‘Customer first’ is not just a corporate tag line any more. The Tamil Nadu government has embraced it, too. The State is now grooming senior employees of three important trade promotion agencies — Tidco, Sipcot and TIIC — to adopt this corporate approach.

In a first of its kind initiative in Tamil Nadu, a two-day workshop is being held with a focus on customers (investors). This comes at a time when the State is facing stiff competition from other States in attracting investors, said a senior government official. It also fares poorly in the ease of doing business ranking.

The workshop is aimed at creating an agenda-setting mindset for the State’s next version of industrialisation; align the individual vision/dreams to that of the organisation; understand and celebrate the success and being stakeholder focussed, according to a press release.

Nearly 30 officials from the Department of Industries and the trade promotion agencies are attending the workshop on ‘Design the Thinking: Making Tamil Nadu a role model State for Industrialisation’, organised jointly by the Industry Department and the School of Design Thinking of Intellect Design Arena.

Tamil Nadu has been an industrialised State, making headstart in 1960s. Tidco, Sipcot and TIIC are pioneering institutions and no other State could think of setting up such organisations at that point of time.

Trade promotion

While the government has been proactive in trade promotion, the situation is changing slowly and the State is losing the headstart it enjoyed, said State Industry Secretary N Muruganandam at the inaugural function of the workshop.

“You have more responsibilities in treating investors and the way you handle them. This will decide the opinion of the State among investors. We can’t be behaving like government departments. You are all promotional agencies and we will have to be customer (investor) friendly; customer is the key. Our thinking needs to change to that extent and the purpose of two-day workshop is that. We need to practise design thinking, and change our thinking,” he said at the inauguration of the workshop.

“We cannot be complacent that we are number one in industrialisation now because others States have woken up and we are facing severe competition not only from Southern States such as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, but also from Northern states such as Haryana, NCR and Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in attracting investment. We will have to change our attitude, the way we work so that we maintain our leadership as the number one industrialised State,” he said.

Inaugurating the workshop at Intellect Design Arena, Industry Minister MC Sampath said the workshop will help design the roadmap keeping in mind the current reality and the vision for the State’s next version of industrialisation. Arun Jain, CMD, Intellect Design Arena, said the workshop will provide an opportunity to shape the thinking and align the mindset and approach of leaders from the government.

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