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Billionaire Anil Agarwal lists 2 steps to expand business. See post

Anil Agarwal, Chairman, Vedanta

In his LinkedIn post, Agarwal said, "I get asked by entrepreneurs how to expand their business. I tell them to get these two things right - empower your young talent and let your local people lead."

Agarwal gave an example of another bankrupt company that he learned about in the 1990s. The company was called Copper Mines of Tasmania in Australia. He said, "I flew from India to see if I could acquire it. I was advised that it was risky but my faith was strong."

"I remember I had gone to meet the Premier of Tasmania to close this deal. I wished him namaste and showed him my turnaround plan. I did not know fancy English but knew enough about soil and mining to convince them. He decided to give the plant to me, and I put in $2.5 million to lock in the deal," the post added.

After acquiring the plant, Agarwal did two things.

Firstly, he was made general manager of the plant as head of the company. Agarwal said, "We empowered this young man to do things his way. The kind of passion and dedication with which he worked, I hadn’t seen it even in the CXOs of that company."

Secondly, Agarwal downsized the company with only 3 people in senior leadership, while the rest of the company was entirely led by the locals.

His post said, "Jaise doodh mein cheeni milao toh uski mithaas badh jaati hai, bilkul waise hi, when setting up your business away from home, you must work with the locals to bring the best results."

In the first year, Agarwal revealed that they made $25 million in profits and continued making profits for the next 10 years. Thereby, he added that "we trusted our local people to lead and gave young talent the freedom to run things…"

Further, his post said, "Our success in Australia changed everything for us. This led to substantial growth of Vedanta…to be continued."

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