Dear Shareholder

While entering the new millennium, I take this opportunity to share some of my thoughts with you. Last decade was an era of globalisation and liberalisation across the region. Much has been said and done and much more is yet to be done. Lot of debate has taken place in the past about the level playing field etc. The storm has settled without satisfactory solution.

The point which I would like to make is that in the process of economic liberalisation we should not take a step which results into monopolistic situation, which is controlled even in a most open economy like US, and Microsoft is a live example.

In fact, the economic liberalisation must lead to increase in productivity and we must revisit the existing labour laws. In the process of economic liberalisation the hidden competition is now with the global market. In the context, if our productivity standards are not upgraded to international standards, the domestic business will definitely suffer. To achieve the said standards, we need to concentrate on education, training and working environment. In case of working environment one of the major bottleneck are our labour laws. Employers should be permitted, based on their internal appraisal systems to take decisions without interference of the law, may be to the lowest extent say 1% of their strength. The powers conferred to the labourers should also specify the responsibilities and there should be a proper mechanism to monitor and make the responsibilities effective.

Today, all around the era is Information Technology and Dot Com. India being a country where educated, english speaking intellectual power is available in plenty, the world at large, at present, is looking at import of the said manpower. We, at bureaucratic level appears to be bent upon loosing this opportunity by restricting / controlling number of seats in the field of IT allotted to the various engineering institutes, be it private or public. To cash on these long term opportunity, I feel even in education, this type of road blocks needs to be removed on an urgent basis. I feel happy about our intellectual recognition on the globe, and indeed we should be. The process of liberalisation should extend in the field of education too. We must also think about the value addition taking place in the country instead of merely focusing on exporting the manpower. If we can create an environment, whereby those corporations employ them in India, that would be better solution and would lead to better economic growth.

Be it service consumer or a product consumer at the end of the day what does consumer wants really matters. The consumer all over the globe looks for better equation of value and money, keeping other factors like product availability, after sales service, etc. being constant. These equations could be perspective and could be real. The perspective equations be it by hype, be it by improper presentation, be it by misrepresentations by sending wrong message about the product may succeed. The same kind of success can sustain for a short time, but in the long run the hard core value in the product which benefits him and which enhances his real usage value only will sustain. Hard core value maximisation, avoiding usage of non required elements into the product and reducing the cost by that results in the benefit of the consumer will only sustain. In a product cycle it is very difficult to define what is long term and what is short term. But in case of NIRMA, we are committed to the long term referred strategy and I am happy that the said strategy has been digested not only at the senior management level but right up to the operating level and that is the level of satisfaction I have desired, and any may be that is the value which will continue to benefit the family of entire NIRMA stake holders.

With warm regards,

K. K. Patel
Chairman