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Manish Garg’s lucky number is nine. Not only does it mark the date in August when he first stepped through the doors of Interarch Building Solutions in 1994, but it also represents the date of his return almost 30 years later on 9 August 2021 – a deliberate choice.
His first 13-year stint with the firm instilled a deep understanding and fondness for the company that would ultimately bring him full circle; he returned to take its helm after spending 14 years acquiring experience with other industry-leading companies.
“I think I’ve been very lucky to have been back in this organization at a time when it wasn’t really very sure of what was going to happen.”
It was a turbulent time, with his appointment as CEO coinciding with great uncertainty as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic rippled out across the business world. But even as the precarious situation played out, Garg quickly found contentment in his new role.
“I think I’ve been very lucky to have been back in this organization at a time when it wasn’t really very sure of what was going to happen,” he tells The CEO Magazine.
“These three years have been very exciting. Challenging also, but I would say less challenging and more exciting.”
Top of the list for Garg is the moment that Interarch Building Solutions went public, which was particularly satisfying as he had played such an important role in the company’s journey during those early days.
“In any company’s lifetime, you only take it public once,” he says. “You may raise funds thereafter, separately, but then the initial public offering (IPO) only happens once.”
Armed with the experience of working with other public companies, among them India Gypsum (now Saint-Gobain Gyproc) and Everest Industries, and a burning desire to take a company public, something he had not yet had the opportunity to tackle during his career, Garg got to work.
“When you go for an IPO, you have to have the performance to back up to the investor. You can’t take a weak performance to an investor; nobody will invest in you,” he explains.
Instilling predictability and sustainability throughout Interarch Building Solutions’ operating model therefore became a top priority.
“What we insisted upon was a system that let us look at the longevity of whatever levers we had adjusted in terms of systems and processes, as we had almost rewritten the way we were doing things,” Garg reveals.
Establishing a growth mindset was also crucial.
“The company was plagued by questions like, ‘If we take this giant stride, is it going to work?’ and ‘What if it doesn’t work?’” he recalls.
“So we took that fear away from people’s minds because now you have a process in place, so it doesn’t matter if you plan for 10 percent or if you plan for 120 percent growth. It’s not going to matter because now you have a mechanism to handle scalability.”
These measures paid off and soon Interarch Building Solutions found itself in a sweet spot. Since Garg’s return three years ago, the company has more than doubled in size, growing from US$65.5 million to more than US$152.1 million today. The business is now valued at US$293 million.
“Our profitability has become five-to-six times what it was three years ago,” he says proudly. “Although, of course, it was post-pandemic, so things were very tough at that time.”
“Our profitability has become five-to-six times what it was three years ago.”
Garg was able to deftly maneuver the company into the right position, overseeing every detail of the listing – from selecting the right merchant bankers to physically ringing the bell on the National Stock Exchange.
“It’s been an amazing journey,” he reflects. “A lot of sleepless nights and a lot of work. Every day was a new day. But yes, it all culminated into a super-duper listing.”
Even since the listing, the company’s upward trajectory has continued, with the number of investors almost doubling in three months.
“It’s very seldom that you will find stocks doing so well,” Garg says with pride. “But we don’t chase the stock price. We just chase, as we say, customer delight. We chase, of course, our internal efficiencies. We chase market expansion and we chase our team-building.
“Frankly, everything else is a by-product of these things being done directly and passionately.”
Now the next goal for Interarch Building Solutions is to double its turnover within the next three-to-four years – a bold ambition recently set out by Managing Director Arvind Nanda.
“That growth will come from our capacity expansion,” Garg points out.
While this has been enacted at some of the company’s locations, it is still underway at a further two – its sites in Andhra Pradesh and also Kicha in Uttarakhand. These will be followed by capacity expansion in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.
This growth will be well supported by bolstered engineering and sales capabilities as well as additional headcount.
“Our aspiration for our future is to double turnover in four years,” he explains.
“It’s been an amazing journey.”
“It’s going to be a result of capacity expansion, number one. Number two, our market expansion plans. Number three, and most important, is the India growth story – the new-age industries that we are working for, which include semiconductor plants, solar panel manufacturing plants, data centers, multi-story buildings and also a lot of electric vehicle infrastructure.”
Garg links the country’s steel consumption, accelerated by this manufacturing influx and the infrastructure requirements it generates, to its advance toward development.
“We believe we will be partnering in India’s growth to build the required manufacturing or the real infrastructure to take the country to the next level – be it bullet trains, be it metros, be it airports. We are a very important part in the process,” he says.
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