In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Nestle India Managing Director Suresh Narayanan said the company would look at saving costs without having to cut salaries or fire employees.
Narayanan said people have been at the core of the organisation and one of his core objectives was to ensure that they were safe, in a job, and got their salaries on time.
Like most FMCG organisations, Nestle's sales too have been impacted by the nationwide lockdown in the wake of the COVID pandemic, and the company is trying to cut costs to compensate for the drop in revenues.
"My cost management would be more on other costs in the system whether it is in terms of material cost, whether it is in terms of administrative cost, advertising cost as the case maybe wherever I find that the levels of demand are not yet adequate for us to put in a lot more of money behind advertising and promotions," Narayanan said.
"Maybe we look at rationalisation, but I think there are different levers at cost management that Nestle is working through without touching the core area of people because the one thing in the Maggie crisis that I am really proud of is that it didn’t allow a single job to be lost ," he said.
"Even during this pandemic I hope and pray that God gives us the strength to maintain all the jobs that we have got. These are the plays that we will be at in order to ensure that we are competitive," he said.
Narayanan said his company has enormous strengths both in manufacturing efficiencies, and technical capabilities in mechanisation.
"My manufacturing capability today is more than 90 percent with a much lower complement of labour because of the COVID situation," he said.
