Four months before Apeejay Surrendra Group turned 100 years old in 2010, We decided to conduct a Festival of Ideas for employees of all Group companies across our business verticals. The objective was to understand from our people how they would like to commemorate the Group´s 100th year milestone. A unique condition was appended to the Festival of Ideas making it tougher – if an idea won funding from the Centenary Celebrations Committee, the employee who had contributed it would have to captain the roll out of that idea across all group companies, no matter where he/she was located, which company he was employed with and what it took to give the idea its final shape.

Hundreds of ideas poured in. All these ideas helped the Centenary Celebrations Committee, led by the Chairperson Emeritus and the Chairman, to formulate the Centenary Celebrations plan. One of the winning ideas came from Chef Sambadan of The Park Vishakapatnam – of designing a common shirt for all at Apeejay and he, a Chef, had to design and coordinate its large scale production! Yet another idea that was a winner was that Apeejay should shun the use of plastic and so, an eco-friendly tote bag was designed to package the Shirts Chef Sambadan designed and use thereafter for household shopping and tiffin to work.

And the ´sweetest´ idea of them all was that a cake should be cut in Group Head Quarters, to mark the start of the Centennial and a piece of it should reach every employee, irrespective of his /her location.

Though it was a logistical challenge, about 10,000 identical cakes were ordered, with our Chefs directing the exercise, wrapped in our Centenary colours and delivered to every employee, at exactly the same time that the mother cake was being cut by the Group Management Committee members in Apeejay House on Park Street, Kolkata. We however did change the idea slightly. Everybody got their own identical cake, not just a piece of the mother cake, enabling them to have their piece and take home for the Family too.

There were many more ideas that won and were implemented by the winners themselves. Overall, the Festival of Ideas galvanised an entire organisation towards the celebrations and made everybody feel a sense of belonging.