Innovate or Perish-Moser Baer Chairman Deepak Puri

Moser Baer, the world’s largest disc manufacturing company, producing 4 billion discs a year and exporting to 82 countries is contemplating future growth though the organic and inorganic routes, according to Mr Deepak Puri, Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Moser Baer India Ltd.

Unveiling the business strategies of the company at PHD Chamber’s CEO Lecture Series yesterday in New Delhi, Mr Puri said that the focus of the company is to cater to the bottom of the pyramid in order to achieve the economies of scale. “There was a time when the digital discs were sold in the US market for US$12. But now the price has hit at few cents creating a groundswell of demand for its products. The key-driver of growth is investment in research and development,” he said, adding that his company would stay focused on innovation and in creating a pool of highly talented researchers, who think differently.

Mr Puri disclosed that his venture into film world digitizing the titles would gather momentum. “I would like to sell films like a fast moving consumer good at a rock bottom price so that the common man will have easy access to it and well within his affordable means. That will happen three years from now,” he added. There will not be any compromise on Intellectual Property Rights. The copy rights of the content and that of the films will be honored. In this regard, he disclosed that his company has spent already between Rs.600 and Rs.800 crore for buying content of over 1500 films and more titles would be bought in due course of time.

Mr Puri said that the foray of his company into the solar energy (production of photovoltaic cells) is an attempt to diversify its product line and to tap the enormous market that would emerge in the future. Solar is a clean energy source and it is necessary to bring down the equipment cost to make it accessible to the common man. “With GDP growing at more than 8%, the ‘gap’ in demand supply only going to increase, Solar PV is the only RE source which can fill this ‘gap’, he added

Mr Puri said innovation is the key to business success and that comes from huge investment in R&D. “When I had invested 3 per cent of my sales revenue on R&D, many people advised me not to do that. But I did not heed to their advice. That helped me to continuously value add to my products. I have produced over the years big compact spools/discs to tiny yet affordable ones which has huge storage capacities. That is the incremental innovation that I am talking about,” he added

Tracing his career graph as an entrepreneur, Mr Puri said that perseverance and tenacity are the two attributes that an entrepreneur should have. Many of his projects had failed initially. He had accumulated heavy losses during initial business attempts. But ‘will to succeed’ has kept him in good stead. “That is what an entrepreneur should have; indomitable courage to face adversities, learn from mistakes and make the right starts again and again till success winks at you,” he said.