Vineet Agrawal
President, WIPRO Consumer care and Lighting, India

"We share a long and valued relationship with Bala. We have had the benefit of his strategic orientation, customer and market understanding, and the ability to come out with refreshing and innovative approaches for our brands. It was with Bala, that for the first time, we saw advanced Account Management practices from an ingredient supplier. We were always impressed with how Bala and his team went beyond the brief, to help create wins for us in our business. Our comfort was high enough to share internal plans - which we would never share with any other supplier, because of the value that Bala and his team would provide, and the fact that they would maintain confidentiality."

Sumit Bhasin,
Director of Fragrance Development Worldwide, P & G Prestige Products &
Deputy Chairman, Fragrance Foundation

The capability and leadership position Bala had built for his company in India was tremendous.

Tim Schaffner
Former Global President, Symrise Inc., USA.

Bala was given the responsibility of globally managing a new Account management initiative, including new processes and softwares, with clear targets for savings and efficiency improvements. He not only brought in the required renewal of the systems and processes and achieved the savings, but also connected the different parts of the organization into an informal network that coalesced into a company emerging from a complex merger. Even though Bala had mainly regional experience before, his strategic thinking, a deep understanding of Account Management vistas and a quick grasp of our global markets helped simplify the design and implementation of our global exercise."

C. Venkat,
CEO, EMRI, founded by Satyam Group, India.

When we started our company, Bala was tasked to lead one of the divisions. The slate was clean and everything had to be built from scratch, including an appropriate localisation of our approach, coming from a global company with over 100 years' existence. The record speaks for itself. In six years, we became the market leader and were paying out 100 % dividends by the fourth year. Clear segmentation of our markets, appropriate tailoring of our services and products, expanding account management to even board level engagement with our key customers and rigorous execution were some of the cornerstones of how Bala grew the business beyond the expectations of the top management."

Mukul Deoras,
Managing Director, Colgate Thailand, Bangkok

"Bala always brought a slew of solutions covering our whole business rather than just the task that he was briefed about. As a customer, we managed to find more relevant ideas at the end of our interactions than in the beginning. He and his team broadened the vistas of how to deal with a large customer, with diversified portfolio. This almost always led to a lot of win-win situations."

Winston Pereira
Director, Homecare Development Asia, Unilever

"Bala and his company overcame the disadvantage that the company was historically not a natural supplier to Unilever. Over the next few years, they not only owned the fragrances for many of our brands, but also redefined some of the status quo of how we managed the Perfume portfolio. If I have to single out, I would consider the host of new ideas covering all aspects of our brands as the key to the expansion of the relationship. This was redefining Account Management and Sales to a long term attitude."

Bernd Kirchhoff
Managing Director (Retired)
Symrise Asia Pacific, Singapore

"Thanks to his visionary approach, his professional focus and excellent human relations, Bala and his well motivated team succeeded to become the No 1 supplier in India. This was a most outstanding achievement, made possible in spite of stiff and entrenched local and international competition" .