UNILEVER LTD

Unilever

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Industry Area: Branded and packaged goods including foods and home and personal care products.

Overview

Market share/importance:

Unilever’s mission statement is ‘meeting the everyday needs of people everywhere’, and the multinational definitely has a huge and expanding global reach. Unilever proudly declares that every day 150 million people are choosing their brands ‘to feed their families and clean their homes’. Unilever is one of the world’s top makers of packaged consumer goods and moves countless products like deodorants, fragrances, soap, margarine, tea and frozen foods all over the world. The corporation sells products in over 150 countries and has annual sales of approximately $ 46 billion (£31,5bn). Unilever controls subsidiaries in at least 90 countries and employs 295,000 (in 2000) people [1]. Unilever is one of the world’s top three food firms -after Nestle and Kraft- and the world’s second largest packaged consumer goods company –behind Procter & Gamble.

However, in spite of Unilever’s vast size and presence worldwide, the company’s actual visibility is surprisingly low. Anonymity hides the company’s importance. Unilever does not retail under its own name, preferring brand names to create the illusion of diversity. Who does not know brand names like Magnum, Omo, Dove, Knorr, Ben & Jerry’s, Lipton, Slim-Fast, Iglo, Unox, Becel, and Lever2000? They’re all part of the ‘Unilever armada of brand names’. To make sure the brand names do not go unnoticed, Unilever spends huge amounts of money on marketing and advertising. Advertising has always been a keystone of Unilever’s businesses. The Dutch-Anglo company is likely to be the world’s number one advertiser. (Advertising Age estimate a 1999 global media spend of $3.7bn (£2,539bn), of which $3.1bn (£2,127bn) was outside the US, making Unilever the world's #1 advertiser)[2].

History:

Butter & Soap
Unilever was formed in 1930 when the Dutch margarine company Margarine Unie merged with British soapmaker Lever Brothers. Both companies were competing for the same raw materials (e.g. oilseeds), both were involved in large-scale marketing of household products and both used similar distribution channels. Between them, they had operations in over 40 countries. Margarine Unie grew through mergers with others margarine companies in the 1920s. Lever Brothers was founded in 1885 by William Hesketh Lever. Lever established soap factories around the world, and had plantations in many Third World countries. In 1917, Lever began to diversify into foods, acquiring fish, ice cream and canned foods businesses.

Control of the supply chain
In Unilever one activity has frequently led to another. The oil seeds crushed for use in margarine and soap yielded a by-product known as "cattle cake" which prompted a move into animal feeds. Processing the oil for use in margarine and soap yields other by-products, glycerine and fatty acids, which led Unilever into chemicals, a $2-billion (£1,372bn) business in 1986. (In 1997 Unilever sold its speciality chemicals business to Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) for US$8bn (£5,489bn) Those millions of consumer products need to be packaged, which resulted in Unilever operating twenty-four packaging plants in six European countries. Consumer goods must also be transported, which turned Unilever into one of the largest truckers in Britain - and for fifty years, before it was sold in 1985, the Unilever-owned Palm Line was one of the biggest shipping companies out of West Africa.

Fishing is another area of interest. Unilever farms for salmon in Scotland, has prawn farms in several Asian countries, and is the major owner of a vertically integrated fishing business out of West Germany that includes catching the fish in deep-sea trawlers, processing the catch, and then selling the fish in company-owned shops and restaurants that carry the Nordsee name. Unilever made a public commitment to move towards buying all its fish from sustainable fisheries by 2005. To meet this objective Unilever and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) jointly set up the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) as a platform to promote sustainable fishing internationally (1996). The MSC is now said to be an ‘independent, non-profit body with a set of principles and criteria for sustainable fishing’.

Recent acquisitions
Major acquisitions during the 80s included Brooke Bond in 1984, greatly strengthening the Unilever’s tea interests, while Chesebrough-Pond’s Inc, in 1987, brought a major additional stake in the US personal product market, as well as strengthening Unilever’s position in the world skin care market.

(Unilever has been considered a ‘sleeping giant’ for a long time, especially during the 80s. In the 90s Unilever tried to shake this image as a ‘cumbersome, inflexible corporation’ off.) Again, in the 90s, there were numerous acquisitions, and Unilever began to put into effect its planned moves into Eastern Europe. However, the company largely withdrew itself from packaging and all agricultural operations, apart from Plant Breeding International Cambridge (R&D based company developing products (in the agriculture and horticultural sector) mainly under license, sold to Monsanto in 1998] and the plantations. Much of the company’s agribusiness assets were sold as part of the company’s policy to focus on its core activities.

Strategy

In September 1999 Unilever announced its intention to focus on fewer, stronger brands to promote faster growth. The company is whittling its brands down to 400 (from 1,600) including familiar brands such as Dove, Lux, Lipton, Magnum and Calvin Klein fragrances. (Consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has been hired by Unilever to sell off ten of the firm’s 70 food brands) [3].

The concentration on innovation and brand development on a focussed portfolio of 400 leading brands is part of Unilever’s latest growth strategy, called ‘The Path to Growth’, designed to accelerate top line growth and step up the rate of margin improvement in five years time. In February 2000 the company announced a series of linked initiatives (organizational changes, restructuring) to align the entire organization behind these growth ambitions.

The shake-up of its top management, splitting the company into two, separate global units –food and home, and personal care-- was one of these initiatives. And Unilever has started selling off any subsidiary businesses which are making less than average profits, and ‘decentralising’ control of subsidiaries, with the corporate HQ in Europe just monitoring profit levels – and making sure they are maximised. This heavy focus on profit means cost-cutting - especially minimising workers’ pay.

Another key component of the growth strategy is e-commerce. Unilever wants to step up the use of the Internet in order ‘to improve brand communication/marketing and on-line selling & to simplify business-to-business transactions throughout the supply chain’. India’s Satyam Computer Services Ltd has recently won an information technology services contract from Unilever [4]. Unilever also made deals with Compaq, IBM, Microsoft, Excite@Home, Ariba Inc. (leader in all phases of business-to-business e-commerce) and WOWGO to enable a faster adoption of global e-commerce opportunities. In February 2000, Unilever and iVillage formed a new Internet company. Unilever committed £130 million to e-business initiatives in 2000 and hopes to create a ‘mall that never closes’.

In its bid to concentrate on fewer, core brands, Unilever disposed of 27 businesses during 2000 for a consideration of approximately $642 million (£404,7 million). The company sold, amongst others, the European Bakery Business, Benedicta a culinary business in France and various other small businesses and brands. The same year, Unilever acquired several high-profile companies, including American based Bestfoods, which strengthened Unilever’s market position remarkably. Other important acquisitions were Groupo Cressida Central America Foods (Home & Personal Care) Corporation JABONERIA NA (Ecuador, Foods, Home & Personal Care), Amora Maille (France, Culinary Products) Codepar/SPCD (Tunisia, Home & Personal Care), Ben & Jerry's (USA, Ice Cream), and SlimoFast (USA, Slimming Products). The total purchase consideration for businesses other than Bestfoods (total number: nineteen) was approximately $4,451 million (£2,8 million) [5]. The acquisition of Bestfoods made Unilever's foods business the world's second largest after Nestle.

Unilever keeps selling businesses. In 2002, Unilever sold at least 19 of its food brands including cleaning firm Diversey Lever and cooking oil firm Mazola. Brands that are here to stay include Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Bird’s Eye, Persil, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. On these brands Unilever will focus its tremendous advertising efforts. The company has closed several big advertising deals on airtime with Carlton and Granada. Also, Unilever struck a massive deal with billboards company JCDecaux, the biggest poster contractor in Europe. The French firm will handle all Unilever’s poster advertising across 22 European countries for the next five years.

About BILLGATES.......

So just how did Bill Gates get started to becoming one of the world’s richest man?  Bill Gates, real name William Henry Gates III, is a co-founder of one of the most famous and recognized computer software companies in the world, Microsoft. He was born in the United States on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates II and Mary Maxwell Gates.

Background

Gates has two sisters and they enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle as they were growing up. His mother was a school teacher who was also the Chairperson for the United Way. His father was an attorney in Seattle.
He attended Harvard University where he worked on a version of computer programming language known as BASIC with Paul Allen. Bill Gates did not graduate from Harvard; instead, he left Harvard during his junior year to start the company that has made him so famous and the richest person in the world (according to Forbes), Microsoft Corporation.
Microsoft was formed in 1975 and it has completely changed the way the world uses computers today. Originally named, Micro-soft, which was an abbreviation of the microcomputer software, the company changed its name to simply, Microsoft. Bill gates retired from the CEO position at Microsoft in 2008.
Criticism
Even though Gates founded one of the strongest and most influential companies in the world, along with his success has came great criticism. Many criticized Gates for making Microsoft a monopoly and limiting the abilities of competitors such as Apple Computer and more. Gates has fought several battles in the courtroom since the development of the Microsoft Corporation. Legal battles have included: Apple Computer, Netscape, Opera, WordPerfect, and sun Microsystems.

The Richest Man in the World

In 2006, it was estimated by Forbes that Bill Gates’ net worth was $56 billion USD. (Too old, need 2009) He has held the number one position on Forbes’ list since the mid 90’s, except in 2008 when controversy between a Mexican billionaire, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates’ fortunes were examined, or somewhat at least. In the early part of 2008, Forbes stated that Warren Buffet knocked Bill Gates from the number one position; however, the Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim Helu’s fortune was not tabulated in the list. As 2008 continued on, speculations were made that Bill Gates, once again, became the richest man in the world, where he maintained his title through 2009 at $50 billion USD.

Investment Style

Bill Gates’ investment style has been compared by many to that of Warren Buffet. Bill Gates owns his own investment company called Cascade Investment, LLC which Gates’ uses to embark on several of his personal investing adventures.
Cascade doesn’t take part in investing in technology like one would think after Gates’ reign over Microsoft; instead, Cascade takes part in investments that will offer long term value. Basically, Cascade could own millions of stock options in hundreds of companies; however, instead they invest majorly in a small amount of companies where they can hold a major share of the company. For instance, the garbage industry has Gates’ attention. Cascade has invested in a company known as RSG on the NYSE or Republic Services. Cascade (Gates) owns 13% of the garbage collecting company.
Gates’ investment style is like a “whole market” approach where capitalization upon select stocks within a particular industry that is on the rebound is important. His investments are diversified where “old economy” stocks are utilized and through the purchasing of bonds

Management Guru.......

 

In India , the word 'guru' is not used in a cavalier fashion. It denotes certain level of wisdom, achievement and respect given by the disciples.

It is not granted by any position, power or by legal processes. It is neither conferred nor self-proclaimed. The title sits lightly on those who are worthy of it, unspoken and understood.

From that point Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad can be called a guru. He was insightful and definitely provocative. He was an interesting combination of an academic and a practitioner.

His thought process got formulated by observing businesses in action and his ideas thus formulated altered many businesses. He was communicator par excellence and had ability to focus on the emerging scenarios.

The ivory tower academics - we can call them epsilon estimators - were disdainful of him. For the pure academics any discussion of the real world is anathema. But CK was not to be bound by such notions particularly in the business management world.

He was a graduate in Physics from Loyola College-Chennai (then Madras). He worked in Union Carbide for nearly four years which according to him - in a way shaped his ideas of management and then did his masters from IIMA and his DBA from Harvard in 1975. Then he taught at IIMA for a while to return to Stephen M Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan as a Distinguished Professor.

Two of his major ideas are about core competencies of the organization and leveraging on it and the idea of looking at poor as source of profit than an object of charity.

During the eighties and early nineties it was fashionable to create conglomerates which consists of unrelated businesses since low correlated or unrelated businesses reduce risk at the time of crisis.

But he turned the entire idea on its head and suggested the need for corporations to focus on their main strength or core competencies. His seminal work with Gary Hamel (HBR May-June 1990) won him the Mckinsey Prize and maximum number of reprints were sold of his paper.

He compared the 'Diversified Company' as a tree and major limbs as core products, smaller branches as business units' leaves and fruit as end products and the root system which nourishes and stabilizes all things as core competencies.

Many an award followed and he was always in the top ten of every conceivable lists of management thinkers - even though Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo feels all such lists are only worth keeping in the garage before entering the house!

He was a recipient of Padma Bhushan and was actively involved in the India @75 initiative of CII. His discussion on core competencies had its quota of critics -  some with justification - particularly in the emerging market context where one teacher school flourish (who teaches from Mathematics to English to Civic Sense) and where existing traditional businesses get in to unrelated areas and succeed. Rice millers and Banana Farmers become business barons in areas of high technology.

His other big idea is the formulation about the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) as market opportunities for corporate.

C K Prahalad in an interview with the renowned Professor of Strategy, J Ramachandran of IIM-Bangalore in 2004 (pioneering a new paradigm IIMB Management Review 2004) had elaborates his idea on the BOP.

JR: But the poor have always been there. Why do we suddenly see them as providing a radical opportunity?

CK: I think two or three discontinuities are coming together to create an opportunity. One, the regulatory framework is going down dramatically worldwide. And therefore there are opportunities for a commercially oriented view of the poor, rather than subsidies, poverty alleviation schemes and so on.

The second factor is the advent of digital technologies, which provide a different way to connect poor people with the rich. Take for example the cell phone. For the first time in history, the most advanced technology is being totally driven by the poorest people - 250 million Chinese with cell phones; 1 million Indians being added every month (in a year we went from 3-4 million to 20 million, as of today); Brazil  with 35 million - in three or four years, these three poor countries alone will have about 450-500 million cell phones. And the US has only 150. So who is driving the cell phone business? It is the poor.

In the same interview he elaborates on the continuing theme of his research in the management discipline. He says "If you look at what I have done over the years, I first worked on the challenges of managing multinationals.

The important issues, as I pointed out way back in 1987, are global integration and local responsiveness – two forces that no multinational can avoid. This fundamental tension will always be present. In fact that has had the most enduring life.

You can call it glocal; you can call it transnational; you call it anything you want, the fundamental tension hasn't gone away. While a lot of people have talked about managing the multinational, nobody has challenged this basic premise. The question is how to manage it."

Cavincare of Chennai was already into sachet shampoos and various brands of pan masala in pouches were big market success.

The MNCs of the west which were always in bigger; larger; greater mode could not understand the market of the poor. They were used to selling 10 bottles of shampoo in a crate and offer two bottles as bonus.

The model followed by Unilever or P&G was to shift as much as possible from Wal-Mart to the basement of households. In other words each American household was a retail store except what they hold is consumption and what the mom-pop store holds is inventory.

The MNCs could not comprehend the idea of 50g packets and top line as well as bottom line getting bigger. CK consolidated this idea of poor as market, giving examples of Aravind eye hospital and Bank of Madhura - both from Tamil Nadu his home state. He could explain Dharavi as an opportunity and not a curse.

Many an MNC in India later followed the Cavincare route to target the poor. Even Biscuits are now sold in packs of one or two for as low as one rupee.  Of course not many agreed with him.

Critics which included his colleague at Ross school Aneel Karnani in his 2007 paper- maintained that at the bottom of the pyramid market is small to add to bottom line of big companies. It was suggested that the poor can improve their position by being entrepreneurs and not consumers. He was not deterred.

He was a co-founder and became CEO of Praja Inc. The goals of the company ranged from allowing people to access information without restriction - in a sense related to the bottom of the pyramid or BOP philosophy to providing test bed to various innovative ideas.

The venture did not succeed and laid off one third of its work force and was finally sold to TIBCO. Perhaps, the age old saying that professors should only profess and not try to practice has been validated by this venture!

He was a popular teacher and CEOs listened to him carefully since he was provocative and also incisive. He was concerned about India and its problems. Being one of the nine sons of a Sanskrit scholar and a Judge; CK was the product of the times of scarcity and India of ration queues - of the fifties and sixties.

He would have understood what it means to be poor since during those days for everything from rice to coffee powder to milk long queues were formed, and entrepreneurship was considered as low brow.. After growing up in such a milieu he has seen India rising and emerging as a global power.

He was on many boards and his Windsor Manor Lectures at Bangalore were eagerly awaited by the entrepreneurs of the South who are soft spoken are less brash compared to the Mumbai chieftains. He wanted a moral and ethical leadership shown by India and that comes from his roots. His demise has definitely left a void in the field of the management.

FOUNDER OF ADIDAS AND PUMA ARE BROTHERS

The two companies were actually spawned from a bitter rivalry between the two. Brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, were born in Germany. While Adolf was a sport fanatic, Rudolf was a great salesman.

They began a shoemaking business in the 1920s, but soon argued over everything including politics, women, and their business. Finally, in the 1940s Rudolf left the business and started his own across the river. Adolf renamed the original shoe shop Adidas and Rudolf established Puma. Today they are two of the world’s best known show brands!

	List of African Countries
	Eastern Africa       Country Population Map Capital City Burundi 8,500,000 Burundi Map Bujumbura Comoros 727,000 Comoros Map Moroni Djibouti 900,000 Djibouti Map Djibouti Eritrea 5,200,000 Eritrea Map Asmara Ethiopia 85,000,000 Ethiopia Map Addis Ababa Kenya 40,000,000 Kenya Map Nairobi Madagascar 20,100,000 Madagascar Map Antananarivo Malawi 15,400,000 Malawi Map Lilongwe Mauritius 1,300,000   Port Louis Mozambique 23,400,000 Mozambique Map Maputo Réunion 800,000   Saint-Denis Rwanda 10,400,000 Rwanda Map Kigali Seychelles 100,000   Victoria Somalia 9,400,000 Somalia Map Mogadishu Tanzania 45,000,000 Tanzania Map Dodoma, Dar es Salaam Uganda 33,800,000 Uganda Map Kampala Zambia 13,300,000 Zambia Map Lusaka Zimbabwe 12,600,000 Zimbabwe Map Harare Central Africa (Middle Africa)       Country Population Map Capital City Angola 19,000,000 Angola Map Luanda Cameroon 20,000,000 Cameroon Map Yaoundé Central African Republic 4,800,000 Central African Republic Map Bangui Chad 11,500,000 Chad Map N'Djamena Congo, Rep. (Brazzaville) 3,900,000 Congo, Rep. Map Brazzaville Congo, Dem. Rep. (Kinshasa) 67,800,000 Congo, Dem. Rep. Map Kinshasa Equatorial Guinea 700,000 Equatorial Guinea Map Malabo Gabon 1,500,000 Gabon Map Libreville São Tomé and Príncipe 200,000   São Tomé Northern Africa       Country Population Map Capital City Algeria 36,000,000 Algeria Map Algiers Egypt 80,400,000 Egypt Map Cairo Libya 6,500,000 Libya Map Tripoli Morocco 31,900,000 Morocco Map Rabat South Sudan 9,000,000 see: Sudan Map Juba Sudan 36,000,000 Sudan Map Khartoum Tunisia 10,500,000 Tunisia Map Tunis Western Sahara 500,000 see: Mauritania Map --- Southern Africa       Country Population Map Capital City Botswana 1,800,000 Botswana Map Gaborone Lesotho 1,900,000   Maseru Namibia 2,200,000 Namibia Map Windhoek South Africa 49,900,000 South Africa Map Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Cape Town Swaziland 1,200,000 Swaziland Map Mbabane, Lobamba Western Africa       Country Population Map Capital City Benin 9,800,000 Benin Map Porto-Novo, Cotonou Burkina Faso 16,200,000 Burkina Faso Map Ouagadougou Cape Verde 500,000 Cape Verde Map Praia Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) 22,000,000 Ivory Coast Map Yamoussoukro, Abidjan Gambia, The 1,800,000 see: Senegal Map Banjul Ghana 24,000,000 Ghana Map Accra Guinea 10,800,000 Guinea Map Conakry Guinea-Bissau 1,600,000 Guinea-Bissau Map Bissau Liberia 4,100,000 Liberia Map Monrovia Mali 15,200,000 Mali Map Bamako Mauritania 3,400,000 Mauritania Map Nouakchott Niger 15,900,000 Niger Map Niamey Nigeria 158,300,000 Nigeria Map Abuja Saint Helena 6,000   Jamestown Senegal 12,500,000 Senegal Map Dakar Sierra Leone 5,800,000 Sierra Leone Map Freetown Togo 6,800,000 Togo Map Lomé

Steve Jobs inspirational story

 

steve job:

 “When Steve Jobs was born February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California , his unwed mother decided to put him for adoption because she wanted a girl. So in the middle of the night, his mother called a lawyer named Paul Jobs and said, “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?”

His mother felt very strongly that he should be adopted by college graduates and when she found out that both his future parents had never graduated from colleges, she refused to sign the adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when his future parents promised that they would send Jobs to college.
He went to college but decided to drop out because it was too expensive. Recalling his time there he said,

I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.
Jobs and Apple
At 20, he and a friend (Steve Wozniak) started a company in a garage on April 1, 1976. Later that year, the duo debuted the Apple I at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California. A local store offered to buy 50 machines and to finance the production, the duo had to sell their most expensive possesions. Jobs sold his Volkswagen van while Wozniak sold his Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator.
Jobs named their company – Apple in memory of a happy summer he had spent as an orchard worker in Oregon.
By 1982 however, his company sales sagged in the face of competition from IBM’s new PC. Jobs and Wozniak unveiled their new creation, Lisa to increase the company’s bottom line, only to be another expensive failure.
Not wanting to dwell on these successive failures, they worked on a new machine called the Macintosh. Jobs was reported to commandeered the project, ruthlessly pushing its computer engineers and flying a pirate flag above the building where the team worked.
By 1986 the Mac, which Jobs promised to be ‘insanely great’ was a huge success. After 10 years, starting from 2 kids working in a garage, Apple computer had grown into a $2 billion dollar company with over 4000 employees.
At 30 Jobs, however, was fired from the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak. He left the company after losing a bitter battle over control with Apple’s CEO John Sculley (whom Jobs had recruited from Pepsi Cola).
After Apple
Apparently both have different views of how the company should be handled and in one meeting Sculley had told security analysts in a meeting that Jobs would have no role in the operations of the company “now or in the future.” When Jobs heard of the message he said, “You’ve probably had somebody punch you in the stomach and it knocks the wind out you and you cannot breathe. The harder you try to breathe, the more you cannot breathe. And you know that the only thing you can do is just relax so you can start breathing again.”
Jobs sold over $20 million of his Apple stock, spent days bicycling along the beach, feeling sad and lost, toured Paris, and journeyed on to Italy.
Recalling this publicly heartbreaking episode Jobs said,
‘I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.’
During the next five years he started two companies – NeXTStep and Pixar.
NeXTStep which produces NeXT, $9,995 cube-shaped workstation which aimed to create a workstation for research and higher, didn’t do as well as Jobs had dreamed for. It did poorly and Jobs pulled the plug in 1993.
Pixar, however was a success story. The company started the first computer-animated film, the Toy Story and when Pixar’s stock went public, Jobs became an instant billionaire.
Jobs, back with a vengence
Meanwhile, his old company, Apple was under immense pressure from rival Microsoft and in 1996 posted billions of dollars in losses.
In December 1996 Jobs convinced Apple to buy NeXT and make its software the foundation of the next-generation Mac OS. The technology he developed at NeXT became the catalyst of Apple’s comeback. Initially appointed as Apple’s adviser, Steve Jobs was named Apple’s interim CEO in 1997.
In 2004 he was diagnosed with cancer on his pancreas. Jobs was told that the cancer was incurable and he would only live for another three to six months. Later, a biopsy showed that he actually had a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. He had the surgery and survives.
Under his leadership, Apple returned to profitability and introduced innovations such as the iPod.
Steve Jobs advice
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary

HISTORY OF TUPPERWARE

 

Tupperware (plastic container with airtight lid) was invented by Earl Silas Tupper (1908-1983). Tupper was a New Hampshire tree surgeon and plastics innovator, who began experimenting with polyethylene, a new material used primarily for insulation, radar, and radio equipment. He patented the Tupperware seal in 1947. Tupper used "Tupperware Parties" to market the product, a unique way of marketing directly to homemakers.

Earl Silas Tupper was born in 1907 in Berlin, New Hampshire. Tupper’s first contact with plastic grew from his job at the DuPont Chemical Company which had been developing plastic before World War II. Eager to work with the new material, yet too poor to buy refined plastic, Tupper asked if he could purchase any left-over substance. His supervisor at DuPont gave him a black, inflexible piece of polyethylene slag, a waste product of the oil refining process. Tupper purified the slag and molded it to create light-weight, non-breakable containers, cups, bowls, and plates. He later designed liquid-proof, air-tight lids by duplicating the lid of a paint can, except in reverse. Tupper founded the Tupperware Plastics Company in 1938, and in 1946, he introduced Tupper Plastics to hardware and department stores.

Tupperware; was not welcome at first. Consumers were confused as to how to operate the lids. Store sales lagged. In the late forties, home demonstrations of the products proved enormously successful, indicating to Tupper the potential power of direct demonstrations. By 1951, he had pulled all merchandise off store shelves and channeled it solely through direct home sales. Tupper hired Brownie Wise, a charismatic single mother and one of his first direct sellers, to design the Tupperware; direct selling system. The concept grew to be a household phenomenon, the Tupperware Party.

Today, a Tupperware demonstration begins approximately every two seconds some place in the world with yearly net sales exceeding $1.2 billion

TOP 10 GLOBAL CEO'S OF INDIAN ORIGIN

According to global HR major Hay Group, the technical skills and the behavioural patterns of Indians make them adaptable to any kind of situation they come across.
"Indians have the ability to adapt to any situation they are faced with. They are also used to doing more with less (resources)... These factors make Indians successful," Hay Group's director Arvind Pandit said.
Considering the regulatory environment and conditions here, "people who have done business successfully in India, can be   (image-Sanjay Jha, CEO, Motorola Mobility).successful anywhere in the world," he added. 
- 

Jain and Pandit are joined by the likes of Indra Nooyi, Lakshmi Mittal, Ajay Banga, Sanjay Jha, Shantanu Narayen, Rakesh Kapoor, Harish Manwani and Ajit Jain among those holding top leadership positions at global MNCs.
The businesses headed by these ten persons recorded revenue worth $410 billion last year and are said to be on a robust growth path for the years to come.
This figure is nearly double the value of Indian exports worth about $245 billion last fiscal and approximately one-third of total size of the Indian economy.
(image-Vikram Pandit, CEO, Citigroup).

There are about a dozen large global companies outside India with Indians or persons of Indian origin in their top management positions, while there are many more dozens at the helm of affairs at mid-level and smaller companies.
Germany-based global banking major Deutsche Bank has become the latest to join this league with the recent appointment of cricket-freak Anshu Jain as its co-CEO.
Jain, who once held a small stake in Indian Premier League cricket team Mumbai Indians of the Ambanis, was already handling a large part of $55-billion banking giant's businesses and his elevation to the top has been long awaited.(image-indra nooyi)
Another India-born banker Vikram Pandit was asked to head $111-billion Citigroup at a time when it was deep in financial crisis and he has successfully handled a turnaround.
Indians are increasingly rising to the top of global corporate ladders and just 10 of them are together managing business worth over $400 billion -- an amount nearly double the total exports from India in a year.
So, it does not come as a surprise when CEOs are being billed as the latest and leading export from India, given the multi-national giants like Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, PepsiCo, Unilever, Adobe, Mastercard and Motorola having Indian-origin persons in their top leadership positions.
International magazine Time also recently termed CEOs as India's leading export and said that the subcontinent could be 'the ideal training ground for global bosses'.
Experts believe that Indians' inherent focus on good education and their ability to work in difficult situations is aiding to the trend and more and more Indians could rise to top positions at global companies in near future.
Image: Anshu Jain, co-CEO, Deutsche Bank. 

Experts say that the need for tapping high-growth markets like India could have played a key role in the rise to the top for many of these people.
Besides Indian-origin persons in their leadership teams, the other common factor for many of these companies is their focus on new frontiers for business growth.
Also, many of them are into consumer-focused businesses and are looking to target the growing purchasing power of Indian middle-class in a big way.

Image: Ajit Jain, CEO, Reinsurance Division, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 

Global consultancy major Deloitte's senior director (human capital services) P Thiruvengadam said that the rise of Indians to high levels in global corporations is no more limited to the US, but is also happening in Europe and other places where English is not the main language.
"Our country's education system is good... then, Indians are by nature oriented to do things (in a good manner) in whatever they want to do," he added.
Executive search firm GlobalHunt's director Sunil Goel said that professionals in India have become global professionals and "they have capabilities, skills and wide exposure to manage cross geographical business and they are being identified by many of the global giants for top roles."
Image: Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe.

Not surprisingly, most Indian-origin persons holding top positions at global giants have risen through ranks in their professional career, with the sole exception of steel giant ArcelorMittal, which also happens to be promoted by Mittal.
The list includes food and beverage major PepsiCo with Indra Nooyi as Chairman and CEO, FMCG giant Unilever as Harish Manwai as its global COO, IT firm Adobe having Shantanu Narayen as CEO, Mastercard with Ajay Banga as its chief and Sanjay Jha heading Motorola Mobility.
There is also Ajit Jain, who heads reinsurance business of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway empire and has been termed as most productive CEO of his group by the legendary investor himself. Besides, his name has been doing the rounds as potential successor of Buffett for a long time.

Image: Harish Manwai, COO, FMCG giant Unilever.

Among others, Cisco has Padmasree Warrior as its chief technology officer, HP has Vyomesh Joshi as executive vice president, Sanjay Khosla heads Kraft Foods' developing market business, Google has Nikesh Arora as chief business officer and private equity major Clayton, Dubilier and Rice LLC (CDR) has Manvinder (Vindi) Singh Banga as its operating partner.
Vindi Banga has previously held top level positions at Unilever, while his brother Ajay Banga, now with Mastercard, was previously retail banking head of Citigroup.
In the past, there have been many other Indians at the top positions, such as Arun Sarin as CEO UK-based telecom giant Vodafone.

Image: (Inset) Rakesh Kapoor, global CEO, Reckitt and Benckiser.

Also, Europe's top business school Insead has Dipak Jain as its head, while Harvard has Nitin Nohria as its dean.
Global HR major ManpowerGroup India's managing director Sanjay Pandit said that India was fast emerging as the key source for providing talent to drive the global economy.
"I feel we would see more and more Indians making to the top positions with global organisations," he said.

Image: Ajay Banga headed Mastercard as its CEO.  

Deloitte's Thiruvengadam also said that Indians were becoming more mobile and have always been talented and hard working, which help them in achieving success.
Hay Group's Pandit said that "Indians have the right mindset, which is suited to succeed in crisis situations. And they are also good at complimenting the systems in the West."
He, however, cautioned that Indians are used to doing things themselves and might sometimes find it harder to get work done through others (like in Western countries).

Image: Arcelor Mittal chairman Lakshmi N Mittal.