'Put Rs 50 if you don't call me Harsh': RPG Enterprises Chairman kept piggy bank to stop employees from calling him 'Sir'

A small box used to sit on Chairman Harsh Goenka’s table for about a month when the Mumbai-based conglomerate RPG Enterprises decided to infuse more informality into its workplace culture some years ago. It said, “Put Rs 50 here if you don’t call me Harsh.”  

It was an idea he borrowed from a former Maharashtra CM who, when Goenka mistakenly referred to Mumbai as Bombay (the name had been changed by then), asked him to pay Rs 50 to their donation fund. “I picked that up from there. So, the word spread around that you have to pay me Rs 50 if you don’t call me, “Harsh”. One colleague of mine would bring Rs 50 with him, put it over there and say, ‘I cannot call you Harsh’,” chuckles Goenka. Let alone me, he said he used to call his own son with a lot of respect, too, the Chairman adds.   

“So, I collected a few hundreds of rupees and I gave them to charity. Now I’m okay with it. There are still some who call me Mr Goenka. So be it. People should be comfortable. But I always tell them, ‘Call me Harsh’. It’s nothing but the culture you set.” 

Rajat Bhargava, President & CEO, Speciality Sector, RPG Enterprises, says Goenka made it clear in the first interaction that he should call him by his first name. The first-time CEO calls him one of the rare chairpersons in India Inc, especially in a family-owned diversified conglomerate, who insists on being called by his first name by his colleagues.   

The group is among a bunch of Indian family-owned businesses such as Dabur India, Asian Paints, Pidilite Industries, Britannia, Cipla, Berger Paints, Marico and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories and Page Industries which have successfully separated management from ownership.   

In RPG Enterprises Chairman Goenka’s case, it was a combination of inheriting a professional group and acquiring a number of professional MNCs. As an admirer of the Tata Group’s professional structure, he continued his father’s tradition of giving managers, freedom. Today, professionals lead three of the four verticals at the diversified conglomerate.

It has a mix of listed and unlisted companies across Tyres, Infrastructure, Information Technology / Business Process Outsourcing and Specialty verticals. Bhargava, a rank outsider who has a consultancy background, is one among the professionals leading three verticals. Goenka’s son, Anant Goenka, is the MD of its tyres vertical CEAT Limited.  

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