Hari Mohan Bangur’s management idea is to pursue correct, innovative work and keep raising the standard of performance—not to treat profit as the only immediate goal. In a February 2019 interview, he put it this way: “Profitability is the by-product, but doing correct and innovative things is more preferable.” The title’s wording, “If you work for excellence, profit becomes a byproduct,” captures the idea but is not the verified verbatim quote.
What Bangur meant by profit as a byproduct
Bangur’s distinction is between the work a company can directly improve and the financial result it hopes that work will produce. In his account, people should focus on doing the right things and finding better ways to do them; profitability follows as an outcome rather than serving as the sole immediate instruction. His point is not that profit is unimportant, but that excellence and innovation are the chosen means of pursuing it.
That formulation came in a Ground View interview published in February 2019. Asked about challenges at Shree Cement, Bangur said: “Profitability is the by-product, but doing correct and innovative things is more preferable.” The article title paraphrases that statement; the quoted sentence is the wording verified in the interview.
How the principle shaped day-to-day work
Raise targets as the company approaches them
Bangur described setting challenging productivity targets, then increasing them as the company came close to achieving them. The point of that practice is to keep improvement from ending as soon as an existing benchmark is met: reaching a target becomes a reason to set a harder one.
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Use challenges to make routine work more engaging
He also said novel challenges helped motivate commercial and technical employees. That matters in a commodity business, where daily work can become repetitive. In his description, a fresh operational problem gives people a reason to think, innovate, and improve instead of simply repeating established routines.
Together, these practices make “excellence” more concrete than a slogan: set demanding productivity goals, keep revising them as capability grows, and make room for employees to solve new problems. The interview presents these as Bangur’s management approach, not as proof that any one practice guarantees higher profits.
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Who is Hari Mohan Bangur?
Shree Cement’s official profile identifies Bangur as the company’s chairman and says he studied Chemical Engineering at IIT Bombay. The company lists him as the recipient of EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 and the Forbes India Leadership Award 2017. IIT Bombay’s profile says he earned a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering in 1975 and has led Shree Cement since 1992.
IIT Bombay’s institutional account describes his work in cement operations, efficiency, energy conservation, and innovation, alongside disciplined capital allocation and continual improvement. That profile offers context for the management themes in the interview; it is an institutional career description, not independently audited evidence that those themes caused particular financial results.
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What the idea does—and does not—establish
Bangur’s interview offers a management principle, not a measured estimate of its financial effect. The material available here does not establish a statistic showing how much this excellence-focused approach increased Shree Cement’s profitability, nor does a 2019 interview establish the company’s current performance. His claim is best read as a description of how he wants people to work: direct attention toward correct, innovative improvements and treat profit as the desired consequence, rather than the only short-term target.
For a personal-finance reader, the useful distinction is between an outcome and the behaviors intended to create it. A financial result matters, but Bangur’s formulation directs attention to the operating choices behind it—what gets improved, how ambitious the goals are, and whether people keep learning after meeting them.
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