Traditional entrepreneur Harsh Mariwala, Marico chairman and ace investor, and new-age entrepreneur Tarun Sharma, co-founder and CEO of D2C startup mCaffeine, discuss finding business opportunities, leveraging strengths, hiring talent, and the key learnings and challenges they face in this FILA 2022 session which shows how business, entrepreneurship have evolved in the last few decades
Leadership is a constant challenge when the way people do business, raise capital, sell products and concepts are constantly evolving. India sees a new unicorn being pronounced almost every week; in such a scenario, it is critical to decode entrepreneurship and building a business. Entrepreneur and investor Harsh Mariwala, chairman and founder of consumer goods giant Marico, chatted with Tarun Sharma, co-founder and CEO of caffeinated personal care startup mCaffeine, at the ‘Founders’ Corner’ session at the 2022 Forbes India Leadership Awards on March 25. Leading teams, sourcing the right talent, how to sell and innovating constantly were buzzwords of their candid conversation.
Mariwala started the session with an anecdote about struggling to convince people to join Marico, located in the crowded bylanes of Masjid Bunder, Mumbai. He then started to interview people at the upscale Willingdon Sports Club and convinced interviewees that they would soon move office.
“As an entrepreneur, you don’t give up,” he recounts. Mariwala had already achieved management separation from the rest of his family to run Marico as an independent company. In early years, expansion was always led by primary research. Mariwala used to travel to small villages in interior Maharashtra and Gujarat to appoint distributors for his products. “There were no hotels for meetings. I often stayed with them at their homes. As an entrepreneur, you have to find ways to resolve issues,” he explains.
Sharma spoke of a different concern when starting out to raise funds. The constant question posed to Lachhwani and him was whether someone had launched a similar venture overseas. “How would an entrepreneur be able to do this for the first time in India if they are repeatedly asked this question?” he asked.
Sharma explains how they wanted to reach their target audience of millennials in the most convincing manner. mCaffeine has created a caffeine student army, which provides research and education to the company. It tied up with a highest charted influencer in a #mancrushMonday campaign to define and provide ideas. “Use data to make better decisions,” says Sharma.
He also stresses on spotting the right talent and ensuring strict governance. “Entrepreneurs tend to take a shortcut when they are starting out, but they should not,” he adds.
Sharma sought Mariwala’s advice on whether a team should be built “like a family” or a “sports team”? Mariwala says the interest of a company comes first: “The issue of loyalty is not relevant… if you try to be loyal to them and they are not good enough, it will impact business.” My key learning as a founder, says Sharma, has been to “constantly sharpen sales skills. Aap har waqt bech rahe ho (You are selling 24x7). Also, one should be patient while building a brand”.
The session ended with Mariwala being candid that he had a lot to learn from D2C (direct-to-consumer) startups like mCaffeine. “What we saw as entry barriers earlier have all gone,” Mariwala says.
Marico today runs acquired brands such as Beardo and Just Herbs very differently from their homegrown FMCG brands, because the mindset is different for both. Sharma stressed that they are still learning how to hire the right people, and building systems and processes first, rather than only chasing targets.
(This story appears in the 22 April, 2022 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)