By- Mr. Anand Mahindra

I am sure that the question upmost in your mind when you see me at the podium is: What am I doing here? Why am I here?
I’m here because it’s actually a moment of great pride for the entire Mahindra group.

 The next question in your mind is: This much pride for a sizeable stake in a company?

 I am here because of the story behind that stake. The story is about an experiment, in management if you will, it’s a lab experiment you might say. The experiment was about trying to understand or to figure out: How do large business groups incubate and build new businesses? How do you create a sense of entrepreneurship inside a large group?

 To answer that question, in 2010, ironically when FirstCry was born. We created Mahindra Partners. That was our attempt at trying to create this experiment in entrepreneurship. The mandate for Mahindra Partners, was that they should be investing in incubating companies, particularly in the new age fields. They would of course have to do that while competing with a variety of startups, and frankly nobody is betting on the large companies, as you know. So, I asked one of my colleagues Zhooben Bhiwandiwala and another colleague Parag Shah to join. Zhooben as senior Managing Director of the company and then Parag as the Managing Director. They are both here today. Their mandate, as I said, was to isolate this kind of mentality of the startup. To our minds, the really differentiating mentality of startups is that they worship at the temple of value creation. Almost to the exclusion of everything else. They are not there necessarily to build empires, they are there to build and create value; and that his why they are so agile; so nimble; and so focused. That’s why nobody bets on large companies to create new businesses.

 Now if we found that they invested in businesses where the value creation was better done in the large company, under the umbrella, or aegis of our large companies, so be it. We’d build them as a new vertical. But if they found that, greater value would be created by ceding control or ceding leadership, so be it too. And so, they worked first on Mahindra Logistics, a company that was a division of Mahindra. They took it out, grew it dramatically, created extraordinary value. They then created Susten, a new age business in new age renewables, new energy, solar to be specific to begin with; and that’s been very successful. Both these are now solid pillars of the Mahindra group. As well as Mahindra Accelo which was the first business of the group that was the first business of the group that they transformed from a trading business to manufacturing powerhouse.

 Then they invested in Mom & me which was a business in clothing and other goods for newly born children, for infants and beyond. The identical space that Supam is fighting in. After a while they felt that consolidation is the path value to creation, so we acquired Baby Oye, we were still fighting Supam.

 One day Zhooben came to me and said, “You know Anand, I’ve studied this man and he is brilliant. He is an innovator, he is passionate, he focuses relentlessly on efficiency. He has a global vision”, which I am delighted to hear today is manifesting in UAE and Saudi. He then said, “this is the time for us to really create value by consolidating with them. I think we’ll be better off supporting him rather than fighting him.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is why we merged with FirstCry and at that time became the largest shareholder. After that you know, Supam went like a rocket ahead. He has created a delivery system that is the envy of many global online retailers. Which, I suppose, is what attracted Softbank of course to come in, and of course the rest is history.

 So, I want to end by saying here today that we are extraordinarily happy to be here. I want to congratulate you Supam, and your entire team that is here, and I want to express our gratitude for creating value for yourself and your team. I want to congratulate you and express my gratitude for creating immense value for Mahindra. And I want to thank you in particular for creating enormous value for this country.