Inc. India

The Magazine for Growing Companies

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September/October 2010 | Rs.150 | Volume 01 | Issue 08A 9.9 Media Publication

Meet India’s Best-Performing

...and the Superstars

Mid-sized Companies...

Who Run ThemHow They Did It

Adi Godrej of GCPL PAGE 44

Vinod Ramnani of Opto Circuits PAGE 58

Kamal K Singh of Rolta India PAGE 64

Irfan Razack of Prestige Estates Projects PAGE 70

Best-PerformingBest-Performing

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September/October 2010

on the coverInc. 500 logo illustration by Tommy McCall

THIS EDITION OF INC. MAGAZINE is published under licence from Mansueto Ventures LLC, New York. Editorial items appearing on pages 12-13, 20-21, 25, 27-28 were all originally published in the United States edition of Inc. magazine and are the copyright property of Mansueto Ventures, LLC, which reserves all rights. Copyright © 2009 and 2010 Mansueto Ventures, LLC. The following are trademarks of Mansueto Ventures, LLC: Inc., Inc. 500.

The Prodigal SonAdi Godrej has expanded his family business into an empire spread across 21 countries.

Billion-dollar Ambitions Annand Sarnaaik’s Glodyne Technoserve just bought a US company much bigger than itself.

34 Where All the Action Is Introducing the most definitive ranking of best-performing mid-sized companies in India. They just might be the next best thing to happen to India Inc.

38 The MethodologyHow we ranked our list.

39 The Class of 2010The complete list of 500.

47 By the Numbers Looking at the top 500 in smaller bands of turnover, and finding the other number ones.

50 cr - 100 cr 101 cr - 500 cr 501 cr - 1,000 cr 1,001 cr - 1,500 cr

THE COMPANIESThe journey of five companies that quietly ploughed their way to success. 52 Glodyne Technoserve88 Nagarjuna Agrichem 90 Bartronics India92 eClerx Services94 Orbit Corporation

IN THE SPOTLIGHT55 Unlisted FirmsGems chipping away at success hidden from the public eye.

61 InnovatorsWho spent the most on research and development.

67 GlobalisersCompanies with the highest foreign exchange earnings.

73 Wealth CreatorsThe ones loved the most by shareholders.

76 Making ItA photo portfolio of products made by our honourees.

Pradip Overseas Metro Shoes Goenka Diamond and Jewels HSIL TTK Prestige

82 Top 100 HonoureesA look at the best of the best. Who they are and what they do.

96 The Way I WorkKaran Chanana does not believe in sleeping for eight hours a day, or in enslaving himself to gadgets. He would rather bank on hard work to build Amira Foods.

100 Who’s Your Guru?Those who lead the Inc. India 500 companies tell where they find inspiration.

HOW I DID ITFour leaders share lessons from the victories and struggles of their entrepreneurial journeys.

44 Adi Godrej Godrej Consumer Products An empire worth 12,000 crore.

58 Vinod Ramnani Opto Circuits An eye for surgical profits.

64 Kamal K Singh Rolta India Mapping his way to success.

70 Irfan Razack Prestige Estates ProjectsThe many firsts in Bengaluru’s real estate.

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04 Contributors 05 Editor’s Letter

06 Behind the ScenesWhat makes Select Citywalk so appealing to shoppers.

09 Launch A peek into the minds of the Inc. India 500 CEO Club The Ticker Why wrong career fits make good business sense

12 Get RealBy Jason Fried Expensive real estate is a foolish indulgence, right? Absolutely wrong.

14 PassionsKaustubh Nirmal professes his love for theatre.

16 Guest ColumnBy Raj BhatiaUse the internet to make your company more visible. Your employees, for one, will thank you for that.

18 InnovationAn effective way to kill the pesky mosquitoes.

20 Balancing ActsBy Meg Cadoux HirshbergWords that an entrepreneur’s spouse dreads hearing: I have a new business idea.

23 The Goods Cool office chairs that suit your back and pocket iPod docks that lighten up the mood at work Thunderbird for your email Making the touchpad on your laptop more effective Digital SLRs for the perfect shot Skins to adorn your gadgets Things That Pranav Kukreti Cannot Live Without

GuidebookHow to buy the right insurance for your business. Find the Guidebook following page 32

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STRATEGY27 TECHNOLOGYMaking payments on the go.

29 SALES & MARKETING How would you market a portal that wants patients to consult doctors online? Four marketers ponder.

30 ELEVATOR PITCH Can some venture money satiate a Bengaluru bakery’s appetite for growth?

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CONTENTS September/October 2010

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2 | INC. | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010


Shreyasi Singh is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. She writes regularly for several national and international publications reporting on issues as varied as sustainability, social entrepreneurship, women and interesting societal trends. Shreyasi finds the process of writing fascinating—how some thoughts, a few conversations, an empty Word document, and deft fingers can create a little slice of history. She also enjoys travelling and reading, and is working on a book of short stories.

CONTRIBUTORS

Charu Bahri would like to say that she writes for the sheer love of it. But, in truth, she earns her living as a freelance writer. She enjoys writing on subjects as

diverse as business and spirituality. She likes talking to people to learn more about how things work,

almost as much as arranging words in a way that benefits readers the most. In the past five years, she

has written 500 plus articles for a medley of Indian and overseas publications and websites. Bahri lives

in Mount Abu with her parents and her dog.

John Khiangte talks business most of the time. If he isn’t holding forth on trends across industries, functions and geographies, then he is forecasting change (or, the lack of it). When you need an objective answer, he’s the man you seek out. After all, he has six years of experience in setting up business intelligence units. And he’s the man behind the Inc. 500. An alumnus of the Delhi School of Economics, John is an avid reader of political history. He does have other passions, though. He loves trying out new things, be it food, sports or travelling. “I will travel anywhere just to know what that place feels like,” he says.

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of the companies that made it to our list to interview their honchos. In hindsight, we couldn’t have chosen a worse time—it seemed

as if the entire world was travelling abroad. For companies that seem to have tall domestic aspirations, our Inc. India 500 surely travel the world over.

Our email solicitation for participation got some remarkable replies—a handful got offended at being referred to as mid-sized, while one person wanted to know if we were going to charge him for covering his story.

The interviews have been a fascinating read. As I went through the stories filed by our writers, I was struck by how “unexposed” these gems have been—and how proud we are of being given this opportunity to reveal them to the world outside.

I’m sure not many of you would be familiar with the stories of the founders of Glodyne Tech-noserve, or eClerx Services. Not that it’s common knowledge that Adi Godrej worked as a bell boy in his student days in the US.

I cannot help but express my joy at how unfamiliar many of these CEOs—the likes of Godrej being exceptions, of course—to the ways of fame. They haven’t yet put up their guards against the world. They don’t weigh their answers as much. And,

they share their failures as openly as their excitement over the first clients or the plans for the future.

Overtime, as most of them become suave and develop their own ways of ‘handling’ journalists—surely we’ll miss these times. And, maybe, we’ll claim with obvious pride how we have witnessed this crop of business leaders come into its own.

For now, we’re looking forward to seeing many more of you in our annual ranking in the years to come. We love sharing your stories of success with the world. So keep giving us more.

We’ll see you next in November. Enjoy the special issue.

Pooja [email protected]

The last few weeks have been an interesting exercise in co-ordination. To put together the special issue, we had to get in touch with many

EDITOR’S LETTER

The winners of 2010

Pooja Kothari

THINGS I LEARNT IN THIS ISSUE

Scale isn’t the preserve of the big boys of corporate India.

Gut and feel works as well as analytical bent of mind when it comes to building a business.

No job is menial—work is work.


SecuritySelect Citywalk has secured its complex with the help of 24 Guarding. From providing trained guards to security systems and CCTVs, 24 Secure is in charge of all security-related issues at the mall. The Gurgaon-based company was founded by Nihal Dug-gal in 1999. The 50 crore-firm has 24 offices across India and employs around 10,000 people. It provides security solutions to malls, hospitals, hotels and cor-porate offices. Its clients include the Claridges hotel, and Monnet Ispat and IFFCO offices.

Facade cleaningKeeping the exterior of a mall spread over 6 acres is not a job for the weak-hearted. Ask Technolean India, one of the first to introduce façade cleaning services in India. Established in 1991, this Mumbai-based firm is run by Ashok Daulatram Khemlani. Its turnover is 20 crore per year and it has 250 employees.

BEHIND THE SCENES Companies at the heart of everyday life


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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY COMPANY REPORTED BY DEEPIKA SHARMA

11.08.10 06:34 PMSelect Citywalk Mall, New Delhi

Parking managementThe mall’s basement parking is run by Bengal-uru firm Building Control Solutions, which was set up in 1994 by N Satyanaraynan. It has 3,500 employees and is present at about 70 locations.

Plants and lawn maintenanceThe well-manicured lawns and lush green plants around the mall are thanks to New Delhi-based Masjid Nursery. Founded in 1948 by Munni Lal, the nursery operates flower shops in two hotels in cen-tral Delhi and owns another nursery in the elite Khan Market. Its annual turnover is 20 crore and it employs 250 people.

AD

continued on the next page

LAUNCH News, Ideas & Trends in Brief

Our annual survey on the best-perform-ing mid-sized companies of India is also our chance to get close to those who run these enterprises. Not much is known about most of these honourees, save an Adi Godrej, or a Subhash Chandra. So, this becomes our opportunity to put faces to some names and hear their voices, and get their opinions.

Like last year, we ran a quick survey this time, too, to get a glimpse into the worlds of our honourees. What we found was a confi-dent set of people, nursing not-so-secret ambitions of making it big in the coming years. However, there was a strain of caution somewhere as well. Our biz whizzes are careful in their approach, no matter how ambitious their plans. And, they’re sure about what matters most to their businesses.

Scale turned out to be the common obsession. Just ask NK Bansal. He wants Ind-Swift to be “a 2,000 crore company by 2015”. Hetero Drugs’ B Parthasaradhi Reddy wants his company to “join the billion-dol-lar league” soon. It’s almost as if the 2009

Up Close and PersonalA peek into the Inc. India 500 Club

2009 2010

Percentage of respondents who chose from the following options

External factors that will impact businesses

People skills

Technological factors

Macro-economic factors

Environmental issues

Globalisation

Socio-economic factors

Budgets

Regulatory concerns

Geopolitical factors

2511

3121

3121

1325

5032

1332

8143

3154

2557

As a teenager, Deepesh Agarwal was in awe of his Yashica cam-era. He spent his time tinkering with it—capturing his surround-ings. He even went on to pursue a Master’s degree in photogra-phy from London. That’s also where he honed his skills in “home photography”–an innova-tive concept. Agarwal turns up at people’s homes, along with his make-up artistes, to shoot portraits of either individuals or the whole family. After a few hours of the session, results are processed, tweaked according to the client’s requirements and shown on a projector screen, all within the comforts of the home. Selected pictures are then burnt onto a DVD and compiled into a coffee table book. Agarwal’s Mumbai-based company, Pic-turesque Photographic Works, was started less than a year ago. So far, it has completed 25 assignments, including one for veteran politician LK Advani. Given that the company charges between 40,000 and 60,000 per session, it’s a luxury offering that attracts four to five clients a month. “It’s a way to capture family moments and preserve them,” says Agarwal. —Sunaina Sehgal

NEW BUSINESS

Capturing Sweet Memories


LAUNCH

Up Close and Personal continued

Ashish Rajpal’s iDiscoveri is the next education hottie to raise funds. India 2020 Fund, managed by the Mumbai and New York-based Lighthouse Funds, bought a minority stake in the firm. The company has

an interesting model of transforming learn-ing outcomes covering the range from pre-school to enterprises...Education is the hot sector for investors and is creating strange bedfellows. PE firm India Alternatives Investment will invest 28 crore in the com-bination of Rajesh Turakhia and Naveen Gupta-led Frameboxx Animations, an anima-tion and visual effects training institute, and Jagmohan Bhanver’s Indian Institute of Financial Manage-ment. Anjani Jain, vice-dean at the Whar-ton School is guiding India Alternatives’ education sector investments…Another feather for India as Ashoka, the world’s community of leading social entrepreneurs, and the leading global office products com-pany, Staples, chose Shiv Bhaskar Dravid, 24, as the fourth of eight finalists in the Sta-ples/Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur (YSE) Competition. He’s a young social entrepreneur working to harness the power of Indian youth and create a platform to involve them in national discourse. Check out theviewspaper.net…Foodies rejoice! IIT Delhi alums Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj

Chaddah-led foodie-bay.com gets 4.7 crore in funding from Sanjeev Bikhchandani’s Info Edge, where Hitesh Oberoi just became CEO. The popular portal gets money to expand and the naukri.com owners add another growing category to their portfolio of online properties. —Inc. India

The Ticker

hot on education

recession never happened. Nearly 40 per cent of our respondents believe that the slowdown did not in any way change their plans or strategies. A mere 14 per cent felt that it fundamentally changed the way they plan to grow in future.

The fact that Inc. India 500 has truly put the economic woes of last year behind them, bears out in another way. This year, only 43 per cent of the respon-dents had macroeconomic fac-

plans, though, has changed in the past year. Organic growth, though still a favourite strategy for the future, has made way for inorganic growth for the pres-ent. Domestic acquisition is on most minds, which is just as well, given that global M&A remains slow for now.

The Inc. India 500 are also open to more joint ventures and strategic alliances this year. Nearly 50 per cent cited partner-ships as a strategy for the pres-

tors weighing on their minds–when it came to external factors that they thought would impact their businesses. Last year, the corresponding number was a whopping 81 per cent—as was to be expected.

It is people skills and techno-logical factors that are of supreme concern . Again, this points towards their plans to grow, since both these are invest-ments that are usually made in anticipation of growth.

The nature of these growth

ent, as against the 19 per cent last year. And more than 70 per cent saw themselves taking this route to growth in the coming years.

But, as they find their way ahead, they are sure of one thing: customer satisfaction will be their true measure of perfor-mance. It does not matter what the world uses as a yardstick, the mid-sized winners know that ultimately it’s the customer who’s the king—of course, followed closely by profits.

rajpal

bikhchandani

2010 2009

Customer satisfaction

Growth in profit

Employee satisfaction

Productivity

Growth in total revenue

Returns on investment

Growth in market share

Parameters of Performance

(Ratings on a scale of 1 to 7 where 7=most important; 1=least important)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7


LAUNCH

Finding the Right Career FitBraving entrepreneurial pains to help others explore their true calling

Why do you think Mera Career Guide is important for young people? Chopra: Career counselling does not exist in India. However, a career counsellor is needed as much as a doctor. We want to help young people (between 13 years and 25 years of age) make the right career choices—which are an intersection of interests, abilities and aspirations. We “inform” students, our counsellors “guide” them, and we help “connect” them to rele-vant educational institutions. We don’t want to convince them to do this, or that. They need to self-explore, not be taken in by the herd mentality, which is what usu-ally happens. Dewra: You’d be surprised at the level of confusion that exists among students. Even

at a place like BITS Pilani, few know why they have opted for a certain course. I took up electrical engineering because it was sought after, and I was a rank-holder. I now wish I had taken up computer science, so I could write programmes for the portal. In fact, ideally, I should have done commerce.

What happens once a student logs in? Dewra: We are a resource hub. There are links to educational institutions and notifi-cations for exams, interviews and entrance tests. We also have a panel of 50-odd career counsellors across streams, who are experts in their fields. Students can write to them directly with queries. This chat feature has been very successful. We also have person-ality assessment tests and our specially-for-

First Steps Surabhi Dewra and Luv Chopra cobbled together Rs 15 lakh with the help of family, friends and ‘fools’ to start a portal for career counselling.

mulated career decision algorithm, which takes students through a stage-by-stage cycle to help them arrive at a decision. We get 300 queries to 350 queries per day. That’s been the average over the past year.

How does the business make money? Chopra: It’s a multi-dimensional, hybrid model. Our revenue model works two ways—conversions, plus branding. We have 10 colleges, and between them, 30 campuses on board. Colleges pay us when a student, who hears of them through us, or sees them on our portal, gets converted into an admission. We get a percentage of the fee, which typically works out to be

15,000 to 20,000. Institutes pay us for online advertisements and presence. We get between 3,000 and 5,000 first-time hits per day. Right now, everything is free for students. We don’t want to add to their financial burden.

Doesn’t the business model expose you to a bias for the institutes that pay you? Dewra: The student is our primary client. We are very conscious that what we aren’t selling a product. We are building a knowl-edge economy. A stringent due diligence is done on the institutes we partner with. We visit them several times to check the fac-ulty, infrastructure and placement records. We avoid autonomous institutes. We tap alumni network for continuous feedback. We are not in for short-term profits.

Aren’t you too young to brave entrepreneurial pains? Dewra: The toughest challenge of running a start-up is to stay frugal, even as you dream of being big. A young company must be kanjoos. That comes easily to me. (Laughs) I am a Marwari, after all. I worked for two years with Freescale Semiconduc-tors after graduating in 2007. I learnt a lot. But, I knew I couldn’t spend my life in a cubicle. For me, there is no thrill in finding a good job that pays a lot. It’s great to swipe your credit card and buy something nice. But, the first time I paid somebody a salary, it felt incredible. —Shreyasi Singh

Surabhi Dewra and Luv Chopra are hoping to convert “cluelessness” into an entrepreneurial success with their 15-month-old venture, Mera Career Guide, an online portal for career coun-selling and educational information. “Would an introvert do well in a sales job?” asks Dewra, an engineer from BITS Pliani. It’s such “wrong fits” that the young entrepreneurs, both barely 25, wish to help people avoid. From their very “start-uppish” office—a tiny second-floor space in Noida—they are building a service they wish they had had access to seven years ago.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 | INC. | 11PHOTOGRAPH BY SUBHOJIT PAUL

The Truth About Real EstateOur new office cost a fortune, but I still think it is the best investment we’ve ever made.

My software company, 37signals, is nearly 11 years old. But until now, it’s never really had a place to call its own. For much of that time, we’ve been posi-tively nomadic.

Our first headquarters was in the office of one of our original partners, a Chicago-based graphic designer named Carlos Segura. Carlos’ office also housed his design firm, as well as the T26 Digital Type Foundry and Thickface Records. 37signals lived on a corner of a big desk in a room upstairs. It wasn’t glamorous, but we didn’t need much space. It kept our costs down, too.

After we had been there a year, Carlos left the company, so it was time for us to move on as well. By this time, 37signals was three people—Ernest Kim, Matt Linderman, and me. We were making money and doing well and didn’t require much in the way of an office. So when some friends/clients at a company called Data Harbor invited us to sublease some of their extra space, we said, “Sure.”

A year after that, Data Harbor moved, and we took over the remainder of its lease for a few months. Then we decided to finally get a place of our own. We found it across the street (we could see it from the window of the space we were still occupying). It was too big—3,500 square feet for just three Chicago-based employees—but the location was good, the rent was fair, and the landlord was a nice guy. Still, it never really felt like home. Rather than investing in the space, we just put some cheap tables together and got DSL. We worked that way for three years. During this time, we brought on a couple more people, but they were working remotely from other cities.

I suppose we were thinking about office space the way most businesses do—as a cost centre. After all, between rent, fur-niture, technology, and the like, it adds

up fast, especially for a young company. We were doing fairly well, so $2,500 a month wasn’t much of a burden. At the same time, it was $30,000 a year out the door when we could all have just worked from home, which might have explained our ambivalence.

But over the course of three years in that Spartan space, we learned an important lesson: An office could make you money, not just cost you money. We had a lot of empty space. Our three desks, conference room, and personal space took up only about 25 percent of the office. Perhaps we could turn that empty space into a revenue stream. Not by subleasing it but by using it to host our own work-shops and conferences.

For a few years, we’d been sharing our ideas on software design,

GET REAL BY JASON FRIED

An Important Lesson An office could make you money, not just cost you money. You don’t have to sublease it to do that; use the empty space to host workshops and conferences.


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marketing, and business on our blog, Signal vs. Noise. We’d begun to build a loyal and passionate following. So why not take advantage of that and hold a workshop about the things we were writing about on the blog? We could host it in the spare space in our empty office. And charge for it.

We put together a one-day agenda, charged about $300 a person, and sold about 30 seats. Suddenly, we found ourselves with $9,000 in additional revenue. Our monthly rent at the time was $2,500. In one day, we just paid more than three months’ rent. That was a light-bulb moment. An office can be free—and even a profit centre—if you start thinking about your company’s by-products.

What do I mean by by-products? Just like the lumber industry can sell its sawdust (a by-product of milling trees), we discovered that we could sell our knowledge (a by-product of running a business). And we could sell it in our spare space. Eventually, we packaged this knowledge in book form. All told, the combination of the book and the workshops has brought in revenue of more than $1 million.

But back to our real estate saga. When our lease was up, we decided not to renew. But instead of getting another space of our own, we hooked up with another friendly company we knew: Coudal Partners. I knew Jim Coudal, owner of the advertising and design firm, through a mutual friend. Jim had some extra space, I mentioned that we were looking, and he offered it at a fair price. This was in 2003. For the past seven years, we’ve been working out of that office.

It’s been a wonderful experience. The folks at Coudal Partners are wildly creative. We’ve hired them to shoot and produce some video for us, and we even started a side company together called The Deck, a targeted ad net-work that helps companies reach graphic designers, Web designers, and other creative professionals. However, since we’re sharing the space, it’s not ours to do whatever we want with. Holding workshops there has been a logistical challenge, because those events mean that the people at Coudal Partners can’t work at their own office for a day. That doesn’t scale well. We’d like to be able to do a workshop every six weeks. Or maybe host a spontaneous gathering of all our nearby customers. We needed more flexibility.

What’s more, since we’ve expanded from just a few people to 20 (nine of whom are in Chicago), we’ve outgrown the six desks we had been renting. Privacy is another thing you don’t have much of when you share an office with another company. It wasn’t an issue early on, but it is now. Our friends at Coudal Partners have been fair and accommodating, but we decided it was time to move on.

So last year, we began looking for a place of our own. From the outset, we decided to recall what we had learned years before: We weren’t just going to spend money on the space; we were actually going to make money on it. That requirement became the driving force for finding the right space.

We looked at a bunch of places. We almost had a lease done on a large factory that had been turned into a six-bedroom residence

(we’d use the bedrooms for private offices). But the deal fell through because of zoning and parking issues.

Eventually, we found a beautiful raw space just six blocks from our current office. It’s a corner space with two enormous walls of windows. Natural light pours in. We hired architects to review the space and draw up plans. We negotiated the lease, paid the lawyers, paid the lawyers some more, and signed the papers.

The design process took a few months, and the build-out took about four months. We finally moved in July. True to our vision, about a third of the 10,000 square feet is dedicated to teaching. We built a theatre-style classroom, with 37 seats, in which we can give presentations, hold workshops, and offer training and support classes for our customers. We plan on holding the first of many regular workshops this fall.

For the past few years, we’ve rented out different venues for our workshops. It cost us a few grand for the space, another few grand for the overpriced catering (we had to use each facility’s sanctioned caterer), and another few grand for audio-visual requirements and other logistical considerations. Though we were able to charge about $750 per seat for a one-day event and sell about 50 seats per work-shop, renting still took a good chunk of profit out of the equation.

With our own space, we’ll not only save money on the costs side; we can make more money on the profit side. We also believe we’ll be

able to charge closer to $1,000 a seat. At 37 seats, that’s $37,000 in revenue. All we’ll have to pay for is catering. All the AV requirements and Internet connectivity are built into the space. And it’s much more attractive than the venues we were renting out before. Just a few of these workshops will cover our rent for the year.

The lesson here is less about real estate than it is about business itself. Whenever you make something, you make something else. Your by-products may not be as obvious as sawdust, but they’re there. Maybe it’s the knowledge you’ve acquired by running a busi-ness. Maybe it’s a piece of software you wound up making when you made another piece of software. It’s there; you just have to look for it. You may even find a business you never knew you had.

Jason Fried is co-founder of 37signals, a Chicago-based software firm, and co-author of the book Rework, which was published in March.

Just like the lumber industry can sell its sawdust (a by-product of milling trees), we could sell our knowledge (a by-product of running a business).

GET REAL


PASSIONS Life Outside the Office

“I am inspired by small and

independent filmmakers”

The child actor Acted in Mahan Atmaye in Kamani Auditorium in 1988 Participated in mono acting workshops and competitions

The director’s chair English thriller A Night, A Singer & … at Alliance Francaise, New Delhi Regional films such as Bindia and Rajkumari Malayalam album Isal Maalagal (Garland of Songs) (2007). Sunday, a Rohit Shetty film Corporate movies for the Birla group and Polaris

Busy bee Spends his free time organising plays and theatre workshops Conducts workshops for DilSeDrama on weekends


Not so long ago, a 10-year-old was idling away his summer holiday in Delhi, when his father sent him off to a theatre camp. That’s how Kaustubh Nirmal fell in love with this beautiful medium. He couldn’t

pursue it for a long time, but he always responded to the creative aspects of business, including at the firm

he co-founded, Star INXS. While designing logos and websites, Nirmal directed a short film in Haryanvi,

and pursued other creative endeavours at the behest of friends. He got back on stage only in 2009, when he

began DilSeDrama, a theatre group run by working professionals on a “no boss” philosophy.

TheatreKaustubh Nirmal

PHOTOGRAPH BY MADISHETTY MANASA REPORTED BY SUNAINA SEHGAL

If you are a small services com-pany like mine, you are bound to be as “disadvantaged” as I am.

Or, so I thought, until a few months ago, when I attended a workshop. The speakers were inspiring—and more impor-tantly—they were entrepreneurs who had been in the same boat once. Their words filled me with a new-found confidence.

I don’t feel disadvantaged any-more. I now believe that I can quickly—and successfully—influ-ence my company’s destiny.

So, what brought about the change? No jadu-mantra—I didn’t attend a magic show, after all. The commonsensical suggestions from those who’ve tread the same path in the past, convinced me that I can lift my company out of obscurity, and make it well known, perhaps, even outside our industry.

Using information from that conference, I created my own five-point (some-thing) suggestion list to attain visibility. Here goes:

There’s a stronger relationship between the brand and employee reten-tion than we may like to believe. Several years ago, I struck a conversation with a co-passenger in a Mumbai local. He told me that he worked for TVS Motors. I asked: “The motorcycle company?” He nodded proudly. “Where do you work?” he asked me in turn. “Hindustan Thompson,” I said. “That’s very good,” he said, pleased. I was thrilled to meet someone who knew about my employer. “What do they manufacture?” “Hindustan Thompson is an ad agency,” I replied, obviously disappointed.

Every small and medium company lives an obscure life. More so their employees,

who have to feel small (if not sorry) whenever they answer a query like the one above. After a while, they start their answers with something along the lines of: “I’m sure you’ve not heard of my company…” In fact, scores of employees who have quit my company have confessed to me: “While you have worked in India’s biggest ad agencies, we have nothing much to say when someone asks us where we work. Now, we’ll be joining a big brand.”

By investing in brand visibility, we can lift ourselves out of obscurity, and make our employees feel confident and proud of working with us.

Can someone find you on the net? If not, you could be in trouble. Couple of months ago, the manager

Lifting the veil of obscurity Use the internet to make your company more visible at very little cost and even lesser time.

GUEST COLUMN BY RAJ BHATIA


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who represented our client sent me a mail informing that she’s moving onto a new assignment. A lady named Mala will be replacing her. She requested an introduc-tion-and-handover meeting later in the week. She copied Mala into the mail as well.

The moment I finished reading the mail, I was on Google, then LinkedIn, then Face-book, searching ‘Mala’. I wanted to learn as much about as her possible—her back-ground, common contacts, area of expertise, and so on, before I met her.

Is this unusual?Not at all. In fact, the opposite is now

unusual. Every prospective ‘X’ checks us out over the Net before he responds. ‘X’ here could be anyone—an employee, client, ven-dor, or investor. We do the same.

Unless we have a digital presence, results are bound to show nothing. A blank is not good news. Much like CIBIL (Credit Rating Bureau)’s practice—if you don’t have any credit history, you are considered a ‘risk’, as you score less.

Digital presence starts with a good website. Nowadays, that’s our face to the world. Visible 24 hours, 365 days.

To begin with, having a website is reassuring to a prospective ‘X’. At least he can put a face to a name. But, a face alone may not be enough to guarantee a favourable impres-sion. Hence, having a good website is critical.

What’s a good website? A site that makes us look bigger and better than we actually are. Yet, it shouldn’t brag, or tell lies. Remem-ber, we are in the digital space, and facts can be verified instantly. So, the website must be like a well-written CV. It should present us appropriately to the interested public. And, it should focus on things that would be of

greatest interest to someone who may want to deal with us. These could be our achieve-ments, experience, client list and work, among others. Since it isn’t possible to con-trol the movement of a reader on the web-site, our design has to do this duty skilfully. I cannot emphasise enough on the strength of a well-designed and well-presented website.

A website by itself may not create a strong digital footprint. You need more. Your website, or you, or your services, may still not show up when someone searches key words that are part of your domain expertise, or are used to refer to the industry you belong to. For example, I work in loyalty marketing space, and neither I, nor my company website, pop up when someone Googles the key word ‘loyalty marketing in India’.

Why does this happen? I found out recently. First, I may not have sufficient foot-print in the digital world. Second, I may not have sufficient visitors to my website. Both are necessary to improve my ranking associ-ated with ‘key words’. There are several ways to boost both, and a good web and search engine optimisation (SEO) consultant can

easily help you overcome both these limita-tions. You can even visit www.seomox.org. Here are three suggestions that can help:

a.Flash and pictures are not picked up by search engines. HTML formats, too, have limitations. Therefore, the language and content format you use are critical.

b.Your website must have a lot of content. It must be updated often, at least once in two or three months. I believe this leaves a posi-tive impact on the ranking.

c.Get your website designed in Word Press. Hundreds of Word Press templates are

available over the net, and many are free. In any case, the most expensive ones cost no more than 10,000. Moreover, Word Press allows instant updating. You can, in fact, learn to update content on your website on your own. Do that as often as you like. It took me less than a couple of hours to learn. The website I’ve tried this on, already shows on Google’s first page when searched!

Lastly, why is digital footprint so important? Why can’t we just make use of other media? Consider these facts:

India has the third-largest number of internet users in the world—which is around 81 million. The number is bound to explode with the launch of 3G and language portals.

Facebook is now the world’s third-largest country! It has 500 million members—nearly twice the population of USA. It boasts of 18 million users from India—that’s 25 per cent of all internet users in the country.

Indians now spend 15 hours a week on the internet. That’s more than average time spent by all members of a household watch-ing TV in metros!

A well-known brand may get up to 5,000 mentions a day on the net. Digital footprint, unlike the footprint we create on sand, cannot be erased.

The facts above, I hope, are eye-openers. They suggest that unless we learn to handle ourselves in the digital space, we will never be able to build the brand.

The good news is that most of the digital space is free, or costs little. It can be easily learnt and managed, and it’s not as complicated as it may appear. An important advantage, it’s a fast medium—results are visible quickly.

I strongly urge you to connect with a consultant and chart out a strategy. I’ve already implemented mine.

PS. By the way, the conference I attended was organised by Inc. India magazine in Bengaluru earlier in June.

Raj Bhatia is the founder of Up Close & Personal (UCP), a CRM and loyalty marketing consultancy. He can be reached at [email protected].


GUEST COLUMN

A website must be like a well-written CV. It should present us appropriately to the interested public.

INNOVATION Companies on the Cutting Edge

“I wanted to find a solution to reduce

the mosquito population, so that in future we may be able to better

combat mosquito diseases”

—Orwin Noronha, Managing Director, Leowin Solutions


Attacking the bite brigadeOrwin Noronha was making a liquid repellent

for mosquitoes when he came across American Bio-Physics’ Mosquito Magnet.

Although quite efficient, it cost a staggering 1 lakh, and needed an additional

5,000 a month as operating cost. That inspired Noronha to attempt a cheaper prototype. The result was MozziQuit, a mosquito trap made

up of a plastic body and a patented self-heating element, which kills the culprits instantly.

Made by Leowin Solutions, MozziQuit uses the principle that mosquitoes are attracted to

carbon dioxide to lure them into its plastic body, and then, sucks them in using an

integrated vacuum system. The killed mosquitoes are collected in a removable

container for disposal. Founded in 2008, Leowin Solutions is working on other eco-

friendly products, such as environment-friendly waterproof paints and a specialised

mix for 2-inch thick concrete for roads. MozziQuit was one of 15 gold medal winners

in the DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Programme this year.

Basic Facts Cost: 2,990 (one-time) Operating Cost: Less than 25 paise per day Availability: In four months

Leowin SolutionsMozziQuit

PHOTOGRAPH BY RK BHAT REPORTED BY AKHIL BERY

As a resident of New Hampshire, I do not fear earthquakes. But I live in terror of four little words: “I have an idea.” When my husband utters them, the ground beneath me trembles.

We were hiking a local mountain when Gary revealed his brainstorm for a chain of healthy fast-food restaurants. This was in 2000; his first venture, Stony-field Yogurt, had been profitable and stable for several years. Gary saw this new business as a logical extension of the mission of our organic yogurt company. My husband sometimes refers to himself as a “pathological optimist.” To me, this plan was just pathological.

When you live with a serial entrepreneur, you are never safe from the siren song of new ideas. As one repeat offender told me, “The personality of a serial entrepreneur is almost like a curse. You see opportunities every day.” Danny Meyer cites a practical reason for populating much of Manhattan with his eclec-

tic restaurants and food businesses: The new ventures provide development opportunities for his 1,500-plus employees. But as fundamentally, “I can’t stop thinking of ideas that excite me,” he says.

That creativity and independence are what attract people like me to entrepreneurs in the first place. As Gary points out, I knew what I was getting into when I married him. “While you didn’t sign on for multiple rounds of pain, you signed on with me,” he says. “You were drawn to the upsides of entrepreneurial busi-ness—the excitement, the fascination, and the fun.” All true. It had never crossed my mind to request a one-company-only prenup.

My Husband’s Next BusinessThe four words an entrepreneur’s spouse dreads hearing: ‘I have an idea.’

BALANCING ACTS BY MEG CADOUX HIRSHBERG

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But when Gary broached the restaurant idea, I had not recovered—in fact I have still not recovered—from the extended trauma of the yogurt company’s start-up. Stony-field took nine agonising years to reach profitability. Even though Gary said he intended to hire a CEO to run the restau-rants, I anticipated a return to the gruelling hours and constant distractions I thought we had finally put behind us. Serial entre-preneurs are like women who suppress the recollection of labour in order to marshal the stamina to give birth again. For their families, such selective memory is not so easy to muster.

Then, of course, any new business entails risk. Here I thought we were on terra firma, only to find Gary gazing longingly at rough seas. Entrepreneurs, as I knew from experi-ence, are masters at defining risk down. So in my brain: “Gary knows nothing about the restaurant business.” In Gary’s brain: “I’ll

bring in smart people and figure out the rest.” For many spouses, life stages enhance that sense of risk. Entrepreneurs launching sec-ond, third, and fourth companies are by definition older than when they started out: If they fail, there are fewer years to rebound. No wonder when the adrenaline kicks in for the serial entrepreneur, the cortisol spikes for the spouse.

Yet who would want to quash a loved one’s dream? That way, unhappiness and resentment lie. “It’s a crappy part for the spouse to play,” says a friend whose husband started a second company. “To say ‘no’ or ‘have you thought of this or that problem?’ The way I dealt with it—and I’m not proud of this fact—is, I said, ‘You want to go through this again? Fine, but I don’t want anything to do with it.’ We agreed on a cer-

tain amount of money he’d sink into it—but we passed that number long ago.”

Inc. reader Mallary Tytel, an entrepre-neur married to a serial entrepreneur, tries to be realistic. “You have two choices: fighting it or going along with it,” says Tytel, founder of the consultancy Healthy Workplaces. “As an entrepreneur myself, I know there’s no percentage in going against the grain.”

Nor could I go against the grain with Gary. Painful as the prospect of this new business was, I kept my mouth shut. As long as he wasn’t jeopardising the roof over our heads or our children’s college funds, I fig-ured he was entitled to his next dream. I comforted myself with the fact that he’d suc-ceeded once. This time the learning curve should be less steep. Would be less steep. Had to be less steep.

At what point, though, does the spouse get to say enough? Let’s assume that the first

business was successful, and financial need is no longer a compelling motive. When does a spouse’s desire for calm and security outweigh the entrepreneur’s desire to be “who I am”? The answer, of course, is differ-ent for each couple and set of circumstances. Is it selfish to discourage a loved one from doing something he or she desperately wants to do because it makes you uncom-fortable? Or more selfish for him or her to persist in spite of your discomfort?

Among other things, the spouse should consider whether the entrepreneur is truly succumbing to an irresistible opportunity or driven by a darker motivation. He or she may be depressed or bored, or seeking to fill a psychic or emotional void. One man told me that he kept creating businesses to escape his marital woes. Unfortunately, he didn’t

have that insight until after his divorce. At that point, he realised other ways that start-ing multiple businesses had made him less fit as a mate. “Entrepreneurs feel they have to have all the answers,” he told me. “Starting several businesses only reinforced that. The control issues became habit forming, a way of being. When you apply that trait to your personal life, it doesn’t go over very well.”

Fortunately, there are less risky ways, both personally and professionally, for an entrepreneur to flex those creative muscles. Passive or active investing and mentoring can be like methadone for the entrepreneur, providing some of the thrill without all of the risk. Gary loves to mentor because, he says, “what I remember most about Stony-field’s dark days was the loneliness. I’m rewarded by the idea that with a little of my extra time and money, I might be able to help others avoid some pain.”

And running an existing company—even a mature one—offers some of the charge of a start-up. “In my work at Stony-field, I’m inventing new enterprises all the time,” Gary says. “I take huge risks every day.”

Not that that stopped him. Gary launched the first O’Naturals—recently renamed Stonyfield Café—in Falmouth, Maine, in 2001. As I’d feared, the business has consumed considerable time and energy. Also cash: Gary has put in much more than either of us expected. (We have since agreed on a total amount that he can risk on entrepreneurial ventures, including this one.) The café is now in two locations and is still finding its way as a business. I avoid discussing it with Gary and try not to think about it too much.

Recently, Gary assured me that he wouldn’t start another company unless I was fully behind it. If this is true, he won’t be starting another company anytime soon. Or, actually, ever. But somehow I suspect that our lives will continue to be rocked by seis-mic activity. I hope Gary’s next idea will score lower on the Richter scale.

When does a spouse’s desire for calm and security outweigh the entrepreneur’s desire to be ‘who I am’?

Meg Cadoux Hirshberg ([email protected]) is married to Gary Hirshberg, president and CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt. She writes a regular column about the impact of entrepreneurial businesses on families.

BALANCING ACTS


AD

Getting the Right Support Office chairs to suit your back—and your pocketThe modern day office is where new-age labourers perform back-breaking work. Literally! Meetings, projects, deadlines—the whole routine revolves around the chair. Needless to add, the chair’s your best friend at work. And like your friend, it needs to be supportive (more than your boss or co-workers), comfy, and economical, too. Quite a list of demands from a single piece of furniture, but we dug deep to find the best deals for you.—Sunaina Sehgal

CHB 263This is a value-for-money product. Its high backrest supports the spine. Armrests are adjustable and the seat is made of soft plastic, which helps when one is working long hours. The chair moves with the body’s movements. The netted tapestry at the back makes it lightweight, yet sturdy. price: 6,500warranty: Two years

CMB 269This medium-back chair has adjustable armrests and a nylon base. Unlike the CHB 263, it works on a push-back technology. (Simply put—if you push, it goes back really smoothly.) The chair’s gas lift mechanism mitigates sudden movements or jerks, thus benefiting the person sitting in it. price: 5,400warranty: Two years

EC 259Especially designed for people with back problems, this chair comes with a special lever at the centre to reduce the gap between the back rest and the spine for that extra support. The armrests can be easily moved up, down, or to the sides. It has an adjustable neck and a facility of locking the back rest. price: 7,800warranty: One year

EC 264Like any other revolving chair, the EC 264 has the basic features that allow the user to raise its height and lock the back. Made of leather, this chair with a high backrest is as comfortable as sitting on cushions. Short or tall, this chair has been designed to suit all people, and prevents repetitive strain injuries. price: 7,800warranty: One year

Your Business Toolbox THE GOODS

SYNCHRONYSynchrony’s leather-padded backrest is shaped like a spine to provide better support. Its back can be locked according to one’s needs. It provides adjustable neck support, as well. It looks more comfortable than the Spider, thanks to its padded back. It is designed for long sitting hours. price: 12,500warranty: One year

SPIDERAn attractive chair, it has a non-padded backrest that looks like a web. It moves back and forth according to a person’s movement. Its adjustable arms come with back-and-side locks for manoeuvrability. The raise bar helps elevate the height of the chair to a maximum of 23 inches. price: 15,800warranty: One year

FEATHERLITE COMFORT GALLERY ENCORE SYSTEMS

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Music to the Ears Docking stations for your iPods

EMAIL OPTION

Simple Client to RescueThe Thunderbird is an email cli-ent developed by Mozilla, the people behind the popular Firefox browser. Simple to use, it’s more than just an email cli-ent—it grabs RSS feeds that let you stay updated with the latest blogs and discussions. It can be customised to needs—an option that the more commercial Out-look lacks to an extent.

It is not the most feature-rich email client; however, with downloadable free add-ons, one can expand its capability. The latest version, 3.1, is easier to set up. It includes features, such as Migration Assistant, which lets you use Thunderbird the way you want. You can also install add-ons like advanced folder columns and compact headers for your message dis-play window from the Migration Assistant. The new mail account set up wizard makes configuring account effortless. Some of the other features include an attachment reminder, which looks for the word attachment in the mail and reminds you to add an attachment. The Thunderbird is a good alternative for those who have already used Microsoft Outlook, and find it a bit slow and heavy. Moreover, it is an open source and free. site: www.mozilla.com/thunder-bird/

THE GOODS Products + Services

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PHILIPS SBD7000It has an unusual design that makes it look like a large driver from a speaker. Your iPod sits at the centre. The dock isn’t very sturdy, but is compact enough to be carried around in a back-pack. The speaker can be powered by four AA batter-ies that fit snugly into the back of the product. The ability to carry the dock around even while on the go is a nice thing. However, not a great option for the dis-cerning user.price: 5,990

If you are one of those people who listen to music after work– you are probably less stressed than the fellow next to you who doesn’t. There’s no doubt that music soothes nerves. Next time you slave the graveyard shift, take some time off, plug the iPod to the docking station and listen to unwind. While you are at it, we give you some options.

LOGITECH PURE-FI ANYTIMEOne of the fancier-looking docking stations around, its audio quality is average, but the high frequencies seem toned down. As an iPod dock for a medium-sized room, it’s pretty good. There’s little or no distortion, which is great. The dock comes with loads of features, such as a snooze timer and FM and AM radio tuner, which work rather well. It isn’t too expensive, either.price: 7,495

BOSE SOUNDDOCK 10One of the newer releases from the Bose stable, it’s pricey, but also one of the sturdiest docks around. Audio quality is excellent—as expected. You really need to use it in a larger room to appreciate its performance. For its size, it’s loud. There is some minor distortion at really high volumes. The remote has few buttons and is simple to use; the range is decent as well. A sensible purchase, if you’re looking for a lifestyle product. price: 42,638

2 4 | INC. | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

YOU CAN TOUCH THIS

Simplifying the touchpadStruggling with your notebook’s touchpad? HandsTalk Technologies has made life simpler for you with Wit-pad—its new software that converts a regular touchpad into a device with multiple features. Using touch sen-sors to interpret finger movements, Witpad makes it easier to browse and navigate, and use media features of the notebook. For instance, a tap on the top corner of the touchpad can close a file or browser, and a touch on the bottom-right corner of the pad shows up the desktop. Witpad even allows for customisation of com-mands. Launched in July, it is priced competitively at $10. Users can first download a trial version from the Handstalk website. —Sunaina Sehgal TO

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Work + Play THE GOODS

Shooting for PerfectionCapturing a lifetime of memoriesHere’s a pop quiz for the amateurs–is point-and-shoot not good enough for you? Do you actually know what a digital single-lens reflex is? The photographer inside you is etching to come out and be a bit more than just an amateur. With prices of digital single-lens reflex (or the DSLR) at an all-time low, there’s no excuse to postpone this purchase any further. Here are some of the best options for your consideration.

SHOWING SOME SKIN

Funky ware to adorn— and protect—gadgetsProtective skins are now available for all hand-held gadgets and gizmos—from pen drives to digital cameras. One can upload one’s favourite designs, or use from existing options offering cartoons, graphics, abstract art and even Swarovski crystals. These skins cover all edges, whether round or straight, and can be removed easily by stripping them off the gadget. These stickers can last for two years, protecting your favourite gadget from scratches or stains. At a price range of 500 to 2,500, or 15 per Swarovski crystal, this is definitely a fashion statement that you can afford to carry! —Sunaina Sehgal

My company provides a plat-form for online video collabora-tion—so we need a way to showcase our work to prospec-tive clients. We can’t simply embed video in PowerPoint presentations, because they would be too large to send to clients via email.

We started using SlideR-ocket in February, and it’s been great. We can create and store presentations on SlideRocket’s website and send out URL links to our clients over the email.

We invite our Google con-tacts directly from SlideRocket using Google apps. Whenever we make a change to a presen-tation, SlideRocket automati-cally updates the links.

We also use the service’s web meeting feature to present slide shows to our clients dur-ing video conferences. During the meeting, a progress bar lets us know when the next slide has loaded completely on the client’s desktop, so I don’t move forward too quickly.

We started out with the free 30-day trial, and now pay a total of $72 a month for three busi-ness accounts, which allows us to see who has viewed which parts of a slide show and for how long, then focus our follow-up efforts accordingly.

SlideRocket helps us allo-cate our time appropriately, a crucial support for a resource-strapped start-up.—As told to J.J. McCorvey

FIRST PERSON

My Favourite Tool for Sharing VideosJAMES DE JULIO

How to use SlideRocket to share presentations

D3000The D3000 sells with an 18mm to 55mm lens. It does not come with a focusing motor, so better keep that in mind when buying a new lens, or you’ll miss out on the auto-focus function. Its com-petitor, the Canon EOS 1000D has “liveview” that lets one to focus using the screen. Price: 30,950

D5000There are some similarities in the two Nikon options. However, the D5000’s screen is smaller than that of the D3000, and it is foldable. It has a higher resolution sensor, better ISO range and burst speed shooting rate, among others. The HD 720p video recording feature is unique. Price: 31,950

EOS 1000DThe Canon 1000D has a strong body, but lacks a rub-berised grip. There is a gap between the hand grip and lens mount, such that fingers lock against each other while adjusting the lens. The layout of buttons is neat. Navigating the menu isn’t over-whelming. A great DSLR for newbies. Price: 25,295

EOS 7DThis is a large-bod-ied camera with an 18MP sensor that fits perfectly, but is heavy. Instead of directional buttons, you find a joystick at its back. Con-trols surround the top display, and its menus look fresh. One of its unique features is the vir-tual horizon.Price: 1,45,995 (with 15mm to 85mm IS Lens)

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THE GOODS Beyond Business

CO-FOUNDER, TREKS ‘N RAPIDS

Canon camerasI love to capture candid moments on my Canons–an SLR and a 12x optical zoom SX200 IS. They are my best friends during excursions.

Pranav KukretiEach day is a new adventure for Pranav Kukreti, the 34-year-old co-founder of Treks ‘n Rapids. Blame all the excitement on the company that he runs—an adventure sports firm that has bagged “India’s Most Preferred Adventure Sports Company” tag for three years in a row. The New Delhi-based company can pack in a lot of action for adrenaline addicts, with scuba diving, trekking, aero sports, wildlife safaris and adventure camps. In its tamer avatar, it markets sports gear made by international companies. As the success of Kukreti’s company proves, this adventurer is quite the pro when it comes to manoeuvring his way through the rapids of business. –Sunaina Sehgal

LaptopI have a Toshiba that meets all my requirements; it’s portable and provides a good battery life.

A Harley Davidson motorcycleI have dreamt of possessing one of these cult bikes since I was 15. Now that they are in India, I hope to get one soon.

Camping gearIt consists of an all-season alpine tent, sleeping bags, a 45-litre Huckfinn backpack and North Face boots.

KayakI love water and paddling

sports, and intend to do justice to my Pyranha Kayak

for a long time to come.

Things I CannotLive Without

...and WhatI Covet


Whether you are at a trade show, a street fair, a sporting event, or just on the road, it has gotten a lot easier to make a credit card sale. Thanks to a host of new applications, businesses can pro-cess credit cards without using dedicated wire-less devices or clunky terminals, which can cost anywhere from $200 to $2,000. All you need is your cell phone.

Technicians at Jackson Comfort Systems, a $3 million company in Ohio that offers heat-ing and air-conditioning repair and installa-tion, recently started using their phones to process orders in clients’ homes and offices. After an employee finishes a job, he keys the customer’s credit card information into an application on his cell phone. The data are automatically encrypted, and payment is pro-cessed immediately. No information is stored on the phone. After the transaction is approved, the technician can use the applica-tion to send the customer a receipt via e-mail or text message.

TechnologySay Goodbye to the Cash RegisterMaking sales from almost anywhere

Payments on the Go One can now key in customer's credit card data into a cell phone

to process payments and send receipts.

STRATEGY

Technology New apps that make it easy for companies to use mobile credit card processing services.

this page Sales & Marketing How would you market a portal for online medical consultations? page 29 Elevator Pitch Can some funding meet a bakery's appetite for growth? page 30

The Way I WorkKaran Chanana of Amira Foods (India)page 96


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Processing payments on cell phones, says owner Pat Jackson, works much better than the old system, in which technicians sometimes scribbled card numbers on invoices to take back to the office. Customers weren’t thrilled about handing over their credit card informa-tion, and sometimes technicians would get back to the office only to discover that the card number was wrong or had been declined.

Jackson’s company uses Intuit’s GoPayment application, which she chose because it worked on the Nextel phones her technicians already carried on the job. For the few employees who fre-quently process transactions, she also purchased, for $145 each, swipe sleeves that wirelessly connect to the phones

using Bluetooth technology. The mobile application has become an integral part of the company’s day-to-day operations. “I can’t think of a drawback,” Jackson says. “We’re exactly the type of business this is for.”

Mobile card processors may be well suited for companies that want to pro-cess payments off-site, but retailers have also begun using them in stores. Self Edge, a high-end clothing retailer based in San Francisco, never installed a reg-ister in the company’s third boutique, in New York City. Instead, in the middle of the store, past the racks of vintage-inspired jeans and next to a rotary phone and a vintage riveting tool, there’s an iPhone on the large wooden desk that

serves as the store’s checkout counter. The phone, which is the boutique’s only means of processing credit cards, has a small plastic cube plugged into the headphone jack.

The device, called Square, is a card reader and app that makes it easy to swipe customers’ credit cards. Instead of printing a receipt, the clerk asks for an e-mail address, and Square sends the customer an electronic receipt via e-mail. The app can also send a receipt by text message. The cashier can even include a photo of the items the customer bought, snapped with the iPhone.

The entrepreneur behind Square, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, invited Kiya Babzani, co-founder of Self Edge, to test the device when Dorsey launched

his new venture last year. At first, Babzani feared it would look unpro-fessional: “What if it looked like we had jury-rigged the system when we’re selling someone a $400 pair of jeans and a $1,500 jacket?” But after seeing the service in action, Babzani decided to try it out as the exclusive

payment processing system when he opened his New York City boutique. So far, customers have reacted with fasci-nation rather than skepticism, says Andrew Chen, co-owner of the Self Edge store in New York.

Because none of the credit card infor-mation is stored in the phone—the data are encrypted and sent from the Square application to the credit card companies, without being stored on Square’s serv-ers—Chen says he isn’t concerned about someone stealing the phone. “Having a cash register with cash in it stolen from us would be a lot more costly than losing an iPhone,” he says. Still, after one cus-tomer, eager to examine how it worked, dropped the iPhone and broke the

swiper, Chen is careful to hold the phone himself during a transaction.

Like traditional credit card termi-nals—and the dedicated wireless proces-sors you might have seen used by delivery guys or tableside in restaurants—nearly all mobile applications that process credit cards require a merchant account, a type of bank account that enables busi-nesses to accept payments by debit or credit. The application process involves background and credit checks, and can take a few days to a few weeks. Most mobile payment software works with existing merchant accounts. Jackson, who didn’t have a merchant account, had to open one through Intuit before she downloaded GoPayment.

Unlike most applications, Square automatically gives users access to its processing services, which means users don’t need a merchant account. After you get a free swiper and download the free application, you just type in your bank-ing information, and you can be up and running in less than a minute, Dorsey claims. Babzani already had a merchant account for Self Edge’s other boutiques, but he liked that Square offers a single swipe fee for all transactions.

Whether you use a mobile app or a traditional terminal, most credit card processors charge a complicated array of interchange, or swipe, fees, which can range from about 1.2 per cent to 3 per cent, depending on many factors, such as whether the card is debit or credit as well as whether the card was swiped or the information was keyed in.

Although using Square requires some clerical work for Chen—to manage inventory, he manually enters informa-tion about purchases made with Square into the point-of-sale software on the store’s iMac—he says customers seem to enjoy the novelty of swiping their credit cards on a cell phone. “When people tweet about what they bought here,” says Chen, “half the time they’ll say, ‘I paid with this crazy payment system.’” —Nitasha Tiku

Mobile card processors may be suited for companies that want to process payments off-site, but retailers have also begun using them in stores.

STRATEGY


Sales & MarketingA portal for medical consultations Can marketers find the right prescription?

Remember the last time when you struggled to get that appointment with your doctor? Getting the doctor’s time is such a hassle that often, when there is a specialist involved, people make do without follow-up check-ups. Life would be oh-so-simple, if only there was a spe-

cialist available online for a consultation. That thought inspired Chennai-based Vinoth Kumar to launch Doctorsand-medicines.com in May. Though still in its early days, the portal has received an encouraging response. Its unique selling point is its panel of doctors, who provide web-based solutions from their individual clinics—at their convenience. It also brings complementary therapies, such as ayurveda and homeopathy, onto a single platform. Four experts weigh in on how they would attract more patients. —Charu Bahri

How would you sell that?

PITCH NO. 1: Offer 'freemiums'Ajay Sanghani, founder, ITVidya.com, a community of IT professionals A popular marketing model is to offer “freemium” services, wherein patients get free membership to search doctors, view experiences and expertise and view reviews. Users who revisit the site can be encour-aged to buy premier services. Special incentives can be given to patients to recommend and invite doctors known to them to sign-up and they can even write reviews of the doc-tors. Users may be given incentives to invite contacts (especially those who are unwell and need treatment) to sign-up for the services.

PITCH NO. 3: Take the event routeSanjeev Sarma, CEO, Osmos Multi-mediaA medical consultation business can’t run online. It can be at best a medical information portal with due caveats thrown in. The reason is simple: The pain in my chest could mean anything from a minor sprain to a major block. Medical consultations cannot address such situations without prescribed pro-cedures involving observation and diagnosis. Online queries or requests for information are not the same as medical consultations. The model should move offline through camps and events to attract clients.

PITCH NO. 4: Deal with minor health issues firstDr Thomas Chandy, director, chief of orthopaedics, HOSMAT, BengaluruSenior doctors are likely to shy away from signing up to offer their services via a portal. Junior doctors will probably be eager to join. Online diagnosis leaves room for mistakes and doctors will be con-cerned about getting embroiled in legal tangles. This kind of one-on-one telemedicine service should focus on minor health queries. The portal could also generate more traffic by offering niche doctor-to-doctor secondary consultations.

FEEDBACK ON THE FEEDBACK:Offering “freemium” and premium services is a valid point. We plan to offer freemium services to first-time customers. We are also working on customising the home page and will appre-ciate pointed suggestions to add more value to it. As regards to the concerns surrounding medical consultations, we are not focusing on medical consultations for serious illnesses. Our focus will be enabling follow-up consultations. Doctor-to-doctor secondary consultations is a good idea. The challenge is to attract a balance of senior and junior doctors—and definitely more patients.

PITCH NO. 2: Spruce up the portalSamir Jhaveri, internet marketing consultant and founder, www.Aware-INDIA.net New visitors landing on the home page would find it hard to figure out what the site is all about. The visual area on the home page should be utilised more effectively. Next, the team should establish a lead gener-ating system and an auto follow-up email series to convert visitors into prospects and prospects into clients. They should also test landing pages to achieve high conversion rates through low-cost Pay-Per-Click campaigns. Once the portal achieves a decent conversion ratio, it should work in tandem with other websites to generate win-win offers.

A Convenient Option Can online medical consultations work in the face of scpeticism?

STRATEGY


PH

OTO

S.C

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The Pitch “We offer high-quality bakery products—walnut brownies, orange and chocolate marble cakes—much more. Our products, which boast of more than 21 features not offered by any of our competitors, sell through stores or are home delivered. We’d like to expand services and retail through our own chain someday. We’d also like to expand our menu to include chicken sandwiches, lasagna, and many more items. We estimate returns of 20 per cent to 30 per cent, and hope to be the frontrunner in the 100 per cent vegetarian and sugar-free desserts segments. This way, Sheetals will be able to serve the niche market—consisting of diet or sugar-conscious people, senior citizens and youngsters.”—As told to Charu Bahri

The Experts Weigh In

COMPANYSheetals Homemade

FOUNDING TEAM Sheetal and Sushwin Devatraj

LOCATION Bengaluru

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES 8

FOUNDEDApril 2009

REVENUE LAST MONTH2 lakh

PROJECTED REVENUE FOR NEXT YEAR 30 lakh per outlet

BUSINESS MODELSale of sugar-free and eggless desserts, packaged meals and gourmet breads

PRODUCT PRICE RANGE50 per unit to 600 per unit

CLIENT BASEAbout 10 to 12 regular clients per month

FUNDING SOUGHT5 lakh to 7 lakh

per outlet (for 14 outlets)

PLAY IN A NICHESheetals Homemade should work towards establishing market leadership in a niche segment of the desserts indus-try. There is nothing special about their current expansion plans. I will suggest that they unclutter the menu and con-centrate on the growing niche segment—people with diabetes or food allergies. The products may be sold at uniform prices through outlets and malls. Pro-jected returns for its estimated turnovers seem unrealistic. Such high returns can only be expected from a considerable scale-up. Sheetals can reach out to more customers through word-of-mouth tasting ses-sions and media coverage. RITU DALMIA, founder, Diva Italian

EXPLORE CORPORATE CAMPUSESAs Sheetals is yet to establish a brand name, it should ideally start with retail stores in mar-ket areas with high footfalls. Small-sized ground floor retail spaces are hard to come by and will cost well over 5 lakh to 7 lakh estimate. Also, its products are too specialised to be successfully retailed through stores. Sheetals should explore the option of establishing a presence in food courts in technology and busi-ness parks, and corporate campuses. It should seek debt funding from banks or risk-capital funding from spe-cialised institutions, like SIDBI, or state financial corporations.KIRAN NADKARNI, founder and director, Kaati Zone

UNDERSTAND THE FRONT-ENDThe company seems to have understood the back-end of its business. Now, to achieve scale, it must try to understand the front-end by establishing stores in areas that the found-ers know well. This means determining the clientele and store layout—should it include a place to sit down? There will be competition from estab-lished brands. So, Sheetals must focus on its “It” factor. On the funding front, institutional investors need to be able to exit the business— so, the com-pany must show clear potential of how big a brand it can become; can it grow to a point where it is either listed or acquired by another firm?BHARATI JACOB, managing partner, Seedfund

Elevator PitchSheetals Homemade has fixed the right menu. Can 1 crore sweeten things up?

STRATEGY

PHOTOGRAPH BY S RADHAKRISHNA

GU

TTER

CR

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HER

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Fresh Flavour Sheetal Devatraj hopes

to win some fans for her chain of stores.

AD


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WHERE ALL THE ACTION ISMeet the honourees who have been plodding away quietly, rising to new levels of growth and excellence. They are now ready to play a larger role in the national and global economy.


Could doing business get any more interesting? Ask the honourees who make up our list of the Best Performing

Mid-sized Companies in India. They’ve emerged out of nowhere in this decade to seize the opportunities thrown up by the opening up of the economy, by the increasing globalisation of the world we live in, and by unprecedented growth in India’s economic fortunes.

These pint-sized rockets are rarely mentioned in mainstream business press. How many know what Nava Bharat Ventures—the company that tops our list—does? Yet, it has been around since 1975 and is one of the top ferro alloy companies of the country.

It isn’t the only one. Many of our honourees have been plodding away quietly, rising to new levels of growth and excellence. And, they are now ready to play a larger role in the national and global economy.

The achievements of this group are commendable because each of them had to beat at least three others to find a place on our list. We analysed a total of 3,848 companies and chose the best 500.

Our 500 companies are a dynamic lot. Of the top 10 in the current list, five companies were not on our list last year. Glodyne Tech-noserve, which ranks eighth this year, was not even among the top 200 last year. Sun TV, which topped last year, has ranked fourth this year, while Educomp Solutions has gone up from 56th position last year to second this year.

Of the 500 companies that made the cut last year, 29 have grown too big for the Inc. India 500 list, having crossed our upper limit of

1,500 crore in turnover. Companies such as Electrotherm and Jai Balaji Industries managed to grow even in a bad year like 2008-09—and went beyond our list. We can only hope that our honourees will continue to do so in the coming years.

This pace of growth is not surprising, given how ambitious this lot of business-owners is. Here’s a sample: “We want to grow to a turnover of 1,000 crore within the next 3 years to 5 years,” says RG Agarwal, group chairman, Dhanuka Agritech, which ranks 135 in our current

REAL ESTATENo of Companies 30

Total Revenue 18,963 cr

3-year CAGR 34%

Average Profit Margin 11%

Median Turnover 522 cr

Median Profit 17 cr

Top Player Peninsula Land

IT & ITeSNo of Companies 50


3-year CAGR 21%



Median Profit 59 cr

Top Player Glodyne Technoserve

SECTOR PROFILE

n its 63 years of independence, India has never seen a decade like the one past. We’ve ridden the roller-coaster of hope and despair in these 10 years. The dotcom bubble inflated with the breath of a million imaginations, and its eventual deflating on the nail-bed of reality. The revival of brick-and-mortar businesses in its aftermath. The predictions about the rise of India that promised a billion brighter tomorrows. And then, like the scripted twist in the tale, the global ebb of economic fortune that threatened to wash our hopes away—albeit temporarily.

WHERE ALL THE ACTION IS


list and has clocked a growth rate of 17 per cent per year in turnover for the past three years. That’s exactly the goal that TT Jagan-nathan, chairman of the 470-crore TTK Prestige, has set for his company.

This desire to ride waves of growth is common. From “five-fold growth in revenue in the next five years” to “grow 20 per cent every year”, “occupy one of the top three positions” and “domestic acquisitions”—the answers resonate the yearning for size.

Such ambitions are, however, not misplaced when you consider the solid performances put in by these companies. The top 500 list has recorded an average sales growth of 50 per cent every year for the past three years—despite fighting off a tidal wave of recession. (In fact, according to our survey, the 2008-09 global financial crisis did not in any way change the future growth strategy of 40 per cent of our respondents.)

There are a few other interesting insights into these companies. Although IT& ITeS sector boasts of the maximum number of players in this list, the fact is that there is a clear dominance of manufactur-ing companies. There are 39 pharmaceuti-cal manufacturers and 21 cement firms in the top 500—and these are just two sectors within manufacturing.

This may be partially because most businesses in India are the result of the favourable environment created by the government during the Licence Raj. Many of these companies had started out being government suppliers or contractors, and over time, morphed into manufacturers.

The services sector is not only new to the game—having come to the fore only in the past two decades—it is also just about mature enough to see significant entrepre-neurial activity.

Geographically speaking, our compa-nies are scattered all over the country—from Kullu in Himachal Pradesh to Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. However, Maharashtra remains the leader among Indian states with more than 150 compa-nies registered in the state. Gujarat, And-hra Pradesh and Delhi lag behind with just about 50 companies from each state.

In terms of absolute numbers, the smallest sector in our list is capital goods with a combined turnover of 8,000-odd crore, while the largest is IT&ITeS. The average profit margins in most sectors fall within a range of 8 per cent to 11 per cent. Software is a clear exception with 26 per cent.

Textiles sector has grown way faster than the rest. The 18 companies represent-ing the sector in our list have recorded a growth of a whopping 197 per cent per year over the past three years. The second fast-est-growing is pharma with a correspond-ing growth rate of 66 per cent. Incidentally, seven out of our top 10 innovators are pharma companies as well.

As you will see in the pages that follow, these mid-sized players have not only grown fast and managed this growth much better than peers, they’ve also done their bit in coming up with innovations, in glo-balising their operations and in creating wealth for their shareholders. Our findings in each of these categories are mentioned in the Spotlight section.

Last, but not the least, we could not resist the temptation to compare the per-formance of our honourees with that of the giants of corporate India. We looked at the 30 companies that make up the Sensex, an index of the Bombay Stock Exchange, and compared their performance with that of the top 30 companies that shine on our list. As expected, it is a rather David-and-Goli-ath comparison. The average sales of Inc. India 30 at 750 crore pale in comparison to the BSE 30’s average of 25,000 crore. The average profits of BSE-30 grew at 12 per cent per year, while there was a 109 per cent per year growth in average profits of the Inc. India 30.

Probably, the comparison is even futile to an extent. But given that the Inc. India 30 have grown at a whopping 177 per cent per year in the past three years in terms of turnover, it’s only a matter of time before they hit the big league.

There’s, of course, no discounting the pleasure of discovering the future occu-pants of the corporate Hall of Fame and claiming, years later, to have spotted them ‘then’. Here’s a toast to that elite class of India Inc’s future leaders.

PHARMACEUTICALSNo of Companies 39


3-year CAGR 66%



Median Profit 20 cr

Top Player Mankind Pharma

AGRI-BUSINESSNo of Companies 19


3-year CAGR 32%



Median Profit 34 cr

Top Player Nagarjuna Agrichem

CAPITAL GOODS (ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT)

No of Companies 18


3-year CAGR 20%



Median Profit 41 cr

Top Player Amara Raja Batteries

CEMENT & CEMENT PRODUCTS

No of Companies 21


3-year CAGR 16%



Median Profit 31 cr

Top Player Rain Commodities

SECTOR PROFILE

WHERE ALL THE ACTION IS


When we decided to wade into the unchartered waters of mid-sized enterprises in India, we faced a dilemma. Should we simply look at sales growth over a period of time? Or, should we look at the overall performance of a company? After all, sales isn’t the only indicator of how well a company is doing.

We opted for the harder path. To assess ‘high-growth’, we chose companies with net sales between 50 crore and 1,500 crore in the most recent year. To begin with, we created a ‘master list’ of more than 3,000 companies across 35 sectors. Of this list, nearly 40 per cent were dropped for lack of requisite data. We excluded banks and financial institutions, and public sector undertakings (PSUs). It’s difficult to define revenue for the former; and PSUs can hardly be considered independent entities with commercial objectives.

Just as a student is ranked on the weighted average of marks obtained during a three-year degree programme, our set of companies too went through a weighted analysis of the following financial parame-ters, annualised for comparison:

1.Top-line growth2.Bottom-line growth3.Profitability, and 4.Returns

To evaluate the ‘performance’ of these companies, the ranking model took into account net sales, operating profits and profit after tax for each company for the past three calendar years—2007 to 2009—and added up the relevant quarterly data.

METHODOLOGY

STEELNo of Companies 18


3-year CAGR 19%



Median Profit 14 cr

Top Player Monnet Ispat & Energy

CHEMICALSNo of Companies 23


3-year CAGR 17%



Median Profit 30 cr

Top Player Deepak Fertilisers &

Petrochemicals Corporation

TEXTILENo of Companies 18


3-year CAGR 197%

Average Profit Margin10%


Median Profit 14 cr

Top Player Reid & Taylor (India)

CAPITAL GOODS (NON ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT)

No of Companies 45


3-year CAGR 25%



Median Profit 24 cr

Top Player Titagarh Wagons

The compound annual growth rates (CAGR) of net sales and net profits for the past three years were calculated to arrive at the respec-tive numbers for ‘top-line growth’ and ‘bot-tom-line growth’. Finally, ‘profitability’ was calculated by taking a simple average of net profit margins and operating profit margins.

Further, the ‘returns’ parameter was calculated as an average of the return on capital employed (ROCE) and the return on equity (ROE)1, both available in the balance sheet of a company, for the past three finan-cial years (2006-07, 2007-08 and 2008-09).

We made two adjustments—the first involved converting all parameters to a scale of 0 to 100 for comparison purposes using the following equation.

ith company’s score on parameterj = 50 *parameterj parameterj’s universe average

The conversion equation assumes an inverted bell shaped probability distribution for all parameters. The converted number then represents the ith company’s score on the parameter j (j running from 1 to 4 i.e. size, top-line growth, bottom-line growth, profitability, and returns). These scores were then ranked to assess the company’s per-formance on each parameter.

The second adjustment normalised top-line and bottom-line growth rates to address anomalies.

Finally, all companies were ranked on the basis of scores assigned for each parameter. The model gave higher weights2 to calendar year data and lower to financial year data. The top 500 companies from the universe were selected as the Inc. India 500.

SECTOR PROFILE

Top-lineGrowth Score

PERFORMANCE RANK

Bottom-lineGrowth Score

ProfitabilityScore

Returns Score

THE PROCESS SCHEMATIC

Cumulative average net sales growth

Cumulative average net profit growth

Avg. net profit margin Avg. operating margin

Average Return on Capital Employed Average Return on Equity

Note 1: All parameters were annualised for comparison purposes; data sources were Capitaline, companies’ annual reports and online registration.Note 2: This automatically penalises older data (data as on April 2009) by placing higher weights on the more recent data (i.e. data as on December 2009)


The most comprehensive ranking of India’s best performing mid-sized companies

BEST PERFORMING

22 Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India

23 Orbit Corporation

24 Koutons Retail India

25 Marathon Nextgen Realty

26 Rolta India

27 Coastal Projects

28 Emami

29 Bharati Shipyard

30 ARSS Infrastructure Projects

31 Rain Commodities

32 Titagarh Wagons

33 Lanco Kondapalli Power

34 Tecpro Systems

35 Hindusthan National Glass & Industries

36 Torrent Pharmaceuticals

37 Monnet Ispat & Energy

38 Mangalam Cement

39 Amara Raja Batteries

40 Core Projects & Technologies

41 Ahluwalia Contracts (India)

42 TRF

43 MindTree

44 Texmaco

45 JK Lakshmi Cement

46 Nuziveedu Seeds

47 OCL India

48 Compact Disc India

49 Dolphin Offshore Enterprises (India)

50 eClerx Services

51 Ipca Laboratories

52 Intas Pharmaceuticals

53 J Kumar Infraprojects

54 Marg

55 Techno Electric and Engineering Company

56 Zydus Wellness

57 OnMobile Global

58 SEL Manufacturing Company

59 Nagarjuna Agrichem

60 Symphony Comfort Systems

61 Pradip Overseas

1 Nava Bharat Ventures

2 Educomp Solutions

3 Reid & Taylor (India)

4 Sun TV Network

5 Godrej Consumer Products

6 Peninsula Land

7 Man Infraconstruction

8 Glodyne Technoserve

9 Bajaj Corp

10 ICSA (India)

11 Geodesic

12 Aban Offshore

13 Mankind Pharma

14 The Clearing Corporation of India

15 Syntel

16 Vardhman Yarns & Threads

17 Mundra Port & Special Economic Zone

18 Allied Digital Services

19 AIA Engineering

20 Vuppalamritha Magnetic Components

21 Opto Circuits (India)

The ranking is based on three-year performance. For details on the ranking methodology, please refer to Page 38.Source: Capitaline and online registration; all data are annualised

THE CLASS OF 2010


62Deepak Fertilisers & Petrochemicals Corporation

63 Balkrishna Industries

64 Transformers & Rectifiers (India)

65 Eros International Media

66 Sanghvi Movers

67 Prestige Estates Projects

68 Temptation Foods

69 USV

70 Greenearth Resources & Projects

71 Zee Entertainment Enterprises

72 Zensar Technologies

73 Supreme Infrastructure India

74 FDC

75 Navin Fluorine International

76 Jagran Prakashan

77 Surya Pharmaceutical

78 KND Engineering Technologies

79 Sesa Industries

80 EID Parry (India)

81 Hanung Toys and Textiles

82 Ess Dee Aluminium

83 Ankur Drugs & Pharma

84 Diamond Power Infrastructure

85 The Tinplate Company of India

86 Allcargo Global Logistics

87 WABCO-TVS (India)

88 Bannari Amman Sugars

89 Bartronics India

90 Mandhana Industries

91 HBL Power Systems

92 AurionPro Solutions

93 Kemrock Industries and Exports

94 3DPLM Software Solutions

95 Malana Power Company

96 Hindustan Dorr-Oliver

97 Unity Infraprojects

98 Mcleod Russel India

99 DB Corp

100 Hindustan Colas

101 Unichem Laboratories

102 Page Industries

103 VST Tillers Tractors

104 Infotech Enterprises

105 Godfrey Phillips India

106 Parabolic Drugs

107 Aristo Pharmaceuticals

108 Vikas WSP

109 Ramky Infrastructure

110 Shri Lakshmi Cotsyn

111 Modern Insulators

112 Bliss Gvs Pharma

113 Mahanagar Gas

114 Varroc Polymers

115 KNR Constructions

116 Tilaknagar Industries

117 Jindal Drilling & Industries

118 MBL Infrastructures

119 Micro Technologies (India)

120 Zee News

121 EMCO

122 Vinati Organics

123 Cranes Software International

124 Omnitech InfoSolutions

125 Navneet Publications (India)

126 TTK Prestige

127 Pratibha Industries

128 Indofil Organic Industries

129 Zen Technologies

130 Sadbhav Engineering

131 Jaihind Projects

132 Swaraj Engines

133 C & C Constructions

134 Rithwik Projects

135 Dhanuka Agritech

136 Motherson Sumi Systems

137 Hyderabad Industries

138 Shilpa Medicare

139 Sabero Organics Gujarat

140 Gayatri Projects

141 Powerlinks Transmission

142 Genesys International Corporation

143 Cox & Kings (India)

144 Powerica

145 Hetero Drugs

146 Banco Products (India)

147 Oil Country Tubular

148 KRBL

149 Orient Abrasives

150 L&T Infocity

151 SKS Ispat and Power

152 Venus Remedies

153 CavinKare

154 Hawkins Cooker

155 Dharani Sugars & Chemicals

156 Goenka Diamond & Jewels

157 Virgo Engineers

158 Torrent Cables

159 Atlanta

160 Glenmark Generics

161 Lanco Industries

162 HEG

163 Aarti Industries

164 Tara Health Foods

165 Time Technoplast

166 Kaveri Seed Company

167 Greatship (India)

168 Parekh Aluminex

169 Hira Ferro Alloys

170 Cosmo Films

171 Twilight Litaka Pharma

172 EMI Transmission

173 Sandur Manganese & Iron Ores

174 Hinduja Global Solutions

175 Shantha Biotechnics

176 Polaris Software Lab

177 Indian Immunologicals

178 L&T- Valdel Engineering

179 PNC Infratech

180 Jessop & Company

181 SIRO Clinpharm

182 Hikal

183 WMI Cranes

184 Ashoka Buildcon

185McNally Bharat Engineering Company

186 JK Paper

187 National Engineering Industries

188 Everonn Education

189 NKG Infrastructure

190 Responsive Industries

191 GMR Energy

192 3i Infotech

193 Relaxo Footwears

194 Jyothy Laboratories

THE CLASS OF 2010


195 Ind-Swift Laboratories

196 ICRA

197 Axiom Impex International

198 Elgi Equipments

199 Gmmco

200 Base Corporation

201 BVG India

202 Solar Industries India

203 UB Engineering

204 Kitex Garments

205 Totem Infrastructure

206 Electrical Manufacturing Company

207 Sahara Prime City

208 Zylog Systems

209 KSK Energy Ventures

210 Tata Technologies

211 Jolly Board

212 Aqua Logistics

213 Insecticides (India)

214 Sunil Hitech Engineers

215 Shriram EPC

216 Usher Agro

217 Natco Pharma

218 Confidence Petroleum India

219 Visaka Industries

220 Greenply Industries

221 Sunflag Iron and Steel Co.

222 Sakthi Sugars

223 KPIT Cummins Infosystems

224 Nectar Lifesciences

225 JB Chemicals & Pharamaceuticals

226 IFB Industries

227 Jay Shree Tea & Industries

228 Tata BP Solar

229 Usha International

230 Godrej Properties

231 Kalpena Industries

232 Liverpool Retail India

233 Ramco Industries

234 Sonata Software

235 Simplex Projects

236 GTL Infrastructure

237 Matrix Laboratories

238 Nu Tek India

239 AcroPetal Technologies

240 JMC Projects (India)

241 Treadsdirect

242 Falcon Tyres

243 ETC Networks

244 HSIL

245 Arch Pharmalabs

246 Metro Shoes

247 Rajshree Sugars & Chemicals

248 GSS America Infotech

249 Meghmani Organics

250 Sahyadri Industries

251 Cochin International Airport

252 Kwality Dairy (India)

253 Empire Industries

254 Kirloskar Electric Company

255 Liberty Phosphate

256Carrier Airconditioning & Refrigeration

257 Firstsource Solutions

258 DT Cinemas

259 Astec LifeSciences

260 Thiru Arooran Sugars

261 Bilcare

262 L&T-Sargent & Lundy

263 The Andhra Sugars

264 UIC Udyog

265 ETA Karnataka Estates

266 Selan Exploration Technology

267 Amar Remedies

268 Galaxy Surfactants

269 Century Plyboards (I)

270 Fabindia Overseas

271 Indraprastha Medical Corporation

272 MSK Projects (India)

273 Simbhaoli Sugars

274 WPIL

275 Persistent Systems

276 The Anup Engineering

277 NIIT

278 Mahindra Lifespace Developers

279 Globus Spirits

280 Fem Care Pharma

281 Kirloskar Pneumatic Company

282 Amira Foods (India)

283 PI Industries

284 Astral Polytechnik

285 INOX Air Products

286 Dhampur Sugar Mills

287 Brandhouse Retails

288 Infinite Computer Solutions India

289 Tata Refractories

290 Kavveri Telecom Products

291 Manjeera Constructions

292 Valley Iron & Steel Company

293 Technofab Engineering

294 GVK Biosciences

295 United Breweries Holdings

296 Nitin Fire Protection Industries

297 Thinksoft Global Services

298 Archidply Industries

299 Indo Bonito Multinational

300 Banswara Syntex

301 Indian Hume Pipe Company

302 BS Transcomm

303 Rainbow Papers

304 Jocil

305 Riddhi Siddhi Gluco Biols

306 Info Edge (India)

307 Resurgere Mines & Minerals India

308 Dwarikesh Sugar Industries

309 Gulf Oil Corporation

310 DCW

311 Cheema Boilers

312 Apollo Metalex

313 Rupa & Company

314 DCM Shriram Industries

315 Om Metals Infraprojects

316 Holostik India

317 Cantabil Retail India

318 Sagar Cements

319 Amrutanjan Health Care

320Sree Rayalaseema Alkalies and Allied Chemicals


THE CLASS OF 2010


321 Numeric Power Systems

322 SeQuent Scientific

323 Sudarshan Chemical Industries

324 Ponni Sugars (Erode)

325 Veena Industries

326 Cera Sanitaryware

327 VIP Industries

328 Ind-Swift

329 Transport Corporation of India

330 TIL

331 Anil Products

332 Sonata Information Technology

333 Sharda Ispat

334 Gillanders Arbuthnot & Co.

335 Talwalkars Better Value Fitness

336 Tantia Constructions

337 QuEST

338 Excel Crop Care

339 Anu’s Laboratories

340 Thangamayil Jewellery

341 vCustomer Services India

342 Shree Digvijay Cement Co

343 Haldyn Glass Gujarat

344Dishman Pharmaceuticals and Chemicals

345 Kovai Medical Center and Hospital

346 TCS e-Serve

347 Suprajit Engineering

348 Gulshan Polyols

349 Saraswati Sugar Mills

350 International Conveyors

351 Savita Oil Technologies

352 Graphite India

353 Aarti Drugs

354 Venkys (India)

355 Gujarat Fluorochemicals

356 Ajanta Pharma

357 Consulting Engineering Services (India)

358 Minda Industries

359 Parenteral Drugs (India)

360 Prakash Steelage

361 Datamatics Global Services

362 Everest Industries

363 Kudremukh Iron and Steel Company

364 NELCO

365 CTR Manufacturing Industries

366 Setco Automotive

367 Great Offshore

368 Vishal Information Technologies

369 Strides Arcolab

370 ABC Paper

371 Hitech Plast

372 TVS Srichakra

373 Kiri Dyes & Chemicals

374 India Motor Parts & Accessories

375 Himalya International

376 Tata Elxsi

377 Horizon Infrastructure

378 Gujarat Reclaim & Rubber Products

379 Aditya Birla Chemicals (India)

380 Aarvee Denims and Exports

381 Pacific Industries

382 Voltamp Transformers

383 English Indian Clays

384 Reliance Natural Resources

385 SRS Real Infrastructure

386 Valecha Engineering

387 GEE

388 Chettinad Cement Corporation

389 Goodluck Steel Tubes

390 Hexaware Technologies

391 Sanwaria Agro Oils

392 Granules India

393 KLJ Resources

394 Geometric

395 ABT

396 Avon Cycles

397 Max Healthcare Institute

398 IMP Powers

399 RS Software (India)

400 Spanco

401 N.R. Agarwal Industries

402 Patels Airtemp (India)

403 Mascon Global

404 Nitta Gelatin India

405 Mittal Corp

406 TV Today Network

407 Sree Rayalaseema Hi-Strength Hypo

408 Siva Industries & Holdings

409 Easun Reyrolle

410 Hindustan Polyamides & Fibres

411 Compuage Infocom

412 Asbesco (India)

413 GEI Industrial Systems

414 Modern India

415 Dynamatic Technologies

416 Balaji Amines

417 Somany Ceramics

418 Jupiter Bioscience

419 Mazda

420 JVL Agro Industries

421 Elecon Engineering Company

422 Eskay K`n’IT (India)

423 Zenith Infotech

424 Ador Fontech

425 Dhunseri Tea & Industries

426 Godrej Agrovet

427 Development Consultants

428 Star Delta Transformers

429 Indian Cable Net Company

430 LGS Global

431 Godrej Oil Palm

432 NOCIL

433 Avon Corporation

434 Flex Art Foil

435Shri Nataraj Ceramic and Chemical Industries

436 Jeypore Sugar Company

437 Munjal Auto Industries

438 Indowind Energy

439 Anuh Pharma

440 Prism Cement

441 Excel Entertainment

442 Garware Offshore Services

443 Ambience

444 P C I

445 Gandhi Special Tubes

446 Manjushree Technopack

447 Mercator Lines

448 Saurashtra Chemicals

449 Bedmutha Industries

450 Ester Industries

451 Vardhman Acrylics

452 NCL Alltek & Seccolor

THE CLASS OF 2010

453 Surana Industries

454 Atul

455 Jaybharat Textiles and Real Estate

456 Richa Industries

457 Asian Granito India

458 Zandu Realty

459 VMT Spinning Company

460 Petron Engineering Construction

461 Camlin

462 Provogue (India)

463 Kanani Industries

464 Gujarat Apollo Industries

465 Va Tech Wabag

466 Raunaq International

467 Grabal Alok Impex

468 Associated Stone Industries (Kotah)

469 Baba Arts

470 Indag Rubber

471 National Peroxide

472 Himatsingka Seide

473 Polyplex Corporation

474 Kabra Extrusion Technik

475 Iris Computers

476 Tata Sponge Iron

477 Dharma Productions

478 Kalyanpur Cements

479 Poly Medicure

480 GMR Power Corporation

481 Wim Plast

482 Coromandel Engineering Company

483 Anjani Portland Cement

484 Sai Service Station

485 Deccan Chronicle Holdings

486 Century Enka

487 Jubilant Chemsys

488 Autometers Alliance

489 Himadri Chemicals & Industries

490 Dish TV India

491 Brigade Enterprises

492 CMC

493 Finolex Industries

494 H & R Johnson (India)

495 NCL Industries

496 Shivalik Agro-Poly Products

497 Gloster Jute Mills

498 Financial Technologies (India)

499 Midfield Industries

500 Gabriel India


GODREJADI

A SWELLING EMPIRE

At 68, Adi Godrej, chairman of the century-old Godrej

Industries, is enjoying his reign over an empire spread

across London, Jakarta, Buenos Aires and Mumbai.

The lessons he picked up—at home from his mother, those

at MIT and the ones that came through his 47 years of

running the family business—have helped the diversified conglomerate ensure that

every third consumer product used by an Indian has a

Godrej stamp on it. Not a great believer of long-term

planning, his focus remains on expanding his businesses

and keeping the contemporary charm of the

brand intact.

I was born in Mumbai in 1942 and did my schooling from St Xavier’s School. I did reasonably well; in fact, I stood first from my school in the SSC exams. After my intermediate exams, I made it to Massachu-setts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1959. I was one of the youngest students there.

At MIT, I realised the importance of studying management. In those days, there were no management schools anywhere, except in the US. My Master’s degree in management, with a minor in mechanical engineering, gave me the best possible education and training I could have hoped for before joining the family business.

My first lessons in business, however, started way before this. My mother, Jai Godrej, was my first true mentor. When I was just five years old, she taught me how to cross the road alone, in front of our home at Malabar Hills in Mumbai. Of course, there weren’t so many cars on the roads then.

At 10, I was given a monthly sum as pocket money and told to accom-modate all my purchases—my schools books, lunch and toys—within that sum of money. So, I learnt the fine art of budgeting at a rather early age. By the time I reached my teens, my mother allowed me to travel across the country, alone. I had to make my friends convince their parents in turn, so that we could take advantage of this freedom. I travelled to far-flung places in India on third-class carriages of Indian Railways. In hindsight, there could have been no greater way of know-ing how India lives and thinks.

MIT taught me the power of team work. I was a member of Pi Lambha Phi—a fraternity at MIT, which was known for welcoming people of all races and religions. In 1961, our fraternity elected an African

AS TOLD TO DHIMAN CHATTOPADHYAY

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JITEN GANDHI

HOW I DID IT


True ContentmentAdi Godrej turned his

century-old family business into a

12,000-crore behemoth with a presence in

21 countries.

Leading the Pack Godrej was one of the first Indian businessmen to recruit graduates from the IIMs.

American classmate as its president—something unheard of in those days.

It was also the only time that I truly had to work hard to make ends meet. The government of India rules then allowed people to carry only a few dollars while leaving India. So, I first worked as a research assistant for Franco Modigliani, who later won the Nobel Prize for econom-ics, and then, as a bell boy in a hotel.

I had always been sure that I would join my family business. In 1963, I joined Godrej Soaps, with no previous work expe-rience. I was the first management gradu-ate to join the company, and brought with me a set of fresh values and a new way of looking at things. The total turnover of the group then was 10 crore.

Those were socialist days when we had to pay up to 90 per cent tax on income. In some years, we had to pay more taxes than our income, so we sold Godrej Soaps to Godrej & Boyce, a family-owned company, to get the cash needed to pay the taxes!

The transition came in 1991 with the opening up of the economy. We put a restructuring process in place. In 1993, we went public for the first time with Godrej Soaps. I also realised that the new eco-nomic order presented a perfect opportu-nity to expand through joint ventures. It was a good option for both sides—the for-eign companies would get a foothold in India, and we would gain access to a vast wealth of knowledge about global best practices. And of course, the process would result in a spike in revenues. Fortu-nately, most of our joint ventures have worked well for us and even in cases where they have ended (P&G and GE), we have gained enormously.

In 2001, we de-merged Godrej Soaps into Godrej Consumer Products and Godrej Industries. It turned out to be a great deci-sion. Since then, the market cap of Godrej Industries has gone up at a compound rate of 60 per cent, while that of Godrej Con-sumer Products at 45 per cent.

Looking back, my biggest contribution in the initial days was to bring in new man-agement principles, hitherto not followed by most Indian businesses. This was also the phase when the first of the Indian Insti-tutes of Management (IIMs) were coming up. I would drop by the campuses, meet students and faculty, and then pick up the best talent on the block. I was one of the first to recruit IIM graduates.

I had no idea that 47 years later we would be a 12,000-crore group (consolidated revenues) with a presence in 21 countries. Today, roughly 25 per cent of our sales come from outside India. And all our busi-nesses are standalone companies with none of the CEOs coming from the family.

We are now focused on moving into newer areas. Our real estate arm is growing at a steady rate and we are also looking at stra-tegic acquisitions. The next generation, our children, is also in the process of re-ener-gising the group’s existing brands and tak-ing a fresh look at products so that they become more attractive to younger cus-tomers. It is our constant endeavour to be seen and known as a contemporary brand.

One of my biggest weaknesses is that I am a poor listener. Till a few years ago, I didn’t really listen to what others had to say. I have tried to change that. Now, I make an effort to listen carefully when a suggestion is made, or when someone is making a point. It helps, especially, when we plan for the long term, since my vision doesn’t go beyond five years. I consider myself better at visualising short and medium-term tar-gets. So when it comes to setting goals for the future, I make sure that I get the views of other people, both family members and others around me.

Apart from my mother, I’ve been fortu-nate to have two great mentors—my father, Burjor, and my uncle, Naval. While my father, a technology expert himself, stirred my interest in technology, my uncle has been a guiding force in most business matters in those early days.

I honestly feel I would have failed as an entrepreneur, if I had to start from scratch. To be successful as an entrepreneur, you need passion as much as perseverance. There is no success without failure. I do not know if would have passed muster.

HOW I DID IT



The four bands in terms of sales are:

1. 50 crore to 100 crore2. 101 crore to 500 crore3. 501 crore to 1,000 crore4. 1,001 crore to 1,500 crore

BY THE NUMBERS

Taken together, our 500 honourees constitute a vast pool of data. It’s easy to overlook smaller companies in this universe of winners. So, here is another look at our list—this time, within a certain band of turnover. Divided into four categories and then ranked according to their performance, here are the other number ones.

BY THE NUMBERS


Started in 1979, Himalya International has an array of products in its portfolio—all in the food segment. From growing mushrooms to baby potatoes and manufacturing Italian cheeses, it has grown at 21 per cent for three years ending 2009.

Why we’re growingThere are three things that helped us the most in the past year. The best of them was our diversion to the domestic market with its bur-geoning middle class. The second thing was our decision to inno-vate and diversify our production lines. Besides contributing to

our top-line last year, they show promise to become star products, and could lead our growth plans for the next few years. And finally, our advertising and brand building exercise helped us to reach Indian consumers, which in turn led to better sales.

Our challengesThe logistic chain is a challenge for us. Since our products are tem-perature sensitive, maintaining the chain from factory to fork is daunting. The infrastructure is inadequate and power supply erratic. Another big challenge is the quality of inputs, especially the milk for our cheese and yogurt plants. Adulteration is rampant and laws are not properly implemented.

What’s nextWe have earmarked 20 crore for cold chain development for our distribution throughout the country. We hope to increase our sales from nutritional supplements, launched earlier this year.

50 crore - 100 crore

Rank Company Name3-year CAGR

(%)

1 Zen Technologies 51

2 Genesys International Corporation 32

3 L&T Valdel Engineering 42

4 SIRO Clinpharm 45

5 Jolly Board 3

6 AcroPetal Technologies 30

7 ETC Networks 48

8 GSS America Infotech 30

9 Astec Lifesciences 39

10 L & T-Sargent & Lundy 42

11 ETA Karnataka Estates 95

12 Selan Explorations Technology 22

13 The Anup Engineering 37

14 Manjeera Constructions 47

15 Nitin Fire Protection Industries 34

16 Thinksoft Global Services 19

17 Apollo Metalex 838

18 Holostik India 21

19 Amrutanjan Health Care 7

20 Talwalkars Better Value Fitness 39

21 International Conveyors 15

22 CTR Manufacturing Industries 15

23 Vishal Information Technologies 26

24 Himalya International 21

25 Pacific Industries 4

26 Patels Airtemp (India) 15

27 Siva Industries & Holdings 9

28 Asbesco India 26

29 Mazda 10

30 Development Consultants 26

HIMALYA INTERNATIONALNo. 375

MAN MOHAN MALIK, Chairman & CEO

BY THE NUMBERS


Part of the 40-year-old Marathon Group, Marathon NextGen Realty has been with the promoter Shah family since 2002. It has grown at a compound rate of 32 per cent between 2007 and 2009.

Why we’re growing We have developed an expertise in low-cost land acquisition. We never go to auctions. It helps that we can efficiently and strategi-cally acquire land, and convert it quickly into a real estate property. We have gone into the root of asset reconstruction. We run a holis-tic company, where everything from planning, design and con-struction is done by in-house teams. This saves us costs and time. Moreover, our sales increased even in the downturn because our properties were in near-ready condition.

101 crore - 500 crore


(%)

1 Bajaj Corp 1,247

2 Geodesic 31

3 Clearing Corporation of India 22

4 Vardhman Yarns & Threads 1,414

5 Allied Digital Services 19

6 Opto Circuits (India) 15

7 Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India 19

8 Orbit Corporation 40

9 Marathon Nextgen Realty 32

10 Core Projects & Technologies 35

11 Compact Disc India 37

12 eClerx Services 32

13 J Kumar Infraprojects 53

14 Zydus Wellness 66

15 OnMobile Global 36

16 Symphony Comfort Systems 49

17 Transformers & Rectifiers (India) 24

18 Eros International Media 39

19 Sanghvi Movers 14

20 Greenearth Resources & Projects 36

21 Zensar Technologies 13

22 Supreme Infrastructure India 64

23 Navin Fluorine International 16

24 KND Engineering Technologies 70

25 Ess Dee Aluminium 20

26 WABCO-TVS India 1,521

27 Mandhana Industries 24

28 aurionPro Solutions 39

29 Kemrock Industries & Exports 32

30 3DPLM Software Solutions 22

MARATHON NEXTGEN REALTYNo. 25

Our challengesIt hasn’t been easy to raise debt. The industry faced this challenge, not just us, where the costs of raising funds went up substantially between 2008 and now. Getting approvals are a major challenge in real estate, making it difficult to turn around a project. Manpower has been a big challenge in the past 6 months to 12 months. Not only has there been a shortage of skilled and unskilled workers, there’s also a huge increase in the price at which it is available.

What’s nextWe are sitting on big project opportunities. We’ve acquired sufficient land for the next 7 years. We’ll now plan those. We’ll be launching a few major projects in the next couple of months.

MAYUR SHAH, Managing Director

BY THE NUMBERS


501 crore - 1,000 crore


(%)

1 Reid & Taylor (India) 1,769

2 Educomp Solutions 56

3 Peninsula Land 27

4 Man Infraconstruction 84

5 Glodyne Technoserve 39

6 Mankind Pharma 20

7 Syntel 14

8 AIA Engineering 15

9 Vuppalamritha Magnetic Components 125

10 Coastal Projects 56

11 Emami 16

12 ARSS Infrastructure Projects 67

13 Rain Commodities 21

14 Titagarh Wagons 35

15 Tecpro Systems 45

16 Rajasthan State Mines & Minerals 21

17 Mangalam Cement 8

18 TRF 28

19 Nuziveedu Seeds 17

20 Texmaco 16

21 Dolphin Offshore Enterprises (India) 39

22 Marg 54

23 Techno Electric & Engineering Co. 9

24 SEL Manufacturing Company 44

25 Nagarjuna Agrichem 18

26 Prestige Estates Projects 27

27 USV 11

28 FDC 10

29 Jagran Prakashan 7

30 Surya Pharmacuticals 32

Established in 1950, USV is considered one of the top pharmaceuti-cal companies. The manufacturer of cardio-vascular and anti-dia-betic medicines has done its bit to spread good health.

Why we’re growingThe Indian pharmaceutical market is growing at 15 per cent, com-pared to 5 per cent worldwide. Seventy per cent of our products are marketed in India. We define our goals clearly, so we can work together to achieve those. We’ve got a great team of scientists, who manage to produce original research—we have 57 patents.

Our challengesCompetition is a big challenge. We compete with companies, such as Novartis, Merck and Sun Pharmaceutical, which also produce anti-diabetic medicines. Recruiting good people is another chal-lenge. We have found that it is rare to find professionals, who can imbibe the spirit of transparency and team spirit. Also, it’s difficult to find people who can break the Chinese walls, and get involved in different aspects and genres of work.

What’s nextWe want to grow by 20 per cent in the next 12 months. We are awaiting three international patents, which will increase our brand popularity and growth in international markets, mainly Europe and US. We hope to increase our share of the cardio-vas-cular market in India by 20 per cent through franchisees. And, of course, we want to grow to a 1,000-crore company soon.

LEENA TEWARI, Chairperson

USVNo. 69

BY THE NUMBERS


1,001 crore - 1,500 crore


(%)

1 Nava Bharat Ventures 15

2 Sun TV Network 9

3 Godrej Consumer Products 14

4 ICSA (India) 30

5 Aban Offshore 25

6 Mundra Port & Special Economic Zone 25

7 Koutons Retail India 38

8 Rolta India 11

9 Bharati Shipyard 26

10 Lanco Kondapalli Power 31

11 Hindusthan National Glass & Industries 31

12 Torrent Pharmaceuticals 10

13 Monnet Ispat & Energy 13

14 Amara Raja Batteries 12

15 Ahluwalia Contracts (India) 21

16 MindTree 19

17 JK Lakshmi Cement 9

18 OCL India 20

19 Ipca Laboratories 13

20 Intas Pharmaceuticals 15

21 Pradip Overseas 44

22 Deepak Fertilizers & Petrochemicals Corp 11

23 Balkrishna Industries 7

24 Temptation Foods 137

25 Zee Entertainment Enterprises 6

26 EID Parry (India) 28

27 Ankur Drugs & Pharma 23

28 HBL Power Systems 9

29 Unity Infraprojects 24

30 Mcleod Russel India 16

The way our customers have accepted and responded to our brand has helped us venture into tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Last, but not the least, our understanding of the market and venturing into cities at the right time with the right product mix and sticking to our strategy all through has helped us in being where we are today.

What’s nextWe want to make Koutons a ‘family experience’ in shopping. So, we will focus on consolidating our presence through family stores, which will sell all our brands under one roof. Also, given the increase in the standards of living and brand consciousness amongst customers, we see a lot of potential outside metros as well. So, we will continue to focus on tier-2 and tier-3 cities. We will continue to follow our aim of providing the best quality and latest fashion products for our customers at affordable prices.

DPS KOHLI, Chairperson

KOUTONS RETAIL INDIANo. 24

Started in 1991 as Charlie Creations to manufacture garments, Kou-tons got its present name only in 2006, after it became a public lim-ited company. It sells garments for men, women and children from more than 1,400 outlets across the country. The company has grown at 38 per cent to a turnover of more than 1,000 crore in 2009.

Why we’re growingMy biggest strength is the people I work with. Their experience, as well as experimentation in brand and line extension, has helped us target a wide range of audience, which was not the case when we launched. We have been successful in understanding the customer needs and taste, and thus, created designs that are readily accepted and picked by our target audience.

Contentment does not come easy to the stars who inhabit the entrepreneurial galaxy. Annand Sarnaaik, chairman and managing director of Glodyne Technoserve, India’s leading technology infrastructure management services (IMS) company, is no different, having pursued contentment relentlessly in his 13-year-old business.

However, he confesses to having experienced a rare “yahoo” moment last month. That’s when Glodyne, which closed 2009-10 with a turnover of 721 crore, acquired DecisionOne—one of North America’s larg-est pure-play technology IMS companies with more than $200 million in revenue. The $104-million

acquisition brought with it several marquee Fortune 500 clients in the US and Canada.

“This deal has given us a lot of pride. With this acquisition, we are looking at a turnover of nearly

1,700 crore by 2011. Buying something much bigger than ourselves has given us the confidence to reach the billion-dollar milestone by 2013,” claims 42-year-old Sarnaaik, who co-founded Glodyne, earlier called Paradyne, with his wife and former colleague, Divvy-ani Sarnaaik, in 1997.

Clearly, Sarnaaik’s not daunted by his huge appetite for growth. Glodyne needs to grow at more than 150 per cent over the next two-and-a-half years to reach its

THE COMPANIES

Annand Sarnaaik started Glodyne Technoserve just over a decade ago. A leading technology infrastructure management services firm, it recently bought American company DecisionOne. Now, it is gunning for a growth of 150 per cent in the next two years.

MY LEADERSHIP STYLE IS MORE GUT AND FEEL”

“ANNAND SARNAAIK | Chairman & Managing Director, Glodyne Technoserve

BY SHREYASI SINGH PHOTOGRAPH BY JITEN GANDHI


In Pursuit of Scale Buying a big company has

made Annand Sarnaaik confident of reaching the billion-dollar milestone.

goals. As Sarnaaik points out, there are immense opportunities that are yet to be tapped in the $54-billion global technology IMS market. Of this, only $1 billion to $3 billion currently gets out-sourced to India. Glodyne’s stock movement over the year proves its capacity for wealth creation. Its share price, which hovered at

318 in August 2009, is at 830 today. There’s no doubt that this is an exciting time for the company.

With DecisionOne in its fold, the Mumbai-based Glodyne boasts of a 3,200-plus workforce spread across offices in key loca-tions in India and North America. It is now able to offer more services in data centre, networking, server, and workstation and application management services. Sarnaaik has hand-picked a team to oversee the integration process and make Glodyne’s recent acquisition a success.

Such successful scenarios didn’t always seem possible. The son of a school teacher and a government engineer from Washim, a small town in Vidarbha, Sarnaaik grew up dreaming of becoming an engineer and bagging a well-paying IT job. Post his engineering from Regional Engineering College in Nanded, Maharashtra, he even got the opportunity to live his dream as an associate, market-ing PCs and servers, in HCL-HP’s enterprise division in Mumbai in 1991. It’s here that the metamorphosis took place.

“When you work for a year or so, you have clarity. I realised that I wanted to work for myself. I didn’t know then how big or small. I just wanted to do it,” says this first-generation entrepreneur. Two years into HCL-HP, Sarnaaik quit his job to join a group of col-leagues to start Indosys, a systems integration company in 1993. In the next four years, the group, which also included Sarnaaik’s wife, tried to build a business together.

In 1997, the Sarnaaiks decided to part ways with the rest of their business partners. With 10 lakh that they got from exiting Indosys, the couple founded Paradyne Infotech. The primary business focus was on hardware sales. But as implementation and services orders started flowing in thick and fast, Paradyne

Backed with good advice and prayer, Paradyne survived. In 2005, it went public to raise nearly 14 crore. The company was rechris-tened Glodyne in October 2007 to avoid confusion with an IT firm in the US with the same name.

Sarnaaik, who says his leadership style is more gut and feel than thought, credits his success to two key factors. “For me, commit-ment is primary. Through these years, we have built the company on making commitments and honouring those. It doesn’t work in the short term, but in the long term, it yields huge dividends. Our clients have stood by us,” he says.

Some smart strategising has also helped the company get to the sweet spot. First, unlike many of its competitors, Glodyne concentrated on the domestic market through its first decade with almost 85 per cent of its business coming from within India. Essentially, IMS helps companies optimise their complex IT infrastructures. Sarnaaik understood that a large chunk of IT budgets were spent to maintaining current systems, especially during recession phases when cost optimisation assumes top pri-ority. Wisely, Glodyne chose pretty early on to be a pure-play technology IMS firm. That’s probably a key reason why the recent interest shown by big IT majors in the tech IMS and Remote IMS space doesn’t have Sarnaaik worried.

“Companies trust you will do a better job because of your focus,” he says. Staying away from customised application develop-ment, where most of the IT blue-chippers were digging gold, also helped Glodyne manage the crowded talent market more effi-ciently. “Our business model has been more supportive of and dependent on technology. That’s been a great advantage.”

The effort has paid off. Glodyne has attracted a stream of pres-tigious awards. For the past three years consecutively, the company has bagged the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific award that seeks to honour fast-growing technology companies. In 2009, it also received the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India award, and grabbed a fifth ranking in BT 500 India’s Most Valuable Compa-nies in the 10 Years’ Profit Performance category.

Despite this meteoric rise, it’s Glodyne’s sub-stantial niche in service offerings for the govern-ment’s social initiatives that gives Sarnaaik the most satisfaction. Under its “E-Disha” pro-gramme, Glodyne is implementing the ambi-tious 284-crore National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) project in Bihar. It has already started a similar NREGS implemen-tation in Maharashtra’s Gadhichiroli district.

“It is our way of being conscious corporate citizens. There is nothing that makes you feel as good as when your work helps the needy,” says the rather proud founder.

As Sarnaaik powers ahead to claim a greater chunk of the global market, he also enters what is most definitely Glodyne’s golden phase. May be this is where this continuous pursuit of con-tentment just might find an answer.

decided to switch gears. Things moved briskly and by 2005, Para-

dyne hit 70 crore in revenue. It undertook some key projects, such as setting up Reliance Infocomm’s infrastructure with Sun Microsys-tems. There were roadblocks, too. An engage-ment with India Infoline, an Internet service provider, to set up its entire bandwidth, almost tripped the company, even as the dotcom bub-ble burst at the turn of the century. Paradyne had bought a lot of equipment from Cisco on credit and found it tough to pay for it, as India Infoline went down.

Sarnaaik remembers seeking Wipro chair-man Azim Premji’s support at the time. “He has been a role model. You don’t forget help extended to you during tough times.”

His maternal grandmother’s blessings have also worked, Sarnaaik adds.

THE COMPANIES


COMPANY DASHBOARD Glodyne Technoserve

Sector IT & ITeS

Year of incorporation 1997

Net sales 2009 (January to December) 611 crore

Three-year sales CAGR 39 per cent

Average profit margin (last three years) 14 per cent

Market cap (as on December 31, 2009)270 crore

SPOTLIGHTUnlisted Firms


UNLISTED FIRMSThere’s always a curiosity about companies that are not listed on any stock exchange. Here are 10 gems that are still not in the public eye.

SPOTLIGHT Unlisted Firms


It is not surprising that a majority of the companies on our list are publicly-listed companies. In fact, just about 20 per cent of the companies in this exercise

are unlisted. That is primarily because it’s difficult to find financial data on such companies. Not listed on any stock exchange, these companies are owned by private shareholders and investors, and by law, are not required to declare their financial results in a public forum. We bring you the top 10 in this category and an interview with one of these hidden gems.

Rank Company Name Sector CAGR Sales (%)

1 Reid & Taylor (India) Textiles 1,769

2 Bajaj Corp Consumer Durables 1,247

3 Mankind Pharma Pharmaceuticals 20

4 Syntel IT - Software 14

5 Vardhman Yarns & Threads Textiles 1,414

6 Vuppalamritha Magnetic Components

Telecomm Equipment & Infra Services 125

7 Coastal Projects Construction 56

8 Lanco Kondapalli Power Power Generation & Distribution 31

9 Tecpro Systems Capital Goods-Non Electrical Equipment 45

10 Nuziveedu Seeds FMCG 17

Sales of top 10 unlisted companies( crore)

2007

2,530

4,098

2008

7,079

2009

SPOTLIGHTUnlisted Firms


“I’m a self-motivated person who’s egged on by targets.”Nuziveedu Seeds | No. 46

MY BACKGROUNDFather’s occupation: My father started out as a government officer in the minis-tries of agriculture and commerce respec-tively. He came back to Buntur, his hometown, to do something on his own. In the seventies, he got into the nascent seeds industry. My previous jobs: I have never held a job. I knew that I will study agriculture and join the family business. I have been run-ning Nuziveedu Seeds since 1990.

MY COMPANYIts origins: Started in 1973 by my father, M Venkataramaiah, who is a postgraduate in agriculture science, Nuziveedu Seeds makes seeds for cotton, rice, corn and lately, vegetables.Why it’s growing: Agriculture as a sec-tor has grown. With food prices going up in the last three years to four years, farmers are finding agriculture more remunerative. As a result, they are using better quality inputs. And with seeds being one of the most important inputs, this has helped us grow. Food is likely to remain a cause of concern for most developing economies, where the supply fails to match the rising demand. I believe agri input companies will continue to grow. Further, our plant

breeding practices have helped us develop better and better varieties and hybrids. That gives us an edge in the market.

HOW I WORKMy role: I run the various companies in the group. I still personally handle the breeding activity for cotton. I spend half my time on the seeds business, and the rest in high-level, strategic decisions.Where I get my inspiration: I’m a self-motivated person who’s egged on by targets. As a company, we’re motivated by the success of farmers, when they grow crops using our seeds. What I lose sleep over: HR is not a worry but is surely an area we need to focus

more on. We have to figure out how to bring and retain high-quality talent. Once this issue is resolved, all others become manageable.

WHAT’S NEXTWe have gone from a turnover of 1 crore in 1985 to 100 crore in 2000. Our aim is to cross 1,000 crore by 2011-12. We ‘ve taken the right steps to get there. We see signifi-cant growth in the vegetable seeds division started three years ago. We aim to list on a stock exchange either by next year, or the year after that. For now, my aim is to bring good management bandwidth in the com-pany, and limit my involvement to policy and important issues.

MANDAVA PRABHAKAR RAO, Chairman

VINOD RAMNANI

A SURGICAL EYE ON PROFITS

As a young engineer in the US in 1982, Vinod Ramnani sold

shoes, worked as a hotel bell boy and hawked groceries. The marketing insights he

gained from these odd jobs came handy years later, while he built Opto Circuits with his

partners, Thomas Dietiker and Jayesh Patel. Together,

the trio grew it into a 1,100 crore company—and

more importantly, into a lead-ing developer, manufacturer

and marketer of invasive and non-invasive medical devices

in India. For now, the chief managing director has only

one goal in sight—taking his company to the billion-dollar

goalpost in the next three years to five years.

I wasn’t raised to run a company. My father was an officer with the Indian Railways. Education was very important to him. So he made sure that all his children—I, my two brothers and two sisters—con-centrated on our studies. I did my mechanical engineering from The Manipal Institute of Technology in 1979.

I don’t think I could have been anything but an entrepreneur. If you have an appetite to learn, to observe your environment and to make a real impact, you need to be on your own. I think some of this is inborn. It is in me, at least.

I learnt to think big from my first boss, Mr Sajjad. I worked with him at New Standard Engineering in Mumbai after finishing my engineering. He would always say: ‘The ground is very crowded; to succeed, you have to look up’. He gave me tough assignments, and asked me to learn on the go. Those were invaluable lessons to be learnt at 22.

In 1982, I went to the US for better opportunities. The economy was in doldrums then. I didn’t get a job right away. In Chicago, I sold shoes at a retail shoe chain called Wild Pair. We would get a 5 per cent com-mission on sales. I quickly figured out that I should focus on black women. Most of them had a thing for boots, which were priced higher. So, commissions from these sales were more. Within a month or two, I was the best salesman they had. Every time I got that odd feeling about selling shoes, I would tell myself ‘what the heck, work is work’. Our US subsidiary, Criticare, is based in Chicago. Even now when I am there, I like walking past that store.

AS TOLD TO SHREYASI SINGHPHOTOGRAPHS BY S RADHAKRISHNA

HOW I DID IT


In Good Health Vinod Ramnani exhibited a healthy appetite for

growth, buying 10 companies in 20 years of operation.

I moved to Detroit to live with my brother. He bought me a $500 car and I decided to try my luck on the West Coast. I went to Los Angeles. I had to sleep in the car on many a day because I had no money for rent. I sold groceries at the famous India Emporium.

I also worked at the India Sari Palace. This was an important stint. I made my first acquaintance with the Indian business community here. Many of them continue to be business associates, and several have guided and mentored me.

After more than a year in the US, I finally got a $1,000-a-month job with DC Motors. One of their clients was UDT Sen-sors, whom I would visit often. A chance meeting with the company’s president, Deepak Chopra, changed my life. When asked about my future goal, I told him that I wanted to sit in his chair. He liked my answer, and hired me immediately. I was sent to manage the San Francisco branch, where I met Thomas and Jayesh, my pres-ent partners. I later spent two years in Puerto Rico handling that region indepen-dently. In 1987, I moved back to the US.

Then, Deepak quit UDT to start Opto Sen-sors. I joined him and moved to lead the Singapore division. Thomas and Jayesh joined us too. We did exceptional business in the first year. But, in 1990, Thomas, Jayesh and I decided to go our own way. We founded Elekon Industries in Singa-pore to manufacture optical sensors for healthcare and security markets.

Moving manufacturing facilities to India really changed the game. In 1992, we shifted to Bengaluru and registered as Opto Circuits. Although I have been Man-aging Director of the company since, we have built the business together.

Luck played its part in our success. In the early part of this decade, we bought over Unilever’s thermometer business. It was a really small, inconsequential deal for them. But, it made a lot of money for us. In 2002,

the SARS virus hit Southeast Asia and thermometers sold like popcorn.

My journey’s been full of highs and lows. Earning my first dollar was such a high, as was appointing a CEO for our German subsidiary in 2006. But I also remember the times when I have stayed up at nights, not knowing what would happen tomor-row. In 1994-95, things were particularly bad. We lost all our big OEM customers. It taught us a critical lesson—to have our own product line and not depend on the OEM business alone. Things were also tough before we went public in 2000.

For a first-generation business, acquisi-tions are the fastest way to grow. In health-care especially, research and development takes so long that growing organically isn’t always possible. We have bought 10 com-panies in the past 20 years. You need to have an open mind with acquisitions. Nobody sells a company that is doing well. Something always needs to be turned around. You need to recognise the syner-gies and work hard at aligning them.

Three mantras rule the way I work. First, never ever say die. Be creative and always look for opportunity. Second, never stop

learning. You never know enough. Third, get the best out of your people. Everybody has weaknesses. You need to identify their strengths. As the head of the business, ulti-mately, I am responsible for the failures.

In the next few years, we want to become a billion-dollar company. I know that won’t be easy and there are other big play-ers in the game. I also want to make the company less vulnerable. We are not very big and need to build a brand. I want to bring it to a stable position before I hand over the reins to the younger generation.

I haven’t thought much about retirement yet. But, I am conscious of having a succes-sion plan. We are hiring youngsters with good professional backgrounds, and let-ting them learn the ropes. My son is in his final year of engineering, and my daughter is studying medicine. But, they haven’t decided what they want to do yet.

In business, thing are never easy. Every situation seems as tough as the one before. That’s the price you have to pay as an entre-preneur. That’s also why you get a kick when you are successful. There are so many things not in your control. You have to fight it out.

The Machinist Ramnani relied on his ‘never-say-die’ attitude to build his medical devices

company into a 1,100-crore business.

HOW I DID IT


SPOTLIGHTInnovators


INNOVATORSA look at companies that excel in finding a new way of doing things.

SPOTLIGHT Innovators


Rank Company Name Sector CAGR Sales(%)

1 Torrent Pharmaceuticals Pharmaceuticals 10

2 Intas Pharmaceuticals Pharmaceuticals 15

3 Unichem Laboratories Pharmaceuticals 5

4 Oil Country Tubular Steel 7

5 Kaveri Seed Company Miscellaneous 20

6 Shantha Biotechnics Pharmaceuticals 27

7 3i Infotech IT - Software 5

8 Natco Pharma Pharmaceuticals 13

9 Matrix Laboratories Pharmaceuticals 25

10 Ajanta Pharma Pharmaceuticals 9

Average R&D spend of top 10 innovators

( crore per annum)

2007

3843

2008

54

2009

Innovation is not commonly found in Indian enterprises. It becomes all the more imperative to find and reward this attribute. Defined as companies

that not only spend a significant proportion of their revenues on research and development, but also attempt to discover new products, technologies and processes, here is our list of the best innovators. They have gone beyond process improvement and problem-solving to imbibe the spirit of true innovation.

SPOTLIGHTInnovators


“I trust the good deeds God has chosen for me.”Shantha Biotechnics | No. 175

MY BACKGROUNDFather’s occupation: My father was a farmer and a landlord.My education: I am an electronics engi-neer by training. I also did a Master’s in business administration from Osmania University.My previous jobs: I was a scientist and a bureaucrat before becoming an entrepre-neur. From 1972 to 1977, I was a radar sci-entist with the Defence Electronics Research Labs; thereafter, I worked with APIDC, an Andhra Pradesh government enterprise. In 1985, I became a director in Hyderabad Batteries, which was my first entrepreneurial effort.

MY COMPANYIts Origins: I started Shantha Biotech-nics in 1993 as an Indo-Oman joint ven-ture. We brought out India’s first locally-developed r-DNA Hepatitis-B vac-cine in 1997, and initiated the bio-technol-ogy revolution in India. We followed that up with several low-cost, next generation healthcare products.

While the Indian pharma industry played in the field of generics, we worked on original research on the development of antibodies for the treatment of cancer. In fact, we have created a culture of research and development within the company by investing more than 25 per cent of our earnings in R&D.

The quality of our product attracted Pfizer, which asked us to produce the Hepatitis-B vaccine under its brand name. We have been a part of Merieux, the first vaccine firm in the world.Why it’s growing: Our work has made world pharma firms confident about the future of biotech in India. Last year, Sanofi-Aventis made us a part of its group, by replacing Merieux. Our faith in home-grown technology and social entrepre-neurism has given us an edge in innovation.

HOW I WORKWhere I get my inspiration: The sat-isfaction of reaching out to many more of

the suffering millions; social conscious-ness; the revolution Shantha’s endeavour triggered in the Indian biotech sector.What I lose sleep over: Nothing whatsoever. I trust in God and the good deeds he has chosen for me. I go to bed with the satisfaction of doing my best and within minutes I slip into deep slumber. Even the treacheries cannot rob me of my sleep.

WHAT’S NEXTWe will continue focusing on the develop-ment of vaccines. Moreover, we’ll improve our efforts on domestic marketing, so that Indian citizens would benefit more from our work.

KI VARAPRASAD REDDY, Managing Director

KAMAL K SINGH

MAPPING SUCCESS ON

THE BUSINESS GLOBE

For someone who took up engineering merely to do something different, KK

Singh, founder and chairman of Rolta, one of India’s leading

IT companies, has written quite a tamper-proof code for

uninterrupted success. And yet this journey might never

have been this way, had Singh not listened to his gut as a

21-year-old and ventured out on his own. His gamble paid

off. Rolta ended 2009-10 with a turnover of more than

1,000 crore. A firm believer in continuous change, he is

confident that his recent acquisitions will script even

greater successes for his

I grew up in Madhya Pradesh. My father, a doctor by training, was a professor at a medical college. He had seen his own father, a well-known doctor, spend little time with the family and didn’t want the same thing for us. So, he chose to teach medicine instead of practicing it.

In my days, students had to choose their future streams of study in Class 8. My father wanted me to take up biology and follow the family tradition. But my mother said, ‘your father is very bright, he became dean of a medical college at a young age and even did his Master’s from the US. But, he hasn’t achieved his potential. His father had, but did not have a family life.’ She suggested that I do something different. So, I took up engineering—not because I wanted to be an engineer, but because I just wanted to be different.

While studying engineering, I realised that I didn’t want a job in a big company. That would, in effect, be the same as being a non-practicing doctor. In my heart, there was this entrepreneur wanting to prove himself. I decided to give him a chance. It also seemed the best way to achieve professional success.

My first business was a steel rolling mill in Indore. That was in 1971. I was just out of college and determined to do my own thing. My father loaned me 1 lakh to set it up, which I returned a few years later. The factory did well in the next few years. By 1978, it was doing more than a crore in business. By then, I was yearning to get out. The steel busi-ness was very cyclical. So, I waited for the next up in the cycle and folded the company.

AS TOLD TO SHREYASI SINGHPHOTOGRAPHS BY JITEN GANDHI

HOW I DID IT


The IT Factor Kamal K Singh wrote a tamper-proof code

for the success of his software company.

I had made enough money by then to retire. But then, I decided to move to Bom-bay, my dream city, to set up a business in 1980. I felt I had arrived.

I spent a lot of time researching ideas, and finally chose IT—still a nascent sector then. People viewed it, at best, with suspi-cion. The notion that computers would displace labour made it difficult to sell IT.

I believed it would work. We started oper-ations in 1982. Our first client was ONGC, for whom we set up a data processing cen-tre. ICICI was another early client. We did really low-end support for them. Slowly, we started writing applications.

The big break came when we began inter-branch reconciliation for banks. We worked with almost all the established banks, like Central Bank and Bank of Bar-oda. These were large contracts, priced at more than 50 lakh.

In 1985, we decided to change tracks and focus on computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and geographic information sys-tems (GIS). Till then, we were competing on price and getting work. That was a danger-ous game to play. Any bigger company could slash rates and put us out of business. TCS and Wipro were already huge compa-nies then. The only answer to this was being different. We researched a lot of options and finally homed in on CAD/CAM and GIS. The move paid off. We had cutting-edge technology and a niche offering.

By 1992, we were fully established. And within a few years from that, we became market leaders in GIS. In the mid-nineties, we started branching out to the US and Europe. And then we landed a contract from AT&T Saudi Arabia for mapping the whole country. It was a $50 million con-tract. That gave us a great push.

It was time for change again. In 2000, we did another brainstorming. Internet tech-nologies were coming up and we wanted to

embrace them. From being just technology providers, we became system integrators and solution providers. We also forayed into the defense sector. Till recently, we were primarily doing mapping work for the security establishments. Now, we are setting up a unit to manufacture night-vision goggles for them.

Though engineering and GIS have been the critical verticals, there continues to be tre-mendous opportunity in main IT work. Just IT could be a $100-million business for us. It is a crowded market, but our patented IP sep-arates us from the others.

In the last two years, we have chosen to own specialised intellectual capacity. In April, we acquired OneGIS, which gave us IP to the OneView Mobile solution, a GIS application that allows field personnel to automate their daily work assignments, and is used by several large utilities in North America. We are one of the few companies in India with this level of IP. Again, we have changed the course of the company. Now, we play on the high-end value chain. Going forward, we hope to earn 20 per cent of our revenue from IP based solutions, up from 8 per cent now.

Change keeps me going. And that’s true of the company as well. Irrelevance can be the death of a business. It’s the most impor-tant issue to tackle—how to offer relevant services or products to the market.

In a knowledge-based company, getting the right people is the biggest issue. Money comes with ideas and success. But, ideas come from people. It’s a vicious cycle, though. A start-up doesn’t get the best peo-ple because they won’t come even if they are paid more. That’s been a constant chal-lenge, to get good people and retain them.

Rolta is a unique company. And I am proud of getting it here. I don’t get worried about how big or small we are, as long as we are doing good, meaningful work. We have recently partnered with CBSE to teach geo-spatial science.

What’s always helped me is my ability to think clearly. I am not a technology, or finance guy, but I can very quickly get into the deep of things. Any decision I make is based on hardcore information and research. But, in the end, it is driven by my gut. Otherwise, I would never have founded Rolta and gone into the IT space.

Size Does Not Matter Singh doesn’t worry about how big or small Rolta is, as long as it

continues doing good, meaningful work.

HOW I DID IT


SPOTLIGHTGlobalisers


GLOBALISERSIt isn’t easy to do business in one country, let alone expand operations beyond geographical boundaries. Here’s a look at the inhabitants of a truly global world.

SPOTLIGHT Globalisers


The world’s usually not enough for the truly ambitious. That’s also the case with some of our honourees, who have crossed geographical

borders in pursuit of their global ambitions. We’ve listed 10 firms that earn a significant proportion of their revenues from overseas operations and have demonstrated an equivalent or better ‘operating’ competitiveness compared to their peers. Here’s the journey, motivation and vision of one such enterprise.

Rank Company Name Sector CAGR Sales (%)

1 Aban Offshore Crude Oil & Natural Gas 25

2 Matrix Laboratories Pharmaceuticals 25

3 Amira Foods (India) FMCG 42

4 MindTree IT - Software 19

5 Syntel IT - Software 14

6 KRBL FMCG 15

7 Balkrishna Industries Tyres 7

8 Geodesic IT - Software 31

9 Ipca Laboratories Pharmaceuticals 13

10 Great Offshore Shipping 16

The average foreign exchange earnings of top 10 globalisers( crore)

2007

469565

2008

869

2009

SPOTLIGHTGlobalisers


“The recession didn’t really affect us—or, the food sector as a whole.”KRBL | No. 148

MY COMPANYIts origins: My family had multiple business interests, primarily cotton. In the early seventies, there was a separation within the family, after which, my father got the rice business to run. Now, my two brothers and I run different aspects of our business. We started out supplying bas-mati rice to exporters. Then, in 1980s, we started exporting directly, at first to Saudi Arabia. In 1998, we started selling locally in India. We were doing well in exports; and were selling our by-products, prima-rily broken rice, which could not be exported, in bulk to wholesalers. We real-ised that we could sell those directly in the domestic market. By 2002, we became the number one player in rice. Today, we sell a million tonnes of basmati rice. Why it’s growing: We’ve been a growth story for many years now. The recession didn’t really affect us—or, the food sector as a whole, for that matter. Our branding efforts of the past five years have begun to bear fruit. The brand we have created in the international market helped us immensely to meet our numbers.

HOW I WORKWhere I get my inspiration: I get inspired by the people I meet on my travels.

When I went to see Sun Rice in Australia, or, when I see the value addition that rice businesses can think of in developed countries, I get inspired to think of new ways to add more value to our business. I also read a lot. What I lose sleep over: I’m a care-free person. I have no worries. If there are any business issues, I don’t keep them on my mind.

WHAT’S NEXT1) We still have a lot to do in marketing. We are working hard to create more awareness for the brand in the interna-tional markets. 2) People have not worked on the by-prod-

ucts of rice, such as rice bran oil. We are doing a lot of research to develop a brand for this oil. 3) We are going into power. We are the only company to produce power from rice husk. 4) We’re working with Indo Rama to make Furfor Oil from rice husk, which acts as a solvent for purifying crude oil. We’re tar-geting a bigger share of industrial and pharma uses in the next 15 months. 5) We’re working on extracting silica from the ash of the husk in our boilers.

We want to be vertically integrated in all segments of the rice product. Our whole focus is on utilising each and every thing coming out of rice.

ANIL KUMAR MITTAL, Chairman and Managing Director


A Daring DiveIrfan Razack left the safety of his family’s clothing business to venture into the riskier real estate sector in Bengaluru.

HOW I DID IT


IRFANRAZACK

LEAVING HIS MARK ON THE CITY’S SKYLINE Irfan Razack’s fierce ambition and passion for excellence probably permeates best through the uber cool malls and world-class buildings that he has built for Bengal-uru. He has done with Pres-tige Estates Projects what an artist always wants to do with his creations—leave behind a mark. And in the process, Razack introduced newer ways of developing real estate in the city. His 830-crore construction company is now getting ready to expand to the north and west of the country.

I studied at St Joseph’s Indian High School in Bengaluru and then went to St Joseph’s College of Commerce. I held leadership positions at school and college, which taught me a thing or two about leadership early in life. Those experiences also made me a lot more confident about dealing with people and taking important decisions.

I was always ambitious. Nobody had to ever push me to achieve things in life. I wanted to be either a lawyer, or a chartered accountant, and was exploring both options. But destiny, I guess, had something else planned for me. My parents wanted me to be a part of the family business at some point, so I decided to leave law and accountancy aside, and take the plunge.

Our venture was in retail. We sold clothes for men and offered pre-mium tailoring services. Our clients included the who’s who of Beng-aluru, both business and political. This network helped us a lot when we forayed into real estate years later.

We ventured into real estate almost by chance. We sold off a family property owned by my father and uncle. That triggered a process of buying and selling real estate. It also opened our eyes to the huge opportunities that lay in the sector. There was no better way to gener-ate such large returns that quickly. That apart, I liked the idea of mak-ing a difference to the way the industry was being run; and was kicked by the thought of leaving a lasting impact on Bengaluru’s landscape.

AS TOLD TO MAHESH RAVIPHOTOGRAPHS BY S RADHAKRISHNA

Focused on Ambition Razack gave Bengaluru its first mall, Forum; and with it, he set off the mall revolution in the city.

We decided that built-up products would be great for the city. In 1985, we got into our own construction. We started off with office properties like the House of Lords and were significantly involved in execut-ing premium commercial real estate proj-ects. Residential projects were next in line.

Our focus was always to do what others have not done. We liked to set new bench-marks for the city. Now, every builder in Bengaluru goes out of his way to produce good buildings.

The nice thing about all this is that we have managed to inject innovative changes into the real estate business in Bengaluru. For instance, we were the first entity to encourage “joint development” of various properties, defined as a partnership between the owner of a property and a developer/builder.

In fact, my first client for this plan was my father-in-law. He wanted to sell off a family property. He was getting old and did not have the energy to tend to the property. I was against the idea of him selling off the property. So I suggested that he go in for joint development of the land. That way, he would still remain its owner and yet not have to bear the full responsibility of look-ing after it. In 1986, this was a new concept in Bengaluru. Now, of course, joint devel-opment has become very popular.

I am proud of the properties we build.With each one, we raise the bar. In 2000, when we built Acropolis in Koramangala, we set new standards in beauty and ele-gance. Then we built Forum, the city’s first mall, which set off the mall revolution here. Through this property, we ushered in Ben-galuru’s first food court and first multiplex. UB City, one of the city’s newest land-marks, was a prestigious project for us. It stands testimony to the fact that Bengaluru can produce world-class buildings, archi-tecture and landscapes.

I never lose sight of the fact that the customer is of prime importance. For me,

once a commitment is made, you cannot back out until it is delivered. Even if it costs me money, time or extra resources, I ensure that commitments are never forgotten.

It’s also important to trust the abilities of the people working for you. The only demand I make of them is, “show me the passion and commitment”. You can deliver results only when you are enjoying what you do. No matter what your voca-tion, job, or routine is, if you don’t have the passion or the commitment, you will get nowhere.

It can be tough to run a family-owned business, since the stakes are higher here. There has to be a strong understanding between the family members. You need to be sensitive to each other’s views and carry everyone with you. Otherwise, you might end up dealing with a lot of rancour and bad blood. That’s why, each of us ensures that we understand our responsibilities and focus on executing them to the best of our abilities. Each family member in the business understands that a professional

approach to business is vital to keeping our heads nicely afloat. As long as you have that understanding in place, there are fewer chances of things getting messed up.

Over the next 25 years, I would like to expand Prestige’s footprint across India. Till now, we have primarily focused on Bengaluru. The future plan is to cover more of South India and then slowly branch out westwards and northwards. My next milestone is to move from a privately-held enterprise to a listed company.

I get inspired by my desire to have newer and higher goals. There is still a lot left to do and achieve. You can’t hang up your boots, thinking you have done enough. There is always something more to learn.

In real estate, you end up creating some-thing out of nothing. Barren landscapes give birth to architectural wonders. That art will stand there long after its creator is gone. It’s this desire to leave behind some-thing monumental that keeps you going. You have to be thinking and living this dream all the time.

HOW I DID IT


SPOTLIGHTWealth Creators


WEALTH CREATORSA look at companies that created the maximum wealth for their shareholders.

SPOTLIGHT Wealth Creators


The past two years weren’t easy on wealth-holders. Not when the smartest investor of the world, Warren Buffet, had to write off $25 billion

from his wealth. The stock exchanges didn’t help, with both the Sensex and Nifty struggling to crawl up from the lows of 2008. And yet, some of our resilient honourees have managed to satisfy their shareholders. When evaluated on the net change in their market capitalisation over the past three calendar years, each of these firms came up trumps. Here’s introducing the new order of wealth creators.

Rank Company Name Sector CAGR Sales(%)

1 Educomp Solutions Computer Education 56

2 Godrej Consumer Products FMCG 14

3 Torrent Pharmaceuticals Pharmaceuticals 10

4 MindTree IT - Software 19

5 Ipca Laboratories Pharmaceuticals 13

6 Zydus Wellness FMCG 66

7 EID Parry (India) Sugar 28

8 Responsive Industries Plastic products 24

9 GTL Infrastructure Telecomm Equipment & Infra Services 46

10 Reliance Natural Resources Miscellaneous 18

Average Market Cap

( crore)

2007

1,472

573 38 529

3,444

2008

3,718

2009

Top 10 Wealth Creators Remaining listed companies

SPOTLIGHTWealth Creators


“It gives me a lot of energy to be with people who enjoy their work.”MindTree | No. 43

MY BACKGROUNDFather’s occupation: My father was a doctor in the Indian Army, thanks to which, I learnt to adapt to change quickly.My education: I studied engineering at the University of Roorkee. Then, after many years of working, I did an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management, Manila in 1973.My previous jobs: I joined Burmah Shell in Kolkata after my graduation. Then, DCM Shriram and Wipro followed respectively.

MY COMPANYIts origins: MindTree was started by 10 of us in 1999. Some of us had worked together at Wipro. We’re in our 11th year, and all of us are still together, along with most of the senior team. Why it’s growing: We have been a con-sistent growth story for the past five years or so. We’ve grown at a compounded rate of 50 per cent since 2004. That gives us a track record and history, which in turn, gave us the momentum to get over the effects of recession. Second, since March 2009, we have added two new areas to our offerings—infrastructure support and test-ing, and analytics, both of which are high-growth areas. We also acquired a captive unit in the middle of the year, which added

to our revenues. Given that it was a tough year, that too made a difference.

HOW I WORKWhere I get my inspiration:The fact that we’ve got such young Mind-Tree minds. It gives me a lot of energy to work with people who enjoy their work. What I lose sleep over: Jet lag and the work that piles up due to travel. I’m con-cerned about the “musical chairs” game being played in the industry currently. It’s affecting everybody by adding to the over-heads in the system.

WHAT’S NEXTThe main thing is to keep proceeding in a

certain direction so that we meet our vision of being a billion-dollar company by March 2014. We need to focus on strong organic growth for that, with a selective approach towards M&A. Seventy per cent of our business is new application develop-ment, which is a discretionary spend for our customers. Only 30 per cent is mainte-nance and infrastructure support. So, we have to build our pipeline of multi-year contracts to reduce our dependence on the economic cycles. We also have to make a success of our new initiatives, including our entry into the digital surveillance space and 4G infrastructure. We need to grow at nearly 40 per cent a year to achieve our goals. It’s a stretch, but totally achievable.

ASHOK SOOTA, Executive Chairman


REPORTED BY AKHIL BERY AND SUNAINA SEHGAL

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JITEN GANDHI

The Inc. India 500 group is dominated by manufac-turers of products—things that you can see, feel and touch. From railway wag-ons and bicycles to glass containers and aluminium coils, our stalwarts make a variety of things. Here are some of them.


PRADIP OVERSEAS Ahmedabad, Gujarat, No. 61

Established in 1980, Pradip Overseas is a leading manufacturer and

exporter of household furnishing products, such as bed sheets, quilts,

towels and curtains. Promoted by the Karia brothers, Pradipkumar, Chetan and Vishal, it is now a publicly-listed

company. Its products sell all over the world, with more than 40 per

cent of sales coming from overseas operations. It works on a variety of fabric, ranging from pure cotton to

polyester, jacquard and flannel.

MAKING IT


METRO SHOES Mumbai, Maharashtra, No. 246 Last year, Metro Shoes became the first footwear retailer in the country with more than 100 standalone stores. The icing on the cake came in the form of the ‘Retailer of the Year’ award for its category from the Asia Retail Congress. Started nearly six decades ago, Metro Shoes makes a variety of footwear for the discerning Indian consumer. The company clocked a turnover of 285 crore last fiscal.

MAKING ITG

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IT H

ERE

PHOTOGRAPH BY NAME TK SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 | INC. | 7 9

GOENKA DIAMOND & JEWELSJaipur, Rajasthan, No. 156

Diamonds are forever. That’s certainly what Navneet and Nitin Goenka hope for. The brothers sell their sparkling

stones under two brands—G Wild and CERES. Sported by celebrities such as

actor Shilpa Shetty, jewellery hallmarked CERES starts at 5 lakh

and goes up to crores. Its nobler cousin, G Wild is priced much cheaper. Established in 1990, Goenka Diamond

and Jewels procures the precious stones from Russia and Africa through

miners, and cuts and polishes them. Its four manufacturing units design

some of these into jewellery pieces for retail in India. The company has

processed 50,000 carats of diamonds this year alone.

MAKING IT

PHOTOGRAPH BY NAME TK8 0 | INC. | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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TTER

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HSIL, KolkataWest Bengal, No. 244A leading manufacturer of sanitary ware, HSIL was founded in 1960 by the Somany Group in collaboration with Twyfords of the United Kingdom. It produces a range of products for bathrooms, such as faucets, showers and sanitary ware. Although better known for sanitary ware, HSIL also makes products for kitchens, such as sinks and built-in hobs. Its products sell under the brand name Hindware. Its products are available across India through a network comprising 1,000 direct dealers and 12,000 sub-dealers.

MAKING IT

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 | INC. | 81PHOTOGRAPH BY SUBHOJIT PAUL

TTK PRESTIGEHosur, Tamil Nadu, No. 126 If there is one thing common to Indian kitchens, it’s a pressure cooker. The capacity may vary from 1 litre to 10 litre, but there’s no going away from the cooker’s importance to the scheme of things. Founded in 1928, TTK Prestige started out as a distributor of pressure cookers imported from the UK. It moved into production in 1959, and now manufactures a range of kitchenware. The pressure cookers, however, remain at the core of the business, accounting for 47 per cent of the company’s turnover in 2009.

A closer look at the best of the best on our list. Who are the top 100 honourees? What do they do? How have they grown in the past three years? Just some of the things you wanted to know.

Name: Glodyne TechnoserveRANK 8Net Sales: 611 croreFounded: 1997What it does It offers business solutions across two strategic business units—technology infrastructure management and application software services.

TOP 100 HONOUREES

Name: ICSA (India)RANK 10Net Sales: 1,216 croreFounded: 1994What it does It provides technology solutions to the power sector by identifying transmission and distribution losses, and monitoring power consumption.

Name: GeodesicRANK 11Net Sales: 500 croreFounded: 1999What it does Its real-time content, communication and collaboration platform, works seamlessly across the web and mobiles, addressing retail segments.

Name: SyntelRANK 15Net Sales: 902 croreFounded: 1980What it does A leading provider of integrated IT and knowledge processing outsourcing solutions spanning lifecycles of business and information systems and processes.

Name: Allied Digital Services RANK 18Net Sales: 439 croreFounded: 1995What it does An outsourcing company in IT management and technical support; helps large- and medium-enterprises using a combination of onsite and remote services.

IT & ITESNo of companies 50Total revenue 23,172 crMedian turnover 397 crMedian profit 59 cr


Name: Rolta India RANK 26Net Sales: 1,002 croreFounded: 1982What it does It chiefly operates in three business segments: GIS, engineering and design services, and enterprise information and communication technology.

Name: Core Projects & TechnologiesRANK 40Net Sales: 406 croreFounded: 2003What it does Its products and solutions provide assessment and intervention, compliance and reporting, student information systems and campus management solutions.

Name: MindTreeRANK 43Net Sales: 1,167 croreFounded: 1999What it does It specialises in IT services, independent testing, infrastructure management and technical support, knowledge services and product engineering and software-product engineering.

Name: eClerx ServicesRANK 50Net Sales: 197 croreFounded: 2000What it does Headquartered in Mumbai, its portfolio comprises data analytics and audits, operations management, metrics management, and reporting services.

Name: Zensar Technologies RANK 72Net Sales: 462 croreFounded: 1963What it does A software and IT services company offering a range of integrated IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) products and services.

Name: Bartronics IndiaRANK 89Net Sales: 521 croreFounded: 1990What it does It provides solutions using automatic identification and data capture technology, covering card, bar code, data communication, and RFID technologies.

REAL ESTATENo of companies 30Total revenue 18,963 crMedian turnover 522 crMedian profit 17 cr

TOP 100 HONOUREES

Name: Peninsula LandRANK 6Net Sales: 731 croreFounded: 1997What it does An arm of the Ashok Piramal Group, this integrated real estate management company has planned and developed 20 mn sq ft of real estate. Its stronghold lies in western India.

Name: Man InfraconstructionRANK 7Net Sales: 529 croreFounded: 2002What it does It is an infrastructure construction company headquartered in Mumbai. Along with its subsidiaries, it is involved in residential, industrial and commercial projects.

Name: ARSS Infrastructure ProjectsRANK 30Net Sales: 810 croreFounded: 2000What it does A construction major of India, it is engaged in railways, road, highway, bridge and irrigation sectors.

Name: Ahluwalia Contracts (India)RANK 41Net Sales: 1,384 croreFounded: 1979What it does Ahluwalia Contracts (India) constructs buildings and manufactures ready-mix concrete for buildings.

Name: 3DPLM Software SolutionsRANK 94Net Sales: 136 croreFounded: 2002What it does 3DPLM is the world’s leading provider of CAD tools and product life cycle management (PLM) solutions. It is also the second-largest R&D lab for Dassault Systemes.

Name: J Kumar InfraprojectsRANK 53Net Sales: 406 croreFounded: 1980What it does Its principal activity is civil engineering construction in infrastructural projects–mainly commercial structures, dams and canals, and roads and highways. The company is based out of Mumbai.

Name: Prestige Estates ProjectsRANK 67Net Sales: 831 crore | Founded: 1986What it does Set up in 1985, it is one of the leading property developers in Bengaluru, and has developed 13-million-sq ft of space.

Name: KND Engineering TechnologiesRANK 78Net Sales: 148 croreFounded: 1964What it does It provides civil construction services to steel plants, housing and infrastructure sectors, and to oil and petroleum industries.

Name: Unity Infraprojects RANK 97Net Sales: 1,367 croreFounded: 1997What it does A flagship unit of the Mumbai-based KK Group of Companies, it deals in concrete block manufacturing and quarrying, hotel and organised retailing.

PHARMACEUTICALSNo of companies 39Total revenue 22,724 crMedian turnover 393 crMedian profit 20 cr

Name: Mankind PharmaRANK 13Net Sales: 840 croreFounded: 1995What it does Among the top pharma firms in India, it enjoys a substantial market presence in the antibiotics, antifungal, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular categories.


TOP 100 HONOUREES

CEMENTNo of companies 21Total revenue 13,327 crMedian turnover 593 crMedian profit 31 cr

Name: Rain CommoditiesRANK 31Net Sales: 810 crore Founded:1974What it does A cement manufacturer, it also engages in calcined petroleum coke (CPC) trade and power generation.

Name: Mangalam Cement RANK 38Net Sales: 633 croreFounded: 1978What it does An offshoot of the House of Birla, its products include Birla Uttam Cement-43 Grade and Portland Pozzolana.

Name: JK Lakshmi Cement RANK 45Net Sales: 1,414 croreFounded: 1982What it does It offers three variants of cement through a network of 70 cement dumps and more than 2,200 dealers.

Name: OCL India RANK 47Net Sales: 1,306 croreFounded: 1949What it does Having diversified from cement to refractories, it has produced some of the largest refractory plants in the country.

Name: Torrent PharmaceuticalsRANK 36Net Sales: 1,324 croreFounded: 1959What it does It is a dominant player in the detection and cure of cardiovascular and central nervous system disorders.

Name: Ipca Laboratories RANK 51Net Sales: 1,498 croreFounded: 1949What it does It is engaged in import and marketing of pharmaceutical formulations, and active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Name: Intas PharmaceuticalsRANK 52Net Sales: 1,146 croreFounded: 1976What it does It engages in research, development, and manufacture of medicines for chronic or acute conditions.

Company Name: USVRANK 69Net Sales: 837 croreFounded: 1961What it does It deals mainly in pharmaceutical ingredientsand is an old player in medical research.

Name: FDC RANK 74Net Sales: 639 croreFounded: 1936What it does It manufactures healthcare products such as therapeutics, specialised food and bulk drugs.

Name: Surya PharmaceuticalRANK 77Net Sales: 975 croreFounded: 1992What it does Its portfolio includes active pharmaceutical ingredients, finished drug formulations, and menthol derivatives.

Name: Ankur Drugs & Pharma RANK 83Net Sales: 1,048 croreFounded: 1995What it does It manufactures and market 400 pharmaceutical formulations in forms of tablets, capsules, liquid orals and dry syrups.

NON-ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENTNo of companies 45Total revenue 19,509 crMedian turnover 227 crMedian profit 24 cr

Name: Titagarh Wagons RANK 32Net Sales: 689 croreFounded: 1997What it does It manufactures railway wagons, bailey bridges, heavy earth-moving and mining equipment, among others.

Name: Tecpro System RANK 34Net Sales: 707 croreFounded: 1990What it does It undertakes turnkey projects in solid-handling systems (belt and slat conveyors, and bucket elevators).

Name: TRFRANK 42Net Sales: 699 croreFounded: 1962What it does It operates in bulk material-handling equipment and systems divisions, port and yard equipment, among others.

Name: Texmaco RANK 44Net Sales: 902 croreFounded: 1939What it does It manufactures and sells heavy engineering products, including railway freight cars and agro machinery.

Name: Sanghvi Movers RANK 66Net Sales: 337 croreFounded: 1989What it does It provides heavy-lift and maintenance services for large-scale projects.

Name: Supreme InfrastructureRANK 73Net Sales: 404 croreFounded: 1983What it does The company undertakes

engineering works of unrestricted value with mainly government departments, as well as public and private sector organisations.

Name: Hindustan Dorr-Oliver RANK 96Net Sales: 786 croreFounded: 1974What it does An engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) company, Hindustan provides engineered solutions, technologies and EPC installations in liquid-solid separation applications.


TOP 100 HONOUREES

ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENTNo of companies 18Total revenue 8,545 crMedian turnover 352 crMedian profit 41 cr

Name: Amara Raja Batteries RANK 39Net Sales: 1,362 croreFounded: 1985What it does It distributes lead, acid storage batteries for the industrial and automotive markets, and heavy industries.

Name: Techno Electric and Engineering Company RANK 55Net Sales: 540 croreFounded: 1963What it does Engaged in power projects, it has worked to set up over 50 per cent of the power generating plants in the country.

Name: Transformers & Rectifiers (India)RANK 64Net Sales: 481 croreFounded: 1994What it does Catering to the power transformer sector, it is the third-largest in terms of capacity.

TEXTILESNo of companies 18Total revenue 9,689 crMedian turnover 452 crMedian profit 14 cr

Name: Vardhman Yarns & ThreadsRANK 16Net Sales: 347 croreFounded: 2000What it does Its portfolio includes yarn, greige and processed fabric, and sewing thread, acrylic fibre, and the manufacture of alloy steel.

Name: SEL Manufacturing Company RANK 58Net Sales: 834 croreFounded: 2000What it does A pioneer in the fields of exports and supply of yarns, fabrics and garments, it operates four units, a single knitting facility and a complete processing house.

Name Pradip OverseasRANK 61Net Sales: 1,171 croreFounded: 1980What it does One of the leading exporters of the country, it has its own processing house that covers a range of products.

Name: Mandhana IndustriesRANK 90Net Sales: 463 croreFounded: 1984What it does A manufacturer of textiles and garments, it is involved in designing, dyeing, weaving, processing and garment making.

OTHERSThis includes other sectors, which do not have a significant number of companies. These are glass, tyres, cables, auto ancil-laries, chemicals, and so on.

educators and learners across the globe.

Name: Sun TV NetworkRANK 4Net Sales: 1,279 croreFounded: 1985What it does 20 TV channels, 45 FM stations, two newspapers, four magazines and the largest direct-to-home satellite TV services.

Name: Godrej Consumer ProductsRANK 5Net Sales: 1,262 croreFounded: 2000What it does FMCG products, such as Cinthol and Ezee, that are household names.

Name: Bajaj CorpRANK 9Net Sales: 244 croreFounded: 2006What it does Hair-care products that are exported to countries such as UAE.

Name: Aban OffshoreRANK 12Net Sales: 1,128 croreFounded: 1986What it does It was born as a small Chennai-based engineering firm –Aban Constructions.

Name: Clearing Corporation of IndiaRANK 14Net Sales: 268 croreFounded: 2001What it does Manages electronic trading platforms.

Name: Mundra Port & Special Economic Zone RANK 17Net Sales: 1,135 croreFounded: 1998What it does Provides cargo handling and value-added port services.

Name: AIA Engineering RANK 19Net Sales: 807 croreFounded: 1991What it does Manufactures, installs and services high chromium castings.

Name: Nava Bharat VenturesRANK 1Net Sales: 1,161 croreFounded: 1972What it does Power (industrial and merchant plants), ferro alloys, infrastructure and sugar.

Name: Educomp SolutionsRANK 2Net Sales: 743 crore Founded:1994What it does Diversified solutions to both

Name: Reid & Taylor (India)RANK 3Net Sales: 653 croreFounded: 1998What it does It focuses mainly on men’s off-the-peg segment, and has a market share of 18 per cent. It also supplies fabrics to the firm’s Scotland branch.


TOP 100 HONOUREES

Name: Vuppalamritha Magnetic Components RANK 20Net Sales: 669 croreFounded: 1998What it does Telecom backbone transmission equipment, customer premises equipment and power conversion products.

Name: Opto Circuits (India)RANK 21Net Sales: 455 croreFounded: 1992What it does Medical equipment and devices, such as pulse oximeters and sensors, fluid warmers, cholesterol monitors, stents, multiparameter monitors and digital thermometers.

Name: Mahindra Holidays & Resorts IndiaRANK 22Net Sales: 393 croreFounded: 1996What it does Offers holidays through a vacation-ownership product.

Name: Orbit Corporation RANK 23Net Sales: 447 croreFounded: 2000What it does Redevelops cessed and dilapidated buildings in Mumbai.

Name: Koutons Retail IndiaRANK 24Net Sales: 1,047 crore Founded:1994What it does It manufactures and retails clothing for men, women and kids.

Name: Marathon Nextgen Realty RANK 25Net Sales: 160 croreFounded: 1969What it does It operates in two segments–property development and lease rental.

Name: Coastal ProjectsRANK 27Net Sales: 937 croreFounded:1995What it does It does underground excavation work, and road work projects.

Name: EmamiRANK 28Net Sales: 868 croreFounded: 1974What it does FMCG products, such as Navratna Oil and Zandu Balm.

Name: Bharati Shipyard RANK 29Net Sales: 1,306 croreFounded: 1973What it does Ship manufacturing and repairing, and windmill power.

Name: Lanco Kondapalli Power RANK 33Net Sales: 1,247 crore Founded:1993What it does An integrated infrastructure enterprise operating across verticals.

Name: Hindusthan National Glass RANK 35Net Sales: 1,324 croreFounded: 1946What it does Manufactures glass containers ranging from five to 3,200 millilitres.

Name: Monnet Ispat & EnergyRANK 37Net Sales: 1,412 croreFounded: 1990What it does Manufacturing of sponge, steel and ferro alloys.

Name: Nuziveedu SeedsRANK 46Net Sales: 551 croreFounded: 1973What it does Produces hybrid seeds of cotton and other field crops such as corn and rice.

Name: Compact Disc India RANK 48Net Sales: 216 croreFounded: 1992What it does Production, distribution and financing of films and television serials.

Name: Dolphin Offshore RANK 49Net Sales: 536 croreFounded: 1979What it does Diving and underwater services

to oil and gas industries; turnkey EPC construction, topside hook-up and fabrication, inspection and maintenance and, ship repair.

Name: Marg RANK 54Net Sales: 705 croreFounded: 1994What it does It provides infrastructure solutions; ports, SEZs and IT Parks.

Name: Zydus WellnessRANK 56Net Sales: 249 croreFounded: 1994What it does It is a manufacturer-cum-seller of consumer products, such as EverYuth.

Name: OnMobile Global RANK 57Net Sales: 327 croreFounded: 2000What it does Telecommunication services and value-added software products.

Name: Nagarjuna Agrichem RANK 59Net Sales: 653 croreFounded: 1994What it does Manufactures pesticide and custom-manufactured chemicals.

Name: Symphony Comfort Systems RANK 60Net Sales: 140 croreFounded: 1988What it does A manufacturer and importer of portable evaporative air-coolers.

Name: Deepak Fertilisers & Petrochemicals CorporationRANK 62Net Sales: 1,279 croreFounded: 1970What it does Multiple products—chemicals, petrochemicals, fertilisers and agri-inputs.

Name: Balkrishna IndustriesRANK 63Net Sales: 1,270 croreFounded: 1961What it does Manufactures paper, paper board and automobile tyres.


TOP 100 HONOUREES

Name: Eros International MediaRANK 65Net Sales: 479 croreFounded: 1994What it does Produces and commissions film projects, and has distribution deals.

Name: Temptation FoodsRANK 68Net Sales: 1,134 croreFounded: 1991What it does Processes frozen vegetables and fruits, and gourmet products.

Name: Greenearth Resources & ProjectsRANK 70Net Sales: 441 croreFounded: 1994What it does Manufactures low-ash metallurgical coke in Indian refractories.

Name: Zee Entertainment EnterprisesRANK 71Net Sales: 1,130 croreFounded: 1992What it does Largest producer and aggrega-tor of Hindi programming in the world.

Name: Navin Fluorine InternationalRANK 75Net Sales: 416 croreFounded: 1967What it does Manufacutres special organic

and inorganic fluorochemicals, bulk fluoro-chemicals, refrigerant gases, and alkylated anilines and toluidines.

Name: Jagran PrakashanRANK 76Net Sales: 893 croreFounded: 1975What it does Publishes a newspaper and monthly magazines, among others.

Name: Sesa IndustriesRANK 79Net Sales: 586 croreFounded: 1992What it does A diversified metal and mining company, the group has been involved in iron ore mining, beneficiation and exports, and engages in producing pig iron and metallurgical coke.

Name: EID Parry (India)RANK 80Net Sales: 1,053 croreFounded: 1788What it does Manufactures sugar, biopesticides and neutraceuticals.

Name: Hanung Toys and TextilesRANK 81Net Sales: 732 croreFounded: 1990What it does Makes and exports soft toys and home furnishings.

Name: Ess Dee Aluminium RANK 82Net Sales: 439 croreFounded: 2004What it does Packaging material; aluminium foil-based, and PVC-based thermoforming.

Name: Diamond Power InfrastructureRANK 84Net Sales: 760 croreFounded: 1970What it does Power transmission and distribution service; and equipment maker.

Name: Tinplate Company of IndiaRANK 85Net Sales: 753 croreFounded: 1920What it does Tin-coated and tin-free steel sheets; electrolytic tinplates, etc.

Name: Allcargo Global LogisticsRANK 86Net Sales: 516 croreFounded: 1993What it does Offers container freight stations, and ocean, air and land logistics.

Name: WABCO-TVS (India) RANK 87Net Sales: 426 croreFounded: 2004What it does Manufactures air-assisted and air-brake systems for commercial vehicles.

Name: Bannari Amman Sugars RANK 88Net Sales: 847 croreFounded: 1983

What it does Manufactures sugar, alcohol, power and granite tiles.

Name: HBL Power SystemsRANK 91Net Sales: 1,094 croreFounded: 1986What it does Design and manufacture of specialised batteries and DC systems.

Name: aurionPro solutions RANK 92Net Sales: 274 croreFounded: 1997What it does Software products and IT consulting services to financial industry.

Name: Kemrock Industries and ExportsRANK 93Net Sales: 433 croreFounded: 1981What it does Manufactures fabric-enforced polymer and GRP composite products.

Name: Malana Power CompanyRANK 95Net Sales: 185 croreFounded: 1997What it does Merchant hydro power plant.

Name: Mcleod Russel IndiaRANK 98Net Sales: 1,008 croreFounded: 1869What it does 100 million kilograms of tea per year; and agricultural projects.

Name: DB CorporationRANK 99Net Sales: 921 croreFounded: 1995What it does Media, entertainment, print, textile, FMCG, oils, solvents and internet.

Name: Hindustan ColasRANK 100Net Sales: 352 croreFounded: 1995

What it does Manufactures bitumen emulsions, modified bitumen and value-added bituminous products; provides a range of road application-related products.


“We want to buy an international company.” That was CM Ashok Muni, chief operating officer and director

of Nagarjuna Agrichem, a 16-year-old pesticide company, declaring his intentions at a press conference earlier this year.

Although such statements are easy to write off as ambitious dreams, this one isn’t all that misplaced. Muni’s company, Agrichem—part of the $2.5 billion Nagarjuna Group—has grown 18 per cent to hit a turnover of 650 crore since 2007.

With his eyes set firmly on the target of $1 billion in revenue, an acquisition would shorten the gestation period, and allow Muni to reach his coveted milestone sooner.

It would also be a dream come true for Muni. Throughout his 22-year career in the chemicals industry, he has worked for the Indian subsidiary of many a multinational company. Often, a heady, almost aspirational, thought would play at the back of his mind—what would it be to work for an Indian com-pany with an international subsidiary?

Nagarjuna seemed to have provided him the perfect script. And Muni is playing the role to

perfection. He has given the Hyderabad-based company aspirations to sell its brands in the global markets.

So far, Nagarjuna’s been selling mainly in the domestic markets, with 57 per cent of its revenue coming from sales to Indian farmers. Another 37 per cent, which comes from exports, is mainly from

contract manufacturing, where the company produces products for multinational firms under confidentiality agreements. “Now, we dream of promoting a brand in the international market,” says the 45-year-old alumnus of the Indian Insti-tute of Technology, Chennai.

The game could change considerably, though, if Nagarjuna has a face in the $42-billion interna-tional pesticide market. Its Indian equivalent, valued at $1.45 billion, is one of the largest in Asia, but seems insignificant in comparison. Unlike contract manufacturing, which is shrouded by non-disclosure agreements, having its own brand will give Nagarjuna direct access to end-users.

“We have finished the blueprint to go global. Since the salient features of each country are dif-ferent, our strategy is going to be different for each. We are just about to start executing those

THE COMPANIES

It isn’t easy being Ashok Muni right now. The COO and director of Nagarjuna Agrichem has just declared a drop in profits for the first quarter in the midst of a global slowdown in demand for his products. Yet, Muni is confident of selling his own brand in the international market and emerging as a billion-dollar company in the near future.

WE HOPE TO BE A BILLION-DOLLAR COMPANY IN SEVEN YEARS”

“CM ASHOK MUNI | Chief Operating Officer and Director, Nagarjuna Agrichem

BY POOJA KOTHARI PHOTOGRAPH BY SURESH

COMPANY DASHBOARD Nagarjuna Agrichem

Sector Agro Chemicals


Net sales 2009 (January to December) 653 Cr

Three-year sales CAGR 18%

Average profit margin (last three years) 8%

Market cap (as on December 31, 2009)NA


resistance over a period of time, giving rise to the need for more efficient molecules.

“So, we keep our options wide open. In my life, I need a plan A, plan B, and plan C,” says Muni.

An example of this is the upcoming 250-crore greenfield manu-facturing facility at the Visakhapatnam special economic zone (SEZ). The new plant is expected to add 8,000 tonnes to the company’s exist-ing active ingredient manufacturing plant at Srikakulam and formu-lation plant near Rajahmundry, both in Andhra Pradesh.

While the intent behind the creation of this facility is to produce agro-chemicals, Muni’s Plan B is to produce fine chemicals—an industry in which he has spent a considerable amount of his career. These are chemicals used in industries, such as cosmetics, electronics, and tyres, among others. “Since the manufacturing assets are the same for both, it makes sense to cross-link both businesses,” explains Muni.

That’s not all. Even as he looks to ride the global wind, he’s mak-ing sure that his pipeline of contract manufacturing agreements does not dry up any time soon. The process of selling agro-chem-icals in another country can be time-consuming because of the various legal formalities. However, as patents expire on a number of widely-used formulations and companies abroad find it increas-ingly difficult to manufacture these products locally, their manu-facturing comes to cost-effective manufacturing centres in the East, such as India and China. “This trend is likely to continue till 2015,” says Muni. So, Nagarjuna will continue manufacturing for MNCs for the time being.

The current fiscal has thrown up another challenge his way in the form of drop in profits for the first quarter. If he is disappointed with that, he certainly doesn’t show it. “It was totally expected. The global recession led to a drop in commodity prices, which resulted in panic liquidation of stocks in the market and thereafter, a drop in demand,” explains Muni, pragmatically. He also adds the point that fungal disease and pest infestation was lower in 2009 as compared to the year before. That too dragged down the demand for his com-pany’s products.

For now, Muni would rather concentrate on the execution of his long-nurtured dream. “We have set ourselves an ambitious goal to be a billion-dollar company in seven years. So our plans have to be aggressive,” says he.

But before that, he knows he has to get his house in order. “It isn’t going to happen through a single person. A team of people have to lead this,” adds the COO, who has been busy ushering in a perfor-mance-management culture. He’s creating opportunities for his 1,000-odd team members through job rotations and succession plans, and preparing them for “interpersonal effectiveness” required to reach out to the international market.

As he gets ready for the ceaseless grind ahead, Muni dramatically resorts to philosophy: “I believe in being optimistic. Sometimes, you may not see the fruit of your efforts for quite some time but that should not discourage you. Business is all about managing ambiguities. Just work on converting failures into opportunities for success.”

Dreams UnlimitedAshok Muni knows

that his business is all about ambiguities.

plans,” he adds. That synony-mously means identifying the key people who will lead these initiatives at different stages of execution; figuring out potential tie-ups; expan-sion of production facilities, and fund raising, among many other things.

But right now, Muni’s got his job cut out for him. The crop protection chemicals industry is a hard one to operate in. Given that the demand for the product rides on climatic conditions, risk is an eternal partner in the business. If long spells of dry or wet weather persist, as happened in 2009, the inci-dence of crop disease whit-tles down, and so does demand for chemicals that can protect the crop.

In addition, each of these products operates within a life cycle, since crops develop


“

From a turnover of 1.5 crore in 2000 to a topline of 880 crore for the financial year ending March, it’s been a pretty impressive turnaround for a company that was looking to fold up just a decade ago. Now, Bartronics India, the Hyderabad-based maker of smart cards and RFID tags, is hungry for scale and global expansion.

HOW SOON CAN WE GO TO 5,000 CR FROM HERE?”

SUDHIR RAO | Managing Director, Bartronics India

BY ANOOP CHUGH PHOTOGRAPH BY SURESH

In the late nineties, Bartronics India, a Hyderabad-based pro-vider of technological solutions, had to battle many demons at one time. Besieged by debt, shrinking turnover and disgruntled clients, the company was in such trouble that it seemed only divine interven-tion could sort out the mess.

The forces above heard it’s prayers. When Bartronics made a pitch for computerisation of the yatra management system at Vaishno Devi and Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam—places of pilgrimages that receive millions of devotees—its prayers were answered. The deals were won and work begun.

The two accounts proved so successful that Sudhir Rao, managing director, Bartronics, delightedly describes them as the biggest wins of his company in the last decade. “They weren’t just emotional victories, but strategic ones. Both Vaishno Devi and Tirupati are frequented by the who’s who of India Inc. Our presence there cre-ated awareness about the company among the right set of people and showed how well our solu-tions worked,” he offers by way of explanation.

The success of implementing the queue man-agement project at Tirupati was even sweeter for Rao, considering that a rival firm, considered an undisputed leader in the IT field, had failed to execute the same project a few years ago.

Incidentally, that was also when Rao was brought on board to turn the company around.

“My primary job, then, was to make the company survive rather than to revive it,” recalls Rao, who had previously worked with blue-chip firms, such as TCS and Core Healthcare.

The divine push worked. Slowly and steadily, Rao and his team began the process of “plugging the leaks”. The product offering was expanded from “systems integration” to “consulting and solu-tions”, which proved to be a differentiator, according to Rao. Hav-ing started off providing solutions in bar coding, one of the oldest technologies for automatic identification and data capture (AIDC),

the company subsequently moved to newer options, such as RFID (radio frequency identity tags) and smart cards.

In the years since, Bartronics has taken on local rivals, as well as competed with foreign players, such as Intermec of US and Synel of Israel. “We followed a simple strategy—of creat-ing multiple entry barriers—which made it dif-ficult for foreign companies to eat into our pie,” explains Rao. Moreover, its annual mainte-nance contracts with major blue-chip compa-nies in India helped as well.

The company focused on the manufacturing sector, implementing a number of projects for manufacturing majors like Tisco, Tata Motors, Voltas, Whirlpool, LML, Chennai Petroleum, TVS Suzuki, Wipro GE Medical Systems, and so on. Bartronics helped clients with their

THE COMPANIES

COMPANY DASHBOARD Bartronics India

Sector IT & ITeS





Market cap (as on December 31, 2009) 228 crore


inventory, logistics management, time and attendance, and asset tracking systems.

Bartronics also benefited from being at the right place at the right time. Favourable government policies played a fair role in giving it a growth push. “In 2005, when the government made bar coding compulsory for food exports from India, there was a huge surge in business,” recalls a grateful Rao.

The same year, Bartronics went public and successfully raised 48 crore through its IPO.

In the coming years, as the Indian economy opened up and foreign direct investment was allowed to flow into the retail sector, the demand for Bartronics’ services went up. The company began to feel the need for another round of capital infusion. “We, subse-quently, managed to raise 35 crore through a qualified institu-tional placement; and a further $25 million from foreign currency convertible bonds,” recounts Rao.

The real test came in 2007. Bartronics had set up a smart card plant, committing to orders worth more than 200 crore over the next one year. “We had a major breakdown within the first three days

of operation. Subsequently, we had to shut down the plant for three months and run trials for three months after that. The loss incurred during those six months almost burned us out,” Rao recalls of those nightmarish days. The company recovered from the loss, but only after Rao convinced customers not to lose faith in the company.

From a turnover of 1.5 crore in 2000 to a topline of 880 crore for the financial year ending last March, it’s been a pretty impressive turnaround for a company that was looking to fold up just a decade ago. “I barely consider this as an achievement. The real test starts now—how soon can we go to 5,000 crore from here is the question,” says Rao, who can boast of a 60 per cent growth in his topline between 2007 and 2009.

At present, Bartronics seems hungrier than ever. Having entered the Middle East last year, it recently expanded to South Asia—Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. The move is expected to rev up growth of up to 40 per cent in revenue. Next on the plate is the European market.

If Rao manages to sustain this growth and find the capital to fund it, he will not need to invoke divine intervention a second time.

Pressing the Right KeysSudhir Rao’s belief helped him turn Bartronics into a

880-crore company.


Envision your largest client filed for bankruptcy and 14 per cent of your revenue disappeared overnight. There would be no doubt that this would be a “nightmare” of gigantic proportions. And that is exactly what Mumbai-based business-process-outsourcing com-pany eClerx Services had to live through after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. The bank was its largest client.

The share price of eClerx, which had touched 500 per unit in January 2008, nosedived to 72

by October of the same year. And yet, like the proverbial phoenix, the BPO

firm rose from the disastrous innings to end the year with a 40 per cent growth in revenue over its previous year.

It is no wonder then that the company has climbed from 190 to 50 in our ranking within a year. Or, that its share trades at 700 today. Last year, when Forbes magazine was scouting for the 200 best companies under a turnover of $1 billion in the Asia Pacific region, it chose eClerx from more than 24,000 publicly-listed companies. There were only 22 Indian companies that made the cut, and eClerx was the only that belonged to

the KPO/data analytics space. Consulting firm AT Kearney calls it one of the best outsourcing companies in India.

The focus with which eClerx has carved a niche for itself in the outsourcing market, and the aggression it has shown in building

relationships with Fortune 500 companies have helped this decade-old company reach a turnover of 250 crore in FY 2009-10. Instead of aiming at low-end outsourcing that rests on labour arbi-trage, the company offers sales, marketing sup-port and financial services, such as risk management and operations.

Started in 2000 by two business school mates, Anjan Malik and PD Mundhra, eClerx initially built websites for dotcom companies. It soon found out how hard it was to make a living that way. The world expected dotcoms to change the way businesses worked. These were supposed to substitute the old-world companies and their brick-and-mortar ways.

And then came the dot-com shakeout. Sud-denly these companies seemed to be dropping like flies all around.

After some desperate gasps for survival, the

THE COMPANIES

“

In 2008, eClerx’s biggest client went kaput and almost dragged the firm with it. In 2009, Forbes chose the company as one of the 200 best firms under a turnover of $1 billion in the Asia Pacific region from more than 24,000 options. Now that’s what we call a turnaround.

TO BUILD AN ENDURING INSTITUTION”

PD MUNDHRA | Co-founder & Executive Director, eClerx Services

BY POOJA KOTHARI PHOTOGRAPH BY JITEN GANDHI

COMPANY DASHBOARD eClerx Services

Sector IT & ITeS


Net sales 2009 (January to December) 197cr



Market cap (as on December 31, 2009) 790 crore


majority of them had crashed out, forcing Malik and Mundhra to dig out a Plan B.

“We decided to focus on managing the data behind the websites. And that fundamental shift in strategy laid the foundation for what we are today,” says 37-year-old Mundhra.

While evaluating the matrix of options, Mundhra realised that IT was far ahead in the game for them to play catch up. And, “voice was an operational nightmare” that neither of them even considered getting into. So, writing software, or running call centres were defi-nitely out of the list.

The way forward sprang from an interesting blend of happen-stance and fate—or, you could say, pluck. A few former classmates from Wharton were running their own shows, and wanted help in getting website and database management work done from India. These small companies were on no one’s radar anyway.

“It wasn’t a capital intensive business and made sense to get into,” recalls Mundhra.

Malik was firmly ensconced on Wall Street. Mundhra, who came from a business family, had learnt the chops by running his own business as an undergraduate in Kolkata where he had set up a mate-rial handling unit. Post his MBA, he had even set up a detergent packaging unit for Hindustan Lever, one of the largest FMCG com-panies in the country.

Starting up was hardly a new game for either of them. So, in 2000, they incorporated eClerx and went to work. Within a year, they beat “14 competitors” to land their first “big brand client”. By 2002, Malik had come on board full-time and was spearheading the company’s move into financial services. Both followed a conservative strategy, running a cash-flow oriented business and avoiding debt. And, “we knew what our strengths and weakness were, and stayed away from business which wouldn’t be feasible”.

Last year, Sequoia Capital, one of the leading private equity firms in the country, bought a stake in the company. In the past 10 years, there have also been several proposals from companies offering to acquire the business. However, Mundhra is clear that “there’s still a lot of headroom that we want to exploit”.

Given that both of them spend all their time on this business, they want to remain “leveraged”. “The day we decide to cash out, we’ll remove ourselves completely from this business,” adds Mundhra.

While 40-year-old Malik plays a client-facing role in the organi-sation, Mundhra handles the operational aspects.

Together, they have managed to create “a culture and a work atmosphere” that has allowed them to “attract disproportionate tal-ent”. With more than 3,000 employees and nearly 20 Fortune 500 clients under their belt, this team is sure to fulfil its aspiration of “building an enduring institution”.

Putting the Past Behind PD Mundhra’s eClerx

Services rose from the brink of disaster in 2008-

09 to grow sales at 40 per cent.


“

Pujit Aggarwal and his father were new to the real estate sector, but they figured out soon enough how to make it big in the business without ‘deep pockets’. The Aggarwals established a reputation for redeveloping dilapidated buildings in Mumbai. Their success has fuelled a desire to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange next.

WE FOUGHT PEOPLE’S DISTRUST OF BUILDERS”

PUJIT AGGARWAL | Managing Director & CEO, Orbit Corporation

BY POOJA KOTHARI AND SUNAINA SEHGAL PHOTOGRAPH BY MEXY XAVIER

As a 16-year-old, Pujit Aggarwal was literally “lured” into real estate. His father and uncle were working on their maiden venture as property developers. On his uncle’s suggestion, post his classes at Sydneham College, Aggarwal decided to try his hand at selling the block of offices his family was developing in Navi Mumbai. His sales pitch worked, earning Aggarwal a neat 1.5 per cent of the deal value in commission. “I had tasted blood,” recalls Aggarwal, who earned a princely sum of 1 lakh in the process. There was some-thing addictive about the business, and Aggarwal knew he wanted to be a part of that.

Cut to today, Aggarwal, along with his father, Ravi Kiran Aggarwal, runs Orbit Corporation, a

450-crore real estate developer in Mumbai. Though people outside the financial capital

might have a hard time recalling what Orbit is, residents of the city might recall its reputation as a redeveloper of dilapidated buildings—not to men-tion, the company that most recently hit the head-lines for winning the bid to redevelop Kilachand

House—once home to the Maharaja of Patiala and one of the last palaces in the city. Given its success in the recent years—Orbit has grown nearly 40 per cent in the past three years—it is difficult to

believe that the Aggarwals are relatively new to the sector.

Hailing from Haryana, the family had moved to Mumbai in 1973 and founded Orbit Steels to manufacture steel plates. As typical of a family-owned business, they pursued other revenue opportunities, such as export of fabric, arts and crafts, and later, frozen foods under the Tasty Bites brand. In the early eighties, the senior Aggar-wal introduced the Indian consumer to the con-cept of ready-to-eat meals and packaged frozen vegetables. “The experiment bombed in the mar-ket,” says his 38-year-old son. “We were much ahead of our times for the Indian market. We sur-vived by exporting the products and by selling them to institutions like the canteens of the armed forces.” Luckily, the business scraped through and was later sold to Hindustan Unilever in 1995.

THE COMPANIES


COMPANY DASHBOARD Orbit Corporation

Sector Construction





Market cap (as on December 31, 2009)190 crore

During its moments of struggle with businesses, the family ven-tured into real estate through co-investments. It didn’t take them long to realise the potential of the industry. So, it gave up other pur-suits and dived into real estate full time. The initial years weren’t easy. The Aggarwals didn’t have the deep pockets to bite into Mumbai’s expensive real estate deals. However, the senior Aggarwal noticed that old, dilapidated buildings standing in posh South Mumbai localities were going at not only cheaper rates, but were also available.

“Landlords of such properties barely got any rental income because of rent control laws. Returns were negative in some cases. So, getting them to sell to us wasn’t that difficult,” explains his son.

Having created a niche in redeveloping old properties into swanky, luxurious residences and offices, the Aggarwals formalised their efforts into a corporate entity called Orbit Corporation in 1999. “It was an uphill task. We had to constantly fight people’s distrust of builders and convince them that we weren’t out to usurp their prop-erties,” recalls the younger Aggarwal. Over the years, Orbit has single-mindedly focussed on localities within South Mumbai, even raising money on the stock markets to fund its operations.

Along the way, it’s been helped by the management team’s unre-lenting focus on delivering value to its customers, and some wise decisions. In 2008-09, as the economy cratered and sales froze for

PROFILE

almost six months, Orbit decided to convert its commercial pre-mium complexes into residential flats. “We were nimble-footed and responded in time to the weakening demand for commercial real estate,” says Aggarwal.

Similarly, five years ago, when competitors were constructing luxury apartments in Lower Parel, Orbit decided to make one-room studio apartments, which later sold like “hot cakes”.

In its 20 years of experience, Orbit has also set high standards for itself. Aggarwal likes to point out that each Orbit building comes with a 20-year warranty against leakage. “We use stainless steel rein-forcement bars for construction, so that repairs need to be done much later than is usual for buildings,” explains Aggarwal.

It has taken him time to get here—and to develop this eye for detail and best practices. But the time has been worth it. Today, as father and son comfortably occupy their swank office in upscale Mumbai, Orbit’s looking to raise 1,000 crore in the near future.

It’s working on projects of various sizes. Besides the Khilachand House, which is their most ambitious to date, there’s a cluster devel-opment in Malabar Hill and a 200-acre project in posh Alibagh.

It won’t be long before their “teamwork” leads to the realisation of the son’s dream of “ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange”.

High RisePujit Aggarwal’s Orbit Corporation has built a reputation for high-quality redevelopment of

dilapidated buildings in South Mumbai.


Running a 95-year-old company, whose supply chain straddles five continents, requires an appetite for innovation and growth. Karan A Chanana, group managing director for Amira Foods, India’s largest rice exporter, has displayed that he has a stomach for much of this. Since he took over the reins of The Amira Group, which also has interests in infrastructure, energy and special economic zones, the company has morphed from a family-run business to a professionally-managed unit. A believer in structured approaches and smart people, he has steered the company from a turnover of 367 crore in 2007 to

1,040 crore in 2009 (both calendar years). Along the way, the company has picked up prestigious tags—like ‘Global Growth Company’—and he a handful of accolades for his contributions to business in India. Amira now sells its own label of basmati and non-basmati rice, which sits on shelves of retail chains across the US, New Zealand and Canada. Here’s a peek at his typical workday.

AS TOLD TO SHREYASI SINGH | PHOTOGRAPH BY SUBHOJIT PAUL

I am always eager to start a new day. Morning means a fresh start, that’s why I look forward to it. My body clock is pretty much set. I wake up by 7am, without alarm clocks and beeps. I sleep for six hours. More than that, I feel I am wasting time.

THE WAY I WORK | Karan Chanana, Amira Foods

“Meetings are dynamic and they should stay that way.”


The Taste of SuccessKaran Chanana enjoys

establishing systems and processes, and watching

them hit milestones.

I like to see my children the first thing in the morning. They are 12 and five years old. That’s the most refreshing dose of the day. Before they leave for school, I spend some time with them. Then, I proceed to my Blackberry. After the mails, I read my newspaper and start getting ready. By 9am, I am prepared to get out of my personal space.

My day is structured to the needs of the company. I let logic drive it. I reach office by 10:30am. I keep the pre-lunch hours for internal discussions, where we recapitulate what has been happening and what needs to be done. It’s a basic review process that helps me remain on top of things. It also allows a certain amount of flexibility to my team because they can plan the rest of their day. I think that doing this at the end of the day won’t have the same impact. I reserve my post-lunch hours for external meetings, if any.

I am very flexible during meetings. I don’t like to define them by time. Sometimes, a 15-minute meeting will flow into four hours. Other times, a meeting scheduled for four hours will finish in 15 minutes, because it has lost its value by then. Meetings are dynamic and they should stay that way.

My work day has remained much the same since 2005 when I took over managing the company. Before that, when I was heading our manufacturing units, my routine was different. But, life’s like that. It should be dynamic. . I enjoy both roles. I wouldn’t be able to pick a favourite. Running a business is a continuous pro-cess, like riding a bicycle. It can get monot-onous, so setting new goals is very important. It allows you to look forward to each day. I don’t do anything I don’t enjoy; as simple as that.

I am completely self-motivated. I run my business in a structured manner. We have a vision, to which we attach mile-stones, and then we implement it. For instance, right now, the biggest milestone in front of me is to strengthen our own brands of rice. We have traditionally sup-plied rice to other brands. However, in the recent past, we have worked on creating our own brand, which contributes 10 per cent of our revenue right now. We want that share to go up to 50 per cent within five years. And, we want a global footprint for our brand in the next 36-48 months.

For this, we need the right processes and the best human talent. I don’t like to micro manage, unless required to—which happens once in a blue moon. My aim is to hire people smarter than me because I am not in the education business.

To grow, you have to surround yourself by good people, and I am always on the lookout. I hold interviews two times a week. Growth, I think, gets limited by the absence of good people, and not by that of business opportunities. In India, especially, there is no lack of opportunities for a business to grow. Unfortunately, the same can-not be said of talent and intellectual strength, which are inversely

proportional to our population. Employability is an issue. Ethics and morals are a very, very big issue. I see a misplaced sense of wealth creation among the young people nowadays. There are glaring gaps

between expectations and capabilities. I have seen so many inflated resumes and mis-matched expectations; and that worries me.

ou can’t run a business if you don’t trust your people. Of course, a certain de-sensitisation happens over years of hiring the wrong people. But, that doesn’t mean I am less trusting. Yes, I definitely trust systems more than people, though. I have inculcated systems into Amira in the past few years. We have revamped the organisation and put processes in place. That’s what I enjoy doing most—establishing systems and seeing them hit milestones. I have a single-minded focus on that.

I have consciously moved to a younger team. There is no substitute for experience. But, there are functions where experience is at a discount, like in sales. There are so many new methods, ideas, and strategies out there. I have found the younger people to be more

“with it” on that. I expect our team leaders to mentor their members. Recently, I

was at a popular restaurant, where the service was terrible. I went and met the head of the hotel and told him that the problem lay in his training process. You cannot expect efficiency and good service from your people, if you don’t invest enough in training them. Training fulfils the gap between performance and expectation.

I have reached 70 per cent of my HR milestones. Now, I spend four hours in a week doing people- related work. Twice a year, we have an off-site for everyone. We have close to 300 full-timers and

Y

“I detest theattitude in

seeped into

THE WAY I WORK


all of them are part of this. This is a great way to interact with them. Other than my senior management, I also keep in touch with the top and middle-level management, roughly 20 people, on a fairly regular basis.

All said and done, I am a demanding boss. And my employees know that. I detest the “chalta hain” attitude in India. It’s seeped into the new generation, too. The problem is that it doesn’t get you any-where. Like, if people are late for meetings, I don’t see it as a punctu-ality issue. For me, they are just not committed enough. The subject matter of the meeting should be important enough for people to be on time. Everybody’s time needs to be respected.

Time is the most precious commodity. You need to value it, oth-erwise it won’t value you. I do allow myself to indulge in spontaneity during the workweek, but it happens rarely. I never bunk work. You bunk something that you don’t enjoy.

I don’t like eating big lunches; they make me sleepy. I grab a bite, generally a sandwich, while I am talking to somebody. I am usually in the middle of an internal meeting during that time. At the manu-facturing unit, we had an elaborate lunch ritual. All of us would get together and eat. Today, if I am not in a meeting, I use the time to think rather than eat. I don’t smoke or drink either—another reason why I don’t have to sleep too much to detoxify my body. I just have two or three foamy espressos a day.

I generally travel once in a month. We take part in a lot of exhibitions since that’s a great way to meet customers. I try and go for some impor-tant ones. In July, I went to New York for the Fancy Foods show. Dealing with customers is at the core of our business. Although I meet fewer customers now, I do oversee the function. Even when I am out, my senior team knows they can get me for any meeting they want.

Though the Internet is a great way of keeping in touch with every-body, I still believe a lot more in personal contacts. I have an account on both Twitter and Facebook, but I don’t post update very often. It’s not a priority for me. The Internet has put personal meetings and verbal communication at a premium. Very few people pick up the phone and call you. That effort has to be more appreciated.

I am not a slave to my gadgets. I use them; I don’t let them use me. The iPhone, for example, has great applications and I use it for enter-tainment when I travel. It’s not part of my daily work kit, though.

I like to exercise after work. It’s part of my evening routine. I walk for an hour and then do yoga. It helps me de-stress and get into that balance of the evening. My exercise routine has pretty much stayed the same for the past 20 years. Once a week, I try and take out time for golf.

I enjoy reading. The Economist is my weekly fix. I have been read-ing it for years. I also try and go through the Harvard Business Review. I read a lot of business magazines. I don’t read books—I subscribe to audio book summaries, which I listen to in my car, or on my iPod. These are mostly business books.

Four times a year, I take a holiday with my family. It’s usually for a week or 10 days. As a family, we like to go for beach holidays. These holidays help me unwind and clear a lot of things in the mind. There is nothing better in life than spending quality time with the people you love.

Gen-X, too.”

chalta haiIndia. It has

The Self-motivated Worker Chanana wants his own brands to

bring in 50 per cent of his firm’s revenue within five years.

THE WAY I WORK


CEO SURVEY

The success and humility of APJ Abdul Kalam and Sachin Tendulkar. —Vinod Kumar Chaturvedi, managing director, Usher Agro

Dhirubhai Ambani and ‘Think Big’ attitude. —Rajiv Mittal, managing director, Va Tech Wabag

My mother.—TT Jagannathan, chairman, TTK Prestige

Good leadership qualities. —SVS Shetty, CEO, Anjani Portland Cement

Creativity; and my guru, Yogi Ashwini. —Gurjeet Singh Johar, chairman, C&C Constructions

Swami Vivekananda’s words: ‘Take up one idea and make it your life—think of it, dream of it, live on it…this is the way to success’. —Kamlesh B Patel, chairman, Asian Granito India

JRD Tata. —RK Somany, chairman and managing director, HSIL

Intelligent work done by stakeholders. —VK Jatia, chairman and managing director, Modern India

My immediate boss, Admiral BR Vasant of the Indian Navy, who believed that one could own a single ship or numerous, if they truly wanted to. —Harjinder Singh Cheema, managing director, Cheema Boilers

Great people who served the society, such as Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi; and industrialists like the Tatas. —UK Gupta, chairman and managing director, Holostik India

Every successful man in the field of business, politics, sports or spiritualism. —NK Bansal, group CFO, Ind-Swift group of companies

Honesty, integrity and success stories of personalities like Ratan Tata, Narayana Murthy, and Azim Premji.—PA Nair, CEO, Shree Digvijay Cements

JRD Tata and others, who have achieved success in different walks of life. —MR Jaishankar, chairman and managing director, Brigade Group

Leading industrialists, like Tata, who have done a marvellous job in their respective fields. —RG Agarwal, group chairman, Dhanuka Agritech

Books on management, self development and corporate growth; the Bhagvad Gita.—SV Kabra, chairman and managing director, Kabra Extrusiontechnik

Mahatma Gandhi; biographies of successful global CEOs and business people. —Atul K Nishar, founder and chairman, Hexaware Technologies

My grand-dad; People still remember and talk about him 40 years after his death. —Partha De Sarkar, CEO, Hinduja Global Solutions

Success stories of entrepreneurs like Sunil Mittal, Narayana Murthy, and others. —Manoj Tirodkar, chairman, GTL Infrastructure

WHO’S YOUR GURU?We asked the leaders of the top 500 firms who or what inspires them in life. Here is what some of them said.

and Mahatma Gandhi; and industrialists like the Tatas. —managing director, Holostik India

REMOVE BOOKLET ALONG DOTTED LINE

08

BUY THE RIGHT INSURANCE COVER

Everything you need to know to run your business in today’s economy

: : : : : : : : : : : A MONTHLY GUIDE TO POLICIES, PROCEDURES AND PRACTICES

The recent rains in Delhi brought back memories of the Mumbai deluge few years ago. On that fateful day in June 2005, life at the country’s financial capital had come to a standstill, with some 40,000 businesses taking a hit. The loss was pegged at somewhere around $5 billion by various reports that assessed the damage. That only 15 per cent, or $770 million of those losses were covered by insurance, serves as a grim reminder of the fact that any business owner can be caught off guard. Looking back at the Mumbai incident, one couldn’t help but ask the inevitable question—those without the insurance, what were they thinking? That bad things don’t happen to good people? Or, that insurance is too expensive? As it turned out, the only thing that they could not afford was not having their businesses insured. The principles of economics say that small and medium businesses find it more difficult than large organisations to bounce back after suffering irreparable damage to their assets. And flooding is just one of the dangers. There are so many other misfortunes that may hit any time—fire, theft, medical claims by employees or business associates and commercial suits are just some of the unpleasant scenarios that could pop up without any warning. If and when they do, business owners without any insurance could end up losing even the shirts on their backs. Here are a few tips on buying the right insurance for your business, so that your assets remain safe under all circumstances.—By Charu Bahri

BUY THE RIGHT

VOL. 01 NO. 08 | INC. GUIDEBOOK

08

HEDGING AGAINST RISKS

BUY THE RIGHT INSURANCE COVER : : : : : : : : : : : : :

1 Getting StartedIdentify key risks: Don’t make the mis-take of thinking of insurance as a tax-saving product. Insurance is, and should be treated as, a risk-mitigating tool. “Risk management should be the end objective, not insurance,” says Praveen Vashishta, CEO, Howden India, a firm that provides risk man-agement and insurance solutions. Adopt a structured approach; start by identifying risks that your business might face, quantify those risks and then take the required decisions to transfer risks from your balance sheet to insurance companies. If the list is long, rank the risks in the order of their probability and severity of occurrence.

Take compulsory insurance: Insurance is also about securing what matters to the government and to others who have an interest in the continuity of your business. Indian law outlines only two mandatory insurance covers: that for businesses manufacturing, trans-porting, handling or warehousing haz-ardous substances (as given in a notified government list); and, third party insurance for vehicles. Beyond that, it is up to a business to decide what protection it needs.

Certain kinds of business are com-mercially (not legally) obliged to buy specific insurance policies. For instance, exporters can mortgage raw material and stocks of finished goods stored at various locations to a bank at special interest rates. “Banks, however, do not offer this facility unless the busi-ness has covered its stock under a fire and burglary policy,” points out Vivek

Tyagi, general manager for exports, Ganpati Exports, whose company avails credit under this scheme.

Consult an insurance agent: Most liabil-ity insurance policies have no associ-ated rate-card, that is, their premiums are based on detailed client-specific evaluations. “That’s why SMBs that do not employ professionals in their risk and insurance departments should be hand-held by a broker through the pro-cess,” says Jayant Tewari, an outsourced CFO who has served a number of tech-nology companies, such as Proteans Software and Tech Unified prior to their acquisition.

Brokers can suggest options based on calculated advice, instead of mere hearsay. “We rate insurance companies on the basis of the coverage offered by the policy in question, price, the insur-ance companies’ track record in pro-cessing claims for the policy in question, their financial standing, and the complexities involved—these relate to policies that may throw up claims across various jurisdictions,” explains Vashishta.

If you decide to consult an agent, consider one who can handle all of your insurance requirements. And, in case you choose to go it alone, follow Tyagi’s advice: “Take extensive feed-

back from people in your industry and then buy insurance.” In short, do some home-work before choosing a provider.

2 Key CoversKey man insurance: Most SMBs are one-man shows riding on the shoulders of one or, at most, a few decision-makers. That makes it very hard for a business to re-organise itself in the face of the untimely demise of any one

or more of these individuals. This is where key man insurance comes in—it’s a kind of life insurance taken to cover the losses that are likely to accrue during the time between the demise of the person and the filling up of his position.

These losses are not easy to esti-mate. “As a rule of thumb, the value of the insurance will be somewhere between the estimated loss of revenue that the company may incur due to the absence of a key person and the cost of replacing the individual,” says V Philip, a Bengaluru-based insur-ance advisor.

“The cover will also depend on the company’s financials and how much premium it can afford to pay,” he adds. Partnership firms also benefit from buying life insurance for each of the partners. That way, should one partner die, the surviving partner can use the life insurance claim to buy out the heirs of the demised partner. Such life insur-ance policies should ideally increase in value as the business grows.

Business property insurance: Business property is a wide term including an


Risk management should be the end objective, not insurance.

INC. GUIDEBOOK | VOL. 01 NO. 08

office building and all it contains, if the office is owned by the business, or just the movable assets, that is, furni-ture, equipment and office records, if the business operates from leased premises. Property insurance taken for leased offices should ideally cover improvements made to the premises, such as adding room partitions or custom-made furniture.

A broad form of business property coverage, also called an all-risk policy, is recommended to protect the busi-ness from a wide variety of losses aris-ing from natural calamities such as earthquakes, floods, and even loss of income from having to temporarily shut down the business due to damage to business property.

Liability insurance: Comprehensive General Liability (CGL) policies are designed to cover third parties for inadvertent injuries arising from your business dealings, such as inappropri-ate advertising or bodily harm (a guest trips over a loose cable in your office and claims compensation).

Some businesses also need to cover specific liabilities. For instance, Tewari points out that Indian IT firms are often required to take errors-and-omissions policies to protect them-selves from commercial suits arising from inadvertent errors made in the delivery of services.

For examples, if an IT company has sold air travel companies software to facilitate online bookings, then it

would need to protect itself from claims arising from errors in the work-ing of the software application.

Firms that offer services tradition-ally associated with a higher degree of care or standards, such as health or consultancy, also need liability insur-ance. “In addition, start-ups that have been funded by angel investors or ven-ture capital funds may be asked to take coverage for their directors (Directors and Officers Policy) to protect a nomi-nee director from being liable for errors made by the company,” adds Tewari.

No matter which cover you opt for, remember to negotiate the payment schedule for the premium. Ask for a quarterly or half-yearly payment option, in place of annual payment.

NOTES:

08 BUY THE RIGHT INSURANCE COVER : : : : : : : : : : : : :

ResourcesInsurance Regulatory and Development Authority site, Visit it for updates on insurance laws and lists of approved insurers, http://www.irda.gov.in/Defaulthome.aspx?page=H1

LIC of India, Glossary of terms, http://www.licindia.in/glossary.htm

Know about Life Insurance, http://www.licindia.in/know_lic.htm

PolicyBazaar, Get free insurance quotes, compare plans based on their premium and features side-by-side, http://www.policybazaar.com/

MAKING A CLAIMMost commercial insurance policies follow a standard claim procedure.

Step 1: The insured business must submit all original documents, that is, repair or replacement bills in the case of loss of property, medical bills in the case of liability insurance, and so on, to the surveyor.

Step 2: The surveyor calculates the approximate value of the loss incurred and forwards a report to the insurance company.

Step 3: If the insurance company has a query, it will seek clarification from the insured. Once the queries are sorted out, the insurance company issues a cheque for the value of loss incurred based on the report submitted by the surveyor within one week to three weeks.


INSURANCE TIPSSome other insurance policies that your business might benefit from are:

Group life insurance: These can help attract and retain employees. “Most employees see life insurance paid for by their employer as an

attractive perk,” says Tyagi, whose firm has bought insurance for its workers and employees for a cover of 2.5 times an individual’s salary.

Workers’ compensation insurance: Some companies choose to transfer the compensation they may be liable to pay to their workers to an

insurance company. The financial benefit is that they have to pay a smaller amount as premium, which is a deductible expense, instead of doling out huge sums as compensation, if and when the need arises.

Health insurance: Tyagi also recommends health insurance plans tailored to the size of your business. “This coverage gives you an edge

when recruiting employees,” he adds.

Inland Transit Policy: Ganpati Exports has taken a 5-crore cover for cargo despatched by road from its factory in Delhi to Mumbai port. The

sum insured covers the maximum value of shipments lying at Mumbai port or in transit between the port and the factory during the peak season.

INC. GUIDEBOOK | VOL. 01 NO. 08

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