Strong governance key for companies to achieve sustainable growth, attract investors: Marico chairman

Good governance is very important for growing companies, including the listed ones and those planning to hit the markets, in order to attract potential investors and achieve sustainable growth, said Marico founder and chairman Harsh Mariwala on Friday.

"The biggest problem among promoters, who have gone public or will go public at some point of time, is governance as they think the company belongs to them. They start utilising charging companies for personal expenses, which is not related with the organisational matters," Mariwala said at the annual summit organised by TiEcon here.

He said governance is very important and the organisations need to take this very seriously, irrespective of its size to help it achieve sustainable growth.

"Because once companies begin to take shortcuts, it will become its culture to harm the growth of the organisation. Company must set the right example, then the market will support you and you will attract potential investors," he added.

Further, Mariwala said constant innovation and creating a culture that encourages new ideas are key to building a successful business.

"My belief in innovation is very high and that's why we started the Marico Innovation Foundation. I think, if India has to succeed, innovation has to play a very important role," he noted.

However, Mariwala said, it is difficult to create a culture of innovation in businesses and it is for the leadership to ensure that people in the organisation experiment and take risks and remove the fear of failure.

"To create a culture of innovation, where everybody in the organisation is thinking about new ways of doing things is very important. To create a culture of innovation you need talent, diversity as it brings in great ideas, an open culture where one can communicate ideas and the most important of all is to remove the fear of failure, because it halts innovation," Mariwala added.