When people ask me about ELGi’s culture, I rarely have a simple one-line answer. We did not build culture at ELGi through workshops, posters, or value statements. We built it through choices.
Many of those choices were not even made as “culture decisions.” They were business decisions, people decisions, and operating decisions. Looking back, those decisions shaped the organization far more than any formal culture exercise could.
Over time, I realized that organizations shape culture through repeated decisions; how they treat people, how they solve problems, and what they choose to reward.
My understanding of this evolved over time.
Before joining ELGi, I worked in the US. Like many people who grow up around family businesses, I was familiar with the scepticism that comes with eventually joining one. People assume the path is predetermined or that opportunities come through family ties rather than merit.
I heard those questions myself: Why leave an independent career? What happens when you join a family business? Does objectivity become harder?
The reality I experienced was very different.
When I joined ELGi and later returned to India operations, I did not walk into an organization driven by hierarchy or entitlement. I walked into an institution that had already made interesting choices around trust, empowerment, and long-term thinking long before I became part of day-to-day leadership. I inherited many of these systems and practices, but more importantly, I learned from them.
One example is how ELGi approached industrial relations.
Traditionally, wage discussions in manufacturing were transactional. Management negotiated on one side, workers on the other, and trade unions typically mediated the relationship.
ELGi took a different approach. Instead of asking, “What should compensation be?”, the organization asked: "What does a good standard of living look like for an employee and their family?"
That thinking led to the basket of goods model. Employees and management worked together to define what families genuinely needed. Shop-floor employees surveyed local markets, contributed inputs, and evolved the framework over time as needs changed.
I inherited this system long after it was created, but I learned an important lesson from it. The organization chose to solve a problem alongside employees rather than negotiate against them. That choice changed the relationship.
Another practice that shaped my thinking was transparency.
For years, ELGi openly shared business realities and performance outcomes with employees. When business conditions changed, employees understood why because the organization had already created visibility and context.
I once came across a line from an employee that stayed with me: "When the company grows, we also grow."
That statement mattered because employees said it—not leadership. Trust becomes real when people feel included in the journey.
I learned a similar lesson from Project Caterpillar, a transformation initiative focused on shop-floor employees. The program focused on capability building, but it also changed the way the organization viewed people and potential. Teams invested heavily in learning, development, and broader opportunities for employees.
The organisation introduced Self-Managed Teams. Responsibilities rotated. Employees became Production Stars and Quality Stars, taking ownership beyond traditional job definitions.
The message was simple: Leadership is not a title. Ownership is not linked to hierarchy and Capability can come from anywhere.
That belief still shapes many conversations at ELGi today. Employees from the shop floor later moved into broader technical roles based on capability and performance.
Another example is the ELGi Vocational Training School.
As experienced employees approached retirement, ELGi recognized that hiring talent alone was not enough. In FY 25–26, we recorded a 0.46% attrition rate among 420+ shop floor employees, with most vacancies arising from retirements rather than employees leaving the organization.
The organization needed people who could align with its way of thinking and operating. So ELGi built its own vocational ecosystem to identify and train young talent before they entered the workforce. The focus went beyond technical training. Students learned communication, teamwork, problem-solving, Kaizen, discipline, and ELGi values from the beginning. The school created a steady pipeline of technically skilled and culturally aligned talent while strengthening long-term capability within the organization.
None of these initiatives started as “culture programs.” They were built to solve practical problems: How do we build trust? How do we create ownership? How do we develop capability at scale? Over time, those decisions shaped the culture.
That is what I have learned at ELGi: culture is not built through statements. It is built through consistent choices.
“At ELGi, we continue to learn and evolve. But one principle remains constant; we build systems that trust people, create opportunities, and allow individuals to contribute beyond their roles”.
Our ambition goes beyond building a successful company. We want to build one of the finest global companies to emerge from India. That journey will depend as much on our culture as it does on our products, strategy, or performance.
Because culture is not what organizations say. Culture is what people repeatedly experience.