DIPALI GOENKA LEADING BY EXAMPLE

Dipali Goenka, one of India’s most successful industrialists, exemplifies how compassionate leadership during a crisis can be a formula for growth

- Anita Panda

Dipali Goenka believes that one should “never let a crisis go waste”. The CEO and joint managing director of Welspun India Limited (WIL), India’s largest exporter of home-textile products, says that the Covid pandemic brought the greatest challenge the world faced in decades and WIL faced the impact too. But, she adds, “Crises are the best opportunity to innovate and reinvent. Even with the coronavirus pandemic hitting businesses globally, at Welspun we have re-purposed our people, products, and processes to align with the changed ecosystem.”

To meet the immediate medical crisis, WIL – a ₹5,400-crore company by annual revenues – provided health and wellness support and round-the-clock medical camps to all the communities around their operations, and even donated linen to Indian Army isolation wards. “We conducted awareness drives, distributed masks and also collaborated with the state government and municipal authorities to provide masks and PPE kits,” says Dipali. In order to protect their 20,000-strong workforce, WIL introduced a fivelayered security framework and an integrated app.