Retaining talent is a huge challenge for the economy: Venu Srinivasan

Venu Srinivasan, Chairman of TVS Motor, asserts a huge challenge is facing the Indian economy. The competition for talent, “to get talented people, to train them, and retain talent” in the years ahead, is set to mark a very important period in the country.

“With a new Government in place, there is much hope in the country. We have seen that in terms of consumer confidence coming back, in terms of huge external inflows,” he said.

Stating that for the last five years, since the global slowdown in 2008, there was no demand for people and no great challenge to retain talent, he said: “We are going to get a lot more manufacturing coming to India, and there will be a lot more competition for talent. The huge challenge will also be to retain talent.”

With supply chain and logistics’ set to transform manufacturing, Srinivasan asserted that changes in the order of magnitude will not be incremental. “Within 3-4 months, we will have doubling, and even trebling of output measures, on every front, be it delivery, quality or productivity,” he said.

Srinivasan was in Mumbai recently, at a graduation ceremony of the Visionary Leaders for Manufacturing (VLFM) initiative, a programme of the Ministry of HRD, National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council, and the Confederation of Indian Industry, to develop ‘visionary leaders’ to strengthen growth of the Indian manufacturing sector.

As Chairman of the programme, Srinivasan said skills training had to be improved substantially, and that it was time for corporates to step in and take the initiative to the SME sector.

“Small and medium sized companies tend to contribute 60 per cent of exports, and 75 per cent of employment. Most of India’s commerce and trade comes from the unorganised sector,” he queried.

He added that India has 6,38,000 villages who have “no access to training, or skilling, or even the modern way of thinking.”

Alluding to the 1,000 Visionary SME programme, part of the VLFM initiative, that enables companies to transform the flow of manufacturing processes, build relationships of trust amongst tiers, Srinivasan said companies have recorded breakthrough improvements. Some range from a 150-400 per cent jump in productivity, and 60-75 per cent in inventory.

Large companies such as the Hero Group, TVS Motors and the Tata Group are participating in this programme.

Incidentally, a TVS Group company Harita Seating Systems — that makes automobile seats — recorded 50 per cent productivity improvement, 25 per cent in assembly line efficiency, and almost 100 per cent in customer satisfaction between 2011-12 and 2013-14. Harita has attributed this to its Tier-II and Tier-III suppliers, who have gone through the VLFM programme.