a look at the Leadership at Amul under Dr. Verghese Kurien

1. Corporate Leadership Of
Dr Verghese Kurien
Leadership in Organization
Presented By –
Aditya Vikram Cheema
Kushal Karamchandani
Nachiket Kulkarni
Rishabh Sinha
Ishan Parekh
Arthava Oswal

2. Agenda
• Corporate Leadership
• Early Years
• Birth of Amul – True Leadership of Dr. Verghese Kurien
• Dynamic Leadership
• India Revolution
• Critical Evaluation of the Leader in formation of Amul

3. Early Years
• Born on November 26, 1921 in
Kozhikode, Kerala Served as Civil surgeon
father in British Cochin
• Graduated in Physics from Loyola
College, Madras in 1940 and then did B.E.
(Mech) from the College of Engineering
from Madras University
• After his engineering, he worked at Tata
Steel Technical Institute, Jamshedpur
from where he graduated in 1946
• He also went to USA on a government
scholarship for his Master of Science in
Metallurgical Engineering (with
distinction) from Michigan State
University

4. BIRTH OF
AMUL
• Taken over by Dr Kurien in
1950, Amul Dairy was founded
to stop exploitation of farmers
by middlemen
• Initially known as Kaira
District Co-operative Milk
Producers Union began with
just two village societies and
247 litres of milk headed by
Tribhuvandas Patel as its
founder chairman
• Based in 'Anand'
(Gujarat), Dr. Kurien's vision
and extraordinary intelligence
built the dairy development
cooperative model into one of
the largest and most successful
institutions in
India, called, AMUL

5. Dynamic Leadership
• India's first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru
visited Anand to inaugrate AMUL "factory"
and he embraced Kurien for his
groundbreaking work
• The Amul pattern of cooperatives had been so
successful, that in 1965, Shri Lal Bahadur
Shastri, (then Prime minister of India) created
the National Dairy Development Board
(NDDB) to replicate the program on a
nationwide basis citing Kurien's "extraordinary
and dynamic leadership" upon naming him
chairman
• Kurien also set up GCMMF in 1973 to sell the
products produced by the dairies. Today
GCMMF sells AMUL brand products not only
in India but also overseas

6. Journey In Brief

7. Vision & Mission

8. The man who Revolutionized White
• A rare visionary who always translated his
vision on mission mode
• He had an astute sense of management and
marketing.
• He attempted to replicate the Anand Model
nationally through the launching Operation
Flood Programme (OFP).

9. The Noble Milkman
• He believed that the rural
development process required
professional transformation.
– IRMA
– Institutions providing skill-
oriented training
– Tribhuvan Das Foundation

10. From Milk to Management
• The AMUL story
– Operational flood 1,2,3
– Milk prod. Tripled
– Value of the increased
production of milk is
Rs.2,400 Cr.
– Dairying has become
the largest rural
employment scheme in
this country.

11. Innovation
• A great believer in innovation
• Development of the automatic milk bulk vending system
to compete with the urban liquid milk dwellers.
– It was re-engineered from a similar loose (pasteurized)
liquid milk supply system established by M/s
Conosupo, in Mexico.
– The vending system was invented originally by M/s
Rowe International of USA.
• The re-engineered Indian bulk vending system was
established as more functional and economical than the
original system!

12. It is because of Dr. Kurien that India today contributes about 17 per cent
of the total milk production in the world. Amul, with a turnover of over
Rs. 13,000 crore, is Asia’s top milk-producing brand and is counted, with
one of the best recall values, among the world’s leading brands in any
sector.
From one milk project to a larger one, the
“Milkman of India” saw India emerge from a milk-
deficient country into the largest milk producer in
the world, overtaking even the once milk-
abundant Netherlands.

13. Year Name of Honor
1965 Padma Shree
1966 Padma Bhusan
1986 Krushi Ratna Award
1989 World food prize (USA)
1993 International Person of the year award (dairy
expo)
1999 Padma Vibhushan

14. 3 Tier Structure

15. Achievements & Anecdotes

16. Anecdotes
• Fiery, Blunt & Controversial
– Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shatri’s visit to
Anand, Gujarat.
• Fearless & Wicked Sense of Humor
• Solving the bigger Problems of society.
• He dint enjoy drinking milk, but sold it all of us.

17. • Architected a platform that enabled people to
build/sell on top of it.
• Beyond the definitions of traditional v/s
incremental innovation.
• Created the farmer-owned & controlled
business.
• Built an insular system.

18. • On Request from Shyam Benegal, Mr. Kurien
agreed to fund a movie to portray human
stories surrounding cooperative dairy
movement.
• The film won national awards and continues
to be considered as the best tool to educate
farmers about cooperative movements.
• Amul Group created some of the best
documentaries and literature.

19. Critical Evaluation of his role

20. Social Entrepreneur
Sent on a scholarship and returned in 1948 and joined the
Dairy Department of the Government of India
Posted as dairy engineer to the Government Research
Creamery, a small milk powder factory, in Anand
Used his skills for no personal profit
One of the first social entrepreneur India was to ever see

21. Kaira Union
made a strong lobby, which contended that buffalo milk could not be
turned into milk powder
 Buffaloes give double the milk in winter than in summer
 Bombay was lone consuming centre and didn’t want irregular milk flow
into the city
 Bombay Milk Scheme preferred to import milk powder from New Zealand
to meet the city's demand prompting Kurien to ask: "Mr Khurody, are you
the Milk Commissioner of Bombay or New Zealand?“
Another problem during that time was compettion from "Polson" brand
 Before the independence British Government pushed Pestonjee to supply
milk from Kaira to Bombay.
 Scheme helped everyone but the farmers who struggled to get a fair price
for their milk against the middlemen working for the Polson Dairy

22. Solution
• In 1949 Mr Kurien took charge and bought a pasteurising
machine for 60,000 rupee
• Investment paid off; the milk could now reach Mumbai
without spoiling; and the co-op idea grew apace
• Credit of creating the country's best-known brand and that
too for a product of rural India turned out by co-operatives
• Pride in seeing an Amul fronting every shop shelf with
Nestle and the rest making the rear

23. Empowering the poor
 “Socialism” never described what he was doing
 Empowerment of the rural poor was his real aim, and
milk merely the best tool available
 His dairies taught poor farmers to value
cleanliness, discipline and hard work
 Liberalisation in 1991 came as an appalling shock and
he had no intention of letting private companies back
into the dairy business

24. Courage of his conviction
 Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Barkutallah Khan, did not agree to autonomy
being given to the milk cooperatives
 Rajasthan’s farmers were not as capable of managing their businesses as
Gujarat’s farmers
 Kurien then said that if the CM’s constituency, Jodhpur (rural), was
capable of electing him, surely they could manage their own little milk
businesses
 Indira Gandhi also questioned Kurien on the capacities of farmers to
manage big business
 Kurien is then reported to have told her that ‘you are now talking like the
British who said we will give you freedom when you are ready’

25. Innovator
 Inception of a nationwide cooperative sector
 Invented the process of making skim milk
powder and condensed milk from buffalo milk instead of
from cow milk
 Amul girl was created
Dr Kurien suggested a mischievous little girl as a mascot
with two requirements i.e easy to draw and memorable
 Range of products

26. Nation Builder
 Taken India from milk deficient to milk surplus nation
 Built a whole family of institutions around NDDB to realise
his dream of a strong Indian dairy industry founded on
cooperative lines
 Founded the Institute of Rural Management at Anand
(IRMA) and over 30 years, IRMA graduates have made a
mark in the cooperative, agri-business and non-profi t
sectors of the Indian economy
 Believed in preventing MNCs eating into Indian companies