It is easy to get blown away by the mind-boggling growth pace of Dixon technologies. It’s a company whose revenues have grown from around Rs 6,500 cr in FY21 to Rs 38,860 cr in Fy25 and is on course to cross Rs 50,000 cr this year. But the more moving tale is of the number of girls and women that it employs.
Of the company’s over 40,000 workforce, nearly 10,000 are women, mostly employed in the company’s factories in Tirupati and Kopparthi in Andhra Pradesh and in Chennai in Tamil Nadu. They are also growing in numbers in Dehradun and Ludhiana.
“It’s a pleasure to see these young girls coming to our factories in such numbers,” said MD & CEO Atul Lall in the course of my interview with him for our series “Latha & the Leaders”. “At first there is diffidence, even fear on their faces; they aren’t sure they can learn these new jobs. But in three months, they become confident diligent workers,” he said adding that the entire demeanour of the women changes once they start earning and liking their job.
More generally, isn’t it an HR challenge to manage 40,000 employees and with the numbers growing. “No, I think that's our advantage,” said Lall. “That's our strength because we understand the Indian sensibilities as compared to our peers who are coming from abroad. We're able to manage that, managing those local sensibilities,” he said. Now this is no empty boast. On prodding, I could glean from Lall that he even understood the difference between the flavour of Sambhar needed in his Tirupati plant, from that in the Chennai plant!
That was an eye-opener, even for a southerner like me. What’s with this Chennai fascination, I asked. “You, Bhavish Agarwal of Ola, Siddharth Lall of Eicher, all North Indian natives, why do you prefer to locate your plants in Chennai?
“Chennai has an ecosystem advantage.: the electronics industry is already there; the auto industry is there. So the talent availability is there in Chennai,” said Lall, adding that “Importantly, it's close to the port.”
“ Availability of talent, supplier component ecosystem, toolings, dyes, jigs, fixtures, closeness to the port- are all Chennai’s strengths And also, I think government is extremely supportive in Chennai.”
In fact Dixon’s attachment to Chennai goes way back to 2008, when former Chief Minister Jayalalitha decided to distribute free “Amma TVs” as part of her election promise. “ we got this order from Tamil Nadu government for designing (low-cost) televisions” said Lall, “And that's how we got into designing. And then we started diversifying.”
And then when government policy turned in favour of the EMS sector through its PLI policy, Dixon was ready all the way from Noida to Chennai to grab the opportunity.
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