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Photo Concern Managing Generation Change
The Nepali photography industry has hugely expanded with the entry of some big players in the recent years. How is Photo Concern (P.) Ltd., the old guard of this industry, doing in the changed circumstances?
When Srijana Thapa (now 27), granddaughter of DB Thapa (now 73), the founder and Chairman of Photo Concern (PC), started managing the family business about two and a half year ago after being awarded a degree in business management from a college abroad, she had some fresh ideas to introduce in the company’s management. But her enthusiasm was dampened when the employees who had been in the company for a long time (some from 1960, the year it was established), were not willing to take orders from anyone other than her grandfather. Even senior Thapa would take sides with the employees.
It was a clear case of generation gap and resistance to change but Srijana was able to manage it by becoming accommodative.
Though her grandpa still plays an active role in the business, he is limiting himself to the technical aspects, such as quality control, granting more responsibilities to Srijana who is now completely in charge of the management. However, he can be interfering sometimes though he says that he is happy with the younger generation. The trick was that Srijana learnt from the old generation and that knowledge helped as the platform to introduce her modern marketing ideas.
Typically senior Thapa views his business achievements in terms of the contributions he has made to the society through his business, rather than in terms of profits he earned or the expansion in business achieved. Those employees who are his contemporaries share his views. Srijana got a valuable break by using this sentiment to implement her ideas, when Eastman Kodak, which is represented in Nepal by Photo Concern, proposed to promote the Kodak brand in Nepal by launching a scheme under which Rs. 2 from each order that Kodak Express outlets receive for developing films and printing photos would be contributed to the Nepal Cancer Relief Society (NCRS).
That was soon followed by the introduction of the discount card (Photo Concern Privilege Card), which again pleased the senior generation as this, to some extent, matched with their views in philanthropy. That was followed by the publication of Photography Digdarshan, a book on the science and art of photography, which was aimed to help photography enthusiasts. The most recent example in this connection was sponsoring the exhibition of photos by photojournalists, thus helping this sector of photography to grow.
While the old generation was happy because of the charity aspects of these activities, Srijana was happy for the help these activities provided for the growth of the photography industry in the country.
Though these developments helped Srijana to get herself heard in the company, she had other ideas to implement as well. For example, there was a need for the introduction of modern management style in the company, and the old guards had to be convinced about the need for such a change.
How did she go about it?
“By introducing some motivational programmes,” is her reply. For that she introduced a number of awards – the Photo Concern Family Award and the Best Staff of the Year Award. She also introduced the Life Time Achievement Award of Rs. 100,000 for those who completed 44 years in the company and Rs. 50,000 for those who completed between 20 to 25 years.
That was followed by the provision of training opportunities outside the company. Altogether 45 persons have been provided such training so far, she informs.
Apart from these she also introduced some demotivators, she says. “I threw some people out as they were not changing themselves or helping in the changes being introduced,” she says. The result is that she is now in complete charge of the company.
The decentralisation programme she started has now been firmly established, she says. All the departments now have department heads and this has made it much easier in corporate communications and decision making. “The company now really looks like a company.”
Industry Focus
“Being the oldest surviving firm in this industry with a reputation for quality, we would like to see further growth . So our focus now is not so much on our own growth but mostly on the growth of the entire industry. When the industry grows, we will grow automatically,” says Srijana. Her explanation is simple. The photography industry has various fields such as portrait photography, press photography, outdoor photography etc. While PC is specialised in portrait photography, the industry will have a healthy growth only when all these other aspects of the industry grow.
That explains partly why PC is not worried about the growing competition. The newcomers, some of them established by former employees of PC, are specialised in different fields, other than portrait photography thus leaving a sort of monopoly to PC in this field, at least in the upmarket segment. “The number of our customers is increasing despite the appearance of new players on the scene. In fact the number of quality studios is still not sufficient,” says Srijana and her grandpa also shares this view.
It is not, however, likely that the more upmarket colour labs and studios would open up fast enough. The reason is the prohibitive initial investment requirement, which Thapa senior estimates in the range of Rs. 500 million. It is very high amount to arrange, and if anyone comes with this investment, he would have a tough time in getting a reasonable return on that big investment, he opines.
PC was established in 1960 with a studio at New Road, the present day business hub, where it is still located. However, back in 1960, the land was easily available. “The landlord was happy that the surrounding areas would be clean if I opened the studio there and he was reluctant to accept rent for that space,” recalls Senior Thapa.
Though there may be other claimants to the adjective of pioneering photography business in Nepal, Thapa undoubtedly is the pioneer of cinematography in the country. Till then, if anything were to be filmed, the shooting units would come all the way from Calcutta. Being trained in cinematography in Bombay (now Mumbai), the centre of the Indian cinema industry, Thapa saw a business opportunity here and started providing these services. But as the manpower was not available here, he used to do the shooting, editing and even the recording on his own. He was also involved in the shooting of Maitighar, the first feature film produced in Nepal by the private sector, and a number of other movies.
When the government decided to privatise the motion picture production company, Thapa took the majority holding and now the company is a sister unit of PC. After the unit came into Thapa’s hands, the number of movies coming to the unit increased to 60-70 per year from about two or three.
Thapa’s PC is also the first one to introduce automatic colour labs in the country. When a number of other players entered this business, the ensuing competition started hampering the business and Thapa took the initiative to form an association to ensure uniformity in quality, price and service. “But it was not a cartel as our focus was on reducing the price rather than on increasing it,” says Thapa. The main issue was maintaining the quality as the major customers in this business were tourists who were quite satisfied by the quality and price of developing and printing photos in Nepal. “It would not be wise of us to let this customer group slip away as a result of price undercutting among the colour labs. If you undercut prices, you may come to a situation when you have to compromise on the quality. As a large segment of Nepali customers was not conscious about the quality, such price undercutting would be attractive for some colour labs, but the tourist customers, who are normally more quality conscious and ready to pay a good price for quality, would be lost, thus there was the risk of the entire industry being destroyed,” says Thapa explaining the background.
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PC has advantage over its competitors also in terms of the employees. “Most of them are personally trained by me and they have become artists over the period, not just technicians. Moreover, I still look after the quality aspect myself. So, the newcomers will not be able to compete with us,” he adds.
To improve the quality of its employees, PC has introduced a spiritual training programme. Every day, the staff members are encouraged to attend a meditation session on a specially appointed hall inside the office, and this has helped in improving the psychological profile of the staff, according to Thapa.
With such a strong brand name, why is PC not benefiting by awarding franchise? Replying to that query senior Thapa reasons that it would be difficult for him to monitor the quality in all the franchises. “It is like a man having many wives, or a doctor having many clinics. You cannot do justice to all. It is physically difficult to monitor all those franchises,” he says. However, Srijana says that she is thinking of developing an arrangement, which would satisfy the quality concerns of her grandpa while helping the company to harvest higher returns from the equity that the brand Photo Concern commands in the market.
That should not be much difficult looking at the already successful experience of Kodak Express, the name given to the outlets that develop Kodak films and provide the printing services as well. So far, Kodak is the leader in this business with 144 Kodak Express outlets, while its nearest competitor Konica has around 60 and Fuji around 10. According to Srijana, a quality team visits every Kodak Express outlet that are outside the Kathmandu valley at least once a month and for ones that are in the valley every fortnight.
Shangri-La now a 5 star
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Prasidha Bahadur Pandey
MD, Shangri-La Hotel |
The capital city now has seven hotel properties, which are rated five star, after Shangri-La Hotel received the coveted rating in May 2005. Though the upgradation comes when the hotel is celebrating its silver jubilee, the company is not playing up the achievement.
“It does not make much differeknce to our business as we were already getting the highest room occupancy and average room rate in the country even before this – much higher than the other five star hotels,” says its Managing Director, Prasidha Bahadur Panday.
Shangri-La was not formally categorised as a five star property in the past as the earlier criteria required 120 rooms and Shangri-La has only 100 rooms. Now the criteria are based more on quality than on the number of rooms and this upgradation simply recognises that, he says.
Established in 1985 when it was very difficult to get rooms in good hotels, Shangri-La focused on quality from the very beginning. The name was suggested by the famous travel writer of that time Desmond Doig. The most prominent and distinguishing feature of the hotel is its award-winning garden with a pool fashioned after a 16 th century royal bath. “We developed the garden as an art, not as an ordinary garden and the hotel as a distinct property, not just another formula hotel,” says Panday.
While other top-level hotels in the city are now focusing on conference business, Shangri-La has not felt the need to do so. The reason being its consistent good occupancy, though Panday does not want to reveal the exact occupancy rate. “Conference business may give us some crowd and additional revenue, but we have not paid much attention to that but have focused more on quality service to our resident guests,” says Panday.
Some additional facilities added to the hotel recently are the new fire alarms, 30 rooms with wireless access to the internet and a health club. Similarly, the hotel has added a Jazz Gourmet restaurant serving authentic continental food. “Though the market has several specialty restaurants like Chinese, Italian, Japanese, we felt that there were no authentic continental restaurants, hence Jazz Gourmet,” explains Panday.
On the management end, the hotel has developed a full-fledged in-house training facility and a sales and marketing department. “The objective of our new marketing department is to sell not only the hotel but the country itself as a tourist destination,” he adds.
Shangri-La is running a resort hotel in Pokhara as well and it gets about 30 percent of the company’s business from Pokhara. While Kathmandu has some 300 employees, Pokhara has about 150. The company has a policy to train its employees on its own rather than hiring trained people from outside. “This way we have been able to inculcate the culture of quality service in our people,” he further explains.
The company was planning on a joint venture with Banyan-Tree (a famous resort hotel brand) to set up a resort at Begnas Lake, but the plan has been postponed “due to the present situation of the country”, as Panday puts it. Similar was the fate for a Safari Resort project at Meghauli of Chitwan. In this connection, Shangri-La is also in close contact with Oberoi Group of India for the development of luxury hotel property in Nepal. “Once the situation improves, these projects will fall in line,” he says.
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