Diamonds in the rough

They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend. That’s certainly true for R Kanchanasumathi. Working at Dimexon’s Coimbatore-based diamond cutting and polishing company literally gave her a life. In 1993, when Kanchana first joined the organisation, she had little to call her own. A fatherless youngster for whom the job at Dimexon, initially as a data operator and today in executive production, brought hope and the chance of finding a groom.

Today, Kanchana has not only acquired an MBA from Periyar University, but she is also part of the management at the factory and handles the pipeline for the special Forevermark diamonds. “There is a difference in handling 20 people and handling 200, and I thought I needed to upgrade my skills in keeping with my new responsibilities. I am a better leader today,” says the 39-year-old of her HR specialisation she opted for during her MBA.

Kanchana and her 3,500 colleagues at Dimexon handle diamonds worth crores of rupees — including the crown jewels of the Forevermark line, work on the special Dimexon 81-facet Decagon, with its perfect heart-and-arrows formation — without getting carried away by the glamour of it all. Nor are they carried away by the fact that many of these diamonds find their way into luxury brands Gucci or Cartier’s jewellery and high-end watches.

“Almost everyone we come across asks us about the ‘wow’ factor since we are dealing with diamonds. But after so many years, it is difficult for us to think like that,” says Revathy, executive producer at Dimexon, who holds the distinction of being the first person to handle the big rocks — 1-5 carat diamonds. She was the first to cut and polish diamonds of this size at the Coimbatore factory more than a decade ago. That’s because the women have been touched differently by the stone; in Dimexon’s Coimbatore factory, diamonds have played a big role in the economic empowerment of almost all the women staff.

When Dimexon began this factory, it had only a handful of women, Vimla being one of the those early starters. Today, they form the majority of the workforce (there are only 250 men on the rolls). Many of them are strong second pillars to their household economy; some are even the sole bread earners. In the days when the textile mills of Coimbatore went through a downturn, Dimexon played a life-saver.

As the textile town’s families gained confidence about women’s safety at the diamond factory, the women workforce increased. Today, there are women who have been there for close to two decades; who have married while work-ing at Dimexon, had children, taken loans to buy houses, bicycles, cars and even educate their children and themselves. “The biggest empower-ment is that almost three-fourths of us own our own houses and many have their own four-wheelers,” says Revathy. A fact they all reiterate.

It all started with a desire to differentiate from the competition and provide employment to locals. When a young Pankaj Mehta, chairman of the near-Rs 2,000-crore Dimexon Group, envisaged a factory with a large woman workforce three decades ago, it was because he found “women have a different eye for detail, are precise and very dedicated.” He adds: “I saw that they stood out considerably, and always on merit. Even when benchmarked against the globally-renowned Belgian workers, they stood out and their output was better too.”

Clearly, gender was never an issue here — a fact endorsed by Mehta’s 36-year-old son Rajiv, the current CEO of Dimexon, who says having more women leads to zero pilferage, near-zero talent migration and considerable knowledge transfer. For Mehta junior, who looks after the factory, his father’s vision of both setting up a unit far away from competition and employing a large number of women, were moves much ahead of their time.

In the late 1970s, Coimbatore’s textile mills employed some women, but their ratio to male workers was negligible, and they were mostly engaged in peripheral activities. Conservative families, typically, preferred not to send their girls to work in the male-dominated factories and industries. Pankaj Mehta’s decision to set up a unit in Coimbatore was indeed a big one, since the industry was centred around Surat and Mumbai. But Mehta senior, during his apprenticeship with the company, realised that polishing diamonds was not heavy or hard labour. What it did require was careful and deft handling of stones, which could easily be mastered by women. “It was then that the idea of employing women on a large scale struck me,” he says.

“Recruiting local talent at our south India manufacturing units was a conscious decision, and the initial efforts to hire women proved successful. We were happy to see them perform consistently, with high standards and output, even when compared to the skilled diamond workers of Belgium.”

Vimla, Viji, Revathy and Kanchana are just a few of the women who have ascended to leadership responsibilities. With their focus, integrity, adaptability and sustained passion to excel, they are a force to reckon with, on the factory floor. Pankaj Mehta recalls an incident from the late 1990s when a diamantaire from a well-known international diamond trading company was visiting the factory, and expressed concern about a particular process.

“He was speaking in English and, to my astonishment, the local woman worker who was performing the job, stood up and politely explained the procedure. She confidently and logically put forth the reasons as to why she thought the procedure being followed was the correct one. Not expecting such high standards of clarity from our employees, he was clearly impressed,” says an amused Mehta.

No wonder, then, that both the Mehtas and their global HR head Shyam Khirsagar, believe the real diamonds in their factory are the workers — even the men. Not surprisingly, the Mehtas are lavish in their praise for their employees. As Rajiv puts it: “Every one of our workers is competent enough to be able to handle any part of the pyramid, if necessary.” Especially, of course, the superbly-able women of Dimexon.

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