Post-Videocon, KR Kim has authored a book, begun piano lessons and joined Onicra.
It’s more than two months since Kwang Ro Kim stepped down as vice-chairman of Videocon but all ties have not snapped — he still gets calls on his mobile phone late at night from irate Videocon customers. These calls are partly a result of the management credo Kim espouses, of displaying his mobile phone number on his visiting card — not something many CEOs do. But then this is the same credo that helped the former MD of LG Electronics India script the South Korean consumer durables firm’s legendary success story in India, and which he is now expected to implement at his current workplace, credit-rating firm Onicra.
The Onicra assignment happened in the nick of time. After his three-year contract with Videocon ended, Kim was planning to go home to Korea and start a consultancy there. “I had even booked a container and almost started packing,” he laughs. That’s when Sonu Mirchandani, the promoter of Onicra whom Kim had known since 1994, asked him to come on board. “I wanted to share my management knowledge in Korea but then these people, who were so sincere, came to me; so I thought why not do the same in India?” he says. And so Kim, who began his India sojourn with LG’s entry into the country in 1997, decided to extend his stint here by another three years.
But after a lifetime in consumer durables (34 years with LG and 3 with Videocon), why has Kim chosen a credit-rating firm? “The important thing is not the sector, but the people. And the people are the same everywhere. It’s about how the management can encourage employees,” he says. Mirchandani (brother Gulu owns consumer durables firm Onida) is also clear about his reasons for hiring Kim as vice-chairman.
“The basic tenets of running any company are the same. You need to be smart, sharp and aggressive, which Kim is,” he says. Onicra was set up in the early 1990s but it has been active only in the past three to four years. The firm is different from peers such as Crisil and Icra which rate companies’ debt instruments, in that its focus is on rating MSMEs and business associates, providing background checks of employees and road maps for educational institutions.
Kim says his brief was to change the company’s culture and set up a system for innovation. And though he just joined on March 1, the overhaul has begun. “Earlier, people used to come at 9.30 am, though they are supposed to come at 9 am. That is not acceptable! Now they have started to come at 9 am and the managers, a little earlier,” says the Korean whose voice and frame belie his reported toughness. One could even say the writing is on the wall — for, throughout the Onicra office in Gurgaon, sheets of paper displaying the Kim formula for success (“discipline, integrity, quality and creativity”) have been put up. He is targeting 100 per cent growth for the company, year-on-year, and wants to take revenues to Rs 120 crore this year, and Rs 1,000 crore in four years “Insha Allah.” India has clearly grown on him.
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It is not just with Onicra that Kim is sharing his management wisdom — he has also written a book about his experiences, titled Essence of Good Management. Published by Biztantra a couple of months ago and marketed by Times Group Books, he says the book is particularly aimed at Indian companies because he knows what they lack. And what would that be? “Indian companies prefer to focus on the visible, like advertising and PR, rather than the invisibles, such as research, maintenance and quality. They must focus on the intangibles; this is something we Koreans learnt from Japan,” he says. The book is divided into sections such as corporate culture, innovation management and intelligent marketing and would have made for easy reading, if not for the atrocious editing.
No one disputes Kim’s success with LG in India, taking it from nothing to a $2-billion firm “in one decade flat,” as the jacket of his book says. In the mid-1990s, the Koreans were thought of as poor cousins of the Japanese — imitators, at best. But LG, and Samsung, rewrote the rules of the game with innovations right across the chain — product, distribution, pricing, advertising etc. In the next few years, India is set to become LG’s second largest market in the world after USA but ahead of South Korea.
However, questions have been raised about why Kim was not able to replicate it at Videocon, though the company opted for a rebranding exercise and restructuring during his stint. Experts say that he was not given a free hand by the Dhoots of Videocon. Kim says apart from the relatively short tenure, his role there was limited and, therefore, so was his performance. “I did my best but you cannot expect a miracle,” he says, adding that he had put best practices in place and it was now up to the company to follow them.
His contemporary, Samsung India Deputy Managing Director Ravinder Zutshi, diplomatically says Kim has done a good job wherever he has been, while former colleague Yasho Verma, COO of LG Electronics India, refuses to comment, perhaps due to the Omerta said to have been enforced by the top LG management on the issue. Nishkam Bhasin, who has worked with Kim for 10 years, says he was able to improve after-sales service at Videocon, among other changes. “Kim trusts his employees and always lets them express their opinion, even if they disagree with him. If he feels your argument is valid, he is open to changing his decision,” says Bhasin who joined Onicra with Kim as vice-president (sales and administration).
Outside his professional duties, Kim spends time painting water-colours and jogging (“it is a form of meditation”). He recently started taking piano lessons with his wife, adding that she is much better at it, and plans to take up the violin next year because “you cannot lug a piano wherever you go.” He is off to Korea soon to give a lecture on management and attend the wedding of his second son, a dentist in the US. His elder son is also in the US, working as a doctor. Does he see himself adding another India chapter after his three-year contract with Onicra comes to an end? “Last time I changed my mind at the very last minute; so who knows?” he smiles.
