Not many start their company in different fields despite having a very well-established one already in the family. Nilesh started his company named Jaihind Warehousing in 2015, Skybridge Warehousing in 2017, focusing on Warehousing and Supply Chain while his father is in heavy engineering, brother is into petrol pumps. He has always been fascinated with immense structures designed and modified uniquely. He pursued his Civil Engineering in 2007 from Nirma University, Ahmedabad. After his graduation in 2011, he acquired the college placement for L&T ECC – the biggest construction company in India and was assigned to the quality department of a highway project in Chennai. Gaining experience is an important aspect, according to Nilesh.
During his stay in L&T ECC Chennai, he was regularly asked to change his field of work every three months to get essential knowledge and practical experience to work in every area, which was not possible due to corporate constraints. So Nilesh also worked in Ahmedabad during his college days on various construction sites like hotels, residential colonies, dam projects to gain practical experience.
After working in L&T ECC for a year, Nilesh moved to the U.K. in June 2012, where he pursued his MBA in Project Management from Cardiff University, the U.K., and also worked there in companies like RGIS – inventory management, Amazon warehouses for gaining valuable experience into eCommerce back in 2013 well before the eCommerce boom started in India in 2016. Staying there, he saw the ease and scalability of eCommerce in the U.K., and Nilesh had identified warehousing and eCommerce will be a massive success in India and started working towards it in 2013.
After gaining years of experience, a feel of the ground, and a complete analysis of the current market trends, he entered the warehousing field in 2015. According to Nilesh, warehousing is the backbone of eCommerce and the supply chain, and he became a part of that revolution very early on. Nilesh likes to develop a process step by step, which has been one of the crucial points during the excursions of his journey. He looks forward to gaining every piece of information about the local land as the real estate evolves. Daily, he says doing the most challenging task of the day first thing in the morning is highly productive. May it be tough meetings, a tough phone call, answering demanding emails, it should be over before midnight to maximize productivity.
His family has always supported Nilesh in every phase of his journey. During Covid times of April-20, Nilesh was in the final stages of completing a giant warehouse of 75000 sq. ft. But due to the uncertainty in the markets due to Covid, the client backed out from a signed agreement even when Nilesh had already made huge investments and 90% work completed. So he used everything he had in the bag and finally found two even better clients. He bifurcated the warehouse and gave the halves to the eCommerce and logistics company, respectively. Nilesh says getting new ideas and being productive is very difficult when times are hard.
According to him, his first project completed in 2015 has been the defining moment of his career. Nilesh is presently involved with three companies in different core sectors: Warehousing and Real Estate, Automobile Dealership, and Petrol Pumps. Nilesh stated that keeping all the businesses separate – letting each business sustain and grow independently is very important when handling various companies daily. Trusting your team and motivating them, having feet on the ground, meaning customer feedback at regular intervals, and learning from those feedbacks, limited profit margin but volume games, concentrating more on B2B models are the top philosophies he follows.
These philosophies helped him sustain three businesses in the complex conditions of Covid. As a leader, he believes that planning and maintaining synchronization between the team, vendors, and workforce dramatically impacts productivity. Also, identifying the core of your business and never moving away from your heart and continuous research, new learnings helped him finish nine big projects, each better than the previous one. Nilesh designs the warehouse himself, which has led him to face all the difficulties to make him more robust and better for the long run. His goal is to grow from current Gujarat operations to at least two neighboring states of Maharashtra – the most critical logistics center and Madhya Pradesh, which is strategically best suited for logistics and supply chain operations.
“Optimize your techniques and pass on the benefits to your customers because, in the end, execution is the key.” – Nilesh Hinduja.
