Chennai: Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairperson of Aditya Birla Group, said that massive scale provides the resilience needed to absorb macroeconomic shocks, pointing out that UltraTech Cement increased its operating cash flow by 50% amid geopolitical tensions that disrupted supply chains and fuel costs across sectors.Speaking at the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry event on Tuesday, he said the group remained unscathed from the recent geopolitical disruptions and emphasised that building sticky relationships with customers and onshoring helped them absorb shocks, similar to what helped them navigate the disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We have been pretty unscathed even though we have a presence across so many countries… We have been able to pass on the extra cost to the customers and have to reemphasise the benefit of onshoring and having deep relationships with customers, suppliers and the entire value chain. The importance of that came to the fore during COVID,” he said.He said the benefits of scale extend far beyond lower production costs and can reshape industry economics. In capital-intensive sectors like cement, scale creates certainty, encouraging suppliers to innovate, technology partners to invest, logistics providers to optimise and customers to build long-term relationships. Over time, this strengthens the industrial ecosystem, improves capacity utilisation and makes capital more productive, he said.Execution discipline across dozens of plants and thousands of dealers gives the confidence that no large disruption can impact the destiny of the company, he said, adding that making transformational bets that may be unpopular in the short term but create sustained value over time.“Our entry into cement, financial services and, later, renewables reflected our conviction in India’s long-term growth story. More recently, our entry into paints and B2B e-commerce reflects the same philosophy. That of identifying large opportunities where our institutional strengths create a genuine right to win,” he added.
