Mid Manager position review - Typical Indian Marwari company with ZERO professionalism
Pros
1. Kishore Biyani - KB is very smart & a huge, huge reason why the group is where it is today & maybe (fortunately) he will have significant say in next 5-10 years. 2. Leader in Indian retail - If you want to be in retail industry, this company is leader. So, you may get opportunities to understand retail business more than any other company.
Cons
Lots of it. My review is focused on my experiences at mid-managerial position. 1. ZERO professionalism at Lala company - The company works the way promoter family wants to. There is no scope to implement your BIG ideas. They have no accountability/responsibility classification of projects they work upon; so as long as you're in good books; everything is fine. As a result, you won't learn - which is most important thing at early stage of career. 2. Incompetent, deadwood management - Many people have been in same place/domain for far too long. The reason is the limited players in retail - so, there are not many opportunities. As a result, there are a number of incompetent people at mid mgmt level who are born & brought up in Future Group & have developed "it's managable, do it first & then let's see, it will happen on its own, come tomorrow for this small work, do part A now; we will figure out something for part B later" culture in their professional lives. There is no value of time & resources (except money) in the company culture & as result, it's an extremely inefficient company (my opinion). Apart from culture, many of the people are incompetent & are holding good managerial positions - just because they were ready with their surfboards when modern retail wave was taking off in India. 3. HR policies -- This is a joke. There is only one HR policy - everything can change at any time as per the whims & fancies of promoters. They don't spend money for taking care of employees. While it's prudent to make travelling employees stay in self-owned guest houses instead of hotels to minimize cost, the guest houses are shady (although they have very nice food at guest houses), not modern(WI-FI got installed in 2017) & there is parity about stay. There are virtually no employee engagements, no motivation, chindhichor (I don't have a more suitable word in English) bonus/appraisal payment policies. There is no career progression planned for employees; they rotate employees as & when there is gap & project this as if they are exposing you to multiple facets of retail. They had bought in new HR leadership about two years ago who started making some changes; but as the budget swelled, they were let go and the company is back to square one. God bless! 4. Company culture - It's sad. It's extremely thrifty company which doesn't even pay it's suppliers (because of the retail stronghold it enjoys). When an employee leaves, his colleagues & friend congratulate not because of getting better opportunity, but because he is leaving Future Group. There is little motivation among employees. There no openness, transparency, equality in company. A look at top management yells that it's typical Marwari family business. Most of the new crop are arrogant because of what their fathers achieved, posses no value to add to business & some are just detrimental to business they took over.