20 years after first battery was sold... Still charged with enthusiasm

He has roughed it out on the factory shop-floor and logged thousands of miles across the country trying to market batteries, grow his company and build up its image. Today, he sits in an impressive, functional room with an array of gadgets, looking out on to a contrasting view of the growing concrete jungle of Cyberabad with a rural area nearby.

His office room, at the corner of an expansive house, with a small pool in front and rows of trees and Spanish-designed structures for inspiration, is both an ideas room for Jay Galla and a board-room for brainstorming sessions with company top-brass.

In a freewheeling chat, Mr Galla, the 45-year-old Managing Director of Amara Raja Batteries Ltd, talks about his experience as an entrepreneur and the trials and tribulations that he and his father, Ramachandra Galla, went through to make the company what it is today.

What makes for a successful entrepreneur? “A successful entrepreneur is one who can spot gaps or opportunities in the market. Taking advantage of the opportunities is the essence of entrepreneurship to me,” he says.

Right systems, processes

One need not be a Steve Jobs, whose ability to successfully create new opportunities and products is in a different league altogether. In India there are lots of opportunities waiting to be identified. There are also funds, investors and avenues to be tapped by budding entrepreneurs, as long as they have a sound business plan, says Mr Galla, who heads the Rs 2,000-crore company. What does he perceive as the challenges for an entrepreneur? The most common ones are understanding people, employees, customers, bankers and bureaucrats, says Mr Galla. Then comes the task of putting in place the right people, systems and processes. In the last two decades, by translating these challenges into an advantage, Amara Raja has created a niche in the Indian batteries market.

Amara Raja was founded by Mr Ramachandra Galla; Jay joined him in the early days and father and son went through many ups and downs during the company's painful gestation and growth phase. Along this journey they have helped employ a few thousands, enriched shareholders and built a brand.

The transformation to driving the company while being physically detached but retaining the flexibility to reach out to employees through modern technology has taken nearly 25 years for Jay Galla. The senior Mr Galla returned from the US, quitting a job in an electric company that was doing business with a nuclear energy firm. The nuclear industry was in turmoil in the US following the Three Mile Island accident.

Part of transition

The appeal by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, to NRIs to return and contribute to India's growth in a way firmed up his father's homecoming, says Jay. Thus began his journey of entrepreneurship and the birth of Amara Raja. Though, he set out to float an engineering consultancy firm, a chance visit to a power plant turned his attention to batteries.

He observed that the batteries used in the plant were a couple of generations older in technology than those used in the US. He saw a big opportunity in battery technology. He applied for a licence and got the nod for UPS and Valve Regulated Lead Acid (VRLA) technology. That was the time of licence raj in India.

“In a way my grandfather, Rajagopala Naidu Paturi, being a Congress (I) MP from Chittoor during the time, perhaps helped in opening doors to bureaucrats and ministers. We set up a manufacturing plant in Tirupati, in Chittoor. For several years it was in project mode. In 1991, I joined after finishing my Political Science from the University of Illinois,” says Jay.

“I came with both eyes closed. I did not realise how important that moment was in history. In retrospect, I feel privileged to have seen the transition,” recollects Jay Galla. India was transiting into economic liberalisation from the licence raj. It was going through a grave economic crisis, with the country pushed to pledging its gold reserves. It was a great learning experience”.

He says he is a first-generation entrepreneur as well, because he and his father learnt the ropes of the business while work on the project was on, and sold the first battery produced at the factory after Jay had worked for some time in Amara Raja.

Team effort

The company was full of rural youth who had energy and enthusiasm to learn. “I have about 35 years of work experience. I started as a newspaper delivery boy in a Chicago neighbourhood, had a stint at a tennis club, where I also played, and in men's clothing retail — all part-time — while I was studying,” he recollects proudly.

“This experience in various spheres gave me valuable lessons in hard work, team effort and the importance of being able to work with different people. All this can add value to a company. In my case, I feel it has given me the confidence and resilience to succeed. For those entertaining thoughts of entrepreneurship, I feel these are some hard but good lessons to learn,” says Jay Galla.

In India, if you don't fund for losses for five years, you will find yourself in trouble, especially in the manufacturing sector. Though banks were supportive, the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Development Corporation was more active then. Amara Raja began commercial production in 1992 and got its first bulk order of 200 sets of batteries from the Department of Telecom around 1993, followed by a commercial order in 1995.

“We were the first to launch products based on VRLA technology in the country and DoT was our biggest client.” The daunting task was to convince bureaucrats about the price, which was three times more than conventional batteries. “That we succeeded is now history, but it involved quite an effort,” says Jay.

The company got its first major order nearly a decade after it was registered. However, there was no time to relax. They realised that they could not be dependent on the Government alone for business. This prompted Amara Raja to get into making batteries for the automotive sector, leading to the launch of the Amaron brand. “We moved fast to take on competition, and put in place a strategy that had a two-tier distribution system. Within a year our batteries were available at 5,000 dealer centres across the country, to the competition's 3,000.”

Amara Raja's partnership with Johnson Controls has been strong. Making the right technology choice at an opportune time was another significant differentiator for the company. This, again, is a good learning for entrepreneurs in the making. “The technology for Amaron batteries (with zero maintenance) was the best in class and we converted that and the distribution chain advantage to ring in the sales,” says Jay.

Rural initiative

Having put the company on sound footing, Jay Galla has taken on bigger roles. He is Chairman, Andhra Pradesh chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industry, is active in Young India Forums and is pushing his ideas to create more employment in rural areas, improving skills of the youth and fostering entrepreneurship.

In Andhra Pradesh, the State Government's ambitious plan to provide a million jobs under the Rajiv Yuva Kiranulu programme has his backing.

“What we need is to take manufacturing facilities to the villages, instead of bringing workers to urban areas. The task is to create non-migratory jobs. In our case, we have created 6,000 jobs and around 15,000 indirect ones. Our factories are in the small villages of Diguvamagham and Petamitta in Chittoor. This has led to a tripling of the population there, instead of migration,” he says.

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