Jamshyd Godrej, chairman, Godrej Enterprises Group, is the most media-shy member of the Godrej family. The septuagenarian had also been averse to the idea of listing his company. However, in an interview with Fortune India, Godrej says though there is no immediate plan for an IPO, he is open to the idea. "Essentially, we have cash flow which is why we are able to take care of our needs. If we ever go into a project which requires huge investment we will certainly look at an IPO," he says.

Here are some edited excerpts from his Q&A with Fortune India.

How different is Godrej Enterprises Group post the realignment of shareholding?

The realignment of the shareholding gives us greater focus on our businesses - we have launched new products as well as refreshed the existing portfolio. The idea of brand realignment with the new colour is to converge all our businesses. We also have a new purpose, new vision and new values, which actually builds on what we have done. It’s not totally new. It’s a different way of presenting.

We continue to have our arrangement with GPL (Godrej Properties, which is under the Godrej Industries umbrella). Whatever buildings we build, they will do the marketing. They will get an overriding fee for that. That will continue, and there is no change in that.

How has the overall strategy evolved?

The GEG businesses are disparate – we have consumer-facing businesses, we have industrial businesses as well as services businesses. We are trying to carefully focus on each of our businesses to grow them. What we are seeing is, over the last 15-20 years there has been a lot of consumer interest in the products that we make. We are making sure they are more sustainable and at the same time we are also building new factories. 

If you take something like appliances, new products and refreshment of existing products constantly goes on. Also, there is a greater interest in premiumisation. Hence, most of our new products are premium. Because of the heat during summer, there is a greater demand for cooling products, especially air-conditioners, freezers etc. We are concentrating on providing more manufacturing facilities for that.

There was a huge supply-demand mismatch this summer, especially for air-conditioners. The reason for this is a component shortage. How do you intend to bridge the gap?

China has developed a robust supply chain for components across the entire cold chain industry. They have large suppliers who are very competitive, on quality, price and quantity. We haven’t been able to reproduce any of those things in India. So, it will take time for our supply chain to get robust. The compressor is the main component we import. It is a commodity and there is nothing unique about it. The concentration has to be on developing the entire supply chain.

The government has also been trying to stop imports from China to the extent they can, but if there is not enough supply chain, we have no other choice but to import. We won't be able to make products, and we will face the same mismatch of supply and demand as before. Our entire supply chain has been local; we only import certain specialised components. 

China has built a scale which is unheard of, they make for the world, whereas we make for India. A lot of investments have to be made for our supply chain to catch up. A lot of schemes have been made such as the PLI scheme to develop that, but it will take time to develop. My position is that no country in the world is able to make everything they need, everybody has to be interdependent. I don’t think India can be diverse from that. We have to be part of a global supply chain. While the Government is keen that we build more and more in India and not depend on China so much, the reality of the situation is different.

We are living in a world where volatility, uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity are the new constants. How different is the role of a leader in a Vuca world?

The empowerment that is given is something, that is very important. It's important to have empowered teams, who know what they want to achieve. It is best to break down the problem into smaller bits. The overall picture might look grim, but you will find solutions when you look at each of the little problems you have when you break it down. We recently had a steep commodity price increase, and we are still coping with that. It needs some thinking on what the alternatives are, any substitute materials that can be used, is there some other way of doing things, so that you don’t get stuck. In each business, there is a different approach. If each business looks at that from the company’s overall perspective of becoming more sustainable then you will succeed. 

It's impossible to give a one-minute solution to deal with commodity prices. India is vulnerable to commodity price volatility. Take copper, for instance, we have copper production, but it doesn’t take care of our demand. Look at the steel industry, it is constantly going from difficult situations to good situations and then it's back to crisis. This will keep happening. These are the things we need to manage.

The Government has been actively propagating PLI schemes in manufacturing. Do you think this will help in generating investment?

I don’t believe that these kinds of financial incentives are good for the long term. In the long term, we need to make India an efficient country to attract investment from within India or abroad. Other countries have done it much better. Take Vietnam for instance, when the China plus one opportunity came up in the whole world, everyone was looking for another location and they went to Vietnam. They found it so easy to enter Vietnam. What we have to do as a country is to create the right conditions for investment. That is much more important than giving financial incentives for manufacturing etc. The more important and bigger issue is to create the right atmosphere for investment, and we have to be efficient, very speedy and reduce all the red tape and multiplicity of approvals.