The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : ‘Next big challenge: tap rural India’

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 02, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

‘Next big challenge: tap rural India’

Staff Reporter

There is need to bring in innovation and new business models to achieve this: Kamath

— Photo: G.R.N. Somashekar

New scope: (from left) S.R. Rao, Executive Director, EXIM Bank of India; K.V. Kamath, Vice-President, CII and Managing Director and CEO, ICICI Bank Ltd; K.N. Shenoy, Past President, CII and Chairman, CII Institute of Quality and S.S. Mehta, Director-General, CII, at the CII Quality Summit in Bangalore on Thursday.

Bangalore: Making inroads into rural India and touching the 600,000 villages is the next big challenge before business and industry, K.V. Kamath, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, ICICI Bank Ltd, and Vice-President Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) said here on Thursday.

Delivering the keynote address at the inauguration of the 15th Quality Summit of the CII Institute of Quality on the theme “People to Profit: Driving Performance through Organisational Excellence”, Mr. Kamath cited the example of his organisation to show how important it was for companies to look at innovation and new models to tap the rural market where business activity would be migrating in a big way, and said “innovation is essential for sustainable growth and will prove to be the distinguishing factor for the organisation”.

Fresh horizons

The key challenge is to look to new horizons. ICICI Bank’s growth has been based on its ability to identify opportunity horizons early and build businesses to scale those horizons, he said. So our challenge is to invent a new business model where we can create a distribution base effectively in 600,000 villages in India, and to do that at one-tenth of the cost of urban India. To succeed in urban India, we need to be able to do business at one-tenth the cost of the West, because the ticket-size of the banking product in India is one-tenth that of the West, Mr. Kamath said.

K.N. Shenoy, Chairman, CII Institute of Quality said, “Indian companies have made a mark on the international arena by improving on the quality aspect. However, we need to gear up for new challenges like environment, social and talent aspects. We need to deliberate upon several issues such as sustained market leadership, societal aspirations, and growth in the midst of environmental issues like global warming, making technological advancements and innovating continually.”

CII also announced the results of CII-EXIM Bank Award for Business Excellence for 2007.

The model has gained wider acceptance with participation of public and private organisations coming from a wide range of sectors. Though there has been a rise in the number of companies that have been recommended this year, there were no winners for the top honours. This clearly indicates that while Indian companies are improving, there is a strong need to gear up for future challenges. This also sets the award apart, as it is not conferred by consensus but on the basis of the company following all the processes.

The Certificate of Strong Commitment to Excel was awarded to 25 companies, and the Commendation Certificate for Significant Achievement was presented to 10 companies.

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