The very early years Laxmi Mittal spent on the sand dunes of Rajasthan. As a five year old he went to Kolkata to live with his father, do his schooling and college level education. Alongside college education he gained practical knowledge of steel works. Then, as a steel business professional he showed his learning capacity, innate genius and enterprise.
The evolution of Laxmi Niwas Mittal can be understood by viewing it in the following phases or work culture or aspects:
❑ He has specialised in increasing production whatever may be the state or type of steel works he finds ways to increase the output.
❑ After increasing production his next effort is to reduce the price of the end product.
❑ He has created an effective team of marketing experts that creates demand for the Mittal product. After creating demand it sets up an efficient distribution network.
❑ The use of the latest technology and techniques in production and distribution sets him apart from others.
❑ It was Laxmi Mittal who first introduced Direct Reduced Iron technique to upgrade the quality of the steel at low cost.
❑ He was the first one to use liquid steel.
❑ He gave prime importance to the raw material. For enhanced steel production his plants buy scrap in huge quantities besides taking the traditional route of making steel from iron ore. Huge quantities of both items are kept in large stocks as buffer. Mittals were the first entrepreneur who saw iron scrap as raw material. Storage of huge stocks help him insulate the advance order from market price fluctuations. This makes him trustworthy of his consumers. At international level his steel prices are very economic for his buyers. Keeping the production cost down is his speciality. He has a long list of faithful big consumers who bank on him for uninterrupted supply.
❑ Laxmi Mittal is a shrewd steel visionary. He accurately forsees the coming market trends. He knew the scrap prices were going to rise and introduced the D.R.I. (Direct Reduced Iron) technique in his plants fairly in advance besides using liquid steel as raw material.
❑ With steel plants he also bought nearby power plants and coal mines to protect his enterprises from energy crisis.
❑ Of course, he is master of acquisition strategies. With amazing farsightedness he targets the steel plants for acquisition. He foresees future possibilities of a plant correctly better than others.
❑ He runs his steel empire with the assistance of a team of experts and specialists. Every unit is given a target to control production and cost. The target is always kept in mind and discussed is the speed of production to meet it. He keeps in touch with his lieutenants through video conferencing.
❑ His human resources development and worker welfare policies are appreciated all over the globe. It helped him win the acquisition bid of Poland Steel works.
❑ In his steel plants L.N. mittal faithfully follows the international industrial and labour laws. He supports various social concerns like education, health and labour welfare schems. It shows his humanitarian face.
❑ He believes that management must have cordial and harmonious relationship with workers and employees.
Busy schedule
It is but natural for an ordinary person to have a curiosity about the daily routine or schedule of a man who happens to be the fourth richest person of the world. His daily schedule can reveal a lot of background facts about a character.
L.N. Mittal devotes 18-20 hours of a day to his work. He has divided his time in such a way that all the important functions get attended to or gone through.
He starts his day with yoga in the morning and some limbering exercises and stretches. This keeps him fit and ready for action. Yoga helps him mentally relax and banish tensions. It also trains his mind to get into focus as and when required. That is the secret behind his broad smile that keeps his face ever lit up. A satisfied and contented look he always wears. His face rarely betrays any anxiety or tension. A happy mind resides in a healthy body. Even at the age of 58 years his feet are springy, eyes sparkling and oily glow of success keeps the wrinkles away. He does not get disheartened or flustered.
L.N. Mittal reaches office routinely at 8 a.m. every day. In this matter he is very punctual and expects the same of his official executives and workers working for his group of industries.
Once in his chair his mind gets focused on the important business of the day. It is no easy to control and direct steel workers spread all over the globe in 16 countries. But he does not let that fact beget him tension because he has able and competent people on all important stations and post. A task done as a load of responsibility only tires one. But work done in the spirit of karma begets one joy and satisfaction having accomplished something. His burden is far less now since Aditya is taking over more and more of the responsibilities of the business. His task is now to keep an overall view of the entire works and pay attention to the most important projects or reviewing the progresses of the various undertakings. He travels by air two hours a day on an average.
L.N. has become a synonym for success and works for more success. His business sense is ever on the look out for new opportunities and his talent accepts the challenges, turns those opportunities into real gains and success. He does like to spend quality time with his family as his son and daughter are begetting children of their own. But that does not upset his business schedule because karma is life and idleness is living death for an industrialist.
LN’s MIDAS TOUCH : Whatever Midas touched it turned into gold. Laxmi Niwas too has that touch. It sounds an incredible fact that one of the world’s richest persons is born out of scrap.
At the very young age he was introduced to the scrap business. He at once saw his future in that heap of rusted iron fragments. Perhaps it was the work of destiny that he got introduced to something that was going to take him to the top of the world. It is often seem that a person wastes his entire life in doing something he was never made for. For L.N. Mittal everything went according to the script of destiny.
