How Harsh Mariwala rebooted Ascent Foundation, a platform for entrepreneurs to exchange ideas

Prince Mathews Thomas

Harsh Mariwala knows a thing or two about building brands and sustaining them. The founder of Marico has over the years nurtured some of the most iconic FMCG names, including Parachute, Saffola and Revive.

But if something is not working out according to the plan, the 66-year-old entrepreneur also has the nimbleness to quickly take corrective action. Like he did in the case of Kaya, the retail wellness brand owned by Marico. When the business wasn’t turning out as hoped, Mariwala changed Kaya’s proposition from a skin cure services brand, to a brand that offered skin care.

“Changing the positioning was a wrong decision,” Mariwala would later admit to a business daily. He quickly went back to the original promise, and the renewed focus showed on Kaya’s financials, making it profitable.

The entrepreneur, who stepped down as Marico’s Managing Director in 2014, showed similar agility in the case of Ascent Foundation, the platform he created in 2012 to help entrepreneurs learn from each other’s experience.

By 2015, Ascent had 245 members, who were divided into ‘trust groups’ and would meet every month. Everything was going well, at least seemed to.

But it wasn’t.

Membership was stagnant, and had in fact dropped in a year.

There were plans to increase the membership to 1,000 in Mumbai alone. The long-term target was 10,000. Instead, the number of members had dwindled down to 245 from nearly 350 in 2014. Trust groups reduced to 23 from 26.

A plan to expand to Delhi hadn’t taken off. Worse off, Mariwala got to know that some of the trust groups weren’t meeting regularly, and the interest among members was waning off.

“Some groups were not meeting, others were collapsing and we were the last people to know… even the quorum was not being met,” says Archanna Das, who joined Ascent Foundation as Associate Director in 2015.

Mariwala sums up the basic issue facing an initiative that was close to his heart: “In the desire to add numbers we may have compromised on quality.” And that eventually led to some of the members dropping off.

Like in the case of Kaya, Mariwala immediately took corrective action.

“We realised that certain building blocks had to be made to ensure that these are strong and we are not the last people to know,” adds Das.

Mariwala knew the product was good. “You go through a learning curve. You can’t perfect everything. If you think you are in the right direction, then go on making changes rather than doing perfect from day 1,” says Mariwala.

To be sure, Ascent had what Mariwala would always look for in a new product, “the right to win.” The service that the foundation offered was novel and there was no competing platform.

Many entrepreneurs vouched for it, including Anand Baldawa.

A good start

It was from the most unlikely of places that Anand Baldawa got the answer to his prayers - an advertisement in a magazine dedicated to stainless steel industry.

The advertisement was a write-up on Ascent and something about the foundation clicked with the second generation entrepreneur.

It had been a year since he had come back to India to join the stainless steel export business that his father had founded. Anand was coming back after 10 years, and was brimming with ideas on how to make a change at Seeba, the family company.

But almost every engagement with a supplier or a government official would end with, “Son, this is how it should be done.” None was open to the ideas that Anand was suggesting, and the 38-year-old missed a sounding board.

“My social circle involved dad, dad’s friends and some of my friends. I was wondering whom do I speak to… I just needed to talk to more entrepreneurs,” said Anand. Reading the advertisement in the magazine, the second generation decided to give Ascent a chance. He joined the foundation in 2013.

It was a similar need that drove Samir Kaji to Ascent. “Inherently, there is a sense of loneliness in entrepreneurship,” says the first generation entrepreneur who founded Selec in 2000, and made a name in electric components.

“You can’t share things with a friend, business groups, or colleagues at office,” says Kaji, who was also looking for ideas, and inspiration to scale his brand and make it global.

None understood this need better than Mariwala, who had faced and overcome many a challenge in building Marico from what was earlier an edible oil business.

With Ascent, he intended to provide a platform for entrepreneurs to share their journey, including their challenges and experience with each other. And this sharing, Mariwala hoped, would give rise to solutions and ideas.

Both, Anand and Samir, became part of trust groups which met once a month. Each trust group had a mix of industries, usually equally divided between manufacturing and services sectors. Entrepreneurs’ age varied from 25 years to 56, and the turnover was anything from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1,000 crore.

“There are two-three of us who are second generation entrepreneurs,” says Anand, who could instantly connect with them. Adds Samir, “We delved into each other’s businesses.”

If someone came up with an issue, say a crash of server in someone’s office, that would trigger thoughts in others minds. “Have we secured data in our office? That becomes a topic and we bring a knowledge guru from outside to understand,” says Samir.

Trust groups would also organize off-sites with Mariwala, workshops with experts were held and then there was the Huddle with Harsh, in which a select few got to pick the entrepreneur’s mind in a three-hour session.

The format clicked initially, with some of the members coming from Pune and even Bengaluru to attend the monthly group meetings.

But gradually, interest started to wane. “Beyond a point, we didn’t know how to progress,” says one of the entrepreneurs.

Adds Das, “There was a disconnect with ASCSNET. Beyond a point, the members didn’t know what could be done and what couldn’t be. If there was a problem, whom to go to? If someone was not contributing in a group, how can that difficult discussion happen?”

In short, the groups had become stagnant after going on for three years. Essentially, how could Ascent keep adding values for the entrepreneurs?

Course correction

“To build a brand, you have to constantly evaluate it,” says Mariwala. And that is what he did with Ascent.

The foundation needed a few more systems and processes that could deal with the challenges. And to set these up, Mariwala got in Das, a sustainability, brand and communication management professional, and later Shivani Divecha, who had curated events at TedxGateway.

The team went about tackling the issues at multiple levels.

The eligibility criteria was upped. Now an entrepreneur needed a minimum turnover of Rs 5 crore (for a manufacturing company) and Rs 1 crore (for a service business).

Each trust group got an initiator, who hand holds the group in the first four months. This is apart from the two facilitators - a bit like class monitors – that each group has.

“For instance, our initiator told us that we were not trusting each other, and that our discussion could go deeper,” says Anand.

The ‘trust’ factor was an important element as without it the members couldn’t really share their experience, including mistakes and challenges. To improve that, a Lifeline exercise was introduced in each group.

“Each person shares his or her life in a series of important events in five-year buckets. This had advantages,“ says Das. “Group bonding became stronger,” she add.

Concurs Anand. “There were people in my group whom I knew for two years, but I really didn’t know much about them. After these sessions you could link their professional lives with the personal ones. One really opens up and that is when the trust builds,” he said.

Getting Feedback

A Governing Council was formed in 2016, to keep track of the Foundation. “The Council includes members from the Trust Group. And this helped in hearing their voice more, and helped in having the co-creation model,” says Das. Mariwala chairs the meeting, helping him also keep a pulse.

And to get more feedback on the working of the Groups, ‘health checks’ were done.  In this, each the member is required to participate in a survey, which gauges his experience within his Trust Group. “It also measures his engagement with other members across Groups, with the ASCENT team and with the facilitators of the Trust group. At the end the NPS score is calculated,” says Shivani.

The Net Promoter Score measures the willingness of customers to recommend a particular product or service.

“We did a survey recently and we got NPS of 62. The best is for Apple store, which is 70. So am happy with what has happened in the last two years,” says Mariwala.

A couple of more events were added to the workshops and ‘huddle meetings.’ One was the Mixer in which Ascent members meet, say in a club, and also bring along friends and relatives keen to know more about the foundation. The get together includes a talk by an industry expert – say in GST or artificial intelligence that are of interest or relevance to the entrepreneurs.

The showcase

The biggest draw of all is the Conclave, a signature event showcasing Ascent. While the first one had billionaire banker Uday Kotak as its key speaker, and had a line-up of thought leaders addressing entrepreneurs.

It was in the 2018 edition, which had JSW Steel chairman Sajjan Jindal, that Gauri Devidayal first experienced Ascent.

A lawyer and chartered accountant who along with her husband set up restaurant The Table in south Mumbai, Gauri was struggling to come to terms with the exit of her executive chef when she got to know about Conclave.

“Halfway through the Conclave, I was floored. I signed up within a month,” she says.

At her first Trust group meeting, Gauri was relieved to hear other entrepreneurs speak. “It was good to know that everyone goes through highs and lows. And it is not just about people saying well done, but about hearing from independent people who have no vested interest in your business,” says Gauri. She has now signed up for a course for women entrepreneurs offered by Stanford University, along with Ascent.

The Ascent team is now working on this year’s Conclave. As always, Mariwala is the catalyst, getting his friends - like Uday Kotak and Sajjan Jindal in the earlier editions – to address the aspiring entrepreneurs.

A successful event will cap off the turnaround in Ascent. The course correction has helped. Membership is up at 350, distributed among 30 Trust Groups. And instead of Delhi, as was the plan earlier, the next chapter of Ascent may start in Chennai. “I’m going there in August and will be meeting about 100-150 entrepreneurs. We would initially start with about 50 members,” says Mariwala.