Guest lecture by Mr. Harsh Mariwala, (MD - Marico Industries)
September 12, 2007

The guest lecture by Mr. Harsh Mariwala was organized by Acadcom (Academic Committee)’07 as part of its strategic task to increase industry - academia interaction. The guest lecture had a huge turnout from participants cutting across different courses including PGDM, FMB, PGPM and PGDSM-MIT. More than 250 participants attended the highly informative lecture.

The guest lecture was initiated by Prof. Renuka Kamath and members of Acadcom’07 - the academic committee of SPJIMR - pitched in with enthusiasm to make the event a grand success. A special quiz on FMCG sector was organized prior to the lecture to promote the event.

Mr. Mariwala addressed the audience for an hour. Starting with 'The Evolution of Marico', he covered a wide range of topics in Marketing, Finance, Operations, Information Management and Human resource practices. He also touched upon topics like 'Product Differentiation and Positioning of Parachute and Saffola,' 'Journey from Products to Solution (The Kaya Experience)', 'Innovation in Finance, HR and Marketing Fields', 'Corporate Values', 'Differentiation through unique Culture' ,'Financial growth through the years', 'Cost Management Initiatives ' , 'Attraction and Retention of talent at Managerial levels', 'Perception challenges at various phases of the company', ‘Big bang approach in ERP implementation', 'Strengthening sales and distribution through IT' , and 'The Journey from Indian to Global.' The lecture was followed by a question and answer session. Participants put forth a lot of interesting questions on the 'Marico Journey' and Mr. Mariwala answered them enthusiastically and provided insights into the same.

The event concluded with the felicitation of the winners of the quiz by Mr. Mariwala. Vijay Pillai, a first year student of the PGDM programme, bagged the first prize in the quiz contest. It was an enriching experience for the students to hear from that one man under whose stewardship Marico made its journey from a traditional commodity driven company to one of India's trusted FMCGbrands.