Game-changers in India Inc

Captains of industry may not have slayed a 10-headed demon, but the actions taken in the course of their professional career may have shaped the future course of events, impacting the lives of many people.

The tradition of oral history need not be confined to narrating the exploits of Lord Rama or Krishna. Corporates and those at the helm of managing enterprises too have stories to recount. True, the captains of industry may not have slayed a 10-headed demon or lifted a mountain to protect the cowherds from a particularly heavy downpour. But the actions taken in the course of their professional career may well have shaped the future course of events, impacting the lives of many people.

This writer has heard a few in his time, each one of which offers some rare insights about an organisation or individuals at the helm. Don't know how far this is true but the story, as told to this author by someone who knew the founder of Infosys in his days as a struggling sales engineer for Patni Computer Systems, is offered to the readers in the best traditions of oral history.

As the narrator recounted the story, one was left pondering over a fundamental question.

Would Mr Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, have taken the lead in forming the company if Data General, a well-known US computer manufacturer and not Burroughs Corporation, a competitor, had won the contract for supplying a mainframe system to Tata Motors or TELCO, as it was known then?

Birth of Infosys
Back in 1980, mainframe computers in Indian business enterprises using advanced programming languages were rarer than a hen's teeth. But businesses were getting bigger. That meant handling larger volumes of commercial transactions, which the second generation computers then in use could not do as effectively. The Government was forced to concede the demands of the industry to import large mainframe systems.

Of course, the fact that at about this time IBM walked out of India in protest — with the Government insisting that IBM dilute the ownership in the India business — also helped shape a more liberal import policy regime.

Anyway, Patni was pitching for a computer manufactured by another US company, Data General, while Burroughs Corporation was the other contender. Tata Motors chose Burroughs, and Patni was left with a machine, not knowing when a new order for it would materialise. As the story goes, the Patnis were going to relinquish the agency arrangement with Data General and sell that one machine that they had on hand to whoever was willing to pick it up. Enter Mr Narayana Murthy and his band of intrepid engineer associates with an offer to buy it out on easy payment terms and the rest, as they say, is history.

Tata's grand vision
Or consider, another, which is even more dramatic than the previous one. What was J. R. D. Tata's vision for the Tata Group of companies? The important point to note is that he didn't articulate it in terms of market share, return on net worth or market capitalisation and such other inanities.

Yes, profits did matter to JRD but that would not deter him from envisioning a larger purpose for himself and the companies that he presided over. In the best traditions of Indian philosophy, he was in business not to make money per se but because that was his ‘Dharma'.

An old Tata hand, who worked under the legendary leader at one time, described it thus. Tatas, in JRD's view, should be in those businesses that entwine themselves in the lives of ordinary Indians. He wanted a share of the ordinary Indian's wallet not in the sense that the wannabe Sam Waltons of the modern Indian retail trade would have liked it, but something that is steeped in deeper business purpose.

Elaborating on the point in a somewhat dramatic fashion, JRD, it is believed, said that he would like the average Indian's homes to be lit up by energy supplied by the Tatas, travel to work or go to school in a bus made by the Tatas and which would stop at a filling station that will sport of the Tata logo. The Tatas haven't managed to get into petroleum refining and marketing business although they are very much into electricity generation or distribution and, of course, they are a dominant force in mass transportation business. But the vision should not be interpreted in some mechanistic terms. It is a lot subtler than that.

What JRD had in mind, to my reckoning, was a situation where the word ‘Tata' keeps leaping out of every nook and corner of the environment in which the average Indian lives, to a point that it becomes a part of his life. In short, so grand was his vision that he would settle for nothing less than an outcome that makes the name Tata endure, not because there is a Tata at the helm of businesses that sport that particular name tag; it exists because there is a bit of Tata in every average Indian.

The fundamental truth
If we reflect on it, this should come as no surprise. JRD must have realised more than anyone else a fundamental truth. The demographics of the community to which he belonged posed a greater threat to perpetuation of the Tata business legacy in the traditional sense.

Even if businesses manage to overcome the uncertainties of the market place and continue to grow, they would, in the long run, still not be proof against the conventional yardstick for measuring their survival, namely a progeny sporting the same label.

This is just as well as the Group enters another important milestone in Mr Cyrus Mistry taking over from Ratan Tata as the head of the Group. The last thing Mr Mistry would want, as he wrestles with the many challenges that the Group would face in the market place, is to be assailed by self-doubts about his place in the scheme of things.

If JRD's vision had actually taken root in the years since he articulated it, Mr Mistry is as much a Tata as you or me could possibly be without a 15 per cent stake in the Group holding company!

blfeedback@thehindu.co.in

(This article was published on December 25, 2011)
Keywords: cross court column, Narayana Murthy, Ratan Tata, Cyrus Mistry, JRD,

D.SAMPATHKUMAR