BackWe wanted to do things Piramal way, says Piramal Finance MD Khushru Jijina
Piramal Finance's managing director Khushru Jijina attributes employee loyalty to the group's constant efforts to enforce its value system at levels of the firm
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In just five years, Piramal Finance Ltd, part of the Piramal Group, has become one of India’s largest domestic fund managers operating in both real estate and, other sectors. From 25-30 employees in 2012, it has grown to around 240 with zero attrition rate in the last three years. The company’s managing director Khushru Jijina attributes employee loyalty to the group’s constant efforts to enforce its value system at levels of the firm. He said one of the reasons the company has been able to retain and attract talent is the entrepreneurial spirit that it encourages and the strong support it provides to all its employees.
What makes Piramal Finance a great place to work in?
Everyone comes here not just to work but to do something for themselves. They come because they want to do something for this family. If you look at the journey of Piramal Finance in the last four years, we have had the same set of people. It is not easy work that we do here but people enjoy what they do here. This goes back to the core value of the group. One of the value systems is entrepreneurship and you will see across right from the smallest guy to the managing director of the company. People have the right to take decisions and even if there is a mistake, we have always said that the leader has to accept it because if you relate to a family, the family head has to own up. So, I own it if something goes wrong, but then that freedom is given to anyone to do something what they think they can do, innovate and take risk. Secondly, family means we share everything. In other words, whatever the management or the board gives as part of the profit is actually shared by everyone. It is not restricted to a chose few. That’s the concept of family.
The attrition rate of the company in the last three years is almost zero. How do you manage it particularly in terms of retaining the younger talent?
Everyone comes here as part of the family. Why would anybody leave a family when one is getting all the tools what he wants and rewarded for what he is doing? It also starts from the philosophy of the group—that is to get the right people whose value system is similar to the group’s. That person may be less intelligent to the market.
We are not worried about that because that person will learn. We are not looking for rock stars, we are looking for people whose DNA matches with us. My role as family head is to see is that each of my family members are treated fairly and how their aspirations and ambitions are taken care every year in terms of work, more job and responsibilities. Thirdly, if one of the family members has a personal problem, the whole team rallies to see how to solve the person’s problem.
So it’s that strong a bonding among the team. Here, we also give the person all the tools and opportunity to become their own boss. We encourage the entrepreneurial spirit in a person by giving the freedom to do what you want and with a strong support of the group. One of the things we score very high is on communication. We communicate a lot with each other.
Since it was founded in 2012, how has the company evolved in terms of talent management to keep up with the pace of growth?
When I took over in 2014, the assets under management was around Rs1,300 crore. Today as we speak, the combined growth of the real estate and non-real estate along with private equity would around be Rs40-45,000 crore.
The growth has come from support of the group but obviously the credit goes to the team because it is this team which kept on innovating.
We have all come from different backgrounds. We realized that we wanted to do things the Piramal way. And because of the spirit of entrepreneurship that we encourage, we started innovating all the time.
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