Rahul Mirchandani never had a minute’s doubt about joining Aries Agro, a speciality plant nutrition solutions company his parents founded in 1969. The office was his playground growing up, and the employees a second family. But, Mirchandani, who is now the company’s executive director, hasn’t let familiarity limit his skills. He teaches at Mumbai University and is the founding member of two global youth alliances. He’s a doting father, and frequently uses anecdotes about his nine-year-old son. His work-life balance is difficult not to envy as is his humility that he credits to his regular interactions with farmers across the one lakh plus villages Aries Agro reaches. With a schedule that keeps him on the road, it isn’t surprising that Mirchandani judges his success as a manager by the amount of work his team can handle without him. 

I travel 20 days a month. The 10 days when I am home in Mumbai, I get seven hours of sleep. I get up around 7.30am everyday and wake up my nine-year-old son who is usually cuddled up next to me. We both get ready after which we have our usual south Indian breakfast of dosa or idli. Home is my sanctuary. I rarely, if ever, work from home. When I’m at home, it’s strictly family time. Office starts at 9.30am but I usually get there by 9.45am. It’s only 10 minutes away from home, and a short ride. I intentionally delay getting there by 15 minutes so that the staff gets some leeway to settle in. Once I reach office, I expect everyone to be there.

We strictly follow working hours here. In the evening also, everyone leaves by 6.45pm. It’s only sometimes that people stay back till late, typically around the year end, when the books are being closed. When that happens, I stay back with the accounts team too. My perfectly orchestrated routine in Mumbai is in strong contrast to the days when I am travelling. When I’m travelling, I never get enough sleep as I take early morning flights so I can save up on travel time. Since I look after the company’s marketing across 26 states, I try to visit each state every two months. In each location, I usually have a review with the sales team of that state after which I’ll have meetings with customers and dealers. I thoroughly enjoy that I am connected to the farmers. They have taught me all I know about agriculture as I was not trained in agriculture. I’ve done my MBA from University of Canberra, Australia and am also a chartered financial analyst. 

Meeting them helps us understand their habits which enables us to design products relevant for them. Being in the field keeps us in touch with the ground reality and helps to pick up the pulse of the market. It gives us a lot of product ideas and scope for innovation of our existing products. It  allows me to keep a tab on outliers as well. Once, during a visit, I heard that the yield in a particular village had tripled. We later found out that it was due to a glitch by the production team which had led to the increase in the concentration of a nutrient in the fertiliser by manifolds. This unintended consequence helped us realise the increased deficiency in soil and helped to create our flagship brand. Field visits are a very important exercise as all our 85 brands of speciality fertilisers are conceptual products for agriculture. We have to educate the farmers on the importance of these micro-nutrients like zinc, iron and boron and creating their demand. 

We do this through systematic demonstrations and extension activities. The demand creation exercise in a village takes upto three to four crop cycles which is usually a year and a half long. It starts with recognising the highly respected farmer in the village and taking a small plot of his land where we use our products. At the end of the season, we compare the produce from the two fields so the farmer can judge for himself. On an average, we have seen a benefit of `6 for every rupee invested. Not only is there an increase in the quantity of output but it is of better quality too. We then organise farmer meetings so that the selected farmer can talk to fellow villagers about his experience with our product. I am a part of this process often. In spite of this, some farmers still aren’t convinced. So we talk to them individually or do a trial on their land. It is usually by the third season that we get maximum demand from a village. Uptil now, we have managed to cover 1,20,000 villages but it is only one-sixth of the total villages in India. We do this with the help of our marketing team of 600 people. 150 of these only do such extension activities. We hire a lot of temps too. They can go up to 1,000 during season time. Mass media advertising does not help as farmers are not able to figure it out. In the last 42 years, we have not spend even a single rupee on it. 

If I am in office for an entire week, it makes me feel unproductive.”- Rahul Mirchandani 

After my visits, when I go back to the office, the first thing I do is to look at the dispatches made and the sales report from previous days. This is the most critical part of my work. Being the marketing head of our company, I also look at product cost sheets, product profitability and branding decisions. I have realised that I have to learn to trust the management information system (MIS). Even now, I want to be present everywhere and see things for myself. If I am in office for an entire week, it makes me feel unproductive. I like going out to meet customers and solve their problems. But as our business grows more, it will be difficult to be outside this often and I will have to trust the reports and reviews given to me. Currently, I am in the office for not more than three days a week. Since I am away most of the time, it is important for me to let my team work independently so that they can get work done during my absence. Initially, I used to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s. But, I learnt that I need to free up my time to do more important things. Giving them the authority to work in my absence is the best learning so far. I ascertain my success as the manager by the amount of work my team has piled up for me during my absence. The lesser the work, the more they have learnt 

We have been growing at almost 30 per cent year on year for the last nine years. But, only our scale of operations has increased. The way we do things in the company has not changed. In fact, the company’s culture is still very grounded. This was instilled into me by my parents and we still live up to it. To ensure that I understand the work, they would take me to office and let me work with our staff right from the days when I was in school. I would type tenders, be a telephone operator or sometimes sell like a salesman. They would also take me along on their business trips. I learnt a lot working with almost every function. Now, I take my son along whereever I go during his school holidays. I hope it does for him what it did for me when I was growing.

Travelling with my parents helped me under- stand the value our company creates and made me proud of it. So, succession was never a problem for me when I joined the company in 1999 after finishing MBA. Everyone was already used to my presence. Due to the familiarity with the staff, the only problem was the transition from Rahul ‘baba’ to Rahul ‘Sir’ that took almost five years. I did not ask for it though. It just happened gradually. 

Apart from handling Aries Agro, I teach on Saturdays at Mumbai University. I love to design and teach my own courses.Previously, I have taught marketing finance, rural marketing,entrepreneurship, marketing research and agri-business management at IIM Ahmedabad and Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies. Overall, I have lectured at over 50 Business schools in India. Our company is also launching an MBA programme in agri-business and we are now designing the course material and training teachers for it. Teaching forces me to be updated and motivates me to add value to the class. For that, I read a lot. It is mostly restricted now to business journals, newspaper or non-fiction. But, John Grisham is one author whose books I always find time to read. I hate ‘How to’ books. I believe I have to make my own path and no one can customise it for me. I also get a lot of insights from my students who are mostly working professionals. I end up learning a lot more than I teach, to be honest.

Mirchandani says he likes being on the field to keep in touch with ground reality and design relevant products.

I have a very strong bond with my students and they were the  ones who got me involved with Young Indians, the youth arm of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in 2005. There I started working with 82 student networks across India who would get-together for leadership training, skills developmentand community service projects. In 2009, I led CII’s Young Indians  as their National Chairman and was the President of the Indian Delegation to the Group of Twenty (G-20) Young Entrepreneur summit in France in 2011. Later, I was given the responsibility to connect Young Indians globally. I managed to connect it with 28 youth organisations from around the world. These youth bodies looked at entrepreneurship training and skill development related activities. Later, I became the founding member of two global alliances of young entrepreneurs—G20 Young Entrepreneur Alliance and Commonwealth Asia Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs. Writing the governance code of both these alliances gave me an institution building exposure and I could experience peer-leadership at its ultimate extreme. What struck me the most was that these young entrepreneurs from each of the 28 participating countries, whether it was the US, Europe or Pakistan, face similar problems and wanted the same five things. They want better access to finance, entrepreneurship culture-building, mentorship support to advice during risk-taking, a system that taught entrepreneurship right from school level and a better innovation and incubation infrastructure.

So, as a group we focus on advocating and developing a more conducive entrepreneurship ecosystem in each of the respective countries. We not only give suggestions and recommend policy interventions and solutions to the government but also carry out action projects that demonstrate success. If I see a development problem, these are the platforms that enable me to do something about it and being a change catalyst is a very satisfying experience. 

These activities do take up a lot of my time. But, if I don’t do it now, I perhaps never will. This is the time when I have the energy and capacity to do multiple things. And, these are the things that excite me. I do not want to look back later and regret not having done something I wanted to. This motivation keeps me going. If by  the end of the day, I am both physically exhausted and mentally  exhilarated, I know my day has been worth it.