When you take the time to hone positive leadership skills, such as decisiveness, integrity, and honesty, these values can have a trickle-down effect on your employees and encourage them to work harder for the common goal. It also helps in encouraging and improving morale.
This helps to build a more strong trust and relationship between a leader and his followers. Better leadership also somehow helps to improve the communication and as everyone knows how much important is communication these days. It helps to make one’s objective and thoughts more clearly understood and acceptable by people.
Imbibed with the above mentioned distinguished qualities, Manmohan Panda, MD of Glaze Group of Companies is leading a venture that has made a name for itself in the list of top suppliers in India.
In the following interview, he shares some insights on how his efforts has impacted the overall business paradigm:
What is your definition of leadership and how do you make an impact through your leadership qualities?
Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. Leadership signifies the trait which defines one’s capability to bind the people together and move forward with them. This leadership definition captures the essentials of being able and prepared to inspire others. A leader is an inspiration which everyone follows.
Tell us more about your company
For most of us, life gives us a lot of reasons to change the world, but we end up being selfish and just doing things that we take us as an individual to new heights. But some among us grow up with vigour to transform the world, do things that the generations ahead would remember and one such name is of Glaze Group of Companies.
With a plethora of ventures under its name, Glaze Group of companies have risen to new heights and put us in big leagues coming from a small town of Orissa. Despite having small beginnings, this business has raised high enough to become synonymous with success. Glaze Group of Companies owns more than ten organizations that span from a hospitality chain to a media/film-making firm, from a real estate business to manufacturing, automobiles, and upcoming Multiplex outlets.
We are into manufacturing of LPG cylinders, LPG Pressure Regulators, Industrial Valves, and other engineering machinery, etc. in the name ECP Industries Ltd.
The ladder of success was not easy to climb. The group had to face all kinds of hardships but it was the greed to achieve big that made him take up every opportunity like a challenge and channelize his strengths to make a name in the business world.
Being a partner with one of the biggest entertainment production and Training houses in the nation, Institute of creative Excellence Pvt. Ltd. (privilege partner of Balaji Telefilms Ltd.), is not an easy affair. Not only this, we are also giving wings to a lot of pursuing creative minds with this company called Ashlesha motion pictures Private Ltd.
Glaze Group never waited for anyone to take the step towards development in this area. We jumped in and just did it. Like the amazing and luxury class hotel he builds in his home town in Orissa as the place lacked a good high-end property Glaze Hotel and Resorts Pvt. Ltd.
Reaching heights in the business world we now want to give back to the society. One such venture through which Manmohan has become the Messiah for the people of his region is Glaze India Foundation, one of its kind educational institution which nurtures and paves the way for many more.
Glaze Group in his pile of success stories also has Glaze Retail to show off. The company has a huge name when it comes to supplying hotel toiletries and house-keeping items to hospitals, hotels, and several small & big establishments.
Manmohan, with his long list of awards like, Corporate Captain 2013 and 2015(Govt. Of Orissa), Face of the year 2018, Business tycoon of the year 2019, and Golden Indian of the year 2018, to name a few, has become the role model to a lot of people across the globe.
How do you lead your company towards sustaining its competency and innovation?
- Every company needs to pin down ‘why we do what we do’. A strong purpose drives growth and profitability. In order to achieve sustainable success, companies must repeatedly re-examine their sense of purpose and make sure the organization serves it well. That’s what I do.
- For creating a scalable business, I focussed on understanding how crucial it is to build brand equity and emotional connections with customers. It’s those attachments that link customers to your products and will keep them returning to you. Building a brand is about developing and sustaining those relationships over time.
- Putting the most experienced talent in charge to carry out all the targets and growth in a more descriptive manner.
- Carrying out regular performance assessment and motivating the team to follow them and improve accordingly.
- Identifying the customer’s pain point
- Articulating the value proposition.
- Leveraging organization’s core capability
What were the challenges you came across in your career as a business leader?
- At the beginning I faced some challenges some cash flow management challenges.
- Hiring and building the proper team was a hard work in the start.
- Finding customers.
- Building the brand value
- Time Management.
What is that one aspect or emotion that drives you at work or keeps you motivated?
The most important thing that keeps me motivated is the thought in my mind that what I am doing now that is helping a lot of people and if I keep on improving that will help many others in the future.
As an entrepreneur, what is your opinion on the current landscape of start-up culture in India?
Start-up ecosystem in India is booming fast and sees huge growth in the coming years with new innovation and technology. In around a decade, the Indian start-up ecosystem has scaled to become 3rd largest start-up hub in the world followed by the US and China. No doubt the success of consumer internet companies has played and continues to play a big role in that. The ecosystem has seen a cycle of boom, bust and exits with a promise that India has the ability to return capital to investors. There are going to be great opportunities in Indian start-up ecosystem by 2020 and huge growth for entrepreneurs and founders.
According to you, how important is it to be updated with novel technologies as per your industry sector?
- Getting updated with new technologies helps your brand become more relevant and progressive.
- Tech helps you gain a competitive edge over larger companies
- Technology also helps to streamline and manage the cash flow in a better way.
- Technology is also very important to meet up with the customers’ demands in an effective way and fulfil all their requirements.
How do you strategize on scaling your career and your company in the future?
Adding a new script to India’s business world our Group has risen up like a phoenix from my failures and hardships. Our group has given a new and fresh breeding ground to the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
