“I followed my desires and that made my life interesting”

He is a charismatic man, who is polite, yet straightforward. He confesses to having no hobbies and is a workaholic. He knew he was born to be a leader and, today, Yatish Mohan is living his dream as the managing director of Rohde and Schwarz India Pvt Ltd. He believes that success is not only about getting the numbers but also building a rapport with a close-knit team. Mohan is one of those rare people who share the credit for their success with others.

In a tête-à-tête with Srabani Sen and Kartiki Negi of Electronics Bazaar, Mohan came across as a strong-willed person, who considers himself very lucky to have got the right things at the right time, but credits himself for applying his own strategies to be in the right place and maintain his position. Today, after 23 years with Rhode and Schwarz, he is still fresh with ideas and strategies to take the company to new heights.

Thursday, December 12, 2013: My childhood was smooth sailing, with my mother as a home maker, my father the head of the geography department in Meerut University, a brother and two sisters. Born in Meerut in 1959, I spent a very secure life in an academic and healthy environment. We lived in the professors’ colony, which was equipped with indoor and outdoor sports facilities such as tennis courts, a cricket ground, football and hockey fields, parks and swimming pools. Although, I played all these sports, but do not have proficiency in any.

Most of the children from our professors’ colony made it to some of the best engineering and medical colleges.

I graduated in 1980 in electronics and communication engineering from the University of Roorkee, which is now known as IIT, Roorkee. In fact, our family is made up almost entirely of engineers—my brother and I are engineers, my sisters are married to engineers, and now my son and daughter are also engineers.

Leadership traits

I strongly feel that I was born with in-built leadership qualities. Very early in life when I was still in school, along with one of my friends, I formed a society called ‘Subharti’. We used to call all the children of the colony together and engage in social work, and also organised cultural events.

In college also, I actively participated in extra curricular activities. I was chosen as the secretary of the college cultural group. Later, in my professional life, within a span of five to six years, I started leading a team of engineers and I continue to do so.

Professional journey

Post engineering, I began my professional career with Toshniwal Bros Pvt Ltd in the R&D department. I worked on developing a foodgrain moisture analyser, a product then highly in demand by the Food Corporation of India (FCI). It took me nearly 18 months to finish the product and, thereafter, I was involved in product conformance tests at the labs of FCI. Getting the product approved was a precondition of a large tender being floated by FCI.

What interested me the most was that during the trials and lab testing, I found an opportunity to interact with the technicians, inspectors and senior managers.

I had successfully completed the task and, based on my achievement at FCI, Mr Toshniwal felt that I could also do well in sales and offered me a sales position in the firm’s overseas agencies division.

Rohde & Schwarz (R&S) was then one of the principals being represented by Toshniwals. At that time, the only attraction to shift to sales from R&D was the three months of training that was scheduled for me in Germany. But today, I am very glad that I took that decision, though at that point of time I did not imagine that 20 years later I would be heading the R&S operations in India.

Life at Rohde & Schwarz

I worked with Toshniwal Bros for almost eight years, and after a short stint with Philips India Ltd, I joined the R&S liaison office in India in 1990 as a sales manager, T&M, for north India.

At that time, we were a very small team of about five people. The initial years were rather tough as business was limited to only aerospace, defence and government organisations like AIR, Doordarshan, DoT, etc. Local manufacturing or R&D was at a very low level in the private sector. India was also passing through a crisis with regard to foreign exchange reserves. For some years, the total order intake of our company was equal to the total expenditure of the company. Yet R&S remained committed to India.

The market situation started improving for us from the mid-nineties, when India built up adequate foreign exchange reserves and the private sector started coming up.

As the company grew in terms of revenue and workforce, I was also promoted as the country manager for sales in 1996. By that time, we were a team of 25 people and had small offices in several cities.

I bacame the director of R&S in 2000. Today, we have built a very strong team in India.

Even in this slow moving market scenario, we managed to achieve 15-18 per cent growth every year, and that reflects our team work and our determination to take the comapany to new heights in India.

Today, R&S is like a big global family for me. We all work with a lot of respect for each other.

The best thing about this company is that it is constantly growing, empowering its employees and giving them a lot of freedom at all levels.

What drives me

I am a person driven by passion, motivation, focus and honesty. I believe that a person can succeed in almost everything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm. I had a dream to lead R&S operations in India, but I never imagined that the journey would be so exciting and fulfilling.

No dream is ever chased alone. When I look back, I have many people to thank for supporting me, guiding me and believing in me. The late Prof SN Mitra, technical director at Toshniwals, was my mentor during my younger days. Heino Gregorek, who started the Indian operation of R&S as a liaison office in 1988, is another person for whom I have high regard. Under his leadership, R&S started making its presence felt in India. The market conditions were not very favourable then but Gregorek held the fort with his excellent networking skills. Even today, when he visits India, people remember him and are really happy to see him again.

I found Dr Erich Freund as the most inspiring person during my professional career. India was one of the first subsidiaries for R&S in Asia, which Dr Freund established in 1996. Since then he has established such subsidiaries in almost all big countries in Asia Pacific. When he started Asian operations in the mid-nineties, the business share of R&S’s Asia operations used to be less than 5 per cent, which has now grown to more than 40 per cent of R&S’ global order intake. Asia is not only contributing to R&S’ success with its sales turnover, but now there are several R&D as well as manufacturing sites in Asia. This would not have been possible without the vision, entrepreneurial skills and the structured approach of Dr Freund, who is currently the company’s executive vice president, heading Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa.

Most of all, I thank the entire team of R&S India who remained with the company through good and bad times. Fortunately, we have a very low attrition rate at R&S India. We are a great team, and the joy of bonding together and striving to achieve a goal is what has made our job so special.

Decisions that proved to be turning points

In 2005, I had taken a major decision to hire a large number of engineers straight from the institutes, as we had expected the telecom boom to happen in India. We doubled our strength by hiring about 30 young engineers all over India and gave them extensive training in India, Germany and Singapore.

We built independent teams for sales, applications, project support, repairs and calibration. These young engineers started delivering extremely well within a year.

R&S by then had a strong presence in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai, to serve customers across the country. Unfortunately, the telecom boom did not help us or the other T&M vendors much, as most of the mobile handset manufacturers preferred to transfer their old production lines from other countries to India instead of investing in India. Also, the R&D activities continued to remain at the nascent stage. We could not grow as much as we had planned but we were happy to have developed our team. Our presence was very well recognised by our customers, and very soon we started seeing good results.

Another major decision taken at the same time was to consolidate our service labs at one location. We moved assets from our discrete service labs in Delhi and Hyderabad to a central repairs and calibration lab in Bengaluru.

This move helped us tremendously in improving efficiency, while reducing our inventory and service assets as well as cutting expenses on logistics.

I am very happy that we have bridged most of the gaps in terms of market reach and expanded our product basket. During the last couple of years, we have successfully executed several large EMC (electromagnatic compatibility), radio monitoring and radio communication projects. Today, about 130 people work for R&S in India, of whom more than 100 are engineers. We achieved an order intake of over $60 million in our last business year ending in June 2013. Our growth rate for the last two fiscal years was 40 per cent, and this year we want to sustain that. We have our offices and channel partners across all major cities and are all set to grow in all verticals.

Success mantra

I followed my desires and that made my life interesting. I believe that we can earn respect only by giving respect, and that is what I have imbibed in my team, who are seen by the industry as the most customer-friendly group of people. I have always felt that it is the people who take the company forward, and that is why I firmly believe in hiring the best people in the industry.

Taking corrective measures at the right time is another success mantra for a company, because if ignored, even small issues can have a huge impact.

Another mantra that I believe in is that all management action should lead to value addition to the company. Managers should have a helicopter view of the situation and their third eye should always be looking to the future. Their role should not be limited to finding solutions for the team but also helping the team to find a solution. The management team should see themselves as the owners of the company and feel fully responsible for its profit or loss.

The Indian R&S team is considered to be one the best across the globe. The global management holds up our team as an example to follow abroad, which gives me a great sense of achievement.

Advice to GenX

I feel that the younger generation takes things casually and is very easygoing about life. They must take things seriously and ensure that they prove themselves to the company every day. One must challenge oneself and be goal-oriented, facing problems with a solution-driven approach. Without goals, nobody can achieve anything. One should never get overwhelmed by short-term gains. I also strongly believe that being humble is the key to success; arrogance will not lead to anything. Also, one should have the courage to be honest in everything one does.

Ready with future plans

I have strategies in place to ensure that we sustain our market position in the coming years as well. Currently, the aerospace and defence industry is looking more and more for RF measurement system solutions, which are built for comprehensive automatic testing of specific devices like radios, radars, communication systems, RF components, etc.

Such measurement ATEs are complex, require customisation and continuous interaction with users. We are in the process of forming a systems integration team in India consisting of software and hardware engineers. This team will develop customised measurement systems as per Indian needs and provide technical support to our customers.

Additionally, we will have business partnerships with other companies that offer complementary products and services to the existing product range of R&S. Our aim is to become a one-stop supplier, meeting all customer needs in all business verticals.

In the coming years, we want to add new product lines to our portfolio, similar to what other T&M companies have, so that we can cater to a wider base of customers.

This has been our weak area. We have always dealt with high-end customers, who can afford our expensive products. But there is a very wide base of customers in the market that is buying low cost intruments like scopes, multimeters, etc. Last year, we added new scopes to our product line with an aim to extend our reach to this untapped market.

Life has been fairly good to me

I have always been lucky in life, with the current phase being the best part. Although a top management position is very demanding, making it almost impossible to manage a work-life balance, I have been able to maintain a decent work-life balance with the support and assurance of my family. I have always found strength and encouragement from my wife and children. My wife, who is a home maker, understands me and my workload quite well. She complements me and bridges the gap whenever I am unable to give adequate time to my family.

I am blessed to have two loving and caring children. My son, who is getting married this month, works for MathWorks Inc. in the US, after completing his masters in computer science from USC, Los Angeles. My daughter is an E&C engineer, and is currently perusing an MBA from the FORE School of Management in Delhi, after a short stint with Accenture.

Future plans

Though it is too early to think about my retirement plans, one thing is certain—I do not want to work post retirement. All my life, I have been juggling my personal and professional lives, trying to do justice to both as much as I can.

I will breathe, think and live R&S as long as I work here, as I have done all these past years. After my retirement, I look forward to spending some quality time with my wife and children.

I do have a couple of things in mind—I would like to get associated with some universities and take classes; would also like to enrol myself for some further studies and I may even join an NGO, which is run by my sister and brother-in-law, and do some social work. 

Electronics Bazaar, South Asia’s No.1 Electronics B2B magazine