QUARTERLY MAGAZINE July 2022 Vol 10
QUARTERLY MAGAZINE July 2022 Vol 10
Corporate report
To be recognised for the work we do, and the culture and ethos we strive to build among our Group companies, gives us immense pride and satisfaction!
We are happy to share that four RPG Group companies — CEAT, Zensar, RPG Life Sciences and KEC International — were honoured at the 34th Annual CFBP Jamnalal Bajaj Awards for upholding the highest standards of business ethics and promoting fair business practices.
Founded in 1988, these awards evaluate companies on critical business performance parameters such as customer satisfaction, employee motivation, supply chain, environment protection, adherence to the code of ethics & conduct and corporate social responsibility.
With a strong legacy of two centuries, the RPG Group has been built on a solid foundation of trust and tradition, with a relentless focus on excellence and outperformance. Brand RPG today is synonymous with trust, fairness and integrity while servicing various industries and clients, across geographies.
The Group has been consistently focused on customer centricity, building an agile, people-first organisation and delivering growth and financial value to its stakeholders.
At the core of it all, however, is the Group’s purpose of spreading Happiness. From enriching lives by making a difference to customers and employees, to driving innovation and growth, and caring for the planet, society, and all its stakeholders, happiness speaks many languages at RPG.
The biggest ambassadors for this are its People. Over the years, the Group has strived to create an inclusive, equitable and contemporary workplace. RPG continues to shape careers, and remains the employer of choice across industry type.
The Group provides employment opportunities to people from marginalised communities, such as transgenders, across its plants and corporate offices. It has also created opportunities for mothers returning to work and army veterans, among others. RPG also continues to focus on developing leaders through unique initiatives such as WoMentoring and the Future Leaders Board.
The health and wellness of its employees continue to be a priority at the Group. It is perhaps the first Indian conglomerate to announce a permanent remote working policy at the height of the pandemic and continues to operate on a hybrid model.
RPG Group has tied up with Juno Clinic, a leading mental wellness clinic, to provide counselling services to employees and their families at a nominal rate. Group company CEAT hired a qualified doctor as Chief Fitness Officer in 2019, to look after employees’ physical and mental wellness, while moving to a five-day working week for plant personnel. At Zensar, special Covid leave and caregiver leave were introduced, in addition to employing the survivors of Zensarians who died from the disease.
A crucial framework that binds RPG and its people processes are the commitment to customer centricity. Happy customers lead to a successful business and at RPG everyone walks the extra mile to put the customer at the forefront.
RPG Life Sciences delivered critical medicines directly to patients amid the pandemic and created RPG Serv, a digital platform that virtually connects doctors with medical representatives.
KEC continues to deliver projects on or ahead of time in an industry fraught with severe unpredictability and delays, helping fast-track critical infrastructure projects across the country. During times of distress, such as floods in Kerala or cyclones in Odisha, the company has quickly deployed teams on the ground to restore the damage to power lines.
In the annual happiness survey conducted across 30,000 employees of RPG, the overall Happiness Quotient for the Group stands at 83%, a positive indicator of the culture being reinforced across the Group.
To service the needs of its customers, CEAT has developed products such as tyres with tread-wear indicators and long-lasting grip. It has leveraged technology to enable solutions such as spot resolution of claims and smart tyres.
The RPG Group’s digital and innovation architecture permeates its diverse companies, functions, processes and management teams. In addition to building smart factories that combine the physical and digital worlds, Group companies have been prompt to adopt modern technology for systemic process innovations and to improve agility and efficiency in their operations.
For example, companies like KEC and HML use drones for various purposes such as surveys, stringing and spraying nutrients on plants. KEC has been using VR technology to enhance safety training at its project sites.
To drive innovation at scale, the Group’s central digital team has also embarked on RPG Click, an internal crowdsourcing platform that encourages collaboration across companies. Today, the Group has exciting projects in the metaverse too, along with developing agritech, medtech, blockchain and artificial intelligence-enabled platforms, heralding the next leap in its digital journey.
The commitment to safeguarding the planet and future generations runs deep across the Group. Sustainability at RPG is practiced across the entire value chain – from shareholders to employees, and everyone in between.
A shining example of this is Udaan, a bio-diversity park developed and maintained by Zensar, which follows a unique public-private partnership (PPP) model for enabling environmental sustenance. The company has significantly stepped up its efforts on sustainability, including investing in green energy and the Environment Health & Safety and climate-related risk frameworks.
CEAT has undertaken a target to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% by 2030, with plans to source 26% of the power at its manufacturing plants by installing rooftop solar plants. Green Stripes, an employee-driven platform, acts as a seeding ground for ideas to promote sustainability across the organisation.
Meanwhile, KEC has committed to reducing water consumption by 20%, greenhouse gas emissions by 20% across its plants and enable zero waste to landfill by FY26.
The Group is committed to ensuring a sustained impact across the entire ecosystem by efficiently addressing fundamental needs. Under the guidance of the RPG Foundation, Group companies execute several Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes designed for holistic empowerment of the communities they engage with.
The CSR initiatives run by the Group are centred on employability, education, community development and heritage. Over the years, several successful projects have been executed, such as the setting up of 100 Fever Clinics across Maharashtra in collaboration with the National Health Mission; revival of the Banganga precinct in Mumbai; and A-Story-A-Day, in collaboration with Doordarshan and All India Radio, to make spoken English accessible to every child in the region.
The RPG Group is steadfast in its promise to take care of all its stakeholders — from employees and clients to investors, vendors, society and the environment.
The culture that permeates the Group is built on fairness, outperformance and the promise of delivering happiness. This likely makes RPG and its Group companies deserving torchbearers of trust and integrity in the world of business.
