Srinivas Garimella  is the  Founder – Director  of Vega Conveyors and Automation Limited, a company in Hyderabad in the field of packaging and material handling. For over a decade, Vega Conveyors & Automation Ltd., has been a leader in its own right, producing versatile and reliable systems in the field of Conveying, Material Handling & Packaging Automation across industry segments. Its list of customers includes the best of the Indian Corporate Industry from Amul, Brittania, Cadbury,Coco Cola, Haldirams, Heinz, Tata, Wipro, Unilever, UB group, Pepsico etc.  

After completing a degree in Electrical Engineering from Andhra University, Srinivas and his business partner Sai started Vega in a small garage. From those humble beginnings, Srinivas's immense drive to succeed has helped propel the company to great heights. Often called upon to give guest lectures on entrepreneurship to students of Osmania University, JNT University and GITAM University and other engineering colleges, he is a keen jogger and has participated in both marathons and half-marathons. He was the regional winner of Microsoft’s Entrepreneurship Challenge for the year 2013-14 and is an active member in industrial organizations.

This year, Srinivas took some time off from his busy schedule to join the campaign trail at a time when the Indian elections have been attracting worldwide attention with myriad political issues. Lokvani caught up with him soon after the campaign to share his views.

What prompted you to join this year’s election campaign?

This year I was prompted to join a campaign since a college friend, Prasad Rao, chose to contest as an Independent from the Visakhapatnam (North) MLA constituency. Prasad Rao is altruistic by nature and has a penchant for social service. After his graduation, he went to the US to do his Masters, worked there for 15 years, came back to India to set up a business enterprise, and finally turned to philanthropy. I wanted to campaign for him not just because he is a friend but also because I intensely feel that our country needs people who enter politics to serve rather than use it as a means for furthering their own personal and business interests.

How many days did you campaign for your friend and can you share with us the campaign trail?

I campaigned for a week and I found it to be a wonderful learning experience. For the first three days, a few handpicked volunteers and I chose an upper-and-middle-class locality for door-to-door campaigning, distributing manifestos and explaining the value proposition that Prasad Rao would bring in.  Nonetheless, the results did not seem to be very encouraging. The middle class society possibly has a poor opinion about politicians and hence was reluctant to entertain us and hear out our views. Some were downright hostile, ostensibly because of their past experience with politicians. Due to my rather corporate and non-politician looks, I was given a patient hearing, typically to know what changes my friend was assuring to bring in. I found the upper-middle-class voters to be more skeptical than the middle-class voters on the promises and commitments made by us. The fourth day of my campaigning was with Prasad Rao in a park, trying to persuade early morning walkers and joggers to vote for honest and educated candidates and as per their conscience.

Early morning walkers are a disciplined lot, and hence I felt they were more appreciative of our desire and ability to bring in change.

I found the atmosphere on the fifth day of my campaigning electrifying. I picked a working-class-dominated locality and being a Saturday evening, there was large scale campaigning from all parties. We ran into

a) YSRC Party carrying out loud campaigning with an “all-girls” volunteer team

b) an independent candidate with his team of smartly uniformed volunteers campaigning vociferously with all mics blaring

c) a huge gathering of TDP members marching to drum beats with ornate mics eulogizing Modi and Naidu.

and finally

d) a Lok Satta party candidate in an open jeep speaking powerfully on his promises and trashing the tall claims of other political parties to a mildly amused gathering of 150 people.

 This was in contrast to our 12 member team canvassing door-to-door, swiftly and silently.  To an ordinary citizen, this noisy and boisterous atmosphere may have been disconcerting, but to me as an entrepreneur, a first time campaigner trying to understand a voter’s mind and behavior, it was a wonderful spectacle.  

The sixth and the seventh day of the campaigning were with Prasad Rao in the poorer and more economically backward areas of the city. Prasad Rao, followed by a team of 15 volunteers, myself and two vehicles fitted with mikes booming out our programs and promises, conducted a high volume campaign. The team was energetic, forceful, and focused and canvassed with a sense of purpose. Prasad Rao did everything to connect with the public. He met women on the road, smiled at shoppers, waved at people gaping at him, shook hands with barbers, bowed to women giving baths to their children in the open, blessed a few children, coddled toddlers, put his arms around shirtless-but-towel-clad men, introduced himself to potbellied people wearing nothing but checked boxers, smiled at voters in a sweet shop, and posed with lady tailors in their nightgowns. He covered more than 2000 houses, limbered through a labyrinth of narrow lanes, and walked more than 18 kms.

Did Prasad Rao connect with the public? Would they vote for him? These were the constant refrains going through my mind. If not, how does one connect with the people and how does one successfully communicate a message?

What issues were foremost in the mind of the voter in general?

A democratic society is supposed to be egalitarian. In India, equal opportunities do not exist for everyone and hence the needs and wants of voters are very varied and different. In the upper middle class locality that I visited, the quality of roads and quality of life was an important issue while in the middle class locality, corruption, power shortages and lack of proper drainage were the burning issues. In the working class locality, the biggest issue was not corruption but the shortage of drinking water.  Bogged down with many such concerns, the foremost issue on the mind of the voter was the immediate problem he was facing and hence he was looking only at the current reality.

Explaining the future reality to a voter and how the voter can usher in change becomes extremely complex and difficult. Hence many politicians resort to connecting with the voters by making false promises to alleviate their present suffering.  The trick is in enlightening the voter to understand the root cause of problems and in convincing the voter to look at the long term instead of the short term and be a part of this transformation that you are trying to bring in. Therein lies the victory of being the true harbinger of change and a committed campaigner.  It is easier said than done, and the path is difficult. Hence we need more true, dedicated and honest politicians.

As an entrepreneur, what was your learning experience? Are there any management lessons that can be learnt from this?

Like most entrepreneurs and corporate managers, I have used the phrase “run it like a campaign” with my marketing and operations team whenever we promote a new product or launch a new initiative in the company. This simple idiom has now acquired a different meaning and connotation for me. One of the biggest challenges an entrepreneur faces is communicating his strategic vision to all the employees, including the ones in the bottom tier.

Campaigning teaches you how to make this possible. Employees are like voters. If you want an initiative to succeed in your company, you need to connect with each and every employee, just as you try to connect with each and every voter. You will have to do person-to-person campaigning, expound the benefits of your program initiative to the employee, hammer out slogans day in and day out through emails, encourage employees to embrace change, promise rewards to the one who is most successful, and, importantly, do all this within a fixed time frame, just as in a political campaign. Time is of the essence here. A company launches many new initiatives, but only a few succeed and the successful ones are the ones that have been “run like a campaign”.

Just as a constituency has voters from different strata with dissimilar wants and needs, unified by the single cause of country’s development, companies also have employees in different roles but unified by the single cause of company’s growth. In both the cases, leaders will have to exhibit drive, energy, enthusiasm and strongly believe that they can make a difference to the lives of people. One has to connect and appeal to each of them in a unique way and yet be able to communicate the same vision or the message.  Yes, there were many takeaways and I recommend all aspiring managers and entrepreneurs to be involved in campaigns like these. 

Finally can you share with us a personal story of talking to a voter and what it meant to you?

There were this old couple, about 80 years old, living all alone in the neighborhood of the slightly posh locality of BS Layout, who were genuinely curious and interested to know about our promises and about our candidate. They patiently gave us a hearing and assured us of their votes and requested us to come on the voting day and help them to the polling booth as they were aged. This old couple, who between them may have seen more than a dozen elections, heard more than 50 politicians perhaps falsely promising them change, did not turn cynical at our pitch and on the contrary were pinning their hopes on us to usher in change for their country. This is a lesson to and in absolute contrast with the thousands of armchair critics that our country has, who wish for change without so much as taking the trouble of going out to the polling booth to vote, citing reasons of heat or a long queue. The “Never say die” spirit of the old couple was the toast of my campaign.

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