You are taking over at a time when there are multiple global headwinds. How are you navigating through these choppy waters?

It’s about keeping an eye on what’s happening and reacting appropriately, but at the same time trying not to get too distracted. The controllable things — we need to execute well on those. It’s easy to get lost in negativity. But I actually take a step back and feel extremely blessed to have this opportunity at this moment in time. India is the world’s largest country by population and has the potential to be the fastest-growing major country over the next couple of decades. The key, as we see it, is combining the best of our past — the incredible set of values built consistently over generations — while avoiding the risk of looking backwards too much and keeping focus firmly on the opportunity ahead.

As the new Chairman of Godrej Industries, what would be your key targets over the next few years?

Over the next five years, we’d like to build ourselves into a ₹5 lakh crore market capitalisation group — roughly a 3x growth over five years to FY31. We’d like at least two of the three unlisted businesses to be listed in this timeframe — most likely financial services and chemicals. We’d also like to compound sales at the group level by at least 15 per cent per year, compound earnings per share by at least 20 per cent per year, and have each individual business generating a return on equity of at least 18 per cent. If we do those things, we think the ₹5 lakh crore outcome is very much achievable. The three values we think the group was built on, and want to celebrate going forward, are: Inspire trust — what we say, we do; Create delight — genuinely offer customers something they enjoy; and Be bold — don’t rest on our laurels.

Over the last decade or two, Godrej has played it safe, not taking too many risks. How will you change the mindset for the Be Bold agenda?

I think that’s a fair criticism as I look back at the group. We have been guilty of opening up a lot of different fronts and creating successful mid-sized businesses. But where is the Godrej Group’s TCS? Where is its Bajaj Finance? Hopefully, we’ll have a better answer to that question over the next few years. The mindset has already changed quite a lot, and it’s changing quite fast. Look at Godrej Properties, which is a business I grew up in. I joined when we had about 30-40 employees and roughly ₹40 crore in revenue. Last year, we ended at about 5,000 employees and ₹34,000 crore in sales. Over the last three years consecutively, Godrej Properties has been the largest listed developer in the country by residential sales. Our youngest business, Godrej Capital, is actually the fastest NBFC in the country to ever reach ₹25,000 crore in AUM. We hope over the next five years to take that to ₹1 lakh crore AUM, publicly list it, and expand it beyond lending into other areas of financial services. And in that business, historically we’ve opened businesses with relatively modest capital — but that intent has changed. We’ve put in about ₹5,000 crore into Godrej Capital, which is a big multiple of anything previously invested into a single early-stage business

Are you happy with the business portfolio under GIG or will you be looking to expand to new areas?

Our first task is to make sure this set of businesses grows closer to its full potential and we avoid the risk we’ve perhaps been guilty of in the past — opening too many fronts without clarity on how you get to a dominant position in each. At the individual business level, we will constantly be opening new products and business lines

Would you consider joint venture and M&As to scale up?

Never say never — we’re certainly open to it if the right opportunity comes along. But I think there’s been an intentional move toward doing it ourselves. The ₹5 lakh crore market cap target is achievable through organic growth.

You’ve been a vocal proponent of professional management. How do you hold family members running various businesses in the group to the same level of accountability?

We’ve done a lot of work at the family level to make sure that accountability is real. The most important thing is that family members are held accountable. The first person who should be fired if they’re not doing a good job is me. If a business is not living up to the opportunity available, then we will exit that business. We have, in fact, exited businesses that were run by particular family members — they themselves agreed more often than not that there was a structural issue and that exiting was best for the group.

How is the group thinking about AI?

It’s an incredibly important area — both as a business enabler and as a business risk. We do have a central AI lab, but like most things in the group, a lot of the work is decentralised because what AI means for an agri business is very different from what it means for financial services. In our chemicals business, for example, there’s a major project underway in partnership with McKinsey on AI-driven analytics and operations, Godrej Capital just won an international award for its AI-driven underwriting work. In FMCG, a lot of interesting work is happening — the way advertising is being created, timelines being compressed, budgets being optimised. We are still scratching the surface.

What is the biggest risk that could come in the way other than the external macro headwinds?

The key thing we need to get right internally is culture. We are a fast-growing organisation with a lot of new people coming in. Godrej Capital, which didn’t exist five years ago, has 2,000 team members today. Godrej Properties has people coming from many different organisations with different value systems. Creating a culture that integrates all of that — making sure people understand what we stand for and how we want to go about doing things. The ‘what’ we deliver is very important, but so is the ‘how’. Doing that consistently across six different companies all growing quickly, all in very different industries — that takes a lot of doing.

Any suggestions for the policymakers?

The government has done a lot of good work — infrastructure development has been absolutely fantastic, GST rationalisation was a good recent step. But there are still big opportunities for improvement in ease of doing business, particularly in real estate. The constraint to growth is not actually the market — it’s the ability to bring supply efficiently. Steps have been taken, but more could be done. The most important thing for India to get right over these next few years is enabling rapid economic growth. There’s a lot of good work happening, but the effort really needs to be redoubled.