A techie, a doting father and a loving husband... wearing many hats and taking on responsibilities comes easily to Dheeraj Sinha, CIO of Apollo Tyres, India's premier tyre manufacturing company. A veteran in the IT field with 15 years of experience, Sinha surprisingly is "not fond of reading technical magazines" and loves to read more of fiction and less of management stuff. An avid traveler, Sinha has traveled for work to almost all geographies of the world including the US, the UK, Chile and Australia. Like most other IT professionals working hard and busy juggling family and work responsibilities, Sinha too is no exception. Sinha says, "Balancing work and family is always a challenge as both are vital for one's existence and therefore I make it a point to go out with my family at least once or twice a month and spend quality time with them." On a lighter note Sinha adds that he generally does not get time in the weekdays to spend with his family, but on weekends he makes sure that he is there with his family.

Dheeraj Sinha CIO, Apollo Tyres

Doting Father, Loving Husband
"My wife is the fulcrum of my universe and I firmly believe that for any one to succeed it is important that he should be able to devote more time to his work and not worry about his family, and my wife has done just that. She has given me the freedom to pursue my goals while she takes care of the home. In fact, I attribute all my success solely to her," he declares. Being a family man, Sinha likes to play with his two kids aged four years and four months.

The Work Front
After spending 10 years at Xerox Corporation, he joined Apollo Tyres in 2004 and the journey until now has been the most exciting and satisfying one. One of the best things about working at Apollo Tyres is the trustworthy nature of the people working here. Being a people man, Sinha does not shy away from attending meetings, which he believes are an indication of your ability to mingle with your peer group though sometimes they do get frustrating.

But what gets Sinha excited are the multiple IT implementations done at Apollo Tyres which have benefited the business. The most rewarding one has been reaching to the customers of the company.

"Being a tyre manufacturing company from our business model perspective we sell directly to the dealers who in turn cater to the customers. Therefore, dealers are a critical and important part in the supply chain. The traditional methods of communication with the dealers included telephone, email, credit note, etc. through which the dealers communicated their stock requirements and the company announced new schemes, etc." Sinha says. About one and a half years back, the company decided to do away with the old communication methodology and decided to reach out to their 6,000 strong dealer network. It was then that the management decided to set up a portal for the dealers. "In fact, we were the first ones to set up a dealer portal and since we wanted to break away from the traditional method of uploading the data which sometimes also resulted in stale information being uploaded, we decided to go 100% online with SAP," he says. To encourage the dealers to log onto the web, the company gave away PCs at low rates.

But after the initial euphoria had died down, the portal meant for the dealers did not find favor as was envisaged. "The problem was that only a small percentage of our dealers started using this portal while a significant majority still relied on the traditional method of communication which was defeating the purpose of setting up the portal," he explains. After pondering over the various reasons for the failure of the dealer portal, the company decided to adopt a different strategy. "It was then we discovered that the lowest common denomination of our dealers did not have a PC but did have a mobile phone which could be used anywhere and everywhere. Therefore, we reconfigured our interface with SAP and started to use triggers to send SMS to the dealers about the various scheme closure, stock availability, etc." he says. With time this initiative was also expanded for the company employees as well, for example a procurement manager was sent an SMS about the availability of raw materials which eased his task. "Roughly we send about 15-20,000 SMS per day to our 6,000 dealer network," he adds.

Exemplary Feat
"When I joined Apollo Tyres, the three-member team was fragmented and there was a lot of apprehension as SAP was ready to roll out." Sinha says. One of the first tasks cut out for Sinha after joining Apollo Tyres was to build a strong team, which was clear on its organizational goals and objectives. Being a team man, he did the same and has won the confidence of his team members by standing up for them and guiding them on work related issues, something which has instilled confidence in the team. Summing up the reasons for the success of any team, he says "In order to build a good team it is important that there should be clarity on the objectives to be achieved, milestones should be created for achievement and most importantly there should be rewards for every milestone achieved however small the task may be. In fact, to build up a closely knit team, I have started IT meets for team fostering." Apollo Tyres was one of the first companies in the manufacturing business to get BS 7799 certification even though it was not required but was considered important by Sinha so as to put processes in place and institutionalize to ensure scalability and reliability in the organization.

Being a rational and quick thinker, when faced by complex situation, he does not get alarmed and does some quick rational thinking. His guiding principle in life is to "take quick decisions, give your best shot and stick by it" and he does not believe in procrastination.

Stuti Das
stutid@cybermedia.co.in

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