Enough room for competition and collaboration
Mahindra MPower needs no introduction. Everybody associated with the Indian transport industry, particularly in the last three to four years, will tell you that Mahindra has emerged as a change agent, much on the lines of its RISE initiative. Designed as a program for next generation transporters to be able to take over their family business and professionalize the Indian trucking industry, MPower has tied up with IIM-Ahmedabad as the knowledge partner.
A look at the numbers derived from the last 11 editions of MPower will tell us how powerful the program has been. A total of 291 next-gen transporters have attended the MPower classes in the last 11 editions. These students, representing their transport companies, employ a combine 66,500 people, own over 59,500 trucks and produce a combined turnover of Rs. 24,800 crores! These are mind boggling figures indeed for students whose average age was 29 years with minimum seven years of experience.
Objective of the War Room
The War Room engages with participants of the MPower to assess their learnings from the program. It captures how these transporters translated their learning into business benefits and reward their efforts. For War Room III, entries from MPower batch I to IX were called and 16 participants were selected to present their case studies in front of an expert jury. It was an honour to represent MOTORINDIA amongst the jury members comprising Mr. Dharmesh Dutta, MD, Progeon Global Forwarding, Mr. V.G. Ramakrishnan, MD, Avanteum Advisors LLP, Mr. Tuhin Sinha, Media Advisor to MoRTH, and Mr. Shyam Ozarkar, Sr. GM – Manufacturing, MVML.
After a day of listening to the case studies, Arvind Sarda, Director, Tanushree Logistics, P.R. Arun, Sankari Roadways, Manavdeep Singh, Director, Janta Roadways Pvt. Ltd., Mahesh Panjwani, Director, Harsh Transport Pvt. Ltd., Hasit Nijhawan, Director, Anand Trans Logistics Pvt. Ltd., and Vipin Gupta, Director, RCPL Logistics Pvt. Ltd., were amongst the six finalists.
The next day, the grand jury comprising Mr. Nalin Mehta, MD and CEO, Mahindra Truck and Bus, Dr. Brinda Jagirdar, former Chief Economist, SBI, Director, Capital First and Rane Engine Valves, Mr. S.K. Krishnan, Sr. VP – Demand Chain Management, Mahindra and Mahindra, Mr. Rajev Rajadhyaksha, MD, Aumkar Supply Chain Solutions, and Mr. Joe Thaliath, CEO, FCB Interface Communication, adjudged Arvind Sarda, Director, Tanushree Logistics, as the winner. Manavdeep Singh, Director, Janta Roadways Pvt. Ltd., and Mahesh Panjwani, Director, Harsh Transport Pvt. Ltd., came second and third respectively. IIM-A Prof. Debjit Roy, Faculty Chair, along with his colleagues and Prof. Raghuram, Dean, IIM Ahmedabad, gave their inputs during the two days.
The War Room Premise
The case studies presented by all the participants covered business growth, marketing, process restructuring, use of technology like MIS and GPS, cost optimization, driver engagement, repair and maintenance, safety and fleet management. Recollecting his experience from MPower, the winner, Mr. Sarda said: “The way of seeing things changed drastically after MPower. I was able to compile different reports from loading, unloading, repair and maintenance into one excel sheet and can finish looking at it in less than 10 minutes compared to 30 to 45 minutes spent earlier.”
Not only did he compile the different data, but also aligned his workshop. He said: “I have created bays for repair and maintenance of my vehicles. It includes greasing, checking tyre pressure, checking for bearings, brakes, etc. The realignment has helped streamline the process and free up space and enabled optimum use of resources.”
Another transporter who chose repairs to cut cost and accelerate business was Hasit. He said: “I wanted to understand the pain point of the drivers when they call to inform that something has gone wrong. It is directly linked to cost. MPower touched upon these subjects which sparked the idea to focus on repairs to bring down some cost.”
Operational efficiency
Akshay Tilak Lodaya, Director, CRL Express Logistics India LLP, who was amongst the 16 participants, launched specialized services for the chemical industry as per the CMV Act on hazardous goods to establish CRL as the niche chemical carrier. This initiative also fetched CRL the Mahindra Transport Excellence Award for transport of hazardous goods. “Some of the preventive best practices to reduce emergency incorporated by my organization were briefing drivers prior to departure, developing GPS with deceleration alerts and over-speed with journey time extension alerts, create black spots for accident locations, red spots on pilferage and looting zone, eye checks for drivers carrying dangerous goods and mandatory chemical handling training,” informed Lodaya.
The focus on operational excellence led Manavdeep Singh, Director, Janta Roadways Pvt. Ltd., sell some vehicles and optimize the resources in such a way that the move does not hamper the profit in business. “Optimising resources helped me increase profit contrary to belief that my business will come down. I could manage faster turnaround time and my local loading has increased. Remaining assets were utilized as per the zones analyzing the demands of customers from North to South, North to West and South to North,” informed Singh.
Elevating business
Mahesh Panjwani, Director, Harsh Transport, Pvt. Ltd., went for organizational restructuring and assigning task to process managers in order to have more energy reserves for the top management. “We decided to move from SOPs to process flows in order to fill the communication gap and work overlap. Changes in different verticals like, HR, Finance, and Fleet, etc., have been done keeping in mind the needs of the business. The idea was to give a little more power to the down line managers so they can be converted in to decision makers,” beamed Panjwani.
On a similar front, Vipin Gupta, Director, RCPL Logistics Pvt. Ltd., prepared a weekly evaluation for his company’s branches across India through MIS. Each branch’s performance delivery was particularly mapped and was made responsible to proactively convert leads. “Based on monitoring weekly performance the business development team was able to meet potential clients and negotiate business. Weekly feedback also was handy for HR team to evaluate performance of an employee,” revealed Gupta.
P.R. Arun, from Sankari Roadways, chose to diversify from his father’s traditional business segment of edible oils to cement bulkers. For this he started with minimal margins and focused on increasing the number of trips. He analyzed the cost of being in the business by speaking to suppliers and assessed the amount of opportunity involved. Although he diversified from edible oil tankers to hydrogen peroxide, liquefied paraffin and cement bulkers he was able to sustain the edible oil business and grow in his new segment.
He said: “Since I already was handling the tanker segment for edible oils, I had maximum control over the fleet and was able to use the experience in the cement segment. MPower acted as a refresher course to help me identify the glaring opportunities in front of me. Plus the biggest eye opener was that I could reduce my dependency on my niche edible oil segment.”
Mitesh Shah, Director, B.D. Transport Company, and member of the Managing Committee, Bombay Goods Transport Company, also highlighted the importance of social interconnect with clients, drivers as well as vendors for self and business growth. “I identified that the biggest roadblock were the old generation manpower. We made them adapt and upgrade to the latest change and initiated ‘chai pe charcha’ a social activity both internally and with drivers at different hubs. This helps address issues faced by the driver community in particular and transporters in general,” explained Shah.
Competition and collaboration
There is a holiness in the campus of a top-notch institute like IIM-A. Although it prepares you for the competition ahead, it doesn’t fail to teach you collaboration. This was evident from the amicable behavior of each and every participant towards each other. Every one of them gained from each other’s case studies. Everybody was open to ideas and suggestions. This is what a temple of education supposed to do the devotee who comes here. It transforms and shapes an individual.
At the valedictory session, Mr. Nalin Mehta, MD and CEO, Mahindra Truck and Bus Division, reflecting on the case studies, said: “While the transporters presented on operational efficiency, process management, maintenance and organizational restructuring, one common element was managing transition and challenges related to it. Some challenges are from family, some from the environment, some from history of the transport industry, but everybody found way to professionalize the challenge. If there is even a slight deflection towards a better way of doing business it will take the entire industry towards a new destination.” Rightly so, as these young transporters attain leadership positions in their organizations as well as in the transport industry it will only benefit the entire trucking community and bring them on the same page. Certainly, the Mahindra MPower War Room has enough space for competition as well as collaboration.
“ I created bays for repair and maintenance of my vehicles. It includes greasing, checking tyre pressure, checking the bearings, brakes, etc. The realignment has helped streamline the process and free-up space and enabled optimum use of resources. ”
– Arvind Sarda, Director, Tanushree Logistics
*******************
“ Optimising resources helped me increase profit contrary to the belief that my 
business will come down. I could manage faster turnaround time and my local loading has increased. Remaining assets were utilized as per the zones analyzing the demands of customers from North to South, North to West and South to North. ”
– Manavdeep Singh, Director, Janta Roadways Pvt. Ltd.
*********************
“ We decided to move from SOPs to process flows in order to fill the communication gap and work overlap. Changes in different verticals like HR, Finance, Fleet, etc., have been done keeping in mind the needs of the business. The idea was to give a little more power to the down line managers so they can be converted into decision makers. ”
– Mahesh Panjwani, Director, Harsh Transport Pvt. Ltd.
*************************
“ Since I already was handling the tanker segment for edible oil, I had maximum control over the fleet and was able to use the experience in the cement segment. MPower acted as a refresher course to help me identify the glaring opportunities in front of me. Plus the biggest eye opener was that I could reduce my dependency on my niche edible oil segment. ”
– P.R. Arun, Sankari Roadways
************************
“ I wanted to understand the pain point of the drivers when they call to inform that something has gone wrong. It is directly linked to cost. MPower touched upon these subjects which sparked the idea to focus on repairs to bring down some cost. ”
– Hasit Nijhawan, Director, Anand Trans Logistics Pvt. Ltd.
**********************
“ Based on monitoring weekly performance the business development team was able to meet potential clients and negotiate business. Weekly feedback also was handy for the HR team to evaluate performance of an employee. ”
– Vipin Gupta, Director, RCPL Logistics Pvt. Ltd.