Marico founder Harsh Mariwal offers entrepreneurs three key suggestions: “The founder can do market research, but…”

Marico’s founder and chairman Harsh Mariwala shared some advice for young entrepreneurs at Mint’s 2025 India Investment Summit and Awards to survive in a highly competitive business environment with external factors such as disruptive technology.

Mariwala highlights three key points that any entrepreneur should remember before entering an industry that might help them through challenging times.

The top three suggestions for entrepreneurs by demanding Mariwala

Harsh Mariwala, chairman of the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), focuses on differentiated values, demand for talent and work culture, and good governance, which are three major factors that entrepreneurs should keep in mind when running their business.

1. Difference value: Mariwala stressed that entrepreneurs should focus on “different” from others in the market to survive in a highly competitive environment.

“You have to be unique in a competitive business environment. Differentiation may depend on the business you are in,” said the founder of the Investment Summit.

He also noted that the biggest disturbing thing is the technology in the business, so entrepreneurs can use it to create new business models and launch new products.

“But I think the key is to develop something different, and most importantly, test it with consumers,” Mariwala said.

Mariwala highlighted the need for consumer insights, saying founders can do market research, but it has “a lot of limitations” and advised entrepreneurs that there are no shortcuts to launching their products in the market.

“You can do market research, but market research has many limitations. So, I suggest that all entrepreneurs have no shortcuts to actually launch their products in the market,” he said.

“You think of it as field market research. When you prototype, you define the action standard, you see the response of the consumer product, you look at the brand, the packaging, the pricing product itself, and continue to fine-tune and make changes in the prototype phase. And implement that action standard, you can roll it out.”

2. Talent and Culture: Mariwala also focuses on how organizations need good talent and also the ability to empower people who work there, which will inspire them to work and do better.

“You know that to make any organization grow, you need to have a good talent. Actually, you draw on the best talent. And I always have the principle that that person, from the moment I started, this person should be better than I was in that particular functional area. Because if this person is good, you are actually giving you a better job because you will do better than you, because you will do better than you.”

He also stressed that organizations must be able to attract talent and have the ability to maintain the same talent, which is only possible if there is a strong culture within the company.

“To some extent, you have more free time and your talents are good. They feel good too. But you have to attract talent and you have to retain talent. To retain talent, you need to have a very strong culture, which will help keep talent. People should like to work in an organization,” Mariwala said.

3. Good governance: Chairman Marico also focuses on the importance of good governance, not related to the size of the company. He also said he had seen businesses take shortcuts and then destroy themselves in the governance field.

“In the end, I think governance plays a very important role for any entrepreneur, regardless of size. We’ve seen a lot of lovely businesses being destroyed because they’ve taken shortcuts in the governance field. If they start using shortcuts, it will hit them at some stage and that will put them in a strait.”