Executors

Ashutosh Sinha

Description

'If you produce what you have promised to, no one would want to come in your way' S. Ramadorai, former vice chairman, Tata Consultancy Services'Relying on conventional wisdom is never a smart idea in an emerging business' Akhil Gupta, vice chairman, Bharti Enterprises'Do your duty to the best of your ability, without attachment to the results, and remain calm in both success and failure' Venkatesh Kini, president, Coca-Cola India and south-west Asia'Planning is academic. Action decides the winner' Rahul Bhasin, managing partner, Baring Private Equity PartnersThese are some of the life lessons that 30 of India's most celebrated managers share in The Executors, a personal account of how they came to run influential companies such as Bharti, Bennett Coleman, Tech Mahindra, Apollo Munich, Convergys, Yum! Brands and Max Life Insurance, among others. Packed with inspiring stories of struggle, this book culls out the wisdom that these leaders have imbibed over the years and are keen to impart to others. Ashutosh Sinha insightfully explores their management style, philosophy and how they lead from the front.

Sujets

• Entrepreneurship
• Economics

Informations

• Publié par: Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
• Date de parution: 21 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184007749
• Langue: English

Extrait

ASHUTOSH SINHA

THE EXECUTORS
How India s best managers did it right
RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Contents
Note on the Author
Introduction
1. Tata s Jewel in the Crown
S. Ramadorai
2. Numbers That Do the Talking
Akhil Gupta
3. Getting the Fizz to Work
Venkatesh Kini
4. The People s Leader
C.P. Gurnani
5. Food for Thought
Siraj Chaudhry
6. From Investment Banker to CEO
A. Krishnakumar
7. India s News Muse
Arunabh Das Sharma
8. Studying Companies Diligently
Rahul Bhasin
9. Helping Build India s Infrastructure
Vipin Sondhi
10. Connecting the Dots
Vinod Sood
11. The Science and Art of Media Planning
Anita Nayyar
12. Challenging the Challenges
Rajesh Sud
13. The Online Monster
Sanjay Modi
14. Staples Fables
Sunil Duggal
15. Weaving Stories for Brands
Hemant Misra
16. Healthcare Warrior
Dr Raj Shankar Ghosh
17. The Importance of a Good Reputation
Apurva Purohit
18. Driving the Health Agenda
Antony Jacob
19. Nuts and Bolts of the Food Business
Rajeev Minocha
20. Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
Hitesh Oberoi
21. When Determination Wins
Sunil Sinha
22. New Wings to Outsourcing from India
Hanumant Talwar
23. Action before Words
Mohit Anand
24. Leading the Way
Aniruddha Ray
25. Seeding the Polyester Plants
Anant Kishore
26. Bittersweet Sugar Battles
C.B. Patodia
27. New Approach to Housing
P.N. Mishra
28. Fashion Model to Luxury Marketing
Pascale Ahmad
29. Working since the Age of Six!
O.P. Jain
30. The Will to Change the World
Vishal Jain
Footnotes
1. Tata s Jewel in the Crown
22. New Wings to Outsourcing from India
Follow Random House
Copyright
Note on the Author

Ashutosh Sinha has earned his stripes as a business reporter and news anchor across India s print and television media companies over the last two decades. He lives in Delhi.
To Papa and Maa, for what they have taught me
If you have to choose between speed and perfection, always choose speed. Because perfection will follow .
Sunil Bharti Mittal
Introduction
F reewheeling conversations often end up bringing forth ideas that would not have crossed your mind otherwise. As I was putting together my thoughts for this book, I realized that I needed to sharpen my focus so that there could be enough takeaways for the reader. As I discussed the details with a friend, the promoter of a Delhi-based company who prefers to remain unnamed, he told me: There are some people who will tell you their own story. They could be stories from their personal lives and how those have shaped their professional lives.
Whether it was a business deal or the conversation with me which helped determine the focus of their own stories for this book, one thing was clear: business leaders have the uncanny ability to come straight to the point. Those conversations finally helped me to give a broad shape to the book, to explain the theme to people who run some of India s most efficient businesses.
Promoters of companies are often dreamers who conceive of an idea or manage to envisage a market for their product or services ahead of others. They are often celebrated as visionaries who could see beyond a certain situation and create a market for their company. As I was researching for this book, I decided that the focus of The Executors would be leaders who show the way by setting an example. These leaders get down in the field and dirty their hands instead of sitting in comfortable corner offices.
On a Sunday afternoon I caught up with Naresh Gupta, then running the operations of Adobe India. After listening to what I was planning to do, he cut through all that I had spoken about and asked me articulately, You want to tell the stories of the people who build the highways, and not those who dream of them. Right?
And with that, my germ of an idea suddenly took the concrete shape of a book. For a brief while, though, it had proved elusive and caused much despair.
The idea of this book germinated during a discussion with Ajit Sinha of InvestCare who encouraged me to pursue this venture and stayed positive even when I became sceptical. I am grateful for the faith he reposed in me to pull it off. In telling the stories of business leaders, his guidance has been invaluable in putting the book together. Lohit Jagwani and Arpita Basu of Penguin Random House tirelessly pored over the manuscript and deserve all the praise for the hours they spent on the book.
All this would not have been possible without the cooperation and patience shown by the people whose stories are narrated in the book. Some of them went out of their way to find the time to narrate their stories. At other times, I had to invade their busy schedule to go through the manuscript and make sure that the timeline for the book was met. They were candid in speaking about their growing-up years, narrating some defining moments of their personal lives and, later, helping me piece together missing links and, in some cases, mistakes, in their stories.
The leaders have shared values that they learnt during their growing-up years. Some of those values have been reinforced during their years as a professional. For the young manager, entrepreneur or management student-those who will emerge as the thought leaders of tomorrow-the book will present, hopefully, a lesson or two.
The anecdotes mentioned in the book are very close to the hearts of the people who have narrated them. I could see the passion with which they told me those stories, as if they were willing to learn from them all over again.
Most of the personalities featured in these pages have spent their formative years at institutions that we look up to. Speaking to the people who drive India s leading businesses has been like a crash course in management for me. At different points, with various people, the conversation grew so engrossing that I later listened to the tape again and again only to learn something new each time. I consider myself lucky that they shared with me their wisdom, earned with decades of experience.
My family and kids have had to bear with me as I listened to nearly 100 hours of taped conversations with the business leaders featured in the book. Writing can be tedious when you have to sift through all the stories and choose the best ones. Hopefully, I have managed to tell them with the right context.
1
Tata s Jewel in the Crown
S. Ramadorai
TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES *

S ometime in late 1971, Subramaniam Ramadorai received a letter from his father. He had been working for the Los Angeles-based computer hardware and software giant NCR Corporation for over a year, having completed a master s degree in computer science at the University of California. As he opened the envelope, Ramadorai found a clipping of a newspaper advertisement. Mumbai-headquartered Tata Group was looking for bright young professionals.
Why don t you apply for it? his father s letter suggested. There were two advantages if he got selected. Ramadorai would get to work for India s most respected business group and he could come back to his country, which his parents were hoping for.
Ramadorai had grown up under the tutelage of his father, a wonderful teacher who had handheld him through science and mathematics during his school years and spent a lot of time with him. He was the fourth of five children in the household. Ramadorai s father was a strict disciplinarian and believed that there was little reason to excel in anything other than studies. Ramadorai admired his father even though the old school teacher rebuked him every now and then for not meeting his expectations.
At the Madras Higher Secondary School, now called Delhi Tamil Education Association School, Ramadorai was among the brighter students in his class. His father took a keen interest in his son s education and put a lot of effort into coaching him. Ramadorai studied science at Delhi University and later went on to study electronics and telecommunication at the Indian Institute of Science. After his master s degree in computer science, he was settled in a comfortable job in the US.
Like an obedient son, Ramadorai took his father s suggestion and promptly applied for the job.
A few weeks later, he got a phone call from the office of A.H. Tobaccowala, the president of Tata Inc, who was based in New York. After an engaging conversation, the two agreed on a date and Tobaccowala flew down to Los Angeles to interview Ramadorai. It took a couple of months before Ramadorai got a job offer from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in December 1971.
Once he had the offer, it didn t take long for Ramadorai to decide that he would leave his cushy job. It was often the norm for well-educated Indians to find a job in the US and then settle there. Not for Ramadorai, though. He returned to India the next year and joined TCS on 23 February 1972.
There was certainly more to do in India, he says about his decision to move back to India. When you are thinking of doing something that can impact an industry, it is passion that drives you more than logic , he reasons.
It was a daunting task to drive TCS in the early years. The company had been set up in 1968, led by the visionary Faqir Chand Kohli. Tata Sons, the parent company of the entire group had lent Rs 35 lakh to fund the expenses of TCS in its initial years. The early movers in India s IT services industry had no idea about how technology would shape their lives.
With his educational background in computer science, electronics and telecommunication, Ramadorai was ready to be the face of the company in its early years. At the time there were just three computers that TCS had at its Nirmal Building office in Mumbai-two IBM 1401 and one ICL 1903. Anyone who wanted to or was required to learn programming did so on these three machines. People used to take turns at the computers because they were so precious! The physical size of the machines was so huge