A Tea Bag In Hot Water

Give her a clean slate, and she can fill it up with innovative, out-of-the-box ideas. But ask her to tread the path that was used by millions of others, and she will feel completely lost. “I end up carving, and paving my career, and professional path,” she says nonchalantly. Meet the real face behind the happy-go-lucky personality of CMA Harjeet Kaur Joshi, former CMD, Shipping Corporation of India (SCI). Take the example of MV Swarna Krishna, the world’s first oil tanker with all-women officers. Flagged off from JNPT Liquid Jetty, the SCI-owned vessel carried 50,000 tons of crude to Vadinar. This was in early 2021 during the height of the pandemic, when Joshi was the CMD and even normal operations were a challenge for most companies.

The crew was led by Captain Suneha Gadpande, and aided by Chief Officer Usha Yadav, and Chief Engineer Divya Jatin Jain. In a press statement, SCI said, “All seafarers on board MV Swarna Krishna are certified to sail in foreign waters and have the experience of sailing to foreign coasts. The ‘All Women Officers Sailing’ was an event to acknowledge and display the capabilities and competence of the Women Officers who were anyway discharging their duties diligently. The event just served to afford them the visibility that they deserved and to know the confidence that was reposed on them, in celebration of International Women’s Day. These officers are also the Indian brand ambassadors in the global maritime sector.”

It was not a one-off event, a single voyage. “The women officers completed their contracts. The tanker made 20-odd voyages, carrying highly-inflammable cargo. This was not a solo event. A year later, to celebrate the inaugural IMO International Day for Women in Maritime,the 2nd Flag Off Ceremony with an all Women Merchant Officers’ Fleet took place on 14th May, 2022 from Jawahar Dweep oil terminal, Mumbai of tanker M.T. Swarna Godavari,  These exemplary voyages sailed SCI towards promoting diversity and inclusivity in the Indian Shipping Industry while making global footprints.In fact, Joshi regularly generated innovative ideas throughout her career, especially when faced with extreme crisis. Within months of her taking charge as the SCI CMD, the pandemic struck in March 2020. Instead of being paralyzed by panic and fear like most CEOs, she took charge of the situation, and SCI became the first public sector unit (PSU) to prepare a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). As the name suggests, it was a blueprint to continue the shipping operations under various scenarios, including the worst-case one, a shutdown and lockdown.

“We fleshed out the scenarios. What would we do if the employees fell sick, and we had to isolate them? How will we deal with absenteeism due to sickness? What if the operations are shut down? We prepared possible solutions to deal with them,” says Joshi. Hence was born the idea, which was followed by most companies later, around remote working, and remote operations. The immediate issue was to provide digital devices to employees, and empower the latter to use them from home. In a PSU, where most do not have access to such devices, and do not know how to use, training was crucial to make them digital-savvy.

An IT person, or someone with responsibilities and powers, was enabled to remotely take over the digital device of any other employee who was unable to deal with it. “We had a control room to remotely monitor the ships and vessels, which was crucial because we could not afford to have Covid patients on them which would jeopardize lives and commercial operations. One single patient could ground a ship. Thankfully, the infection rate was minimal,” explains Joshi.

But the idea of a BCP was unique. It did not find immediate acceptance, either within SCI, or the functional Board members. The SCI Management did not take it seriously, infact they laughed it off as over imagination by the new CMD. Joshi did not give up and  along with the heads of IT and operations a complete blue print to cater to unforeseen circumstances and emergencies was prepared in time before the lock-down happened and was seamlessly rolled out. The government was so impressed that it urged other institutions and organizations under it to follow suit. SCI became the first PSU to declare annual financial results during Covid, and was also the 1st Navratna/ Maharatna PSU to hold its remote annual general meeting with the shareholders. This was despite a series of mandatory audits, including CAG, that a PSU needs to go through demonstrating the efficiency regardless of Covid. Most importantly, SCI’s profits soared during Covid-19.

In the 2019-20 annual report of SCI, Joshi’s message about BCP read: “We preempted disruptions (due to pandemic) to the operations in two phases, initially, by envisioning the modalities of an alternate Plan to deal with an anticipated confinement which seemed inevitable yet unprecedented, and later, focusing on executing the Plan and realigning it as warranted to the ever-changing requirements. Actions were taken to institute the Work-From-Home mechanism and implementing Shipboard Outbreak Management Plan and the situation on board all owned and manned vessels were closely monitored by the Fleet and Operations Divisions.”

During 2019-20, SCI reported a standalone net profit of over Rs 300 crore, against a net loss of more than Rs 120 crore in the previous year. The operating revenue in 2019-20 was the highest ever in the previous decade, as the company offset the losses in the bulk and container segments with profits from the tanker and offshore fleet. As Joshi wrote in her message, “Your Company has broken records on several fronts, a couple of them almost over a decade….”

In the next financial year, 2020-21, standalone net profit of SCI more than doubled to over Rs 600 crore, which implied that the company remained robust regardless of the pandemic. The figure was the highest recorded in the past five years and, during the year, SCI reported the lowest financing cost in a decade, partly due to dollar devaluation, and partly due to “refinancing of existing long-term loans.” As Joshi proudly noted in her message that year: “The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists; the venerable timeworn Japanese proverb could not have held more truth today in depiction of the agility which organizations embraced to withstand the instability caused by the pandemic and its resurgence. Your organization continued to adapt and change in tune with the variable circumstances and pandemic vicissitudes.” (After Joshi was no longer the CMD, SCI’s growth in net profit in 2022-23 was marginal, at just 1%, against 28% growth in the previous two years).