Employees Get Cars, Flats And Jewellery As Diwali Bonus 

Surat: About 1,200 artisans and engineers from the Rs.6,000 crore Harikrishna Exports will have a blast this Diwali as they receive cars, flats and jewellery as bonus from the company.

Harikrishna Exports is a diamond firm in Surat. Its chairman Savji Dholakia surprised his artisans and engineers on Sunday by asking them to choose between a car, a flat and jewellery as their performance incentive. From the employees who qualified in what the company calls a "loyalty programme", around 500 employees opted for a brand new Fiat Punto, 570 for jewellery and 207 chose a flat.

Taking pride in becoming the first company in the world to offer performance incentive valued at around Rs 3.60 lakh to each of the 1,200 diamond workers, Salvi Kaka, as Dholakia is affectionately known in the diamond circles, attributed the realization of his dreams to his workers' efforts and praised them for achieving targets that were set for them.

Dholakia said his company paid a total of Rs 50 crore worth of incentive to the workers this year. The company had started the "loyalty programme" in 2011. In the first year, three artisans were gifted cars. Last year, around 72 artisans were given cars for achieving their annual targets.

The fact that many of those who got cars don’t even know how to drive, has however not dampened their excitement.

Typical of a rags to riches story, Dholakia who is a native of Dudhala village in Amreli district, came to Surat in the late 1970s in search of a job without a penny in his pocket. He then went to his uncle and borrowed money to start off the diamond business on a small level. After years of struggle, he established Harikrishna Exports in 1992.

The total business of diamond industry is estimated to be worth 20,000 million USD. Surat which is said to polish 90 per cent of the world’s diamonds, has nearly 4000 polishing units employing over five lakh workers mainly from Saurashtra, north Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.