OREANDA-NEWS. Rallis team receiving the Porter prize Rallis India, a Tata enterprise, was recently awarded the prestigious Porter Prize for 'creating shared value'. The Porter Prize, named after the renowned thinker, Harvard faculty member and father of modern strategies, Professor Michael E Porter, is awarded by the Institute for Competitiveness, India. The awards ceremony was held at the Leela Kempinski in Gurgaon, and included a talk by the renowned management guru, Mr Porter. Rallis India won this award for being a 'high impact' organisation for creating shared value that has created economic success by redefining markets, products, way of doing business, creating collaborative efforts and in turn creating societal and economic progress.

Companies were evaluated on the following measures:

Social problem being addressed.

Geographical reach and societal activities.

Investments in community development in business.

Linkage between the social problem and company's competitive position and strategy.

After a thorough evaluation, Rallis emerged as a winner for the best organisation for 'creating shared value'. Rallis India as an organisation is prominent for its strong farmer connect. With resilient initiatives such as Rallis Kisan Kutumba (RKK), Samrudh Krishi (SK) and More Pulses (MoPu) program, the company always strives to partner with farmers and helps them to be successful by providing appropriate direction and quality products and services.

Speaking on the recognition, V Shankar, managing director, Rallis India, said, “This is indeed a moment of pride for Rallis India and we are delighted that our initiatives of creating shared value with farmers have been appreciated by awarding this coveted Porter prize. In recent years, we have made a paradigm shift in our approach and this endorsement comes as a great encouragement to us. We are very grateful to the panel and Professor Porter for having acknowledged our strategy in creating shared value and we will continue our endeavour in this direction.”

Rallis's objective of continued focus to strengthen its longstanding relationship with the Indian farmers has helped Rallis RKK to touch a new milestone during the year, with the farmer base crossing a million farmers.

Farmer advisory services (SK) which are deployed in grapes, chilli and cumin crops have helped farmers in reduction in input costs, improved yields and better quality of produce which resulted in better prices. In grapes, the share of exportable produce went up, giving the farmers better netbacks.

The MoPu programme of Rallis has received acclaim at many fora, and under this initiative 1,60,000 farmers were covered during 2012-13, supporting them to improve crop productivity and returns. The public-private partnership project between Maharashtra government and Rallis for pulses is guiding the farmers in deploying the Rallis Package of Practices. The other states where MoPu continues to work are Karnataka, Tamilnadu and Madhya Pradesh.

The Institute for Competitiveness is an independent, international initiative centered in India dedicated to enlarging and disseminating the body of research and knowledge on competition and strategy, pioneered over the last 25 years by Professor ME Porter of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, Harvard Business School, USA.

Mr Porter and Mark R Kramer urge leaders to recognise that “shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success“.