Personality: Rohini Thapaliya (57), Padma Shree Group

IT’S QUALITY FOR HIM
Rohini Thapaliya (57), Padma Shree Group
New Business Age, June 2009

A firm believer in quality, Rohini Thapaliya, 57, started assisting his father in their family business of timber and furniture from his late teens. His father, who spent his active years as a magistrate at Bhaktapur, Patan and Kathmandu and also served as Bada Hakim of Doti and Birjung, had started a saw mill in Simara of Bara district upon his retirement in 2020 BS (some 46 years ago). They mainly exported their products to India and also supported some local development works. The business was running well while Thapaliya was enjoying his college years after completing high school from the Laboratory School at Kirtipur in 2024 BS.

But difficult times caught up on them later in the decade following the devaluation and revaluation of the Nepali and Indian currencies. The saw mill lost a fortune, which led Thapaliya to forsake his studies to join his father in the business as a helping hand. He was 18 then.

It was a tough call for teenaged Thapaliya. But, being determined to put the business together again, he went ahead slowly but steadily. He took his time to learn the nuances of the business. In between, he completed graduation in commerce from Tri-Chandra Campus but fell short of finishing his post-graduation. "Now I had to get into the business full time," he remembers. "There was no room for saying no."

Thapaliya took the initiation for upward integration of the business and employed some carpenters from Patan and Bhaktapur, which were and still are famous for indigenous woodcraft. Such was the start of Padma Furniture Factory in 2035 BS which soon became one of the most successful businesses of the time. "We scaled up our production volume to partly substitute the imported furniture in the market and to export a little bit as well," recalls Thapaliya. It was a great revival for an enterprise which had witnessed a period of acute setback. With increasing credibility and popularity, Thapaliya started getting contracts for government institutions (including Singha Durbar), five-star hotels, educational institutions and other distinguished clients. They even exported their produce to countries like Japan and Germany. "We couldn't meet the demand due to the insufficient availability of timber. We had received demand for 50,000 chairs per month from Japan. We had similar orders from Italy. But poor supply of timber ate into those business prospects," he adds.

Before the start of Padma Furniture, quality furniture had to be imported from India in large volume. No local manufacturer could come in between in terms of production volume and eminence. It was no cakewalk for Thapaliya to bear the challenge and to beat it. But he was not the one to give up. He imported modern machines from Italy in 2042 BS and started another furniture plant at Bhaktapur with plans to increase the production volume to meet market demands. "We root for quality and it pays back," Thapaliya maintains. "For me, there is no substitute for quality in business."

The plant bore the sought-after results for Thapaliya but his father wasn't there for long to cherish the good times. He died of heart attack in 2044 BS and it came down on the shoulders of junior Thapaliya to take the business to the next level.

Keeping timber shortage and environmental issues in mind, Thapaliya later imported machines from Germany and started an aluminium plant called Al-Tech Pvt. Ltd. at Bhaktapur. It supplied construction material of aluminium to different institutions, including Tribhuwan International Airport, Hotel Radisson, established real-estate developers and many other organisations and institutions.

In 2045 BS, Thapaliya set up Padmashree Pvt. Ltd., a trading company and through it, he started importingMazda cars from Japan from 1993 AD as the authorised distributor in Nepal. And from 2000 AD, he started the distributorship of Germany's reputed firm Robert Bosch. Recently, when petroleum and power shortage hit Nepal hard, he started importing electric cycles Foton Lovol from China and power generators from DEUTZ, the inventor of four-stroke engine and a leading German company with the history of more than 144 years. Now Thapaliya is looking into the business prospects in alternative energy; bio gas, solar panels and small hydropower projects.

Before remodelling Padma Furniture with modern machines, the unit used to employ almost 300 people but the staff size has been reduced now to 50 as manual work has been replaced by automated process. Similar is the case with Al-Tech, which has its employee number reduced to about 30 from a lot at the outset.

Thapaliya believes in honesty, dedication and the right product. "Quality is the mainstay of organised life, be it in personal presentation, diet, education or anything that matters in life," Thapaliya says about his belief and work ethic. When asked about his shift of priority to trading from manufacturing, he says, "An investor needs to be market-specific. Labour laws here are not helpful for manufacturing industries which require long-term investment. Political instability has paralysed the situation. We brought electric cycles because there was no fuel and we brought generators due to the chronic load-shedding, which, as experts believe, will persist for the next ten years. That prompted us to change our stand, keeping changing times in mind."

During his twenty-year stint with FNCCI at different posts before finally as its Vice President, Thapaliya has always advocated for linking labour with productivity instead of keeping them only under the 'minimum wage' scheme. He believes that there needs to be a cordial relationship between employers and employees for the sustainable development of any nation. He derives an example from a program that he recently attended in Germany where the German Chancellor had said something like: "We should not layoff our skilled and talented people. We should adjust them for now by cutting their work hours. We need to retain them and keep them in form as this financial crisis is going to be over sooner or later. We should and must save the German quality." Now in many companies in Germany, it's four-day-a-week working schedule. "It is fixed out of the mutual consent of workers and employers. We need to have similar spirit also here," Thapaliya stresses.

Thapaliya further believes that the economic policies need to be stable no matter which political party comes to power. "We need to ensure return on investment to local or foreign investors," he says. "Business is a tradition in Western world - companies there have histories of hundreds of years. Here in Nepal, we tend to worship the fast up, fast down flukes. Consistency is the hallmark of business success. And it needs loads of commitment, dedication and honesty without which a business might earn money but no identity, no credibility." Thapaliya has learnt to emphasise on quality from his tours to developed countries. "The sense for quality is in their genes. We need also to focus on our own indigenous products and services like these developed countries do. That is what is called competitive edge and with that comes quality."