As part of our ongoing quest to get you meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world, we invited yet another passionate Business Leader Indroneel Goho for an exclusive interview with BrilliantRead Media. Indroneel is a proven leader with a wealth of knowledge, expertise, transferable skills and rich leadership experience of over 25 years. He has built sales in many businesses from scratch across all domains. He is the CEO of Darjeeling Organic Tea Estates Pvt. Ltd. Let’s learn more about his inspiring journey and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Indroneel:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey, please;
I have a strong desire to excel my life and have been able to structure my professional career in a way that enabled me to reach a good leadership position in leading companies very early in my career.
However, I had to prepare myself for the journey to the leadership position, by engaging not only in detailed working in the job that I was entrusted with but also going beyond the requirement of the job and acquiring a thorough knowledge of the business verticals/industry sectors and overall Indian and global economies.”
Though I am from the finance background, by demonstrating capabilities to manage various functions/business verticals, I got the opportunity to not only cut across functions and lead diverse functions like sales, marketing, production planning, supply chain, commercial, projects, corporate finance, banking restructuring etc but also got the opportunity to work across industry verticals like Steel, Big 4 Consulting, Consumer Durables, Auto Components, Travel, Distillery, AlcoBev, Animal Feed, Frozen Food, IT Consulting etc, during the last 25 years.
During my career, I had the experience of managing and leading multi-functional and multi-cultural teams of up to 10,000 employees, and this journey made me a decisive and dynamic leader with a proven track record of success.
I was given the opportunity by IFB, the company that I was working with at that time, for taking up the Stanford Executive Program in 2012, and this stint at the Stanford University, USA, helped me develop myself into a highly credible and dynamic business leader.”
I am also associated with the Stanford Seed Program of Stanford University, USA, and through this platform, I offer consulting support to many startups in Africa and India.
Now I lead the largest producer of Demeter Biodynamic Organic and Fairtrade Teas in the world, but the business is operated with a very strong organic, social and environmental development vision with the objective of creating positive social impact for the more than 10,000 workers and their 65,000 dependents living in the 14 tea gardens in Darjeeling and 3 tea gardens in Assam, that the company owns.
The vision of the company is to create a sustainable, organic, biodynamic, fair and ethically secure food system that promotes health, pivoted on life, form and matter. The challenge of achieving profit maximisation by ensuring social, environmental and organic standards in a company of more than 10,000 employees is a unique and challenging opportunity, very seldom available to professionals.”
How did you find your passion and purpose and started working with it?
The passion to excel in my professional career as a Business Leader got inculcated in me when I took up my professional studies. I was also fortunate to have good mentors early on in my life during my professional studies and early on in my career, who not only guided me properly but also fuelled my passion to excel in my professional career.
Having seen the benefit of good mentoring, I now offer mentoring and counselling support not only to young professionals and colleagues but also to many startups with whom I am associated as a Mentor/Advisor either directly or through Private Equity Firms and the Stanford Seed Program.
The exposure to social, environmental and organic food business in late 2017, bought in a paradigm shift in my thinking and I took the plunge into a completely new business vertical with the objective of driving the social, environmental and organic tea business and creating a positive social impact to the lives of 10,000 workers in the tea gardens and their 65000 dependents living in the tea gardens.”
The opportunity to lead the development of society and the improvement of the environment through professional business management is a cause now very close to my heart.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
The inspiration to impact the social and environmental conditions of such large human lives is a great motivation and drives me to think and do better every day.
How do you manage yourself and keep on going despite the challenges? What drives you?
The smile that I see on the faces of the 65000 people, old, young and children, gives a great sense of achievement to the heart and keeps me going.
In this business, I am constantly pursuing the conversion of other business leaders to this cause and seeing many of them taking the steps to drive the cause gives a great sense of fulfilment. Due to my frequent global travels, I get to meet many people who are driving this passion globally and it’s great learning.
Please share with us – what has worked well for you so far?
I would say, my ability to connect with all age groups at their level and make people around me feel confident to go for their dreams, has worked well with me.
“My ability to delegate to my team and support them through thick and thin to excel in their role has enabled me to reach leadership role quite early in my life.”
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
I believe the ability to adapt to various situations and driving business through the power of knowledge and wisdom is key for a successful professional career.
I believe in the saying – “Throw me to the Wolves and I will come back leading the Pack”
Gone are the days when people used to respect designation, power, now people respect knowledge.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
The sense of satisfaction that I get when I see people around me achieving success and happiness keeps me going. The sense of being able to contribute positively to society and the environment through my work keeps me passionate about my work.
We would love to know your advice for all those starting out?
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
