Revathi Advaithi, CEO of global manufacturing company Flex, talks about the India focus and what it will take for the country to become a global manufacturing hub
Revathi Advaithi was the only woman in her batch at BITS Pilani in the 1980s. People never failed to tell her she had made an unusual career choice, opting for mechanical engineering. One of her professors was sure she would faint in the workshops because there was manual work to be done under intense heat. “And then, two boys fainted in front of me. But I didn’t. I never fainted in my four years there,” Advaithi recollects. Even as she moved to the US, started working in the manufacturing sector and rose up the career ladder, it was “apparent that women don’t end up in manufacturing”. But, she says, it never bothered her. “It required me to work differently, work harder. But I loved what I was doing. I enjoyed being in a factory.”
At 54, Advaithi is the CEO of Flex, a Nasdaq-listed, Singapore-domiciled American manufacturing company that has over 170,000 employees across 30 countries. With over $26 billion in revenue in the fiscal year ended March 2022 and close to $8 billion in market capitalisation, Flex is the third-largest electronics manufacturing company in the world. On July 27, the company announced its Q1FY23 results, registering $7.3 billion in net sales, led by China, Mexico and the US. India, Advaithi says, is among the top 10 markets for Flex.