Look for Grandma’s Remedies

When faced with the problem of rats biting cables and causing major short circuits, Deepak K Chabria, MD Finolex, recalls the company’s response. “Instead of protecting the cables at a high cost, they coated the cables with very bitter chemicals, which the rats hated! Somewhat like what we do for a child sucking his thumb.”

We have 10 people in R&D, he says, “but we believe that R&D is everyone’s job. All 1300 of our people are encouraged to innovate. Our technical people travel and watch. We look for the strengths of well – run companies abroad and bring it back to build a more efficient Indian ethos.”