Jogy Paradiyil Thomas, Kore Communities: Inspiring new trends

Years of working in the industry, your contribution reflects versatility and volubility. What has influenced

your decision making process at various stages?

I believe in trying to maximize the shareholders wealth without compromising the interest of other stakeholders, be it lenders, customers or vendor. My decisions and actions are guided by this.

A project or an accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career?

One project that stands out is the delivering of quality expandable independent housing project in a tier 3 city at a unit price of Rs.10K. The challenges include non-availability of basic infrastructure like sewage treatment plant or disposal system, quality electricity supply infrastructure, drainage system or even water supply provision by the Government in 5 Km radius of the project. Overcoming these challenges and delivering the project within the budget, timeline and ensuring that the experience of the residents is good was a big challenge. Success of this project motivated others to take up similar projects.

How do you integrate corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility as a part of your business strategies?

In my view, the corporate social responsibility starts not with spending part of your profit for social causes, but it starts with designing and delivering projects/ product with focus on reduction of its negative social/environmental impact, even at the cost of profit. In other words, spending extra to negate adverse social/ environment impact of your project, even though such expenditure is not mandated under statute. On mandatory corporate social responsibility spending, my choice of area is working for social upliftment of underprivileged of the society by supporting education and health care.

What has been your driving force or philosophy in life?

Change is inevitable and be prepared to adapt to change. Challenge yourself every day to do better.

What are the other philanthropic works you are involved in?

I am actively supporting a charitable trust, which is focused on providing medicine to poor patience (mostly cancer) and also supporting the family of such patience in the absence of other bread earning members in the family. The support includes, food and basic needs to the family members, educational assistance to their kids etc. The idea is to support them as they are battling the illness, ensure that the family is taken care of (in terms of its basic needs) and ensure that they are able to stand on their own feet over a period of time. If the patient didn’t survive or recover fully, different plans are put in place to take care of the needs of the family.

How do you define success and how do you measure up to your own definition?

A business leader is expected to provide sustainable growth to the organization and ensure high levels of employee and customer satisfaction. Investors put their money in your organization to earn profit and there is an implied promise from the leader to deliver that. Success to me is achieving the above objective consistently. I challenge myself time and again to achieve this objective and I do believe that I am consistently successful in this regard.