Vineet Trakroo is the CEO of Evolution Strategy Advisors LLP, a company that focuses on helping clients plan and execute their business goals. Known for his thoughtful leadership skills, Vineet is immensely dedicated to helping clients make informed and beneficial business decisions. Under his leadership, the firm provides high-level strategic advice and planning for clients in a variety of industries and sectors. They develop and execute plans that are tailored to suit each client’s needs. With a unique insight into the complexities of the financial and business worlds, Vineet believes that business is best kept simple.

In an interview with PerceptivX, Vineet shares his vision, his struggles, and the journey that led him to the unparalleled success he enjoys today. Below are the highlights.

 Business simplified. Success multiplied.

 Vineet Trakroo: “Evolution Strategy Advisors LLP (ESA) is a Limited Liability Partnership firm that offers innovative solutions for business growth to large and mid-sized corporates in the B2C sector. Incorporated in India on December 26,2013, ESA is located in Gurugram, near New Delhi, and Mumbai, India. Its mission is to offer realistic solutions in operational strategy and execution and to grow businesses along with change management.

We offer consulting services in three areas: 

• Business Transformation: Restructuring and transforming organizations to grow. Creating new businesses or a new way to do business. This would cover the creation of strategy, organization structure, operating system, governance (review and controls), mentoring team to deliver, working with both top management and operative levels to follow best-in-class industry standards, as well as digitizing operations, leading to a data-driven organization.
• Operational strategy: Partnering organizations to build excellence in core functions (sales, marketing, brand management, distribution, HR, and product management. Identifying challenges that are holding back growth for a business or a division and offering innovative solutions for growth.
• Partnering Executional Excellence: Partnering organizations to execute growth strategies devised by us in areas of sales, marketing, supply chain, HR, brand management, and business analytics.”

Self-started.  Self-made

Vineet Trakroo: “We have been self-funded and have been able to manage our needs with better financial controls. Being a consulting company, we had to have a better solution based on our team size and needs. Our advice is to first get your proof of concept verified at your own cost or with a little help from friends and family. If you can’t sell your business idea to your loved ones and family, it’s going to be more difficult to sell it to unknown people. Once the idea has roots and results, one needs to go out and get funding from people who can benefit more from it. Or from people who can take this idea to the next level with their support and contacts.”

Embedding Technology

Vineet Trakroo: “We have been instrumental in changing many of our clients operations and cultures. This can only come about by explaining to them the benefits of doing things differently as well as ensuring they can implement the strategies created for them. This only happens when we are transparent in our thoughts and can explain why we suggest certain things. Most importantly, we are a team of former CXOs who have been successful in the industry and are now working with clients to improve their performances. This gives us an edge in creating practical solutions as well as the experience of an ex-CXO to drive the solutions.

Technology has been the backbone of our solution, and we have created proprietary business diagnostic solutions to identify the blind spots in business. We have been using cloud-based solutions for the last nine years, along with data analytics and visualization. We can use technology to reach out to every person who can contribute to improving the company’s performance, be it trade partners, employees, customers, or influencers. Our solutions are based on facts, and the facts are hidden in data. Presenting the data in a way that can impact decision-making is our core competency.

Our focus on the B2C industry and ability to manage large business issues have been our strengths. Our superior execution abilities and bringing in change management are delivered through an internationally proven technique based on OKR, objectives, and key results, which is used by the largest tech companies in the world.”

A journey to glory

Vineet Trakroo: “I worked for corporate for 23 years in leading B2C organizations as Head of Sales and or Marketing in Usha International, Cavinkare, Pidilite, and Beiersdorf, which are some of the organizations where I brought in transformative change and grew the business by over 50% in a very short time while managing over 25 large brands for corporates. I also created JVs with Unilever, Coty, and many other international brands. Having grown many businesses, I saw an opportunity in advising organizations on how to grow them exponentially. I started a consulting organization in 2013 to advise mid- and large-sized organizations on becoming globally competitive. One of the first clients was a loss-making faucet brand based in Gurgaon, which was turned around within 12 months with a doubling in sales. Thereafter, ESA expanded into representing international brands, such as Coty, Honeywell, and Westinghouse, as well as many others, for licensing and joint ventures. While we continued to offer consulting in operational strategy for sales and marketing to pharma, automobiles, FMCG, durable, and building material companies. I completed my Electrical Engineering from Manipal in 1990 and joined the electrical industry as a management trainee at Voltas, then moved to ABB to work on power systems. I went back to college to do my MBA in marketing at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai. Thereafter, I headed sales and marketing for a leading edible oil brand, Postman, followed by the head of marketing for Fevicol. I went on to head sales and marketing for Beiersdorf’s India operations in 2001. Later, I headed marketing for Cavinkare as VP and CMO with Usha International. The name Evolution was chosen because that’s what we offer as a solution—we help organizations evolve. It’s the only constant in the universe, as everything is changing for the better.”

Turning errors into milestones

Vineet Trakroo: “The advice we didn’t take initially was to develop an internal system or tech backbone for our business. As we largely rely on analytics and research tools to run our business. This impeded our growth initially, but we corrected it. Further, when our clients asked us to offer execution services for our strategy, we didn’t invest in it. Finally, this too was corrected, and it has given us better business and customer retention. So, our advice to disruptors is to invest in their competitive advantage and keep complete quality control over it; never outsource it. Customer insight and feedback are where your business evolution ideas exist. Listen and implement.” 

Looking Forward

Vineet Trakroo: “Having a strategic approach to doing things and being grounded in reality has been very helpful in this journey to date. Add to that, my sincerity and desire to learn new things have helped me perform better. In the consulting industry, one needs to keep abreast of the latest technological trends, automation, and software that can help us perform better and deliver results to our clients. We are planning to invest more of our time in expanding our offerings to include cultural transformation. We believe that changing strategy will be difficult until the culture changes.We also look forward to expanding to B2B businesses, where the need for change is higher. We have already increased our team size by 40% to target more clients and industries in the current year. We believe we can make a difference to the Indian industry by helping it grow and contribute to the overall economic growth as well as create world-class operations.”