00:00:17
so mr gurani a very warm welcome to
00:00:19
wharton uh the wharton india economic
00:00:21
forum and also
00:00:22
knowledge at one thank you very much for
00:00:23
taking the time to be with us
00:00:25
well good to be here i'm really enjoying
00:00:28
my day
00:00:28
good we're glad to hear that um so mr
00:00:31
quran if i could uh
00:00:33
start off by asking you a little bit
00:00:34
about your own career trajectory
00:00:36
given that you've been in the indian
00:00:38
corporate sector for a long time
00:00:40
and have seen the indian sort of india
00:00:42
inc so to say
00:00:43
evolve over the years i would love to
00:00:45
get some perspective from you on how
00:00:47
you have seen that evolve what positive
00:00:50
changes you've seen what
00:00:51
changes you've seen that you might not
00:00:53
you know necessarily say are positive
00:00:55
we'll have to start off with that
00:00:56
in honor of that's interesting i never
00:00:58
actually my life has been so good that i
00:01:01
never actually
00:01:02
took a pause to even think about this
00:01:05
thing well today we give it a chance
00:01:07
so let's go back i mean when i was in
00:01:10
college
00:01:11
i did my chemical engineering 1981 there
00:01:13
were enough opportunities in india
00:01:15
incorporated
00:01:16
i actually refused to go in for any of
00:01:18
the campus placements i
00:01:19
thought i'm going to start my business
00:01:22
so when my
00:01:24
wing or all my classmates were either
00:01:26
busy preparing for uh
00:01:28
iams or busy preparing for is in 81 is
00:01:32
still a big career
00:01:34
and or they were you know answering
00:01:37
their gres and gmats
00:01:39
so that they could come overseas i was
00:01:41
the only guy who used to say that
00:01:42
i mean i need space for myself and i'm
00:01:44
not going to go into any structure
00:01:47
and i want to start a business of my own
00:01:49
well
00:01:50
i mean i did make business plans but
00:01:53
i did realize that
00:01:56
you know the scale at which i wanted to
00:01:58
make the business work
00:02:00
i mean there was not enough capital
00:02:02
available and if for capital you only
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could go to the
00:02:05
local state finance corporations or to
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the public sector banks
00:02:10
right and uh one very quickly realized
00:02:13
that
00:02:14
you know the game that is required to be
00:02:17
played
00:02:18
you know it's a game of patience and
00:02:20
number two is that it is about
00:02:21
positioning and number three is about
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you know eventually taking advantage of
00:02:26
the license raj or
00:02:28
things that you've all heard of and i
00:02:30
decided to that you know
00:02:32
maybe i will be a little wiser when i
00:02:33
come back and i will so i actually
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joined jk synthetics
00:02:39
as a process engineer and very quickly i
00:02:42
realized that there is
00:02:44
i was not adding enough value to the
00:02:47
whole polymerization process as a
00:02:49
chemical engineer
00:02:50
so i went back to my you know the
00:02:53
you know as a mentors in the engineering
00:02:56
program i went to them and they said
00:02:58
oh you should get into process design
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and again i think a little too
00:03:01
unconventional even for process design
00:03:03
because process design of those days in
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81 was
00:03:07
you know pick up a drawing and see how
00:03:09
you can reproduce the same drawing in
00:03:11
india
00:03:12
you know what people call it reverse
00:03:13
engineering and i think i was asking too
00:03:16
many questions
00:03:17
and one of the suppliers was a company
00:03:19
called lloyd insulation that i was
00:03:20
asking too many questions how to
00:03:23
and they eventually said oh they have a
00:03:25
graduate management training program
00:03:27
would i like to apply i did apply i mean
00:03:30
and
00:03:31
so once i got into the business side of
00:03:33
things from engineering to business yeah
00:03:36
you know the first project i did was
00:03:38
project management i was in a
00:03:39
thermal power plant and getting the
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insulation done
00:03:43
one is i did realize that you know when
00:03:45
you get into
00:03:46
those offices which are non-air
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conditioned which are project sites
00:03:50
i mean they're a real test of your
00:03:52
physical capabilities
00:03:54
and number two is that getting thousands
00:03:56
of things to collaborate and be able to
00:03:58
deliver on a project plan
00:04:00
i mean it is it's uh more than what any
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housewife
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can even manage yeah but anyway it was
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fun i
00:04:06
learned the project management there i
00:04:09
think over a period of time i mean it
00:04:10
was just
00:04:12
you know one of those things where i had
00:04:13
to uh
00:04:15
seriously look at i mean and meanwhile i
00:04:17
got an admission offer from fms in delhi
00:04:20
yeah i decided not to take it because i
00:04:22
was having so much fun in my career
00:04:24
and since then it has been you know
00:04:28
you know one even led to another and all
00:04:29
i can say is that
00:04:31
i was willing to experiment i was
00:04:33
willing to make mistakes
00:04:35
i was willing to do things which were
00:04:37
considered difficult by others
00:04:38
yeah and i was willing to challenge
00:04:43
conventional thinking and you were wise
00:04:44
enough not to do an mba
00:04:46
i believe so i mean coming to wharton
00:04:48
and saying this
00:04:49
i mean i i did remember that you know as
00:04:52
i said alternate thinking is what has
00:04:53
brought me up to this point
00:04:55
yeah i think that's a very relevant i'm
00:04:58
glad you shared your
00:04:59
you know thinking about how you were
00:05:01
picking your careers because a lot of
00:05:02
students at wharton
00:05:03
whether they're doing the undergrad here
00:05:04
or the mba are facing that choice
00:05:07
whether they should go do
00:05:08
entrepreneurship which often times their
00:05:10
heart lies in or whether they should go
00:05:12
into a more traditional corporate route
00:05:15
again
00:05:16
i mean the good news is because i have a
00:05:17
young girl my daughter who
00:05:19
went to carnegie mellon university here
00:05:21
in pittsburgh
00:05:22
and she had the similar career choices
00:05:25
to make
00:05:26
the difference in these 30 years is that
00:05:30
number one the number of choices
00:05:32
available is much larger
00:05:33
right number two is that
00:05:36
you also know is that
00:05:39
for a good idea there is enough capital
00:05:41
that follows
00:05:43
and so people who have asked me
00:05:46
and including my daughter and i that
00:05:49
also include some of the students and
00:05:51
what wharton that met me i said listen i
00:05:53
mean if you're looking at india as in a
00:05:55
place for an opportunity
00:05:58
i mean as long as you're willing to live
00:06:00
with
00:06:01
you know certain discontinuities certain
00:06:03
unstructured way of working
00:06:05
right i mean i think it is a place to be
00:06:07
in and my examples are very simple
00:06:10
that an indian is traveling overseas
00:06:14
that indian is traveling
00:06:16
that indian roads infrastructure
00:06:19
growth in that just in the quadrilateral
00:06:22
triangle
00:06:23
creates new opportunities that number
00:06:26
three
00:06:27
is that whether you want to set up a
00:06:29
socially responsible
00:06:31
ecosystem where you want to work on let
00:06:34
us say
00:06:35
teach america equivalent program
00:06:38
or you want to do things in health care
00:06:41
you want to do in things in you know
00:06:44
cloud-based education
00:06:46
right i mean there are opportunities at
00:06:48
every level
00:06:50
and and in my opinion i mean uh
00:06:53
there is no better place to be than to
00:06:55
be in india at this moment if you are
00:06:57
really really willing to
00:06:59
sacrifice your you know
00:07:02
the stability stability and as well as a
00:07:04
better better pay
00:07:06
pay package here right so i think
00:07:09
you you bring up a good point that
00:07:11
obviously more capital is available more
00:07:12
opportunities are
00:07:14
presenting themselves in india but at
00:07:15
the same time sometimes
00:07:18
an argument is made that if i want to
00:07:20
start a web startup in india today
00:07:22
it's very easy for me to do it without
00:07:24
much capital et cetera
00:07:25
but if i want to compete in areas where
00:07:27
the large conglomerates are
00:07:30
interested in entering then it becomes
00:07:32
very hard for someone who's not part of
00:07:34
a large conglomerate
00:07:35
to enter those fields and largely the
00:07:37
argument is that one
00:07:39
there's huge amounts of capital required
00:07:41
which again still remains some sort of a
00:07:43
deterrent but then also the
00:07:45
question about connections with the
00:07:46
government connections
00:07:48
generally that have been made by large
00:07:50
conglomerates everywhere which still
00:07:52
serve as barriers to entry
00:07:54
for entrepreneurs any thoughts on that i
00:07:56
think again especially every generation
00:07:58
has had its own dhirubhai ambania
00:08:01
own jrd tata or our own
00:08:04
you know keshav mahindra every
00:08:06
generation has had one who's our
00:08:08
generations
00:08:08
now if you look back i mean just to take
00:08:10
an example i mean i'll just take a very
00:08:12
recent example
00:08:14
now not the most innovative idea in the
00:08:16
world i mean uh
00:08:18
makemytrip.com yeah this got capitalized
00:08:21
in the new york stock exchange
00:08:23
for about a billion dollars now 50 60 70
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million dollar revenue i don't remember
00:08:28
the exact numbers
00:08:29
yeah now when did you last hear after
00:08:32
velocity or uh
00:08:33
orbits or uh expedia i think
00:08:36
if my memory serves me right these were
00:08:39
active portals 10 years ago
00:08:42
now a new portal from india
00:08:45
with almost a similar features even
00:08:47
today gets
00:08:48
listed at a billion dollars it itself
00:08:51
tells you is that
00:08:52
the growth story in india the volume
00:08:55
volume the
00:08:57
the appetite for whether it is a
00:09:00
web-based or a new service
00:09:02
now whether it's an alternate energy
00:09:03
whether it is a so you guys need to pick
00:09:05
your battles
00:09:07
the fact is that education healthcare
00:09:09
travel
00:09:11
infrastructure i.t services
00:09:14
hotels i mean they all lead to the new
00:09:17
generation
00:09:18
right now whether you call them brick
00:09:20
and mortar or you call them private
00:09:21
services
00:09:22
to me as long as there is a customer and
00:09:24
the customer is willing to buy a service
00:09:26
as long as you are willing to be an
00:09:28
intermediary as long as you're willing
00:09:30
to be able to offer and service
00:09:32
i mean there is a market yeah and as
00:09:34
you're suggesting there's clearly a lot
00:09:36
of innovation that's happening
00:09:37
in the service industry in india a lot
00:09:40
of startups are service based
00:09:42
i would love to get your perspective on
00:09:44
product innovation
00:09:46
often times it's said that in india a
00:09:49
lot of companies
00:09:50
are innovating on on service on low cost
00:09:53
service
00:09:53
and they're doing really great things
00:09:55
with that but then when it comes to the
00:09:56
product side of things we're still not
00:09:58
seeing an
00:09:59
ipad come out of india or a new
00:10:01
technology come out of india that's
00:10:03
really innovative
00:10:04
now of course there are examples of
00:10:05
nanos etc but they're still few and far
00:10:07
in between
00:10:08
and that again i would argue is still
00:10:10
cost focused
00:10:12
i would love to get your sense on where
00:10:13
you see the trends going in as far as
00:10:15
product innovation is concerned in india
00:10:17
you know i mean if you ask me
00:10:19
i mean am i not impatient am i not that
00:10:21
kid that a
00:10:23
aggressive to say that i would rather
00:10:25
see an ipad an iphone being born in
00:10:27
india
00:10:28
but at the same time i just want to be
00:10:29
realistic india is what i mean now 1947
00:10:33
to now whatever 64 years
00:10:35
old that this budget
00:10:39
was presented by manmohan singh 20 years
00:10:42
ago
00:10:42
which liberalized the economy right so
00:10:45
in a lot of ways your economy liberal
00:10:47
economy has only started 20 years ago
00:10:49
so that in your maturity cycle
00:10:53
you have now created enterprises like a
00:10:56
tcs
00:10:57
which is now an 8 billion dollar company
00:11:00
that you have a tech mahindra
00:11:02
which is buying a company which is
00:11:03
bigger than them which is when they
00:11:05
bought satyam
00:11:06
that there is an appetite to allow the
00:11:09
companies to scale up from 1000 people
00:11:11
to 70
00:11:12
000 people right in less than five years
00:11:15
that there is an
00:11:16
appetite to be able to run an emergency
00:11:18
response systems
00:11:20
out of you know hyderabad in a
00:11:23
technology environment by mahindra
00:11:24
satyam
00:11:25
which serves 430 million people i think
00:11:28
it just gives you an example
00:11:31
of that we may be not exactly on the
00:11:36
lead but it i do believe that now
00:11:40
in the next 10 years when we you and i
00:11:42
talk i mean there will be an unruh out
00:11:44
there who would have created a product
00:11:47
that it is not and i it is something
00:11:50
which i am very very confident of that
00:11:52
maybe the next
00:11:53
generation of the mobile devices the
00:11:55
next generation of the connected devices
00:11:58
the next generation of uh you know the
00:12:01
smart grids will actually be evolving in
00:12:04
india
00:12:04
yeah so you mentioned obviously uh you
00:12:07
know your
00:12:08
acquisition of satyam i would love to
00:12:10
obviously hear
00:12:11
your perspective on how things have
00:12:13
changed and moved
00:12:14
since you know the last scandal
00:12:16
especially and i would love to get your
00:12:18
site on how it contrasts with
00:12:19
you know we're obviously hearing a lot
00:12:20
about scandals in the public sector in
00:12:23
india
00:12:24
and obviously you know india has seen
00:12:27
suddenly over the last few months a lot
00:12:28
of scandals are up
00:12:29
i would love to get your sense on how
00:12:31
things have moved in your particular
00:12:32
case
00:12:33
and also how things generally are moving
00:12:35
in a positive or negative direction in
00:12:37
the corporate
00:12:38
sector as far as governance is concerned
00:12:40
i mean
00:12:41
you know this is as a child you heard
00:12:43
the saying that fortune favors the brave
00:12:46
and i would like to believe that tech
00:12:48
mahindra
00:12:50
couldn't have chosen a better timing to
00:12:52
acquire satyam
00:12:54
fact is that it was a leap of faith i
00:12:56
mean it is it was a leap of faith i mean
00:12:59
i still remember going to the board and
00:13:02
presenting this case
00:13:03
and what was it you said
00:13:06
financial statements not there
00:13:09
liabilities
00:13:10
to the best of our knowledge this is the
00:13:13
these are the liabilities that
00:13:16
in terms of whether you have excess
00:13:18
employees or less employees
00:13:20
we don't know do you have a bad payroll
00:13:23
or do you have a
00:13:24
you know muster role like in india we
00:13:26
used to have in the
00:13:27
government sector i mean do you have
00:13:29
fake employees we don't know
00:13:32
and yeah but gentlemen i still want to
00:13:34
buy that company
00:13:35
right right management under uncertainty
00:13:38
right this is a prime example of that so
00:13:40
i mean how are you thinking about it
00:13:41
though so i think i mean it was clear i
00:13:43
mean as far as i'm concerned i mean
00:13:45
obviously for
00:13:46
every risk that was there we we tried to
00:13:48
look at the
00:13:49
minimum eczema on that and we looked at
00:13:52
you know how are we going to manage it
00:13:54
and what are the minimum impact and what
00:13:55
is the maximum impact
00:13:57
and the net net if i still make a good
00:13:58
deal i went and headed
00:14:00
and bought it so it wasn't like that we
00:14:02
were fools who rushed into it right
00:14:04
it was clearly that it has been a test
00:14:08
of
00:14:08
management that it has been clearly a
00:14:11
test of leadership
00:14:13
it's been a clearly a test of the spirit
00:14:15
and the the grit of the company
00:14:18
employees that it has been a test of
00:14:21
you know trying to find that extra ounce
00:14:25
of energy
00:14:26
when things you know seem to be not
00:14:29
going exactly
00:14:30
right and to be able to find that
00:14:32
confidence
00:14:33
that the core of the end system is still
00:14:36
very very good
00:14:37
i think it is a it's a storybook in
00:14:39
itself so what lessons would you
00:14:41
be able to offer in management so from
00:14:43
management perspective both for managers
00:14:45
in india and abroad
00:14:47
from your experience over the last year
00:14:49
or two and turning around a story where
00:14:51
really i think a lot of things went
00:14:52
right in the aftermath where the
00:14:54
government was able to actually
00:14:57
work with the private sector and um i
00:14:59
guess salvage a situation which could
00:15:00
have been much worse for the india for
00:15:02
india inc
00:15:03
and also for your company in particular
00:15:06
so there are
00:15:06
three chapters to it one is the
00:15:09
financial mismanagement of the company
00:15:11
by the erstwhile
00:15:12
shareholders number two is having
00:15:16
discovered the fraud how government
00:15:19
reacted
00:15:20
to the corporate governance and number
00:15:23
three is a chapter where the leadership
00:15:26
came in and acquired a company which was
00:15:29
at to some extent a company which was
00:15:33
damaged and had
00:15:36
some of the challenges so if i look back
00:15:39
i mean i think there are lessons at
00:15:40
every level
00:15:41
can you elaborate on number three in
00:15:43
particular right so number three is very
00:15:44
very clear that
00:15:45
uh i do believe that
00:15:49
uh in any of the acquisitions
00:15:54
the most important part is people and
00:15:57
whatever we may define in design
00:16:00
i mean the basic fundamental fact is
00:16:02
that
00:16:03
while we may look at the rational side
00:16:05
when we look at the
00:16:07
the clear the objective side of any
00:16:10
acquisition
00:16:11
or the people part of it but there are a
00:16:13
lot of things which are
00:16:14
subjective there are a lot of things
00:16:16
which are more related to cultural
00:16:19
a lot of the things which are related to
00:16:23
you know what happens to y is equally
00:16:26
critical than just what happens to me
00:16:29
so i think we focus a lot on an
00:16:31
individual and me
00:16:33
we don't realize that it is a whole
00:16:34
fabric which works
00:16:36
so i would say is that culture behavior
00:16:39
and a time that is spent on a people
00:16:41
part
00:16:41
i think that's number one and number two
00:16:43
once you have taken a decision
00:16:46
let us say that i'll i'll give you an
00:16:48
example
00:16:49
i get a lot of credit for uh you know
00:16:52
doing a virtual
00:16:54
pool that means i had to get rid of 10
00:16:57
000 people because i had to right-size
00:16:58
the company
00:17:00
i created a virtual pool i brought them
00:17:02
on a low salary
00:17:03
relatively lower salary but i allowed
00:17:05
them my technology access placement and
00:17:07
so on and so forth
00:17:09
now great move i got great press
00:17:12
i got a good appreciation from ecosystem
00:17:16
but internally what was happening that
00:17:18
those 10 000 people
00:17:20
were still part of the system and they
00:17:22
were pissed off
00:17:23
because their question was why me market
00:17:26
was bad
00:17:28
now trust me if i were to do it again
00:17:31
i'll do it surgical in one day
00:17:33
not because it is not good for the
00:17:35
employee problem is that it
00:17:37
impacted my other 40 000 employees or 30
00:17:39
000 employees
00:17:40
because these 10 000 people you know
00:17:43
while i was being here
00:17:44
you know we as a management team were
00:17:46
being human
00:17:47
but they they were renting off their
00:17:49
feelings
00:17:51
to them we were the villains while as we
00:17:53
did all of this six month program
00:17:55
you know out placement getting
00:17:57
psychologists to come and talk to them
00:17:59
getting you know the making sure that
00:18:02
they are able to save face in front of
00:18:03
their families
00:18:05
so they still remain on the employee
00:18:06
payroll to be able to save faces that
00:18:09
they
00:18:09
are on the they have their email system
00:18:12
working
00:18:14
right so i'm just telling you that there
00:18:16
are many many lessons
00:18:17
i mean this will take almost a book out
00:18:19
by itself one of these days i'll write a
00:18:21
book
00:18:22
and you can remember that the idea of
00:18:24
germinator had knowledge i'll give you
00:18:26
the credit
00:18:28
so one actually one final question um
00:18:31
so i know you just told us not to focus
00:18:33
on the individual and the focus really
00:18:34
has to be on the people and everyone
00:18:36
but if i can sort of move away from that
00:18:39
for a second and focus on your own
00:18:41
personal
00:18:42
uh career over the last decade few
00:18:44
decades
00:18:45
what have been the most what have been
00:18:47
the drivers of your success
00:18:49
very simply but i think uh you know i
00:18:52
don't want to do the cliche
00:18:53
i mean i think what differentiates
00:18:57
anybody in any kind of a competition or
00:18:59
race
00:19:02
i think is ultimately your own passion
00:19:05
hunger
00:19:05
and drive and number two is
00:19:10
what is a support system and how whether
00:19:12
the support system gives you that
00:19:13
opportunities
00:19:15
uh i think i've been blessed that both
00:19:17
from the family part of it and number
00:19:19
two
00:19:20
is that i've had a chance to work with
00:19:23
leaders who are who have allowed me to
00:19:27
you know make mistakes who have allowed
00:19:29
me to experiment who have allowed me to
00:19:32
you know generally you know
00:19:36
try out a few innovative ideas so i
00:19:39
think i mean
00:19:40
so if i were to say is that that is very
00:19:42
very clearly important
00:19:43
you know how the ecosystem how the whole
00:19:45
you know
00:19:46
the the world around you tries to be
00:19:49
become your collaborator instead of just
00:19:50
becoming your uh
00:19:52
you know the adversary or at times you
00:19:55
know but yeah
00:19:56
so i think i was very very lucky that i
00:19:58
had that kind of an ecosystem to
00:20:00
thrive on and number two is that yeah i
00:20:02
mean it
00:20:03
it it clearly means a
00:20:07
a little more hard work and a little
00:20:08
more uh
00:20:11
you know passion a little more hunger
00:20:14
and i
00:20:14
sure believe that is one of the
00:20:16
important differentiators
00:20:18
well mr ghanani it's been an honor uh
00:20:20
speaking with you and learning uh from
00:20:22
your experiences
00:20:23
thank you again for sharing your time
00:20:24
with us and we wish you the best of luck
00:20:26
in your endeavors as well
00:20:28
okay hopefully you'll have time to be an
00:20:30
entrepreneur together i am an
00:20:31
entrepreneur
00:20:32
thank you i got all the space that's why
00:20:34
i'm i continued with my job i mean that
00:20:36
is an important part of it
00:20:38
right okay exactly thank you thank you
00:20:41
so much
00:20:56
you
