Business Wire IndiaOne of the panels at eSummit 2017, the largest startup event in India organized by the eCell of IIT Bombay discussed the growth challenges for startups by drawing experiences from three Italian Multi Nationals.
The panel organized by MISB Bocconi, the only offshore location of Bocconi University, Italy, eCell and the Indo-Italian Chamber of Commerce saw on stage Stefano Pelle (MD of Piaggio Vehicles), Luca Bottazzi (MD of Brembo India) and Riddhish Jalnapurkar (Sales Director of Salvagnini India). The session was moderated by Paola Bielli, faculty member of Bocconi University and MISB Bocconi.
The three manufacturers share a common DNA: few years back a brilliant entrepreneur (Enrico Piaggio, Emilio Bombassei and Guido Salvagnini) sees an opportunity in the market, believes in the possibility to develop a product to address it and in the process creates a great company.
But what is the ingredient helping the initial startup growing into an MNC with thousands of employees worldwide? Innovation is the common platform for all these companies.
“Our idea of innovation is consumer or customer-centric and future-oriented,” said Stefano Pelle. “Trying to find out opportunities in the market, in other words having the right product at the right moment at the right price”. In a B2B environment customer-centric means to develop systems which can improve the operations of the customers. “Our aim is to automate the process and move towards complete automation” says Riddhish Jalnapurkar. “The people who do not use our systems have a lot of people doing the same operations, lot of inventory buildings, lot of factory spaces and a lot of work-in-progress but with these systems everything changes”. This improves the efficiency of our customer. Innovation can also come from highly advanced application areas. Brembo which has 100% market share for braking systems in F1 and moto GP first develops its solutions for racing and transfers them to the traditional automotive industry. The same case is with Piaggio and the Aprilia moto GP label.
The Human Capital plays a relevant role in the growth and these companies need to adopt creative ideas about how to get the right competencies and skills. Salvagnini hired retired Pentagon/US army experts to fill in a gap in technological competencies. Piaggio created a department with international and young talents to develop innovation for the future.
The final ingredient is procedures. “At Brembo, operations now are very well structured,” said Luca Bottazzi. “In our factories the model is always the same all over the world”.
Eventually, the future seems to be shiny as all these companies are now experimenting with very innovative technologies to be ready for growth.
In a nutshell, the panel concluded that investing and experimenting is the clear mantra for the future to be the number one in offering innovation to the market.
About MISB Bocconi
MISB Bocconi, located in Mumbai, is the world’s only offshore presence of Università Bocconi, one of Europe’s premier universities. MISB Bocconi offers Post-Graduate program in Business and Executive Education, designed and taught by the faculty of SDA Bocconi, Milan, Italy. SDA Bocconi, the management school of Università Bocconi, is one of the selected business schools worldwide to have received, for its MBA program, all three of the prestigious international accreditations—AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System), and AMBA (Association of MBAs).
Photo Caption: L to R: Luca Bottazzi (MD of Brembo India), Riddhish Jalnapurkar (Sales Director of Salvagnini India), Prof. Paola Bielli (MISB Bocconi) and Stefano Pelle (MD of Piaggio Vehicles)
