‘Virtually all products and services we deal in provide employment opportunities’

Manish Rohtagi is the Business Head for Simba Group of Companies. In this interview with The Guardian, he talks about how the company has impacted the lives of Nigerians. 

Can we meet you?

My name is Manish Rohtagi, I am the Business Head for Simba Group of Companies, Nigeria.

I have about 26 years of experience in major automobile around the world including Top 3 manufacturers of motorcycle and tricycles in India.

Nigeria is a land of great opportunity and great people. The life here is full of energy, with every day bringing on new challenges and surprises.

I am very excited about the things we are doing at Simba, firstly to enhance the experience of our customers, but more importantly to enhance the lives of Nigerians.

I always wanted to travel to new places, meet new people and over and above I always wanted to extend my support to individuals, communities and institutions.

More than achieving business objectives, what has given me immense satisfaction, is growth of people around me, whether they are my bosses, colleagues, reporting officers, channel partners or vendors.

It is about a year now since I have been here and Nigeria is a beautiful country with beautiful people and rich culture.

Nigerian people have astonished me with their warm welcome and I think the country has really taken me in.  

At Simba I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people from different ethnicities and I must compliment the way people are proud of their cultural roots and their traditional attires.

Kindly tell us more about Simba Group of Companies and TVS. What exactly is your focus as a business enterprise?

Simba Group is a 30-year-old company in Nigeria. We started out precisely in 1988 and have various businesses that contribute to Nigeria’s sustained development.

These include Agriculture Solution, Alternate Energy, Commercial Vehicle Sales & Service, Textile Clusters, Networking and Data Services.

We have been associated with TVS motors for over 10 years and we have been successful in becoming the number one tricycle brand in the country.

Our focus is our shared belief in customer satisfaction and offering an unparalleled reach for after sales service with a good product. 
 
How has it been doing business in Nigeria compared to your experience in other countries that you have worked in?

We always look at giving solutions to consumers rather than giving them a product.

And when I consider giving solutions to my consumers, dealers and even my employees I think we get more success.

My business experience in Nigeria has been very intriguing and exciting.

Like any other developing economy, there are ups and downs, but as long as the overall trajectory is one of growth, businesses have an opportunity to flourish.

I’m not saying it’s been easy – it takes investment and a lot of work – but overall we find that we’ve had a lot of support from the market.  

What are the particular needs you have identified in Nigeria and what solution have you provided for them?  

One particular need I have observed in Nigeria is of generating employment.

Employment is a critical requirement for all Nigerians today, especially the youth, and if you don’t employ them they look for alternate ways to get quick money.

So virtually all of the products and services we deal in provide employment opportunities.

Where our impact is most meaningful is in the employment generation that our TVS vehicles create.

First and foremost, there are the riders of the motorcycles and tricycles who earn a daily wage for ferrying passengers to and fro.

Then there are our dealers, financers and fleet owners who play critical parts in our value chain and ensure that the vehicles are made available to potential owners and investors.

Finally, there are the tens of thousands of mechanics and spare parts dealers who repair and service the vehicles and ensure that they are back ‘on road’ as soon as possible.

Apart from providing jobs for Nigerians, in what other ways has your company contributed to the wellbeing of Nigerians?

We currently have many programmes to support the communities in which we operate.

Perhaps we are most proud of our Queen Riders program, which promotes women’s empowerment and creates a safe ecosystem for women to enter the business of keke, helping them to purchase their vehicles and providing training in both safe driving and security.

We also actively engage with the community through our Health check-up camps, where our vehicle riders are invited for Simba-sponsored personal health-screenings, which has included diabetes screening and eye check-ups, while we service their vehicles, for free.

In Maiduguri, our TVS King tricycle has been used as an ambulance in the rural areas where no other vehicles can reach.

So, in essence, we are reaching out to places where we can impact the lives of Nigerian people. 
          
TVS participated fully in supporting the Super Eagles during the FIFA World Cup 2018, what was the inspiration behind that?

Yes, we are extremely proud of this. Football is the great love of this great nation, and something that brings every Nigerian, no matter from which part, or which faith or which background together.

To be selected as the official motorcycle and three-wheeler of the Super Eagles is a great honour, and not only has it enabled us to contribute to the nation’s greatest pastime, but has also enabled us to bring our customers and rider community closer to the action with dedicated fan events during big matches and opportunities to meet with the players.

TVS recently sponsored a dancing competition called “TVS Confam Naija Dance” can you please tell us what it was all about?

This was incredible. We had recently introduced a unique feature in our TVS King Deluxe keke – an in-built mp3 player.

Our rider community love it, and we were honoured to have the very talented artist, Small Doctor, record a special song for us.

Then all of a sudden people started posting videos to their social media profiles dancing to this special track.

So we thought, why not give a prize to the best dance group – and it all took off from there.

The competition ran for about a month, and culminated in a grand finale in Lagos.

To ensure fair-play and true reflection of talent, we brought on board Nigeria’s dance queen, Kaffy, musician Small Doctor and BBNaija finalist Alex Unusual to judge the performances.

The winners won N1, 000,000, with second and third places getting N250,000 and N125,000 respectively.
 
What are your company’s future plans?

Our future plan is very clear. We want to be part of the great story of Nigeria and we are very confident that Nigeria is going to be one of the leading economies, not just in Africa, but in the world and we want to be a dominant player in business, not only in the space we are operating in today, but various other businesses we plan to venture in.