Anil Agarwal of Vedanta shares his key to success: “always take your staff with you.”

Highlights

• Anil Agarwal spoke about his company’s early days.
• He thanked the people that helped him succeed.
• To establish up his telecom cable factory in India, he hired the best.
 
Anil Agarwal, the founder and CEO of Vedanta Resources, spoke about his company’s early days and the people that helped him succeed. Agarwal, who has been chronicling his trip on Twitter in bits and pieces, announced yesterday that he had engaged the greatest specialists and equipment from around the world to build up his telecom cable factory in India.
 

The journey of the CEO

Shamsher Sterling Cable Company was purchased by Anil Agarwal in 1976. The company was losing money and putting a burden on his finances – until 1986, when the private sector was finally authorised to manufacture telephone cables for the first time. That transformed Agarwal’s life, and he started making jelly-filled cables as a result. According to a 2005 Rediff article, Agarwal founded Sterlite Industries, for which he purchased a facility in Illinois and moved it back to India.
 
Agarwal said in his article yesterday that he had no place to stay when he initially arrived in America. “My darling dreamers, I believe the greatest stumbling block in life is to never take any risks at all.” “I had no where to stay when I arrived in America, but that didn’t matter,” the billionaire industrialist behind Vedanta wrote.
 

Secret behind his success

I came back to India with dreams bigger than my reality. As my feet touched the ground, I looked at the vast land in front of me & dreamt of setting up my telecom cable factory.” For his plant in Aurangabad, Agarwal says he hired the best equipment and experts – including from America and from Nokia in Finland. “A true entrepreneur keeps expanding their capacity – & so we did. Moved from producing jelly-filled cables to optical fiber cables,” he wrote, adding that with their efforts, the average time to get a phone line in India (eight years, at the time!) also went down.
 

My dreams were bigger than my reality when I returned to India

As soon as my boots reached the ground, I gazed out over the enormous expanse of land in front of me and fantasized about establishing my telecom cable plant. “Agarwal claims he hired the greatest equipment and specialists for his business in Aurangabad, including from America and Nokia in Finland.
 

A true entrepreneur never stops growing, and we did the same

He stated, “We moved from creating jelly-filled wires to optical fibre cables,” adding that as a result of their efforts, the average time to get a phone connection in India (eight years at the time!) decreased.
Within 5 years, these young freshers became by far the largest producers of telephone cables in India – it was unbelievable!” he wrote. Agarwal says he is often asked “How did you do it?”. The answer, he says, lies in valuing your best employees. You must always take your folks with you no matter how far you advance in life. He wrote, “Whether it’s your CEO or a factory worker on the ground.”
 

“You must give your employees the freedom to do their finest work.”

He uses Ahmad, the government employee from Patna he mentioned previously, as an example. “I recall convincing Ahmad to leave his prestigious job at Hindustan Cable to work for me because I knew he was the finest in his field.
 
“And, believe it or not, he worked with me until he retired,” he added
 
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Dr. Kirti Sisodhia

Content Writer

CATEGORIES Business Agriculture Technology Environment Health Education

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