She dreams big even while her feet are firmly planted on the ground. And to achieve her dreams, she refused coming into the family business as the boss. At a young age of 26 years, Tanvi began as a management trainee at Reema Transport. Despite having handled operations at a freight forwarding company in the UK for three years, Tanvi wanted to work her way up in the family business.
And one of the first ‘shocks’ with regards to working culture aboard and in India for her was “In the UK, we worked with the latest technology and we had early exposure to the next big thing. In India, we have to tackle challenges on a daily basis,” Tanvi says.
Meet Ms. Tanvi Naik. Born in 1989 in Mumbai, Ms. Tanvi is the Director of Reem Transport. Founded by her father in 1983, the company initially ferried engineering goods, but today it is known for pharmaceutical transportation. Under Ms. Tanvi, Reema Transport has won four Awards at the Mahindra Transport Excellence Awards till date.
While growing up, school girl Ms. Tanvi often visited their office during vacations and did odd jobs like data entry to learn new things. She shares: “In 2011, I finished my MBA in Supply Chain and Logistics from the University of Manchester. Even then I always knew that I would come back and work with my father.”
Talking about her initial working days at Reema Transport, Ms. Tanvi recounts: “When I joined in 2015, I was the owner’s daughter. I expressly did not want the team to think that I was privileged. So, I became one of them, I sat with the team and learnt work on a daily basis. I knew that I had to win their trust first before I could introduce new ideas or new ways of working.”
So, what is her dream? “Growing our company to pan-India level. While it is not difficult, the kind of quality service that we offer along with high compliance levels, we cannot merely jump to the next level. We have to carefully work towards it. The goal is to be able to deliver the goods like an e-commerce company does where the load is tracked via GPS, the delivery person takes the recipient’s signature on an electronic device making it paperless while also making it cashless,” she adds, which naturally works towards helping Reema Transport grow from Rs. 50 crores revenue to Rs. 100 crores in the next three years.
Her dream is also to change the attitude of the society who are conditioned to have a condescending view about the transporters to one that is of being professionals. According to her, the secret lies in ‘treating one’s drivers also as professionals’.
Ms. Tanvi is an enthusiast of theatre, painting, dancing and travelling. “Transport business keeps you constantly on your toes and takes up much time, especially if it’s your own company. But I still travel down to Pune every weekend to spend time with my husband and my family”, says Ms. Tanvi feeling fortunate.
Due to her open door policy with their drivers, Ms. Tanvi has been able to bring about crucial changes at their customers’ end too. She recounts an instance: “One of our drivers shared with me that a customer was not checking the temperature of the pharmaceutical load at the time of loading and that they tend to stuff the truck up to the brim. The risk is two-fold – some medicines may not be able to withstand high outdoor temperatures and the high volumes may not allow for air circulation to be efficient inside. We met the client and sorted out the issue. The lesson for all the stakeholders was that the drivers too can be treated like professionals and with trust for constructive contribution to business.”
Attitude is what produces positive results. And that is exactly the reason why Ms. Tanvi Naik is on her way to achieving her dreams.