As H & R Johnson (India) completes over six decades of an eventful and ambitious journey, Mr Vijay Aggarwal reflects on the philosophical foundations and eclectic oeuvre of the brand in a rapidly changing industry. As the Managing Director of a pioneering company, in this conversation, he speaks about his association with the brand & the growth of the company over the years.
This video is a copyright of CNBC TV dated 14 December 2019
Association With the Brand
H & R Johnson has been a pioneer in ceramic tiles world over. It is a name synonymous with the tile industry. Johnson started in the UK in 1901, more than a hundred years ago and it still has a very strong market presence. It was originally set up by entrepreneurs in the UK. Their ambitiousness led to setting-up of a giant company in the early 1990s despite the difficulty of transportation, communication and other basic infrastructure. Some of the early Johnson Plants were being set up in the USA, South Africa, and Australia. Established in 1958, H & R Johnson (India) recently celebrated its 60th year, marking a Diamond Jubilee. My association with Johnson is almost 25 years old, ever since the Rajan Raheja Group acquired a shareholding in 1993. This is how I began my journey in Johnson India.
Growth Witnessed Over the Years
If one were to look at the different parameters along this journey, today we have grown more than ten times in terms of production and almost twenty times in value. Statistics apart, I think the most important aspect is that we have nurtured our core values and developed a concrete team over the years. Somewhere in the mid-90s, we realized that the company must have a vision statement that defines our aim as an organization and that was when we drafted ‘Improving lifestyles of our customers by providing innovative products and services.’ Each word of this statement is very important to us.
Looking back, I recall a time when we had three plants and made 90 Crores (about 900 million INR) in sales annually. We manufactured about four million square meters in a year.
Attempting to improve the lifestyle of our customers, we offer products across segments including residential, commercial and industrial sectors. As a part of our few core values, the two most important ones are: Innovation – in our products and business model; and a Shared Passion for Excellence. We are indeed happy and proud to have built a team of people who are very passionate about what we do as a company. This is not to imply that in the past 25 or 60 years we have only seen success. There have also been difficult times when we have faced grave challenges. But because of our strong core values, hard work and passion we have only grown stronger together.
H & R Johnson is now also a part of Prism Johnson Limited – a construction industry conglomerate offering building materials such as cement, ready mix concrete (RMC) and aggregates including sand. Apart from our range of tiles: wall, floor, ceramic, vitrified and industrial tiles, the brand also deals in faucets, sanitaryware and engineered marble and quartz. Ardex Endura, a brand of construction chemicals, is a joint venture with the world’s leading German company called ARDEX. As a company, we cover a good part of the building materials requirement of a customer: almost 30 per cent can be met through us. We may not be very large in size compared to some of the other companies, but we do have a diverse portfolio ⊗
