

The other experience that I will never forget was the day IndiaMART went public. We all were standing on the dais at NSE Mumbai, lighting up the lamp, ringing the bell, and within a few minutes of listing, IndiaMART shares gained 35-40 per cent. That was the moment when I had goosebumps, as it was like dream coming true not just for us but for the millions of businesses who had trusted us for running their businesses.

Last but not least, the recent one where we launched the Weekly Payout of salary for all employees of IndiaMART. We were the first Indian organisation who took into account the changing expectations and dynamics of new- age employees post-pandemic and initiate disbursing salaries weekly instead of monthly. Many of my colleagues were in disbelief and kept reaching out to me to check if it was true. But IndiaMART has always been known for such innovative solutions be it for the customers or the employees. The initiative has been acknowledged by not just our employees but many others across the nation.

CC: What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

During the pandemic, we all were struggling together to take necessary measures to safeguard everyone’s interests. At IndiaMART, in just one night we took a decision and made sure that the entire organisation will work from home, and we were one of the earliest organisations to take this step. Apart from the complete work-from-home model, we also enabled resilience for MSMEs, by actively promoting the discovery of products related to medical infrastructure, during the second wave of Covid-19.

Millions of users benefited from the dedicated tab on the IndiaMART platform for medical supplies, enlisting all dire needs for ease of reference of buyers and suppliers visiting the platform.

And as the demand for these products increased, so did the requirement for manpower. We leveraged the gig economy to fulfil the requirements and employed those who lost their jobs during the pandemic, making it a win-win for all. Navigating through such an unexpected turn of events, gave me the confidence that if we are well-prepared and ready to pivot, we can accomplish anything and deal with any kind of difficulties.

From the time our employees join and during their entire journey, I have always aimed to build a culture where people are consistently engaged with a high sense of ownership, empowerment and belongingness—open and performance-oriented culture

CC: Tell us about that one corporate piece of advice that changed your life.

In my Reliance Communications days, I got the opportunity to work very closely with Mr Mukesh Ambani. In our weekly meetings, he would always highlight the need to take care of your employees and customers. Then in one of the articles in Harvard Business Review (HBR), I read that employees are your first customers and your first brand ambassadors. Prioritising their satisfaction and engagement is a must. Taking this into account, I have always strived to provide the best to our employees, focusing on their learning and development needs and their career planning. From the time they join and during their entire journey, I have always aimed to build a culture where people are consistently engaged with a high sense of ownership, empowerment and belongingness—open and performance- oriented culture.

I would say, we at IndiaMART have been able to create one of the best employee- oriented cultures and therefore it is not a surprise that over 20 per cent of IndiaMART employees are associated with us for more than five years. And, I am extremely proud to be able to achieve this.

CC: How has India MART used digital transformation for its benefit?

In all humbleness, IndiaMART in a true sense was a visionary, especially when it comes to embracing technology. In 1996, IndiaMART was started as an internet-based company, when nobody actually knew about the internet in India. It was called a marketplace, when I don’t think the word even existed in the dictionary of a common Indian businessman. But, there was the belief that the internet is here to stay and that technology had the potential to change the way of doing business in India. Since then, the vision of the company has remained the same – enabling ease-of- doing business for all.

We provide small businesses with an open marketplace, where they can connect with buyers and sellers from anywhere in the world and grow their business online. While on one hand, we provide them with a lot of assistance and handholding in building their web presence, on the other hand, we use innovative and state-of-the-art digital solutions to create a larger, quicker, and safer marketplace.

Through our employees, we have ensured that we meet millions of sellers every year, for a better understanding of their requirements and their changing needs. Assessing these tonnes of data that we generate every day, we have created a strong value position of product discovery and lead generation, along with the web presence for 7.4 million registered sellers where the 98% of registered suppliers are rendered with online visibility without any charges.

We launched the Weekly Payout of salary for all employees of IndiaMART—we were the first Indian organisation who took into account the changing expectations and dynamics of new-age employees post-pandemic and initiate disbursing salaries weekly instead of monthly. The initiative has been acknowledged by not just our employees but many others across the nation

Enabling people

To enable our sellers further, we have invested in creating a conversational commerce platform through our Lead Manager System – CRM and Cloud Telephony, where as per FY23 data we enabled more than 282 million conversations on our platform. This helps them to access all their leads, and their past conversations. It enables them to manage all their customer leads, make stronger relationships and improve their sales. Along with this, we also provide a secured payment gateway called Pay with IndiaMART, with multiple payment methods.

IndiaMART has approximately 90 million products and services, 7.4 million registered sellers and 165 million registered buyers who trust the platform for running their businesses online, thereby creating one of the strongest network effects in India.

Growing leaps and bounds

Other than that, we have recently forayed into the accounting software market as we believe managing compliances is another pain point for smaller businesses and technology can be leveraged there. We have acquired Busy accounting software that helps businesses to manage their accounting, inventory, production, and taxation especially GST returns.

We have also made multiple investments in the areas of accounting, logistics, supply chain, vertical commerce, financing and other business enablement software intending to create a one-stop solution for all business needs. Thus, we believe in a holistic approach and in aiding small businesses at every stage of their growth journey.

CC: IndiaMART has provided a platform for several businesses that have blossomed over the years. Share one of the best success stories of the business that was present on IndiaMART.

We are a platform that provides an equal opportunity for all kinds of businesses to grow digitally, whether it is a small business or a large corporate. There are several companies which have grown with us over the past two decades.

One of the examples is Sudhir Bakliwal, who is the owner of Dynamic Non-Wovens. It was started in 2002, and they are into technical textiles. They started their journey with intense travelling and convincing people to grow their customer base. In 2005, they registered on IndiaMART as a free supplier. After witnessing the leads they were getting, they soon took paid subscription. They are still with IndiaMART, as they can access a wider range of customers, a market beyond their physical reach, along with getting a deeper understanding of the market and demand for specific products. Many businesses joined us during the pandemic to survive the challenges and get wider access to customers and markets and continue to leverage the platform as their businesses grew further.

This must be one of our striking highlights. We also have many women entrepreneurs with us who have gone against the general norms and expectations of society and immediate family and have overcome the challenges by getting customers and sales for their businesses with help of IndiaMART. As and when we witness such success stories, I feel extremely proud and elated to be part of this impactful journey.

CC: In one of your sessions, you mentioned that MSMEs are the backbone of our country and that they provide the second largest employment. How over the years have MSMEs shaped our country?

The MSME sector is and will always be crucial to India’s Economy and we need to empower them further as they are one of the main pillars of our dream of a $5 trillion economy. MSMEs are responsible for tremendous employment generation and the youth of the country highly rely on them. Likewise, MSMEs could leverage this pool of new and energetic talent.

Post-Covid, the MSME sector has been significantly impacted, as the pandemic has led to disruptions in supply chains, reduced demand and a liquidity crunch. However, Government has taken several steps to support the MSMEs, who suffered due to the lockdown including collateral-free loans, subsidies, and other relief measures.

One step at a time

Additionally, the pandemic has also accelerated the adoption of digital technologies among MSMEs, as businesses have had to shift to online channels to reach customers. Alongside this, the adoption of digital invoicing and payment platforms has also helped streamline payment processes, reduce errors, and enable quicker payment processing. This has created new opportunities for MSMEs to expand their reach and drive growth, as now technology can help them in procurement, sales, lead management, invoicing, accounting, and all other business needs.

Although, a lot still needs to be done to solve some of the big hurdles such as access to finance, access to the market, cost-effective technology, and lack of infrastructure. Let us take it one step at a time. Overall, there was a significant impact of the pandemic, but the sector’s resilience, support from the technology, and Government initiatives have helped them mitigate their challenges up to a certain level.

My ability to combine passion into my job, regardless of the industry I have been in, provides me immense satisfaction and offers me a good night’s sleep. I do what I love, and with that, I also add value to people’s lives

CC: What according to you is the future of B2B marketplaces in India?

The increased penetration of the internet and smartphones have definitely accelerated the adoption of digital solutions, whether it is through digital payments or B2B marketplaces. Even post-pandemic, digital adoption among MSMEs has multiplied. Although B2B marketplaces need to evolve with the evolving technology and consumers. With digital penetration expected to improve further amongst businesses in the next 5-7 years, I see a lot of headroom for growth.

However, the sector will have to come up with a holistic approach for the complete digital transformation of businesses. Even at IndiaMART, apart from lead generation, we also provide the MSMEs with the lead management system (LMS), procurement, inventory management, logistics solution, accounting solution, and digital payments solutions. We have also made multiple investments in the areas of accounting, logistics, supply chain, vertical commerce, financing, HR Tech and other business enablement softwares with an aim to create a one-stop solution for all business needs. Even the Government’s focus on Digital Enablement and the initiatives such as Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and Government-e-Marketplace (GeM) are indicators of the transition that the B2B marketplace sector is going through.

CC: Who has inspired you the most?

The person who has inspired me the most is Mohandas K Gandhi (Bapu). His simplicity, his determination, his assertiveness and the way he practiced his disciplined life, are the personality traits that I am most inspired by and it helps me lead my life and solve the problems I come across.

CC: A book that changed your professional life.

Execution: The Discipline of getting things done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. It enlightened me on the importance of setting clear priorities and creating a culture of accountability and execution. As an idea is of no worth until it is executed well.

The second one is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, it helped me to relinquish some of the old habits and encouraged me to instill some of the new ones. All this has been helping me to a great extent in my personal and professional life.

CC: A quote or a saying that resonates with your journey and why?

The quote, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”, by Winston Churchill resonates a lot with me. I have definitely seen both highs and lows in my personal and professional journey, but I have learned that showing resilience in front of challenges is what matters the most.

CC: When not working, how do you like to spend your time?

In my free time, I love to read, listen to good music, travel and trek. Snow-clad mountains fascinate me the most and the first opportunity I get, I just rush to them.