'TCS deserved to go public much earlier'

Subramaniam Ramadorai took the reins at TCS in 1996 when the Indian IT industry was on the cusp of a quantum leap in growth and globalisation. During his 13-year watch, TCS became the first billion-dollar IT company to come out of India, even though it only went public in 2004, more than a decade after companies like Infosys had stolen the thunder in the stock market. Now, two years after his retirement, Ramadorai reflects on the challenges he faced and how he overcame them, in his book that’s just been published, The TCS Story... And Beyond. In this interview with DNA, Ramadorai fleshes out some key takeaways from his TCS experience.

You’ve written about how you changed the TCS tagline from ‘Beyond The Obvious’ to ‘Experience Certainty’. What was the logic behind this change?
We felt we had to clarify the obvious in some way, because obvious was obvious to us but not to the customer. People went haywire in talking about the future, future and future, when you had not even created the future. So we were in two extremes: one was stating the obvious and looking inward, I know what I’m good at, this is what TCS does; the other way was to say, let’s define the future, in three words — Innovation, Technology, Consulting. Then we saw that 100 companies do the same thing (innovation, technology, consulting). It doesn’t communicate anything that is unique about TCS. So we hired a global branding company to interview a bunch of people and come back to us with a definitive statement that exactly describes the TCS DNA and that is easily understandable to everybody. The key thing that came out of all these deliberations was that these TCS guys deliver what they promise and they don’t promise what they can’t deliver. Out of that came ‘Experience Certainty’.

On the business side, it seems to have suited Tata Sons from an accounting perspective to run TCS as a subsidiary until finally you had your IPO in 2004. On hindsight, do you think you would have been better off if TCS had entered the market 10 years earlier, along with its peers like Infosys and Wipro? 
We always had this debate. It’s not as if we decided in 2003 to go public in 2004. It was a continuous journey of looking at what was good for the parent, what was good for TCS’ growth, and what was the right thing to do. It is true we were not getting the visibility we should have had. We had everything that was required for us to be listed earlier than a lot of other companies because we had been in the industry much longer than them. But it was a constant process of dialoguing with the owners, Tata Sons, and coming to the conclusion that we will do it when the time is right.

Full interview here DNA

Ramadorai recalls the TCS Story

Tech geeks are always busy dabbling in software and hardware language that they hardly indulge in tales of their work, but former chief executive officer of Tata Consultancy Services, Subramanium Ramadorai, proved it otherwise with the launch of his book The TCS Story … and Beyond.

Speaking at the launch of the book by noted scientist M S Swaminathan here at a function organised by Penguin Books and Taj Coromandel in association with the Confederation of Indian Industry on Wednesday evening, the advisor to the Prime Minister in the National Skill Development Council said the book is about getting the story from an IT professional and it is the biggest challenge considering that their whole day is spent on working with hardware and software.

“It was a challenging experience to put in my 40 years of experience in 300 pages and the biggest was to make the IT professionals recall a project to capture the finer nuances of the experiences. As such, I mastered the art of asking the same question so that I could get what I am looking for,” disclosed Ramadorai while highlighting how he went about compiling his book.

Full report here IBNLive

Beaning the bean counter

Have you ever been tempted to strangle your CFO? Desist. Instead ask your CFO to read Everything You Know About Business is Wrong and to start practising it. If he fails to do either, you can justifiably strangle him.

Alastair Dryburgh, of course, intends his book for a general corporate audience – not just for people in Finance – but his own training as a chartered accountant, followed by years of experience in the commercial functions, makes him particularly adept at identifying the sclerosis a traditional accounting mindset can bring to the best of organisations. Dryburgh displays a practitioner’s insight when he identifies the tension that exists between a Finance Director’s job as Head of Control and Compliance (“Produce the basic accounts. Make sure customers pay when they should. Prevent people spending money they shouldn’t …”) and a Finance Director’s job as a Business Partner (“How can I help this organisation make more money?”). Most of the shibboleths Dryburgh trashes are associated with atavistic accountants but that does not prevent his treatment from being amusing and instructive for the general business reader.

Take, for instance, the first commandment of the accountant’s Decalogue: to cut costs. Dryburgh demonstrates, with logic and illustrations, why making a religion of cost-cutting is not only an inadequate answer to the fundamental question of how to improve profits, but is in fact frequently counterproductive for meeting the goal of raising profits. As Dryburgh puts it, “… getting rid of the corporate jet is … cost saving. Reducing capital expenditure or research and development is sacrificing the future of the company to the immediate short term.”

Full report here Business Standard

Mind your business

An increase in the number of B-schools, rapid change in technology and the demand for management principles apt for Indian conditions have led to a rise in the number of business authors in India. Team Viva reports

A glance at the bookshelf of any management professional or a young MBA would reveal that it is not just the usual bestsellers — Getting Things Done by David Allen, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey and The Goal by Eliyahu M Goldratt and Jeff Cox that adorn the racks but an equal number of leadership and management books by Indian authors form the part of the collection there. While it is important to get your basics strong by reading writings by renowned foreign authors, practical knowledge only comes by reading books of Indian managers and experts who often compile their own experiences and come up with self-help books.

The scenario in the business book section has definitely changed over the last few years. Until 1990s, the business book market in India was ruled by the writings of foreign authors and most of them dealt with the basics of business and readership. Be it the management institutes across the country, the shelves at bookstores or personal collections of a management professional or businessman, they all read the similar content by the same authors. “It was then that the management gurus in India thought they needed something that talked about Indian situations and about the Indian business scenario. Some of them then thought of penning down themselves to set the trend rolling. After coming out of a business school, nobody wanted to pursue their professional life reading something about America. On the other hand, with the growth of the number of management institutions in the country, there was an increased demand for different kind of text books and academicians went up to publishers with the demand for Indian text. It was then that the publishers started looking at the collaboration of Indian and foreign authors and for management experts who were willing to write business books. Since then there has been no looking back. In fact, there has been a steady growth and demand of business books,” explains management cartoonist Prriya Raj who has been a part of many business books and has witnessed this changing trend. So it was after the 90s that we started having business books that spoke of India and Indian mindset.

Business books in India can be broadly divided in two categories — self-help kinds and text books for professionals. Where most of the self-help books are by young management professionals, text books are by management and leadership gurus who have been old players in the industry. Talking about how well business books by Indian authors are doing in India, Vivek Mehra, managing director and CEO of Sage Publishers, says, “Though the demand in both these segments has been consistent over the last few years, the requirement for books that can serve as study material for management students is still rising by leaps and bounds. Business as a term now has fragmented into segments like leadership, entrepreneurial and managerial skills with each of them having an increased demand related with it. Also, there has been an amplified focus on quality.”

Full report here Pioneer

Poor sequel

Ambani & Sons
Hamish McDonald
Roli; Rs 395; Pp 408

The Ambanis might have ensured The Polyester Prince, a biography of Dhirubhai Ambani, never saw the light of day in India. The sequel, Ambani & Sons, has had no such problem. Why? The first, and most obvious, when Dhirubhai was alive, no Indian industrialist even came near him, in either ambition or money (Gita Piramal suggests Ambani stands for ambition and money!). Today, the 27-storey Antilla notwithstanding, the Ambanis are a lot more approachable—among the big losers in the last burst of the Sensex, Ambani companies RIL and RCom were among the worst affected. During the 32 months it took for the Sensex to reach 20,000 points, RIL fell 34.7% and RCom 77.7% (Infosys rose 103.7%, TCS 103% and Tata Motors 44.62%). The Brothers Ambani are colossally huge, but they’re no longer the only game in town.

Second, sadly for the former New Delhi bureau chief of the Far Eastern Economic Review, the other reason why the new book has sailed through is that it isn’t a patch on the old one. It’s not just that three-fourths of the book is the same as the one written way back in 1998, though that’s a major minus, there’s no earth-shattering new nugget of information that’s not already known. So why even bother to try to ban the book?

Full report here Financial Express

Mukesh Ambani turns author

A book on Reliance, its founder (Dhirubhai Ambani) and the Ambani brothers (Mukesh and Anil) have always created tremendous interest. It happened with Hamish McDonald’s The Polyester Prince: The Rise of Dhirubhai Ambani published in 1998. The same buzz was seen recently when McDonald’s Ambani & Sons, an updated version of the The Polyester Prince, was published in India by Roli Books.

The above books were neither authorised by the Ambani family nor by the company and therefore have rubbed the Ambanis the wrong way.

Now, Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries (RIL) has decided to write a book on the company and how it has come to become India’s largest private sector company. “The book is being written by Mukesh Ambani with the support of a team of 5-6 people within RIL,” a person familiar with the development told Financial Chronicle.

The book being published by Penguin is scheduled to be released in April 2011. A formal announcement of the book deal with the publisher is likely to be held in December.

Full report here Mydigitalfc

The picture is complete

Meet Hamish McDonald, the man behind Ambani & Sons

When it comes to understanding the lives of big people, we approve or disapprove of, between covers we generally get sensitised hagiographies. So when Hamish McDonald, a seasoned journalist with a reputation of rubbing the big and mighty the wrong way came up with Polyester Prince, an unauthorised biography of Dhirubhai Ambani, we were surprised. But the reaction of the powers that decide what we should read was on predictable lines. The book was banned in India. Now many summers later, when the scenario is a bit different, Hamish has put together another book that tries to uncover the inside story of Reliance. Called Ambani & Sons, the Roli publication goes on to dissect the fracas that followed in the family two years after Dhirubhai's demise.

“The general pattern here is such that business biographers generally go the hagiographic or friendly way at best. It happened with J.R.D. Tata,” says Hamish who has served in Jakarta, Hong Kong, Beijing and New Delhi. He says when the subject requires a hard study, the author comes up with an affectionate work. “There is a question of access as well,” says Hamish whose book on Suharto was banned in Indonesia.

Full report here Hindu

Get the geography right

Global Risk/Global
Opportunity:
Ten Essential Tools for
Tracking Minds, Markets
and Money
Shlomo Maital, DVR Seshadri
Sage
Rs 595; Pp 320

Due diligence is not new to today’s managers who regularly witness, during acquisitions, the investigatory process which can be both exhaustive and exhausting. “In part it exists to avoid legal liability, lest the takeover fails, and leads to shareholder litigation. But mostly due diligence seeks to ensure that management knows precisely what it is acquiring, and avoid unpleasant surprises.” Explaining thus, Shlomo Maital and D. V. R. Seshadri take the concept of due diligence to a higher plane in Global Risk/ Global Opportunity: Ten essential tools for tracking minds, markets & money (www.sagepublications.com).

Country due diligence
Urging managers who seek to do business in new geographies to follow a similar, thorough investigatory process, the authors discuss ‘country due diligence’ as an integrating tool, bringing together the other nine tools, which include risk management, tracking booms and busts, analysing engines of growth, and tracking trade and forex.

Full review here Hindu

'Split between Ambani bros was good as it unlocked value'

Journalist Hamish McDonald, author of the recently-released book 'Ambani & Sons', today said that the split in the Reliance empire has been good for India as it unlocked a lot of value.

"Overall, its been better for India. The split has been good for the share market, it has unlocked a lot of value and helped entrepreunership," McDonald said at an event for the book's promotion here.

After the split in 2005, younger brother Anil went to the backward areas and Hindi belt, while elder sibling Mukesh went out and bought assests abroad, McDonald said.

"It was good for Reliance as well...it could focus on its key businesses and the split also took it back to its strengths," McDonald said.

In a lighter vein, McDonald added, "It's better for two brothers to watch the outside world rather than watching each other."

Full report here Economic Times 

An odyssey revisited

Hamish McDonald launches his second take on India’s most talked about business family in the presence of Sucheta Dalal, managing editor, Moneylife

"I don't see any men in black suits waiting for me outside," quipped Hamish McDonald, tongue firmly in cheek, playing down the fears of a backlash surrounding the India launch of his highly anticipated work on the life and times of Dhirubhai Ambani, the highly successful but controversial business tycoon. Mr McDonald, Asia-Pacific editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, was speaking on the occasion of the launch of his book Ambani and Sons at a Crossword bookstore in south Mumbai. Sucheta Dalal, managing editor of Moneylife, was in conversation with the author at the launch.

The launch of this book in India has been a patient struggle for Mr McDonald, who has had to deal with many vested interests in his quest to bring out the undistorted truth about the man who built a colossal empire from scratch, but not without the use of some questionable tactics. His first book, The Polyester Prince, was blocked before its release in India by the simple trick of filing a case and obtaining a stay order from a small court. Years later, at the height of the war between the Ambani siblings, the book found its way into the hands of Indian book readers in the form of pirated editions or through other surreptitious means. Mr McDonald reminisced the journey which finally led to the launch in India, as Ms Dalal engaged the author in an interesting discussion on the events surrounding the eagerly anticipated book.

Full report here Moneylife

Psychology lessons for market traders

Over 90 per cent of all traders lose, declares Brent Penfold in ‘The Universal Principles of Successful Trading: Essential knowledge for all traders in all markets’ (www.wiley.com). He says that the reason why the traders lose is ignorance, arising from gullibility and laziness.

“It’s human laziness that causes traders to look for the line of least resistance. Why work harder when you can work smarter, right? Unfortunately, this can make traders gullible, and they start to believe what they read, what they hear, and what they install on their computers. This is because traders desperately want to believe there is a simple path to trading riches.”

Three pillars
To succeed in trading, you need to cover three important areas, viz. methodology, money management, and psychology, advises Penfold. The first is the analysis and trading plan behind why you buy and sell; the second, the amount of money you commit to trades; and the third is about having the discipline to follow your trading plan.

Full review here Hindu

‘Times have changed’

Hamish McDonald’s previous book — An Unauthorised Biography published in 1998 — The Polyester Prince: The Rise Of Dhirubhai Ambani met with legal resistance from Reliance Industries. Its Indian publisher HarperCollins withdrew from the project. It was published by Australian publisher Allen & Unwin, but was denied permission for sale in India. So the lack of opposition to his new book Ambani & Sons has intrigued McDonald and everybody else. Especially since the book draws heavily from the old one. It is equally controversial, including errors such as a Kashmir-less map of India. BW’s Rajeev Dubey met McDonald in Delhi. Excerpts from the interview:

How sure are you the new book won’t meet with Reliance’s resistance?
There were injunctions, not a ban. They took objection to a number of passages. It was a company application, not in the name of Dhirubhai Ambani. We’ve had no communication, and there was no response to my messages to the brothers asking if they wanted to talk about the update. Now Roli Books has actually published it, and brought it out in the shops and, so far, there is no legal activity from Reliance or either of the brothers. It may be early days, but the signals Roli Books is getting are that times have changed. The Ambanis are much more sanguine about criticism.

Did Roli check with the Ambanis before publishing this book?
Not at all. Roli studied the book closely. Had their lawyers run through the book.

Tell us about the attempts you made to get the Ambani side of the story.
In the previous version, I had had some interviews and contacts with the Ambanis — father, and mostly with Anil. I had met Mukesh rather formally. I asked Dhirubhai (in 1995) that I wanted to write a book about the rise of Reliance. I suppose he was both flattered and alarmed. I said I would show him the manuscripts if he wanted to argue any of the points. That I would hear what he said, but the author’s right would be mine. He said that would be fair. As I got closer to the controversies such as the Isle of Mann companies, the access to the circle of friends and Reliance was cut off. I rang up Dhirubhai’s secretary, and he said the wish was that the book should not come out.

Full report here Businessworld

There ain’t a trickle-down

Muhammad Yunus needs no introduction. Winner of Nobel peace prize in 2006 and author of classics such as Banker To The Poor and Creating A World Without Poverty, Yunus is widely known for his successful microfinance initiative, Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh. So when the stalwart speaks, you listen.

Building Social Business:
Capitalism That Can Serve
Humanity’s Most Pressing
Needs
Muhammad Yunus
PublicAffairs
Rs 750; Pp 256

Grameen Bank’s success prompted Yunus to work on areas such as healthcare, drinking water, medicine, telecom and energy. And some of these initiatives have been modelled as social businesses. For Yunus, social business is about applying a business model to solve a social issue, without a profit motive. The author says we cannot expect free market to address social problems. All the talk about the trickle-down effect reducing poverty is also unreliable. Applying a business model to solve a social problem would work better. Expecting a for-profit company to pursue both social and profit goals also does not work; CEOs will unconsciously lean in favour of profits.

Grameen Bank associated with French food giant Danone to set up a ‘social’ business in Bangladesh. The unit produces Shokti Doi yogurt, which was fortified with nutrients children in Bangladesh need badly. The challenges in setting and scaling up this business make for fascinating reading. The scale of the factory, the correct price point, employing local women as salespersons are some of the key decisions covered, and their impact analysed in detail. A chapter on launching a social business has useful advice such as identifying a cause one has passion for, defining goals and testing the model before launching. Yunus says one does not need to know how to do business; rather more important is the desire to solve a social problem.

Full review here Businessworld

When structure hinders your speed

Winning Strategies for
Business 
Rajat Kanti Baisya
Sage
Rs 375; Pp 288

Organisational structure has a direct relationship with its cost and effectiveness, writes Rajat Kanti Baisya in ‘Winning Strategies for Business’ (www.sagepublications.com). It becomes imperative for large companies to design, at optimum cost, an effective organisation in line with the realities of the present business environment, he urges, because one of the significant cost elements in any organisation is its manpower cost, which varies from 10 to 15 per cent of net sales in a typical manufacturing enterprise.

Slow response
As for organisational effectiveness, the author reminds that response time cannot be quick when the number of layers is high. He rues that when an organisation has more people than required, it tends to increase the layers and grades in order to keep the people motivated and interested in the company’s business.

Full review here Hindu

Succeed in technology by connecting with people

People issues are tougher than technology issues, and supply chain professionals tend to underestimate people issues, observe Reuben E. Slone, J. Paul Dittmann, and John T. Mentzer in The New Supply Chain Agenda (www.hbr.org). The authors rue that supply chain experts, when asked what it takes to successfully implement initiatives, frequently say that it simply requires excellent analysis and a good project plan. “Many technically-oriented people don’t gravitate naturally to the softer issues of communication planning and organisational buy-in. Yet failures in these areas are at the root of many initiative failures.”

Among the many examples given in the book is one about a firm installing a warehouse management system which ran into a roadblock causing the project to shut down for several months. The biggest mistake, as the project manager realised later was the focus on the technical tasks, figuring that the people stuff could come later. “She failed to recognise that resistance was building as her team worked in a vacuum. With no communication, the management staff people who operated the warehouse felt totally outside the loop. Their anxiety increased exponentially.”

It was not that the changes were bad, the authors explain. But the fear of the unknown can be a powerful force, they caution. In this case, that emotion grew and spread as the project proceeded with little communication, and when it was nearly time to go live, the backlash was so strong that it was impossible to proceed.

Full report here Hindu

A new book sets out to prove that Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive was as responsible for Spygate as its chairman. Kanika Datta reviews Anthony Bianco’s account of the saga 

The Big Lie: Spying, Scandal
and Ethical Collapse at
Hewlett-Packard
Anthony Bianco
PublicAffairs
Rs 987; viii + 360

When he started writing this book, Anthony Bianco could not have known that Mark Hurd would unwittingly vindicate his version of the Hewlett-Packard (HP) boardroom spy scandal. Just months after The Big Lie was published Hurd had to, in short order, resign as HP chief executive following a sexual harassment investigation and then defend a breach of contract suit for swiftly accepting Oracle President-ship.

That, at the very least, provides circumstantial evidence for the burden of Bianco’s argument: that Hurd, who emerged mysteriously unscathed from Spygate, was as guilty as non-executive chairman Patricia Dunn of suborning HP’s security apparatus to spy on board members and journalists. Dunn, then suffering from terminal cancer, took the hit, was forced to step down, publicly pilloried and indicted on four felony counts by a criminal court.

How did the CEO escape similar censure? It’s an obvious point that few journalists chose to explore in depth. The story Bianco unfolds is one of moral cowardice as much as turpitude, sharply at variance with Hurd’s positive public image.

Full review here Business Standard

Muggers in investment metropolis

A devastating chapter in The Investor’s Manifesto by William J. Bernstein (www.wiley.com) is the one titled ‘Muggers and worse.’ In every town and city, people generally avoid certain areas after dark, and it is the same in the investment metropolis, he writes in a section named ‘The world’s largest bad neighbourhood.’

Cautioning not to venture ‘more than 10 yards form the front door,’ the author observes that the prudent investor treats almost the entirety of the financial industrial landscape as an urban combat zone. “This means any stock broker or full-service brokerage firm, any newsletter, any advisor who purchases individual securities, any hedge fund. Most mutual fund companies spew more toxic waste into the investment environment than a third-world refinery… Who can you trust? Almost no one.”

Full review here Hindu

How lies undermine our security

The reason we have regulations for most of the activities in buying and selling is that we cannot be trusted always to do the right thing, writes Dorothy Rowe in ‘Why We Lie’ (www.4thestate.co.uk). Not that all of us are dishonest, but we do tend to get carried away by our ideas, especially where our greed, vanity and fear are involved, she adds.

Looking back at the recent financial crisis, the author wonders if Alan Greenspan – who had spent the most important part of his working life with men who had power, influence and money, men who took great pride in their power and position – had not seen them behave recklessly, without regard to the welfare of others, or to the possibility of an adverse outcome; or, had not been aware of the corrupting influence of power.

Or, had he never looked inside himself and used what he found there to understand other people, she asks. “Had he done so, he would have known that to trust men whose sole purpose in life is to make money always to behave honourably is as sensible as to swim with a great white shark and trust it not to eat you. Can it be true that, if Alan Greenspan had applied his intelligence to understanding himself, we would not have had this global financial crisis?”

Full report here Hindu

Tangibly respond to intangible competition

Marketing in India was easier in the 1990s than now, reminisces S. Shajahan in ‘Strategic Marketing: Text and cases’ (www.vivagroupindia.com). That was an age when markets were more monolithic, a few companies competed, and buying tastes were much more uniform, he adds. “The producers controlled the market. With fewer producers and products, and more shared consumer tastes, mass advertising worked.”

Not so in today’s environment, because ‘other’ has become a major player in almost all markets, from fast foods to personal computers, notes the author. He finds that consumers are increasingly willing to try a new name brand; and that with most industries fragmenting rather than consolidating since the 1990s, more of everything available to the consumer.

In a section titled ‘new business philosophies,’ the book lists four types of companies, thus: those that make things happen, those that watch things happen and respond, those that watch things happen and don’t respond, and those that didn’t notice that anything had happened.

Full report here Hindu

Image conscious

Pradip Chanda’s Requiem for a Brand begins with an underlying cynicism, which is quite understandable for someone who has moved beyond a corporate career and is now attempting to debunk all marketing theories that have been successful all over the world. It’s strange that someone who is a ‘brand expert’ should write a book on branding but with a title that is more obituary and less content.

A Requiem For A Brand;
Pradip Chanda;
Roli; Rs250; pp 138

The book meanders through well-known clichés and there is little that is insightful or analytical. He begins by defining the lack of engagement between consumers and brands in these hurried times and yet spends many chapters taking us through archaic case studies be it on Coca-Cola or Nike. Chanda is, more often than not, out of his depth in understanding the contours of what a brand is. Some of the analogies suggest an ignorance of the very basic tenets of marketing.

His logic suggests that because Coca-Cola today has spawned many variants, many of which bear other names, it’s an indicator of the declining value of Brand Coca-Cola. Strangely, we get to know very little of the author’s turn-around stories. Now, that would have made for compelling reading. There are some reasonable strands in the book but with very little follow-through. For instance, when Chanda talks about the price of community engagement, there are many stories that abound.

Full report here Hindustan Times