CERRITOS CA – The Indus Entrepreneurs TiE SoCal Chapter held their monthly meeting on Feb 15 at the Cerritos Sheraton here touching on diverse topics all aimed at making most of the present economy. Those who spoke included Mark Masten VP Global Sales and Marketing Paramount Farms International Ravi Chatwani Co-CEO Prosum Inc. and Ravi Renduchintala President UniSeva.
Moderator for the event Gunjan Bagla introduced the speakers pointing out that all three had an engineering background. Bagla himself an engineer is a India business consultant with 25 years of global sourcing engineering and technology experience. He is the founder and MD of Amritt Inc.
First to address the audience was Masten who has had an ‘India connection’ for close to two decades and is now selling California pistachios in India. His first encounter with India was in 1994 as an employee of General Electric GE. Paramount Farms is a wholly-owned operating company of Roll Global which also owns companies like Fiji Waters POM Wonderful Teleflora to name a few. Paramount Farms is among the world’s largest grower processor and marketer of pistachios and almonds. Masten joined Paramount in 2005 and has since been leading the company’s growth in the US and developing markets.
Pistachios are grown on Paramount’s 10 K acres farm in the Central Valley in California from where they are exported to India. Paramount launched its brand in India five years ago and since then has seen major growth. Though Indian consumers prefer almonds above pistachios Paramount is pitching for pistachios as a ‘healthy snack’ trying to make it more affordable and getting rid of the image it has as a luxury item.
Paramount has its main office in Delhi with branches in Vadodara Gujarat Calcutta Mumbai among others. Masten pointed out that India does not grow pistachios. All pistachios come either from the US or Iran. Paramount pistachios are roasted and packaged in India. Research is on to introduce flavored pistachios suited for the Indian palate. Paramount is also working in conjunction with the Diabetes Foundation of India to establish that pistachios are a healthy snack. The company is also investing in local pistachio health research. It has a 100 percent commitment to quality and will not compromise on this at any cost.
Chatwani focused on his pet topic – core leadership concepts. He leads Prosum a technology services company which provides consulting technology outsourcing and IT Staffing. Their global clients include DirectTV Levi Strauss Warner Bros.
“Leadership is inspiring your organization to take responsibility for creating a better future” he said. The three basic leadership concepts he came up with are cause and effect moving towards and away from Motivators and Chunking up and down.
He emphasized the importance of mastering communication reframing and rephrasing language to be more positive rather than negative and pessimistic. For example knowing what you want is better than knowing what you don’t want. Chunking up involves getting more abstract. This helps identify solutions and reach an agreement. Chunking down is getting more specific and helps identify the problem.
Renduchintala a technology entrepreneur who heads his technology strategy consultancy firm UniSeva focused on ‘wealth creation’ top most on the mind of all today. “Be a living laboratory and experience new approaches” he urged. He believes in staying nimble and enabling innovation to revitalize the economy. “Money is not in strategy but in execution” he said. Speaking on the new economy business models he gave the example of companies like AirBNB Cyprexx and HomeAway. The new economy is bringing about an emerging alternate investment class and the main area for investment is single family residences. The new business models revitalize service and supply chains and leverage customer touching communities. It involves ‘bottom of pyramid thinking’ building wealth and transparency leading to trust.
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