by Amit Sidham
‘When I came to know about this course, like most of my batch-mates I felt it was too good to be true. But at the same time did not want to risk missing the opportunity and repenting later. So I applied immediately. Anyways, there was nothing to lose. The extremely professional manner in which the entire process right from acknowledging the application, providing clear updates at each stage, conducting the entrance exam, shortlisting of candidates for interview and the interview process was unbelievable. All candidates were treated with respect.’
‘I would like to share one small incident. I was overwhelmed when I received the final confirmation letter and my joy had no bounds when I received a personalized welcome mail from Jivika Maam. The joining was in a week’s time and I had no money to reach here. I replied back to Jivika Maam’s mail requesting for an advance of Two Thousand, to help me book a ticket. My first thought was it might be a mail id created for sending out the welcome letters on her behalf, to make them appear personalized ones. But after two hours I got a call and guess who was on the line. Maam herself. She asked me, and I told her about my problem regarding lack of money to buy a train ticket. She gave me a solution that I can never forget. Any guesses what she would have done?’
Audience replied giving answers, ‘She would have sent you money to come by flight in the form of a joining bonus over and above the stipend receivable later,’
Another person said, ‘She would have sent you a flight ticket itself and arranged a pickup from the airport.’
‘She would have transferred money immediately from her own account’ was another reply.
Anand spoke again, ‘These are the options that would normally come to mind of anyone considering the magnanimous nature of the organization. And nothing wrong with them.’
‘But in my experience, that’s what separates Maam and makes her stand out from any of the other person’s that I have come across. She issued me an advance from the stipend payable itself. She did not issue me Two Thousand neither did she issue me an entire month’s stipend. She issued me Twenty-Five Thousand and sent me a mail saying along with your travel arrangements also arrange some warm clothes. It will be cold during the journey and you will surely need them. Sounds very simple but can you imagine what this gesture means to me?’
‘Firstly, mail reaching the intended recipient, being read and quickly acted upon itself gives me a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. Second, issuing me, my money instead of giving help just because I come from a poor background, maintains my self-respect. I am treated at par with anyone else without being made to realize that I am poor and dependent on somebody’s financial aid. While I do not like people showing sympathy, having pity on my condition and hence helping me, I have had many such situations and even got used to it. But Maam never made me feel that way.’
‘Third, not forcing anything onto me and letting me decide how I should travel, how I should spend the money. Why should I travel by flight when my parents are struggling financially back home. I would rather travel by train and give the saved amount to them, which is what I did.’
‘And lastly, caring like an elder sister. She very rightly interpreted that in spite of the joining checklist sent, I may not buy warm clothing and travel in this chilling cold without sufficient protection. Had it not been for her mail that is exactly what I would have done and definitely fallen sick in braving out this cold. But she ensured that I take that point seriously and issued me advance to take care of those expenses.’
‘In this entire experience, it was not so much about the money. If the mail sent here would have not been read, I would have somehow managed borrowing it from the people back at my town with a promise to repay soon, the way I had been doing till now. But it was about the dignity, the respectable treatment that I received which I had never imagined receiving at least till I became successful in life. Maam, you maintaining your down to earth nature, while being at such a high stature is really an admirable quality and I look forward to being like you. Thank you very much Maam. I can never repay back what I have received from you but I would feel really honoured if anytime I am able to help you in anyway.’
Saying so, Anand could not control his emotions and tears started rolling out from his eyes. The crowd broke out into an applause. Jivika got up from her seat, walked to him, patted his back and offered him some water. She felt Anand might not be able to speak further and signalled him to sit down. But Anand wanted to speak more. Jivika sat back in her seat.
Anand wiped his tears and continued again, ‘On reaching here, not just me but everyone was astonished. Knowing that a seven star resort was being converted into an institute is one thing and actually seeing it with your own eyes is a completely different experience. People yearn to spend a week’s vacation at such a place but here we are a proud batch of thirty students who would be staying here for the five years of our graduation. Maam and all Leadership dignitaries, I on behalf of the entire batch assure you our hundred percent commitment, dedication and efforts towards the expectations and responsibility that you have bestowed upon us. We promise you that we will not let this success, this pride go to our heads and let it deviate us from our goals.’
All the students stood up and seconded Anand’s feelings.
Thanking everyone Anand requested Jivika to say a few words.
Jivika took the mike and spoke, ‘Today is indeed one of the biggest days in my life as well. Four months ago I had taken up this responsibility and seeing this batch of the brightest of students from all over the country, having belief in our purpose and dedicated towards the same, is a matter of great pride for me. I had one concern in my mind troubling me right from beginning. While the benefits extended to the students would help in building image of the institute, of the students, of the vets, it should not deviate the students from their goal. And the promise that you all have made today, has alleviated that concern. But as the saying goes all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, I do not want you to give up enjoying life and completely engross yourself in studies. Enjoy the surroundings, go out to explore the environs, utilize the resort amenities. If you don’t the investment will be a waste, isn’t it?’
The crowd broke out into a laughter.
Jivika began again, ‘The first week has been kept for orientation and team building. You will have a maximum of six hours sessions in a day during this week and these would include outdoor tours and adventure activities as well. Rest of the time is for you to acclimatize, gel together and have fun. Best of Luck.’
The students were extremely excited. They stood up on their feet and kept clapping continuously till Jivika and her colleagues had left the lawn.
When Jivika was executing the plan for the veterinary institute, another idea was cooking up in her mind. Jivika had requested the leadership team to stay back after the grand opening of the institute. Post Operation Reveal, recruitments at the headquarter had gathered pace and now the core team size stood above five hundred. The increased team size made way for reallocation of responsibilities, freeing the leadership team from the operational role they earlier had to play. Avanish having already offloaded forest vigilance and animal rescue to Sunil had now also handed over the security responsibility to another colleague. He now focused his entire bandwidth on espionage and defence. Similarly, Aakash was relieved from his responsibility of managing the kitchen.
As a result, they were now in a position to take a few days break together and relax at a place away from the headquarter. All of them accepted Jivika’s request and adjusted their schedules accordingly. She had planned to discuss her idea with them at that time.
After dinner when they had all gathered into a discussion room she spoke ‘As we all know that this institute for us is a cost centre. The cost of operating this institute and the stipends pay-out runs close to thirty crores right now and will exceed a hundred crores per annum when we have a full strength of students from year one to year five. While hundred crores is not a very big amount, it is always bett
er to run this institute as a financially self-sustained one instead of it relying on the headquarter for funds. And hence I have a plan to convert this cost centre into a profit centre.’
‘Are you planning to charge the animals for their treatment here?’ quipped Avanish.
Everyone started laughing.
‘Shuuut up’ was a quick response from Jivika. This kind of playful banter was not uncommon amongst the team. Whenever they were in a jolly mode, which was most of the times, they would pull each other’s legs.
‘Animals will not pay. But people will pay for their own treatments, when we give them the right value. PermaCure or permanent cure for many of the ailments like fever, cough, cold, migraine, sinus is one of our projects in the pipeline. The treatment requires injecting seven doses on consecutive seven days, with each dose of medicine being indigestible for seven days. On the eight day, the dose administered on day one reproduces a new dose of same quantity which again is indigestible for seven days. The dose loses its indigestibility on eight day and serves as an immunity booster, a preventive medicine in the body till the next day, when it is completely digested and thrown out. The cycle keeps repeating and hence there is a new indigestible dose produced every day, a dose becoming digestible and preventing the body from the ailment and a dose being discarded every day after the seventh day.’
‘Now this treatment requires discipline. A gap in one of the doses makes the treatment ineffective. Hence it requires that the individual stay with us. For a healthy person to stay admitted in a hospital in the city for a week is just so boring. Hence we will combine the treatment into a wellness vacation like never before. You guys see that resort on that hillock. We will acquire that property and convert it into our treatment centre. The students here will serve as doctors at the treatment centre and that will bring in money to fund this institute. And that is just one of the benefits of this solution.’
There are three additional benefits that we will aim from this initiative. One, increase the esteem value of our vets. More the people come closer to our vets, more will be their respect towards them. Two, people will stay with us for seven full days without any work commitments. So we will have their hundred per cent attention. We can utilize this attention to make their minds inclined towards Mother Nature, towards our mission and towards us. We can make an itinerary which will cover a tour of the hill station and nearby places and include mandatory infotainment sessions through which we can pass on the required message to them. The tour will also include a visit to this institute which can easily be connected through a cable car with that resort, just another attraction for the tourists.’
‘Three, as much as possible we will outsource the activities to the locals, activities like pick up and drop, sight-seeing tours, adventure sports, mountain fresh tea, fresh fruits and salads, local cuisine during the tour, and pay them handsomely. This will give a boost to the local economy and they will always be grateful to us. So we will have these local people stand by us when need be and the guests at our resort become our brand ambassadors supporting us through social media, whenever required.’
‘I have a question Jivika,’ that was Avanish ‘How comfortable would people be getting treated by a vet? You and I are used to it. So we do not have a problem. But the common man outside does not think in a similar manner.’
‘I know Avanish. And that is what we will change through this. Ask Mr. Bakshi, Aadi’s ex-boss what was his first reaction when he came to know that he was being treated by a vet? And what was his feeling later? It was absolutely normal, like what he would have felt after being treated by a Doctor. Later when he had shown the reports to a doctor outside, his respect for the vet who treated him increased further as the outside Doctor could not believe Mr Bakshi’s speed of recovery. Similarly, initially not everyone would be open to the idea of being treated by a vet, but increased advocacy by people who would have undergone treatment, will change the perception,’ replied Jivika.
‘But aren’t these vets being trained to treat animals. Does it make sense to utilize them for treating humans?’ was Avanish’s next question.
‘They will treat humans only under two circumstances, one during the course when there is no dependency of any of the veterinary centres on them and two after completion of course only when they are not having any animal cases,’ was Jivika’s quick reply.
‘This makes sense,’ said Avanish giving her a thumbs up.
‘And I am sure you all would have realized by now, selling only the doses at Fifty Thousand per person will not attract as many people as selling the doses, combined with a seven day all-inclusive vacation at a luxury resort at a hill station at One Lakh Twenty Thousand per person,’ saying so Jivika finished presenting her plan.
‘Brilliant plan,’ said Aadi and everyone acknowledged the same. ‘So, from when do we have the PermaCure centre up and running?’
‘I think four months is a good enough time Chief,’ replied Jivika smiling back at him.
Everyone started laughing at her witty reply.
The plan was immediately accepted. No formalities required of getting approvals on mail or signing of documents. Neither budget estimates to be submitted nor any approvals to be taken for release of funds. This would sound strange in a corporate set up but it was a normal practice at GALAXY. Aadi believed that this gave them the agility to get things done faster and he also believed his team to spend judiciously.
Instead of spending time in preparing plans and presenting them in an attractive manner to get the approvals, time spent on execution gave the project a momentum and faster completion, which in turn led to project starting to give returns faster by at least three months. Aadi had calculated and experienced that the incremental returns from those three months far outweighed the savings that would have come by following a budget preparation and approval process. Even otherwise in a case like this when the project had to be done irrespective of the cost involved, when a cost centre was being turned to a profit centre, it was only WISE to finish early and reap the benefits early instead of spending time in reviewing plans.
Chapter 18
SET UP AND EXPANSION OF GREEN BUSINESSES
February-October’ 2016
While Jivika was busy setting up the veterinary institute and PermaCure, Samir had started setting up other Green businesses. Solar panels that converted solar energy into electricity, mini wind turbines and Green Cars.
Samir was extremely good in his area of R&D. But when it came to inputs on strategic decisions, he always looked up to Aadi. On Aadi’s suggestion, Samir set up a network of third party manufacturing facilities for production of solar panels and mini wind turbines.
While each of them could have been an extremely profitable venture, the team was clear on their approach. All of these were innovations designed to curb pollution and hence making money from them was never on the agenda. Due to the product benefit, high demand was anyways expected. Adding to it the organization had decided to sell it without any profit expectations, resulting in an extremely attractive pricing, which in turn was going to increase the already high demand manifold. Hence a distributed third party manufacturing network was a good option. It gave the network assured business at reasonable margins, as decided by GALAXY.
But the same business model was not possible for cars. Setting up manufacturing facilities for automobiles was a highly time intensive affair and hence ruled out.
Though acquiring existing companies was an option involving a high capital investment, it presented a golden opportunity for GALAXY to maintain exclusivity on account of patented technology and make huge profits. There would be no dearth to the demand for minimum twenty five years.
But, the pricing at GALAXY was determined not basis the dynamic pricing mechanism on demand supply gap, neither basis a cost plus model, nor on the amount a customer would be willing to pay. Pricing was determined based the end objective. Here the objective was not about making money to fund another environmental project.
In fact this initiative in itself was an environmental conservation project.
An approach had to be finalized soon. The sooner the demand was met sooner would be the reduction in carbon footprint. While the Wellness Resort was being set up with the intention of cross funding the veterinary institute, the automobile business’s objective was to curb pollution.
The questions in front of Aadi and Samir were, how to meet the demand? How to meet it soon? And what should be the business model?
Aadi asked Samir a question.
Samir smiled and replied, ‘Yes, I can do that.’
And they had found their answers.
Chapter 19
PERMACURE: REDEFINING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
October’ 2016
The PermaCure centre was established and fully operational even before the planned four months. Thanks to the no questions asked money back guarantee and the hype created via an excellent marketing campaign, the centre was booked for ten weeks the day reservations opened.
Vinit Gharial and his family were amongst the first guests at the centre. Apart from PermaCure treatment what had also excited Vinit was the unique proposition of an amazing vacation without the guests having to spend even a single rupee after reaching the nearest airport or railway station.
Vinit found this difficult to believe and had checked with the customer care what it exactly meant? He felt the reservation would include stay, all meals, use of resort amenities, sight-seeing with entrance fees, pickup and drop from airport. These things covered majority of the vacation but did not cover the entire vacation. He felt a vacation was not complete without tasting the local cuisine at the popular food joints, without some adventure sports without shopping.