HRD Talk

An interview with C. Venkat, Chief Executive Officer, Dragoco India Ltd., Chennai.

Can you tell us something about Dragoco?

Dragoco is a multinational company that was founded in 1919 in Germany. We have 24 cetres worldwide with headquarters in Germany. In India, Dragoco works in collaboration with the Sanmar Group wherein Dragoco Asia Pacific holds 51%. We have been in India for the last seven years and have grown to become a Rs 80 crore company. In fact, we are now the third largest company in this field in India.

We supply fragrances in the form of perfume compositions, aromatic chemicals, raw materials for cosmetics and flavours for food and beverages. We have a wide portfolio of clients ranging from Henkel to Britannia.

In India we are mainly concentrating on the soaps, detergents and confectionery market. There is a lot of R&D work that goes on in Dragoco as we are constantly inventing new flavours and fragrances. In fact our contribution to the product is only 1% but without the exact fragrance or flavour the product has no meaning or character. So we are involved right from the time a particular product is conceptualised. We have to work with the particular client for months before we can start enjoying the monetary returns from the venture.

What do you look for in candidates that you hire for the company?

We employ a dedicated team of technical professionals who work on the manufacturing side and a marketing team that gets us various projects. At a lower rung, apart from educational qualifications we look for honesty, involvement, competency, commitment, and a positive attitude towards hard work. We train them to be extremely customer focussed.

At higher levels we look for traits like humanity, humility and humour. I stress on these three attributes because at that level they handle a team of workers from both technical and non- technical areas.I also look for leadership qualities and try to inculcate them in the employees during various lectures and workshops. I believe that good leadership is a combination of consistent performance, behaviour and trustworthiness. This is something that has to be consciously cultivated over a period of time.

Is it true that you handle the HR activities of your company by yourself?

Yes, I have not delegated the HR activities to anybody else in the organisation. After the initial short listing is done based on education and experience, I take a final interview before issuing the offer letter. This is a process, which we have been following right from the beginning when we had just over 10 employees.

We follow this process because I am very particular about the kind of people who work in this organisation. I have a secretary to assist me with my HR functions. Other than that nobody else is involved. This way I know each and every employee as a person, which slot they will fit into and even how to plan their career graph in Dragoco. Since I know my employees so well I was able to formulate management, skill and leadership training programmes for employees at different levels, according to their job specifications.

How is the internal communication process fashioned in your company?

We operate in an industry where companies are highly secretive. It is basically a very closed industry. I have consciously made efforts to see that we don't operate in that way. We are a transparent company and our employees know about every customer and order that we are dealing with.

Our corporate structure is very simple with just three levels of employees and we encourage continuous interaction between the employee and the management. Even though we have designations we do not follow a very rigid hierarchy in the office. For example, any of my employees can walk into my room after office hours to discuss any problem he faces. I make sure that I am present at all the staff meetings and address the gathering, applaud the achievers and explain the future targets. Apart from this we have a very popular in-house magazine in which our employee's children are encouraged to write and they are also encouraged to actively take part in designing our yearly calendars.

MALINI SURYANARAYANAN

maalini.mds@careercommunity.co.in