Leadership Agenda: Diversify Products, Develop People
VP Nandakumar, MD & CEO of Manappuram Finance, discusses his personal and professional goals:
Ravi Lalwani: What are the top 3 areas where you will personally focus upon in the months ahead?
VP Nandakumar: Gold Loan is our bread and butter as far as Manappuram Finance is concerned. We just cannot take our eyes off this business. As for the next 2 areas, I would like to focus on MSME loans and vehicle loans which, in my opinion, hold immense, untapped potential.
Name 3 areas in which you confidently consider yourself as an expert. How did you gain that expertise?
Manappuram is a pioneer in the country when it comes to bringing gold loans into the organized sector in a big way and democratizing the product by ensuring that we reach unbanked nooks and crannies of the country. I inherited this business from my dad and scaled it up as a nationally known NBFC and gained my expertise during this long journey.
Secondly, during developing Manappuram into a large enterprise with over 5200 branches all over the country and 45,000 employees, I realized that human resource development and empowering the workforce through customized training is of paramount importance. We have our in-house platform for training called MADU, besides tie-ups with premium institutes within and outside the country to help our employees develop themselves into full-fledged professionals.
The third area would be community relations which is done not only at the individual level but through CSR initiatives, social outreach programs, and people-to-people contact. After all, man is a social animal and no individual or company can thrive without networking
and giving back to society.
What 3 areas would you be looking to develop yourself in the years ahead?
(i) Data Analytics, which is assuming great relevance in the business sphere (ii) Digitalization (iii) Risk Management.
Name business leaders, non-business leaders, & leadership gurus who you admire.
Business Leaders: (i) Dhirubhai Ambani for having built his empire from scratch, (ii) R. Thyagarajan of Chennaibased Shriram Group, who was an insurance employee before turning into a top-notch entrepreneur and (iii) Uday Kotak, founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank.
Non-Business Leaders: (i) Narendra Modi, (ii) Oommen Chandy, (iii) Amitabh Kant.
Leadership Gurus: (i) Shiv Khera, (ii) Dale Carnegie, (iii) Peter Drucker.
As a leader, what business milestones would you like to achieve in the next 12 months?
Planning to strike the right balance between gold loans and loans in the nongold sector and generate a CAGR of 20% at a consolidated level as well as an ROE of 20%.