SG also shares that while it is a Rs.2000 crore company today, many years ago, HPPL was a fairly small organisation worth Rs25 crore or so. "What propelled the organisation into the big league of growth is our aggressive and relentless focus on innovation," he says. During those days, SG insisted that he and the core members of his team travelled to international markets where the packaging industry boomed.

"I insisted that everyone travelled to these big markets and got exposure to what was happening in the packaging industry. I personally spent a lot of time travelling to countries like Japan, US, Switzerland, Germany and UK. These are the world's finest manufacturers of packaging. I think No. 1 is Japan and No. 2 is Switzerland and No. 3 is Germany. So, these are the big ones. And may be US is at No. 10 but they have huge volumes. They teach you how to scale up. They are enormous and their discipline is mind blowing. We have a lot to learn from them," he states.

The NASP Programme
Based on the collective experience and exposure of these business trips, SG developed a special creativity programme based on innovation called NASP. "NASP stands for New Applications, Structures and Products/Processes.

NASP has now become a religion for us and we calculate the sales generated from this programme on a yearly basis. I invented it and Huhtamaki has made it a global programme. It has now become part of Huhtamaki's policy," he shares.

HPPL's internal target is that 30 percent of its sales must come from NASP; it has been normally achieving between 25 percent to 29 percent of the total sales. "And we have a cut-off of two years in terms of new products. We have set such ambitious and aggressive targets because we are a fast growing economy and we want to introduce new things as quickly as possible. It's more of a challenge for us. At present, we are running at about 26.5 percent of our total sales with NASP," SG informs.

The NASP program has indeed proved to be a major driver of driver for HPPL. "It not only creates new business, but also helps us retain and enhance existing business," he adds.

Today, all HPPL employees recognise the importance of the NASP programme. In fact, HPPL has big bill boards put up at its factories that ask ‘Did you do your NASP today?'. "Today, NASP is a way of life at our organisation," SG says. For all its innovations, HPPL has been able to leverage on its R&D department, which has been recognised by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

When it comes to R&D, SG believes that the need of the hour is to focus more on the development aspect rather than on pure research. For him, innovation takes precedence over invention. "I believe that enough primary research has been done. The challenge is to adapt that research to suit your local needs and local conditions. Can you bring scale and commercial feasibility to a unique idea through development?

"Believe me; it requires a lot more effort than doing just research. Plus, the results are far more fulfilling. And that is why it fascinates me. India's scientists and engineers are very talented and they must focus more on development than on pure research," SG asserts. Incidentally, SG is also on the advisory council of IIT Roorkee and whenever an opportunity presents, he does make it a point to share his views with the academic scholars at that institution.

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