Partner Article

Dr Rahul Nanda on investing in the UK

Dr Rahul Nanda, global chairman of security firm TOPSGRUP, offers his experiences in investing in the UK.

TOPSGRUP created history in May 2008 by becoming the first security group in India to acquire a majority stake in United Kingdom’s leading security company, The Shield Guarding Company Limited. Shield is one of the largest players in the Manned Guarding space in the UK and amongst the Top-5 in London. TOPSGRUP have proven their mettle in the UK, with The Shield Guarding Company being awarded the prestigious ‘Security Partnering initiative of the Year’ at the Security Excellence Awards 2011 (UK) with a nomination in 4 other prestigious categories. Shield has also won ‘Best Security of the Year’ Awards at the Security Excellence Awards 2009. To get to this point wasn’t easy however, and the cultural merger of the two entities was a real learning experience and eye opener for us all.

From our Global Headquarters of TOPSGRUP in London, we aimed to put in place an aggressive growth strategy for The Shield Guarding Company which will help TOPSGRUP consolidate its market share in key geographies and services in the UK marker. We planned to introduce diverse security related services in Shield in line with the product portfolio in TOPSGRUP. 3 new verticals of business have already been initiated in Shield and we intend to do a series of tick-in acquisitions to consolidate our market share in the UK.

This could and can only be facilitated though the quick and seamless integration of Shield into the TOPSGRUP fold, via set systems and processes to systematically align employees of diverse backgrounds and cultures with short-term synergy goals and long-term performance objectives to create accountability at various levels keeping the intrapreneurial culture of TOPSGRUP in sight. This establishes the basic tenets of our sustainable global corporate culture.

We were extremely aware of the sensitive aspect of the merger, trying out best not to let the acquisition have a negative impact on the firm’s management and overall culture by holding a series of meetings with employees and senior executives to gain a better understanding of their perspectives and outlook. TOPSGRUP were new to this market, so it was pre-decided that we weren’t going to make any abrupt changes in their management and policies. Fundamentally, at first we found that we were running two separate companies with two completely different sets of values and cultures.

We found that people’s acceptance was the most important factor for a successful acquisition and that the corporate culture in Great Britain is worlds apart from that in India. Where us Indians tend to be more aggressive, more optimistic and more speedy, we found that the British often came across as very reserved and distant to us at the earlier stages of transaction. Reaching a decision in a British business context tended to be a rather slow and laborious process. Meetings tend to follow a very particular and rigid structure in comparison to that in India which can sometimes be very inflexible and lead to slow decision making. We personally think that we had a lot of experiences to learn from one another, and this realization on both parts is what finally made the assimilation process friction-free.

Systems have now been successfully put in place to cross pollinate the India and UK businesses with processes, innovation and business practices. There are also designated cross functional teams from UK and India working on various domains in TOPSGRUP. IP in the security industry, being a service industry, is primarily the business processes that are practiced after years of hands on experience in the industry. The best practices of Shield & TOPSGRUP are now being implemented across border to get the best of both the worlds to clients in the UK & India.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .