Aggarwal’s ecosystem thinking sets up a natural question of how individual enterprises actually operationalise resilience day to day. Ajay Sharma, President, Head – Supply Chain Management & Sales Administration, USHA who leads supply chain management and sales administration at USHA, answers with the discipline of someone who has had to translate strategy into daily operating reality.
Resilience must be designed, never purchased later.
Compliance As A Strategic Capability
Sharma frames compliance not as a burden but as a capability that has evolved strategically over the past year, citing enhanced maritime reporting under SOLAS, ESG disclosures, cybersecurity expectations, product traceability, sanctions screening and tighter customs documentation. Each requirement is justified on its own, he notes, yet their cumulative impact can meaningfully raise operational complexity. Compliance becomes a resilience risk, in his assessment, when it consumes disproportionate management attention, creates manual dependencies, slows decision making or reduces agility during disruption. His solution echoes his peers: not less compliance but redesigned processes through digitalisation, automation, standardised documentation and real time visibility, embedded into operational workflows rather than treated as a separate control function.
From Cost Minimisation To Risk Optimisation
On geopolitical lessons, Sharma describes a fundamental shift away from minimising cost toward optimising risk, driven by disruption in the Red Sea, regional conflicts and rising trade uncertainty. Organisations, he argues, must diversify sourcing beyond a single geography, develop multi modal logistics capabilities, establish regional distribution networks, maintain strategic inventory for critical products and deepen supplier collaboration through transparent information sharing. Digital control towers and predictive analytics are becoming essential tools for anticipating disruption rather than merely reacting to it. His central lesson is unambiguous: resilience should be designed proactively, not purchased during a crisis.
Securing The Upstream, Not Just The Factory
Sharma is equally direct about critical minerals, describing India’s import dependence for electronics, renewable energy, electric mobility and advanced manufacturing as a strategic vulnerability where supply disruptions can directly hit production continuity and competitiveness. He sees opportunity too, in accelerating domestic exploration, recycling ecosystems, international partnerships and research into alternative materials, arguing that resilient manufacturing requires securing upstream raw material availability alongside production capacity itself.
Rebuilding Supplier Relationships On Sustainability
On supplier networks, Sharma would extend selection criteria well beyond price to include financial stability, compliance maturity, digital capability, business continuity preparedness and sustainability. For MSMEs, he stresses, resilience is impossible without commercial sustainability, calling for long term partnerships, transparent forecasting, faster payment cycles and collaborative planning to replace transactional procurement, alongside geographically diversified supplier clusters with calibrated dual sourcing for critical categories.
