Mr Rampraveen Swaminathan, visited TAPMI on the 8th of October, 2014 to interact with the students. The session was conducted as a part of the TAPMI CxO Leadership Lecture Series. Mr Rampraveen is the President of the International Paper Inc, and serves as the MD and CEO of the International Paper APPM ltd. a subsidiary of the mother firm.

He has more than 15 years of experience in the field of Strategy and General Management. Mr Rampraveen is an alumnus of TAPMI with an MBA in Finance. He set the context of the talk upfront by saying that the two topics he will be talking about will be the Company and Leadership.

He went on to tell about International Paper Inc, and its history. Established in 1898, it has operations in 24 countries and has more than 3000 employees in India. It acquired the Andhra Pradesh Paper Mills (APPM) in the year 2011 to form the Indian subsidiary firm International Paper APPM ltd. The revenue generated from its India operations is $0.4 billion, whereas the revenue generated from global operations is $34 billion.

They have a B2B model, wherein the business is segmented into the following divisions:

Industrial Packaging
Consumer Packaging
Printing Papers
Distribution
He spoke about the “Sustainable Forestry” philosophy that is followed by International Paper, as per which for every tree they cut, they plant four trees so that the environmental balance can be established and sustained. With this they have been able to grow wood and agro land and forms a major chuck of their Corporate Social Responsibility.

He then spoke about his experience and what it takes to be a successful leader. He said for a leader it is very important to be able to deal with Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. The major values that should be demonstrated by a leader are Courage, Higher Ambition and Entrepreneurship. He said that leaders should have learning agility, network centricity and diversity.
He ended the lecture by saying that, “It is always necessary that we do what is right, rather than doing what is convenient”. The lecture ended with the TAPMI Placement Forum, extending the vote of thanks to Mr Rampraveen for taking time out of his busy schedule and addressing the students of TAPMI.