KV Kamath – India’s Banker becomes Chairman of Infosys

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Vikas Pota

Earlier today, it was announced that KV Kamath would become Chairman of Infosys – a major Indian and international IT services company that’s based in Bangalore.

In my book titled ‘India’s Inc – How India’s Top 10 Entrepreneurs Are Winning Globally’, I interviewed and included Kamath – although he wasn’t an entrepreneur per se – simply because he’d taken a boring, old world, finance institution and made it globally competitive – displaying all the traits that successful entrepreneurs display while building their businesses. In the book, I called him ‘India’s banker’ as ICICI had truly become a force in India. Their retail operations were slick, their corporate and investment bank delivered exceptional returns etc. The thing that truly marked him out, though, was his fascination with technology. He could have easily been the Chief Technology Officer for ICICI, such was his grasp of the potential technology held to provide a well deserved boost to his company.

For this reason, it came as no surprise that KVK, on retirement as CEO of ICICI, was asked to serve in Infy’s Board. So in many respects, this announcement also doesn’t come as a major surprise to the markets.

Interestingly, Narayana Murthy, founder and soon to retire Chairman of Infosys, also features in my book. Murthy’s known for many things but what stuck out was his commitment to retiring from Infosys as per the governance of the company. In many cases, such words are seen as niceties as it’s widely expected that their next generation will take over, so for this reason its important to mention and celebrate an entrepreneur who’s kept to his word on this – not that anyone has ever doubted it.

Recently, I’ve also read some of the media coverage around succession at Infosys in particular, which despite being interesting to ponder, is in fact a sign of things to come. Mr Murthy and his band of founders will retire soon. Whilst they claim that Infosys will thrive without them, Kamath’s appointment is a litmus test on their faith in the company that they’ve built.

It’ll be worth keeping an eye on Infosys, that’s for sure.

World Economic Forum’s Annual Summit of the New Champions

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Vikas Pota

For someone who really finds it difficult to pay attention and actively listen to people, it may come as a surprise when I say that I really found the recently concluded World Economic Forum’s ‘Summer Davos’ meeting for Global Growth Companies in Tianjin, China to be thought provoking and stimulating.

Sessions ranged from the technical subjects such as the future of solar energy solutions, to the crystal ball gazing type that the WEF team facilitates extremely well.

For me, the Mentor Sessions with Chief Executives of Anglo American, Infosys, Metro Group, and Nestle were the highlights. The CEO’s provided their views on & experiences of various aspects of the journey that leaders from emerging companies will go through – just like they once did.

It goes without saying that the WEF brought together interesting people and communities to interact, debate and learn from each other, not just as speakers, but attendees. Given that they’ve been fine-tuning their proposition for so long, you can be assured of some high quality networking, which is exactly what I found.

All in all a great few days, well organized, and importantly – an enriching experience.

Thank you

Posted on January 24, 2010 by Vikas Pota

As long as I remember, I’ve always been a fan of books. Over time, the range of books that I’ve bought has expanded to include all types of subjects and genres, resulting in an eclectic mix being crammed on my book-shelf at home. I’ve impulsively bought books in markets; in airports on my business travels; and on the net when I’ve managed to write a list of things to order on-line.

So, when I turned 30, I wrote a list of things that I wanted to achieve, but, as with new year’s resolutions, never imagined that I would actually make any headway on any of these.

My list included jumping out of a plane (a skydive), earning my first million, solving third world debt, flying to the moon, and writing a book. So, achieving two of the above with five years to go before I make another list – on my 40th, is – at least in my view, not bad going.

The launch event, last Thursday, was a major milestone in my life. On a personal level, it feels great to have my name on a book, and look forward to seeing it in places that I normally shop. It kinda felt strange to be at the launch event – professionally my firm organises these for others, so it was weird to be the centre of attention at my own! On a professional basis, it’s gratifying to be able to contribute to such an important subject and feel that the book will lead to bigger and better things for me and my firm.

At the event, it seemed that everyone kept on asking me the same two questions – ‘what gave you the idea?’ and ‘what does it feel like?’, and my wife laughingly told me that lots of people kept on approaching her to ask whether ‘she was proud of me’.
My reason for writing the book was quite simply that I believed that with all the talk of India’s emergence on the world stage, a wider audience needed to become familiar with the trailblazers that were making it happen. Yes, it would’ve been great to have the obvious names like Ratan Tata and the Ambani brothers, but it would be doing the subject a disservice to ride on their shoulders as many others have.

From the outset, I was quite clear that mine wasn’t going to be an investigative book, it was meant to be an introduction to a set of role models emanating out of India that will one day, be referred to – along with, some of the biggest entrepreneurial icons that the West seems to love. I’ve always been puzzled as to how a guy like Narayana Murthy, who founded Infosys by borrowing Rs 10,000 from his wife, has gone on to build a firm that employs people all around the globe and earns over 50% of its revenues from the US, but is still largely unknown.

Or a Baba Kalyani, whose firm manufactures components for every single vehicle in the US & Europe. Or take Subhash Chandra, who apart from Zee TV, owns a firm called Essel who manufactures over 30% of the world’s toothpaste tubes! Despite their global reach and success, how comes no one, apart from hard-nosed business journalists & professional India watchers, know anything about them?

With formalities being conducted by Stephen Pound MP, who as everyone expected, was on absolute form that evening, delivered his trademark, side-splitting, remarks, to the annoyance of the next speaker, who would inevitably find it hard to follow such a performance.

So, for this reason, I was totally taken aback with the expert commentary provided by Dixit Joshi, MD of Asian & European Equities at Barclays Capital, who explained that the world needs to understand the thinking taking place in India’s boardrooms in order to address some of the world’s biggest challenges.

Having taken the temperature of the room, I decided to put the speech that I’d crafted to one side and speak ex-tempore on my reasons for undertaking the mammoth task of writing a business book, in an age when the rules were being re-written as a result of the global recession and credit crisis. Importantly, I remembered to thank a few people who’d made the event happen. I took the opportunity to thank my wife, as without her support and love, I wouldn’t have been able to see this project to completion.

I had a great night. I felt humbled by the massive turnout. I was touched with the words that were spoken about me, the book, my firm, and my family.

At the end of the night, I struggled to articulate my emotions, and hence have take a few days to write this post, but the over-arching message remains the same – ‘thanks’.

You can read a write-up of the event, take a look at the pics, and watch footage of the speeches here:
http://www.redhotcurry.com/entertainment/books/launches/india-inc.htm

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary’s also uploaded some photos and videos, which can be accessed here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markhillary/sets/72157623260177684/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBZpdlIyjiM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt2LqWb1scA

Narayana Murthy walks the talk

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Vikas Pota

In a world where CEOs and business leaders have come under immense scrutiny, and where their ethical behaviour and ability to walk the talk ranks as highly as their ability to deliver shareholder value, I found it absolutely refreshing to attend a briefing held by an Indian NGO called Akshaya Patra (http://www.akshayapatra.org) which had invited Narayana Murthy, Founder & Chairman of Infosys, to speak about why he supports them.

If there’s a business leader in the world who symbolises integrity and transparancy, the award should surely go this this tech titan.

It’s easy to see him through the lense of entrepreneurship, after all he founded what is today, one of India’s most international and prestigious firms’. His story is the stuff of legend and there’s no need to repeat it here, but you can read about him in my forthcoming book (http:://www.indiaincthebook.com).

What he captured in his speech tonight floored an audience comprising some very prominent people. Akshaya Patra runs a mid-day meals programme in India. Since 2000 they have grown from providing meals to five schools in Bangalore to feeding 1.2million kids over 7 states through leveraging the use of technology and understanding best practices and other management techniques to scale up their NGO.

Murthy narrated a life experience, which I cover in the first chapter of the book from a different angle, about when in 1974 he decided to return to India from France, he went without food and water for over 4 days after being locked up in Yugoslavia / Bulgaria for speaking to a girl on a train (!), which made him realise the injustices and inequalities of life. Having experienced starvation himself, he offered to the august audience that was gathered today that they should dig deep to support Akshaya Patra’s ambitions of delivering mid-day meals to 5 million malnourished kids by 2015.

What astounded me was the simple maths. One meal costs a mere Rs5.52, so to feed one child for a year, the cost is no more than £8 per year!

With Murthy backing them, they have my support.

Going back to how I started, its par for the course for large companies to have corporate social responsibilty programmes that support such NGOs, but Infosys isn’t a run-of -the-mill type of company, and what shone through once again is that Murthy isn’t an ordinary guy.

To end with he said it beautifully, he explained that rather than a fat bank balance, the ability to illicit a smile on the face of child is a better measure of success.

“You can have a comfortable night’s sleep knowing that you’ve helped another child sleep better”

Succession planning in Indian companies – the TCS way

Posted on October 10, 2009 by Vikas Pota

In an interview I conducted for my forthcoming book on Indian entrepreneurs going global. I asked Mr Ramadorai, when he was the CEO of India’s largest IT firm – TCS, as to who he thought would succeed him, what became quite clear from his and those I asked this question to, was that a pattern was emerging within the boardrooms of Indian companies.

Two issues emerge – (a) whether in their succession planning, they’d consider external candidates and (b) whether they’d consider non-Indian candidates.

On the first issue, it seems clear to me that Indian firms prefer recruiting for top jobs from within their organisation. In the TCS example, Ramadorai’s successor – Chandra has long been seen as the heir apparant. In other similar situations, take Infosys as another example where the baton has been passed from Murthy, Nilekani and now to Krish Gopalakrishnan.

With respects to having a non-Indian at the helm, there aren’t many examples but the two obvious ones that come to mind concern Brian Tempest’s appointment at Ranbaxy, where after a brief stint, he was shifted by Malvinder Singh to a more supportive role, and the other being Alan Rosling, who Ratan Tata appointed to coordinate strategy at Bombay House, the TATA HQ in India. I recollect the look of horror on other industry veterans, when Rosling was appointed and had to represent TATA in global industry platforms.

The other notable example is that of Suzlon, which made the conscious decision to move their HQ to Europe and in tandem appointed a non-Indian as CEO, who has recently moved on, one suspects due to the move back to India for their global HQ.

India has a long way to go in its journey to become a economic super-power, and I believe that a healthy debate has begun in the boardrooms of these companies on issues such as this. In my view, I don’t think we’re too far off from seeing an external, non-Indian heading up a major Indian conglomerate.

Gazing into my crystal ball – I reckon the mother of all succession headaches surrounds Ratan Tata. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tata Sons opted for a (a) external person (b) of non-Indian origin (despite the prominence provided to Naval Tata as heir apparant as a result of his surname), after Ratan Tata.

Watch this space…

Outsourcing – Indian BPO firms & public sector procurement

Posted on July 15, 2008 by Vikas Pota

I was invited to be a panellist for a Question Time session at the National Outsourcing Association’s ‘Global Sourcing’ conference that took place today. Around 100 leading practitioners and experts discussed the challenges that the outsourcing sector faces in today’s credit crunch era.

The conference was Chaired by a friend of mine – Mark Kobayashi Hillary – who can only be described as a ‘genius’, who’s authored several books on subjects related to technology outsourcing. As was evident in today’s conference, unlike other “experts”, Mark really does know what he’s talking about. Judging by the quality of the attendee list, he also possesses a fantastic book of contacts.

Back to the conference – which was a new experience for me – I found that everytime someone spoke about off-shoring destinations, everyone really meant ‘India’, despite the fact that companies from other emerging and established economies were present.

I had to field questions on a variety of subjects ranging from labour arbitrage to China but the one that’s still on my mind concerns the monopoly of an established group of vendors who continue to win business in the public sector despite their public failings. Unconventionally, Mark allowed me to ask a question to the audience asking why Indian firms simple don’t factor in public sector procurement. The likes of TCS, Infosys, Wipro are great at what they do, but why haven’t they made inroads into a space that is as lucrative?

I was involved in Government discussions around 2003 when the then Secretary of State famously made a speech saying “A job gained in India does not mean a job is lost in Britain”. Such statements helped in creating an atmosphere in which Indian firms could continue what they did best – unlike what was happening in the US. For this reason, I was surprised to hear that some members of the audience actually thought that the “negative atmosphere” in the UK resulted in procurement officers and decision makers taking a dim view of Indian firms.

Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, that may have been the case five years ago, but this doesn’t explain why Indian firms (still) haven’t made inroads into the public sector.

I’m keen to learn your views on why companies which are increasingly toe-to-toe against the big boys in the global bazaar, still aren’t getting a look in. Is there a prejudice?, is it because of cultural missundertandings?, are they simply not up to the task? Please leave your comments as I’m interested in improving my understanding.