The Sanmar Group​,

With its corporate headquarters at Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu
state in south India, has set the benchmark for global partnerships in niche
technology areas.
The group has significant or majority holdings in all its businesses.
These businesses are grouped and managed in industry segments as
follows:

·​ ​Chemicals
·​ ​Speciality Chemicals
·​ ​Shipping
·​ ​Engineering
·​ ​Metals

Professionally managed

Sanmar’s businesses are professionally managed, thanks to the group’s

ability to attract, motivate and retain high calibre staff. Ownership and
management have been separated through a series of top level initiatives,
including the formation of a broadbased, empowered Group Corporate
Board, which oversees all businesses, including strategies and policies. The
businesses are managed by professional managing directors, with highly
qualified managers working under them.

Group Strengths

The Sanmar Group has over three decades of experience in running and
managing a large industrial organisation with multiple businesses.
The group’s innate strengths include:
1.​ ​An ability to source, assimilate and apply complex technologies in
different fields.
2.​ ​Leading edge HR practices and a reputation as a preferred
employer
3.​ ​A high level of IT integration with an SAP ERP platform across
businesses
4.​ ​A global outlook highlighted by successful JVs with world leaders,
and a high level of cross border trade

Joint Ventures

A unique feature of the Sanmar group is that it has several successful joint
venture relationships with leading international partners, both large
corporations belonging to the Fortune 500 and small companies operating in
niche technology areas. Many of these joint ventures are long standing ones
with some close to 30 years. Sanmar’s success in establishing and managing
joint venture relationships has been recognised and its Chairman, N Sankar
has been asked to speak at different fora on the principles the group has
adopted to operate these joint ventures and promote continuing and
successful interaction between the partners. The following extracts from
these would highlight Sanmar’s philosophy in addressing joint venture
management.

​ he necessity for both partners to accept that their gains will flow
T
only from the gains of the joint venture. The joint venture should not be a
vehicle by which either Partner harvests profits for itself – by selling agency
arrangements or preferential price supplies or by off-loading unrelated
expenses/ by charging corporate overheads.

Both partners should appreciate the need for the joint venture. At any time
that one partner feels that the other is superfluous, then the end is in sight.
There should be free and transparent flow of information on product
developments, access to technology, technical and marketing support and all
managerial and business support to the joint venture, even if it were only a
small business.

The partners should clearly agree on the way the joint venture will be
managed. The Primary operational management should be with one of the
partners, who will be accountable to the other.

It is important that both partners work towards a system based on trust and
transparency. Obviously, when the joint venture is set up, a legal document
replete with do’s and dont's has to be drawn up, but if that document has to
be referred to frequently to decide who can do what, then it means that
there is something wrong.

For the on-going operations there should be appropriate interaction at

different functional levels. For managerial decision-making on important
issues that call for the involvement of both partners, there should be a
clearly defined high level contact at either end.The important thing here is
the level of comfort on such ‘important’ consultations.

To make for the long term success of the joint venture, it is also important
that both partners are equally able to service its growing need for capital as
the business expands.......support the joint venture with capital and other
financial and managerial resources and should also clearly agree to share
the responsibility for losses.