Innholdsfortegnelse for 12 March 2017 i Business Today

High performance, fast-growing organisations also tend to get voted among the best workplaces in most surveys. Why is this so? One reason is that high-performance organisations typically adopt the best practices in all functions – and that includes HR, and workplace practices. The other reason is that employees are prone to rate professional growth opportunities as one of the priorities when evaluating a workplace. And only a company growing fast can meet the aspirations of growth of the bulk of its employees. Steady companies are inclined to provide lesser opportunities for all but the few exceptional performers. Workplace expectations have changed dramatically over the years. From Independence to about 1980, job stability and a “professional” work culture were the most prized attributes of a job. By the 1990s, with liberalisation…

23 SHARING LESSONS WHAT: 10TH Assocham Higher Education Summit 2017 WHEN: February 23, New Delhi WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The summit will debate new steps and initiatives to strengthen quality in existing institutions and universities. Also on the agenda is ways to establish linkage between industry, academia and the government. The event is being organised by Assocham with Association of Indian Universities. 23 - 24 FOOD FOR THOUGHT WHAT: Food Importers Meet 2017 WHEN: February 23-24, Gurgaon WHAT TO LOOK FOR: FICCI in association with Made In World, Saudi Arabia is organising a two day buyer seller meet for the food sector. Some 80 procurement heads from around the globe are expected to attend. Indian companies will get an opportunity to showcase their products and meeting with buyers will be…

Before buying even a pair of headphones, 31-year-old Chetan Sapra, like most others, does his due diligence by sifting through reviews on online forums. Choosing one after shortlisting products that have garnered ‘honest’ positive comments assures him of having made an informed choice. But that hardly is the case. As the practice of checking reviews before hitting the ‘Buy Now’ button has become the norm, businesses have sprung into action to influence customers’ buying behaviour. Users satisfied with a product seldom go on online forums to sing praises about it; the dissatisfied lot, however, often takes to the web to rant about their unpleasant experiences, much to the chagrin of companies, says Sreedhar Prasad, Partner, E-commerce and Start-up, KPMG India. In order to balance out the reviews, companies have started…

At the Million Jobs Mission conclave organised by the global philanthropic network Social Venture Partners in New Delhi this January, former Planning Commission member Arun Maira emphasised an aspect that is all too often overlooked – the primacy of the human element in industry. State-of-the-art technology, revenue, profit, scale are all very well, but people working in industry matter more than all of these. “The only appreciating asset in any company and its biggest value creator, if utilised to the full, is its human capital,” he said. “Given motivation and the right environment, human knowledge and performance can keep improving.” Well aware of the truth of this assertion, Business Today, in collaboration with its long-standing partner, HR solutions company PeopleStrong, has been conducting an annual survey of how human capital…

The narrow lanes of Dharavi in Mumbai, home to one of the world’s largest slum, would not be considered as a place where dreams come true. Nadeem Shaikh, who is employed at a leather workshop in Dharavi, would, however, vehemently disagree. Nadeem had found that making ends meet on his meagre salary was a challenge and had been looking for an opportunity to expand his income. That is when he came across Amarinder Singh Chahal, Business Development Manager at Amazon Global Sales. Chahal and his team were enlisting Indian sellers – big and small – for hawking their products on Amazon’s global platform. With a little bit of handholding from Chahal’s team, Nadeem – who initially had zero knowledge about how to use the World Wide Web – today sells,…

Three years ago, the then Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd (BHEL), B.P. Rao, started talking about investing in human capital. His successor, Atul Sobti, is building on this, mainly through diversification. The company, for instance, has started sending young engineers to work on new areas such as defence and solar that it is entering. The focus on digital innovations and re-alignment of the core power equipment manufacturing business, too, is giving the employees new challenges to work on. The aim is to inculcate in them a sense of belonging and accomplishment. BHEL also plans to set up incubation centres to promote start-ups. In the third quarter of 2016/17, BHEL posted a profit of `93.54 crore as against a loss of 1,215 crore in the year-ago period.…

Tata Motors has a natural advantage in attracting talent in spite of its sluggish performance in the domestic market. Its best performers in India can get a chance to work with the company’s marquee brands in the UK – Jaguar and Land Rover. The company says 150-200 employees get global experience every two-three years. Tata Motors employs over 59,000 people in 170 countries. The employees are as diverse as its network, comprising over 6,600 touch points and R&D centres. The company, says Gajendra Chandel, Chief Human Resources Officer, ensures a judicious mix of people in its workforce. “The question is, how can we attract talent? How can we mentor the aspirational employees? We look at the entire lifecycle management of people,” says Chandel. The human resource strategy is based on…

In the movie Piku, Deepika Padukone’s eponymous character fondly recalls the registered address of the fictional company her father once worked for in Kolkata: “37 Virginia House, Park Lane”. The address is uncannily similar to an actual one – Virginia House, 37 JL Nehru Road, Kolkata. Curiously, the latter is also the headquarters of ITC Ltd, inarguably one of India’s most prestigious blue chip companies. In portraying Piku’s pride in her father’s old job, the film merely feeds off the aura around the real Virginia House, today synonymous with ITC that straddles sectors as diverse as FMCG, hotels, tobacco, paperboards and packaging, stationery, agri-business and IT. This pride of association with Virginia House has also been illustrated empirically by global HR consultancy IBM Kenexa. According to a 2016 employee engagement…

Sparse-haired and fast greying Sushil Agarwal, Group CFO of the `2,50,000 crore in revenues Aditya Birla conglomerate, never tires of narrating a story of his youth. He was a freshly-minted chartered accountant who had just been inducted into the organisation in 1989. One day, Agarwal was in the office of current Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla’s father Aditya Birla while the latter was on a phone call with his father B.K. Birla. The father-son duo was haggling over the price of pulp that B.K. Birla’s Century Pulp and Paper used to supply to Aditya Birla’s Indian Rayon (now called AB Nuvo). After nearly 10 minutes when the call ended, Agarwal asked: “Why were you haggling with your father? Eventually, it’s within the family”. Aditya Birla leaned back on his chair and…

THE UPSTARTS By Brad Stone Price: 699 A riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley, that are rewriting the traditional rules of business, changing our day-to-day lives and often sidestepping serious ethical and legal obstacles in the process. BUSINESS BESTSELLERS* The Target By Shantanu Guha Ray Shantanu Guha Ray Price: 405 Little Black Book for Stunning Success By Robin Sharma Jaico Publishing House Price: 250 Bulls, Bears and Other Beasts By Santosh Nair Pan Macmillan India Price: 499 The Unusual Billionaires By Saurabh Mukherjea Penguin Price: 499 Messy By Tim Harford Little, Brown Book Group Price: 599 *Top books by sales for Feb 1 - 13, 2017; Includes only books released after Jan 1, 2015; Information provided by amazon.in…

 Bangalore, January 28, 2017 – 95 golfers teed off at the Prestige Golfshire for the LLOYD Business Today Pro-Am of Champions on Saturday, 28th January 2017. The winning team comprising of Shridev Byrappa, Pradeep Singh Randhawa, Tudor Marchis & Latha Bopanna with a score of 103 points, were crowned the "Bangalore Bravos" and would compete in the finale in Delhi.The team comprising of Tarandeep Singh Pahwa, K. Raghavendra Karanth, Ajay Kumar Gopal & Latha Shivanna finished Runners Up with 100 points. In the Individual prizes, Sreekumar K.R was the winner with 36 points in the 15-24 handicap category and Shridev Byrappa won with 37 points in the 0-14 handicap category. LLOYD Electric & Engineering the Co-title sponsor, Indian Oil - the Fuelled By sponsor, Tata Docomo – the Telecom Partner,…

Post-demonetisation Budget Is Not Bad This refers to your cover story, The Missing Feel-good Factor (February 26 issue). The best that can be said about Budget 2017/18 is that it is not bad, which is actually a big compliment for the Modi government after its demonetisation decision. It has given a great push to affordable housing. The Budget proposal to launch a new health protection scheme is most welcome. The proposal for additional 30,000 health cover for senior citizens is good as it will reduce the burden of health-care expenditure for the aged. Special focus on digitisation will also prove to be an effective tool in shaping the future of the economy. Doubling farmers’ income is an inspiring idea. Given the fact that 56 per cent of the country's population…

Ni Hao, Gates The world’s richest man and Co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, has opened an account on China’s most popular messaging app WeChat. Though this is not his first account on a Chinese social media channel – he already has a Weibo account – he received a hearty welcome from the users of the network. He was viewed more than 100,000 times and received over 10,000 likes. In a 30-second debut video, Gates said that on his account @gatesnotes he will share about the people he meets, the books he is reading, and what he is learning. He also invited users to join the conversation in Mandarin. WeChat is a messaging app similar to WhatsApp. However, it also has a timeline feature, similar to Facebook. An Eye-opener A recent…

In October 2016, as the National Capital Region’s (NCR) air quality dipped to alarming levels, partly because of stump burning in the neighbouring states, leaders at Google India swung in to action. Employees from the company’s human resources (HR) team, facilities, and even business units got together to find out ways to make it safer for everyone in the company to commute. They looked at global best practices to understand how to handle the problem, and learnt that Singapore had a similar problem a few years back as smoke engulfed the city – a result of forest fires in Indonesia. An air quality specialist was invited for a talk at Google’s Gurgaon office. Everyone in the office got masks for themselves, and their families. It was a small gesture, but…

If you search for ‘Facebook as an employer’ on Google, the search engine throws up 118 million results. One of the top results is an article titled ‘Why it’s better to work at Facebook than Google’. The reasons have little to do with India or Indian employees, but people policies. A four-month paid leave on becoming a parent – for both men and women – is one of them. Indian employees of Facebook love this and more about the company, which is why it features in Business Today’s ‘Best Companies’, for the first time. Archana Vadala, Head of Staffing at Facebook India, says it is a “strength-based” organisation. Employees can play to their strengths. That’s a recipe for success, both for the individual and the organisation. A few years ago,…

In 2009, Reliance Industries (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani patted his employees on the back. They had built a splendid ‘House of Reliance’ over the past three decades, he emphasised. But Ambani was now looking ahead and wanted to future proof the company, at least for the next three decades, not through repainting and replacing the old furniture with new but by adopting a new work ethic. So, the RIL team decided to build a ‘New house of Reliance’. With this in mind, the largest private oil refiner in the country framed the Reliance Management System (RMS), which is broken up into three – Operation Management System (OMS), Finance MS and People MS. The emphasis on people has been aligned to the vision of founder Dhirubhai Ambani: “Give the youth proper…

Do you know that Cisco India generates two patents a week? Or that Cisco India has, for the last 10 quarters, been the fastest-growing part of Cisco’s global operations? That with more than 11,000 people, India is the company’s second-largest employee base and alternative global headquarters? The ebullient Dinesh Malkani, President of Cisco, India & SAARC, reels these and other factoids breathlessly. “The work done in India, be it in products or services, is cutting-edge and relevant to Cisco globally, which is why we attract the best and the brightest.” Ask Daisy Chittilapilly, who has been with Cisco for a dozen years, about what makes it special, and prompt comes the answer: “No Monday morning blues. Cisco has thrown many challenging opportunities my way over the years, and that has…

Be it the megapixel count, sensor size, or optical zoom, cameras on smartphones have come a long way. While most smart-phones are jazzing up their rear cameras, Vivo is leading from the ‘front’. The new Vivo V5 Plus comes with a dual-lens front camera – 20 MP and 8 MP – to enhance the selfie experience. The 20-MP front camera has been co-engineered with Sony for clarity, while the 8-MP camera captures depth of field. Together, they capture more light, resulting in better images. There is also a flash at the front which comes handy in low-light environments. The camera app works well. Selfies can be captured either in normal mode with HDR or in bokeh mode (for depth effect). Right next to the HDR is the flash setting control.…

QUOTE "Instead of asking us why we didn’t build another Windows, you should ask Microsoft why they didn’t build another TCS." N. Chandrasekaran , Chairman-Designate of Tata Sons, when asked why Indian IT companies did not do well in the products space. He was speaking at the Nasscom India Leadership Forum UBHL IN TROUBLE The Karnataka High Court has issued a winding-up order on United Breweries Holdings (UBHL), the company through which Vijay Mallya used to control his business empire. The court asked the liquidator to take over all the assets of the company. TAJ BRAND CONSOLIDATION Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) has said that all its hotels will be brought under a single brand — Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris. Under the proposed restructuring, the brands of Vivanta by Taj…

There is a large, genuine and, mostly, unmet need for affordable housing, with an urban housing shortage of 18.8 million units ... the shortage could double to 38 million units by 2030 Access to affordable housing is fundamental to the good health and well-being of people and the smooth functioning of economies. It is such a fundamental need that it is imbedded in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Affordable housing is an enormous challenge not just for India but for countries across the globe. Developing and advanced economies alike, struggle with the dual challenges of housing their poorest citizens and providing housing at a reasonable cost for low-and middle-income populations. According to a global study in 2014, over 300 million urban households (of which 200 million are…

Global consulting and technology services major Accenture’s India operations account for a little over 35 per cent of its global employee base of 394,000. In fact, the company has thrice the number of employees in India as it does in the US. Given the recent backlash against outsourcing in general, and offshoring in particular, Accenture has stopped disclosing the exact number of employees in countries such as India. However, every year, it hires thousands from more or less the same talent pool – Tier-I engineering colleges and B-schools – that its Indian peers such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro tap. So, what makes Accenture figure so high on the list of India’s Best Companies to Work For compared to its Indian peers? Is it compensation? Not really. While Accenture has…

Employee Wellness’ at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) could mean pharmacy products at discounted rates, regular health risk assessments, weekly services by specialist doctors, periodic family runs with fitness monitoring apps keeping a watch, workshops on stress management, Zumba and Bollywood dance workshops. HPE’S global HR practices are localised, at times, to suit India’s demography as well as industry competitiveness. Bollywood dance workshops, for instance, is a very Indian practice. Apart from wellness, policies that resonated well among employees in the past year fell in three buckets – employee experience, engagement, and recognition. HPE does not share numbers related to headcount, but its attrition rate, says Ramendrajit Sen, HPE India’s VP & Head of HR, is amongst the lowest in the Indian technology industry today. In terms of employee experience, the…

The serene, open-air campus of SAP Labs India, with its well-manicured and neatly maintained lawns in Whitefield, Bangalore is in stark contrast to the dynamic traffic chaos that thrives on the streets outside. It is an apt analogy for the smooth way the company has transitioned to a cloud-first era seamlessly despite turbulence in the industry overall. That successful transition is in no small measure to the large Indian operations which has around 6,500 employees. The Germany-headquartered enterprise application software behemoth had revenues of more than $22 billion last year and operations in around 190 countries. SAP started its Indian operations as early as 1998. Dilipkumar Khandelwal, the suave MD of SAP Labs India and Executive VP – Enterprise Cloud Services, SAP SE points out that more than 400 employees…

When Adobe India employees asked it to include online courses in their training programmes, it took the company very little time to meet the demand. It now offers hundreds of courses as part of its education assistance policy; as a result, the usage of its education support programme has increased 18 times. It is this agility and flexibility that the company imbibed as part of its makeover one-and-a-half years ago, when it started offering products using cloud technology instead of CDs, that has stood it in good stead with employees. “We wanted our employees to enjoy the benefits that the customers would get from cloud, namely mobility, flexibility and easy collaborations,” says Abdul Jaleel, Vice President, Employee Experience. “This change had to be translated into the way we work, how…

This is the 15th edition of the Business Today Best Companies to Work For survey. It was conducted in collaboration with HR solutions company PeopleStrong. The purpose of the survey is to understand the perceptions and aspirations of India’s employees across industries and map these against what they see in their companies, sectors and even across sectors. It provides an insight into how industry at large and in specific verticals can align their employer brands to aspirations and thoughts of the Indian workforce. This year, too, we are following a survey open to employees from various industries. In addition, members of a career platform for women, Sheroes, were asked to participate. To cross-check the authenticity of the respondents and to ensure that the quality of responses were of acceptable standards,…

The human mind is wired to notice ‘differences’. Be it the kind of food we eat, clothes we wear or services or products we use – the PODS (points of differences) play a major role in shaping these preferences. Our workplaces are not exceptions to this rule. The companies which are able to align the value proposition succinctly in the mind of the consumer are the shining stars, and bringing them to the forefront is what the Business Today-PeopleStrong Best Companies Study aspires to do. The entire ethos of the study is to bring out those unique differences as an ‘Employer Brand’ that the actual consumer perceives in her mind, as this is how companies have been able to create an edge as employers and make the proposition compelling. In…

There could not have been a better time to read this book. For the past 30 months, India has been trying to overcome issues such as black money, corruption, lack of infrastructure and energy security, among others. The challenges are huge, and hence call for bold and unprecedented solutions. There are very little cues from across the globe where all these challenges were tackled together effectively. But there are enough inspirations from across the world on how economies were fixed. The stories, which talk of persisting on the path of correction with conviction, are insightful for developing countries like India. The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World in Decline brings 10 such stories to the fore. It also brings out the implications of globalisation – especially in…

Change of Guard Ajay Tyagi, an additional secretary in the finance ministry, has been appointed the new Chairman of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The 58-year-old will succeed U.K. Sinha, whose term ends on March 1. Sinha had been serving as SEBI Chairman since 2011, and has been given two extensions since – one for two years and another for a year. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said that Tyagi will serve as SEBI chief for five years, but later cut his tenure by two years. He is a 1984-batch Indian Administrative Service officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre, and had served on the board of the Reserve Bank of India for a short period. Words of Dispraise Former Finance…

Reenita Das, Partner and Senior VP of Healthcare and Life Sciences, Frost & Sullivan, talks to Anik Basu about growth strategies in the Indian healthcare sector. Where is India’s healthcare sector headed? The next five years will witness widespread changes in India’s healthcare sector – from medical technology, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics to patient monitoring – spurred by the availability of trained medical professionals at competitive costs as compared to India’s peers in Asia; commitment to quality, and business-friendly policies of the government. India will emerge as a great example for innovative delivery models in healthcare in the APAC region. Digital health concepts such as tele-medicine, tele-health and m-health are being accepted in traditional delivery models in India. But unique reimbursement models need to be explored; health information exchange improved. Also,…