The legend lives on

Starting 29 July 2003, the entire House of Tata will celebrate the birth centenary year of the legendary hero of modern industrial revolution in India — the late Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata. When the Tatas celebrate this occasion, the nation would remember one of her Bharat Ratnas that shines as a cynosure in the Indian industrial firmament.

JRD Tata was born on 29 July 1904.

My first meeting with JRD happened on a fine day, when I was working as a trainee in the Tata Trust at Bombay House in the sixties. One day, the train that I used to catch in the morning was delayed, and so I was late to the office.

I hurried along the silent corridor of the Bombay House and waited for the east entrance lift, which was normally used by JRD, the chairman of the group. While I was waiting for the lift, I heard firm, rhythmic footsteps behind me. I turned around. It was JRD. The moment I saw him, I gave up my plan to use the lift and took the nearby flight of steps.

As I covered six steps, the elevator door opened. And JRD clapped his hands to call my attention. He then gesticulated to me, not condescendingly, but with a gentle expression on his face, to join him in the lift. I got in with surprise writ large on my face. He then asked me where I wanted to go. When I told him that I was headed towards the second floor, he instructed the liftman to stop it at the second floor.

Before ejecting myself at the second floor, I thanked him once again and he, with an acknowledging smile and a nod, went up to his office in the fourth floor. That was the first time I met him. This accidental rendezvous and his genuine gesture of concern were an unforgettable experience for me.

Days to cherish
After my training, I joined the PR department in the Bombay House. The chief of that department was S A Sabavala, the PR advisor to the Tata group and the executive assistant to the chairman. Sabavala is one of the senior journalists of India, who was earlier the editor of The Free Press Journal and Asia chief correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. It was a great experience working with him.

Once JRD was invited to be the chief guest for a function at the National Institute of Training in Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, by Air Chief Marshal P C Lal, who was the chairman of the governing body at NITIE. JRD was to deliver an extempore speech as his keynote address.

Normally whenever the chairman or any Tata Sons' director was to attend a function, someone from the PR department will be deputed to cover it. This particular time, it was I who was on duty and I was told that since there will be no press people I had to prepare a report to be released to the newspapers later.

But when I entered the hall, I saw half a dozen journalists whom I knew personally. I wanted to tell JRD about it. But before I could meet him, he was off to the dais. And hence, I gave a chit, informing JRD about the presence of media persons in the hall, to Lal, which was to be handed over to JRD.

JRD started speaking, and to my surprise there were some highly critical comments about the economic policies of the central government. Then I knew that Lal might not have given my chit to JRD. Instantly, I felt that the dailies would feast on his remarks the following day.

Fire fighting
So, after the function I came to office and met Sabavala to inform about this unexpected event. Surprised as he was about the presence of journalists in the meeting, Sabavala asked me to wait in my office, until the chairman returned from the function.

After almost an hour, Sabavala, after meeting the chairman, called me to say that it was my duty to see to that no newspaper carried the highly critical remarks of the chairman the following day.

There were six major dailies. I pulled up my socks and got into action. I met my journalist friends who covered the function from those dailies and literally pleaded with them to delete the critical remarks made by JRD from their reports. It was one of the longest days in my early career solstice. I had a sleepless night.

The first thing in the following morning was to pick up the papers from the newsstand. Scanning through the reports, I was so much relieved to see that JRD's trenchant attack on the government policies the previous day were trimmed down by my friends to appear very natural and constructive in criticism. I took all the clippings and met Sabavala at his office. The good news was reported to JRD. Later Sabavala thanked me and said that the chairman appreciated my initiative.

Dealing with the media
Writing speeches for JRD was a tough job. He was a perfectionist to the core. The speechwriters of the Bombay House would stay very late flavouring his speech, which in his hands would thoroughly be redone. One could see his unique stamp of diction and delivery in each sentence. JRD never minced words. He was against phrases and slogans. He would clear his final draft speech at the last minute, and the PR department would then spring into action to release it to the media.

JRD generally avoided interviews and media exposure. Once Venkat Narayanan, then editor of Onlooker and Free Press Journal (Sunday supplement), wanted to interview him and approached me to get an appointment. I took up his request with the chairman's office. But I was told that JRD had gently declined it. I conveyed this to Narayanan.

That Sunday morning, however, I was surprised to see a front-page exclusive interview report with JRD. When I checked with the chairman's secretary, she said the clever Narayanan phoned up JRD that evening at his residence for a casual conversation. (Normally JRD used to pick up his residential telephone when it rings.) Then I knew it was that lengthy chat, which was converted into an exclusive interview.

The All India Radio (AIR) wanted to have an interview with JRD, who was also the chairman of the Family Planning Foundation of India, as a part of their feature on family planning programmes in India. JRD consented to give an interview. Mrs Bhatia of AIR, with all her entourage and equipment, entered JRD's office and started setting up mikes and other paraphernalia. This annoyed JRD, who said: "This is the whole problem with we Indians; we unnecessarily waste time on things like this."

The interview started and Mrs Bhatia shot her first question without addressing "Mr Tata" to which JRD politely suggested to her that she could begin the question addressing him as "Mr Tata." But Mrs Bhatia tried to explain to JRD that the questions will not be heard at the time of broadcast but only replies, in an edited format.

When JRD insisted on this formality, there was a slight argument over the issue. At that point I told Mrs Bhatia, why couldn't she do as JRD said. That infuriated JRD, who shouted at me to mind my own business. Finally, the programme was aired. JRD's interview was edited to sound as only statements from him as just a part of the whole feature on family planning. That was my last meeting with the chairman.

Tryst with destiny
As a student activist, I had a totally negative view of Indian industrial houses. But later, working with the Tatas, I found that they belonged to a different kind of industrialists with their philosophy of nation building through industrial revolution and constructive philanthropy.

In 1968, I interviewed JRD for Mathrubhoomi Weekly, a leading Malayalam publication, in which I had reported the enterprising industrial initiatives of the House of Tata and how good a corporate citizen the Tatas were. This surprised many former communist colleagues of mine and enraged some other hardcore elements, too.

When my interview saw print, I was on my annual leave at my native place, a village in the outskirts of Thallassery in north Kerala. That weekend I went to Thallassery town, blissfully unaware of the storm in the teacup of the extremists. I got down from the bus only to land in front of some Naxalite leaders. The legendary KPR Gopalan was among them. (KPR, a renowned Communist leader, during his Congress days as a freedom fighter was decreed to be hanged until death by British rulers, was saved from the gallows after Gandhiji's appeal to the British Raj.)

As soon as he saw me, he caught me by my collar and scoffed at me: "When did you become the mouthpiece of capitalists, young man? Are you not ashamed?" The others too were jeering at me. I quietly took KPR aside and sat with him for half an hour explaining about the Tatas and the good work they were doing. He might not have been fully convinced by what I told him, but I could see a positive change in his eyes and facial expression.

A nonpareil gentleman
My career in the Bombay House came to an end. After a short break, I joined the Tatas again; this time at Tata Tea in Kochi. After this, I never had the opportunity to meet JRD, with whom my first encounter was a total surprise and the final was a sting.

Nevertheless each one had a lesson embedded in it. There were innumerable incidents and anecdotes quoted by many writers from the life of JRD that reflect the great personality of this late Captain of Independent India Inc.

Years back, during his visit to the Lockheed aircraft factory in the US, JRD, feeling thirsty, saw two water dispensers — one for the blacks and the other for the whites. He straight went to the one for the blacks. The officials of the factory tried to lead him to the whites' side. But he declined and drank water from the black's side stating that he too was a non-white.

This act prompted the authorities of Lockheed to discontinue the practice of providing separate water facilities for blacks and whites in their premises. Such personality traits of JRD stand even today as exemplary characteristics to be emulated by the entrepreneurs and industrialists alike.

Global face of Indian IT

In a poll conducted by Asiaweek in 2000, the quiet, soft-spoken Narayana Murthy, 58, chairman and chief mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited, and IT advisor to several Asian countries, was selected among the 50 most powerful business leaders in Asia.

The same year, in an online poll by The Economic Times he was voted the best CEO of India. Over the years, awards have routinely found their way to Murthy — the Max Schmidheiny award in 2001 and Ernst and Young's coveted Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2002.

And last year, Fortune, named Murthy, along with his close associate and Infosys cofounder and its current CEO, Nandan Nilekani, as Asia's businessmen of the year for 2003.

Murthy's name is acquiring epic proportions in the Indian infotech firmament for having put the country on the global IT map. He is nonchalant about the accolades he receives for having helped create a prestigious global IT consulting and software services corporate brand headquartered in Bangalore. He has created jobs for thousands of aspiring IT professionals and is admired for his simplicity and a desire to succeed.

Murthy is the chairman of the board of governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore. In addition, he is a member of the board of overseers of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, board of trustees of Cornell University, Singapore Management University and the board of advisors of the William F Achtmeyer Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business.

Narayana Murthy was born on August 20, 1946, in Karnataka, India. He obtained his bachelor of electrical engineering (B E) from the University of Mysore in 1967 and completed his Master of Technology (M Tech.) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur in 1969.

He founded Infosys, as a small software development venture in 1981 along with six software professionals including close friend Nandan Nilekani, the company's current CEO. In 1987, the company set up its first international office in the US. Gradually, the fledgling venture metamorphosed into one of the top IT leaders.

Infosys grew rapidly throughout the 1990s, sharing profits with its employees through stock-options, adopting global best practices and corporate governance, earning Infosys and its founders, particularly Narayana Murthy, the unstinted respect and praise from the Indian IT sector.

No wonder, Murthy was the automatic choice of his colleagues from the industry for the presidency of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) from 1992 to 1994. In 1997, the Tata Group chose him over several others for its prestigious JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award.

The Nasdaq listing in 1999, brought Infosys the funding required to expand its operations internationally, and in 2000, Murthy's dream of seeing his company ranked among the front-runners in global IT became a reality, with the company's turnover reaching $200 million (Rs918 crore)

The same year, Infosys became the first company to be awarded the 'national award for excellence in corporate governance' by the government of India. In FY 2003-04 Infosys created a sensation when it announced its results — it had become the first listed IT company in India to notch a $1 billion-turnover (Rs4,591 crore).

Heading a company of the stature of Infosys, has not changed Murthy's middle-class moorings or life-style much, except for his numerous speaking engagements. He continues to frequent the old Udupi café for his favourite idli and filter coffee.

In 1996, along with wife, Sudha, he set up the Infosys Foundation to execute Infosys' corporate social responsibilities. Sudha Murthy, the head of the foundation, is serious about extending the helping hand equal opportunities for the underprivileged. The foundation spends Rs5 crore ($1.08 million) on charity

The soft aggressor

Sam Ghosh
CEO, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company Ltd.

"At home it is me who decides," says Ghosh's wife Arunima, alias Anu. Nothing strange about that, as wives are the decision makers in most homes. "But when I mull over a decision, I often realise that it was actually Sam's decision that I took. He certainly has a way of wrapping things around me with words."

Not only that. Ghosh's charming ways instantly endear him to every body and at parties the boyish face makes him the cynosure of the fairer sex. "I hate to be with him at parties," laughs Kamesh Goyal, Ghosh's counterpart at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Limited.

Behind that charm and suave tongue dwells the active, shrewd brain of a chartered accountant and a mechanical engineer.

Goyal vouches for that too. "As the Indian representative of the German insurer, Allianz AG, Ghosh negotiated the parting of ways with Alpic Finance with ease, while simultaneously tying up with the Bajaj group."

Assuming the mantle at Bajaj Allianz Life early this year, Ghosh has taken the company three notches up up-from seventh to fourth rank in the life insurance segment (See: Bajaj Allianz Life aims high).

"My target is the third spot among the private sector life insurance companies," states Ghosh emphatically. The competition couldn't have failed to take note.

The 44-year-old Ghosh comes from a well-off family and had a comfortable childhood. Father Subash Chandra Ghosh was a director in Assam Investments and mother Rena was a lecturer in a Kolkata college.

The junior Ghosh spent a good part of his childhood studying in boarding schools first at St.Paul's in Darjeeling and later at Truro School, London before returning to complete his schooling from St Xavier's, Kolkata. Terming the boarding school years as the best thing that happened to him, Ghosh says, "I was a bit homesick at St.Paul's but not when I was in Truro. Twice a year I visited my parents. But the school made me a man at an early age."

An average student during his school days, Ghosh was good at maths while languages were not his forte. "I do know Bengali, English and a little bit of Hindi." At school, he was an active sports person and represented St.Xavier's in tennis and played right-back in the Truro football team.

After school, he enrolled to study mechanical engineering at the London University. While life at boarding school was comfortable and sheltered, university life was different.

"First, I had to look out for accommodation and food as there was no hostel. Second, at school students from all nationalities mingled well, which was not so at the University," he recalls.

To meet his pocket expenses, Ghosh took up odd jobs in a Greek restaurant. "No I didn't learn any Greek recipe'' he laughs.

As a part of his engineering course Ghosh underwent a three-month on the job training at Metal Box in London and Kolkata. To his utter disappointment he discovered that a trainee accountant in the UK earned more than a qualified engineer working in India or in the UK. So, after completing his engineering, Ghosh switched over to chartered accountancy.

Finding his match
Life cruised along for Ghosh till he met Arunima at a dinner. The daughter of a Punjabi couple settled in Botswana (Africa), Arunima was studying for a degree in English in London.

The chemistry between them worked and soon the two started seeing each other regularly. "Our relationship grew steadily. He is a good palmist and would offer to read my future — a ruse to hold my hand," she laughs.

However, their parents had other plans and were on the look out for suitable matches for their respective children. Ghosh's parents even arranged a meeting with a prospective girl in London. "He even went and saw the girl and asked me to take a look at her. I did from a distance," she reminisces.

That's when it dawned on him that Arunima was more than just a friend and decided to propose. "She is caring and nice and that attracted me to her. It was I who proposed," he blushes. The two were married in London, despite stiff parental disapproval.

However, within three months the parents soon reconciled themselves to their children's choice and relatives welcomed the couple when they arrived at Kolkata for a traditional Indian wedding.

With a decent stipend from the accounting firm where Ghosh did his articles and with Arunima starting to work, running a family was not difficult for the two. Completing the accountancy course within the minimum stipulated time, Ghosh joined Ernst & Winnie (later Ernst & Young), where he was posted in the audit and corporate advisory cells.

The Ghoshs, who by now had two children (daughter Pia, now 17 and son Neal, 13) moved on a transfer to Australia in 1996 where his firm audited Allianz, the German insurer's subsidiary.

A year later, he accepted an offer by Michael Diekmann, the current chairman of the Allianz group to join Allianz's Australian subsidiary as finance director / controller.
Since Allianz was setting up operations in the Asia Pacific region, Ghosh applied for received an Australian citizenship.

However, with the liberalisation of the Indian insurance sector, Ghosh became Allianz's choice to steer the group's entry into India.

Relocating the family in 1998 was a major decision. "While the work environment is not very different, the lifestyle posed a major difference," he says. However, they soon acclimatised themselves to the new environment and today Arunima loves India.

Underwriting success
In July 1998 Allianz set up its Indian office. Initially the German group had a tie up with Alpic Finance for the insurance venture. As the venture did not get going, Allianz teamed with Bajaj Auto to start life and non-life insurance companies, with Ghosh at the helm of the non-life venture.

From the outset, Bajaj Allianz General was ahead of many private insurance companies. Apart from the captive group business, the company generated sizeable business and raced to the second slot amongst its private sector rivals.

Last fiscal, the company declared a net profit of Rs21.6 crore on a premium income of Rs480 crore and offered the highest returns to its shareholders compared to other private players in the country.

These aside, Ghosh's major contribution at the non-life outfit was transparency in operatons.

"As the first CEO of the company, he had the responsibility of defining the corporate culture. He chose to be transparent and my job now is that much easier as I am just continuing with the legacy," remarks Goyal, who succeeded him when Ghosh moved to the life insurance company.

Executives at Bajaj Allianz General recall how Ghosh would flash them SMS messages regardless of the hour, the moment he would disembark at the airport at Mumbai or Pune.

In January 2004, Ghosh was shifted to the life insurance outfit and elevated as the country head for Allianz.

"I haven't worked in a life insurance company and the assignment fascinated me as life insurance was basically a retail game."

Heading Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance was the opposite of being with the non-life company; the culture was internally-focused with centralised authority. Its product portfolio was limited to just seven products and the company didn't have a unit-linked policy, which then were gaining popularity for the life insurers.

He redrew the corporate plan and turned the organisational approach around. The product range and the distribution network were expanded. Soon results started to show. (See: Bajaj Allianz Life aims high)

Speaking about his management style, Ghosh says, "I am aggressive. I try to motivate people, give them freedom and direction." Unlike an accountant and a mechanical engineer, Ghosh is driven by sales and is actually a field person who never misses out on a chance to meet clients.

A quick decision-maker, Ghosh is always ready to review his decision and make necessary amendments when required.

"Ghosh is a hard worker and a ruthless delegator. But he is very demanding when it comes to results," says Goyal.

According to Dalip Verma, managing director, Tata AIG General Insurance Company Limited, "I have known Ghosh for the past six years. We are now family friends. He is frank and a nice person to get along with."

As Arunima and Neal live in Mumbai and the Bajaj insurance companies company are headquartered in Pune, Ghosh shuttles between Pune and Mumbai once in two days. "If one takes into account my touring schedules, I actually end up living out of a suitcase."

While Neal studies at the American School in Mumbai, Pia is in standard 12 at a London boarding school. "But he has made the necessary arrangements for Pia to come to India once in eight weeks," says Arunima.

"I do miss not having her here. But it is good for her future," Ghosh adds. As a matter of fact, he also wanted to send Neal to a boarding school but Arunima would have none of it. "I wanted to enjoy watching Neal grow up. With my husband in Pune and daughter in London, life would have been difficult without Neal with me."

A typical Bengali when in matters of the palate, Ghosh loves fish and is also a Chinese food aficionado. "It is the children's preference that decides our eat-out joints. We frequent Royal China in Mumbai," says Anu. As a husband he is caring and levelheaded, says Anu, adding, "I like the complete package called Sam Ghosh."

And, like any other devoted couple, they resolve their differences amicably. "The differences are always sorted out," she says emphatically. To find out how, just read the first paragraph of this article, once again

A Cornell-educated Madisar Mami

Jayashree Vaidhyanathan
Director, unit head of business consulting services, HCL Technologies
Even in the brave new wired world, managers are mostly male. But things are changing. The 34-year-old Jayashree Vaidhyanathan, director and unit head of business consulting services at HCL Technologies in Chennai is setting new trends in this otherwise conservative city.
The Nadia Comaneci of HCL Technologies scores a perfect 10 not only from her male bosses but from her peers and juniors; even from her husband, former journalist Ram Venkatraman, now with Sun Microsystems India. Recently, the Madras Management Association (MMA) selected Vaidhyanathan as the outstanding woman manager of the year.
Gushes senior consultant Akila Moorthy: "For the past two years I have been working under her. She is very considerate, approachable and an easy person to work with." Programme manager Sriram Anantharaman adds: "She can relate to others easily as she is sensitive. It is not a quality that is acquired very easily." At the other end of the corporate pecking order, her boss, associate vice president T S Krishnakumar, concurs: "All the service offerings of the consulting division were thought out by Jayashree. Her key strength lies in consulting and presentation skills."
Not many know that the four-year-old consulting practice set up by Vaidhyanathan has, directly and indirectly, contributed sizeable revenues to HCL Technologies' turnover of Rs1,274 crore. The consulting division directly brings in around $5 million per year, but generates a huge spin-off in terms of software business that results from consulting assignments. Up to 35 per cent of the company's Rs325.72 crore profit could probably be traced to the consulting division's activities.
Vaidhyanathan is now expanding the consulting division; not just the head count but the market as well. She is now targeting the European market. Her ultimate goal is to make the consulting division a standalone company.
Business acumen aside, one thing that most people who know Vaidhyanathan agree about is her genial attitude and her extensive domain knowledge. Her husband Venkatraman, then a student doing a master's in communications in the US, says he felt drawn to her the very first time they spoke to each other. "I had a feeling that I knew her from childhood. I never felt I was talking to someone I had just met," he remembers about that fateful encounter.Early daysThe second daughter of K G Vaidhyanathan — who retired as general manager of Chemplast — and Sundari, she was born in Mumbai in 1971. "The day I was born my dad and my uncle both got their promotions. Another uncle got a job. That's why they named me Jayashree, which means 'goddess of victory'. It also rhymed with my elder sister's name, Rajashree," she says.
As her father's job involved transfers, the girls had their schooling in different cities. "It's unsettling, but there are benefits too," she points out, "it helps adaptability, one makes new friends quickly and, as a child, one tends to pick up new languages fast." Today, Vaidhyanathan knows five languages — Hindi, Tamil, English, Telugu and Malayalam. "I can read, write and speak the first four; the last one I can only speak," she says.
Always at the top of he class, Vaidhyanathan was also a keen debater, excelled at music, essay writing and other cultural pursuits. "From six to 16; those were my musical years," she muses. Her mother, Sundari, is from Thiruvaiyaru and one of her forefathers had started the Thiagaraja Aradana there. It was natural that Vaidhyanathan should learn Carnatic classical music. She was always asked to sing at school functions. After Std 12, she decided to do her graduation in computer science. Her ultimate aim was to get a management degree.
Men are alike; 18 or 38The initial days at the V M K V Engineering College in Salem, Tamil Nadu, were a bit of a culture shock. It was here that Vaidhyanathan says she learnt some valuable male management lessons: "At the college I woke up to gender discrimination and the fact that most men refuse to accept women as equals." She also learnt that a woman has to do much better than her male peers in order to be accepted as an equal. The other lesson she learnt was is to become friends first and come out with her ideas only later. "Men are alike, whether aged 18 or 38," she says philosophically, but adds wistfully, "life would be very boring in a gender-neutral society."
In college, reasoning out issues before reacting to them became her forte. Though boys dominated the student's union, she made sure her views were heard and acted upon. With her engineering degree in hand, Vaidhyanathan joined Visakapatanam Steel Plant as a management trainee in 1992. "I wanted to get at least three years work experience, so that I could get into an Ivy League business school in America, she says." A year later she flew to US to join the Household Finance Corporation; one step closer to her dream.
It was here that she met and married Venkatraman, in 1994. But the newlyweds were forced to live apart — Venkatraman in India and Vaidhayanathan in the US — because of their professions. "It was a hard decision, but each of us had to pursue our professional interests. We used to talk to each other on the telephone daily," she says. Vaidhayanathan feels she is a 'lucky' wife because her husband has always respected her interests.
Soon, she joined Cornell University's management institute, majoring in finance and strategy in 1996. She also completed a chartered financial analyst's course. Her dream of becoming a Wall Street investment banker came true with an offer from CIBC World Markets to join the company as an associate.
Breaking into the investment-banking circle is tough, as one has to cross seven rounds of interviews. "Not only is our subject knowledge tested, we have to prove that we can discuss anything under the sun; any topic that would interest our client or prospect," she remarks. Having a basic engineering degree meant she was already oriented towards technology, while her management and accounting qualifications gave her proficiency in strategies and numbers. She was assigned to scout and execute merger and acquisition (M&A) deals and, within six months of joining the company, got her first promotion.
"I didn't do any deals for dotcom companies," she recalls. Sizing up a dotcom company presented a big dilemma for investment bankers during the early '90s. At CIBC World Markets, Vaidhyanathan negotiated a number of multi-million dollar M&A deals, but mostly in old economy companies. She exceeded her target by a handsome 25 per cent, and started her climb up the corporate ladder.
Life was hectic, but one silver lining was her journalist husband's decision to move to the US. They decided to start a family. Even though she had risen to be a director, Vaidhyanathan remembers losing her annual bonus in 1999 because she went on maternity leave. In the world of finance, a bonus can be as much as half or more of one's yearly income. The insensitive corporate culture, perhaps, made her think about switching jobs. The couple also toyed with the idea of coming back to India. "We both got our US citizenship, while our son Pranav was a naturalised American," she explains.
It was then that she met HCL Technologies CFO Arun Duggal in London. She sold him her idea that HCL Technologies should get into the business consulting space. He was impressed by her credentials and her plans and, when others in the company also bought into the idea, she was hired.From investment banking to consultingFor the next year, she studied the US markets to decide on HCL Tech's offerings and its positioning in the consulting space. With her investment banking background, the obvious choice was financial strategy consulting. And, to start with, she took on HCL Technologies software engineers who were on the bench.
Vaidhyanathan's eyes light up as she talks about their first assignment. "It was from a $6 billion financial intermediary, Thomson Financial," she recalls. Determined to bag the account, the team worked on their presentation for two weeks. Finally, they prepared five charts spread out on 6-feet by 4-feet wall. They depicted the strong and weak points of the prospect, where HCL Technologies could come in and what they could do for Thomson Financials' bottomline, and bagged the contract.
Says corporate vice president-strategy Sourav Adhikari about Vaidhyanathan's uncanny ability to clinch contracts: "Her US experience and Wall Street background help her to get deep insight into a customer's business processes, and to come out with a unique solution."
Home againIn 2001, the family flew back to Chennai. "We wanted our son to know his roots. He is already a US citizen, and can always return if he wants to. But for me, moving from 18-hour days to an eight-hour schedule is a steal," she reasons.
Soon consulting assignments started to come in steadily. She also spotted an opportunity in compliance consulting for the Sarbanes Oxley Act, applicable to US companies. Her team developed a specialised suite of offerings to help US companies comply with the legislation, especially section 404, which requires senior management assessments and effectiveness of internal controls. At one point of time, her team was simultaneously providing consultancy to nine companies about the Act. "Compliance and process consulting is a growth area," she says, pointing out industry trends.
Breaking male stereotypes Vaidhyanathan firmly believes that traditional leadership theories and styles are tailor-made for men, whereas the 21st-century corporation requires empathetic leadership, to which women are more suited. Not an aggregator of authority, she believes in freedom based on trust. She gives the big picture to her consultants and other juniors, so that they know what is expected of them and how they can contribute.
"She is a good team builder and always thinks positively," remarks D Davidson, vice president. Programme manager Anantharaman says, "Whenever it was needed she would take charge and personally lead the team." But it is not 'all work and no play' for Vaidhyanathan's team. At HCL Technologies she has been instrumental in putting together an orchestra called Jugal Guindy — Guindy happens to be the Chennai locality where HCL Tech's consulting division is located.
How does she balance office and home? Though she says is not so difficult, husband Venkatraman reveals that she has made significant sacrifices for family's sake. Despite a hectic travel schedule, Vaidhyanathan still finds time to watch comedy films and take the family out to her favourite Chennai restaurant, NewYorker. "My favourite actor is Arvind Swamy," she laughs. Her other passion is music. Travel with the family is her way of relaxing, and she is planning a holiday trip to Italy and Germany.
Though not ritualistic, Vaidhyanathan is very religious and visits the Ganesh Temple everyday on her way to work. "I pray two or three times a day," she says. Her husband calls her a Cornell-educated madisar mami. Madisar is the orthodox Tamil Brahmin nine-yard saree and mami in Tamil means an aging aunt. But he respects her sentiments: "Her faith gives her a lot of strength," he says.
Vaidhyanathan's ultimate personal goal is to make it to the Forbes list of women achievers. If that happens, she will be the first madisar mami to figure in the list.

‘We don’t make excuses’ - Mukesh Ambani

In Navi Mumbai, the spanking new buildings at the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge Centre reflect the bright sunlight. In just 18 months, dozens of buildings have come up, housing the telecommunications and life sciences divisions of the Reliance group.
The centre, which will be completed by end-2003, will accommodate nearly 5,000 people, experts in various fields. The dream of the late Dhirubhai Ambani, it has been brought to life by Mukesh Ambani, 44, the current chairman and managing director of the group. For over 90 minutes, Ambani took time off his hectic schedule to talk to V Gangadhar on the group’s vision.

The giants of Indian industry, from the Tata and Birla families, were remote figures, revered but not close to people. The late Dhirubhai Ambani was different; many considered him to be a ‘people’s industrialist.’ How did this happen?
Papa never forgot the fact that the family was part of the millions who constituted the Indian middle class. He started the equity culture, which attracted millions; and he sold the idea of investment in an era of high taxes and saw to it that his investors got handsome returns. All his efforts were to help the middle class.

Thanks to Reliance, the prices of polyester fell from Rs 320 a kg in 1982 to Rs 57, and India became the second largest producer of polyester. So it has been with plastics, refining crude, natural gas and telecommunications.

In June 2002, he said it was his aim to make a phone call cheaper than a postcard, and that has come true. He had the foresight to invest Rs 1,000 crore in the hydrocarbon sector, got the best people to work in that business, and very soon millions of people will be supplied with natural gas that is much cheaper than LPG. His dream of making India a better place for its people brought him closer to them.

Yet the same Dhirubhai was the target of criticism by the media and politicians. How did your father react?
His philosophy, at all times, was simple. “I am accountable to myself, my conscience and God. Nothing else matters.” There were no feelings of anger or thirst for revenge. “Theek hain, dekh lenge,” and he would shrug off the attacks. He never developed a negative attitude even when some of the attacks were at a highly personal level.

Now that the company has gone through a generation change process, will there by any difference in management style?
I don't think so. Look, Papa was always thinking of the next 10, 20 years, and made plans accordingly. We are working on the ideas he had conceived and it will take some time to complete the process. His plans are good enough to guide us in future.

This Centre for Knowledge was conceived by you. How did it come about?
Our 15 to 20 enterprises in Mumbai are spread all over the place. In the next 10 years, our workforce will rise to around 50,000. We needed a central location to cover all our activities. Navi Mumbai was chosen after an internal poll. The focus will be on improving life standards, higher productivity and the concept that work can be fun and rewarding.

Reliance and other companies will need thousands of managers in the years to come. But these days management education has become prohibitively expensive. The middle class, which forms the core of high academic standards, may not be able to afford such high costs.
I have thought about this. We will be investing heavily in our own management schools, and hope to price them reasonably. You see, education should provide you with the ability to earn well. Then it will be worth investing in it. Reliance will encourage bright youngsters with monetary help, loans and so on. The cost structure in education can’t come down below certain levels, but if the money spent can yield good results, then it is well spent.

At the recent Indian Science Congress, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee expressed concern over the brain drain and urged Indian scientists and management experts who had settled abroad to return. Do you think the brain drain can be reversed?
Why not? The process has already begun. In this complex alone [the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge Centre], there are nearly 500 men and women who choose to work in India. In fact, our recruiting teams have persuaded Indians settled in high positions abroad to come back home and work here. And they will not regret the change.

How important is it for an industrialist to be in the good books of the government? We often find that industrialists are prepared to go along with any party in power.
This may have been true in the days of the licence-permit raj, when the government had a finger in every pie. But with liberalisation the attitude has changed. Today, the government has less and less say in business and industry. This is a welcome trend. It is the duty of the government to govern, not interfere with industry and business. I am also very particular about following the laid-out processes for doing business.

Union Telecom Minister Pramod Mahajan recently said earning money and becoming rich is not a sin. But, as The Indian Express has shown, several tycoons have taken the country for a ride, taking huge loans from banks and not returning them.
I find all this hard to believe, because papa had drilled into us the belief that public money invested with us was sacrosanct. We were never exposed to this kind of thinking and acting. This is our most enduring principle. Yes, business tycoons, or anyone else, should be held accountable for the public money they borrow. But the entire community of industrialists should not be blamed for the actions of a few.

The reported closeness of any politicians to Reliance immediately catches media attention. Why?
Judge people by their deeds, I say. Today, our activities and progress speak for themselves. There was a time when our remarkable progress created the doubt ‘kuchh tho gad-bad hoga.’ Today, we have gone past that stage even though we are a young company. Views like the one you mentioned are no longer relevant.

The Ambanis never raised the issue of level-playing field, as a section of Indian businessmen did. Why?
We don’t make excuses. Our focus is always the goals, not the obstacles. The day you focus on obstacles, you will miss out on goals. So the issue of level-playing field just did not enter our mind at Reliance.

There is one black mark in your success story — the Observer publications, which had to be closed down. This foray into the media never took off, and the editorial staff complained that the management never bothered about the functioning of the papers.
Publishing was not our mainstream activity. It was the immediate reaction to the environment prevailing in those days [referring to the attacks that were made in the media against the group]. Somehow the passionate commitment that was the hallmark of the group was absent. Because of this chalta hai attitude the papers struggled and were finally shut down.

But today you are very media savvy. I mean, you are a permanent feature of the page-three celebrity culture.
The media has become commercial these days. It is better to be communicative. I don’t see anything wrong in being open and available to the media.

The economy will be in a shambles if war breaks out in the Gulf. We import about 70 per cent of our crude requirements, and higher prices will be disastrous.
Very true. A war will be a disaster for us. What we need is urgent and aggressive action to reduce this reliance on imports. I am happy that the government is alive to this problem. In another three to five years, there will be substantial improvement in import substitution.

The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation is very active and is bound to be successful in its quest for additional crude deposits. At our own Jamnagar refinery, we are able to export more and more petroleum products. Further, because the crude is refined locally, customers pay less for petroleum products.

As a Gujarati, do you think that the recent communal riots in Gujarat will affect the state’s investment process?
I don’t think so. The riots will have no long-term impact on the economy and investment. We have huge projects in the state, and they are shaping very well.

How do you react to scenes of abject poverty, reports of starvation deaths, suicides by farmers, intolerable conditions in hospitals, which are very much a part of the Indian way of life?
Yes, we cannot run away from these unpleasant facts. I am comforted by my father’s philosophy as brought out in the song, ‘Hum honge kamyaab ek din’ (We shall overcome). We will work hard to achieve that goal.

Big industrial houses of the past are breaking up. Will the Reliance family stand together?
Reliance is not about individuals. It is a philosophy, a way of life. We are professional to the core, that is the only quality that counts. And there is so much work to be done, work for everybody

Arun Sarin: Global telecom Czar

Though he is the top executive of the largest telecom company in the world by revenues and Europe's most profitable company, Arun Sarin has not received as much attention in the Indian media as Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi has.

While Pepsi is a high profile brand in India, Vodafone is relatively unknown. In India, Vodafone is probably known only for its sponsorship of the England cricket team. But that is about to change as Sarin starts his big push into the Indian telecom market with Vodafone's successful acquisition of Hutchison Whampoa's stake majority stake in Hutchison-Essar, India's fourth largest telecom firm.

The 52-year old Sarin graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 1975 and did his masters from the University of California at Berkeley. He started his career in the telecom industry in 1984 when he joined Pacific Telesis group in the US. He became a director at AirTouch, which was spun off from Pacific Telesis, in July 1995, and was its president and COO when the company was acquired by Vodafone for more than $66 billion. After the acquisition, he became Vodafone's CEO for the US and Asia Pacific.

He left Vodafone in 2000 when the company merged its US operations into Verizon Wireless, only to return a few years later. During the years away from Vodafone he was the CEO of a software company and also tried his hand as a venture capitalist

Sarin succeeded Christopher Gent as Vodafone's CEO in 2003 and inherited a company, which was reeling under the costs of expensive buyouts at the peak of the technology boom. Under Gent, Vodafone had spent more than $300 billion in a series of high profile acquisitions, including the $230- billion takeover of German telecom group Mannesmann AG, the biggest ever buyout in history.

Vodafone had to write down its investments in these acquisitions substantially, which affected its bottom line for years. For the financial year ended March 2006, Vodafone had reported a net loss of over $43 billion - the biggest ever loss in European corporate history.

Arun Sarin has been far more cautious in acquisitions than his predecessor. He made an aggressive bid for AT&T Wireless in 2004, but walked away when it became too expensive. AT&T was finally sold to Cingular for $41 billion. Vodafone and Sarin have been unsuccessful in establishing a footprint in the US, though the company remians the single-largest shareholder of Verizon Wireless with a 45-per cent stake.

Last year, Sarin led Vodafone on a restructuring drive which saw the company exiting some markets like Japan and Sweden and selling-off stakes in telecom companies in Belgium and Switzerland to net a total of close to $16 billion.

Sarin also started his push into emerging markets last year through the $4.55 billion buyout of Turkish company Telsim. Though this deal is still being criticised as a very costly one by analysts, Sarin has proceeded with his plans and has now taken an even more significant step by acquiring Hutch-Essar. Vodafone has agreed to pay an even higher price for Hutch than what it paid for Telsim - more than $900 per subscriber for Hutch as compared to around $500 per subscriber for Telsim.

This country would see much more of Arun Sarin in the days to come. He has already made a significant strategic move by signing an agreement with Bharti Airtel to share telecom infrastructure. The Vodafone - Bharti alliance would deter any new player planning to enter the GSM space, like Reliance Communications.

Sarin has already stated his intention to increase Vodafone's market share from the current 16 per cent that Hutch-Essar currently owns to nearly 25 per cent of the Indian mobile telecom market by 2012. Also expect the familiar purple logo of Hutch to be gradually replaced by the red and white Vodafone logo.

When that happens, the cute pug, which was the Hutch mascot, would be sorely missed

Carly Fiorina: HP's merger queen

Carly Fiorina: HP's merger queen

Carly Fiorina has a bachelor's degree in medieval history and philosophy from Stanford University. She holds a master's degree in business administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland at College Park, and a master of science degree from MIT's Sloan School.


She is currently at work on a book about her career and her views on such issues as what constitutes a leader, how women can thrive in business and the role technology will continue to play in reshaping our world. The book will be published by the Portfolio imprint at Penguin Group and will be released in the fall of 2006.

Throughout an extraordinary career in business, Carly Fiorina has successfully blazed new trails, taken risks and defied the odds. As the former chairman and chief executive officer of global technology solutions provider Hewlett-Packard, she brought all of her skills to bear to write a new chapter in the life of a historic company.

After joining HP in July 1999, Fiorina led the reinvention of the company many associate with the birth of Silicon Valley, returning HP to its roots of innovation and inventiveness. Fiorina successfully led HP's controversial merger with Compaq Computer Corp., now recognised as the most successful high-tech merger in history.

After HP's more than six decades of corporate stewardship, and during a period when corporations make up 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world, Fiorina called for a new era of leadership, one in which corporate leaders have an opportunity to redefine the role of the corporation, to use profit engines to raise the capabilities, extend the hopes, and extinguish despair of people across the globe.

Prior to joining HP, Fiorina spent nearly 20 years at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, where she held a number of senior leadership positions and directed Lucent's initial public offering and subsequent spin-off from AT&T.

Fiorina has previously served on the boards of Cisco Systems, Kellogg Company and Merck & Company. She currently serves on the boards of Revolution Healthcare Group and MIT Corporation Board of Trustees.


Appointed to the US Space Commission by the White House in 2004
The Private Sector Council honoured Fiorina with its 2004 Leadership Award for her contributions to improving the business of government
In 2003 she received the Concern Worldwide "Seeds of Hope" Award in recognition of her worldwide efforts to make global citizenship a priority for business
Honoured with the Appeal of Conscience Award in 2002
Fiorina was named an honorary fellow of the London Business School in July 200

Louis V Gerstner, Jr: Reinventing IBM

Louis V Gerstner, Jr: Reinventing IBM

In November 2002 Gerstner authored the book, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?

At IBM he established Reinventing Education as a strategic partnership with 21 states and school districts, which utilise
IBM technology and technical assistance to eliminate key barriers to school reform and improve student performance.

He is co-author of the book Reinventing Education: Entrepreneurship in America's Public Schools.

Gerstner is a director of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and a member of the advisory boards of DaimlerChrysler and Sony Corporation. He is vice chairman of the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of The Business Council, and a fellow of the America-China Forum. In past years he served on the boards of The New York Times Company; American Express Company; AT&T; Caterpillar, Incorporated; Jewel Companies; Melville Corporation; and RJR Nabisco Holdings Company.

He has received numerous awards for his work in education, among them The Cleveland E. Dodge Medal for Distinguished Service to Education — Teachers College, Columbia University, and the Distinguished Service to Science and Education award from the American Museum of Natural History.

In recognition of his efforts on behalf of public education, as well as his business accomplishments, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Gerstner the designation of honorary Knight of the British Empire in June 2001.


Louis V Gerstner, Jr, was chairman of the board of IBM Corporation from April 1993 until his retirement in December 2002. He served as chief executive officer of IBM from 1993 until March 2002.
In January 2003, he assumed the position of chairman of The Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm located in Washington, DC.

Prior to joining IBM, Gerstner served for four years as chairman and chief executive officer of RJR Nabisco, Inc. This was preceded by an 11-year career at American Express Company, where he was president of the parent company and chairman and CEO of its largest subsidiary, American Express Travel Related Services Company. Prior to that, Gerstner was a director of the management consulting firm of McKinsey & Company, Incorporated, which he joined in 1965.

A lifetime advocate of the importance of quality education, Gerstner recently created The Teaching Commission to develop specific policy recommendations to deal with the teaching crisis America is facing. From 1996 to 2002, he co-chaired Achieve, an organisation created by United States Governors and business leaders to drive high academic standards for public schools in the United States

A tough life at the Planning Commission: Montek Singh Ahluwalia

There's no question that Montek Singh Ahluwalia brought life to Yojana Bhavan when he became deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. He isn't a bureaucrat-academic content with sitting back and letting things happen. As someone with decades of public-policy experience at the highest levels, he has strong views on what needs to be done and is committed enough to those views and methods to see that they are taken as far as they can be taken. Even if it ruffles his opponents' feathers.


"The dissolution of all consultative groups of the Planning Commission when the Left parties had only sought the exclusion of so called foreign experts from those bodies, reflects the autocratic style of functioning of Montek Singh Ahluwalia," an indignant D Raja, secretary of the Communist Party of India, told reporters. "The government should explain why they were constituted in the first place."


Raja has a point. It may be that the Left's fight with Ahluwalia was more symbolic or even ideological than based on policy substance. It may be that the Left were personally insulting to Ahluwalia in their questioning of his credibility. But to throw out an entire process that could have been of great value to the review of the Plan was a bit peevish.


One possible explanation for Ahluwalia's action is that he was trying to keep an ideological balance in the consultative committees and was not comfortable with the Left's potential dominance of the groups with the exit of the so-called foreign experts.


Yet, it isn't difficult to discern the personal friction between him and the Left. Some find it ironic that he unconventionally ties his turban from left to right.


As an Oxford-educated Rhodes Scholar and long-time World Bank-IMF economist-technocrat who has little time or patience for politics, the Left sees him as one of the international jet-setting elite who go about from country to country, alighting only to prescribe 'neo-liberal' poison remedies that put money and profit over people. His having served in various capacities at the World Bank from 1971-79 (before Rajiv Gandhi drafted him into his PMO in the 80s), and as director of the independent evaluation office of the IMF from 2001-2004, makes him a 'World Bank man', in Jyoti Basu's pejorative words.


His image as one of the architects of India's liberalisation process doesn't help when faced with a set of people who oppose the process itself. The Left has consistently opposed his rise to power.


What Ahluwalia's got going for him this time, however, is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's strong support. Both remain convinced that their reforms have had a beneficial impact on the Indian economy. Both share the conviction that India needs to continue its liberalisation and globalisation drive and move even closer to a market-oriented economy. Both are acclaimed economists. Both are Sikhs. Moreover, both have the confidence of the international and domestic business and financial communities.


A measure of the PM's faith in Ahluwalia is the fact that the PM, in an unprecedented decision, chose to include him but none of his other cabinet colleagues handling economic portfolios to accompany him during his recent important US trip.


But what Ahluwalia lacks is the PM's accommodativeness. To add to that, he seems to have retained the traditional economist's contempt for symbolism and politics. This has led him into an unnecessary conflict with the Left that is likely to make his job much more difficult.

It would be a pity if the Planning Commission's regained vigour and importance and its new deputy chairman's vast experience were to go waste for these failings.

Sunil Bharti Mittal

Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of the Bharti group of industries is a man who thinks big and talks straight. The door of the conference room of his Dehli office is inscribed in capital letters with the words 'sultanate 1.' That's thinking big for you.

Recently, a television channel asked him how the result of the American presidential election would affect the outsourcing business. He shot back: "It will not. The whole thing has been blown out of proportion." That's talking straight.

In 1976, when he was just 18, he ventured into the world of business. He set up a bicycle parts unit in his home town in Ludhiana with a modest investment of Rs20,000. He then dabbled in knitwear and utensils before moving his base to Delhi and Mumbai.

Here, he dabbled in the import and distribution of goods, mainly portable generators. So thorough was his grasp of the business that he is said to have committed nearly all the convoluted regulatory sections of the voluminous Export-Import Handbook to memory. In 1983-84, he set up his first company, Bharti Healthcare, manufacturing capsules.

This versatile personality's romance with the telecom world happened purely by accident. In 1983, imports of several products were banned, including portable generators, which Mittal used to import. So he tied up with Siemens to manufacture push-button telephones for the German company.

In 1992, the bids were floated to award cellular licences to the private sector for the Delhi metropolitan area — but the criteria stipulated that bidders were required to have prior experience in offering telecom services.

Mittal commissioned a market survey, which revealed that the market for cellular phones was extremely limited — the size revealed by the survey shoed just, 5,000 takers. Mittal threw away the report and decided to jump in the race regardless.

He clinched a deal with the French telecom group, Vivendi, after a three-hour session with its CEO. However, with the deadline for the licence approaching, Vivendi backed out saying they would join hands with the larger and better-known Modi group, instead. Mittal, mustered all his negotiation skills and cajoled the French to stay the course with him. Vivendi agreed.

Mittal's track record shows a string of firsts, which he is immensely proud of — the first push button telephone handset in India, the first answering machine, the first fax machine and the first cordless phone.

Today, the Bharti group has acquired 20 per cent of the telecom market and is the largest player in the private sector and aspires to become a billion-dollar company in a couple of years.

India's largest private sector telecom company, Mittal's Bharti Tele-Ventures will invest Rs3,000 crore in the current fiscal to expand the company's network infrastructure.

"We invest around Rs 3,000 crore investment a year," Mittal explains. The overall investment of the group till date is Rs 13,500 crore "We are doubling base stations to 10,000 by the end of the current fiscal in largely new places and adding more capacity in the large existing towns," he adds. Last month, Mittal's cellular services venture, Airtel, extended its services to the strife-tornstateof Jammu & Kashmir with base stations located inJammu and elsewhere in the state.

Earlier in March this year, IBM signed a 10-year deal estimated at $750 million (based on the percentage of revenues generated by the Indian company) to take over Bharti's information-technology infrastructure and applications. The agreement also includes joint-development and marketing of IT and telecommunications products and services in India, with Bharti as a preferred supplier of telecom services to IBM India.

"The agreement demonstrates our strategic intent to create a globally admired telecommunication company," says Mittal and adds, "With predictable IT spending, improved cash flow and optimised use of technology resources, the agreement with IBM will enhance Bharti Tele-Ventures' shareholder value."

Having established his presence in the telecom sector, Mittal is focussing his attention to other sectors. Along with Singapore's Changi Airports, he has bid for the modernisation of the Delhi and Mumbai airports. He is also making a foray into the agro-processing industry and hopes to "put the fresh produce from Indian fields onto the tables of the western world."

The agro firm is in the process of acquiring land and hiring people. Mittal believes that if the execution is right, the agro-processing venture will be bigger than telecom. 'India has great weather, zillions of acres of arable land and you do not even need an English accent,' is the reason he offers.

His two brothers have assisted Mittal and as the businesses grew, the group became a board-managed company. Today, a team of 10 or 12 senior people takes key business decisions. At 44, Mittal wants to be involved hands-on in his business for another seven years after which he'd like to play a larger role in society. Though his father was in public life and a member of parliament, Mittal is disinclined to enter politics. He wishes to work in areas that lead to the empowerment of people as he considers this the most essential.

A family man, Mittal lives in Delhi with his wife, daughter and two sons. He wishes he could find more time to spend with the family. "This is the problem with first generation entrepreneurs," he sighs.

Kumar Mangalam Birla: A master strategist

Kumar Mangalam Birla, 39, is particularly known for his global ambitions — and successes. When he took over as chairman in 1995, the Aditya Birla Group was already present in the Far East (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines) and Egypt, apart from being among the top three business groups in India. Birla consolidated the overseas businesses and set up new ones in Canada, China and Australia.


Birla's strategy was to integrate all these operations seamlessly with one another and the ones in India. For instance, in Canada, two joint ventures (JV), AV Cell Inc and AV Nackawic Inc, produce the raw materials for the group's Indian Viscose Staple Fibre (VSF) business. Liaoning Birla Carbon is a pioneering JV in China that manufactures and markets furnace grade carbon black, building on the group's experience from its existing carbon black companies in Thailand, India and Egypt. And there are strong synergies between the copper operations of Aditya Birla Minerals Ltd in Australia and Birla Copper in India.
It is Birla's immense clout in India that allows him to venture bravely into global waters. The Aditya Birla Group is India's third largest business house. It is a leader in many of the businesses in which it operates including non-ferrous metals, cement, VSF, carbon black, viscose filament yarn, chemicals, fertilisers, insulators and branded apparel. The group is also active in services sectors like insurance and asset management, software and telecommunication.

The Aditya Birla Group has annual sales of $8.3 billion and a market capitalisation of $14 billion. Its important Indian companies include Grasim Industries Ltd, Hindalco Industries Ltd, Aditya Birla Nuvo and UltraTech Cement Ltd. Among its important JVs are Birla Sun Life (financial services) and Birla NGK (insulators). The group employs 72,000 people across the world. More than 30 per cent of the group's revenues accrue from its global operations.

Birla took over as chairman at 28 on the sudden demise of his father, noted industrialist Aditya Birla, after whom the group is named. Birla, who trained as a CA and holds an MBA from the London Business School, is also on the boards of major Indian companies like Tata Iron & Steel Company and Maruti Udyog Limited, apart from being the chairman of the flagship companies within his group.

He is also on the board of the G D Birla Medical Research & Education Foundation and a member of the board of governors at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Birla is also a member of the London Business School's Asia Pacific advisory board.

He holds several key positions on various regulatory and professional boards, including chairmanship of the advisory committee constituted by the ministry of company affairs for 2006 and 2007, membership of the prime minister of India's advisory council on trade and industry and chairmanship of the board of trade reconstituted by the union minister of commerce and industry.

Most recently, the government of India's Ministry of Finance nominated Birla on the Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India, with effect from 27 June 2006.

Silencing the sceptics
When Birla took over the mantle at the Aditya Birla Group, sceptics doubted his ability to handle a mammoth business house with interests spanning viscose, textiles and garments on the one hand and cement, aluminium and fertilisers on the other… several of which were then in the grip of a cyclical downturn. There was also the question of how he would transform the traditional babu culture (internal bureaucracy) of the group — an anomaly in a rapidly globalising environment.

Birla proved all his sceptics wrong. He changed business strategies, brought in sweeping changes, professionalised the entire group and replaced internal systems. He reduced his group's dependence on the cyclic commodities sectors by entering consumer products. He hired well-known professionals like D Bhattacharya,
Dr Santrupt Misra, Sumant Sinha and Sanjiv Aga and gave them independent charge of key business functions. At lower levels, he inducted fresh talent from management schools in India and abroad and set up Gyanodaya, an in-house management learning centre.

Birla also put on hold projects, some already announced, others at the take-off stage. These included the Aditya Birla Group's plans to enter sugar, paper, steel, glass fibre and Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA) — a key intermediate used in the manufacture of textiles. The group has also exited from unviable businesses like seawater magnesia and oil refining.

Seeing a future in cement, the group has strengthened its cement business by buying out the cement business of engineering and construction giant Larsen & Toubro (since then renamed UltraTech Cement). It also acquired Indian Aluminium Company from Alcan of Canada.

While under him the group has consolidated its position in existing businesses. It also carefully ventured into sunrise sectors like cellular telephony, asset management, software and BPO. In telecom the group bought over a 48.14-per cent stake from the Tatas and is now a 98.3-per cent stakeholder in Idea Cellular Ltd. The group also bought over Byte International, a US-based e-learning firm; PSI Data Systems Ltd, TransWorks Information Services Pvt Ltd and copper mines in Australia.

On 23 June 2006, the Aditya Birla Group announced that it has made an offer to acquire, through TransWorks, Minacs Worldwide Inc, Canada's leading BPO provider. The acuisition is expected to cost US$125 million in all.


Clearly, the low-profile Birla's multi-pronged strategies are working. In the last decade he has not only evolved into a respected industrialist, he has also succeeded in multiplying five-fold his group's revenues. As one of the youngest and most successful business leaders in this part of the world, perhaps his best is yet to come

Vijay Mallya: The king of good times

The public face of The UB Group, Vijay Mallya was elected chairman at 28 by the company's shareholders in 1983. Within the next few years he shaped the group into a global conglomerate. The UB Group is today the third-largest manufacturer of spirits products in the world and owns five of the 10 fastest growing brands in the world in their respective categories. The brewing division holds a 60-per cent market

share in India and its Kingfisher brand of beers is sold in 32 countries.

Earlier Mallya worked for the American Hoechst Corporation (now Sanofi-Aventis) in the US and then with Jenson & Nicholson in the UK. From 1980 till his elevation as chairman, Mallya assisted his father, then the chairman of the company, in managing the brewing and spirits divisions of the company and in re-launching the Kingfisher brand of beer.

Mallya is the chairman of the boards of companies in India as well as in the US. He held the chairmanship of Aventis Pharma India (previously Hoechst) and Bayer CropScience in India (previously Agrevo) for over 16 years.

He has served as an elected member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house) of the Indian Parliament and has served as a member of various Parliamentary committees and on defence, science and technology, environment and forests, and industry.

He has served as an elected member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house) of the Indian Parliament and has served as a member of various Parliamentary committees and on defence, science and technology, environment and forests, and industry.

He is a keen sportsman, aviator and yachtsman of distinction, championship horse breeder, and professional racecar driver. Mallya not only participates in sporting events but also supports sporting activities worldwide, in aid of the underprivileged.

On assuming chairmanship in October 1983, Mallya initiated the process of defining a corporate structure with performance accountability, and inducting professional management to create individual operating divisions out of the various businesses of the group that included pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, paints, petrochemicals and plastics, electro-mechanical batteries, food products and carbonated beverages, a fast-food pizza chain and several medium and small scale industrial units.

In 1990, Mallya led the restrucutring of The UB Group, retaining only the areas of core competence, transforming the vastly diversified UB conglomerate into a handful of key operating businesses that dramatically increased shareholder value.

In a leveraged buyout in 1988 Mallya acquired the global Berger Paints Group with operating companies across four continents and divested it at significant value in 1996 through a successful exit strategy that included five initial public offerings on the stock exchanges in London, Singapore (Main Boards), Nairobi, Jamaica and Abidjan.

In 1993 he founded UBICS, Inc, listed on the NASDAQ in 1996, a leading global provider of a broad spectrum of IT services and IT products for the vast US market.

Mallya personally steered The UB Group's entry in civil aviation with Kingfisher Airlines, launched in May 2005. The full service luxury domestic airline operates a fleet of 13 brand new aircraft that provide 70 daily flights connecting 16 cities. In its first year of operations Kingfisher Airlines was awarded service excellence awards.

Personally and through his businesses, Mallya contributes to charities and foundations in several countries. In addition, the super speciality Mallya Hospital, the Mallya-Aditi School and the Vittal Mallya Scientific Research Foundation in Bangalore, India, are some of the foundations with which he is personally associated.

Mallya was nominated 'global leader for tomorrow' by the World Economic Forum, Davos, in 1995
Over the years he has been conferred industry awards for his contributions to business

Reflections on Premji's lessons in life

In the early 1980s, I worked for Wipro at its Amalner plant, which manufactured vanaspati. That was the time when Azim Premji had come back from the US and was in the initial stages of defining Wipro's values and putting them into practice. As I went down the list of Premji's lessons, little instances came to mind, which were, perhaps, reflective of those learning moments.

Azim Premji is today the icon for integrity and integrity could be the "strength" he talks about in lesson 1 (build on your strengths). He certainly leveraged this strength well — but I can tell you it needs courage of conviction.

Those were the days when the vanaspati business was all about "on" (euphemism for black!) money. At the Amalner plant, we produced 7,000 tins of vanaspati per day and the going rate in those days was around Rs 15 a tin. Annually, that would have meant about Rs 4 crore of "on" money then and, at current money values, about Rs 50 crore per year. But Premji insisted on sticking to the Wipro value of integrity and, much against "practical" advice, Wipro refused to collect that money.

I have subsequently worked for companies which loudly touted their values of integrity but when it came to the crunch — and cash! — rationalisations, which come easy in a soft state like India, made way for an obvious breach of the stated value system. The lesson I learnt was that it is better not to talk about integrity if you can not stick to it. By some perverse logic, the employees trust you more if you shut up!

Premji's focus was on optimising capacity utilisation, efficiency of processes, and quality. The loss of "on" money was partially made up by the dramatic increases on all three fronts. I recall Premji being castigated by the other vanaspati manufacturers, ironically, for producing more, as it was hitting their "on"!

Some time later in my life, I worked for an industrialist who went the other way and concentrated on optimising his "on" money, much against my protestations. He ruined a company with a very good work culture. While personal cash flows increased in the short run, the leadership focus shifted from optimising business to optimising personal wealth. This led to the exodus of capable executives, the rise of "smart" executives and, since trust levels had plummeted and the vision was suspect, the company faded away after the opening up of the economy.

In a sense, having worked with Premji, I had a very difficult time fitting into the other companies where I worked. As the corporate world got "smarter", my "strengths" had a shrinking market, though I did reap a whole lot of benefits because of the integrity value.

The second lesson (what you build is far more valuable than what you inherit) triggered off this memory: With my middle class fear of speculative ventures, I used to wonder why Premji was passionate about diversifying into the risky electronics business (that was the original name for the computer division), when the business he had inherited was doing well. So, I argued vehemently in favour of the growth of the oil business, where we had established expertise, rather than venturing into software. Well, I guess that is why Premji is where he is and I am where I am!

The third lesson (enjoy success but let it not go to the head, learn from failures), was, I think, learnt when the attempts at change were failing miserably at Amalner. Premji had set up a team of bright young people (heads of departments were around 28 years old) with intellect and enthusiasm but no experience. The company was going downhill and Premji had to change the leadership twice in two years before he zeroed in on a general manager who delivered. He was 37 years old and we were cynical about an "old" guy leading a young team. Premji kept his cool, though I could sense how tense he was, and the initial failure was transformed into a very successful turnaround.

Lesson four is about humility. I can not remember a special display of "humility" but Premji did not have any "airs" about him and we generally felt comfortable working with him and even invited him over to dinner occasionally. He was perhaps the richest Indian even in those days, but he lived very simply — the Amalner guest house was pretty sparsely equipped.

Premji certainly strove for excellence. When he set targets for the annual plan we would think he was just being pushy, but the general manager who joined after the two unsuccessful ones, was able to deliver each of these ambitious targets and more. Lesson five (striving for excellence) was evident everywhere in Amalner.

The sixth lesson (don't give up in the face of adversity) brings to mind something of which I have no personal knowledge but have heard from friends. Wipro Finance lost Rs 120 crore in the early nineties when most other finance companies folded up. Premji, I am told, insisted on repaying every depositor and used his personal wealth to do it. He went beyond his legal obligations and stood firm in the face of adversity.

Reflecting on his eighth lesson (have faith in your ideas), I am struck by the thought that, way back in the 1980s, Premji could not have known the world will go the way it has with the opening up of the global economy. But he had vision and obviously believed in his ideas and was able to translate them into a resounding success.

Ratan Tata: Tending it like a Tata

Barely a decade and a half ago, when Ratan N Tata took over as chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, people in the markets and in management circles dismissed him as a person of no consequence. When he sold off Tata Oil Mills Company in 1993 people said he had no stomach for competition. When he exited ACC, India's leading cement company, people said he was frittering away his heritage. When he decided to build India's first indigenous car, analysts predicted ruin. Ratan Tata has proved all his critics wrong. And how! Tata is one of Indian industry's most respected business leaders. The shy, somewhat reticent chairman has taken the group's annual revenues to $21.7 billion, or more than seven times their level when he took over as boss in 1991. He still has eight years to go before he retires at the age of 75.Tata has successfully restructured and revitalised a group that was seen as slow, bureaucratic and unable to deal with the hurly-burly of today's intensely competitive world. Tata companies have made aggressive strides in India and abroad, leading the rush for overseas acquisitions by Indian groups, and ramping up market shares at home. Under his leadership, the Tata group has emerged as India's largest business conglomerate, a modern, unified organisation ready for the challenges of a young economy and increasingly global marketplace. He has also ensured that while the group metamorphoses to meet the volatile demands of a borderless international market, its tradition of business ethics and commitment to society remain intact, and even become stronger. When Tata took office in 1991, he inherited an unwieldy giant with over 250 companies, representing nearly every industry, loosely held together by the group management. The immediate challenge Tata faced was to galvanise this amorphous entity to face the challenges of a newly liberalised economy. It was a feat he executed with such skill, foresight and success that it has silenced his detractors.Tata took over the helm of the group from his uncle, the legendary JRD Tata, after spending three decades in relatively smaller roles in group companies. His first stint was with Tata Steel, which he joined in December 1962, after returning from the United States with a degree in architecture from Cornell University and a brief assignment with the architectural firm of Jones and Emmons in Los Angeles. Tata rose to the chairmanship of the Tata Group, at a pivotal moment in the country's economic history – the liberalisation of the Indian economy. The development seemed to be timed in his favour. He took over from JRD Tata, who, though a pioneer in his time, had left the group unprepared for a new economy. While the group was still pursuing its manufacturing thrust, the younger Tata had anticipated the opportunities in the information-based industries. Strengthening an inheritenceRatan Tata quietly but firmly began to assert the group's authority on the individual companies. He strengthened the unified brand image of the group. A major restructuring effort was undertaken, excess baggage was dropped and businesses were rationalised and consolidated. The effort ended with a leaner portfolio of 93 companies, focused on seven identified industry sectors – engineering, materials, energy, chemicals, services, consumer products, and information systems and communication.Tata has been instrumental in promoting the Tata brand and the 'Made in India' tag not only in India but across the globe in sectors as diverse as steel, automobiles, chemicals and hospitality. His mandate for group companies was clear: shape up, or ship out; be among the top three players in your business or get out of it.

Under Tata's stewardship, the group is in a leadership position in information technology (TCS, CMC), steel (Tata Steel), chemicals (Tata Chemicals), tea (Tata Tea) and hospitality (Indian Hotels), and the Tata name is reaching new geographies through an aggressive 'internationalisation' effort. The group now has a presence in 40 countries and exports to 140.What has ensured the success of Tata's plans is his unwavering focus on the customer. Quality, he insists, must be the hallmark of all Tata products and services, no matter which segment of society or which country they are meant for. Good governance, fair business practices and social responsibility should be the guide for all Tata companies, in all locations and at all times. Recent years have seen the group make rapid strides in its M&A and JV strategy across the globe. Since 2004 the Tata group has acquired over 30 companies, totalling about $2 billion. The group has also built strategic partnerships with global companies, in order to improve its competitive position. As he drives the group's expansion plans in other geographies, Ratan Tata is encouraging Tata companies in India to shift their focus from the urban to the rural and create products and services that address the needs of the bottom of the pyramid. The Taj group's recently launched Ginger chain of economy hotels, Tata Motor's proposed Rs 1-lakh small car, Titan's Sonata brand of watches, and Tata BP Solar's initiatives in harnessing solar energy to light up villages, are efforts at creating affordable but quality products and services for small-town and rural customers. Referred to in the media as a recluse, Ratan Tata is not to be found at the regular high-society events patronised by many of his peers. He prefers instead to indulge his passion for flying by piloting a plane or helicopter to his weekend getaway at Mandwa, and spending time with his two Labradors.

Educational qualifications:

Graduated from Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai

Bachelor of Science degree in architecture from Cornell University in 1962

Advanced Management Program conducted by Harvard Business School in 1975