Sunil Kulwal: Innovation at Work is Difficult in Australia

Image: Ron D'Raine/AFP for Forbes India

Sunil Kulwal
Age: 49 Years
Designation: Managing Director & CEO
Company: Aditya Birla Minerals, an ASX listed publicly held company in which majority is owned by Hindalco Industries. Turnover $381 million.
Sons: Ayush (18), Akshat (13).

I have been working with the Aditya Birla Group since the 1980s. When the Perth offer came along in 2008, I was very excited. I used to manage a business in India. In Australia, I was to lead a company — a listed entity with a board and a host of responsibilities. It was one of those special opportunities. I was looking forward to such an opportunity for a long time and I accepted it.

Perth is a fairly global, cosmopolitan city. With a population of 1.65 million, it is small but it is postcard perfect with fantastic weather and very good infrastructure. It has a lot of lovely beaches and golf courses. People here are very friendly and disciplined. Even at midnight, you will find people abiding by traffic rules on the roads. Night life is great with lots of pubs, bars and clubs where people — especially young couples — hang out during the weekends. People here are very outdoorsy and they go for long drives and night outs during weekends. Around 300-400 km away, people go for beaches, bush walking and lots of leisure activities. Recently, Perth was ranked the world’s 4th most liveable city.

Life for an Indian isn’t very difficult. There are lots of Indians, Indian restaurants and a couple of temples. There are Indian associations in Perth. Hare Ram Hare Krishna mission, Swami Narayan — all of them have a presence here. There are Indian stores where you can get Indian stuff including spices.  

Settling down was not very difficult. You can do a lot of stuff like looking for a house etc. on the Internet. I did all the ground work for the house on the Internet. I shortlisted five houses, set up appointments and finalised the deal after visiting them. It was very smooth.

What takes time to get used to are some of the Indian comforts that are not present her. For example, in India, you have drivers but here you have to drive yourself. If you don’t know the routes, people take route maps. GPRS is pretty handy. My wife did take time to adjust. In India you get so used to domestic help that it’s a big cultural challenge to do it all yourself.

I have two sons — the younger one, Akshat in class eight and the elder one, Ayush is in his first year at university. Akshat goes to a private international school. Education here is more than just books — social skills, communication skills; they try to make you street smart.

I remember Akshat had to play a hockey match during games period in school. The temperature was 3-4 degrees and it was raining. In India, students would be confined to classrooms in such a scenario. Here it was as if nothing mattered, the game took place: Playing practice hockey wearing a t-shirt and shorts in rains in a temperature of 3 degrees.

We have two copper mines here. We employ more then 450 people — with four expat Indians. One at the mine and three in the corporate office.

The Australian economy is resource based — it exports a lot of minerals and agricultural produce. There are a lot of mining jobs where people fly in and fly out from cities/towns to the mines spending seven-eight days at the mine and then come for a few days off before going back. Unemployment here is pretty low. I am on the Executive Committee of Chamber of Minerals & Energy where future manning of jobs is an important issue on radar.

We will have a shortage of up to 10,000 people here — and we are having discussions five years in advance. With a small population and big land mass, the scale of everything is different here as compared to India. Wages are high with the average wage around $20 an hour. At mine sites, tradesmen like a welder or a fitter can get $75 an hour.

The younger generation typically complete their 10th or 12th and do some vocational training and then start working. That may also be because after vocational training you earn as good a salary as a college educated one and live a comfortable life. I have a colleague who is a MD in another company whose son is a fitter and he came and shared that fact proudly. There is respect for all kinds of work.

Here, they prefer a planned approach. When you are thinking of doing something different or innovative it is a little difficult. For such things they would typically hire an outside expert to do it and get the job done. Money and incentives are very big motivators and they will take extra steps to do it. Unlike India where, incentive or not, people will do it if they are motivated. Cost of people is very high. Here they would get A$60,000 as against Rs. 2 lakh in India. Staff turnover is around 35 percent.

The work culture here is very different. At home we had to call a plumber to fix some problem. I tried to give him some inputs and he got upset and was about to pick his bag and leave. People here don’t like micro management. You have to define objectives and then let them do their work. And they do it in a planned manner.

I remember we had some problem at our plant: A system encountered a problem at 11.30 a.m. We didn’t have any expertise in-house and we had to call an expert from Perth. We arranged for a small plane, the fellow landed at 4.30 p.m. and by 6 p.m. the plant got restarted. In India this would have taken far longer.

In India lots of things are hierarchy based. People listen to whatever the boss says. Here they don’t. In India you can still see a sense of loyalty. Not here.

So far it has been a great stint. We had a huge turnover among miners. We have stabilised things by taking few steps. For example, we have a roster system on the mines where people work 8-14 days and then we fly them back for six-eight days off. Earlier we had small planes and it took three hours to fly them. Now we have got bigger jets and flying time has come down to about two hours.  At the site, we have opened a gym, created a swimming pool, and set up a cafeteria. These are small things but it has helped stem attrition.

Personally, it has been a satisfying experience. Managing business in an international environment, managing people with different nationalities, bringing them all together to work for the same organisational goal and delivering some excellent operational and overall performance had been possible due to we all working as one team with one objective. I feel very excited and very fortunate to find myself in this spot and am looking forward to greater contribution in future.

(As told to Malini Goyal. Transcript has been edited for readability)