Innholdsfortegnelse for 6-Oct-19 i Business Today

Over the past five years that I have been overseeing Business Today’s Most Powerful Women special issue, the number of women making it to the long list has been increasing – and also becoming more broad-based in terms of sectors from which they hail. Every year, in fact, we see a number of new names shattering the glass ceiling and making it to the C-suites and boardrooms of different companies and sectors. Even five years ago, the number of women achievers from finance and banking dominated the list. Today, apart from finance, the list has many representatives from FMCG, media and entertainment, durables, manufacturing as well as a number of service sectors. All this – along with the number of women’s issues being debated in publications and legislature – could…

THE NARENDRA MODI government has claimed that the first 100 days of its current term has been a phase of bold decisions and decisive actions. It takes credit for sweeping economic reforms, ease-of-doing-business initiatives, social security measures for the marginalised, increased income support to farmers and many more decisions and actions taken during this period. What the government does not highlight is the fact that these 100 days have also been testing times for the Indian economy. Fewer investments were coming in, fewer jobs were created and demand across sectors remained subdued. The Modi government has not been in power for 100 days, but for five-and-a-half years, now. Hence, bold and decisive actions are fine, only if it results in overall economic and social prosperity. So far, the boldest decision…

RISE UP WHAT: German American Conference WHEN: November 1, Cambridge WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The student-led conference in the US will have more than 700 participants and over 50 speakers. Leaders from business, politics, academia and media will come together to discuss principles of success and emerging trends that are driving growth. INVESTMENT HUB WHAT: CII TEXCON Northern Region WHEN: November 4-5, Delhi WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The event will focus on laying a roadmap to tackle challenges that the textile and apparel industry has been facing. It will evaluate the current investment scenario and present India as an attractive investment destination across the textile manufacturing value chain. 10X GROWTH CHALLENGE WHAT: NASSCOM Product Conclave WHEN: November 5-6, Bengaluru WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The conclave will focus on core strategies…

Every woman has to invest in herself and make herself capable for senior roles. The more you plough into yourself, the more benefits you will reap. There is no short cut to that. Our destiny should be in our bags.FALGUNI NAYAR Founder, Nykaa You need to see yourself as a professional first and a woman later. It may be daunting, but your climb to success depends on how you deal with situations.ABANTI SANKARANARAYANAN Chief Strategy and Corporate Affairs Officer, Diageo India There is a great amount of opportunity to grow, just capitalise on it with passion and hard work. Your work should speak for you to be heard.NADIA CHAUHAN Joint MD and CMO, Parle Agro You have to work hard as a woman. Please take the liberties to get your…

A LISHA MOOPEN, Deputy Managing Director of healthcare chain Aster DM Healthcare, is a new entrant in BT’s Most Powerful Women list. Though the ₹7,963 crore-company has been in India for nearly two decades, it was considered as a West Asia-based healthcare chain. In 2018, Moopen spearheaded the listing of the company on Indian bourses. The company runs 25 hospitals, 115 clinics and 231 pharmacies under three brands – Aster, Medcare and Access. Out of this, 13 hospitals are in India, including the Aster Medcity in Kochi. “Aster’s first hospital was opened in in Calicut (Kozhikode) in 2001,” says Moopen. “A few years ago, we decided to aggressively expand in India. Since then, I have been spending much of my time here,” she says. The oldest of three daughters, Moopen…

It was in the early 1980s when a young SBI recruit, Anshula Kant, applied for a transfer from New Delhi to Varanasi. The HR team was aghast. But Kant was sure of supporting her chartered accountant husband set up his own practice there. Kant, who will soon be taking up the job of MD and CFO at the World Bank Group, remembers how the bank’s borrowers would be taken aback upon seeing a woman field officer. Her about two decade-long experience in UP held her in good stead – when she was CEO of SBI’s offshore unit in Singapore (she got a retail banking licence in a “very competitive banking landscape with 160-plus banks”); and when she became the bank’s CFO. Kant says she personally requested the then Chairperson Arundhati…

Aradhana Galgotia, alumni of Queen Mary University of London where she studied LLM in intellectual property, is no less a queen herself who rules the hearts of youngsters as a role model with her beauty and brains. She is the 26-year-old vivacious scion of the Galgotia family, daughter of Suneel Galgotia who has established the Galgotias University, Greater Naida is devoted to excellence in Teaching, Research and Innovation and to develop leaders who will make a difference to the world. She has studied in prestigious institutions such as Jesus and Mary College, New Delhi (Political Science), LLB and then went to London where she got international exposure, an experience which has given her a global perspective about education and professionalism. A multi-dimensional personality and a passionate educationist at heart. Aradhana…

Nikhita Mangeshkar was born and raised in the city of dreams-Mumbai. This city has its way of giving you different opportunities in life, for her it was pursuing her scientific calling by graduating in microbiology and then moving into fashion designing to follow her passion of creation. "Raffles Design International was hectic, but this is where I realized how much I loved my work. Getting the opportunity to create these amazing experimental garments was something I looked forward to" says Nikhita. After completing her fashion degree, Raffles assisted her in connecting to a designer boutique called Anj, where she landed her first job. After working at Anj for around 10 months, Nikhita quit her job and started working with her father in the family business. Nikhita explains, "Business was flourishing…

NITA AMBANI, wife of RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani, has been busy the last year because of two weddings in the family – daughter Isha Ambani married Anand Piramal and son Akash Ambani married Shloka Mehta. But her social and professional responsibilities did not suffer, whether it be the Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai or the Indian Super League. She said she sees these responsibilities as opportunities to make a change. In an earlier interview, she had advised youngsters to prioritise responsibilities. “It’s important to know that while juggling rubber balls and glass balls, the former may bounce back when you miss, but the glass balls will crack if you let them fall,” she said. According to sources, she has roped in elder son Akash Ambani to manage the major…

PREMIUMISATION has been the main strategy that Priya Nair, Executive Director (Home Care), Hindustan Unilever, has been following for a while now. From fabric softeners to liquid detergents, Nair has been passionately pushing the premium portfolio not just in bigger cities but in rural markets too. One of Nair’s oft-quoted examples is the ₹3 sachets of fabric conditioner brand Comfort and the 200 ml pack of Surf Excel liquid detergent, which she says are a hit in rural markets. A premium product in a smaller pack and at an affordable price point does have takers even in rural markets. Nair’s strategy has paid off. Despite HUL’s overall volume growth in the first quarter of 2019/20 being the lowest in several quarters, the home care business grew 10 per cent. In…

Kanu Kitchen Kulture Pvt. Ltd., India distributors of Hacker, pioneered the concept of modular kitchens in the country. The tastefully done flagship store at Mahipalpur, Delhi is headed by Ms Kanupriya Mal, the young woman Director who has been associated with Hacker since its launch in 2004, after completion of graduation. Trained by the German company, this kitchen specialist, exuding a persona of women’s power and compassion, says she is happiest when known as a Hacker specialist! In love with Hacker’s inspiring business ethics and acumen, the enterprising daughter of Capt. Mukesh Kumar, CMD of Hacker India operations, is putting to good use her management skills learnt at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, passionately bonding with people by putting right the energy centre of their homes-Kitchens! What has Hacker’s…

FOUNDER and Managing Director of Kalaari Capital, one of India’s biggest early-stage VC firms, Vani Kola believes in backing young, first-time entrepreneurs. She has led more than 30 investments at Kalaari in e-commerce, gaming and digital content, among other sectors, and some of her successful portfolio companies include Dream11, Myntra, Cure.fit and Snapdeal. She believes that a dialogue between a VC and an entrepreneur should be honest and transparent. She says such communication has always proven to be an effective way to defuse situations that could cause friction. In a blog post, Kola says today’s world of business and technology is seeing an unprecedented upsurge in participation from women. She points out that in India itself, about eight million women have either started or are running businesses, and that women-owned…

HERE ARE THE NEW STARS ON THE HORIZON WHO HAVE STARTED MAKING A MARK IN THEIR SECTORS. WHEN ASHNI BIYANI joined her father Kishore Biyani’s business in 2007, she was just out of college. Her colleagues wondered if she was serious about the business. She often overheard chatter about whether she would be around after she got married. It impacted her initially but soon she learnt to ignore it. Over a decade later, Biyani is at the helm of the ₹3,000 crore Future Consumer Products. “Over time, your work talks beyond gender. I am reaching the place where I am more comfortable,” she says. “The consumer environment was far more exciting and kept me going,” she adds. The last year has been action-packed for the 34-year-old. The company made a…

Q1. How do you see yourself as a woman leader? Answer: I believe that one can be a leader irrespective of their gender but I cannot at the same time take away the reality from the dream, we do lack women in leadership positions resulting into lack of women mentors in most organisations. Having worked across geographies (inter and intra countries) and different industries has provided me the insight and perspective to understand and appreciate the multifaceted challenges that women have to face in the corporate world. Personally, I see myself embodying accountability at the highest level as key to success and have always felt empowered to find solutions. I strongly advocate that one need not be afraid to be their own as that is authentic and being a leader…

EVERY NUMBER TELLS a story, and researchers, policymakers and enablers must understand it to jump-start the social development sector. Prerna Mukharya, an MA in Economics from Boston University, is a firm believer in that vision. So, she took a leap of faith seven years ago and set up Outline India (OI), a for-profit social data enterprise. Think of it as a Big Data firm with three big differences. First, Mukharya and her team conduct on-field surveys across Indian hinterland to gather primary data. “This is vast, considering 66 percent people live in rural India and very little data is available regarding their quality of life, needs and expectations,” she says. So, OI gathers loads of micro datasets covering key segments such as health, education, water, gender, sanitation and even agriculture.…

Dr Minnie Bodhanwala completed her Bachelor of Dental Surgery from Osmania University, Hyderabad in 1986. Along with this, she has completed her Masters, MHA, OPE (USA), OBA (USA). She is also a Master Black Belt and Black Belt in Sigma from National Healthcare Academy (NHCA) for which she was certified in the years 2018 and 2017 respectively. Dr. Bodhanwala is currently serving as the CEO for two charitable, semi-government hospitals in Mumbai. These are the Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital for Children which has 525 Beds and the Nowrosjee Wadia Maternity Hospital, having 350 Beds. Dr Bodhawala has always been a visionary and ethical enterprise originator. Nurturing and executing new ideas and being engaged in multiple projects, she has helped in recreating the brands for several organizations and business verticals. Dr…

Dr. (Col) Manjinder Singh Sandhu, Director Cardiology & Artemis Cardiac Care, is an accomplished lnterventional Cardiologist and Healthcare leader. He is a graduate from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune and a gold medallist in MD. Dr Sandhu did his MD (Cardiology), from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh and holds a Masters in Healthcare Administration, from Walden University, USA.. A technology literate executive, he has completed programs in Data Science, Big Data, Cloud Technology and Corporate Finance. He is a qualified healthcare leader and Board Member, seasoned in roles focused on operational improvement, revenue growth and technology enablement. A change management specialist, Dr Sandhu applies a collaborative management style and incisive problem-solving capability as the foundation for creating an inspired work culture at Artemis. In…

One of the most celebrated Ocorporate lawyers in India, Zia Mody has made her mark in a male-dominated profession, thanks to her razor-sharp mind, great negotiation skills and sheer hard work. At her Mumbai-headquartered law firm AZB & Partners – co-founded by Ajay (Bahl), Zia (Mody) and Bahram (Vakil) – she is known as the only person who carries both her lunch and dinner to work. Daughter of Soli Sorabjee, a constitutional expert and the former attorney general of India, Mody decided to take a different route to stake her claim to fame and won all the way. From just about 25 lawyers, AZB now boasts a team of 450-plus and caters to several marquee clients, including Fortune 500 companies, MNCs, investment banks and private equity firms. Mody started her…

Being an investment banker is different from incubating e-commerce companies B or running one’s own private equity firm. But Renuka Ramnath has done all that and more. She started her career with the ICICI Group and went on to take up leadership roles in investment banking, structured finance and e-commerce. As the MD and CEO of ICICI Venture, she had turned it into one of the biggest PE funds in India, but quit it to set up her own PE firm. Ramnath describes Multiples as “a culmination of her beliefs, experiences and relationships to channelise high-quality, long-term capital towards the growth of the Indian economy”. Ten years later, her firm has close to $1 billion assets under management and a portfolio of 18 companies. Multiples is backed by several global…

Nobody understands the entertainment demands of the common Indian better than Ekta Kapoor, Joint Managing Director, Balaji Telefilms. Daily soaps – Naagin, Kasautii Zindagii Kay, Yeh Hai Mohabbatein and many more – are popular among many viewers. So, it is not surprising that Kapoor’s digital entertainment platform, ALTBalaji, has more takers in Tier II and Tier III cities and beyond. She is concentrating her efforts on the next stage of entertainment in India, which is over-the-top (OTT) content. The aim is to take the content to a bigger audience. For this purpose, she has recently entered a content deal with Zee Entertainment’s digital platform ZEE5. The two platforms will co-produce over 60 Web originals, which will be available on both platforms. WHY SHE MATTERS ALTBalaji has tied up with ZEE5 to…

Owning a house provides a sense of security to many. But the astronomical rise in property prices in years leading up to 2007 had made buying a home a distant dream for many. Still, lakhs of people who stretched their pockets to book a house never got it as developers struggled with funds and complex regulations and failed to finish projects. “Residential real estate launched in or before 2013, that is stuck at various stages of non-completion, is collectively worth a whopping ₹4.64 lakh crore. A total of 5,75,900 units are yet to be delivered to their buyers,” says Anuj Puri, Chairman, Anarock Property Consultants. This sums up the grim picture of the real estate sector. The developers are in great financial stress as sales are happening at a very…

STAY CONNECTED WITH US ON www.facebook.com/BusinessToday@BT_India Bailed Out for Now, Sugar Sector Needs Structural Reforms The Indian sugar industry is going through a sweet phase. But, is it the end of the industry’s and sugarcane farmers’ troubles? businesstoday.in/sugar-reforms Why Automotive Start-ups Appeal to Venture Capitalists Global investors’ interest in auto-tech start-ups comes at a time when the Indian auto sector is battling its steepest fall in monthly sales in the past 19 years businesstoday.in/autoindustry-global.investors Rosy-eyed Centre Looking at PSB Mergers as a Panacea; It’s Not In a slowing economy, where asset quality deterioration of PSBs has still not receded, the merger could be counterproductive businesstoday.in/psbmerger-economy NEWS Rana Kapoor, Other Promoters Stare at Losing YES Bank Control Post Equity Dilution As the family’s stakes have gone below 10 per cent, they…

INDIA’S LARGEST bank, State Bank of India (SBI), has taken a lead in reducing deposit rates. While lending rates are now linked to the external benchmark repo rate for better and faster rate transmission, deposit rates are still sticky, which raises concerns about borrowers getting lower rates in future. SBI and a few other banks have made a beginning by reducing deposit rates, but it is only restricted to term deposit rates. In addition, private sector banks are still offering higher term deposit rates. There are questions on whether the recent deposit rate cut will sustain for long because of competitive pressures. Similarly, there is also scope to reduce the rate on savings deposits, which account for a big chunk of banks' cost of funds. Many suggest the RBI should…

IT WAS A BIT SURPRISING when the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy recently notified ocean energy as renewable energy, especially when India has no installed capacity and hardly any research has been done to ascertain its potential. The notification means that the electricity generated from the source will have a must-run status at the grid – which means grids can’t refuse to take this electricity and distribution companies can buy it to meet their mandatory renewable energy procurement obligations. Rough estimates peg the potential at 12,455 MW in Khambat & Kutch regions and large backwaters. Officials in the ministry say there are some investors who are keen to tap this energy source. However, it seems that the things have been eased a bit too early, without much planning.…

Women in India earn 19 per cent less than men The more skilled the job, the higher the pay gap While there is no gender pay gap in semi-skilled work, the gap touches 20 per cent for skilled women and 30 per cent in highly-skilled occupations The highest pay disparity is in IT and IT-enabled services where women get 26 per cent less than male counterparts. In manufacturing, women get 24 per cent less. In healthcare, the pay disparity is 21 per cent The least gender pay disparity is in the banking sector, less than 2 per cent…

IN A BUSINESS that is even globally dominated by men, Abanti Sankaranarayanan, Chief Strategy and Corporate Affairs Officer, Diageo India, is among the few women to make it to the top. “Since we are market leaders, the onus is on us to not just shape the industry but also consumption habits. Big shifts don’t happen overnight,” she says. Sankaranarayanan has been advocating for a stable policy environment for the alcohol business in the corridors of power. A stable policy environment helped Diageo register 10 per cent growth in sales and 143 per cent growth in profits in the first quarter of 2019/20, despite an overall slowdown in the economy. Sankarnarayanan says most of the growth has come from its premium portfolio, especially scotch (20 per cent year-on-year). “Our strategy has…

THIS IS THE second year in a row that Ameera Shah, Promoter and Managing Director, Metropolis Healthcare, has made it to Business Today’s Most Powerful Women list. In April 2019, Metropolis debuted on the bourses, at a 9 per cent premium. Its market cap is at present in excess of ₹6,000 crore. Shah is sure of captaining Metropolis, which is counted among India’s leading diagnostic chains. Shah joined her father’s Dr Sushil Shah’s Laboratory in 2001. It then had about 40 employees, annual revenues of ₹7 crore and a business that was restricted to Mumbai. In 2018/19, Metropolis recorded revenues of ₹760 crore, an 18.1 per cent growth over 2017/18; profit after tax of ₹123 crore, 10.5 per cent higher; while EBITDA grew over 15 per cent. It has 123…

THE ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN has hit many industries and the media industry is no exception. Apurva Purohit, President of Jagran Prakashan Group, adapted accordingly. Her company has been making it to the Great Places To Work list for the past several years, an achievement she is proud of, but wonders whether it has been good for business. “Just because we want to be a great place to work, we have often been softer in our approach,” she says. When revenue generation became a challenge, she felt aggression was needed. “I used to tell my team to be collaborative and not be aggressive. Today, I tell them to be hugely aggressive. Soft collaboration to hard negotiation is a big mindset change.” “I USED TO TELL MY TEAM TO BE COLLABORATIVE… TODAY, I…

The name Nykaa is well known among those who shop for branded cosmetics and personal grooming products. Its Founder, Falguni Nayar, who wanted to set up the Indian version of Sephora, is now looking at building Nykaa into a complete lifestyle brand for Indian women, and her first step towards that was starting Nykaa Fashion last year. Nayar believes there is immense potential in offering good quality fashion solutions as opposed to discounted fashion, which most online brands do. “We realised that the consumer wanted well styled clothes but the online brands are focussing more on price; only discounted products are being discovered,” she says. Nayar also wants to bring in an element of personalisation where artificial intelligence will be able to guide a consumer. “The way technology is moving,…

Harshbeena Sahney Zaveri believes in planning for the long term. That is why she is not unduly worried about the immediate future of the company in spite of the fact that the auto sector, its major customer, is in dire straits. “Recession also throws up opportunities and we are ready with the plans if the demand for vehicles does not pick up in the next 10-12 months”, she says. NRB, which makes 500-plus types of bearings for vehicles, has seen good growth in the past few years in terms of revenues and profitability. In 2018/19, NRB reported 12.8 per cent year on year growth, driven by healthy rise in supplies to domestic original equipment manufacturers and exports, which grew 15 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively. Revenues grew from…

AT A TIME when most consumer goods companies in India are reporting lacklustre growth and the overall economy is visibly in a recession, Nadia Chauhan, Joint Managing Director, Parle Agro, claims her business has grown over 35 per cent in the past year. “We have grown despite harsh monsoons in many parts of the country. Appy Fizz is growing by 90 per cent,” she says. The ₹5,000 crore company has reportedly doubled its turnover in the last five years and Chauhan says robust growth has come on the back of high levels of business practices that she and her team have put in place. Parle Agro has not just improved its distribution, it has also come up with packaging innovations, which has helped it keep the pricing affordable. “We recently…

FROM PRIYANKA Chopra and Kareena Kapoor to Akshay Kumar and Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Rohini Iyer, Founder of Raindrop Media, is in charge of managing the reputations of several Bollywood A-listers. At a time when social media minutely scrutinises every move of celebrities, Iyer often finds herself on the edge, trying to fire-fight situations. She tries to keep calm at all times by telling herself not to take failures to heart. At the same time, she is careful to not get blinded by success. “Sometimes people taste success quite early in their career and sometimes failure. At both points they let it mess with their head and that I feel is the worst thing any professional can do. You need to be able to handle success and failure in equal measure,…

Apollo Hospitals Founder and Chairman Dr. Prathap C. Reddy likes to call finance head Suneeta Reddy as Apollo’s Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth. Ask Suneeta Reddy, the Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals and one of the four daughters of Dr. Reddy on what has stood out for her over the past one year and she is quick to say: "The definition of business in today’s world is not just about margins and profitability but about social and environmental impact. Apollo Hospitals has been able to touch over 120 million lives since its inception 35 years ago." Analysts say what has stood out about Apollo Hospitals' finances and which shows Suneeta Reddy’s business acumen is the ability to turn around earnings performance on all fronts, which means improving margins not…

NOT EVERYONE will buy into your idea or vision, but you have to cajole, coax and even threaten depending upon the situation,” says Vibha Padalkar, CEO of HDFC Life Insurance, adding in the same breath, “but you still have to take everyone along.” Padalkar should know; she oversees a workforce of 19,000-plus, 51 million customers, a network of 412 branches and more than 250 partners. Competition is tough, and rules are getting stricter. But HDFC Life is among the top five players in the industry. It earned total premium of ₹29,186 crore and net profits of ₹1,280 crore in 2018/19, and has assets under management worth ₹1.25 lakh crore the same year. But with the economy slowing, the insurance industry faces many challenges. Padalkar, however, is confident of growing more…

THE ANNUAL general meeting (AGM) of Reliance Industries (RIL) is one of the largest shareholders’ meetings held since the time of Dhirubhai Ambani. For those who attended the AGM in August, it was clear that Isha Ambani is passionately involved in the customer experience front of the start-up Reliance Jio, in which RIL spent ₹3.5 lakh crore to build infrastructure. She, along with twin brother Akash Ambani, presented Jio’s business plan at the AGM, while parents Mukesh and Nita Ambani looked on. Last year, at an event in London, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and MD, RIL, had said the idea of Jio, which has catapulted India into becoming the world’s largest mobile broadband data consuming nation in less than two years – was first seeded by Isha in 2011. She was…

BECOMING A director of India’s largest unlisted kitchen appliance company, Neha Gandhi perhaps always knew that she would take over the company from her father, Rajendra Gandhi, Founder and Managing Director of Stovekraft, which has flagship brands of Gilma and Pigeon. She had joined the company’s board in 2016, and is now the Executive Director at Stovekraft. Gandhi, 27, completed her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a post-graduate certificate programme in Sales and Marketing Management from MICA (formerly Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad). After a brief stint as a graduate trainee at Viacom 18 Media, she joined her company’s marketing division before being elevated to a board position. Stovekraft has over 660 products and over 2,000 employees. Over a 1,000 employees are on its factory floors (Bangalore and Baddi,…

Aruna Jayanthi has worn many hats at technology services company Capgemini. She is the former India head and grew the company’s headcount in the country from 32,000 to 85,000 between 2011 and 2015. In 2016, Jayanthi took over as Head of Business Services, a strategic business unit created to provide BPO and Platform services. She has been in a global role ever since. In July 2018, she took over as head of the company’s Asia Pacific and Latin American business. Over the past one year, the region has continued to outpace Capgemini’s average growth, albeit from a lower base. While the company grew revenues by 8.4 percent to €7 billion in the first half of 2019, the Asia-Pacific and Latin America business (7 percent of group revenues) grew 12.2 percent,…

KIRTHIGA REDDY HAS always done something distinguishing in whichever organisation she has worked till date. She came under the spotlight in India as the country’s first employee for social media giant Facebook – literally opening office shutters on day one and cementing its presence in India thereafter. At Silicon Graphics, her first job, she was the youngest director of engineering. Reddy, who is the first in her family to get a technical and business degree in the US, holds a master’s in business administration from Stanford University and MS in computer engineering from Syracuse University. She joined Japanese investment giant SoftBank in December last year. Reddy, who is the first female investing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, while heading into her new role, mentioned in a Facebook post: “After over…

AFTER TELLING innumerable stories such as Kaisi Hai Yariyan and doing reality shows such as Dancing With The Stars on Indian television for over a decade, Myleeta Aga, SVP and GM (South East Asia and South Asia), BBC Studios, says she is finally getting to do the kind of content she always wanted to do in India due to the advent of digital platforms such as Hotstar and Netflix. She can talk for hours about the Indian remake of the iconic British series, Criminal Justice, streamed on Hotstar. It gave her an opportunity to tell a realistic story about the Indian legal system. “We worked with a legal team to make sure we were authentic. Small nuances were taken care of.” Aga is excited that Indian consumers have finally found…

KIRAN Mazumdar-Shaw wanted to join the medical school but eventually became a pharma entrepreneur, turning her company into the country’s biggest manufacturer of biopharmaceuticals. Over the past four decades, she has been targeting diseases from diabetes to cancer, and Biocon has established itself as a significant Indian player in the global biosimilar market. Last year, Fulphila – a biosimilar pegfilgrastim (a white blood cell booster) co-developed by Biocon-Mylan – was successfully launched in the US. It has already captured 21 per cent volume share in pegfilgrastim (pre-filled) syringe market in the US. Biocon and Mylan also got their biosimilar insulin glargine approved in Europe and other regions. With three biosimilars approved in the US and Europe and others in the pipeline, the founder is looking forward to $1 billion in…

CHENNAI-based Tractors and Farm Equipment (TAFE) has continued to boom under Chairman and CEO Mallika Srinivasan. It has become the world’s third-largest tractor manufacturer by volume and India’s second-biggest. Her grandfather had set up the company, and when she joined it in 1986, TAFE had a turnover of ₹85 core. It has now joined the $1 billion-plus league and holds 25 per cent market share in India. She has also diversified into farm machinery, diesel engines, engineering plastic and passenger vehicle franchising, and made acquisitions to push growth. Srinivasan is also known for her philanthropic efforts. She has built JFarm, TAFE’s adaptive agricultural research and training centre, to empower farmers and has launched a platform for renting out tractors and farm equipment to small and large farms. WHY SHE MATTERS…

The coming of age of the #MeToo movement in India is as paradoxical as it is phenomenal. For the first time, many women overcame traditional mores of shame and taboo associated with victims of sexual misconduct and spoke up publicly, calling out their harassers. Being vocal on Twitter about past harassments is liberating and empowering. The viral hashtag campaign helped overturn normalisation of abuse of power to some extent. It also set examples for younger women to find the courage and speak out instead of accepting things quietly as previous generations did. This is a welcome change. Despite the buzz around the movement, little action has been taken against people who were called out. There are celebrated cases such as journalist Priya Ramani versus former union minister M.J. Akbar. Or…

Global podcast platforms like UK’s audioBoom, China’s Ximalaya and US’s TuneIn are streaming in India Music-streaming companies like Airtel’s Wynk Music and Reliance Jio’s JioSaavn have started including podcasts in their offerings Many local podcast platforms have sprung up, such as Audiomatic, Indus Vox Media Podcasts, Indicast, Hubhopper, Awaaz and Gatha Though early podcast platforms were only in English, many have now ventured into Indian languages. Awaaz podcasts exclusively in Hindi…

BY STAYING non-committal at the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership’s (RCEP)’s ministerial discussion and reopening the FTA with ASEAN countries, India has resisted the pressure being built by Chinese diplomats to open up the economy for their products. The RCEP, which has ASEAN countries along with China, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is working on a mega free trade agreement. India is open to giving space to the other partners except China. The tariff would become zero on roughly 74 per cent of the products; of this, 40 per cent are already being ‘dumped’ by Chinese players into India. India has a trade deficit of more than $57 billion with China. With reworking of the FTA with ASEAN, India is looking at capturing the global value chain manufacturing and services…

A SECONDARY market for corporate loans amid a credit crunch in the economy is a logical way forward. The recent RBI Committee report in this regard suggests creating an online marketplace where banks can sell their loans to a wider set of investors from mutual funds, insurance firms to foreign investors. The idea already exists in its limited form in selling stressed loans to ARCs. The report talks about evolving it to an organised structure where not only stressed but also secured loans can be traded. Although a secondary market can help banks utilise their capital better and reduce exposure in overstretched sectors, only investors with strong capital base and risk appetite can buy large loans from banks. Besides, there are concerns of banks disbursing loans without quality due diligence…

IN A BIG RELIEF to big audit firms facing a probable ban for their inability to detect large corporate frauds, the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has reversed a Sebi order banning 10 PwC-associated audit firms for their alleged ‘involvement’ in the Satyam Computer scam. The message that comes from the order is that banning audit firms could be a rarity and if at all partners and staff of an audit firm are found guilty of professional lapses, they are the ones who should face action and not the firms. The general feeling is that a blanket ban on audit firms, especially the bigger ones, will only create trouble for Indian Inc., which will find it difficult get a replacement. The need, people from the audit community say, is to bring…

There has been a steady rise of women up the corporate ladder. We at Business Today know that very well, since we were the first publication to highlight the achievements of women in Indian business starting 2003. We started off the process for identifying the Most Powerful Women (MPW) in June 2019 with an initial list of about 150 names, many of who have featured in our list in earlier years. That’s when BT editors and reporters suggested names of women who have made a difference over the last fiscal year. The women that we initially identified were across 10 areas: BFSI, FMCG, Government, IT & ITeS, Legal, Manufacturing, Media & Entertainment, Pharma & Healthcare, Entrepreneurs, and Others. There is a sharp difference from the past when most of the…

FOR AISHA DE SEQUEIRA, Co-Country Head and Head of Investment Banking-India, Morgan Stanley, the challenge came from two sides: an uncertain economic environment, and her battle with cancer. De Sequeira chose to continue working as her treatment progressed. “I took work down a few notches but did not stop working or talking to clients. For me, work was a huge distraction. It gave me a lot of confidence and I am very content that I could do that,” she says. Adversity tends to bring out the best in people and relationships. While the economic environment was uncertain, De Sequiera worked hard to assure clients. She says, “We have never been as busy as we are now”, thanks to transactions being contemplated, capital being raised and new products like REITs coming…

UNLIKE MANY fashion designers whose claim to U fame is to create exclusive outfits for Bollywood celebrities, Anita Dongre has taken fashion to the masses. With 125 stores across her three brands – AND, Global Desi and Grassroots – her company, House of Anita Dongre, is close to a ₹700 crore entity. In fact, fashion industry’s poster boys, Manish Malhotra and Sabyasachi Mukherjee, are said to be nowhere close to that. Dongre has redefined women’s work-wear in India. Known for feminine silhouettes, Dongre has always believed that women should maintain their feminine identity. By launching smart dresses and Indo-western outfits she ensured that working women broke out of the stereotype of turning out in trousers and shirts at work. Apart from expanding her retail presence, in the past one year,…

THE FILM, Period, End of Sentence, won her an Oscar this year for Best Documentary (Short Subject), but Guneet Monga, Founder, Sikhya Entertainment, has been a regular at international film festivals for over a decade. Raising money for concept films wasn’t easy in India a decade ago, so Monga took her films to the international film markets to raise money. Her film Lunchbox was screened at CineMart (the world’s oldest co-production market) in Rotterdam in 2012 and was eventually shortlisted for the Berlin International Film Festival. The poster girl of independent films in India, Monga has also raised funds through social media platforms: close to ₹1.5 crore each for her films Peddlers and Haramkhor on Facebook. “We were even able to get people who shelled out ₹10 lakh each for…

A SLOWDOWN may have begun hurting one sector A after another. However, the legal profession remains largely unaffected. In fact, it’s thriving – particularly after the increasing cases of white collar crimes following the Centre’s drive against black money and bribery. Also, the introduction of new laws such as RERA, IBC and GST – in the absence of jurisprudence – have only added to legal disputes. That’s where Managing Partner Pallavi Shroff-led full-service law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co Advocates & Solicitors has bucked the slowdown. A specialist in mergers and acquisitions and litigation, Shroff says that even though there was less volume in the industry in the past 12 months, there have been enough deals for firms like hers to register healthy growth. Also, the dispute side of…

Within six months of joining the country’s largest beverage maker, Coca-Cola India, as its Chief Financial Officer, Sarvita Sethi faced the biggest challenge of her career—demonetisation in November 2016. The cash crunch in the market that threatened to hit sales called for 'out of the box' thinking. Then, another one, in the form of GST, presented itself in July 2017. Sethi, who is a British citizen — she is still learning Hindi — had to get into a crisis management role once again. “India has put me through my paces,” she says. “It was like a catalogue of things waiting for me to turn up to test my skills. Dealing with this kind of volatility is very unusual from a UK perspective. A finance person from Europe doesn't like it…

Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) led by Sunita Narain has been taking on governments and industries for decades now. It uses knowledge and research activism to promote sustainable solutions and right policies. “We are a dog with the bone, we don’t give up. We speak up and nudge and prod until the right strategy is implemented,” she says. In the 1980s, the not-for-profit used to campaign for sustainable development when environment wasn’t even a buzz word. Today, as environmental issues have become wider, so has CSE’s scope. It is now working on a wider range of subjects than before — from air pollution to food safety and water and wastewater management to green buildings. Recently, CSE has been at the forefront of fighting for clean air in Delhi.…

ZOYA AKHTAR has given audiences a glimpse of La Tomatina festival in Spain (Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara) and a holiday cruise (Dil Dhadakne Do). But it was when she ventured into the lanes of Dharavi that she scored her biggest hit in Gully Boy. The film grossed ₹134 crore in India. Akhtar’s reputation has been built on the basis of her original screenplays, written in collaboration with filmmaker Reema Kagti. “It’s not easy to write, and not easy to write with someone. We are both extremely dogged and hard chicks. We met in our early 20s as assistant directors and have been mates for a very long time and are practically family.” In 2017, the two started Tiger Baby Productions. Akhtar has proven herself equally adept with short film and…

Neha Singh has stood by the first career decision she took after graduating in computer science from IIT-Mumbai. She was a geek through and through, winning in several coding competitions. However, she realised early on that “technology in itself is limited unless it is merged with business for larger impact.” After graduating in 2008, she joined Boston Consulting Group (BCG), followed by Sequoia Capital, to understand the venture funding space that was at a nascent stage in India. As she was looking at emerging technology businesses to invest, she realised how difficult it was to get information on private companies. “The private market has become significant in the last ten years. There is a need for more information in this space,” she says. That is when she applied technology to…

BUILDING AND EXPANDING a family run business is not like managing other companies. “You are not planning for the next five or 10 years. You will be with the company for the entire life time and will be passing this legacy to the next generation. So, your policies and ideas should be the most sustainable one,” believes Lavanya Nalli, Vice Chairperson of Nalli Silk Sarees. When Lavanya, a Harward school graduate and the fifth generation scion of the 91-year-old company, joined the company in 2005, she was the first woman from her family to enter the business. “The core business of Nalli is silk sarees. I want to build on that,” she says. Thus she started Nalli Next, with trendy designs with affordable prices, for younger, urban, working women. “Our…

Chennai-born Dhivya Suryadevara’s rise has been meteoric as she became the first female Chief Financial Officer of General Motors in mid-2018, breaking the proverbial glass ceiling. An alumnus of the University of Madras where she did her BA and MA in Commerce, she first travelled to the US in 2000 to do her MBA at Harvard Business School. An internship with the World Bank two years later, followed by a job as an investment banker in the UBS, opened the floodgates and she joined GM in 2004. She became the CEO and CIO at GM Asset Management in 2013 and went on to become Vice President, Corporate Finance, in 2017. GM has credited her for playing a pivotal role in Opel divestiture, Lyft investment, Cruise acquisition and SoftBank’s investment in…

AS GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT, Nutrition and Natural Platforms, Geetu Verma (based in The Netherlands), is in charge of the good-for-you portfolio of Unilever. Her mission, says her LinkedIn profile, is to help people live happier, healthier lives with the right knowledge and right food. In her earlier avatar as Executive Director (Food), Hindustan Unilever, Verma increased the contribution of food to overall revenues of the company by 25 percent. She tried to include a food culture in the organisation. On Fridays, her office used to turn into a bustling kitchen where she and her team used to churn out interesting dishes from the HUL portfolio. From jam-filled muffins to sandwiches and omelettes filled with Knorr noodles, the food team of HUL, under Verma’s leadership, tried to reinvent food. WHY SHE…

SHE HAILS FROM A conservative family in Surat where the idea of women going away for higher education or joining the workforce was rarely entertained. So, Komal Mangtani’s story could inspire women who want to embrace fulfilling careers. Stifled by the society, Mangtani took to coding with a vengeance as a release and did her bachelor’s in computer engineering from Dharmsinh Desai Institute of Technology at Nadiad in Surat. She joined Wipro as a software engineer. It was the springboard that helped her move to the US later in 2000, where she spent longish stints at Oracle and VMware. Finally, she joined the cab aggregator Uber in 2015. Over the past four years, Mangtani has built an engineering division, responsible for providing shared services to the parent company’s various lines…

NEHA NARKHEDE, the Co-Founder and CTO of Confluent, has a deep background in computer sciences. Her fascination started when her parents bought her a computer at eight years. She went on to do her BE in Computer Science from the University of Pune and followed it up with an MS from Georgia Institute of Technology. While she started off her career in Oracle, it was in LinkedIn that she was part of the team that helped develop Apache Kafka, a platform which could process the networking site’s influx of data in real time. That is where her entrepreneurial fire was stoked. Apache Kafka allowed companies to get access to their data quickly so that business leaders could make business decisions faster. In 2014, she set up Confluent with two LinkedIn…

Vishakha Mulye manages the over ₹3 Vlakh crore domestic and international wholesale banking portfolio of India’s largest private sector bank. She was brought into the role in January 2016 when the bank as well as the economy were passing through challenging times due to sharp rise in NPAs. In the last four years, she has managed focus on high-rated clients. Now, over 90 per cent of the money is going to companies rated A and above. She has also been tapping the refinancing opportunities. Mulye, who had short stints with ANZ Grindlays and Deutsche Bank early in her career, has a rich experience in strategy, treasury, debt market and structured debt. The last few years have been tough for ICICI Bank because of asset quality pressures but it is looking…

Over the years, we had seen that, not many women were successful in the men leading construction business. But here, Mrs. Usha Kakade sets apart from all. Taking legacy from her father in construction business and becoming the Vice Chairman of the multifaceted real estate and construction entities Sanjay Kakade Group doesn't stop her. Mrs. Usha Kakade further used her vision to strategically diversify business with Gravittus Corp, a firm that enjoys a strong presence with its primary business being development of properties in the residential, commercial, retail, education and social sectors. Mrs. Usha Kakade, is the chairperson of Gravittus Corp and Founder of Gravittus Foundation. The Group’s businesses are spread across a swath of industries. With her unusual and tremendously ambitious vision, she is reinventing the goals of the…

AFTER SPENDING most of her career in the credit ratings business, Roopa Kudva decided to call it a day around four years ago. A seven-time winner of BT’s Most Powerful Women Award, she is now heading the charitable investment firm Omidyar Network in India. Kudva is responsible for overall strategic direction, investment policy and portfolio management. Incidentally, Omidyar invests in early-stage companies where the ultimate beneficiaries are lower-income categories. Key target areas include education, financial inclusion and governance. Kudva, an IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus, started her career as a management trainee in IDBI. Her next stop was CRISIL, where she spent more than two decades. During her seven-year tenure as MD and CEO from 2007 onwards, the rating agency grew its core business and took big strides in areas such as research…

According to a report by McKinsey & Company in 2018, women constitute only 25% of India’s workforce in the organized sector. Despite this diminutive figure, India has become one of the first developing countries to mandate listed companies to have at least one-woman director on-board, helping organizations realize the value of gender diversity. With the Indian government and industries taking initiatives to bridge the gender gap, it is crucial to understand the role that women play in the financial sector, which contributes significantly to the country’s GDP. Chanda Kochar, Arundhati Bhattacharya, Zarin Daruwala and Kalpana Morpria are women who are leaders in the finance sector with an indomitable spirit who have carved a niche for themselves in an otherwise male-dominated metier. Though the number of women pursuing a career in…

Q. We are living in very interesting times globally, especially from the oil market perspective. There is turbulence in the Middle East, tussle between buyers and suppliers, and OPEC is cutting supply. We are keen to understand which way should India look. We also need to factor in the trade war going on between the US and China. A: There is a big change in global oil markets. This is driven by the US. A few years ago, the US was the largest oil importer, and after the shale revolution there, the production increased so much that it started exporting. It will soon catch up with Saudi Arabia and Russia in oil exports. In terms of production, it is already there. It is good news for Americans, along with countries…

Simplifying life has always been a natural feeling and convenience is the cause of all upgrades. History teaches us that everything evolves with time. Change is the only constant and that which leads to growth and betterment of humanity is the best form of change. G-X is certainly paving its way for bringing a productive change with constructive growth and improved convenience Set to redefine switches. GM introduces G-X. the slimmest, range in Home Electrical category. The new G-X range takes the switches & accessories category altogether to a new level with mesmerizing form and functionality. Innovation is reaching a new high with G-X’s exciting range of accessories that ace in quality and features. starting from switches. lamps, dimmers, regulators and more to give you a complete luxurious experience. Thus,…

VIKRAM IS A 27-year-old sales professional at a tech start-up and has been a consistent star performer for the last four years. He was promoted and given a team of four people to manage. A year into the new role, Vikram had not met his targets and his performance dipped significantly. Two of his team members had quit, the other two were reportedly looking for opportunities outside the company, and the annual engagement survey showed abysmal scores for him as a leader. What happened to this star performer, and why did his performance deteriorate? Vikram’s own competence as the product expert is not in question. He was entrusted with more responsibility because of his product-level expertise and consistent performance. Many successful young managers, who were once brilliant Individual Contributors (IC),…