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COVER STORY
“THINGS MAY NOT BE
SUCCESSFUL AT TIMES”
RAJEEV KARWAL, FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR OF
MILAGROW BUSINESS AND KNOWLEDGE SOLUTIONS TURNS THE
PAGES OF HIS CORPORATE JOURNEY BACK AND FORTH IN FRONT
OF MRINMOY DEY AND CHARU
Starting with Onida as a Marketing
Executive, he went on to
work with leading brands including
LG, Philips, Electrolux
and Reliance. And finally, it was in
2007, Rajeev, who is credited for his
excellence strategic abilities and execution,
adorned a new outfit of a managing
partner for Milagrow Business
and Knowledge Solutions. The company
focuses on providing professional
management services to the SMEs and
MSMEs and partners them at all stages
of development.
How did this idea of Milagrow
business come to your mind and
what opportunities it offer to the
SME and MSME sectors?
Milagrow is just a five-year old company
but the idea started cropping
up my mind long ago. ‘Milagro’ is a
Spanish word which actually means
the ‘magic of faith’ but we added the
letter ‘w’ with it as nobody in India
understands Spanish and it becomes
‘Milagrow’ which is something the
consumer can correlate very easily.
As ‘Mila’ means meet and ‘grow’
means rise and together it means we
will rise hand in hand. It was during
my stint with Reliance, I felt that
there had been enough of serving
for commercial reasons and one
INTUITION IS THE IMMEDIATE AND
THE HIGHEST FORM OF LEARNING
AND ONE CAN ONLY HAVE IT BY
UNDERSTANDING THE MARKET
WELL AND THE CUSTOMER'S
UNMET NEEDS
must have an initiative of his own.
Secondly, the world is a one big market
place and India is a nation of
micro, small and medium industries.
So, here we service our clients at
every stage: from strategy to execution
to institutionalization. With
time, people have started looking at
us as specialists as the company provides
360 degree practices depending
upon the economic status of the
company, engage in CEO mentoring.
Most of the companies actually
find it difficult to enter the Indian
market. And before you joined LG,
the company failed twice in its attempt
to venture India. What
transformations have you brought
in the company to make LG one of
the most successful MNCs?
LG is a Korea-based company and
the foremost thing I realised while
working is that marketing is the science
of appealing to the head and
then getting into the heart while,
HR is the art of appealing to the
heart and then getting to the mind.
And anything which has to do with
heart and mind must be managed by
the local people. The people in LG
understood it well and I headed the
sales and marketing division. In
terms of branding a product, it’s
very important to position a brand
with a single-minded objective. And,
it was not out of any big research, it
was all out of my intuition that we
choose that LG should stand for
healthy products and living. Intuition
is the highest form of learning
as it is something which is immediate
and one can only have it only if
he/she understands the market well
and the customer’s need. For in-
stance, LG's Color TV with a golden
eye stands for wrinkle-free eyes,
washing machine is a fabri-care
washing machine, microwave is a
health wave microwave oven. So,
for any brand to become success it’s
important that the consumer should
relate to the fact that this is the only
brand which worries for me and will
take care of my health. So, I used
this rationale of getting into the
heart and then to the mind. And this
is the secret behind the success of
LG in India.
In your stint at Philips, it became
profitable from being a loss making
company – from a loss of Rs.
350 million to a profit of Rs. 500
million. What kind of change
management was involved?
The main problem with Philips was
its structure. It was a matrix organisation
with a wide organisational
hierarchy. In a matrix organisation,
there is a problem of the
unity of command as the subordinates
were to receive orders from
two bosses viz., the Project Manager
and the Functional Manager.
This created lot of confusion and
created problem of communication
which ultimately affected the bottom
line of the company. Once we
overcame that problem and customised
marketing of the products
were done it turned profitable.
After working successfully with
so many organizations. How do
you think change management is
important in bringing changes in
the company?
With ownership mind set, passion
and performance always come as a
natural phenomenon. Change is a
continuous process and you have to
accept it. This change can come either
from within the industry or
from outside the industry. You have
to be continuously on guard looking
for triggers.
As far as inspiration is concerned,
people get inspired by reading
autobiographies, books and following
the legacy of others. Who
would you say were the people
motivated you in your life?
I am living my father’s dream. It is
the thing which probably my father
count your chickens before they hatch 22 april 2012