IOD Special Talk - Igniting Sustainable Progress

The Prestige of Transforming Lives through Good Governance

First of all, just to introduce ourselves, I belong to TTK Prestige. We pioneered prestige pressure cookers in this country. We pioneered it at a time when India was an energy-deficient and fuel deficient nation, and the way we did it was go home to home, door to door, cross village to village, and actually introduce the concept.

India has the largest adoption of pressure cookers in the world today. Over 93% of urban India has a pressure cooker, and I think there is no durable that has that kind of penetration.

Why do I say this? I am going to tell you two stories.

One, something that has been very dear to me is indoor air pollution in this country. I think you would have heard about this. I mean, there are lots and lots of millions and millions of homes where they use the chulha and burn biomass, and actually, they say that one hour of cooking with that biomass inside the underventilated kitchen is equal to smoking 20 cigarettes by the homemaker who is cooking. That's the enormity of the problem, and lots of women die every year on account of this. It was our dream as a company that pressure cookers would go in every one of these homes, and the government then introduced Ujjwala. As you know, they give eight crore homes. At that point in time, we went to the government, saying that it's a very good thing because this will start that kitchen to become completely developed. Our research said that these are some of the most aspirational points in a woman's life, and when we talked to them, we heard, "I think I got a promotion if I can cook standing rather than sitting on the ground"-something we take for granted.“ I think it is a promotion if I can put a cup of tea on the table for a guest who comes home in five minutes rather than in 30 minutes." These were some of the things that we heard. Obviously, LPG revolutionized this. But we always had this concern that an LPG cylinder is like a prepaid connection-you have to pay Rs. 1000 to get the LPG cylinder in a home, and we knew that adoption was not going to happen.

I believe the future is bright for any company that is empathetic to the current generation and sympathetic to the next.

We, on our own, have been promoting electric cooking. But we have been trying to talk about electric cooking using induction cooktops, which are today almost 90% efficient as against LPG at 68% and biomass at 17%, so that is the kind of energy that you would save, and the combination of induction and pressure cooking, we believe, can seriously reduce the energy consumption in this country.

That's something we are doing. In fact, what we are also doing is actually measuring this in terms of carbon credits, and we have now got absolutely some kind of confirmation that we get one carbon credit per induction cooktop per year for five years if it replaces biomass in the kitchen. This is something that we are doing at the customer end.

As a company, we have not signed up for goals because we believe that we are not yet qualified, but what we want to do is actually make a social difference. In this case, also be contributing to sustainability.

So, our basic question is: can we improve the lives of millions of homes with this initiative

At the second level, our board has also been saying that since we have five factories, we actually use' sustainability' as an opportunity rather than an obligation. That was the critical thing that our board said, which I believe is a huge plus for our company. So, like Mr. Gupta said, there are costs in the beginning, for sure. We said that we would not do an all-in strategy when we go for this. We said we would take our most power-intensive plants and make them green, and we started the journey eight months ago. Believe me, in six months, we actually got the certification.

The methodology we used to actually make this happen is-First, we sensitized everybody in the plant about what we were trying to do and gave them very simple,

understandable, measurable goals that they could actually feel as they were going along. I talk about those goals. Make a cross-functional team so that there is more involvement than just people in that factory. So there were other functional heads who became part of the team. Then we did the training and made sure that the achievement of this got back into their balance score cards so that they knew that it's one more thing that they did that they were definitely going to be measured against. Finally, of course, incentivize all stakeholders in the project.

What were the metrics we used? We said, “Reduce energy used per part produced." How much energy are we using today? We need to reduce that. “ Reduce the water used per part produced, reduce the fossil fuel usage, reduce plastic and packing material, reduce the greenhouse gas (we got somebody else to measure it before and after), enhance green fuel, and comply with, and sustain all social compliances.”.

Now believe me. After we did it in the Gujarat plant, these were the results:

Energy per part was reduced by 6.5% in six months; water used per part was reduced by 20%; green power is now 40% of the total power used in that factory; plastic waste was reduced by 12.5%; greenhouse gas was reduced by 12.7%; and now there is an overall yield improvement of 3%.

So, the cost that we thought was a cost is actually not a cost-it's actually a benefit.

We then worked in partnership with our key vendor, Hindalco, to explore how we could use recycled aluminium instead of virgin aluminium. They provided us with the right grade and quality by collaborating closely with us, and now recycled aluminium contributes to 20% of our total aluminium usage. We passed all social compliance requirements, such as SA8000, and we definitely don't stop at paying the minimum wage in our factory. We believe that every person should be paid a sustenance wage. I would also like to discuss the impact of COVID, which affected all of us. I'm very proud to say that COVID did not lead to any layoffs or salary cuts at our company-everyone was paid their full salary throughout the entire lockdown period.

The broad direction from our board is, “Let's move from compliance to making a positive contribution." Let's contribute in spirit and set ambitious targets for ourselves. Let's partner wherever necessary. As you mentioned, it's not possible to do everything on your own because the costs can be too high. We have recently partnered with a company that provides distribution in rural India to ensure these initiatives reach those areas as well.

Let's contribute to skill development, and let's promote gender diversity. Today, all our plans from being zero earlier, have at least 20% women working which I'm very proud of and these are factories with blue collar jobs.

The benefits overall are very good in terms of financials. I am expecting at least 100 to 150 basis point increase in my EBITA in the next one and a half years. So I don't think we are doing anyone a favour with this. I think we are actually doing ourselves a favour.

The board has been very encouraging. I, as a CEO, have been encouraged to do this, and I believe the future is bright for any company that is empathetic to the current generation and sympathetic to the next.

Thank you very much.