Every business needs a growth strategy. A growth strategy is just as important for business as wheels to a car; it just can’t run without it! In an interview with Mr. Vineet Trakroo, the CEO (Chief Evolution Officer) of Evolution Strategy Advisors LLP, let us learn how important an ‘Evolution Strategy’ is to businesses.
Tell us about Evolution Strategy Advisors.
Since 2013 Evolution Strategy Advisors LLP is in the business of partnering with B2C organizations to grow through a proprietary technique of Business Health Analysis, which is a business diagnostic technique in sales, marketing, and strategy. Evolution Strategy Advisors work on growing businesses and categories for our clients using a combination of consulting research, and analytics techniques on a cloud platform. Evolution Strategy Advisors target operational sales and marketing strategies that help the organization in better execution of their plans.
Evolution Strategy Advisors has been transforming both large and mid-sized consumer organizations by working with their top management team. Evolution Strategy Advisors has worked with world leaders and partnered their growth of 20-30%+ within the same financial year.
- Can you please brief us about your professional experience?
I and each of my team members have worked in the past with medium and large consumer organizations for a minimum of 20years. Each of us has been at the CXO level and has had a string of successes. I am an Electrical Engineer from MIT Manipal and MBA from Jamnalal Bajaj, Mumbai University. I have been with start-ups, leaders, and challengers in durables, branded commodities, FMCG, and the building material industry. Having spent more than 25yrs as Head of Sales and or Marketing it was logical to move into consulting, with technology and data driving business we used that as a backbone of our offering.
- What are the products/services the company focuses on? How are your services different from those in the market?
Our Areas of operation are-
1. Business Health Analytics (Business Diagnostics): Identifying issues that are holding back the growth of a business or a division
2. Business Transformation: Restructuring and transforming organizations to grow
3. Building Executional Excellence: In Sales, marketing, brand management, and analytics
- What is Business Health Analytics or Business Diagnostics ?
Business Diagnostics translates to identifying the issues which are not allowing the business to grow or are making it perform poorly. Our role is in identifying the real causes for this low performance and suggesting solutions that can be implemented in the sales and marketing domain immediately without any significant increase in cost.
Evolution Strategy Advisors is the only company in India offering a diagnostic approach to solving marketing and sales-related issues faced by companies using cloud-based tools and analytics to arrive at the challenges as well as the solution. Our approach is to tap into the internal resources of the organization i.e. sales, trade, influencers, service, etc. As these are the people who influence the selling process.
- Is there any new addition to the list of products/services? Anything exciting you would like to share?
Evolution Strategy Advisors is planning to expand our services to other sectors mainly services, consumer finance, insurance, consumer investment. We are also looking at adding more competencies to improve the customer experience offered by our clients.
- What were the initial challenges you faced?
Getting clients to understand our unique offering and only one of its kind. The concepts of cloud, analytics, and consulting are new to a lot of midsized companies. The largest organization relies on internal knowledge. Our approach to growth is by tapping into the internal knowledge within an organization.
- How have the company graphs changed since the foundation? Can you share a few statistics?
Evolution Strategy Advisors started with offering international licensing and joint ventures with leading American and European brands in the first year and then quickly added business diagnostic services. After about 2 years of offering Business diagnostic services, we worked with some of the leading Indian and multinational companies and helped them improve their business results. We have worked on over 75 projects in the last 5 years.
- What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success?
Evolution Strategy Advisors have been able to grow the top and bottom lines of organizations by identifying the real challenges and the extent of these challenges thus prioritizing them. We further offer solutions to these challenges and work with our clients to deliver results after the action plan is created.
Evolution Strategy Advisors work with industry leaders who have complex business issues. These organizations are world-class in their practices and demand the best. With every project, we learn new business practices. We have done multiple projects with our clients which is a testimony of our work quality. Further, we up-skill by getting into more complex client data and have a strong analytic team that uses the latest software tools and cloud analytics to analyze and identify insights.
- How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your products/services?
Evolution Strategy Advisors is always adding more features to our analytical abilities and data analysis. We also complement our services with a team of industry experts who have been at the CXO level. These experts help our clients to deliver through our guidance in execution.
Talking about leadership-
- What do you think are the responsibilities of an entrepreneur?
‘To deliver today with an eye on tomorrow’
- What are the key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey?
Working with the leaders in Automobiles- Tata’s, Mahindra, Pharmaceuticals- Abbott, Pfizer, Cipla, Building material- Saint Gobain, Asahi, and Consumer products- Pepsi, Crompton, Camlin, Piramal, etc. Working with the best teaches us best practices. We have done repeat business with 80% of our clients and have more than 70% of our recommendations being accepted and implemented which gives our clients quick gains.
- How do you look after your employees? What makes your team unique?
Evolution Strategy Advisors work with a select team of senior business leaders who have been CXO’s in the last and have executed many impossible tasks. We get the most relevant person who has worked in the industry to work on client challenges. We advise and deliver from experience and knowledge.
- Is there any special experience with your clients you would like to highlight?
3 key lessons we have learned from running a leading consulting company
- Execution is the greatest challenge to strategy execution. Its rarely a competency issue but more of a discipline which needs to be adhered to
- Often business decisions are taken in haste than through careful planning. Decisions happen more by gut feel as data is scarce and opportunities are many thus the urgency to tap them and grow
- Data and analysis is still not trusted by top management. Feel and perception lead in taking decision. As there are gaps in quality of data and analytics is a new science for the manager.
- Constant vigilance- a need or a strategy? Please share your views.
It’s a need as the world is changing around you. Earlier it was technology disrupting business now its ecology which is redefining product offerings and consumption. Some of the products which are losing their place on this planet are Sugar, plastic, drinking water, vegetation, air. They can alter your business right from product or production to consumption.
- It’s a rat-race out there. How do you cope with that?
We do not compete with anyone and offer unique services which have proved successful. I work at our own pace but keep in sync with disruptive technologies which can alter our or our customers’ business. How to use technology and data for strategic decision-making is our forte.
- Which is the most inspiring quote you have read?
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”
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