HYDERABAD: Plan. Prepare. Perform. Reads a flyer at the plush front office of Aparna Enterprises Pvt Ltd, Jubilee Hills. Aim. Act. Achieve. That’s the one next to it. Respect a woman. You’ve been brought to life by one. Let’s Double, reads another. Beyond these posters and flyers and a wall with their product inventory, there is nothing loud or in-your-face at the office of Aparna Enterprises Limited (AEL), located in the leafy bylanes near Peddamma Temple.
Success speaks for itself, believes Aparna Reddy, Executive Director of the manufacturing & fabrication of building material segment of Aparna Group, the parent group which started operations in 1990 and achieving a revenue of Rs 1,700 crore in the 2017-18 financial year. She keeps the business journos busy with her new milestones and this time around (June 2018), it was to announce plans to invest Rs 200 crore on expansion over next three years and setting up a Felspar unit in Kakinada next month.
For those of us who don’t have a head for numbers and figures, Aparna heads a business conglomerate in building materials industry with 2,700 employees. Her company, she says, is what provides tiles, ready-mix concrete, uPVC windows and doors to major real estate players in South India. “Since its inception, Aparna Venster (uPVC windows and doors provider), has delivered over 10 lakh windows and doors by 2016 December,” she states matter-of-factly.
While she deals with hardcore hardware stuff necessary for construction, Aparna is soft-spoken and is no-nonsense in her approach and interactions. Dressed in an elegant white shirt and black trousers and simple stone ear studs, she walks in tall with a well worked-out body. “I am tied to the desk from 8 am to 8 pm and my 5.30 am work-out with my personal trainer is my most important ‘prepare-for-the-day-ahead’ ritual that I never miss,” she says.
Mom of a six-year-old boy and 18-month-old twins, Aparna may as well be a real-life model of ads that hail youthfulness and energy. Barring two annual family vacation trips and a Sunday brunch with her husband Ashwin Reddy (Managing Director of AEL), six days of her week and 12 hours of her day are dedicated to working.
A techie with a Master’s from the Indian School of Business (2015), Aparna started from the bottom of the career ladder at her dad SS Reddy’s firm, her namesake company 10 years ago and full time for four years now. By her own confession, she likes to “keep a low profile, but be a high performing person”. Not a socialite like many of her counterparts in the business, Aparna meets the media only when she has something to talk about.
Most recently, she opened Aparna Unispace, a luxury bath furnishing showroom in Hyderabad. In the highly competitive roller coaster world of business, what keeps her going? “Hope, practicality, and excitement of starting new ventures and fulfilling new dreams,” she says. “Even a blow like demonetisation could not disrupt our business as we had our practices and procedures in place,” she says.
Her eyes light up when she talks about Vision 2020. “We want to transform into a company that can provide all building materials and with focus on glass and high-end aluminium. So much excitement ahead.” From a trading company to a manufacturing company, she says she loves the shift the company has taken. Like a true blue business leader, she states, Evolves with every (business) quarter, one tile, one window and one aluminium sheet at a time.” For someone who makes a tile as part of her lifestyle, this vision seems apt.