CORPORATE LEADERSHIP
Vivek Vikram Singh: PGP 2005 (Managing Director & Group CEO, Sona Comstar)
Vivek Vikram Singh heads Sona Comstar, a 4.6 billion USD market cap company headquartered in Gurgaon. Sona’s equity value has grown over 18 times since 2019 when Vivek was appointed as the CEO. He has led the efforts to the successful IPO of Sona Comstar with an issue size of ₹5550 crore (or 750 USD Million) in June 2021–India’s largest IPO in the automotive component industry and was amongst the top 15 largest IPOs of all time in India. Vivek’s impact on society is also significant, he is the chairperson of ACMA’s Electric Mobility and Telematics Pillar, member of executive Committee of ACMA and member of Haryana State Council, and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Vivek’s success is further highlighted by the prestigious awards he has received, including the ET 40 under 40 Hottest Business Leaders of India Award (2018) and the EY Entrepreneurial CEO of the Year (2021) among others.
Vivek has led two sessions at Harvard Business School (Apr ’23 and Jan’24) on Sona Comstar’s Growth Journey in the Turnarounds and Transformations MBA Course. He also led a session at Tufts Business School (Apr ’24) on Sona Comstar’s Journey through the years. In collaboration with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, Sona Comstar was able to develop an incubation space dedicated to nurturing technology startups in the name of “Dr. Surinder Kapur Innovation Floor”. The expected impact through this CSR investment, is to provide support to over 6,000 innovators and tech-entrepreneurs, assistance to more than 200 early-stage startups, and positively impact nearly 0.5 million stakeholders within the startup ecosystem.
Congratulations on winning the Young Alumni Achiever’s Award. Can you tell us how IIMA shaped your professional career?
So I was in IIMA 21 years ago. It shaped my career in two ways, one is confidence. I think all of us in India need that stamp, even for ourselves, that we belong, that we can do something, that we can be somebody in this world. And I think that confidence you get once you get into IIM Ahmedabad and you rub shoulders with perhaps some of the brightest minds in the world. You get that confidence that you are capable of doing great things. That was more than I would say anything that I learned inside the classroom. It was just this feeling of belonging to something elite, not elitist, but elite. It shaped my entire life, because I met my wife, who was a batchmate, here. I think what I am is, in a large part, because of her, the choices she’s made, the sacrifices she’s made because of that, I could always be fully present at work. So yeah, I think the two biggest choices you make in life are choosing your life- partner and then finding what you want to do with your years. These are the only two choices you really can make. So I am happy with both.
In your speech yesterday, you said that when you joined as a CEO, Sona was not doing well financially and now we know it’s a success story, can you talk about it?
The first couple of years were pretty hard. I think it took us till about mid- 2017 to get out of financial trouble. I mean, we were on the brink of insolvency at times. We had a lot of debt, and we had some six subsidiaries. There was one in the US, which was bleeding about a million dollars of cash every month. When you are also under debt and you are bleeding cash, it is pretty hard to maneuver your way out. But we did that. The first two years, we learnt the hard way, the value of frugality. It’s a good thing to have adversity early in your life. If you get all your hits really early, you become strong enough to take what comes next after that. Yes, after 2017 we have been fairly successful. We grew our way out of trouble. Actually, if we didn’t grow, there was no way to repay the debt, etc. So we had to grow the revenue, to grow profits to be able to repay debt. So for us, we needed to grow, because we needed to survive. And then we said, “This is pretty good. Let’s keep this growth thing going”. We have grown about 10 times in the last nine and a half years in revenue. The first two years were really tough even personally at that time my dad fell ill. My wife, Preeti, was pregnant with a second child and got deep vein thrombosis. She was in a wheelchair, so I had to go pick up the other one from school every day and handle insolvency in the US.
This is for students, “There will be a period when a lot of people will say quit. Don’t Quit.” You know, you can always get back to consulting or banking but I didn’t, and I am glad I didn’t, because it’s always on the other side of darkness that something of value exists. People shouldn’t throw in the towel early, because it’s very easy. If you have a good brand like IIMA on your back, you will land somewhere, but persist through trouble. That’s what led to success, that’s what makes you stronger.
You decided to foray into EV in 2016 like you said, when nobody was even thinking about it or trying and investing in it. What made you invest into it?
I remember we already had problems with debt, and we took 40 crore more debt. That was the hardest 40 crore I’ve ever raised.I think after that we raised billions. But that 40 crore nobody wanted to lend. I think I went to 14 banks before one gave me some money, because one, nobody believed in EV back then. Second, we were under debt. Third, our customers weren’t people who thought they would buy an EV. It’s just that when we saw the vehicle, when we saw the product, when we met the people making it, we knew this was something special. The product is much superior to a nice product, because it’s far more simple. All good engineering is about reduction and complexity. If you can make less things, do more. That is the entirety of good engineering, good design. You reduce everything to its very essence. Electric vehicles do that for motion for passenger vehicles. When we saw that, when we saw the talented and passionate people behind it, we said, “There’s no way this is not going to succeed. It just makes sense from an engineering perspective”. It does not actually make sense to have internal combustion engines anywhere, frankly. I mean, let’s say you have a motorized toothbrush. Can you imagine an internal combustion engine actually emitting exhaust? You have a motor, right? This fan has a motor. You don’t put an internal combustion engine (ICE) anywhere except a car battery. And that’s when you think that that is somehow the wrong thing that happened in history. In the 1900’s, I think there were more electric vehicles than there were ICE vehicles, but because of the battery problem, they didn’t and ICE exploded. And that’s why the world is and that made the oil industry and kind of reshaped the world. But it isn’t the right choice. So, yeah, we were believers, and sometimes you gotta back what you believe, if you believe that you are right, and everything in you tells you that this is the right way you follow it.
What advice would you give to somebody who wants to follow your path?
I don’t think I can follow my own path. It’s not easy, because I know there’s this Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who said, “No man crosses the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and it’s not the same man”. A lot of time has passed, if I had to go back in 2015 and do this all over again, I don’t think I would end up with the same outcome. A lot of things went my way at the right time and things changed in the world. So I don’t know, but all I would say is, “Whatever path you choose, just do that with conviction”. I mean, do things that have some kind of higher purpose than, “Oh, I will keep climbing the corporate ladder, make some money and send my kids to good college.” There has to be something more to this. Take up challenges, follow your convictions. Do things that are challenging. Also, be kind, be strong, be aggressive, be ambitious, and be humble. It’s not that everybody can come into industry and become a CEO. I started with pricing, supply chain, finance operations, then became CEO. So you have to understand the industry you are getting into. It takes a while.
Now that you have won the Young Alumni Achiever’s Award, what are your plans personally and professionally?
To make this [Sona Comstar] into something truly big. This is not big enough for my liking. I mean, Denso makes $48 billion. Bosch is $96 billion. So we have a lot of way to go, but they have had 125 years, so they’re both 100 years ahead of us. But let’s see. We are aggressive. We will try to run faster, try to get as close as possible before my stint is done, and then hopefully choose a successor who does it better, who can also run fast. We will see. It’s not that much time, actually. If I work for 20 more years, that’s just 1000 weeks left. It’s not a lot of time. 1000 weeks is a very limited time when you start breaking down into projects and how many things you can actually achieve. So yeah, it’s very little time, actually.
As far as personal goals are concerned, I try to spend as much time as my kids before they go to college. And then, you know, we become empty nesters. That’s actually, these are the two goals I only optimise for these two. Try to be, try to make Sona as great as I can, and try to spend as much time with my daughters as possible.
