PHD constitutes Task Force on co-ops; appoints Nahata as its head

The PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry has focussed its lens on the cooperative sector by constituting a Task Force on cooperatives recently. Vineet Nahata, Director Power Gilt Treasuries Inc has been appointed as its Chairman.

Echoing Union Minister Amit Shah’s words, Nahata said that Shah in his address to co-operators at Vigyan Bhawan in Delhi said that cooperatives are weak compared to Corporates and there is a need to uplift the former to the level of the latter in terms of technology and scale.

Taking a cue, Nahata who is a member of PHD and other federations including FICCI, ASSOCHAM, etc made a presentation before the PHD honchos and brought them to view cooperative as a potential sector for the PHD to focus on. Later, the PHD Chamber appointed him to head the Task Force.

Vinit Nahata, who is not new to the cooperative sector is heading Power Gilt Treasuries which is a leading player in the Indian Fixed Income Debt Market and does portfolio management of Provident Fund Trusts and Corpus Fund of cooperative societies.

Talking to the Indian Cooperative soon after his appointment, Nahata said that the aim of his tenure would be to establish a synergy between Corporate and Cooperative. There are areas where the PHD Chamber has expertise and I would like to leverage them out for the cooperative sector, said Nahata.

Naming the skills available with Chambers like PHD, FICCI etc Nahata said that they are ahead of cooperatives in terms of marketing, digitization and management expertise. “Our goal would be to introduce new standards of marketing and related skills in the co-operative sector”, underlined Nahata.

Nahata also said that the PHD Task Force intends to first rope in the big players such as Amul, IFFCO, Kribhco and the likes. “We would soon expand and include smaller cooperatives spread across the country”, he said, adding it would be a win-win situation both for the PHD Chamber and for the cooperative sector.

The Task Force intends to call representatives of different subsectors of cooperatives including dairy, fisheries, bee-keeping, weaving, fertilizer, co-op banks, etc. “We would first hear them narrate their challenges and list their problems. The PHD would see how we can help them”, stated Nahata.

“We also intend to constitute a Committee of co-operators at the PHD Chamber which would have representatives from various subsectors and from various parts of the country. The Committee will meet regularly and would devise ways of finding solutions for problems faced by cooperatives through the expertise of PHD Chamber”, underlined Nahata.

Talking about government support, Nahata said that in the first year the PHD Task Force will focus on its own internal resources and would pitch in areas where it is strong. When we are able to show results, we will contact the ministry for further support, may be from the next year onwards, said Nahata underling that the synergy of corporate-cooperative-govt would indeed make India a 5 trillion-dollar economy.

Nahata, whose company deals in government bonds, has also worked with a few cooperatives such as IFFCO-Tokio, Kribhco and NCDC. “Power Gilt has used its expertise to earn money for them”, claimed Nahata.