Global GaMe cHanGeRS 2017

pRice ` 190. july 7, 2017

GenNext
Special

IndIa’s
Future
Leaders

“[One shOuld]
try nOt tO
predict the excluSive
future, but
we must be
tHe kpmg
the fastest tO ceo poll:
react tO that How futuRe
situatiOn” Ready iS
india inc?
lakSH vaa-
Man SeHGal
director
Motherson Sumi
Systems Ltd

the motherson
l aksh va aman sehgal sumi scion has
navigated tough

rising son
terrain and
taken the auto
parts major to
the next level

www.forbesindia.com
 Business.
Minus the paperwork.
You live on the go, travelling light.

You want things now,

not when the courier gets there.

You’re connected, 24/7,

and you want your reading at your fingertips.
Welcome to the
I NDIA

Tablet Edition
 editor’s note
The next generation of India’s business families will have to negotiate an uncertain new world
Tomorrow’s Leaders
B
usinesses of today need
to navigate change
rapidly. Whether it
is the global market
and the demands it places, or
the disruptions which present
themselves suddenly, leadership is
more demanding than it ever was.
Which is why today’s business
leaders, as most experts will tell
you, need to be flexible, nimble,
innovative and ready to adapt to
fast-changing conditions. The next
generation, which is preparing to
take over the reins at their family-
owned businesses or even setting
up ventures of their own, therefore
Best, have their task cut out. It’s a whole
new world out there, and sitting in
the corner room will hardly be easy.
For this year’s GenNext special
Sourav MajuMdar issue, we pick those business
Editor, Forbes India leaders who are showing the way
in taking their businesses forward,
sourav.majumdar@nw18.com
adding their unique stamp to
@TheSouravM
them by way of innovation and
sheer entrepreneurial energy.
This set of gen-next leaders is just
a sample, but a good example of
how today’s Indian family-owned
businesses are grooming the next
generation to take charge as the
global business environment
presents new challenges every
day. It is also representative of
what Indian enterprise is all about:
The ability to navigate the odds
and succeed. That’s exactly what
Laksh Vaaman Sehgal, the son of
auto parts billionaire Vivek Chaand
Sehgal, did when his father threw
him in the deep end of the pool.
He took charge at ailing UK-based
mirror maker Visiocorp, which
their Samvardhana Motherson
Group had acquired, and turned
6 | forbes india july 7, 2017
it around, changing the fortunes
of the group itself as a result.
Laksh is a perfect example of the
drive and determination which
characterise the next generation
of Indian business leaders.
But there are many others too—
like Tarun and Nikhil Sawhney of
the Triveni Group, Avni Biyani of
the Future Group (who created
a bustling business by way of
lifestyle food superstore Foodhall)
and Neil Parikh, the son of the
late investment expert Parag
Parikh—who are taking the family
legacy forward by either growing
existing businesses or carving out
their own niches. Being a part
of such business families also
comes with an added dimension.
As Senior Assistant Editor Salil
Panchal, who helmed this issue,
writes, it’s not just about the talent
or passion demonstrated by the
next generation. “It is also about
the family managing a smooth
transition—of business ideas,
values, practices and leadership—
from the previous generation to
the new one,” Panchal says.
Coming back to the issue of
change and disruption, I would
also urge you to take a look at
the Forbes list of Global Game
Changers. These people, who are
changing industries and touching
lives, are selected on the basis
of how well they are growing
and innovating compared to
their peers. Sample some names:
Larry Fink of BlackRock, Evan
Spiegel of Snap and Cheng Wei
of Chinese ride-hailing company
Didi Chuxing. The only Indian
on the list: Mukesh Ambani
of Reliance Industries Ltd.
 Contents / July 7, 2017 ● Volume 9 Issue 14

on the Cover

GenNext leaders

48 | Laksh vaaman sehgaL:

rewiring the Future
From turning around an ailing auto
component firm in Germany to
spearheading innovation solutions at
auto parts maker Motherson Sumi,
son Laksh is fast stepping out of the
shadow of Vivek Chaand Sehgal, his
illustrious billionaire father

We value your feedback. Apart from being a successful businessman,

Write to us at: forbes.india@nw18.com | letters may be edited for brevity. Laksh Vaaman Sehgal also wears an
Read us online at www.forbesindia.com investor’s hat in his personal capacity
on the cover & on this page: Amit Verma digital Imaging by: Sushil Mhatre
 ContentS

uPFront
37
interview
22 | ‘the nPa issue has Been reCognised
and is Being deaLt with’
Joris Dierckx, BNP Paribas’s India head, says the
BJP government’s actions have been positive and the
markets have replied suitably

CoLumn
24 | Banking ProBLems redux
Highly leveraged global banks could trigger another
doom loop that governments may struggle to tide over

Features

interview
53 | ‘Ceos must PiCk teams with the right
skiLL sets’
Arun Kumar, chairman and CEO of KPMG India, says restaurateur Zorawar kalra now has foreign destinations on his mind
India Inc is capable of upgrading their abilities
40
66 | ‘even a smaLL groCery store shouLd Be
aBLe to exPerienCe iBm’
Karan Bajwa, IBM India’s new managing director,
wants to offer end-to-end digital solutions to both
large and small enterprises

gennext Leaders
32 | the Baton Carriers
Some of the brightest and most inspiring young business
leaders who are keeping a legacy alive

34 | avni Biyani: the Future is here

Kishore Biyani’s daughter has successfully scaled up the
most premium offering from the retail king’s stable

37 | Zorawar kaLra: the CuLinary maestro Neil Parikh is comfortable with the idea of slow and steady growth
Journalist-cum-gastronome Jiggs Kalra’s elder
son is looking to be the last word in gastronomic
inventiveness in Indian cuisine 44

40 | neiL Parikh: in For the Long hauL

After father Parag Parikh’s sudden demise,
Neil has brought stability and growth to his mutual 37: mADHu KAPPARATH; 40: JosHuA NAVAlKAR; 44: AmIT VeRmA

fund business

44 | tarun sawhney and nikhiL sawhney:

two to tango
While the Sawhney brothers run disparate businesses,
they are committed to making their companies the best
run in their respective fields

survey
56 | the C-suite study
India Inc reveals its preparedness to deal with
disruption and a hostile business environment

Tarun Sawhney (left) and brother Nikhil have similar qualifications

juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 9

 July 7, 2017 ContentS

Cross Border
26 | the wiZards From oZ
26
Move over sales pitches. Two Australian
billionaires behind Atlassian have built smarter tools
that sell themselves

58 | the Big Cheese

With supplies to Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Papa John’s and
many more, billionaire James Leprino explains how he
built a cheese juggernaut in the US

64 | China’s ai advantage
Veteran researcher and investor Kai-Fu Lee believes that
the US is destined to lose its lead in the race

68 | CLass aPP
ClassDojo’s educational software is the go-to app in 90
percent of US schools. But will anyone pay for it?
Thirty-seven-year-old aussies Mike cannon-brookes (left) and
72 | how Long oF a reaCh? Scott farquhar are worth $2.6 billion each
Pro basketball’s appeal in Asia is obvious, but it
struggles to seed NBA talent here
84
reCLiner

reCLiner 1
76 | a room with a view, and muCh more
Heritage hotels and homestays cater to travellers who
seek unique experiences from their holidays

reCLiner 2
80 | street smart
Berlin’s street-food market scene is a reflection of a city
that is a melting pot of cultures

reCLiner 3
84 | a (diFFerent) aFriCan saFari
Uganda’s geography and its variety of natural habitats
make it a haven for wildlife enthusiasts Tree-climbing lions can be spotted in the Ishasha area of uganda

76

With rising incomes,

travellers are opting for
unique experiences such
as choosing heritage
26: JAmes HoRAN FoR FoRBes

villas or homestays
during their vacation

reguLars 19 | Letters 20 | LeaderBoard 98 | thoughts

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 letters to the editor

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Readers Say
Green Cover
Refer to ‘Nothing Like The Sun (And
Wind)’ (Issue dated June 9, 2017). It is
fantastic to know that India is working
aggressively towards the generation and
adaptation of renewable energy. I wish to
thank Forbes India for covering the way
the sector is shaping up in their special
issue. The stories about how Indian
companies are going green have been
enriching and interesting to read.
Mohammad Namazi, on the web
I enjoyed reading Sourav Majumdar’s
piece on the government’s renewable
energy push. While it’s a positive sign
that enterprises are thinking about the
environment, greater challenges
persist. However, it’s refreshing to see
a conscious effort being made in the
country to become environment-friendly.
Kuldip, via email
Environment Concerns
Refer to ‘Winds Of Change’ (Issue dated
June 9, 2017). This is a great initiative by
Sumant Sinha and Rahul Munjal. In their
own way, they have shown that caring for
the environment can be good business.
Kumar Vansh, on the web
Pursuing Her Dreams
Refer to ‘Carolyn Rafaelian: The Bangle
Billionaire’ (Issue dated June 23, 2017).
The article on America’s richest jeweller
who grew Alex and Ani into a $1-billion
company was a nice read. It was great to
know the mind of a person who consults
planetary charts during decision-making.
Chandrakant, on the web

Gen-Next special:
Podcast india’s future
leaders
www.forbesindia.com By Salil Panchal

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Tailoring your arguments to a business leader’s decision-making style announcing this populist but
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july 7, 2017 forbes india |  13

Toby Melville / ReUTeRS

LeaderBoard

Seventeen people died and over 70 were

injured after a fire broke out in the 24-storey
apeRTURe Grenfell Tower in London on June 14. The toll
is expected to go up with many residents still

Up In Flames missing and the fire commissioner saying it

would be a miracle if anyone else is found alive
LeaderBoard
ABOUT-FACE The rear of the
house is actually its front.
According to local legend,
Oliver Belmont wanted to show
Bellevue Avenue his back—but
he also wanted a better view
16 | forbes india july 7, 2017
BRIGHT IDEA An Art
Deco sculpture of
a woman holding
two lamps watches
over the courtyard,
a fitting reminder of
Belcourt’s two guiding
lights: Alva Belmont and
Carolyn Rafaelian
GHOST STORY The original
entrance of the house,which
Rafaelian had cleansed by a shaman
to remove bad spirits and energy
 FIRE POWER The
crest above the
fireplace in the REAL ESTATE
library contains the

The
Belcourt motto,
Sanscrainte:
‘Without fear’

WORDS TO LIVE BY
“First marry for money,
then marry for love,” Alva
SHINE ON Every chandelier in Belmont once famously
said. Her first husband was
Belcourt was taken down and
a Vanderbilt; her second
disassembled for restoration,
was Oliver Belmont
including one weighing 460
pounds and held up by a nail
WHOA The courtyard was
once used to exercise the
horses of Oliver Belmont,
whose father is the namesake
of the Belmont Stakes
Jewellery
Queen’s
Castle
designed in 1891 by renowned
Beaux Arts architect Richard Morris
Hunt, the Newport, Rhode Island,
mansion known as Belcourt was
inspired by Louis XIII’s hunting lodge
at Versailles and built for banking
heir Oliver Belmont. With 60 rooms
and more than 55,000 square foot of
living space, the estate was intended
to be Belmont’s summer bachelor
pad—with stables on the first floor for
the horse-loving owner. Shortly after
the home was completed, Belmont fell
in love with a neighbour, suffragist
Alva Vanderbilt, who, after divorcing
her husband and moving out of their
mansion down the street, brought
a woman’s touch to the place. (The
horses were the first to go; then she
added a library and transformed the
halls for entertaining.)
In 1940, the Belmont family
sold the estate, and it has changed
hands several times over the decades,
falling into disrepair and disrepute:
In 1999, Belcourt was reportedly
the site of an infamous 800-person
“no underwear” party. Then in 2012,
Carolyn Rafaelian, the billionaire
founder of the jewellery brand
Alex and Ani purchased the property
for $3.6 million—and the spirit of
Alva Vanderbilt returned. Rafaelian
has invested many millions in
the estate, including a complete
renovation of the library. She also
added solar panelling to the roof
and, of course, restored Alva’s
bedroom to its Gilded Age glory.

july 7, 2017 forbes india | 17

 $1.45 bln
Box office grosses from
Broadway shows in the

LeaderBoard
2016-17 season, the highest
ever recorded, according to
the Broadway League

entertainment

Hello, Dollars!
even billionaires think there’s no business
like show business. These six produced or co-produced
Broadway shows this year. The headliner: Len Blavatnik
(with trophy, below), who financed the most shows by
far, putting money into seven productions. The Great
White Way has long run on the dollars of the ultrarich—
even a young Daddy Showbucks named Donald Trump
produced a 1970 show called Paris Is Out! It was a flop
and closed in less than three months.
—micheLa tindera

Steve Cohen RobeRt Smith len blavatnik CameRon baRRy DilleR RobeRt RiCh JR.
Net Worth: $13 bln Net Worth: $2.5 bln Net Worth: $19.2 bln maCkintoSh Net Worth: $3.1 bln Net Worth: $3.9 bln
ShoW: A Bronx Tale ShoW: In Transit ShoWS: Hello, Dolly!; Net Worth: $1 bln ShoW: A Doll’s House, ShoWS: Cats;
The Musical Star poWer: Groundhog Day; ShoWS: Cats; Part 2 Present Laughter
Star poWer: Justin guarini Sunset Boulevard; The Miss Saigon Star poWer: laurie Star poWer:
robert De Niro total Box office Front Page; The Glass Star poWer: metcalf, chris cooper Kevin Kline, leona lewis
total Box office groSS: Menagerie; Sweat; leona lewis total Box office total Box office
groSS: $6.1 mln A Doll’s House, Part 2 total Box office groSS: groSS:
$21.9 mln moSt expeNSive Seat: Star poWer: groSS: $538,000 $43 mln
moSt expeNSive Seat: $249 Bette midler, glenn close $46.2 mln moSt expeNSive Seat: moSt expeNSive Seat
$275 toNy NomiNatioNS: 0 total Box office moSt expeNSive Seat $273 (Present Laughter): $350
toNy NomiNatioNS: 0 moNey liNe: groSS: (Miss Saigon): $248 toNy NomiNatioNS: 8 toNy NomiNatioNS: 3
moNey liNe: “i got temping skills $61.4 mln toNy NomiNatioNS: 2 moNey liNe: moNey liNe:
“the grocer, the peddler, to pay my bills, that’s moSt expeNSive Seat moNey liNe: “it looks like you’re “if you offer me fish, then
the whole neighbour- my scheme till my (Hello, Dolly!): $748 “tonight i’m out of my definitely not destitute.” i always want a feast.”
hood—wherever i go dream comes true.” toNy NomiNatioNS: 31 mind, not to mention —Cats
i know my money’s moNey liNe: ten bucks.”
no good.” “money... is like manure. —Miss Saigon
it’s not worth a thing
unless it’s spread around”
—Hello, Dolly!
iLLustration By john ueLand; top: Lucas jackson / reuters

Source: The Broadway League All box office figures are for 2016–17 (through April 30)

18 | forbes india July 7, 2017


LeaderBoard
ClImAte ChAnge
Reaching India’s Climate
Goal—with or without Trump
It is yet to be seen if the US President’s decision to withdraw from the
Paris Agreement will impact India-US bilateral deals on tech and funds
us president donald
Trump’s decision to pull
the United States out of the
Paris Climate Agreement—
an accord negotiated and
adopted by members of the
United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate
Change in December
2015—sent ripples of
discontent across the world.
However, while devastating
to climate activists and to
the spirit of international
cooperation in general,
this move doesn’t have to
stop the rest of the world,
including India, from
moving forward on
climate goals.
Long a sceptic of
climate change, Trump
in the past has called it a
“hoax” propagated by the
Chinese to suppress US
manufacturing. And while
announcing his decision
to exit the agreement,
he addressed China
and India in particular.
“India can double their
coal production. We’re
supposed to get rid of
ours,” he said on June 1.
Never mind that natural
gas and other cheaper
energy sources have killed
US coal production, not
global climate agreements.
Trump also failed to
acknowledge that India’s
per capita carbon emissions
are a mere fraction of the
US’s, or that nearly 300
million people in India
still live without reliable
access to electricity, while
misstating that India’s
participation in the Paris
accord was contingent
on receiving “billions and
billions and billions” of
dollars in aid. It’s not.
External Affairs
Minister Sushma Swaraj
rejected Trump’s claims.
“If someone says we
signed the pact due to lure
of money and pressure
from someone, it is
wrong. I reject both these
allegations,” she said at a
press conference on June 5.
By ratifying the Paris
accord last October, India
committed to reducing its
US President Donald Trump announces his decision to withdraw from
the Paris Climate Agreement at the White House
$11.4 bln
in India’s renewable
energy sector between
2000 and 2016
carbon intensity—or the
amount of carbon emitted
per unit of GDP—to 33 to
35 percent below 2005
levels. They also pledged to
generate at least 40 percent
of their energy from non-
fossil fuel sources by 2030.
Reaching these
goals requires the right
combination of policy,
finance, and technology.
And while the US will
be beginning the long
process of exiting the
accord, some important,
technical agreements
on climate collaboration
between the US and India
are enshrined in bilateral
agreements and these, at
least for now, remain.
India’s bilateral
Amount of FDI
agreements with the US
include cooperation on
financing, investment, and
technical assistance for
renewable energy. These
agreements are likely to be
on the table when Prime
Minister Narendra Modi
visits the White House on
June 26. Alyssa Ayres, a
senior fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations, says
these agreements may be
cut if and when Trump’s
bare-bones federal budget
goes into effect. His
budget proposals include
deep financial cuts to the
agencies involved in these
agreements—notably the
Department of Energy and
the State Department.
“We can’t say for certain
based on the present
budget documents whether
indeed the sun has set
on what had become a
terrific arena of bilateral
cooperation between the
US and India,” said Ayres
in an email, “but the signs
are not promising.”
While the loss of this
collaboration would be a
setback, India is showing no
signs of slowing down on
the renewables front. PM
Narendra Modi announced
that India will keep its Paris
KeVIn lAmARQUe / ReUteRS; top: ShUtteRStoCK.Com
commitments, whether
or not the US is involved,
but has stopped short of
signalling that India will
fill the gap in leadership
on climate issues. With
the recent cancellation of
coal-fired power plants in
Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh,
some projections show that
India could even surpass
its goals laid out in Paris.
—KAtheRIne SUllIVAn
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 19
 LeaderBoard
counting air miles

AI’s Fate Uncertain; Mild

Turbulence in Indian Skies
Despite the recent slowdown, the Indian aviation sector is on the cusp of a boom
period and Air India’s survival, even as a private entity, is critical
india’s domestic
aviation market ended
2016 on a high note. The
100 million passengers that
flew on domestic routes last
year were the third highest
in the world, topped only
by the US (719 million)
and China (436 million),
according to data released
by aviation think tank
Centre for Aviation-CAPA.
This growth, however,
seems to have fizzled out
in 2017. After posting over
20 percent year-on-year Air India has an accumulated debt of `52,000 crore while IndiGo saw its profit fall by 25 percent in the
January-March quarter
growth in passenger traffic
for 12 consecutive months, saw its profit drop by 90.7 entity, is critical. “AI has a Manish Agrawal, leader-
growth in air travel was percent to `36.8 crore in 14 percent domestic market capital projects and
below 15 percent from the last quarter of FY17. share and a 20 percent infrastructure at PwC
February to April this year. For flag-carrier Air India international market India. Despite the current
While the deceleration (AI), the problems are more share, which is not easy turbulence in the sector,
is not big enough to impact acute. The country’s third to replace, particularly in he remains optimistic.
the pipeline of over 800 largest airline by market the international sector,” “The overall trend suggests
aircraft orders that local share, which has `52,000 says Bhargava. He says that it [aviation] is a
airlines have placed with crore in accumulated debt, the airline’s debt does not fast-growing market. In
Airbus and Boeing, they is reportedly on the block reveal the entire story. terms of India’s per capita
may revisit expansion after government think tank “AI has tangible assets income levels, India is at
plans if volume growth Niti Aayog recommended such as real estate, slots a cusp where air travel
wanes to single digits. a complete privatisation. and parking spaces at can suddenly shoot up.”
Compounding matters But Civil Aviation Minister international airports, A recent research
is a rise in aviation fuel Ashok Gajapathi Raju engineering services, report by Morgan Stanley
prices. India’s biggest and believes finding a “strategic ground handling services Investment Management
most profitable airline investor” may not be easy. and subsidiary companies, supports this view. It
IndiGo saw its profit fall According to Jitender besides running a pilot forecasts domestic air
by 25 percent year-on- Bhargava, former executive training academy.” The AI passenger traffic to grow
year to `440 crore in the director of AI, privatisation building at Nariman Point, at a CAGR of 13 percent
ViVeK PraKasH / reuters

January-March period of
2017. The budget carrier
attributed the fall to fuel
prices that were 40 percent
higher than in the year-ago
quarter. Jet Airways too
is the only remedy. “I’m
convinced that AI, in its
current avatar, can neither
survive nor be revived.”
That said, the airline’s
survival, even as a private
Mumbai, is worth `1,800
crore, adds Bhargava.
“There are several
factors to consider for the
sale of AI—[employee]
unions, debt etc,” says
between FY16 and FY26
and expects a capex of
$25 billion in the 10-year
period, primarily for
upgrading infrastructure.
—ansHul DHamija

20 | forbes india july 7, 2017


the 10-Q
How to Survive a
Stampeding Elephant
Billionaire Tom Siebel on why small firms outperform
mammoth rivals, GE’s innovation problem and one
very memorable safari
Q Your 2009 elephant goring:
What’s the story?
Daybreak in the Serengeti. I’m armed
with a Nikon. Herd of 15 elephants, 200
yards away. Gust of wind. Matriarch
charges us.
Q Then?
She hurls the guide about 12 yards away
and races up to me. I can smell her. I
took a tusk through my left leg. She
stepped on my right leg, and my foot
came off.
Q By ‘off’, you mean...?
Detached! Hanging on by a flap of skin.
Q That’s your pattern: Start a
company. Then get almost killed.
We started Siebel Systems in 1993. Two
years later, I was kicked by a horse. The
prognosis: “Permanent, irreparable
brain damage.” It’s hard to tell whether
that prognosis turned out to be accurate
or not [laughs].
Q Perhaps the verdict comes
through your latest startup,
C3 Internet of Things (IoT)?
The Internet of Things needs a software
platform. Today there are 19 billion
sensors. In five years, 50 billion.
Q But why your startup?
Huge companies like GE plan
to own the IoT market.
GE is the world’s greatest 19th-century
company. Its market value the last 17
years has gone from $475 billion to
about $250 billion. Nice job. These
guys make valves and pumps.
Q So, small companies
always win during
transitions?
Microsoft built its first
product with two
people. Apple did it
with four. GE takes
3,000 mediocre
people and says,
“Build a software
stack.”
$450 mln
highest-paid hip-hop acts over 12
entertainment
Richest Rappers
Q What makes IoT software
a hard problem to solve?
Integration. You need a base of big-data
and predictive-analytics capabilities,
and a platform for third-party apps.
Q So does this mean Silicon Valley
wins the IoT sweepstakes?
No. The next generation of IoT apps in,
say, the aerospace industry probably
come from Honeywell, not Silicon
Valley. Same in health care. And so on.
Q How did Oracle, your alma
mater, spin off so many
great entrepreneurs: You,
Marc Benioff and others?
Larry Ellison hires bright, type A,
think-outside-of-the-box-type people.
But Oracle never encouraged a lot of
internal entrepreneurism. So people
who were entrepreneurs needed to go
get that experience someplace else.
the amount pulled
in by the world’s 20
months in 2016
the only thing more predictable than
a Diddy name change? His place atop our
annual list of the wealthiest hip-hop artists.
But the man formally known as Sean Combs
now has some real competition. Jay Z’s
fortune has jumped by 30 percent in the
past year after a $200 million investment
from Sprint reportedly put the valuation
of his music-streaming service, Tidal, at
$600 million, more than ten times what
he paid for the company two years ago.
Which rapper will hit billionaire status
first? Hard to say. Diddy has a lucrative
Cîroc vodka deal with Diageo, while Jay Z
augments his portfolio with a champagne
brand, Armand de Brignac, and a growing
entertainment company, Roc Nation.
—ZaCK O’maLLeY GreenBUrG
1 with nataLie rOBehmed
DIDDY 3
NET WORTH:
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dr dre: shUtterstOCK.COm; Birdman: dave KOtinsKY / GettY imaGes; tOp: mariO anZUOni / reUters
timOthY arChiBaLd fOr fOrBes (Left); diddY: edUardO mUnOZ / reUters; JaY, draKe,
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july 7, 2017 forbes india | 21
 interview
Joris Dierckx
‘The NpA Issue has
Been Recognised and
is Being Dealt With’
Joris Dierckx, country head for BNP Paribas in
India, says the BJP government’s actions have been
positive and the markets have replied suitably
By Salil Panchal
B
NP Paribas is one of the
few foreign banks in
India that commands
a strong retail banking
presence to complement wholesale
banking operations. Joris Dierckx,
the head of BNP Paribas in India,
talks about the country’s sluggish
loan market, the performance of the
government and the growth strategy
for its recently completed acquisition
of Sharekhan. Edited excerpts:
Q How has BNP Paribas fared in
the current global environment?
In the US, economic growth is
quite stable; China is recovering
and even the Eurozone’s 1.6
percent GDP growth is not bad.
The risk, in such a case, is more on
account of geopolitical factors; we
have to see how they play out.
For BNP Paribas, the group in
2016 had a €7.7 billion net profit
and that continued in the first
quarter of 2017 [the bank reported
a 4.4 percent rise in net profit to
€1.89 billion]. What’s impressive
was that the growth was strong in
corporate and institutional banking,
and there was lower cost of risk.
Q How critical is India to
the BNP Paribas group?
India is an integral part of our Asia-
Pacific region; the group is focusing
22 | forbes india July 7, 2017
on maintaining market share in retail
financing and developing consumer
finance and digital/mobile banking.
We are investing in the
Americas and APAC region; we
have successfully concluded a
big investment plan for 2013-
2016 for the APAC region and
are now in the next phase of
investment, going towards 2020.
Q How much investment
would flow towards Asia?
I would be unable to give
specifics, but there is a total
budget for acceleration of digital
transformation of €3.3 billion till
2020; of this, €70 million will go
towards Sharekhan. [BNP Paribas
completed its acquisition of the retail
brokerage firm last November.]
In India, we entered a lot of
partnerships 12 to 13 years ago. An
important evolution [in the bank’s
journey] was the APAC investment
plan, which was a response to the
change in the financial landscape
after the 2008 global slowdown.
The group decided to go deeper into
the local markets they operate in.
We are building the local balance
sheet capability. In wholesale
banking, we have become relevant
in terms of size [in India] as our
local currency balance sheet has
quadrupled in the past three years to
`30,000 crore, making us the sixth
largest foreign bank in terms of assets
[after Citibank, HSBC, Standard
Chartered, Deutsche Bank and DBS].
Q Which business areas will draw
more focus in wholesale banking?
BNP Paribas is not just a bank,
but also a mix of other businesses.
In India, wholesale banking
business forms two-thirds of
the overall business; the balance
is other financial services.
For the wholesale bank, there are
three main lines—global markets,
investment banking, and transaction
banking. In global markets, we
continue to develop; the areas of
emerging growth are towards a
more open market, with a focus on
structured products, particularly
structured derivative products.
Our institutional brokerage firm
BNP Paribas Securities Services
has a strong presence in secondary
markets. In IPOs, we have the
mandate for a few upcoming IPOs,
but we will look at a niche approach.
Q India’s loan growth
continues to be sluggish...
There is not much demand; capacity
utilisation in the industry is still
below historical averages and as long
as that remains, we don’t expect much
capex from the corporate sector.
Consequently, there is low demand
for financing. How fast this will
change depends on domestic demand.
Q How would you assess the three
years of the NDA government?
The actions of the government
have been positive and the markets
have replied suitably. The GST is
a clear example; there could be
some disruption over the short term
because it is something new, but in
the long term, it will be beneficial,
resulting in the full integration of the
Indian economy. There is progress
in the banking sector; the NPA
 Joris Dierckx,
country head
of BnP Paribas
in india
problem has been recognised and is
being dealt with. The merger of the
associate banks with its parent State
Bank of India is the first step towards
consolidation in the sector. There will
be more consolidation in due course.
Q You are one of the few
foreign banks to have gone
beyond corporate banking...
We have a whole range of business
lines available in India. Those that
form a part of our retail banking
operations—wealth management
($8.7 billion as of March 2017),
in the mutual fund space (assets
under management `6,556 crore),
bancassurance and life insurance
(BNP Paribas Cardif holds a 26
percent stake in SBI Life Insurance),
consumer finance through the joint
venture (JV) Sundaram BNP Paribas
Fund Services (loan book of `7,663
crore as on May 31, 2017) and then
the equity brokerage Sharekhan [now
called Sharekhan by BNP Paribas].
Sharekhan is India’s third
largest equity brokerage with
1.4 million customers in 500
cities. We will look to expand our
investment and savings-linked
products under the Sharekhan
“[In India] our
local currency
balance sheet has
quadrupled in the
past three years to
`30,000 crore.”
umbrella. The key will be digital
marketing and client satisfaction.
Q Why did you rework
the Geojit deal?
The proof of the group’s long-
term commitment to India was
through the JV with Geojit about
13 years ago. Sharekhan and Geojit
are complementary, in terms of
investments. [But] the independent
directors of Geojit had concerns
over conflict of interest in the
two investments we made. We
acknowledged their concerns,
although we did not agree with them,
and decided to step out of the day-to-
day management of Geojit. We gave
up the rights for representation on
Mexy xavier
the board and in management, and
will just be the largest shareholder
in Geojit (33.4 percent).
July 7, 2017 forbes india | 23
 das capital
Many bank business models are in need of major reforms which are politically difficult to implement
BaNkiNg PrOBLems reDux
Highly leveraged global banks could trigger another doom loop; whether
governments have the financial capacity for one more bailout is uncertain
By Satyajit DaS
today, there are over $3 trillion in
stressed loan assets globally, compared with
around $1 trillion of US sub-prime loans
in 2008, which was the catalyst for the
financial crisis. The World Bank estimates
that the current ratio of non-performing
loans (NPLs) to total gross loans is around
the 2009 levels of 4.2 percent.
European banks have around euro 1.2
trillion of problem loans. Italian banks alone
have an estimated euro 360 billion of NPLs,
or around 20 percent of its GDP. Italian
NPLs comprise around 15 percent of total
loans in the country, compared with around 5 percent in the
US during the 2008 banking crisis.
Banking systems in many other advanced economies
also face increasing risks. Loans are supported by artificial
collateral values, especially real estate and equity, are
inflated by unconventional monetary policies. Debt
sustainability is based on artificially-maintained low interest
rates and any normalisation of rates could threaten the
solvency of over-indebted borrowers.
NPL problems are also apparent in emerging markets,
especially India, China and Brazil. India’s stressed
loans total more than $150 billion, or over 15 percent of
bank assets. The problems are driven by over-leveraged
borrowers, including state-owned enterprises, family-
owned conglomerates, as well as infrastructure concerns—
government-driven trophy projects with dubious economics
to which state-owned banks are pressured to lend.
China’s official bad debts are under 2 percent of
total credit and if ‘special mention’ loans are included,
around 6 percent. However, estimates say it could be
as high as 15-16 percent. Studies by the International
Monetary Fund indicate there are $1.3 trillion of risky
loans, with potential losses equivalent to 7 percent of
GDP, lower than other forecasts which peg it at as much
as 20 percent of GDP.
Old and New Causes
Traditional banking crises are caused by bad lending, often
to an individual sector, most commonly real estate. Lending
to leveraged buy-outs and telecommunications contributed
24 | forbes india July 7, 2017
to the 1994 and 2001 crises, while real
estate lending was responsible for the 2008
problems.
The current problems have some similar
causes. Banks have significant exposures to
the troubled resource sector, to emerging
markets and to overvalued housing markets.
Lending to the energy sector alone amounts
to around $3 trillion, where borrowers are
struggling to service debt in an environment
of falling commodity prices, weak growth,
overcapacity, rising borrowing costs and (in
some cases) a weak currency. Banks in the
US, Canada, some European countries, Asia, Australia and
New Zealand are exposed to over-valued property markets.
There are also some non-traditional factors contributing
to banking instability. A weak recovery from the 2008 crisis
is a problem. In advanced economies like Italy, low growth
and deflation rather than aggressive real estate lending are
driving loan stresses; in other European countries, it is the
byproduct of a lack of global competitiveness exacerbated
by the effects of a single currency.
Since 2009, official policies have targeted expansion of
bank lending to increase growth and inflation. With safe
assets offering low returns, risk in the financial system has
risen. Seeking higher returns, banks have financed less
credit-worthy borrowers. Abundant liquidity has increased
asset prices and banks have lent against this overvalued
collateral. Low rates have allowed weak borrowers to
survive. This has encouraged a persistent failure to address
asset quality problems, by writing off bad loans.
In developing economies, strong capital inflows, seeking
higher returns or fleeing depreciating currencies, has
encouraged increases in leverage. State policies encouraging
debt-funded investment or consumption to create economic
activity has also led to banking problems.
Doom Loop
Banking sector problems can trigger a familiar doom loop.
Banks are highly leveraged, around 10-12 times; hedge funds
are leveraged 3-5 times on average. This means a small loss
can wipe out a significant portion of their capital, increasing
the risk of insolvency; for example, a loss of 5 percent of
banking assets can reduce the capital buffer by half.
In advanced economies, many banking systems are large
relative to the real economy. They are vital in facilitating
payments and supplying the essential credit. Any disruption
results in a real economic slowdown.
Banks are networked both domestically and globally
through inter-bank borrowing and lending and derivative
transactions. Problems at one bank can quickly spread,
affecting other firms and the financial system. International
banks, primarily European ones, are exposed by varying
degrees to Italian banks and sovereign debt as well as to
other weaker European issuers. These banks have a more
than euro 500 billion exposure to Italy, with French and
German banks holding a large proportion of this.
Bank deposits, bonds and shares act as other channels
for transmission. Principal
losses, deferral of interest
payments or cut in dividends
affect investors. Loss of
wealth and income affects real
consumption. Public finance
problems flow as governments
and central banks are forced
to support banks to prevent
failure of essential payment
and credit flows.
No Quick-Fix
Solution of banking crises
requires strong earnings,
capital infusions, isolation
of bad loans, and industry
reforms. But the ability of
banks to earn their way out of
the crisis to allow losses to be written off is limited. Many
troubled banks have low profitability, which is compounded
by the current monetary policies. Low and negative interest
rates lower banking profitability as banks are unable to cut
deposit rates to the same extent as lending rates because of
the need to maintain deposits and comply with regulatory
requirements for stable funding.
Traditionally, banks have built capital by earning the
margin between low deposit rates and safe, long-term fixed
rate assets, such as government bonds. Today, the term
premium, the difference between short- and long-term
rates, has collapsed, reducing this option.
Access to new capital may be limited. Several structural
factors have created uncertainty about the long-term future
of banks and may have reduced available returns, reducing
the attraction for potential investors. Many bank business
models are in need of major reforms, entailing consolidation
and cost reductions that are unlikely to be embraced by
governments fearing job losses and lack of competition.
Poor institutional and legal frameworks, especially
inefficient bankruptcy procedures, are barriers to new
investments in banks or distressed assets. Emerging market
procedures for dealing with corporate restructurings
are complex. There is reluctance to foreclose because of
politically difficult business closures and job losses.
Political factors are impeding the recapitalisation of
banks. This can be seen in Italy. Resolution of insolvent
banks under EU procedures require progressively writing
down equity, subordinated debt and senior debt, protecting
only insured deposits. However, “bailing in” creditors
would result in writing down around euro 200 billion of
securities held by retail investors in part due to a quirk of
the tax code. Further write-downs would create political
difficulties for the government.
At the same time, EU banking
regulations and budgetary and
debt limits make it hard for the
government to intervene.
After the 2008 crisis, new
banking regulations were
introduced to make the system
safer and eliminate the need
for a future taxpayer-financed
bailout. The success, or
failure, of the new regulatory
regime will not be known
until the next crisis. But in a
major crisis, governments and
public funds are still likely to
be required to guarantee the
payment system and supply
of essential funding for the
economy. Whether governments have the financial capacity
to do that and if the public is willing to countenance another
bailout is uncertain.
same again
A new banking crisis will be significant. For example,
European banks alone may need euro 150-900 billion
in new capital. Given that they are significant owners of
sovereign debt and the main source of lending to the small-
and mid-sized companies, which make up 70 percent of the
economy, banking problems represent a major source of
continued economic instability.
chaitanya dinesh surpur
In modern economies, the financial system acts as a
reservoir of a deadly pathogen—bad debts—which is spread
by banks, creating financial crises. A new such episode may
be beginning.
(Satyajit Das is a former banker. His latest book is Age of Stagnation.
He is also the author of Traders, Guns & Money and Extreme Money.)
July 7, 2017 forbes india | 25
 CROSS BORDER
glOBal gamE ChangERS

The
Wizards
From Oz
Enterprise software giants
use armies of salespeople
to hawk imperfect products
and endless updates. The
two Australian billionaires
behind Atlassian have
built smarter tools that sell
themselves. Just ask Tesla,
Snapchat, NASA and the
entire Ivy League
by Noah Kirsch

F
resh off the red-eye from San
Francisco, Mike Cannon-
Brookes enters a rented
office space in Midtown
Manhattan to seal the biggest deal
in his company’s history. Dressed
in a Detroit Tigers T-shirt and blue
baseball cap, he greets the room in
an undulating Australian twang.
Seated around a conference table are
executives from his collaboration-
software firm, Atlassian, which is
in the final push to acquire Trello, a
smaller competitor whose founder,
Michael Pryor, is also present.
For four hours, Cannon-Brookes
relentlessly sells the importance
of achieving scale and the benefits
of uniting their rival firms.
Pryor is convinced. One month
later, in January 2017, Atlassian will

26 | forbes india july 7, 2017

 Atlassian has no
sales staff. Yet it
has 85,000 clients
who pay for access
to its software

officially acquire Trello in a $425

million deal that will help send
company shares up 47 percent in
four months and add $820 million to
the fortunes of Cannon-Brookes and
his co-founder, Scott Farquhar. The
37-year-old Aussies, who dress more
like off-duty surfers than top-flight
executives, are worth $2.6 billion each.
That ascent has vastly outstripped
the pair’s humble objective when
starting Atlassian in 2002: Dodging
a lifetime of corporate IT drudgery.
“Our aspirations were literally just to
not get a real job,” Farquhar admits,
“and to not have to wear a suit.”
Those aims thoroughly satisfied, they
have managed to reach a few extra
milestones as well: A blockbuster IPO
in 2015, annual revenues approaching
$600 million and status as one of
the most successful technology
startups in Australian history.
The founders, who serve as
Atlassian’s co-chief executives, freely
acknowledge the improbability of
their meteoric rise. “I think we’re
completely under-skilled and under-
experienced for the job that we’re
in,” Cannon-Brookes deadpans.
But despite the self-effacement,
they have unquestionably built a
highly disciplined business with
a continually expanding global
footprint. What began as Jira, a
JamES hORan fOR fORBES

bug-tracking tool for software

Mike cannon-brookes developers, has since morphed into
(left) and scott Farquhar over a dozen collaboration products
started atlassian to avoid
getting “real jobs” after used by many of the world’s most
college. half of australia’s prominent innovators, including
computer science grads
apply to their company NASA, Snapchat, Twilio and Spotify.

july 7, 2017 forbes india | 27

 CROSS BORDER glOBal gamE ChangERS
Atlassian has 85,000 customers
who pay as little as a few dollars per
person per month for access to its
software. Confluence, its knowledge-
sharing app for teams, is its most
popular after Jira. Other products
include Bitbucket, an online repository
for storing code; Bamboo, a technical-
workflow interface; and Hipchat, a
messaging service that competes with
Slack. Trello, the latest addition, is a
project-management tool that helps
Atlassian further appeal to individuals
and smaller, less technical teams.
In essence, Atlassian has taken
on the unsexy mission of bridging
organisational and communication
gaps. If the back-end seems dry,
the applications are anything but.
When developing the software
underpinning Tesla’s electric car, Elon
Musk turned to Atlassian. SpaceX
is using its software to coordinate
coding teams and rocket scientists,
and NASA relied on it to help plan
the Curiosity Rover’s mission to
Mars. The customer list extends
further: Airbnb, BMW, BlackRock,
Sotheby’s, Paypal, all eight Ivy League
universities and 85 percent of the
100 largest companies in America.
That success has come despite
Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes’
insistence on skirting industry norms.
Atlassian has no sales staff, unheard
of in the hypercompetitive world
of enterprise software. And in an
era when some tech leaders helm
more than one multibillion-dollar
venture (Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk),
the co-founders are the conspicuous
aDRian ShERRatt / nEwSCOm; Sam Kang li / BlOOmBERg
duo leading a single entity.
Growth has come easily so far, but
the pressure is on for Atlassian—which
posted just a $4.4 million profit last
year—to prove it deserves its $8 billion
market cap. And as it ventures further
from its technical core competency,
competitors are anything but idle.
Smaller startups like Slack and Asana
are nibbling away at market share,
while industry giants like Microsoft
pose a persistent threat from above.
Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes,
28 | forbes india july 7, 2017
GLobAL
GAme chAnGers
These global business leaders are changing industries and lives around the
world. To make our list, leaders needed to run for-profit operations that are
growing and innovating better than their peers. They also needed to have
market values of at least $1 billion. —Edited by Lauren Gensler
mukesh AmbAni, 60
ChaiRman, reliaNce iNd.*
inDia
Connectivity
Bringing the internet to India’s
masses. Oil and gas tycoon entered
the country’s telecom market,
offering fast internet at dirt-cheap
prices. Gained 100 million custom-
ers in six months. “Anything and
everything that can go digital is
going digital. India cannot afford to
be left behind.”
Ziv AvirAm, 58
AmnOn shAshuA, 56
CO-fOunDERS, Mobileye
iSRaEl
autos
Making cars smart and safe.
Mobileye is a leading provider of
camera-based assisted-driving sys-
tems. Now building maps that use
crowd-sourced data from millions
of vehicles to give cars human-like
decision-making skills. Intel is buying
the company for $15 billion.
sTeWArT
buTTerField, 44
CO-fOunDER, slacK
unitED StatES
workplace communication
Messaging platform Slack is now
evolving into something of a cor-
porate nervous system at scores of
businesses. Next: Leverage Artificial
Intelligence to automate mind-
numbing office tasks.
JOhn And PATrick
cOllisOn, 26, 28
CO-fOunDERS, stripe
unitED StatES
Digital payments
The Irish brothers made it effortless
for merchants to accept online and
mobile payments. Stripe processes
billions in transactions every year in
25 countries. Its new business-in-a-
box product, Atlas, will help coun-
tries like Cuba leap into ecommerce.
JAmes dYsOn, 70
fOunDER, dysoN
unitED KingDOm
home appliances
Inventor who built a better, bagless
vacuum before turning his attention
to hair dryers, fans and now batter-
ies. Recent success: A battery-pow-
ered vacuum that took 17 years and
1,000-plus prototypes to finish.
scOTT FArquhAr, 37
mike cAnnOn-
brOOkes, 37
CO-fOunDERS, atlassiaN
auStRalia
Business productivity
See story, page 26.
“batteries are
quite exciting and
sexy things.” lArrY Fink, 64
-James Dyson, Dyson CO-fOunDER, blacKrocK
unitED StatES
money management
With $5.4 trillion in assets, Black-
Rock dominates ETFs and is strong
in both active and passive strategies.
Fink is using his firm’s vast share-
holder positions to press boards for
better behaviour in areas of execu-
tive pay, climate-risk disclosure and
boardroom diversity.
ken FrAZier, 62
CEO, MercK
unitED StatES
Cancer treatment
When Frazier took over Merck, it
was scandal-plagued and had few
promising experimental drugs. Now
it rivals Bristol-Myers Squibb in a
new class of cancer drugs (including
the one that saved Jimmy Carter)
that amp up the immune system.
“A long-term approach should not be
confused with an infinitely patient one.”
-Larry Fink, BlackRock
(*Reliance Industries owns Network 18, the publisher of Forbes India)
unified in their drive to fend off such
dangers, began their lives on disparate
trajectories. Cannon-Brookes, the
son of an English investment banker,
spent much of his youth jetting
between Sydney and a ritzy British
boarding school. He bought his
first computer using airline miles
and decided to pursue a career in
technology on a whim after being
accepted into a prestigious business
and computer science scholarship
programme at the University of
New South Wales (UNSW).
Farquhar, meanwhile, was raised
in a home with far more modest
means. His mother worked at Target
and later McDonald’s, his father at
a service station, and he acquired
his first computer after his dad’s
business threw it away. He too
landed at UNSW as part of the same
scholarship cohort, one of a few
dozen standout students offered an
annual stipend of roughly $9,000.
Despite their differences, the pair
TAAveT hinrikus,
36; krisTO
GLobAL
käärmAnn, 36 GAme chAnGers
CO-fOunDERS,
traNsFerWise
unitED KingDOm
money transfers
Uses peer-to-peer technology to GAbe neWell, 54
challenge the world’s largest banks CO-fOunDER, ValVe
and giants like Western Union in the
$3 trillion consumer money-transfer
unitED StatES
Videogames
business. Transferwise matches buy- In 2004, his company released
ers and sellers in over 70 countries.
Steam, a digital distribution platform
that became one of the videogame
industry’s most important sales
“The future of
rOberT kATZ, 50
channels. Valve is also leading the
communications way into the cutting-edge world
CEO, Vail of virtual reality after the release in
will be written 2016 of the Vive, a VR headset.
unitED StatES
Ski resorts in software by
Transformed Vail into a global ski
the developers
enterprise with new locations from
JOhn Overdeck, 47
Vermont to Australia, and casino-
style data-driven marketing. His all-
of the world.”
dAvid sieGel, 55
access season pass, priced at a low -Jeff Lawson, Twilio
$859, is crushing competitors and CO-fOunDERS,
reducing cyclicality. Chip-equipped tWo sigMa
lift passes collect data on its skiers. unitED StatES
hedge funds
Math geeks who built the fastest-
growing big hedge fund on the
dAvid kOnG, 62 planet by rounding up hordes of
information and using algorithms to
fOunDER, NirVaNa asia detect patterns of irrational pricing.
malaySia Two Sigma, which now manages
funerals $46 billion for investors, harnesses
On a continent starved for space, 35 million gigabytes of data from
Kong sells tiny lockers for human
remains in ornate columbaria where
10,000 different sources.

developed a fast affinity. “He just
seemed like a really good bloke,”
Cannon-Brookes recounts with
signature nonchalance. Nevertheless,
they spent most of their college
years working on separate projects:
Cannon-Brookes on a couple of mildly
successful startups, and Farquhar, like
many of his classmates, as an unhappy
intern at a technology consulting firm.
They finally teamed up during
their last year as undergraduates after
Cannon-Brookes sent an email to a
handful of classmates seeking partners
for a new startup. The company
would provide third-party support for
a Swedish software firm. Farquhar,
eager to avoid another consulting
stint, was the only person to sign on.
After graduating, they huddled in
their respective bedrooms, working
to cultivate clients under the banner
Atlassian—named for the Greek titan
Atlas, who holds up the heavens.
But the third-party-support model
proved difficult to scale, so they test-
drove a number of other projects: A
mail-archiving tool, a knowledge-
relatives can pay respects and even
enjoy a meal. “Demand for a better
service was evident,” says Kong, who
despised burying his father-in-law in
a neglected public cemetery. (Others
face a lottery or all-out ban on land
burials.) Nirvana runs cemeteries
and columbaria across Asia and
peddles services door-to-door.
JeFF lAWsOn, 39
fOunDER, tWilio
unitED StatES
mobile apps
Has empowered some 40,000 cus-
tomers, including giants like Airbnb
and Salesforce, to enhance their
apps with voice, text and video mes-
saging. Its usage-based pricing sys-
tem has saved businesses millions,
obviating the need for hardware or
costly prepackaged solutions.
AdAm neumAnn, 38
CO-fOunDER, WeWorK
unitED StatES
Office space
Rents out co-working space, with
perks like arcade rooms and on-site
beer kegs, in 44 cities around the
world. “The need for human connec-
tion is more important than ever,”
says Neumann, who has amassed
100,000 members.
“Our mission:
To create a world
where people work
to make a life, not
just a living.”
-Adam Neumann,
WeWork
“These systems get better year after year.
Our brains are only as good as they are.”
-David Siegel, Two Sigma
ZhOu qunFei, 47
fOunDER, leNs
techNology
China
Displays
Developer of super-slim glass
screens on iPhones. Started in a
factory as a teenager and was
tapped by Motorola in 2003 to help
it replace its scratch-prone plastic
screens. Took Lens Technology pub-
lic. A $9 billion net worth makes her
the richest self-made woman.
michAel rAPinO, 51
CEO, liVe NatioN
tim PannEll; JamEl tOPPin; thOS ROBinSOn / gEtty imagES
unitED StatES
Entertainment
The king of live music. Put on
concerts in 40 countries last year
and is dominant in ticket sales via
Ticketmaster. Rapino has also made
a land grab for festivals, including
Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Electric
Daisy Carnival, and is behind big
tours, including those by U2,
Madonna and Jay Z.

july 7, 2017 forbes india | 29

 CROSS BORDER glOBal gamE ChangERS
management product and Jira,
designed to help coders track bugs.
Jira was the first to gain traction,
so they scrapped the other ideas
and went all in. There was only
one possible business model. “Our
software didn’t do very much to start
with, so we couldn’t sell it for much
money,” Farquhar explains. “If you
aren’t going to sell it for much money,
you need to sell a lot of it. To sell a
lot, it needs to be sold globally. And if
you sell globally, it’s got to sell itself
online.” So Atlassian put Jira on the
Web and largely let customers find it
on their own. Among their first clients
was American Airlines, which bought
a thousand dollars’ worth of software
without ever speaking to the Atlassian
team. “American Airlines was the first
company that just sent us some money
and said, ‘We want the software’,”
Cannon-Brookes says. “That was a
pretty big moment. Obviously, we’ve
continued to see that model.”
That low-cost approach gave
the company a positive cash flow
from the get-go, allowing Cannon-
Brookes and Farquhar to make
outsize investments in research and
development and to pay early hires
in cash rather than forfeit equity.
Buoyed by organic growth,
Atlassian took no outside capital until
2010, when Accel Partners invested
$60 million at an estimated $400
million valuation. By the next funding
round—a $150 million infusion led by
T. Rowe Price in 2014—its valuation
had soared to $3.3 billion, and its
unassuming, shaggy-haired co-CEOs
were billionaires. The following
year, the company went public
with a $4.4 billion market cap, and
their fortunes swelled even more.
The founders downplay their
riches, citing job creation as a more
meaningful metric. But belying their
low-maintenance public personas are
tOP: miChaEl gRECCO
some decidedly ten-figure trappings.
Cannon-Brookes speculates in Bitcoin
and invests in sci-fi passion projects.
In March, he sought to alleviate
South Australia’s power crisis with
30 | forbes india july 7, 2017
mOhAmmed
bin sAlmAn, 31
deputy croWN priNce,
1,
SauDi aRaBia
Energy
Rebooting Saudi Arabia’s economy
by taking measures to wean it off
oil, from raising taxes and reducing
subsidies to slashing over-the-top
perks for those on the government’s
payroll. He is also leading the charge
for the world’s largest IPO, the state-
owned oil behemoth Aramco.
PAulO cesAr de
sOuZA e silvA, 61
CEO, eMbraer
BRazil
manufacturing
Pioneered a now widely used
outsourcing model by plucking
parts from companies like GE and
Honeywell and then assembling
in Brazil. Came to dominate the
regional plane industry with its sleek
and spacious E-Jets, which it sells to
70 airlines in 50 countries.
evAn sPieGel, 26
CO-fOunDER, sNap
unitED StatES
Social media
Got the world hooked on disappear-
ing photo and video messages. Snap
has 158 million daily active users
who check the app an average of
18 times a day. Instagram and Face-
book are copying. Offers a host of
innovative mobile ads, like allowing
brands to sponsor filters.
JudY WenhOnG
TOnG, 46
CEO, caiNiao
China
logistics
Masterminding a vast collaborative
logistics network for Alibaba and
others. The onetime secretary is
maestro over a data-backed central-
information system that delivers 57
million packages in 224 countries a
day. “We work with local partners
and empower them with our data
and computing ability,” Tong says.
the help of Elon Musk, engaging
in a round of high-profile Twitter
diplomacy in a bid to import a 100
megawatt-hour Tesla battery farm (a
plan that has so far gone nowhere).
For his part, Farquhar recently
paid $52 million for a 154-year-old
seven-bedroom New South Wales
estate that features a harbourside
tennis court, reportedly Australia’s
priciest home purchase ever.
hAmdi
ulukAYA, 44
GLobAL fOunDER, chobaNi
GAme chAnGers unitED StatES
yoghurt
Turkish immigrant popularised
Greek yoghurt in the US. Started
in an old Kraft factory, his Chobani
yoghurt eventually took off, and
today the company is raking in
$1 billion in sales per year. Ulukaya
gave away a tenth of Chobani’s
equity to his workers and is actively
hiring refugees.
chenG Wei, 34
fOunDER, didi chuxiNg
China
Ride sharing
Saved China from Uber’s grasp by
defending the ride-sharing com-
pany’s home turf. “It was an epic
battle,” says Wei, a nicer, humbler
version of Travis Kalanick. Didi
amassed 300 million users across
China in four years and just added
“snap is a camera another $5 billion in funding to its
war chest.
company. We’re
at the beginning
of what cameras
chrisTO Wiese, 75
can do.”
ChaiRman, steiNhoFF
-Evan Spiegel, Snap SOuth afRiCa
Bargain shopping
The African retail tycoon made
an end run on big urban-market
competitors by targeting rural
and low-income areas with rock-
bottom prices and everyday items.
His central distribution system
also made more efficient work of
stocking shelves. Wiese presides
over Africa’s largest retail empire
and has 11,000 stores spread across
30 countries.
Anne WOJcicki, 43
CO-fOunDER, 23aNdMe
unitED StatES
Personal genomics
When the FDA told 23andMe to
stop marketing its test, it looked
“it was an
like the company was toast. But
epic battle.” Wojcicki has worked to get the
product back on the market and
-Cheng Wei, Didi Chuxing, deploy the company’s genetic-data
troves for drug development, too.
on beating Uber in China
With a lifetime of cash already
stockpiled, the two are focussed on
making Atlassian an indispensable
tool of enterprise that will catalyse
many of the next generation’s most
profound innovations. The Trello
acquisition, then, is simply phase one
of a master plan. “In ten years’ time
we’ll still be young and doing the job
at 47,” Cannon-Brookes says. “We
think about the world in decades.”
 GenNext
THE BATON
CARRIERS
T
his is as good a time as
any for gen-nexters to
prove themselves true
leaders in their family
businesses. The dark
storm clouds, which
formed some of the toughest years for
India Inc between 2009 and 2014—
with a heady mix of funding and
capital raising concerns, weakening
consumer demand and subdued
earnings—appear to be thinning.
Though challenges still persist for
some of India’s largest lenders, several
businesses in the consumer goods,
automobile, financial services and
commodity-led cyclicals have shown
profit growth in the March-ended
quarter of FY2017. Their businesses
are continuing to grow, innovate and
it is in this space that Forbes India
32 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017
leaders
By Salil Panchal
found some of the brightest and most
inspiring next-generation leaders.
For this second edition of the
Forbes India GenNext special, we
asked, like last year, the following
questions in order to arrive at
the selection (which, needless
to say, is just a sampling of the
entrepreneurial stars in India’s
family business firmament).
 Have the GenNext leaders working
in a family-owned business given
their business a fresh impetus, in
terms of strategy or innovation?
 Has the GenNexter introduced
processes or expanded into
new areas of opportunity that
have helped boost growth?
 Or has he or she made a
mark outside of the family-
run business, keeping the
entrepreneurial legacy alive?
The 11 names profiled in
the following pages threw up
the right answers to at least
one of the three questions.
Typically, family-controlled
businesses—many of which are led
by revered but aging patriarchs—
have had to grapple with decisions
surrounding innovation, strategy,
leadership, governance, succession
and even survival. But, unlike in
the decades gone by, promoters of
well-oiled businesses are starting
to understand that their children,
if they are to become leaders and
head vast empires, should not be
mollycoddled. And they are not.
Take the case of 34-year-old Laksh
Vaaman Sehgal, son of billionaire
Vivek Chaand Sehgal who co-founded
the auto parts giant Samvardhana
Motherson Group. His childhood
and education was largely overseas
but he came back to join the family
business. His father, known to adopt
a hands-on and direct approach to
business, pushed his son right into the
vortex of trouble—to head an ailing
UK-based mirror manufacturing
company they had just acquired. In
less than a year, Laksh came out with
flying colours, which in fact helped
the group climb out of troubled
times in late 2009. Today Laksh is
strengthening what he thinks could be
the areas of new growth, in innovation
and technology. (See story, page 48)
Avni Biyani, 27, has proved
as enterprising. Starting out as
one who simply “shadowed” her
illustrious father Kishore Biyani,
known for pioneering organised
retail in the country, at various
meetings, Avni is now the concept
head at Foodhall, the Future Group’s
gourmet, premium food retail chain
and building it fast and strong. (See
story, page 34). It isn’t far-fetched
to say that Avni is steadily building
her own brand within the group.
One of the strongest attributes of
Generation Next is that it is willing
to take more risks and is flexible in
tweaking ideas that have not worked.
Tarun and Nikhil Sawhney of
Triveni Engineering & Industries,
due to the nature of their family-
led business—sugar production and
making turbines—find themselves
in a tough space. Just maintaining
efficiency is helping both siblings
grow the empire their father Dhruv
set up. (See story, page 44)
Some leaders have risen out of
adversity and personal loss. Take
the case of Neil Parekh, CEO and
director of PPFAS, who took charge
of the business after his father Parag
Parekh, who founded the firm, passed
away. His approach has no frills:
He has simply kept the business
lean, nimble and profitable. And it
has worked. (See story, page 40)
There are a few tricky elements
to determine the success of GenNext
within their family-led businesses.
It is not just about talent, ambition,
doing something different or
passion of the new generation.
It is also about the family
managing a smooth transition—of
business ideas, values, practices
and leadership—from the previous
generation to the new one.
This is still a work-in-progress.
The PwC India Family Business
Survey 2016 (which spoke to 102
family-led businesses) showed that
while about 85 percent of those
surveyed had a mechanism to deal
with conflict, only about 15 percent
had a robust and well-documented
plan to manage succession.
The PwC report found this
to be an “alarming finding” that
needed to be addressed, given
that about 40 percent of family
businesses across the globe will be
passing on the business to the next
generation in about five years.
Further, there are also business
practices relating to strong corporate
governance and keeping an arm’s
length distance between ownership
and management which are critical
to making the business work.
Industrialist Adi Godrej had warned
in an earlier interview to Forbes India
about the longevity of the family-
business model; that India will see
fewer and fewer pure family-run
businesses, considering that for
several of them the ownership is
widening and, in other cases, more
professionals are joining the boards
illustration: sameer pawar
of companies. This is part of a natural
evolution and large corporates across
the United States and Europe have
already transitioned towards this.
It does however make the role of
GenNext in the family-led business, or
in their own ventures, more critical.
juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 33
GenNext
l
e

Avni BiyAni:
a
d

The
e
r
s

FuTure
Is here
Daughter Avni has
successfully scaled up
the most premium
offering from retail king
Kishore Biyani’s stable.
And she’s just begun

By Shruti VenkateSh

T
he first time Avni Biyani
imported tomatoes from
the Netherlands to sell at
Foodhall, her mother threw
a fit. “When I told her they cost
`2,500 per kg, she thought I had gone
crazy. She told my father no one will
buy it. But he was so proud of it that
he went around telling people. He
still does that because, for him, it is
value addition at its best,” she says.
You could attribute the words
to a fond, indulgent father, but
Kishore Biyani surely knows a
thing or two about retail. The was much higher than a Food Bazaar brand, a distinct light blue and brown,
founder and CEO of Future Group Gourmet and we were toying with the and the tagline ‘for the love of food’
had pioneered organised retail idea where customers could come and and just gave it to a team to handle.”
in the country. Under him, the shop in an unhurried environment, Today, Avni, concept head of
Future Group operated diverse where ‘deals’ were not available,” Foodhall, has scaled the number of
retail formats—Big Bazaar, Central, says Avni, 27, seated in her tenth- stores to seven, in cities including
Brand Factory, Pantaloons (since floor office at the Future Group’s Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru and
sold to the Aditya Birla Group)— headquarters in Mumbai’s Vikhroli. Gurugram. Under her leadership,
and was dabbling in a slightly- That’s how Foodhall, a premium the store has successfully positioned
premium concept, Food Bazaar food superstore, came along. The itself as a gourmet, premium food
Gourmet, with moderate success. first outlet was set up in Palladium retail chain which, retail analysts
But when the Ruias (who own mall in Lower Parel in May 2011 say, is the only such offering in
Mumbai’s upscale Palladium mall) and, in 10 days, Avni, who had just India. The number of stock-keeping
wanted a store that would cater to returned to India after completing units has increased to 6,500 from
an upwardly mobile segment, Biyani her graduation from New York 2,000. While the company refuses
knew he had to look beyond Food University (NYU) in sociology and to divulge revenues, it does disclose
Bazaar Gourmet. “The Ruias were political science, joined the team. that the business broke even in 2014,
encouraging us to do something that “My father chose the colour for the is profitable and has been growing

34 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017

 biggest learning about the sector she
Soon after joining
Foodhall, Avni Biyani operates in came from a year’s gap
realised there are between the opening of the first and
customers willing to
pay a premium for second store. “We started looking into
quality products every cuisine and every product in
every country and realised there is so
much one can do with cheese, meat,
fruits and vegetables,” says Avni.
This was also the time she
realised that there is a discerning
customer who is willing to pay
a premium for quality products
from across the world. It would be
a classic case of demand
meeting supply, she felt.
Her instinct proved to be
right. Says Harminder Sahni,
founder and MD of retail
consultancy Wazir Advisors:
“There is a clear trend in the
market for premiumisation
of consumers. Incomes at
the top of the pyramid are
growing at a faster pace…
and they are looking for
something differentiated.”
Concurs Arvind Singhal,
chairman and MD,
Technopak, “Of the $250
billion [around `16 lakh
crore] food market in India,
premium and lifestyle food
products constitute $3 billion
and has been growing at
around 15 percent year-on-
year. The category has a huge growth
by around 14 percent every year. opportunity because there is an
“Avni would consult me a lot in evolution of the Indian consumers’
the beginning, but now she handles palate; with more exposure to
and founder and CEO, Nobby Brand
Architects. Often, scaling up comes
with a flipside: A dip in the quality of
service. Adds Gupta: “The real test for
Foodhall, too, will be to maintain the
current level of service, delivery and
customer interaction as they scale up.”
Along with its stock of premium
and imported gourmet food items,
Foodhall also runs its own bakery
and kitchen, and manages its own
supply chain. “It stocks everything,
from regular dal, aata, chawal and
ghee to the most premium
food. It has been designed
Change
quotient to complete a customer’s
shopping basket,” says Avni.
The company has also
avni Biyani
caught on to the launched a bunch of its own
‘premiumisation’ brands, which includes the
of the market
early enough to spices brand ARQA, The
take the Future House of Tea, dry fruit brand
Group’s retail
business to an Bustaan, a traditional food
audience that it range under Traditions,
wasn’t catering
to otherwise. personalised chef service
The only pre- Party Chef and gifting brand
mium retail chain
within the group, Blue Ribbon. Recently, Avni
Foodhall is not also co-founded WhisQ with
just a trendsetter
in the sector, but dessert chef Pooja Dhingra,
also within her and launched a nine-piece
father Kishore Bi-
yani’s conglom- macaron set under the brand.
erate that tracks Jay Jhaveri, COO,
the gourmet
lifestyle store to Foodhall says, “The one
glean trends. similarity between Mr Biyani
and Avni is that both are risk
takers. They have this vision about
things. She has a foresight about
what she wants to achieve and she
drives it very well with the team.”

things on her own. She brought in
a perspective which we didn’t have
and that is understanding the new
generation, new India, food culture
and global cuisine,” says Biyani, 55,
adding, “without her, we wouldn’t
have been able to create Foodhall.”
T
international cuisines, they are
beginning to experiment more.”
In the premium space, Foodhall
faces competition from retail chain
Godrej Nature’s Basket, which has
a larger scale with about 30 stores
across India, including in big cities
hat her father’s company
had the capabilities and
the network to ramp up
operations may have made the job a
tad easier. But it was only just, says
Avni. It wasn’t enough to stock the

B
usiness has been Avni’s thing
since childhood. “For as long as
I have lived, I have only visited
shopping malls and stores,” she says.
like Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru.
But analysts feel that while Nature’s
Basket has a stronger brand recall
because of its upper middle class
target, Foodhall is positioned a level
store with premium products.
While customers knew of the
products through international travels
or multiple food channels, not many
had interacted with or knew how to
Mexy xavier

She developed an interest in food higher. “The gourmet category is use them in their daily lives. Foodhall
from a few culinary classes that she more pronounced in Foodhall,” says had to be made more experiential,
took during her stint at NYU. But her Nabankur Gupta, a brand expert Avni figured. One way to do that

juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 35

GenNext
l
e
a
d
e
r
s “The whole idea is that every time
Radha KapooR Khanna
Founder and CEO, DOIT Creations
and executive director, ISDI
the Creative
entrepreneur
R this. And we take some amount
adha Kapoor Khanna, 32, decided to
try her hand at entrepreneurship only
at her father Rana Kapoor’s (MD and
CEO, Yes Bank) insistence. “I was always
creatively inclined and never into finance,”
she says. But even as an entrepreneur, she
has not cast aside her creative instincts.
Her company DOIT Creations, founded
in 2009, operates the Indian School of
Design and Innovation (ISDI) in partnership
with New York’s Parsons School of Design,
Radha’s alma mater. under ISDI, she has
also started a school of communications
in alliance with the British advertising
company WPP and a creative accelerator
programme with Microsoft Ventures.
DOIT Creations also holds the
franchisee rights for Spanish dry cleaning
chain Pressto, retails the French luxury
brand Longchamp in India and has invested
“it’S not juSt aBout wealth.
But alSo Value and impaCt.”
in Pro Kabaddi team Dabang Delhi, Hockey
India League franchise Dabang Mumbai,
and the Sequoia-backed co-working space
Awfis. All the investments have been
funded by the Kapoors’ family office Three
Sisters (a reference to Radha and her
younger siblings Raakhe and Roshini).
Amit Ramani, founder and CEO,
Awfis, says, “Radha is able to foresee
what people will require tomorrow.” And
Radha corroborates: “These businesses
are here to stay. It’s not just about wealth,
but also creating value and impact.”
—SV
36 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017
was to launch tasting counters,
buy avocado and make guacamole
seasoned to one’s taste, for instance.
a customer walks into Foodhall, the
experience should be something
else. So we celebrate a lot of days.
For instance, you can walk in and
sample a croissant if it is Croissant
Day. We need to constantly excite
customers and give them reasons to
come back,” she says. Avni is also
planning a newer format in which
customers can shop around the store
and hand over the ingredients to the
chef to have them rustle up a dish.
“The whole ambience is experiential
and luxurious, but not intimidating.”
Luxury is a key theme in Avni’s
strategy for Foodhall. She is fully
aware that not everyone is her
customer. “It is the only format
in our group where we believe
of pride in saying this, because
Foodhall doesn’t offer deals/value
in the traditional sense that other
hypermarkets offer. So while we are
a customer-centric company, we are
not necessarily customer-obsessed.”
Avni also lays an emphasis on the
way the store has been designed, with
a free-flow philosophy that allows the
customer to explore the space and
not get caught in silos. Says Vishal
Kapoor, chief design officer & concept
business head, Future Group, “The
consumer likes to explore. There are
tasting and sampling counters for
almost all products and the space
is fluid. The colour scheme is blue
and brown [to reflect the premium
value] and not too stark and white.
And Avni is involved in everything;
you will find her at board meetings
and at the store discussing even a
small shelf problem.” Design-led
thinking has been central to the
Future Group as a whole, ever since
Avni’s elder sister Ashni, a graduate
from New York’s Parsons School of
Design, joined in 2007. She currently
heads Future Ideas, which studies
consumer behaviour and comes out
with relevant product offerings,
in addition to being involved with
Future Consumer Enterprise, which
has a focus on food and FMCG.
Adding to the customer experience
are the cafés inside Foodhall’s
larger stores. “We are just trying
to build experiences and influence
the customers each time they
walk into the store,” says Avni.
The attempt to engage with the
customer also goes beyond the store—
through their website and social
media accounts that are updated
regularly with recipes, videos, and
through predictive analysis of a
customer’s shopping needs.
For all this, and to steer the
company to the next level, Avni has
roped in an industry veteran (who she
declines to name) to mentor her. “I am
not scared of seeking help. Recently,
I decided to look at the next phase of
Foodhall and the next level of growth
opportunity and relook at oneself
as a leader,” she says. For now, she
has her hands full with a number of
‘experiments’—cheese rooms to make
fresh cheese, adding a hydroponic
unit where customers can go and
pluck leafy vegetables and herbs,
and trying out the home delivery
service in partnership with Scootsy.
With so many tasks at hand, isn’t
there ever a fear of failure? Not for
Avni, who has seen her father reinvent
his business not too long ago. In 2012,
Biyani sold off his majority stake in
Pantaloons Retail to Aditya Birla
Group and also divested his stakes
in Future Capital Holdings to US-
based private equity firm Warburg
Pincus. He instead wanted to focus
on core operations by relisting the
fashion business under a new entity,
Future Fashion, growing the FMCG
business and trebling its revenues
to `75,000-1,00,000 crore by 2021.
Says Avni, “My father always
says that in his second innings, he
knew what not to do. There is so
much that needs to be done, the
only thing we need to remember
is to not repeat the mistakes.”
 Zorawar Kalra:
The Culinary
MaesTro
Zorawar Kalra has not just lived up to father Jiggs’s
status as an iconic gastronome, but has gone a step
further by adding a global edge to Indian cuisine
By KathaKali Chanda
Z
orawar Kalra has a need
for speed. When he is not
racking his brains to trump
up flavour profiles that could
shock food gods or have them in awe,
the 39-year-old can be found zipping
around Noida’s Buddh International
Circuit in his Mercedes-AMG. “I clock
good timings too,” he says. Often,
when he is at home, Kalra is fiddling
with computers. He buys the best
hardware, assembles them and amps
them up to perform at superfast speed,
so much so that the processors need
to be cooled with liquid nitrogen.
It’s no mere coincidence, then, that
speed is of essence when it comes to
expanding his F&B footprint as well.
In 2006, Kalra, back from the
US after an MBA from Boston’s
Bentley University, started Punjab
Grill as a kiosk at the food court
of Gurugram’s MGF Metropolitan
Mall. The authentic Punjabi food
that he served there “tasted great,
but lacked innovation”. He raised
some money from Lite Bite Foods
to jazz up the brand, one that
could live up to the reputation of
his author-columnist-restaurateur
father J Inder Singh ‘Jiggs’ Kalra.
in FY17, Kalra’s Massive restaurants had
revenues oF `200 Crore, a growth oF
400 perCent FroM the previous FisCal
Over the next few years, Punjab Grill
became synonymous with gourmet
North Indian food that had big, bold
flavours yet sat light on the palate.
But Kalra wasn’t resting easy
even during the heyday of Punjab
Grill. “I knew this format had a
finite life. The only way to get a
young demographic interested in
traditional cuisine was to modernise
it. Innovation was the key. People
were bored with katoris of daal with
cream on top, however fancily you
served it,” he says. In 2012, he sold off
Wrapster Foods, the parent company
that ran Punjab Grill, to Lite Bite
Foods, and, in December that year,
set up Massive Restaurants, an F&B
company that, he felt, would upend
all existing notions of Indian food and
be the last word in inventiveness.
Four years on, the company has
posted revenues of `200 crore for
FY17, a growth of 400 percent from
the previous fiscal, and also registered
“high profits” in the year (it refused
to disclose the number). It already
has five restaurant brands with 16
outlets between them, including one
in Dubai. A sixth concept, Kode, that
will serve “cuisine-agnostic, freestyle
food” has just opened in Mumbai.
Kalra, meanwhile, has become a
household face by appearing as a judge
on the fifth season of MasterChef
India. So, despite an apologetic “I’m
just kidding” that follows, you better
mark Kalra’s words when he says he
is gunning for “global domination”.
T
hat he would get into the F&B
industry was a given when
Kalra was growing up. For one,
his father—once celebrated author
and journalist Khushwant Singh’s
mentee at the Illustrated Weekly—was
an illustrious gastronome who ran
a food column at the now-defunct
The Evening News. Later, he moved
on to food consultancy, collaborating
extensively with top Indian chefs and
serving dignitaries like Princess Diana
and former US President Bill Clinton,
and authored multiple cookbooks,
including Prashad: Cooking With
Indian Masters, his seminal work.
But Sr Kalra doesn’t remember
formally grooming Zorawar to be a
restaurateur, except that travelling
with him on work assignments
exposed his elder son to a variety of
cuisines. There’s another influence
that Zorawar squarely attributes his
epicurean interests to: His Punjabi
lineage. “Even if my father was not
in the food business, it wouldn’t
be any different. We always talked
about food at home,” he says.
But what changed his approach
to food, turning his concepts inside
out and steering it in a direction
opposite to his father’s, was a visit to
El Bulli, a multi-hatted restaurant in
Spain recognised as the godfather of
haute cuisine. In 2006, Kalra went
to Spain for his honeymoon and,
without divulging as much to his wife,
dropped his father’s name to jump
the waiting list and book themselves
a table at El Bulli. The meal that
followed was the definitive moment
for his food philosophy, not in terms
of taste, but in terms of techniques
and innovation—foams, spherification,
what have you—that could be applied
juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 37
GenNext
l
e
a
to everyday restaurant food. “One
d
of the dishes I had was chicken feet
e
r
with algae that someone had picked
s up from the bed of the sea the night
before. I hated both the components
individually, but was blown away by
the innovative way in which it was
presented. I figured the taste won’t
work in India, just gimmick and no
flavour won’t survive, but I could
apply similar techniques of molecular
gastronomy to Indian
food,” he says.
The food that Change
he would plate up quotient
would be Indian in
taste, yet global in his father’s stat-
ure as an iconic
essence. Rasmalai tres gastronome and
leches, for instance: his foodie pun-
jabi lineage gave
A dessert that would Zorawar kalra a
taste like the Indian headstart in the
F&B industry. But
rasmalai but would be kalra Jr turned
prepared deploying traditional Indian
cuisine, his fa-
the Mexican ther’s forte, on its
technique of mixing head and intro-
duced molecular
three types of milk gastronomy in
and cooking it for Indian kitchens
to give it a global
24 hours. He would edge. Not only
stuff arancini balls has his father,
Jiggs kalra, be-
with the regular daal come a convert,
chawal and make but the five res-
taurant brands in
it one of the most Zorawar’s
popular vegetarian stable are
either the best
items on the menu. Or or among the
make a jalebi caviar— top lot in their
respective cat-
tiny beads of jalebi, egories, making
shaped like fish roe, him one of the
most successful
floating in pistachio restaurateurs in
rabdi and saffron the country.

foam—that could
easily become the stuff of hashtags.

K
alra set up his first venture
under Massive Restaurants,
Masala Library, in Mumbai’s
Bandra-Kurla Complex in 2014, eight
years after returning from Spain.
“One week after we launched, the first
Friday, we got 400 calls. The service
was poor, we couldn’t keep up with
madhu kapparath

the diners, but they kept coming. I

knew I had hit the jackpot,” he says.
Following the success of his fine-
dining format, Kalra expanded his

38 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017

 reach to the younger demographic
Zorawar Kalra has
turned traditional Indian with Farzi Cafe (a modern, Indian
cuisine, his father’s bistro), Pa Pa Ya (South Asian fusion),
forte, on its head and
introduced molecular MasalaBar (molecular cocktails
gastronomy in and drinks) and Made In Punjab
Indian kitchens
(fine-dining North Indian food).
While Kalra is aware that he
isn’t a chef himself, he sets an
extremely detailed brief for his team
to execute what he has on his mind.
Right from the decor (green walls
replicating those of French castles at
his bistro-style Farzi Cafe outlet in
Gurugram’s Cyber Hub), to quirky
motifs (mini red telephone booths
for cheques at Farzi and cocktails
served in lightbulbs at Pa Pa Ya) and
precise flavours (spaghetti in coconut
cream), he goes through multiple
iterations till it reaches the diner.
Saurabh Udinia, executive chef
at Massive Restaurants, recalls his
incredulous feeling when Kalra first
spoke of the jalebi caviar. “Sitting
in his office, he drew a dot on the
table and asked me if we could
make jalebi like this. It was the first
time I even thought of attempting
something like that,” he says.
Sameer Sain, co-founder and
managing partner of Everstone
Capital, which has a 37 percent stake
in Massive Restaurants, calls Kalra
the best artist in the space. “In the
whole F&B landscape, we’ve only
done one investment where we don’t
have a majority stake and where we
don’t have our own team running it.
And that’s Massive [Restaurants].”
Despite his breakneck speed of
growth, Kalra isn’t going to stop soon,
with international destinations next
on the line. He asserts there is much
to explore in the post-molecular phase
with centrifuges, magnetic stirring
and rotary evaporation, techniques
beyond the scope of “traditional
molecular”. And for every summit
that he braces to climb, he goes back
to the first day his then-traditionalist
dad had come to Masala Library for
a meal. “He ate and gave me a hug.
We aren’t the hugging kind, you see,
so that meant a lot,” he says.

juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 39

GenNext
l
e
a
d neil parikh:
In for the long haul
e
r
s

Neil Parikh, who took over PPFAS Mutual Fund after his father Parag Parikh
passed away in 2015, has kept the fund’s philosophy of value-investing intact
even as he moves the business to the digital platform
By Pravin Palande

A
round 5 pm on May 3, 2015,
Neil Parikh got the fateful
call. It was a Sunday and he
remembers watching an IPL
match between Mumbai Indians and
Kings XI Punjab. The call was from
Rajeev Thakkar—chief investment
officer of PPFAS Mutual Fund—who
was in Omaha, US, with Neil’s father
Parag Parikh, chairman and CEO of
the fund, to attend the annual general
meeting of legendary value investor
Warren Buffett’s firm, Berkshire
Hathaway. Thakkar informed Neil
that there had been an accident and
that his parents, Parag and Geeta,
had been admitted to hospital. His
father was unconscious, he was told.
Neil, now 35, did not panic.
After all, his parents had gone to
see Warren Buffett, a man Parag
Parikh deeply admired. He didn’t
believe anything could go wrong.
But when Neil told his wife
Khushboo that there had been a minor
accident involving his parents, she
asked him to immediately get more
information about the mishap. Neil
tried calling Thakkar, but couldn’t
get through. Thakkar, who had been
driving the car that was involved in
the accident, was caught up in police
inquiries and hospital formalities.
It was 3 am by the time he managed
to get in touch with Nebraska
Medical Center and got the news
that his father was no more. His
mother was in a serious condition.
Joshua Navalkar

Neil Parikh had to lead

When the founder of a firm passes
away, the first responsibility of the
new head is to bring stability to the
organisation by communicating
the PPFAS Mutual Fund
overnight after his father
passed away following a
car accident in the US

40 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017

with clients, trustees and partners.
“I suddenly realised I was the head
of PPFAS Mutual Fund and that
the next morning, I would have
to go to my office and take care
of all the responsibilities without
shedding a tear,” recalls Neil, CEO
and director, PPFAS Mutual Fund,
who was then vice president, client
relationship. He spoke with Thakkar
and “the first thing we decided was
to call a meeting of the trustees
and the board members and then
communicate to the world that Parag
Parikh had died in an accident”.
He remembers he had to make
around 200 calls to tell all the
stakeholders that his father was no
more and that his mother was battling
for her life in another country. He
then rushed to the US to complete
the formalities. There were around
200 Indians at the funeral in the
US, he says. “I did not know any of
them. They were just there because
of the goodwill of Parag Parikh,”
says Neil, who returned to India in
a week to take care of the business.
T
he fund has only one scheme
called the Parag Parikh Long
Term Value Fund, with a total
corpus of `750 crore. The scheme
is a multi-cap equity fund that can
invest up to 30 percent of its corpus
in overseas securities. Neil’s biggest
challenge was to ensure the value
system of the organisation does not
get eroded and the business remains
on the growth path. And so far, he
has succeeded in his attempt. Over
the last two years, the number of
clients has grown by 70 percent and
he has added a new distribution
strength, at the same time sustaining
growth of the business which has
been profitable since its inception.
For the financial year ended March
2017, the asset management company
(AMC) had a profit of `6 crore. This
is considered significant because
apart from the top 20 companies
in the AMC business, most of the
others struggle to make a profit even
though their AUMs (assets under
management) are greater. Today, the
top holding of the fund is Alphabet
Inc (Google Class C), HDFC Bank
and Bajaj Holdings & Investment
Ltd. Over the last three years, the
fund has returned 14.92 percent
neil is aware that
he has Big shoes
to fill, But he has
learnt the art
of Being Patient
from his father
juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 41
GenNext
l
e
a
against the Nifty 500, which has
d
returned 13 percent annually for the
e
r
same period. In the last year, though,
s the fund has underperformed the
market by returning 18.51 percent
against the 23 percent for the Nifty
500. Many analysts feel the call to
go for international equities has
not worked well for the fund.
It’s a question Neil is constantly
asked: Why, at a time when the market
is trending high, is this fund not
performing? But he is unperturbed
by such queries. “Isn’t this something
my father would do? Staying away
from a market where the valuations
are high and not participating in the
most fashionable names that are
trending at high PEs?” says Neil,
who had seen his father advising
clients during the high markets
before the dotcom crisis.
Parag Parikh at the time managed
a portfolio management scheme
(PMS)—to stay away from software
stocks that were trading at a PE
multiple of 100 times in 1999-2000.
He lost many clients during that
phase, but then the markets crashed
and the same clients returned to him.
Later, in 2007, during the
infrastructure boom, Parag Parikh
again told investors that the market
valuations were not sustainable.
Several clients decided to move out
again. Then, the markets crashed and
in the next year, the PMS business
top 10 Holdings: parag parikH long-term Value Fund
Company seCtor
Alphabet Inc. Software
HDFC Bank Bank
Bajaj Holdings & Investment Finance
Hindustan Petroleum Corp* Petroleum Products
Indraprastha Gas Gas
Balkrishna Industries Auto Ancillaries
Persistent Systems Software
Zydus Wellness Consumer Non-Durables
Mahindra Holidays Hotels, Resorts & Other Recreational
& Resorts India Activities
Century Textiles Industries* Diversified
Source: PPFAS (Data for the month of May 2017)
42 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017
was able to outperform all its peers.
It was one of Parag Parikh’s
strengths: To not get swayed by the
noise in the market and to follow his
own philosophy of value investing.
Parag Parikh, one of the earliest
value investors in the Indian market,
had been managing a PMS since
1996; this had one of the lowest ticket
sizes—of `5 lakh. In 2013, when new
laws came into effect stating that
investors into a PMS should have a
minimum investment of `25 lakh, he
decided to convert his scheme into a
mutual fund business. He wanted to
remain true to his ethos of creating
wealth for the middle-class instead
of going for high net-worth or rich
investors. His confidence was evident
in the fact that he even encouraged his
employees to invest in the scheme.
Neil, who started working with
his father in 2004 across various
departments, picked up many lessons
along the way. In 2004, PPFAS was
a broking firm with a small arm
dedicated to investment advisory
services and a PMS. Neil recalls that
some of his friends had made a quick
buck in the market, which was in a
bull run. When he told his father he
too wanted to play the market—buy
stocks and make some quick money
—Parag Parikh told him he would
end up losing because he did not
understand the pitfalls of short-term
investing. “I hope you lose money
Holding (%)
12.27
7.8
6.4
4.92
4.9
4.36
4.25
4.03
3.71
3.62
*For arbitrage
as quickly as possible. It is only after
losing money that you learn more
about the markets. This way the
market becomes your best teacher,”
he remembers his father telling him.
It didn’t take long for Neil to
lose his money. When he gave his
father the news one evening over
dinner, he educated him about value
investing and since then, Neil is a
convert. This also means he learnt to
be patient: He is now ready to hold
on when some of the investments in
his funds do not perform. He knows
he only has to wait and watch as the
tide of the market ebbs and flows.
PPFAS also believes in
diversification where it can give
above-normal returns by taking
lower risks. “We are not doing any
market timing, but are in the business
of asset allocation which provides
stable returns in various market
conditions. Our investors understand
our fund philosophy,” says Thakkar,
44, who does the heavy lifting related
to the management of the fund.
In October 2016, for instance,
the Allahabad High Court scrapped
the toll on the Delhi-Noida flyover,
which was managed by Noida Toll
Bridge, a company that the fund
held to the extent of 2.5 percent of
its portfolio. Thakkar sold off the
investment in the next week. “We
have a strong philosophy of value
investing and diversification across
the globe. But there are regulatory
risks or diversification risks that
we need to deal with. Nobody can
predict the market,” he says. “And
we are long-term investors.”
The key words are long-term value
investing. The fund’s approach has
always been to take a long-term call
on equities. Here, the fund manager
does not play momentum, but rather
stays true to his core philosophy of
investing in businesses that are solid
and have predictable cash flows. This
is an approach Neil is sticking to.
The past two years have been
tough and the memory of the first
few days at the helm is still fresh in
“we are comfortaBle losing 50% of our
clients than 50% of the wealth of our
clients. my father Believed in that.”

his mind. He was told that he was too as he is chasing a profitable AUM.
young and inexperienced to run the “I don’t mind growing slow. I’m not
business while some even advised going to pay high commissions for
him to sell it. But he wanted to take growth. We are fine with slow and
his father’s legacy forward. Parag steady growth. We might take time,
Parikh had big dreams for the mutual but then, we have all the patience,”
fund business. He wanted to take the he says, sitting behind his father’s
fund to tier 2 and 3 towns and sell desk where the only change, besides
the fund to people who had never the fact that his father’s yoga chair
even heard of equities. But he was is gone, is a computer. Parag Parikh
not interested in partnering never had a computer on his
with anybody. Neil decided desk; Neil does. He believes
ChAnge
to act along the same lines.
quotient in using technology to grow
“Neil brings a natural the business. “We look at
gravitas to the business.
He has his father’s sense
Neil Parikh be-
lieves the future
ourselves as an ecommerce
business. Everything is
of purpose in him and is ecommerce driven by technology and
and has already
he carries Paragbhai’s made the fund nobody wants paperwork
an online enter-
legacy on his shoulders prise. The fund
and that is how it is going to
comfortably,” says Vikaas operates as a be in the future,” says Neil,
Sachdeva, CEO, Enam AMC. lean company of who launched the mobile
50 people where
Aalok Mehta, an all the functions app of the fund in May
investor in the fund, adds, are outsourced. 2017 and is now working
“Parag Parikh left a deep on a web-based app to
impression on his staff and his on-board distributors and clients.
investment philosophy is going to Everything else in the office is
remain intact at the firm. I have exactly the way it was. The ambience
known him since 1986. I’m invested is the same and all the employees
in his fund and it is the only mutual believe in the product. Though it’s
fund investment I have because underperforming the markets, the
the fund house is conservative. It is fund is already into cash because the
defensive and the return is reasonable valuations are not sustainable. And
over a period of time. Otherwise even today, a lot of clients come and
I invest in stocks on my own.” tell Neil to invest in the trending
Neil is conscious of the fact that sectors, that they want the fund to
he has big shoes to fill. While Parag be more aggressive, that they want
Parikh had the personality to take the higher returns. Like in every other
fund to any new town, Neil, for now, bull market, these investors lose out.
is sticking to Mumbai, Delhi-NCR But it’s not something that bothers
and Bengaluru because he believes him. “We are comfortable losing
he understands the customer base 50 percent of our clients than 50
better and there is plenty of room to percent of the wealth of our clients.
grow. He also knows that the present It is something my father believed in
corpus of the fund would probably and I’m carrying that legacy ahead.
have been multi-fold if Parag Parikh Sometimes, not doing anything is
was still around. But the size, he the sanest thing to do, especially in
says, is not really important as long markets that trend so high.”
Aditi KothAri desAi
Head, sales and marketing,
DSP BlackRock Investment Managers
like father,
like daughter
A
t DSP BlackRock Investment Managers,
Aditi Kothari Desai religiously
preserves the organisational culture
that her father Hemendra Kothari built.
Kothari had always put his managers in the
saddle, empowering them to take decisions.
The philosophy has worked well—the
`64,177 crore (assets under management)
DSP BlackRock has outperformed
peers in almost every category.
Aditi, 41, took over as head of the sales
team at DSP BlackRock in October 2015
when the assets of the fund were around
`39,000 crore. Her decision to realign
the structure of the sales team helped
the company achieve its present size.
The size, however, does not flatter
Aditi. “Size is not as important as integrity.
It is important to be the most trusted
advisor with a focus on performance, and
aditi religiously Preserves the
culture that her father Built
size will follow,” she says. Aditi cites a
Harvard Business Review study (‘The Risky
Business of Hiring Stars’) to claim that
just 30 percent of a fund’s performance
can be attributed to ‘star’ fund managers;
the rest is due to the institution.
Says Mayana Rajani, a former consultant
with DSP BlackRock, who has known
Aditi for 17 years: “I have seen her
determination over the years. When Aditi
sets her mind to achieve something, she
sees it to its culmination. She is result-
oriented and extremely focussed.”
—PP

juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 43

GenNext
l
e
tarun sawhney and
a
d
nikhil sawhney:
e
r
Two To Tango
s
While the Sawhney brothers run disparate
businesses, they are committed to making their
companies the best run in their respective fields
By Samar SrivaStava
B
oth the Sawhney brothers
went to The Doon School
in Dehradun. Both went to
University of Cambridge
where they studied economics.
Both went to Wharton School at the
University of Pennsylvania, where
they got their MBA in finance. So how
did they decide who gets to run the
family’s sugar business and who the
turbine business? “The answer to that
is simple,” says Tarun, 43, the older of
the two siblings. “Our father decided.”
Tarun runs the Triveni Group’s
sugar business—called Triveni
Engineering & Industries Ltd; it
also has a smaller gears and water
systems business—which has seven
mills in Uttar Pradesh (UP). They
are not only among the country’s
largest sugar producers, but also
among the most efficient.
Younger brother Nikhil, 40,
is in charge of Triveni Turbine,
Bengaluru-headquartered makers of
steam-based rotating turbines that are
bought by industries for captive heat
and power requirements as well as
by renewable fuel-based independent
power producers. On its own, Triveni
makes turbines that have the capacity
tarun expectS the Sugar BuSineSS
to Bring in over `6,500 crore in
revenue over the next five yearS
44 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017
to produce 30 MW of power; in
their joint venture with GE, where
Triveni has a majority stake, it makes
turbines that can produce between
30 MW and 100 MW of power.
The two brothers took over from
their father, Dhruv Sawhney, now
73, in 2012 as managing directors of
their respective companies. Sawhney
Senior, himself a mechanical engineer
from Cambridge and a management
graduate from Wharton, had joined
his uncle’s sugar business—set up
in 1933 with one unit at Khatauli
in UP—after returning to India, in
1973. It also had an engineering
business in Naini, Allahabad, UP. In
2000, he merged his father’s sugar
mills with his uncle’s. Eventually,
the Sawhneys set up four new sugar
factories in UP in 2005-06, and
made Triveni among the top three
sugar producers in the country
in 2016-17. Although he has now
stepped back, leaving the day-to-
day operations to his sons—he is
chairman of Triveni Engineering
and Triveni Turbine—he continues
to play a key role in the international
expansion of the turbine business.
Tarun and Nikhil have strong
 Tarun Sawhney (left)
and brother Nikhil took
over from their father
in 2012 and brought
a new wave in their
respective businesses

Amit VermA

juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 45

GenNext
l
e
a
projections for growth: Tarun is the state’s price that prevails. an investor in the sugar industry
d
expects the sugar business to bring The state-advised price in UP, on condition of anonymity.
e
r
in over `6,500 crore in revenue however, had no relation with the The rise in sugar prices from
s over the next five years, up from price of sugar. For instance, when 2016 onwards has dramatically
`3,000 crore in 2017, while Nikhil sugar prices were low, mills affected the profitability of Triveni
expects the turbine business to would be in a position where they Engineering. The company, which
quadruple from the present `800 would have to pay more for cane, had lost `400 crore between
crore within the same time frame. than they would earn from selling 2012 and 2016, swung to a `233
the sugar. Consequently, they didn’t crore profit in 2017, which will
IncreasIng effIcIencIes pay the farmers on time. Arrears in allow it to pay down at least `200
It is not hard to see why Tarun has payments made the farmers plant crore of its `460 crore debt.
an unmistakable spring in his step. less cane, thus bringing down sugar And the reason for the spring in
The sugar business which had gone production and pushing up prices. Tarun’s step is because the industry is
through an extended downcycle has This would allow the mills to pay finally beginning to see rationality in
seen prices improve over the last off the arrears, which in turn would cane pricing. “The messages coming
12 to 18 months. As a result, sugar make farmers plant more cane, from Lucknow about having the
companies based in UP (those in leading to a glut, which would bring interests of stakeholders [farmers
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu down prices once again. and the industry] more aligned are
have suffered on account of The Indian Sugar Mills encouraging,” says Sawhney Senior.
a drought) have swung to
Change Association has estimated For instance, even though sugar
profits after several years of
quotient that, countrywide, the prices rose in the last 12 months, the
losses. “That, coupled with Tarun Sawhney:
mills had piled on a debt government has allowed the import
better support from the Has worked at of `60,000 crore in 2015. of only 5 lakh tonnes of sugar; in the
regulatory policy, has meant planting new past it would have allowed a lot more.
cane variet-
Operating in a regulated
that the Triveni Group’s ies with higher industry meant Triveni was Industry observers say
sugar business should see sucrose content, there is every chance that the
resulting in
not immune to the poor
much better days ahead better sugar re- economics. But, as Tarun government could implement the
before the sugar business covery. Plans to recommendations of the Rangarajan
reduce debt as
explains, even with these
reverts to the inevitable the company has limitations, the company Committee, which had asked for
downcycle,” says Tarun. seen a profitable cane prices to be linked to sugar
year after a gap
worked towards ensuring
The regulatory policies of five years. that their mills were the most prices, which would give the
he mentions are changes Nikhil Sawhney: efficient, i.e, they recover a industry a much more transparent
Has steered
that he, as president of the company higher percentage of sugar pricing mechanism. Tarun expects
the Indian Sugar Mills through a devas- from a given quantity of this to lead to consolidation in the
tating slowdown
Association, lobbied for. in demand by cane. Over the last two sector and suggests that Triveni
India’s sugar industry creating a global years, the company has would be interested in making
export market
has always been cyclical. for their prod- spent about `50 crore on further investments in their
A typical cycle lasts ucts; has made working with local farmers sugar business if the regulatory
the turbine busi-
between five and seven ness internation- towards growing cane with environment is more certain.
years with, roughly, two ally competitive. higher sucrose content. This In addition, Triveni’s mills
bad years, three average does not include the cost produce electricity from the
years and two good years. It is incurred on the company’s nutrition steam that is generated during the
in the good years that efficient information and farmer outreach processing of cane, and supply 55
mills are able to make enough programmes. Triveni sources cane MW to the grid. In FY17, it earned
money to survive the bad ones. from 1.5 lakh hectares of farms `182 crore from power generation.
With cane farmers constituting around their mills; 93 percent of this
an important vote bank, politicians land has been planted with the newer crossIng borders
are loath to upset them. This has cane varieties. These efforts have Triveni Turbine is a testament to
made cane pricing highly politicised. made Triveni’s recovery rate rise how Indian companies are capable of
Across the country, states annually to 11.06 percent from 10.8 percent, producing world-class engineering
announce a minimum price that compared to the UP industry average products. A steam turbine
mills must pay to the cane farmers. of 10.61 percent. “Operationally, manufacturer, it makes turbine blades
The Union government also Triveni’s mills are among the most that efficiently convert the enthalpy
annually announces a price, but it efficient in the industry,” says drop in steam temperatures into

46 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017

kinetic energy. Triveni’s upto-30
MW turbines have a 60 percent-
plus share in the Indian market.
(For the joint venture with GE,
Triveni consolidates the bottomline
but not the topline, in accordance
with new accounting rules.)
The lack of capacity expansion
across the sugar, power and
cement industries has resulted in
the turbine business being buffeted
by poor demand, both globally and
locally. Nikhil illustrates this by
pointing out that in 2011, overall
demand for Indian turbines was
worth `4,200 crore. That number
fell to `750 crore in 2017. “The
business has had a horrible time as
the Indian market has shrunk by
60 to 70 percent,” says Akash
Prakash, chief executive officer
of Amansa Capital, an investor in
Triveni Turbine. “Still, they have
handled the Indian downturn much
better than other capital goods
companies.” He likes the company
for its high return on equity—
more than 37 percent—as well as
its high margins of 22 percent.
With low domestic demand,
Nikhil has worked hard at
developing their products for the
global market. Triveni Turbine
has an installed base of its turbines
in more than 72 countries with
inquiries for orders from over
105 nations. It has nine service
centres in India and six overseas.
This has been a significant shift
from the India-centric business that
his father had focussed on, and in
which they then had a larger share.
“Since we have a larger installed
base, we have been getting a lot of
new business based on reference,”
says Nikhil. “The hardest part about
expanding has been to find the right
triveni turBine recently inveSted
`160 crore in expanding capacity to
manufacture 200 turBineS annually
people overseas.” Export margins
are double the 10 to 12 percent profit-
before-tax margins in the Indian
market. In addition, the company
also earns a steady `110 crore a year
from servicing the installed turbines.
Among the moats Triveni
Turbine has dug around itself over
the years are the 200 patents that it
owns. These ensure that competitors
can’t replicate their blade designs
that come about after hundreds
of hours of engineering, testing
and validation. Symbolic of the
company’s confidence is the fact
that it recently invested `160
crore in expanding capacity to
manufacture 200 turbines annually.
The company is also working on
modernising existing turbines by
retrofitting and reinstalling them.
For now, both the brothers and
their father look poised to exploit
the upturn in the sugar business
and the expected upturn in the
global investment cycle. They point
to the fact that all avenues to raise
funds are open. Also on the cards is
a demerger of the water systems and
gears business when the business
environment for these two segments
improves. They’ve also been approved
as defence contractors and are now
making parts for the indigenous
submarine programme, of which
they do not wish to share details.
So, how did they really decide
who would run which business?
Tarun, who spent the first three
years of his career at Triveni’s sugar
mills, says he is temperamentally
more suited to run the business.
Nikhil first started at the Triveni
Turbine plant in Bengaluru. “Also,
Tarun’s Hindi is better,” he quips.
So, it wasn’t Sawhney Senior
who took all the calls, after all.
ARJUN JUNEJA
Director of operations,
Mankind Pharma
reformulating
his Business
W
hen Arjun juneja joined the family
business at Mankind Pharma, it
wasn’t a cakewalk for him. “For
the first month or two, everything was
going over my head,” says Juneja, 31,
who is now director of operations at the
pharma company. He dreamt of becoming
a cricketer, but extreme competition
prompted Haryana’s state-level cricketer
to give entrepreneurship a shot. He joined
his father, Ramesh, chairman of Mankind
Pharma, and uncle Rajeev, CEO of the
company, in early 2009 when he was just 23.
Initially, juneja—who has an MBA
from the University of Strathclyde in
the uK—was put through the paces
across departments. Over the years,
his involvement has helped speed up a
change in strategy for the company.
Monika Sood, co-founder & partner
juneja now wantS to revamp
mankind’S otc Section
at Arete Advisors and leader of the
health care practice, says: “Arjun has
leveraged his education, global outlook
and understanding of operations to
drive high growth at the company.”
“The focus changed from marketing to
manufacturing,” says Ramesh. As much
as 70 percent of Mankind’s products
are now manufactured in-house as
against 30 percent in 2010. Its flagship
products include Manforce, Prega News
and HealthOk. “Going forward, I want to
revamp the OTC section too,” says Juneja.
—Paramita Chatterjee
juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 47
GenNext
l

Laksh Vaaman sehgaL:

e

RewiRing
a
d
e From turning around an
r ailing auto component
s
firm in Germany to
spearheading innovation

the
solutions at auto parts
maker Motherson Sumi,
Laksh Vaaman Sehgal is
fast stepping out of the
shadow of his illustrious

FutuRe
billionaire father

By Salil Panchal & Paramita chatterjee

F
ew in the corporate world
would have been initiated
into a family business quite
like Laksh Vaaman Sehgal
was. Let’s call it baptism by fire.
It happened in June 2009. The
top brass of Samvardhana Motherson
Group (SMG) had gathered at the
Noida headquarters for a strategy
review meeting to discuss a massively
ailing UK-based firm Visiocorp,
of 15 percent over the previous year
to notch consolidated revenues of
`41,985 crore, with profit of `1,554
crore, up by 20 percent from FY16.)
This announcement, made without
Laksh’s knowledge, was his father’s
way of initiating his son into the
business. But Laksh was apprehensive
about leading a firm, let alone with
the charge of having to pull it out of
the sick bay. The total capital invested
MSSL reported a profit of `78.05
crore and SMR reported a small
but significant standalone profit
of `9.16 crore. This was even more
creditable given that it was in the
backdrop of the global slowdown
when most of the manufacturing
activity across the world was in a
tailspin and the automobile industry
faced one of its worst crises in recent
decades due to slowing demand.

which it had just acquired. (Visiocorp,
which made rear-view mirrors for
cars, was renamed Samvardhana
Motherson Reflectec or SMR, after the
acquisition was completed in March
2009.) The UK-based company’s
losses were so sharp that they had
pushed the flagship firm Motherson
Sumi Systems Ltd (MSSL) into a
loss for the June-end quarter.
Chairman and group co-founder
Vivek Chaand Sehgal suddenly
pointed to his son Laksh Vaaman,
then just 26, and said: “You will be the
new CEO of the [ailing] company.”
“When he pointed towards me, I
actually looked back to see if someone
was standing behind me,” Laksh
recalls while speaking to Forbes India,
amit verma
in SMR at the time of acquisition
was €30 million; MSSL held a 51
percent stake in SMR while a group
firm, Samvardhana Motherson
Finance Limited, held the balance.
Laksh remembers telling his father
that he could not be the CEO as there
were several more experienced hands
who could lead better. “He laughed
and said, ‘Look at the bright side. It
[SMR] is in such bad shape that it
can’t do worse’,” the now-34-year-old
director of MSSL says. “That was a
good way to take the pressure off me.”
In fact, not only did the company
not do any worse, but in less than
a year, Laksh also managed to turn
around SMR’s business—which
conducted most of its manufacturing
I
n 2009, Laksh had returned to the
family business after completing
his master’s in finance from
Columbia University. Prior to that,
in 2003, he had worked at MSSL’s
partner firm Woco Group—which
makes rubber components—at Bad
Soden in Germany and then in
2004, in Thailand to learn quality
training on the shop floor.
The SMR turnaround was a
significant achievement. Consider its
financial health around the time it was
acquired: The `22.3 crore loss that it
posted in the quarter ended June 2009
pushed MSSL into a loss of `12.88
crore (before considering minority
interests) in that period. Even in the

after the FY17 financial results of in Germany—and navigate MSSL’s subsequent quarter, SMR reported
MSSL were announced in May 2017. financials into positive territory. For a standalone loss of `24.3 crore.
(The company has shown a growth the quarter ended December 2009, The then CEO of SMR, an

48 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017

 Laksh Vaaman
Sehgal believes his
experience as CEO
of the ailing SMR was
the game-changing
event of his career
GenNext
l
e
a
d
lapping them up SMG has integrated 19 acquisitions since 2002

e 05 08
r door trim business Gear cutting tools
Huon Corporation dagger Frost Tools
s Australia India (strategic 12
(asset purchase) business units purchase) Powdered
01 metal parts
Wiring harness 06 09 sintermetal sa
business Wiring harness Global rear-view
Spain (share
Wexford business mirror business of
purchase)
electronics ASL Systems Visiocorp
Ireland (asset UK (asset purchase) UK
purchase)

2002 2005 2006 2007 2009 2011 2012

02 10
Machined metal Interior & exterior
polymer modules
components 07 Peguform
reiner Precision rubber moulding
Germany (asset purchase) Germany
business
03 empire rubber
11
Plastic injection moulding Australia
(asset purchase) Thermoformed
G&s Kunststofftechnik GmbH polyethylene and
Germany (company purchase) blow moulded
04 components
Plastic injection Vacuform 2000
moulding (Pty) ltd
FP Formagrau South Africa
Czech Republic
(company purchase)

Source: SMG

Australian, had asked the Sehgals
for two years to effect a reversal
but Vivek Chaand Sehgal did not
agree, saying that Motherson Sumi
would not survive for six months if
losses continued to mount. Instead,
he chose to entrust his son with the
responsibility. Not only did Laksh
live up to his father’s expectations,
he also avoided the ignominy of a
possible jail term: In Germany, the
CEO is held liable and can even be
jailed if the company runs out of cash.
Not without reason does
Laksh believe that the SMR
experience was the “game
changing” event of his career.
His first move at SMR—and he
credits his father for this—was to
break down the business into units,
“The idea was if each and every unit
was profitable, the whole company
would be profitable. We also got in a
lot of financial discipline,” says Laksh,
who discussed business decisions
with his father on a daily basis during
that time. “He was there by my side
and allowed me to take decisions.”
They also got rid of all the
consultants, who were expensive and
not adding too much value, he adds.
The group also tends to not
hire people from the outside
when acquiring a company. In
the case of SMR, some of the
top management had decided to
leave, but the second rung from
Visiocorp’s original staff stepped up
to take charge of operations. And in
keeping with the group’s practice
Group more heft and added to its
roster of global customers: For
instance, MSSL’s auto components are
found in cars manufactured by some
of the automotive world’s biggest
global brands like Peugeot, Ford,
Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Toyota
and Honda. The group’s business is
spread across 75 countries; it [the
group] has made 19 acquisitions
since 2002 and it now has 39 joint
ventures and 230 factories across 33
countries, which ensures that about
84 percent of its revenues comes
from overseas and the balance from
India. And its domination of the auto
parts space is evident in the disparity
between MSSL (`41,985 crore in
revenue for FY17) and the No 2
player, Bharat Forge (`6,598 crore).

so that each manufacturing unit
operates like a separate company and
finds its own strategy to becoming
profitable. This technique helped
them keep a close watch on costs and
processes. (SMR had 16 plants and a
majority of them were loss-making).
of moving management away from
ownership, Laksh stepped away
from SMR in 2014, leaving the
management and execution in the
hands of an experienced team.
The revitalised SMR gave the $9.1
billion-Samvardhana Motherson
V
ivek Chaand Sehgal looks back
at Laksh’s initiation at SMR
with pride. “When you want
to train someone, you should throw
them into the storm. Vaaman had just
finished his master’s. It was important

50 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017

 says Pankaj Mital, MSSL’s chief part, is how the Sehgals managed
18 operating officer (COO), who has been them. Both father and son travel in
17 Illumination with the group since the early 1990s. excess of 250 days a year, meeting
Plastic solutions
moulding Kobek siebdruck Up until the late ’90s, Maruti Suzuki officials and staff at various factories
abraham and GmbH & Co KG was MSSL’s main client. As an initial and companies they have acquired,
Co ltd Germany (share
Hungary purchase) strategic move, Motherson Sumi and their customers. During the
(automotive increased the number of components heady days of the SMR acquisition,
business unit)
per car, which meant offering more Laksh claims to have flown more
products. This saw it expanding into than 2.5 million miles in 2009-10—
plastic parts, later rear-view mirrors which is more than the distance of
and then bumpers, handles, spoilers, the earth to the moon. He says he
2014 2016 2017 tail lights. “We became a company later received a congratulatory letter
which listened to what its customers from Lufthansa Airlines for this feat.
13

extruded plastic parts
scherer & Trier
Germany (asset
purchase)
14 19
Wiring harness
Plastic moulding
PKC Group Plc
Minda schenk
Germany Finland
(share purchase)
(asset purchase)
15
Wiring harness
business of
stoneridge Inc
US
16
Magneti Marelli shock
absorbers Pvt ltd
India (stake purchase)
that he needed to understand the
difference between running a group
against just [acquiring] bookish
knowledge,” Sehgal tells Forbes
India by phone from the UAE.
India’s 31st richest, according to
the 2016 Forbes India Rich List, with
a net worth of $3.6 billion, Vivek
Chaand Sehgal co-founded the group
with his mother (hence the initial
name Motherson) in 1975; it was
then into silver trading which it has
since stopped. MSSL was formed in
1986, as a joint venture between the
Samvardhana Motherson Group and
Sumitomo Wiring Systems, and was in
the business of manufacturing wiring
harnesses. These are the organised
set of wires, terminals and connectors
that run throughout the vehicle and
relay information and electric power
towards a smoother functioning.
In terms of organic growth,
Motherson Sumi saw itself as a
“not yet” company (meaning, there
was always the possibility of doing
something asked for by customers),
N
(in this case car manufacturers, truck-
and two-wheeler makers) say and ow, nearly eight years into the
require,” Mital adds. Acquisitions are business, Laksh has found his
also made based on this premise. In mojo in the form of Motherson
the mid-1990s, the company became Innovations, a firm which sources
one of the first Indian companies to innovative and technological solutions
announce a five-year sales from across the Samvardhana
target and the goal of a 40 Motherson Group, to build
percent consolidated return
Change
on capital employed (RoCE).
quotient solutions for the future.
“This allows Motherson
And it has met these targets Innovations to pick and
after turning
each time. This reflects in around the choose the best competencies
its stock performance: The fortunes of Smr and solutions in the entire
(and mSSL) in his
`66,871 crore (market cap as early years at the group and make one project
on June 15, 2017) company, group, Laksh deliver a complete solution
vaaman Sehgal
which listed in 1993, is now spear- to the car maker for new
outperformed the Nifty Auto heading the technologies. And we can do
innovations arm
Index over the last year, with of the company; that in ways the individual
a rise of 62.2 percent against it draws from the companies would not be
r&D experiences
the index’s 25.85 percent. of all their group able to do independently,”
For FY20, the Sehgals companies and Laksh explains the business
will offer new
have placed, for MSSL, technologies in a note to shareholders, in
a target of $18 billion in to their clients MSSL’s 2016 annual report.
towards mak-
revenues and $26 billion ing cars of the Considering that the
for the whole group. future. use of electronics in a car
To that end, in March, is constantly on the rise,
MSSL said that it has completed the Motherson Innovations is working on
acquisition of Finland’s PKC Group for projects involving surface-, lighting-
€571 million, which essentially helps and new interior technologies, all
the company expand its footprint of which can be built into the next
into the United States region and generation of cars. Laksh’s logic
Europe’s commercial vehicle market. is simple: As cameras get cheaper,
PKC is a manufacturer of truck wiring manufacturers are more likely to use
harnesses, which adds to MSSL’s them. Earlier cars came with radars
product mix. “This acquisition that were more expensive and harder
made sense for Motherson Sumi, to use. Laksh sees cameras replacing
besides adding to their geographical mirrors and lamps, and this is already
reach,” says Deepak Jain, an happening in some high-end models of
analyst with IDFC Securities. sports car brands like the Porsche and
Each acquisition (see box) was Lamborghini. He has set up offices in
successful and the reason, in large Silicon Valley, Germany and Australia

juLY 7, 2017 forbes india | 51

GenNext
l
e
a
to work on this technology while the
d
testing and validation are being done
e
r
in Bengaluru, a low-cost location.
s Laksh is also busy putting together
a project internally called ‘Dashboard
X’, which will explore unique
designs and technologies towards
building the dashboards of the
future. This new project will involve
14 experts from across the US, UK
and Germany in the Samvardhana
Motherson Group. “We plan to
showcase some of our products at
the 2018 CES (Consumer Electronics
Show) in Las Vegas,” Laksh says,
without divulging more details.
Laksh, who is a part of the M&A
and technology teams, is involved
in the “Cs of the business”, which
means understanding customers,
collaborators and control of the vision, GV KeshaV Reddy KRishna R Bhupal
and has attended all MSSL’s board Corporate finance, GVK Airports Promoter-director of GVK Power
and Infrastructure
meetings and the group AGM last year.
Ravi Mehta, managing director of
Steadview Capital, an investment fund
based in Asia, says: “Laksh is among
Powering ahead
i
t’s the rise of the third generation at exit from the Kempegowda International
the best second generation leaders GVK Power and Infrastructure. Founder Airport Bengaluru (KIAB). In the last
in India I see around.” Steadview GVK Reddy’s two grandchildren, 15 months, GVK sold, in two tranches,
Capital invested in MSSL in 2010 and Krishna R Bhupal, 34, and GV Keshav its entire 43 percent stake in KIAB to
exited in 2016, with 10x returns. Reddy, 24, have been entrusted Canadian investor Fairfax for about
with key roles at the infrastructure `3,450 crore. “The projects that I am
Laksh too wears an investor’s hat in conglomerate that has business interests currently working on are of high value
his personal capacity and through the spanning the energy, airport, road, for the company and its sustainability,”
Sehgal Family Venture Fund. In 2006, hospitality and life sciences sectors. Reddy tells Forbes India. RK jain, CEO of
Bhupal, who is the son of Shalini the GVK-owned Mumbai International
he helped a close friend Paramdeep
Bhupal, GVK Reddy’s daughter, holds Airport and a 10-year company veteran,
Singh set up music streaming platform a finance and accounting degree from believes that Keshav’s involvement
Saavn (then in its earliest form) by Villanova university, Philadelphia. He in the company’s exit from the
seed funding it during his under-grad joined the group in 2007, and is presently Bengaluru airport, “was a very good
the promoter-director of GVK Power and initiation for him to constructively
years. (Laksh is still one of the largest Infrastructure. He is credited with having contribute in the negotiations and the
independent shareholders outside successfully completed and commissioned concurrent back office work involving
the founders of Saavn). He has also the group’s 330 MW hydro power project the legal and financial teams”.
invested in other ventures, including in uttarakhand and the 540 MW thermal For Bhupal, the concern is to address
power project in Goindwal Sahib, Punjab. the pressing worry of ballooning
US-based LeagueApps in 2012 and Keshav Reddy, who is Sanjay Reddy’s consolidated debt, which is now in excess
AdvantEdge, an early-stage investor son, is a more recent entrant into the of `30,000 crore. “My endeavour is to
in technology startups, since 2015. family business, having joined the optimise the debt, particularly at our
Of course, some of this often group’s airports division, GVK Airports, energy vertical, which will eventually lead
in 2014. Reddy, a graduate in industrial to better cash flow for GVK,” says Bhupal.
happens 30,000 feet above ground. and operations engineering from the jain believes “he has done tremendous
“My challenge is waking up to see university of Michigan, uS, has been work to ensure that two of the projects
where I am, sometimes it is Mexico, involved in corporate finance and business (the hydro and thermal projects) have
Hungary or China,” he says. But development. He was part of the team gone on stream. He has been coping
that successfully bid for the `16,000-crore admirably with the challenges and these
he has no complaints: He is well Navi Mumbai International Airport project will stand him in good stead in the future.”
aware of how the future needs to be earlier this year and also helped in GVK’s —Anshul Dhamija
dealt with. “[One should] try not to
predict the future, but we must be the “the ProjectS that i am currently working on are of high value.”
— gv keShav reddy
fastest to react to that situation.”

52 | forbes india juLY 7, 2017


‘CEOs Must Pick Teams
with the Right Skill Sets’
Arun M Kumar, chairman & CEO of KPMG India, says India’s
CEOs are thinking of upgrading their own abilities and it
is critical for them to stay on top of change
A
run M Kumar, 64,
chairman & CEO of KPMG
India, has had a chequered
career. He co-founded
three tech ventures in Silicon Valley
and mentored many more. He led the
trade and investment efforts of the
Obama administration in the US as its
assistant secretary of commerce for
global markets and director general
of the US and foreign commercial
service. An expert in finance, he has
worked to advance business practices
in financial management. He has
also authored Plain Truths, a book of
poetry, and co-edited another, Kerala’s
Economy: Crouching Tiger, Sacred
Cows. The global consultancy firm
is banking on his diverse experience
to take its business in India forward.
In an interview with Forbes India,
he talks about Indian companies, its
CEOs and what KPMG’s annual Global
CEO Outlook survey has thrown up
this time around. Edited excerpts:
Q You’ve been here for four
months. How do you see Indian
CEOs and corporations faring
in the current environment?
In the last four months, I’ve had
a chance to meet a number of
[Indian] CEOs and I am impressed
by their global outlook and fluency.
That’s been a reconfirmation of my
interview
arun m kumar
By Sourav MajuMdar & N MadhavaN
previous impressions. When I was
in the US government, I was quite
involved with the US-India CEO
forums and had a chance to meet
many CEOs and was constantly
impressed by how thoughtful they
were of matters relating to India
and the world at large. The survey,
in some sense, confirms some of
these things with really good data.
You see that CEOs in India are quite
cognisant of the geopolitical issues
in the world today, more than they
were in the past. That could lead
to some interesting new trends.
Q One thing which strikes us
in the survey is that the threat
from innovation still seems to
be a bit lower down in the list
of perceived threats for Indian
CEOs. It’s an innovation-driven
world today. Do you think
“CEOs in India are
cognisant of the
geopolitical issues
in the world today,
more than they
were in the past.”
that’s a little out of sync with
what’s happening these days?
If you look at innovation and the
customer and put those two things
together and see them as a source
of disruption, they [the CEOs] see
that as quite important. In fact, I
thought a big theme of it is awareness
of disruption—from the customer,
whether it is ecommerce, the
millennials or things of that kind.
Q But it’s still the lowest among
perceived risks in the findings…
Compared to other risks… But you
do find that Indian CEOs seem to
recognise they haven’t done enough in
the technology area; they want to bring
in people on the executive team who
have technological knowledge to add
to the skills on the technology domain.
But yes, you’re right. It didn’t rank
right at the top. But a lot of it is also
that when you’re running a business,
operational risks are often on top of
your mind. So, you’ll see the survey
shows there is quite a lot of focus on
operational risks. And sometimes,
it’s the nature of the CEO’s job.
Q Overall, based on survey
findings, what is the state of
the Indian CEO’s mind today?
The survey shows that Indian CEOs
are highly optimistic about the world
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 53
 interview arun m kumar
at large and even more optimistic
about the companies [they run]. I
would temper that optimism with
the fact that there is concern about
disruption and the need to add to
the skill sets. What I also found
interesting was that CEOs are
talking about their own skill sets,
like recognising the importance
of emotional intelligence, of self-
awareness and their own weaknesses.
I think those are quite insightful.
Q As much as 90 percent of
Indian CEOs are confident
about the prospects of their
own companies. And yet we
Arun M Kumar, chairman
& CEO of KPMG India,
says Indian CEOs seem
to recognise that they
haven’t done enough in
the technology area
mexy xavier
54 | forbes india j u ly 7, 2017
don’t have enough investments
from the private sector. Is
this again a disconnect?
You see, CEOs are always confident
of the prospects of their own
companies. Generally you will find
that. This is an important statistic
because if they were really worried
about things, they would speak up.
Q What are the major challenges
that Indian CEOs face today?
The survey talks about some areas
that are prioritised—the geopolitical
environment, the changing customer,
embracing technology, which can
be either an opportunity or a threat,
the whole idea of a data-driven
enterprise and the awareness
of cyber security, which is also
seen as an important element.
Q If you look at the top end
of the big companies, are you
seeing a sense of tech-driven,
data-driven initiatives there?
In my conversations I am seeing
a recognition that they need to do
a lot more in the areas of data and
digitisation. And anecdotally, based on
my conversations, they do recognise
they are behind on that… and the
survey shows that too. These are
among the largest companies. And
the way they want to remedy that is
by making sure they get the right skill
set fairly high up in the executive
chain, which makes a lot of sense.
Q Last year’s survey showed
the quality of the data itself is
an issue. Has that been taken
care of over the past year?
I think that’s very much a big issue…
data quality, data integrity… and in
fact, technologies are often very nifty
but they don’t mean anything unless
the data they are dealing with is
consistent and accurate. But I’ve seen
a lot of companies and banks looking
at new approaches to managing large
amounts of data. So, it’s early stages,
but it’s an area that’s being addressed.
Q You’ve spoken to some of
the largest banks. They are
fighting on two fronts: Bad
assets and disruption from
fintech companies. What are your
thoughts on some of the sectors
which are most vulnerable?
There are different kinds of
challenges. The banking system has its
challenges which are well recognised…
many of the banks are seized with
ideas of how to address those. And
then from a data point of view, there
is a different set of challenges.
Q So, which are the two or
three sectors that have to get
their act together quickly?
We have seen the telecom sector
being disrupted. We have to see what
happens to the retail sector. These
are the sectors which have seen
disruption even globally. Financial
services… there are banks around the
world, which have no branches at all.
So, I would say these would be some
sectors which are on top of the mind.
And then manufacturing, with robotics
and automation… the whole approach
to manufacturing is changing.
Q There was a recent report
which talked about the threat of
digital to the automobile sector…
Look at Tesla. You can buy it online,
they download the repair for you.
It’s a computer that moves (laughs)!
In the future, you won’t need to
own a car. In the US, where I’ve just
come from, the younger generation
does not believe in owning a car.
They just don’t. It’s the whole idea
of the non-ownership society.
Q From your perspective of
having come from overseas,
what’s your view on the
way the Modi government
has managed so far?
These are anecdotal, but in the months
I have been here, I have not faced a
single instance of load shedding. Not
once. I remember just a few years ago
“While ideas may
have been there
earlier, the current
government has
done very well on
execution as well.”
it was quite common. Then you go to
many parts of the country and you find
there is surplus power, which again
is unbelievable. Some years ago, you
would have found it inconceivable. But
I think that’s an area where there has
been tremendous amount of progress.
Of course there are issues around
distribution, management, issues of
collection, etc. But progress doesn’t
happen smoothly. I think while ideas
may have been there earlier, the
current government has done very
well on execution as well. I think
there are many areas where progress
is visible… power and renewable
energy, highways, there are so many
metros being set up… When you
come from outside the country, you
do notice these differences. There is
progress. But yes, there’s a lot more
to be done. This is a huge country.
Q The other discussion is
about jobs. That’s clearly
one of the biggest challenges
the country is facing…
That’s the whole idea behind
programmes like Skill India. To
create jobs, both in urban and rural
India. We at KPMG are involved
in some of those programmes. I
would say that it’s a very important
area. The whole education area,
for instance, where some new
reforms are just being rolled out. All
of those will have a big impact on
overall skills development. In the
future, the ability to acquire new
skills will become as important as
the very skill you learn. Because in
a few years, everything changes.
Q On jobs, do you think as
private investments kick in
that will get corrected?
Infrastructure is one big way of
creating jobs. The service industry is
another that has to grow. India has a
huge amount of infrastructure needs.
Q How do you think the
role of the CEO has evolved
from, say, ten years ago?
The role of CEOs has always been
complex because there are multiple
stakeholders, multiple issues and
disciplines that have to be dealt
with. What I have noticed is things
are changing so much faster and the
technology of five years ago may
not be the technology of the next
five years. So being on top of the
change is critical. No CEO can be
knowledgeable about everything.
A CEO has to surround himself or
herself with different sets of skills at
the top leadership. That is a critical
element of future CEOs—they have
to find that team where there are
different skill sets. Technology,
regulatory, depending on the industry.
Q The longevity of a CEO is
also becoming shorter…
Yes! It has become shorter. It’s not
a high longevity job (laughs).
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 55
 Survey
kpmg global ceo outlook 2017: tHe INDIa cut

exclusive

The C-Suite Study

Indian CEOs share their insights on the business
environment, perceived risks to growth and disruption
The domestic economy competitors or new difficult. The India
is slowing down, so is business models—and results of KPMG’s
the pace of globalisation customer loyalty cannot Global CEO Outlook
as protectionism rears be taken for granted 2017 survey delves into
its head. Disruptions anymore. Under these the mind of the CEOs
come in many forms— circumstances, the life to understand their
technology, unforeseen of a CEO has become challenges and priorities.
INfograpHIcS aND IlluStratIoN: Sameer pawar

56 | forbes india july 7, 2017

 ConfIdenT neuTrAl noT ConfIdenT Agree neuTrAl dIsAgree growth Plans
Economic and BusinEss There is a need to reassess global What steps will you adopt to execute
confidEncE footprint due to the changing pace your strategy for growth?*
of globalisation and protectionism
How confident are you about India’s sCAlIng up busIness
growth prospects in the next 12 months? operATIons And proCesses 64%

CollAborATIve pArTnersHIps
And joInT venTures 44%

82% 11% 7% 41% 25% 34% lArge-sCAle busIness model

TrAnsformATIon 36%
What is your level of confidence in the What are the risks that you are
global economy’s growth prospects in concerned about?* mergers & ACquIsITIons 18%
the next 12 months?
operATIonAl
rIsks 38% Top three strategic priorities for
organisations in the next three years:
54% 37% 9% greATer speed-To-mArkeT 31%
emergIng
TeCHnology rIsks 31%
How confident are you about your
company’s growth prospects in fosTerIng InnovATIon 26%
the next 12 months?
ImplemenTIng dIsrupTIve
regulATory
rIsks 30% TeCHnology 22%

90% 10% Cyber seCurITy

BusinEss
transformation
rIsks 28%
BusinEss & Policy
EnvironmEnt
Which of the following do you expect
to have the biggest impact on the
sTrATegIC rIsks 27%
46%
Ceos are likely to keep their buSineSS
largely the Same aS today
growth of your company in the next 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

54%
three years?
repuTATIonAl
/brAnd rIsk 15%
tEchnological risks Ceos are likely to tranSform their

neW TeCHnology 14% and innovation organiSationS into a SignifiCantly

different entity in next three yearS

globAl eConomIC
fACTors 12% 53% 93%
domesTIC eConomIC Share of Ceos who Say their Company iS not
fACTors 11% fully prepared for a Cyber event Share of Ceos who Say they are now more
open to new influenCeS and new
regulATory
11% CollaborationS than at any other

37%
CHAnges
point in their CareerS
neW CompeTITors/
dIsrupTors 9%
*numbers don’t add up to 100% because respondents could
Share of Ceos who Say their have chosen more than one option.
oTHer fACTors 28% organiSation iS Struggling to keep paCe
Source: KPMG Global CEO Outlook 2017
with the rate of teChnologiCal innovation
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Compiled by N Madhavan

july 7, 2017 forbes india | 57

 CROSS BORDER
JamES LEpRinO

From Pizza Hut

And Domino’s
To Little Caesars
And Papa John’s,
The Vast Majority
Of Pizzas In
America Feature
Mozzarella From
One Company.
For The First
Time, Secretive
Billionaire James
Leprino Explains
How He Built
A Cheese
Juggernaut

By CHLOE SORVINO

Camera shy: If you Google James Leprino’s

picture, you’ll get fellow billionaire John Malone.
This 1970s company portrait is the only known
image of Leprino Foods’ founder (right)

58 | forbes india july 7, 2017

 Big
T he
eese
ch

GEtty imaGES
 CROSS BORDER JamES LEpRinO

A
n avalanche of cheese
pours into the test
kitchen at the Denver
headquarters of Leprino
Foods, the mozzarella supplier to
Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s.
First, thin wisps of low-moisture
mozzarella, then a diced alternative,
followed by an “artisanal” version,
cut short and wide. Then come
flavoured cheeses made with a
mozzarella base, as well as provolone,
cheddar and Monterey Jack.
Cooks bring out a take-and-bake
pizza, a New York-style pie and
a stuffed crust, fresh from nearly
a dozen ovens. Another course
features frozen food made with
Leprino products, including ham-
and-cheddar Hot Pockets, Stouffer’s
lasagna and Smart Ones baked
ziti. Then come the cheese cubes
marketed as snack pairings: Pear
flavour with nuts or Gorgonzola
with pretzels. Team Leprino next
brings out dessert: Salted-caramel-
flavoured mozzarella wrapped
in hot dough, rolled in cinnamon
sugar. After an hour, the plastic
shot glasses appear for sampling
the company’s lactose and whey
powders, which end up in protein
bars, Yoplait yogurt, Pillsbury Toaster
Strudel and baby formula consumed
by millions of infants annually.
Two floors above this dairy deluge,
in a dark-wood-panelled office with
white marble floors, Corinthian
columns and gold accents, sits James
Leprino, the Willy Wonka of cheese.
“It’s hard for me to believe I agreed to
this,” the 79-year-old billionaire says.
“I really like to keep my privacy.”
Indeed he does, to a nearly
unprecedented degree, given the way
he dominates his industry. Leprino
has eluded photographers for decades:
A Google search picks up photos of
fellow Colorado billionaire Philip
Anschutz and cosmetics heir Ronald
Forbes’s list of billionaires, Leprino,
worth an estimated $3 billion, is
willing to be interviewed about how
his family’s grocery in Denver’s Little
Italy became the world’s top producer
of pizza cheese—the slightly derisive
term competitors use to describe its
mozzarella. In all, Leprino Foods sells
over a billion pounds of cheese a year,
to the tune of $3 billion in revenue.
The little-known Leprino (he
declined to be photographed) rates as
one of America’s all-time monopolists.
He lets others worry about fresh
mozzarella balls and pizza that
taste like they were made in the old
country. His laser focus on large pizza
chains has allowed him to control
as much as 85 percent of the market
for pizza cheese and somehow sell
simultaneously to a set of customers—
Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Papa John’s
and Little Caesars—that try to cut
each others’ throat in every way that
doesn’t involve where they buy their
milk products. Dominating the market
has its advantages: He’s able to invest some 300 clients in 40 countries and
in technology that no run-of-the-mill check every complaint received the
dairy farmer ever could, resulting week before. “Your employees have
in more than 50 patents—and an got to know you’re not a phony,” he
estimated 7 percent net margin, which says. “They’ve got to believe in you.
dwarfs the dairy-industry average. “I support what’s going on, but I
As the diamonds of his watch bezel don’t try to lead it,” he adds. “My job
shimmer on his wrist, Leprino takes is to hold them responsible for doing
out his beat-up black leather wallet, what they said they’re going to do.”
removes the rubber band holding He wasn’t always so hands-off.
it shut and reveals a card featuring While acknowledging his “genius”,
the four company watchwords: numerous industry executives paint
Quality, service, price, ethics. “I’ve Leprino, in his younger days, as
got everybody keeping one in their an “aggressive” leader who wasn’t
pocket,” Leprino says. “The company above visiting individual franchise
was growing so fast they were owners to pitch his technologically
missing this important message.” advanced cheese. But very few will
Quality is listed first intentionally. go into detail, and fewer still will
It’s easy to mock his product attach their name to their comments.
(Frankencheese, anyone?), but One pizza entrepreneur puts it this
Leprino Foods is one of the few dairy way about the man who owns 100
giants that have never had a recall. percent of this mozzarella giant: “Jim
Every Monday at 11.30 am, Leprino Leprino is a very powerful man.”
walks down to the test kitchen along

Lauder. There isn’t a single image of
Leprino on his company’s website. But
after nearly 60 years of running the
business and more than a decade on
with two dozen of his most trusted
executives for the weekly Monday
Melts meeting. The executives test
samples of the cheese produced for
L
eprino’s office bears testaments
to his roots, including a black-
and-white photo of his mother
on her wedding day at the age of 16

60 | forbes india july 7, 2017


and a bronze relief of James and his
father rolling fresh mozzarella balls.
Leprino Foods’ genesis lies in the
mountains of southern Italy, which
Mike Leprino Sr left in 1914, at the age
of 16. Accustomed to high altitude,
he settled in Denver; without much
of an education or the ability to read
and write English, he began farming.
More than three decades later, in
1950, he finally opened a grocery
store to sell the produce he grew.
Italian specialties followed, including
fresh ricotta, mozzarella balls and
ravioli made by James’s sister Angie.
Meanwhile, James, the youngest of
five children, noticed his classmates
spending free time at neighbourhood
pizza joints. After graduating from
high school in 1956, he started
working with his father full-time
and shared a revelation: “Pizzerias
in this part of the country were
buying 5,000 pounds of cheese a
week,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘This
is a good market to go after’, so I
did.” In 1958, after larger chain
grocery stores had forced the Leprino
Whey to go: Leprino’s new
factory is rolling out its
first direct-to-consumer
product, a protein powder
called Ascent
market to close, the Leprino Foods
cheese empire started with $615.
The timing couldn’t have been
better. That same year, the first Pizza
Hut opened, in Wichita, Kansas. A
year later, Mike and Marian Ilitch
opened the first Little Caesars, outside
Detroit. Another year went by, and
Domino’s began delivering pizza, in
Ypsilanti, Michigan. Frozen pizzas,
introduced after soldiers returned
home from World War II craving
slices, were also gaining popularity.
After two years in business,
Leprino Foods was delivering
200 pounds of block mozzarella a
week to local Italian restaurants.
Leprino realised he needed to
learn the science behind making
cheese on a mass scale. But with a
young daughter at home and another
baby on the way, he didn’t have time
for college. Instead, he hired Lester
Kielsmeier, who had run a cheese
factory in Wisconsin only to find out
that it was sold during his stint in
the Air Force during World War II,
because his dad believed he’d been
killed in action. “When Lester came, I
went downtown to the junkyard and
I bought a couple of bigger cheese
vats to make it look like we were
really in the business,” Leprino says.
Leprino’s first coup came in 1968,
when Pizza Hut was looking for a
supplier that could help it cut costs
while standardising portions. After
hearing that shredding 5-pound
cheese blocks in the franchises was
time-consuming and inconsistent,
Leprino Foods started selling frozen,
pre-sliced blocks. For the first
time, pizza-makers could simply
layer a few slices onto each pie.
While Kielsmeier made the cheese,
Leprino fixated on efficiency. He
quickly realised he was dumping half
his raw ingredients into the river
in the form of whey, the calcium-
rich liquid left over after curds are
strained. Inspired by the 1964 World’s
Fair in New York, Leprino travelled
to Japan to meet with scientists using
milk proteins derived from whey to
help the Japanese population grow
taller. More than a half-century
later, Leprino Foods remains the
largest US exporter of lactose, a
byproduct of sweet whey, and retains
a large market share in Japan.
On the cheese side, Leprino
hustled to satisfy Pizza Hut, which
went public in 1972 with around
1,000 stores and, at its peak in the
1990s, accounted for 90 percent of
Leprino’s sales. Pizza Hut franchises
would sometimes wait too long to
thaw the pre-sliced mozzarella and
reported that their cheese would
crumble, so Leprino Foods responded
with its first major breakthrough:
A preservative mist. The scientists
there soon realised that this method
allowed them to add flavours such
as salted caramel and jalapeño.
They could even make a reduced fat
CODy piCkEnS fOR fORBES
“cheddar” by using a mozzarella base
and then misting on cheddar flavour
and orange food colouring. Leprino
Foods’ production rose sixteen-fold,
to 2 million pounds of cheese a week.
Just as his timing ahead of
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 61
 CROSS BORDER JamES LEpRinO
America’s pizza boom proved lucky,
so did his location in the centre of
the country. In the 1970s, Wisconsin
and New York were producing most
of the country’s milk, but California’s
nascent dairy industry often priced
milk lower. Leprino had the foresight
to engage in some arbitrage, locking
California dairy farmers into multi-
decade contracts at rates that were
often above-market locally but below-
market nationally. Over the next two
decades, Leprino Foods also signed
sweetheart deals with co-ops that
eventually became the Dairy Farmers
of America, securing a lasting milk
supply with the country’s largest dairy
co-op; the company also purchased
and renovated some of the older dairy
plants, cutting off the options for
competitors who wanted to process
milk. As Jerry Graf, a former cheese
buyer for Pizza Hut, notes, “Jim was
always one step ahead of the game.”
L
eprino’s most important
innovation, ultimately, was
marrying science and sales—a
combination that met the needs of
the four biggest US pizza chains
during a period when they were
growing exponentially, launching
one of the greatest turf wars in
the history of American food.
The first key was something called
“Quality Locked Cheese”—shredded
and individually frozen portions—
which Leprino introduced in 1986.
Leprino’s competitors, still mostly
run by Italian-Americans with strong
immigrant roots, sniffed. “They didn’t
believe that was what should go on
top of their grandmother’s pizza
recipe,” says Ed Zimmerman, a 30-
year pizza-industry veteran. But the
franchise-friendly process quickly
became the industry standard, both
for consistency and scalability. With a
patent in place, Leprino made himself
indispensable. Graf left Pizza Hut,
which was still growing, for Domino’s
and brought Leprino’s business
with him, as that chain surged from
200 outlets in 1978 to 5,000 in 1989.
62 | forbes india july 7, 2017
Meanwhile, Little Caesars, with
more than 3,000 stores, was growing
at 25 percent a year with its deal of
“Two great pizzas, one low price”.
And by 1991, Leprino had become
the exclusive supplier for Papa
John’s, which launched in 1985.
Leprino was able to grow with
them all by putting them in silos,
granting each company its own specs
and then troubleshooting as necessary.
“We treat every customer like our only
customer,” says Mike Durkin, a former
Pepsi executive who came on six years
ago to run day-to-day operations as
president of Leprino Foods. Domino’s
Leprino Foods
sells over a billion
pounds of cheese
a year, to the
tune of $3 billion
in revenue
agreed to an exclusive relationship in
1996—the contract was just one page.
“It was more of a handshake than it
was anything else,” recalls Michael
Soignet, a former vice president
of supply chain at Domino’s.
When Pizza Hut began using
a hotter conveyor oven, Leprino
Foods changed the formula so the
cheese wouldn’t burn at higher
temperatures. As delivery-focussed
Domino’s expanded, Leprino’s head
cheese maker, Lester Kielsmeier,
manipulated the product so that it
retained its fresh-out-of-the-oven look
and taste longer. When Papa John’s
insisted it wanted cheese without
fillers—eschewing a new Leprino
product that contained some—the
big cheese didn’t take it well. “His
reflected sense of self is his patents,
his business,” Papa John’s billionaire
founder John Schnatter says of Jim
Leprino. “That really means a lot
to him. When I said I didn’t like it,
he took it personally.” Within two
months, Leprino switched Papa
John’s back to the previous blend.
“Jim came at me and said, ‘It’s going to
cost you three more cents a pound’.”
Price has long been Leprino’s
biggest advantage, and a large one
since cheese accounts for about 40
percent of a pizza’s cost. Leprino’s
scale begat better prices, which begat
more scale. And that scale also led
to cost-saving breakthroughs that
Leprino’s competitors could neither
catch up with technologically nor fight
in patent court. “They are a biotech
company that is wrapped inside a
food business,” Zimmerman says.
For example, in the 1990s,
Kielsmeier realised that just as the
cheese changed when ingredients
were sprayed on at the end, certain
additives used early in the process
could affect how cheese melts—from
how big and how brown the bubbles
get to how many are on the top of
the pie. On the manufacturing side,
Kielsmeier cut down the cheese’s
ageing period from 14 days to just
four hours, which multiplied the
company’s production capabilities
while cutting costs significantly.
“I would tell people, ‘Lester is the
man that made me rich’,” Leprino says.
Notably, though, Leprino never gave
Kielsmeier any equity. While Leprino
got rich, Kielsmeier—who came to
work every day right until his death
at 95 in 2012—would have to content
himself with being very well paid.
F
or James Leprino, the perks of
being a billionaire are relatively
muted. Yes, the company owns
three private planes—a Gulfstream
G450, a Bombardier jet and a small
1980 commuter plane—and his house
in Denver’s affluent Indian Hills
suburb has 11 bedrooms, to go with
an 8,000-square-foot vacation home
in Scottsdale, Arizona. But he’s more
likely to pick up a hammer than call
a repairman: Leprino, who has been
known to operate a forklift at the
Life of Pies
How Papa John’s, the world’s third-largest pizza chain, delivered
a billion-dollar fortune to John Schnatter
Selling mozzarella isn’t the only way
to become a pizza billionaire. John
Schnatter—more commonly known as
papa John—joined the club earlier this
year. the founder and CEO of papa
John’s owes his $1 billion-fortune to the
company’s rising stock price—up by
40 percent in the past year. “When you
start off broke—and we weren’t broke,
we were negative broke—you never
forget that. you stay appreciative,” says
Schnatter, who owns 26 percent of the
company’s shares.
Schnatter, who was born in indiana,
began washing dishes at Rocky’s Sub
pub at 15 and worked his way up to mak-
ing pizza. With his earnings, he saved up
to buy a 1971 Camaro Z28. after college,
in 1983, he started working at his father’s
bar, mick’s Lounge, which was headed
toward bankruptcy. Schnatter sold the
Camaro for $2,800 and used the money
to settle some debts. “all i wanted to
do was make $50,000 a year,” Schnat-
factory, has also personally bulldozed
trees around his Colorado home. A
devout Catholic, he goes to church
every Sunday and donates to charity
anonymously. And the immigrant’s
son has no intention to retire, ever.
“My success is a fairy tale,” he says.
Leprino’s succession plan is simple:
He’ll split ownership between his
two daughters, Terry, 57, and Gina,
55, who have been on the board
for years but won’t take day-to-day
roles. And for now he’ll continue to
ter recalls. “i thought i could take a girl
shopping.” the rest went toward some
used pizza equipment, which Schnatter
installed in the tavern’s broom closet.
mick’s eventually turned around, and
by 1985, the first papa John’s opened
in Jeffersonville, indiana. the company
touted its pies as “better ingredients,
better pizza”, and it caught on. Within
six years, the 100th location opened, and
papa John’s brought in Leprino foods to
be its exclusive cheese supplier. in 1993,
papa John’s went public, and the stock
has since increased thirty-fold. there
are now more than 5,000 restaurants
in 45 countries. as for that Camaro,
papa John’s offered a $250,000 reward
to anyone who could find Schnatter’s
original ride. “Everybody around me
said i was crazy. they thought the car
was squashed up at the junkyard. i had
a feeling it was still around,” Schnat-
ter says. and the incentive worked—in
2009, the car came back to papa. —CS
ensure that Leprino cheese is on as
many American pizzas as possible—
as well as Asian and European
ones (Leprino has a joint venture
with the UK’s Glanbia Cheese).
America’s fifth-largest pizza chain,
the take-and-bake Papa Murphy’s,
remains in his sights. Co-founder
Robert Graham says Leprino visited
him at least three times to try to get
the company to sign on, selling the
technology above all else. “It didn’t
perform well for our pizza, which is
cooked in a home oven,” Graham says.
“Because of the moisture content,
you could see the sauce under the
cheese. It evaporated.” Yet Leprino
executives continue to press.
And while Little Caesars uses
other vendors—industry insiders
say Leprino isn’t exclusive with
Little Caesars, in part because the
chain’s blend uses Muenster cheese,
too—Leprino President Mike Durkin
predicts that Little Caesars will
eventually succumb. “Would we want
more? Probably the answer is yes, and
it’ll come at some point,” he says.
Meanwhile, Leprino will pursue
new markets. It has invested $600
million in a factory in Greeley,
Colorado, that specialises in “ribbon
cheese”—bulky 2.5-pound blocks
that are popular among frozen-
pizza companies. It’s also created
an in-house “innovation studio”,
designed to ride the coattails of
food trends. One creation, Bacio
(“kiss” in Italian), is catering to
artisanal-pizza-makers by offering
mozzarella with a kiss of buffalo milk.
It’s Leprino Foods’ most expensive
cheese—and its fastest-growing.
Leprino is also rolling out the
company’s first direct-to-consumer
product, a whey protein powder
called Ascent, which will have a
dedicated wing at the Greeley facility.
While Leprino still produces whey
protein as a byproduct of making
cheese for its clients, Ascent is filtered
straight from raw milk to protect key
proteins and vitamins that help aid
muscle recovery. Leprino hopes that
will be an edge in the $6.6 billion-
and-growing US protein market.
There is plenty of history to remind
Ascent’s team of their roots. Ascent’s
space sits atop the original cheese
factory’s loading dock and warehouse.
“I remember the first day that we
JamEL tOppin fOR fORBES
had this set up,” says Mike Arnold,
who is overseeing Ascent’s launch.
“Jim Leprino walked in here and
was like, ‘Ah, this reminds me of
the old days’.” A new, fractured
market, primed to be dominated.
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 63
 CROSS BORDER
ARTIFICIAL InTELLIGEnCE
China’s
AI Advantage
Veteran researcher and investor Kai-Fu Lee
believes that the US is destined to lose
its lead in the Artificial Intelligence race
By AlexAnder KonrAd
K
ai-Fu Lee watched the
US beat China to global
internet leadership during
the dotcom bubble from
the inside. Now with what he sees
as an even greater technological
revolution taking place in Artificial
Intelligence (AI), Lee doesn’t expect
China to take a backseat a second time.
“China started slow, and American
companies went international,” Lee
says during a May visit to Forbes
Media’s headquarters. “But simple
math says China has a larger GDP.
The market will be bigger.”
When Lee talks about AI, he
speaks from first-hand experience.
The Taiwan native developed the
first speaker-independent phone
recognition programme as a PhD
student at Carnegie Mellon in the
late 1980s, before stints at Apple
and as an executive at Microsoft
and Google in China—in fact, he was
founding president of Google China.
Google and its peers were
ultimately thwarted in their ambitions
to carve out leadership stakes in the
Chinese market, in part due to cultural
differences among consumers as well
as privacy clashes with the Chinese
government. When Lee returned from
working at Google’s Mountain View,
California, headquarters to launch his
own VC fund, Sinovation Ventures,
he came back to a China firmly
entrenched in what he now describes
64 | forbes india july 7, 2017
as a duopolistic global tech economy.
US internet software continued to
lead the English-speaking world,
while a group of Chinese companies,
famously led by Baidu, Alibaba
and Tencent (B-A-T), controlled
“Whoever has the most
their domestic market and exerted data wins”: Kai-Fu Lee
increasing influence in Southeast sharing intelligence in
mid-May with Forbes Asia
Asia and developing markets. editorial staff
With companies on both sides
of the Pacific racing to develop
applications of AI, China’s scale talent in the field—that is still found
can prove a decisive advantage, Lee in the US, Canada and Britain, he
believes. The country boasts perhaps says—but China’s legions are good.
43 percent of the world’s trained AI China’s political leadership
scientists, Lee says, with Microsoft continues to invest heavily in research
alone training about 50,000 Chinese and technology. And developers
scientists in processes critical to may not face the same regulation
the field starting in 1998. Overall, when it comes to pushing real-world
this doesn’t represent the cream of trials, such as with autonomous
vehicles, or in mass data collection
that would be viewed as intrusive
Facebook in china? or a privacy violation in the West.
In driverless cars, the US.
Google famously pulled its search engine out of
China in 2010 and despite months of reported has about a two-year head start,
off-and-on discussions with the Chinese govern-
ment has yet to return. To its former president of
according to Lee. But each minute
Google China, Kai-Fu Lee, Google is no longer American tech companies find
the most intriguing US internet company to the
Chinese market. That’s now Facebook, the lead-
themselves mired in a regulatory
ing social network and Instagram and WhatsApp battle or hobbled by objections
owner led by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. In
April, Xiaomi’s high-profile former vice president
from transportation incumbents,
Hugo Barra joined Facebook to lead its virtual the Chinese can close that gap.
reality (VR) efforts; Lee believes Facebook’s
VR hardware Oculus will launch in China in the
What’s more, he says, top-down
coming months. But success for Oculus wouldn’t rule in China will countenance
increase the likelihood of Facebook’s core
platform appearing in China, which now has a
a long stretch of data-gathering
host of social media alternatives. “Facebook has experience in which the casualty
the best chance” when it comes to mainstream
adoption in China, says Lee. “But no one has a
rates from autonomous-vehicle
chance.” —AK use steadily drop—by orders of

magnitude, Lee hypothesizes.
Even relatively safe records may
not pass muster in democracies.
Not only do Chinese companies
have the advantage of a hyper-
competitive market in which the
leading players typically compete
across a range of applications and
use cases (compared with more
specialised leaders in the US), the
Chinese government continues
to invest in R&D while unstable
visa policies could encourage
more academics to return to China
after attending universities in
the US. Even a language barrier
can work in China’s favour.
Lee’s odds on China are contested
by at least one top American
voice in the field. “The leading AI
researchers, university departments
and research labs are still in the
US,” says Oren Etzioni, CEO of
Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial
Intelligence. “However, China is
moving fast. As long as we continue
to have an open society and strong
immigration, we will remain ahead.”
The race to AI leadership is crucial
because what we know as AI will
greatly exceed direct technological
applications, Lee argues. Industries
ranging from banking to insurance,
health care and media will all face
massive transformations. Lee is fond
of telling the story of how he pitted
his personal banker against computer-
run trading algorithms. The machines
produced a return that was eight times
better. “Anything with a feedback
loop will give way to AI,” Lee says.
That could include scanning hundreds
of insurance claims or mortgage
applications, shipping orders and
even evaluating patient X-rays.
The small comfort for logistics
managers, doctors and mortgage
officers: A tiny percentage—Lee
guesses about 10 percent—of decisions
will remain so mission-critical or life-
and-death that a company can’t take
the chance the machine is wrong or its
communications are off. “Robotics can
fake some empathy, but compassion
isn’t there,” Lee says. “With 10 percent
wrong, you can still lose all trust.”
Even near accuracy would still
mean a massive displacement
of workers, pushing the jobs to
managerial or quality-control roles
or putting a “last mile” human face
on interactions. Lee and his team
frequently invoke a 2013 Oxford
research paper by Carl Benedikt
Frey and Michael A Osborne that
predicted that 47 percent of jobs in
the US economy would be threatened
by automation. Lee is not impressed
by recent developments such as
Facebook’s announcement that it
would hire 3,000 moderators to
help its systems flag and take down
inappropriate videos. “That’s a tiny
number,” he says. “Look at what
percent of global internet users
Facebook is reaching” relative to the
number of people who will be paid to
monitor them, he says. “It’s noise.”
The rising AI economy, meanwhile,
won’t look like the B-A-T companies
or the de facto American hegemony
of Apple, Facebook, Microsoft
and Google. Lee believes the AI
economy will be spread out across
practices within tech companies
and large corporations as well
as sold as a contract service by
specialists. Through his $1.2 billion
fund—building to $2 billion—Lee is
investing in applications that can
benefit from AI, including, in America,
SuperFlex, a company building
exosuits for disabled and elderly
people, and Wonder Workshop,
which makes robots to teach children
computer science. (He’s sceptical
about humanistic service robots
like Softbank’s Pepper, however.)
DAVID YELLEn FOR FORBES
Lee says he’s investing about
95 percent in China and only 5
percent in the US. No research
hub has more users at its fingertips
than China. Says Lee: “Whoever
has the most data wins.”
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 65
 interview
karan bajwa
‘Even a Small Grocery
Store Should be Able to
Experience IBM’
In an attempt to become India’s largest cloud and cognitive solutions
company, IBM India’s new managing director, Karan Bajwa, wants to
offer end-to-end digital solutions to both large and small enterprises
I
t’s been only about six months
since Karan Bajwa, 50, took over
as managing director of IBM
India. And he is already pulling
all stops to achieve the ambitious
goal he has set for himself: To make
IBM India the number one cloud
and cognitive solutions company
for businesses in the country.
The former managing director
of Microsoft India, who succeeded
Vanitha Narayanan (now elevated
as chairman of IBM India), wants
to position the company as a
one-stop marketplace for all the
technological needs of an enterprise,
and not merely for products. The
conducive environment in India—
which has emerged as a bright spot
for the New York-headquartered
$80-billion global technology giant
—is likely to aid Bajwa’s journey.
The company’s strategy is to offer
end-to-end solutions for enterprises,
spanning across the customer
lifecycle from consulting on the best
solutions to devising them through
products and services (even if they
include third-party products) and
overseeing their implementation.
In an interview with Forbes India,
Bajwa says he wants IBM India
to become the platform on which
66 | forbes india j u ly 7, 2017
By Aveek DAttA
applications meant for grocery store
owners are built by developers. He
also expresses concern about the
recent cyber attacks worldwide
and says that while digital security
occupies high mindshare among
Indian companies, the funds allocated
for it are meagre. Edited excerpts:
Q What is IBM India’s
greatest strength?
I was clear on why I was taking
up this role. It was to leverage the
learnings of implementing digital
transformation at enterprises on a
much larger scale and in a much more
complex environment. That is what
IBM is all about. IBM is four different
organisations rolled into one. There
is a hardware piece, a software firm,
a consulting practice and a digital
The three big
shifts in the digital
world in future will
be around cloud,
data and artificial
intelligence
infrastructure services component.
The DNA of these verticals is different
and there are large individual
companies in the market that focus on
some of them individually. Imagine
the power of a company that can
do all of these on a large scale.
Q What strategy are you
implementing to help IBM
India play to its strengths?
If you see some of the work that we
are doing for our clients, it is about
implementing an end-to-end digital
transformation agenda by bringing in
first party (IBM’s own) and third-party
capabilities together. If a customer had
to do this himself, he would have to
reach out to three or four companies.
The three big shifts in the digital
world over the next two decades will
be around cloud, data and artificial
intelligence, which have become
more democratically accessible to
users, even at an API (application
programming interface, which is
used to build apps) level. Keeping
this in mind, we have devised a
‘One India’ plan. This includes
mainstreaming cloud offerings,
SaaS (software as a service) and
cognitive capabilities. We also want
to build and manage an ecosystem

of developers, startups, academia
and ISVs (independent software
vendors). When they build a digital
solution, IBM offerings like Bluemix
(a cloud-based app development
platform) should be the platform
that they should be thinking of.
By mainstreaming innovative
offerings, we want to expand the
market. For instance, a Chennai-based
company called Pace Automation
has built a digital solution for small
grocery stores that will need to go
digital after the GST rollout. This has
been built on the Bluemix platform. So
a small grocery store that would have
never experienced IBM otherwise
will now do so in some form.
Q Enterprises are now worried
about cyber security. What role
can IBM play to allay these fears?
We want IBM to be the first partner
that enterprises think of when it
comes to security and blockchain.
Nothing exemplifies the need for
companies to protect themselves
against digital threats better than what
is happening in the world right now
(the WannaCry ransomware attack).
Security has a high mindshare with
customers, but poor wallet share.
In India, the surface area for cyber
attacks is increasing with commercial
transactions becoming digital. A lot
of vendors have done a disservice
to customers by giving them a view
from their vantage point, rather
than dealing with the problem.
We don’t offer security solutions
to customers with that mindset.
We recently did a large security
engagement with BSE where we
integrated the entire ecosystem
using a lot of third-party products
along with our own. We are also
working on blockchain and have
built a first-use case with Mahindra
Finance and another with Yes Bank.
Q While IBM’s global revenues
have been declining, those in
India are witnessing growth.
If you look at IBM’s global earnings
declared on April 19, India was one of
the strongest performing and highest
growth regions for the company.
This has been the case for the last
three to four quarters. We aspire to
continue to grow in India, where the
strong fundamentals of the economy
present a great opportunity. As far as
global earnings are concerned, there
is a shift happening with strategic
imperative businesses (including
cloud and cognitive) now accounting
for 42 percent of the overall turnover.
So old revenue is getting replaced
with new and that always takes time.
Q What is your view on
potential job losses because of
technological disruptions?
There will always be prioritisation
of skills and people will transition
to new-age skills, which will take
joshua navalkar
some time. We have said in the past
that we will continue to reorient our
workforce to newer technologies and
newer customer imperatives.
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 67
 CROSS BORDER
ClaSSDOjO

Class
By listening to its core audience—teachers—
ClassDojo’s educational software has reached
90 percent of US schools. Now the real work

App begins: How to get someone to pay for it

By KathLeen ChayKowSKi

E
very morning before
Cindy Price starts
teaching her first
graders in New Castle,
Delaware, she fires up ClassDojo,
a classroom management app.
She checks parent messages,
finds out whether any students will
be out sick and reads school news.
When a child shows a trait like
“amazing thinking” or “great
listening”, she adds a point to the
student’s avatar—a personalised
cartoonish monster—generating a
bright ‘ping!’ that makes classmates
perk up. Points come off for
disruptive behaviour. Twice a day,
Price shares class photos or videos
with parents. And during free time,
she plays ClassDojo’s short personal-
growth videos, which use monsters
like ClassDojo’s excitable green
mascot, Mojo, to teach lessons on
empathy and perseverance. “It’s
helping teachers be successful
in the classroom,” she says.
Teachers like it because teachers
have shaped it, in the form of 20,000
who provide constant feedback.
That bottom-up approach, and
kid-friendly gamification, has given
it penetration into 90 percent of
American schools, according to
the company. “Why don’t we just
go to the people doing the work?”
says CEO and co-founder Sam
Chaudhary. “It sounds obvious,
CODy PiCkEnS fOR fORBES

but it wasn’t being done.”

ClassDojo co-founders Liam Don (left) and

Sam Chaudhary believe the success of their
free classroom-management app will pave
the way for additional paid services meant
to support learning at home

68 | forbes india july 7, 2017

 ClassDojo has been translated
into 35 languages and made inroads
in 180 countries. The company says
ClassDojo reaches 7 million kids
globally every day, or 1 percent of
the 700 million children in grades
K–8 or their equivalent. Price
says that at her school, Southern
Elementary, nearly all the teachers
and a healthy dose of parents use it.
All of this is great, of course,
except for one sticky problem:
ClassDojo is free, and when you’re
dealing with teachers and young
students, a freemium model
involving in-app purchases isn’t
a natural winner. So what is this
company, which is successful in
every aspect except the bottom line,
supposed to do? While the core app
remains free, the company plans
to target parents by promoting
learning outside of school hours.
“The home has been very
underserved for educational
resources and doesn’t support
what’s happening in school,”
co-founder Liam Don says. Paid
features could take the form of
a content subscription aimed at
parents who can’t afford a private
school but want to invest in their
kids’ education. It’s all a bit fuzzy
at this point, though the stakes
are huge: Educational software
and digital content (preschool
through 12th grade) represent a
market bigger than $8 billion.
Chaudhary and Don, both Forbes
30 Under 30 alums, began dreaming
up what would become ClassDojo
after a weekend gathering for
entrepreneurs in Cambridge in
their native England. The two
quickly bonded over a shared
concern: The purpose of education
has changed dramatically across
the world over the past century,
but classrooms haven’t.
Though just 25 at the time, both
had relevant experience. Chaudhary
taught 20 hours a week through his
teens in Abu Dhabi and worked for
McKinsey & Co’s education group;
Don, the CTO, was a computer-
science PhD student with a focus
on educational tech. Three months
after their first meeting, the pair
moved to Silicon Valley to tap
$20,000 from Imagine K12, a startup
accelerator focussed on education
that’s part of the prestigious Y
Combinator programme.
The two spent a month meeting
hundreds of teachers to gauge needs.
Supporting kids’ personal growth
through playful communication
and building community became
early goals. “How do you turn a
classroom from an isolated place
ClassDojo has been
translated into
35 languages and
made inroads in
180 countries. It
reaches 7 million
kids globally daily
where one teacher is dealing with 30
kids and parents are disconnected,
popping in every three months,
and kids aren’t excited to be at
school, into a community working
together?” Chaudhary asked.
The first version of ClassDojo,
which let teachers give kids
feedback, spread to 35,000
classrooms in a mere 12 weeks,
prompting Y Combinator co-
founder Paul Graham to personally
invest in its seed round.
Six years later, ClassDojo
has raised about $31 million
from investors, earning a recent
valuation of $100 million. Its 30
employees occupy an airy former
art gallery in San Francisco’s SoMa
area. Muhammed Chaudhry,
the CEO of the Silicon Valley
Education Foundation, says gaming
techniques succeeded in turning
ClassDojo into “the most widely
used and respected behavioural-
management app out there”.
Academic studies have
found that ClassDojo helped to
increase students’ positivity, self-
control and engagement and to
reduce behavioral problems.
ClassDojo now supports a
Facebook-like feed that teachers
use to share photos and video of
the class, and a ‘stories’ section that
lets schools and students post news
and projects. “I can look through
the feed and see they’re studying the
letter ‘m’ and that they had bagels
for snacks,” says Jennifer Tyler, a
working mom with two preschoolers
in ClassDojo classrooms. “I feel
more connected.” Teachers say
the app helps to promote values
like responsibility and focus.
Students, who have sent
ClassDojo 250,000 drawings
of its whimsical monsters and
mascot, may be the biggest fans.
ClassDojo faces a handful of
startup competitors that are more
narrowly focussed on classroom
communications or ways for
students to upload homework. The
company has stayed ahead through
its broader focus and rapid product
innovation, based on pedagogical
research and teacher consultations.
It collaborated with educators
at Stanford, Harvard and Yale to
develop a video-discussion series
on “big ideas”, with sections like
“growth mindset” and “perseverance”
as well as content to promote
empathy and mindfulness.
Chaudhary vows to double down
on ClassDojo’s user focus through
ongoing in-depth consultations with
teachers and parents. “Education is
a human system,” he says. “You need
to work with people to change it.”
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 69

How Long of a Reach?
Pro basketball’s Asian appeal is obvious, but it struggles
to seed NBA talent here
T
he NBA, while a “national
association”, conducts a
large part of its basketball
business on international
soil. The brand has grown especially
popular in Asia, a region that carries
the NBA’s second- and third-largest
revenue markets in China and
the Philippines, respectively.
And yet, despite Asia making
up roughly 60 percent of the
world’s population, in a class of
113 foreign players to break camp
with an NBA squad this season,
not one hailed from that continent
(unless you count Australia).
In recent years, the league’s
dedicated offices for China, India
and six other Asian markets have
launched initiatives, including newly
opened academies, to establish the
game across all levels of play.
For the NBA to reach its full
potential in Asia, the region is going
to need stars its fan bases can identify
with. Players with full or partial Asian
heritage (see Jeremy Lin) obviously
help, but having a high-level player
born and raised in Asia is key.
Yao Ming, an eight-time All-Star
for the Houston Rockets from 2003 to
2011 and a recent Basketball Hall of
Fame inductee, did wonders for the
DaviD Ramos / Getty imaGes
game in China. But since the 7-footer’s
retirement in 2011, the country of
nearly 1.4 billion has failed to produce
any standouts. The Rockets’ 2016
second-round pick Zhou Qi is the
country’s most promising prospect in
years, but his ceiling is probably closer
72 | forbes india july 7, 2017
CRoss BoRDeR
NBa hopefuls iN asia
By matt connolly
to that of Yi Jianlian, whose NBA
career fizzled out after five seasons.
Satnam Singh is the only Indian
player to come close to gracing the
NBA hardwood, but the 2015 second-
rounder has floundered with the
Dallas Mavericks’ D-League affiliate.
The Philippines, where basketball
borders on religion, has yet to
produce any NBA-calibre talent.
The league’s remedy? Nurture the
sport, and its participants. “There
may be nothing more important
“It (basketball) can
be the No 2 sport
in cricket-mad
India... maybe in
five to six years.”
than having players come out of
that region and be in our league,”
said Mark Tatum, NBA deputy
commissioner, chief operating officer
and leader of all NBA international
efforts. “What we’re hoping to do is
provide the coaching, the training
and the competition required to
develop an All-Star-calibre player.”
It’s been just over four years since
the league first introduced “Jr NBA”
to Asia, adapting to China, India
and its Southeast Asian markets its
American youth programme designed
to impart fundamental skills and
core values. The programme has
garnered participation from over 5.5
million youth, parents and coaches
in the region. “To use a basketball
expression, we’re employing a
full-court press behind youth
development,” NBA China CEO
David Shoemaker says. “It starts
with a partnership we have with
the ministry of education, where
we teach basketball as part of the
physical education curriculum in
elementary, middle and high school.”
Jr NBA’s success has afforded the
programme an advisory council for
Greater Asia, featuring Basketball
Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo and
business leaders (including Forbes
Asia CEO William Adamopoulos).
It has also led to the formation of
sister programmes like the NBA
Yao School, an after-school league
for teenagers that, above all else,
emphasises playing basketball
for the sheer enjoyment of it.
“Yao himself believes that what has
been lacking in China is the number
of people that have played sports for
the fun,” Shoemaker says. The NBA
icon has lately assumed the presidency
of the China Basketball Association
(CBA), a national league of teams.
India has followed suit. With Jr
NBA in 19 of its cities across the
country, it made sense for Mumbai to
become the site of the league’s first
NBA Basketball School, which opened
its doors this spring. The tuition-based
programme is for youth to age 18.
 Strong to the hoop
and american shores:
Zhou Qi, the Houston
Rockets’ 2016 second
round pick
 CRoss BoRDeR NBa hopefuls iN asia
Taking it a step further, prospects
with professional basketball
aspirations now have the opportunity
to enrol in one of the newly formed
NBA Academies. The hope is that
these global hubs—including three
in China, one in India and one in
Australia that all launched this year—
will turn Asian national team players
into legitimate NBA hopefuls.
“We have government-
funded academies in a lot of
sports, but in terms of that level
of facility, it’s the first,” says
NBA India Managing Director
Yannick Colaco. “We’re creating
a legacy through this knowledge
transfer with local coaches.”
Supporting local pro basketball
leagues will prove just as essential
to the sport’s reach. But the NBA
not having a direct hand in how it
conducts business and handles its
talent has presented some challenges.
Many CBA officials, for example,
double as investors in the Chinese
league, leading to top domestic talent
being coddled and barred from leaving
the country to play in Europe, a prime
entry point to the NBA. National team
participation is mandatory, even when
it leaks into the CBA season. The
fundamental structure of the league—
from outdated arenas to a three-
month schedule to an overreliance
on American imports—has left a
majority of its teams in the red.
“With [Yao] at the helm, many
of the old practices will fall by the
wayside,” Shoemaker says of China’s
professional-player development.
India’s situation is even more
problematic, as it lacks a clear-cut
professional league due to reported
infighting within the Basketball
Federation of India (BFI).
But there’s an effort to change.
“Our focus is growing the game
of basketball... in that sense, we’re
completely aligned,” Colaco says of
NBA India’s relationship with the
BFI. “Everything we do, we do in
correlation with the federation.”
The long-tenured Philippine
74 | forbes india july 7, 2017
Basketball Association is having
its own problems filling stadiums,
but a newly opened NBA office
in Manila should present more
opportunities for collaboration.
Japan, which had an NBA office
in Tokyo from 1994 to 2011, is also
back on the pro basketball map
after launching a new league with
backing from the domestic sports
authority. With the Olympics coming
to the country in 2020, Tatum of
the NBA hints at renewed ties.
Unlike most of the NBA-viewing
public, Asian fans are forced to catch
games in the morning—either on their
commute or, for many, when they’re
already at work. But despite occupying
Of the 113 foreign
players to break
camp with an NBA
squad this year,
not one hailed
from Asia
a bad block for programming,
viewership has steadily climbed
across all major markets, due in large
part to advances in live streaming.
“Their fans are sophisticated,”
Tatum says. “In those time zones,
they’re watching our games on
our mobile platforms, our digital
platforms... there’s a consumption
habit that’s now been built
there because we’re making
the product readily available,
easily accessible to them.”
Lucrative rights deals have
been signed across broadcast
and social media in several Asian
nations, as well as videogames.
No surprise, Asia’s also a priority
for the league’s most marketable
players. Kevin Durant, who toured
China last summer, will grace the
hardwood of the NBA Academy
in India this off-season. Fellow
international “endorsement All-Stars”
like LeBron James (Nike, Tencent,
Intel), Stephen Curry (UA, Vivo)
and James Harden (Adidas) now
make annual trips across the globe.
While individual player
appearances are met with fanfare and
mobs, the NBA’s Global Games—pre-
season exhibitions involving two NBA
teams or one NBA team and a foreign
club—have arguably been an even
bigger hit. “It’s almost treated like
an All-Star game when we go there,”
Tatum says. “Last year, we sold out
both games in a matter of hours.”
This, despite the games not even
counting toward the teams’ win-
loss records, is a true testament to
the region’s interest in the league’s
live-event experience. Actual
regular-season games in Asia would
obviously do big business, but that
hasn’t been attempted since a 2003
visit to Japan. “Frankly, I don’t see
us playing regular-season games
today in that part of the world,”
Tatum says, citing “jet lag and the
potential impact it might have with
their performance on the court”.
Though the Global Games have
made stops in the Philippines, Taipei
and Macau, China has served as the
exclusive Asia host for the past few
years. That is to continue in 2017, with
the league strategically selecting the
country’s top merchandise-selling
team, the Golden State Warriors, to
play the Minnesota Timberwolves,
who sold a minority ownership
stake to Chinese businessman
Lizhang Jiang last summer.
Markets like Indonesia and the
Philippines are beginning to lay the
groundwork to follow in China’s
footsteps, but cricket-mad India may
actually offer the most surprising
upside in hoops. Its national team
upset China in Asia tournaments in
two of the last three years. “We know
its qualities resonate with Indian
youth,” says Colaco. “We believe it
can be the number-two sport in the
country... maybe in five to six years.”
 Recliner
ReclineR 2 ReclineR 3
Discovering Spotting birds,
Berlin’s street- and more, in
food markets Uganda
P/80 P/84

recliner 1 Heritage hotels and homestays offer more than mere rooms to stay

neemrana’s
le colonial hotel in
Kochi dates back
to the 16th century
 Recliner 1 travel

A Room with a View,

and Much More
Heritage hotels and homestays cater to travellers who seek
unique experiences from their holidays
By Jasodhara BanerJee

76 | forbes india july 7, 2017


T
he ways in which you can
vacation are probably
as myriad as the places
where you can. As ever-
improving transport and internet
connectivity make the world shrink—
always taking a little away from the
mystery and wonder of far-flung
and unexplored destinations—
vacationers are seeking magic in
other ways. The one big factor in
this search is how (not just ‘where’)
people choose to stay on a vacation.
Because how they stay can now, very
well, decide how they vacation.
India has been witnessing
Properties like the
hill Fort in Kesroli,
rajasthan, are a huge
draw among tourists
as they offer a
glimpse into a bygone
era and way of life
significant investments and growth in
the conventional hotel segment over
the past few years, with an increasing
awareness of the potential of the
industry. For instance, according to
India Brand Equity Foundation, the
mid-hotel segment is expected to get
investments of `6,600 crore over the
next five years, with major chains like
Mariott, Carlson Rezidor and ITC
planning upscale, budget hotels in
tier-I and II cities. However, besides
the scope for growth in conventional
hotel chains, there is a growing
interest in two other segments—
heritage hotels and homestays.
“These two categories represent
a trend that is driving growth. We
have observed this in our surveys,
like the TripBarometer Travel
Trends,” says Nikhil Ganju, the
country head of TripAdvisor, adding
that heritage hotels and homestays
represent a unique holiday staying
experience. While heritage hotels
offer a glimpse into a bygone era,
homestays are increasingly popular
with holidaymakers seeking a slice
of local culture and traditions.
Both represent the widening
horizons and expectations of the
Indian traveller. “People seeking
new experiences is something that
figured very high in the Travel Trends
report on the holiday preferences
of Indian holidaymakers,” says
Ganju. (See In Search Of...)
Sharat Dhall, COO (B2C), of
Yatra.com, agrees: “Increasingly,
people are seeking an experience
that a normal hotel cannot offer.
Heritage is a totally leisure segment,
with top-end products. With rising
incomes, people are willing to spend
on a higher-level experience.”
This preference for ‘experience’
is also highlighted by the 2017
TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice
Awards for hotels. The annual
awards are based on the millions
of reviews and opinions collected
in a single year from TripAdvisor
travellers worldwide. In India, this
year, the award was given to 148
hotels across eight categories—Top
Hotels Overall, Luxury, Bargain,
Small, Service, B&Bs and Inns,
Romance and Family—of which 134
were ‘independent hotels’, that is
those that do not belong to a chain.
“Experientially, there is no
comparison between a heritage
and a conventional hotel,” says
Aman Nath, founder-chairman of
Neemrana Hotels. “Whenever people
do an India trip and stay in a host of
courtesy neemrana
properties, the memorable ones are
not the city five-stars, but that palace
in the wilderness, where they may
have been a lot less comfortable.”
Nath adds that although
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 77
 Recliner 1 travel

GettinG onto the trAvel bAndwAGon

Players from different industries are cashing in on the Indian travellers’ thirst for adventure and unique experiences

(Left) Mahindra adventure includes expeditions to places like Ladakh; Breakaway offers customisable trips for handloom enthusiasts

All for the roAd
Mahindra & Mahindra, one of
the largest vehicle-makers in
the country, has successfully
created a travel and adventure
offshoot—Mahindra Adventure—
that combines the love of auto-
mobiles with travel. Mahindra
Adventure has its roots in the
company’s customer engage-
ment programme in 1993-94
where owners would be invited
for a day of driving and fun. The
event would be held at different
locations, with M&M customers
making day trips out of Mumbai,
Chandigarh, Shillong or Goa.
This activity was given an en-
tirely new identity and dimen-
sion with the inception of Ma-
hindra Adventure in 2011, which
included single-day trips called
Great Escape (only for M&M
owners), multi-day expeditions
that last between seven and 16
days (open to everyone), and
courtesy mahindra adventures, breakaway, plantation trails
wAke up, And smell
the coffee
Tata Coffee, one of the world’s
largest integrated coffee planta-
tion companies, discovered
around 2006 that their India
plantations have more to offer
than just beans. Nestled in these
lush gardens were bungalows
that dated back 120 to 130 years,
and which held the promise of
offering an experience no con-
ventional hotel could.
Plantation Trails was started in
2006 to expand the plantation
experience across the board,
while having a positive impact
on locals. Starting with one
bungalow with three rooms, it
now has eight bungalows across
Coorg, Chikmagalur and Hassan.
While the bungalows provide a
lifestyle experience—they come
with a personal butler, a chef
and an in-house staff—the plan-
tations offer nature tours, bean-
to-cup coffee tours, trekking and
white water rafting.
Gautam Prakash, head of Planta-
tion Trails, says these bungalows
offer a unique experience to
those who are not looking for
a five-star hotel experience:
“Our guests are experientially
evolved. They just want to read a
book, enjoy the flora and fauna.”
weAve An experience
In 2011, Shilpa Sharma co-
founded Breakaway to offer im-
mersive and customisable trips
to those who are not content
with conventional holidays. “It
is meant for those who want to
meet people and understand
their lifestyle,” she says. “It
is for those who travel to find
some meaning in travel, and get
under the skin of a community.”
After Sharma co-founded her
next enterprise, jaypore—an
online platform for handloom
and crafts products—in 2013,
she married the central theme
of both ventures to add a new
dimension to each.
While Breakaway curates short
breaks that range from long
weekends to five-day trips,
depending on location and the
interests of the guests, Sharma’s
experience with the myriad
handloom and handicraft com-
munities in the country puts her
in a position to curate experi-
ences for handloom enthusiasts
and general tourists alike. Trips
include visits to handloom
and crafts hubs where travel-
lers get a close look at age-old
techniques and processes, along
with a glimpse into the lives and
traditions of craftsmen. “These
trips are for general tourists, but
can be customised. They include
food and heritage walks, and al-
though the focus is on craft and
textile, there isn’t an overdose of
it,” she says.

Challenge drives that are entry-

level rallies for M&M owners.
There are between 50 and 70
teams, each with three or four
people, for each of the Great
Escape events. The multi-day
expeditions—to places such as
ladakh—usually have about 15
teams, and are accompanied by
the organisers, spare vehicles,
medical and emergency services.
Bijoy Kumar y, chief of Mahin-
dra Initiatives, says, “These are
not just customer engagement
programmes, but also a part of
experiential marketing, which
enables enthusiasts to experi- Plantation Trails
ence a Mahindra vehicle in combines a relaxing
its natural surroundings, and holiday with coffee
understanding its capabilities.” tours and trekking

78 | forbes india july 7, 2017

Neemrana’s larger properties like
Neemrana Fort-Palace and Tijara
Fort-Palace in Alwar and Hill Fort
in Kesroli (all in Rajasthan) are a
huge draw, other properties like
the Glasshouse on the Ganges and
The Ramgarh Bungalows (both
at Kumaon in Uttarakhand) have
shown a great leap because of their
peaceful locations. “Guests expect
grandeur of scale, great views, some
quirkiness, and a lot of history,” he
says. “Basically people travel to see the
‘difference’, and the heritage hotels
provide this without much effort.”
Heritage also no longer means
just the palaces of erstwhile royalty;
bungalows and havelis too offer a
slice of history, perhaps an even
more intimate one, making for a wide
array of properties and budgets, as
well as experiences. So, while tariffs
at the Rambagh Palace of Taj Hotels
and Palaces in Jaipur begin from
around `22,500 per night, Neemrana’s
Glasshouse on the Ganges can offer
rooms starting at `10,000 per night.
That the sector has grown
manifold, says Nath, is evident from
the fact that the Indian Heritage
Hotels Association, formed in
1990 with 14 members from
Rajasthan—“where the sector is
largely concentrated”—has, in 2017,
191 members from 16 states. The rise
in number of heritage properties
being listed on TripAdvisor, too,
indicates the insatiable demand
in this sector, says Ganju. “There
will come a time when you will
run out of true-blue heritage
properties, but there are always
more forts and bungalows being
discovered and restored,” he says.
H
omestays is another segment
that brings out the Indian
traveller’s search for out-
of-the-ordinary experiences. Both
Dhall and Ganju say the segment
is witnessing significant growth.
So much so that Yatra launched an
initiative last year, through which
they tie up with state governments to
promote the concept of homestays.
Travellers are
now opting for
homestays in
their quest for
going local
“The sector has seen good growth a role. Travellers get insights into
in the past one year to 18 months,” he local customs and culture.” The
says. “But homestays are still nascent second segment is the value-seeker,
in India. Only the entry of new players or travellers in large groups. “For
will drive this segment.” He adds that instance, if two or three families are
a lot of education is required to make travelling together, they take over
homestays acceptable to both hosts one complete house,” he says.
and guests; while hosts are reluctant But India is nowhere close in
to put out their properties, travellers supply, compared to other nations
are iffy about putting up in them. in the region. “Although we have
“They expect amenities such as room witnessed a high level of interest, we
service,” says Dhall. “Homestays haven’t seen the high growth rates
also tend to have fixed times for that we have seen in hotels. Look at
meals, with a caretaker who cooks. Bali in Indonesia, for instance,” says
These might not meet the Ganju. “The quality and
expectations of the guests.” in seArch of… variety of supply there
Online reviews, show we are far behind.”
however, might come Going somewhere He adds that it is also a
I’ve never been
in handy. “Reviews do before: function of the economy:
the job of tempering “How many people in
expectations. A homestay
80% India have a first home,
Being able to learn
newbie would read something new on forget a second one they
reviews and might want the trip: can put up for homestays?”
to stay away if they don’t 67% The nature of
like them,” says Ganju. homestays, Ganju says,
Trying something
The homestay guest, new: is also regional and has
says Dhall, can broadly be 67% cultural manifestations.
categorised into two. The While in the US and
Amenities available
first are those looking for a at the destination: Europe, it is common
differentiated experience. for people to put up
“Location, or the heritage
70% their second homes as
Somewhere I can
of the property—something travel as indepen- homestays—which are
like a 100-year-old dently as possible: managed by professionals—
courtesy yatra
bungalow—is important,” in the Asia-Pacific region,
65%
he says. “Elements such it is more common to
as the host living on the Source: TripBarometer have homestays where
Travel Trends 2016
same property also play the host, too, lives.
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 79
 Recliner 2 Travel

Street
Smart
Berlin’s street-food market scene is a reflection
of a city that is a melting pot of cultures
By Vaishali Dinakaran

I
’m sitting at a table sipping
piping hot masala chai, trying to
moderate a friendly argument
between two gentlemen
from Berlin and a young lady from
Kazakhstan. I nearly choke on my
chai, partly because it’s hot, partly
because I fear the discussion is
heading in a dangerous direction.
At that precise moment, we’re
interrupted by someone who has an
interesting, if strange, proposition. He
tells us that his name is Mario. That
he’s from Colombia. And that for the
price of one euro, he will recite a poem
to us. It seems like a very good idea.
“Among possible maybes
of green winter leaves,
A poet’s ideal lays far beyond
trees…” Mario begins.
He needs to shout the words
a little, because the high-domed
Markthalle Neun (which translates
to ‘Market Hall Nine’), on Berlin’s
Eisenbahnstrasse in Kreuzberg, is
chock-full of people. Every week,
Markthalle Neun hosts Street Food
Thursday, between 6 pm and 9 pm,
PhoTograPhs: vaishali Dinakaran
to Street Food Thursday, let me
explain the wonders of Markthalle
Neun by itself. Between Tuesday
and Thursday, from 11 am to 6 pm,
locals troop in to buy everything from
fresh produce, organically grown
vegetables, fresh meat and seafood,
to rather more exotic whole spices,
spice blends, tofu and a range of
tea and coffee. A slightly amplified
version of this is seen on weekends,
with more vendors and more wares
on offer on Fridays and Saturdays.
But it’s Street Food Thursdays that
give the hungry Berliner or famished
tourist the gastronomic experience of
a lifetime. In addition to the existing
cafes and bakeries, the entire space
is transformed with a multitude of
stalls, each serving up delicacies
from a different part of the world.
Whether you’d like to try cheese
and spinach-filled empanadas from
Uruguay; Portuguese custard tarts friends, and we liked it all. So much
— those heavenly little bite-sized so that we went back the following
desserts invented in the Belem region week, simply because the draw of the
of Lisbon; gol guppes with the power happy market hall, full of laughter,
to refresh the homesick soul from chatter, and cheerful people eating

easily Berlin’s most popular street-
food market. Housed within the
original Markthalle IX building
that first opened to the public in
1891, the new version of the market
flung its doors open in 2011 and
brought people flocking right back.
It’s easy to see why. Before I get
the subcontinent; or some steaming
hot Taiwanese rice bowls with either
pork belly or mushrooms lending it
flavour, there really is something for
everybody. In the name of research,
I ate my way through all of the
dishes that have been listed out,
ably assisted by two fork-wielding
good food, proved to be impossible to
resist. And there was more food to try.
Especially the rolls at Chaiwallahs.
Chaiwallahs is a Berlin street-food
style restaurant that also puts up a
stall in Markthalle Neun once a week.
The stall is almost always crowded,
and the food is often sold out fast.

80 | forbes india july 7, 2017


They usually serve their very popular
naanwiches, or what we’d call rolls
in India. The naan is handmade from
scratch, as is the highly flavourful
filling, in this case the options were
paneer or pork belly. As someone
who normally turns up her nose at
the prospect of eating Indian food
abroad, I salivated shamelessly, and
though I was full, I wanted more of
those paneer and pork belly rolls.
They were massive, filling, and packed
with authentic Indian flavour.
But food and flavours aside, I
realised what made Markthalle Neun
magical when I was sitting at that
communal table, listening to Mario
recite a poem about a girl he met and
fell in love with years ago in Italy:
It was its ability to attract people
from all parts of the world, and make
them interact with each other. For
everyone you meet at the Markthalle
is amiable. The chefs will tell you
about the food that they make, the
sommeliers will tell you about the
Chez su at the Turkish
Market in kreuzberg
offers lovely food; don’t
miss the cauliflower and
zucchini cutlets, or the
cheese-filled Turkish rolls
many fine wines they have on sale,
the fromagers will be happy to chat
for ages about rennet and the finer-
points of washed rind cheese. As for
the people who catch you staring
hungrily at their food? Well, they
will happily point out exactly which
stall they bought it from. It’s the ideal
place for an evening out with family
and friends. And the fact that it’s
indoors, makes it an excellent choice
during the cold winter months.
It was my discovery of Markthalle
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 81
Recliner 2 Travel
(Clockwise from top left) a pan full of Turkish kofte; a cheese-filled empanada and indonesian serabi pancake at street Food auf
achse; gol guppe at Markthalle neun; korean chicken wings and Vietnamese bahn gio at the kulturbrauerei
Neun, then, that led to my quest for
the very best street-food markets
in Berlin. Which is how I stumbled
upon Street Food auf Achse in the
Kulturbrauerei in Berlin’s Prenzlauer
Berg. The Kulturbrauerei, which
translates into ‘Culture Brewery’,
started out as a brewery years ago.
Today, much like Mumbai’s many
mills, it’s become a cultural hub. It
houses theatres, restaurants, and more
than one bespoke designer store. But
every Sunday between the 15th of
January and the 12th of November,
little stalls pop up in between the red
brick buildings, and food is served.
Since the market is outdoors, it helps
to have a jacket with you, unless, of
course, the forecast for the day is more
than pleasant. Unfortunately for me,
I chose a particularly nippy Sunday
for my visit, which meant that in
82 | forbes india july 7, 2017
addition to the services of my jacket,
I needed some hot apple cider to help
warm me up, as I worked my way
through some serabi or surabi, which
are Indonesian claypot pancakes,
empanadas, spicy Korean chicken
wings, and Vietnamese banh gio (rice
dumplings with a pork filling steamed
in a banana leaf). Once again, I found
myself at a communal table, this time
sharing both food and conversation
with strangers. The market, I was told
by some affable people, is far more
enjoyable in the summer. The winter
bonfires are no longer needed, and
jackets and thermals are replaced with
shorts and flip-flops, and there’s the
air of a festival to the proceedings. But
irrespective of what time of the year
you happen to visit Street Food auf
Achse (which literally means Street
Food on the Axis) make sure to notice
the quaint retro food trucks that are
parked all through the brauerei. It’s
like stepping back into the ’70s.
But as I was to discover, there was
another Berlin street-food market
that made me feel like I’d walked
through a time portal. Tucked away
in Wilmersdorf, Preussen Park is a
place where Thai families in Berlin
would meet over the weekend to have
big old family cookouts. Eventually,
these cookouts became so big and so
popular, that they started attracting
the attention of passers-by, who
wanted to sample some of the food
too. So, what had begun as a place for
the Thai community to meet, cook, eat
and make merry, eventually turned
into Thaipark. Open between Fridays
and Sundays when the weather is
good (the market doesn’t open during
the winter or when it’s raining) the

lights and life at street Food Thursday at Markthalle neun, easily Berlin’s most popular
street-food market
park sees several Thai people, usually
women, spread out picnic blankets
on the grass, place tiny little tables
with portable gas stoves on them, and
cook food right there in the park.
Thaipark can be tricky though.
When I first visited the park, I quite
simply didn’t know where to go,
because I was worried that in some
cases I really might be interrupting
a family picnic. But eventually, after
scoping out the many vendors, and
having been assured that they were
indeed selling food, I opted for some
dumplings that were quickly pan-
fried in front of me, and worked my
way through some noodles and rice.
I realised, later, that I’d made some
fundamental mistakes. The first was
that though the timings are meant to
be between noon and 10 pm, all the
really good food gets sold out early. So,
if you can’t make it there for lunch, it’s
wiser to just skip it. The second was
that, drawn by the smells that wafted
my way, I had stopped and eaten some
pad thai, which proved to be very
average and left me disappointed. A lot
of research revealed that there were
specific spots that one must not miss,
but are hard to find simply because
the vendors don’t put up signboards
or names. But go early, preferably
on a summer day, and head for the
stalls with the most people thronging
around, clamouring for more
dumplings or pork noodle soup or
banana fritters and you can’t go wrong.
And armed with this knowledge the
next time around, I got to eat some
fantastic noodle soup, terrific papaya
salad, and indulge in some lovely Thai
sticky rice and mango. I also managed
to procure a jar of homemade sambal,
which added flavour to several
batches of fried rice and red curry that
I whipped up in my own kitchen.
Perhaps the best street-food market
in Berlin on a cold day though, as I
was to discover, was the Türkischer
Markt that runs alongside the
Landwehr Kanal in Berlin’s Neukölln
area. To begin with, this one isn’t
strictly a street-food market. It is,
quite simply, a Turkish market, where
you get everything from lengths of
fabric, buttons, posters and paintings,
jewellery, and the odd knick-knack
and curio, to spices, lentils and a
variety of fresh vegetables. Which is
why you’ll find plenty of Kreuzberg
Berlin is a city that
is as welcoming of
various cultures as it is
possible for a city to be
and Neukölln dwellers coming here
every Tuesday and Friday between
11 am and 6 pm, which is when the
market is open, to do their weekly
shopping. But, there certainly is food,
and it’s certainly worth visiting the
market for. Whether you’re in the
mood for some hot Turkish coffee,
which I needed given that my two
jackets were failing me miserably, hot
toasted nuts of various kinds, or some
tea brewed traditionally in çaydanlıks
(Turkish two-stacked kettles) and
served in transparent glasses, there’s
a stall for everything. Don’t miss the
cauliflower cutlets served in thin
dürüm, or the Turkish köfte that taste a
lot like the Indian seekh kebab. Or the
opportunity to bargain and haggle—it’s
one of the few places where you can
actually try your hand at it in Berlin.
And so, I found myself clutching a
bag of assorted toasted nuts, walking
through the Turkish Market, taking
in the sights, but also absentmindedly
planning a visit to the Bite Club
(another one of Berlin’s must-visit
street food markets that was then
still a few weeks away from opening
for the season) and wondering
what it is about the combination of
Berlin and street food. I watched
as a young German man bought
some Turkish lamb skewers and
began polishing them off with
relish, and then it occurred to me.
Berlin is a city that is as welcoming
of various cultures as it is possible for
a city to be. Which is why, perhaps,
alongside the humble German
würstbrötchen (or sausage in bread)
and currywürst (sausages in tomato
sauce with curry powder), the
döner kebab, falafel, sushi, crepes,
and a veritable cornucopia of other
dishes from various corners of the
world thrive. Not just in stores and
restaurants, but at the many spring,
summer, winter and flea markets
that the city is dotted with at various
points in the year. And thus cultures
mingle, palates are acclimatised
to foreign tastes, and ideas are
exchanged. The word that I’m looking
for, perhaps, is cosmopolitan.
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 83
 Recliner 3 Travel

A (different) African
MarTin Mecnarowski / shuTTersTock.coM

The kob, a handsome

medium-sized
antelope, is Uganda’s
national animal

84 | forbes india july 7, 2017

Safari
Uganda’s geography
and its variety of
By SaTyajiT DaS natural habitats
make it a haven for
wildlife enthusiasts

O
ther than for its gorillas,
Uganda rarely finds
a mention among
favoured African wildlife
destinations. The country is still
associated with its infamous dictator
Idi Amin, who left the nation bankrupt
and allowed the destruction of its
national parks. But Uganda has made
a remarkable recovery and today is
one of the best wildlife destinations
on the continent, as we find out.
With our driver and guide Martin
Okot, we undertake a month-long
circuit of the country: From Entebbe,
we travel north-east to Jinja, then
north to Masindi and Murchison
Falls, before turning south along
the Rift Valley, returning to our
starting point via Lake Mburo.

Mammal fix
Uganda is different from eastern
and southern Africa because it lacks
the high concentration of wildlife,
with the exception of the Queen
Elizabeth (QE) National Park.
Situated in the scenic Albertine Rift,
bordering lakes Edward and George,
fringed by the Rwenzori Mountains
that rise more than 5000 m, the
2,000 sq km park has 95 species of
mammals, including 25 predators.
On drives through the park, we
spot a wide variety of herbivores,
such as waterbuck, topi, and buffalo.
Uganda’s national animal, the kob, a
handsome medium-sized antelope,
is abundant. Hippos wallow in and
around the many waterways while
baboons, one of the 10 primates found
here, are easily seen, as are warthogs.
We also come across a group of
giant forest hogs, the largest wild pig
native to wooded habitats in Africa.
Our lodge even has a large band of
habituated banded mongooses, who

july 7, 2017 forbes india | 85

 Recliner 3 Travel
patrol their territories and inspect
guests with obvious curiosity.
There are now over 1,000 elephants
in QE, a significant recovery from the
low of around 150 due to poaching
during and immediately after the
Idi Amin era, though the number
is still below the 4,000 mark from
the early 1970s. The tragic past is
evident in the behaviour of some
older elephants who are nervous and
sometime aggressive around humans.
Lion numbers, too, have recovered
in QE. The most famous are the
tree-climbing lions in the southern
Ishasha sector, who rest on the limbs
of trees during the hottest part of the
day. We come close to the Kasenyi
pride, in the northeastern sector of
QE—with 16 lions, including several
cubs—although they are hidden in
distant scrubs. However, we see
several of the tree-climbing variety in
the beautiful and wilder Ishasha area.
Martin is keen to find the spotted
hyenas in the southern part of
QE. Within a short distance of our
lodge, we come upon them at a
clockwise froM Top lefT: GeTTy iMaGes; MiroarT / shuTTersTock.coM;
awei / shuTTersTock.coM; peTer BeTTs / shuTTersTock.coM
(Clockwise from top left) a Shoebill Stork, an african grey parrot, a grey crowned
crane and a crested barbet
86 | forbes india july 7, 2017
kill of a kob on an early morning
drive. We park the car only metres
away, and spend several hours
watching the clan in action.
The kill we came across had taken
place only minutes before our arrival:
The three adults at the carcass are
still panting from the exertion, their
muzzles dripping with fresh blood.
They quickly dismember the dead
kob. The clan hierarchy is evident:
Lower-ranked animals, sub-adults
and the young wait a short distance
away until they are called.
More than 60 vultures—hooded,
white-backed, Rüppell’s griffon and
lappet-faced—descend, and await
their turn. But, in a little more than
an hour, the only evidence of the
dead kob is the skin. Well before the
end, the disgusted vultures depart.
Martin says he has only
seen this once before. We have
been extremely fortunate.
The King Whalehead
Uganda is among the richest birding
destinations in Africa, due to its wide
range of habitats: Open grassland,
euphorbia-studded savanna,
acacia woodland, closed-canopy
riparian forests, luxuriant tropical
rainforests, swampland—including
extensive papyrus swamps—as
well as numerous lakes and rivers.
The Rift Valley and mountain
ranges create different altitudinal
gradients, attracting different birds.
Uganda is also a convergence zone,
encompassing several central and
eastern African regions, each with
its distinctive birdlife: The Sudan-
Guinean savanna, the Guinea-
Congo forests, the Lake Victoria
basin, the Afrotropical Highlands,
and the Somali-Masai biome.
There are more than 1,050
recorded species, representing 60
percent of the bird species found in
Africa, and 11 percent of the whole
world. With the help of Martin and
local guides, we are lucky enough
to see around 450 species.
At the Mamba Swamp, west of
Entebbe, after a short boat trip, our
guide points out a Shoebill Stork, one
of the holy grails of African birds.
Shoebills, also known as whalehead
storks, are very large birds standing
up to 1.5 metres high with a wingspan
of up to 2.5 metres. The bird stands
still beside a channel, waiting for
its preferred prey—lungfish. When
it spots one, it pounces. The razor-
sharp edges of its mandibles and a
large hook at the tip of its massive bill
help it decapitate its prey. Due to the
destruction of its favoured papyrus
swamps and due to hunting, shoebills
are now classed as vulnerable.
More avian riches
There are numerous types of weaver
birds throughout Uganda, with
their elaborately woven communal
nests. There are warblers, thrushes,
flycatchers, sparrows, woodpeckers
and barbets. Perhaps the most striking
are the crested barbets, their faces
speckled yellow and red, with a
small black crest, a yellow belly with
red dots, black wings with white
specks and a broad black band on
its neck. Despite the bright colours,
the bird blends into the bush.
There are mousebirds, the
survivors of a lineage that dates back
to the late Palaeogene and Miocene
periods. The tiny and slender grey or
brown birds have soft, hairlike body
feathers. They scurry through trees
in search of berries, fruit and buds,
sometimes feeding upside down.
We see kingfishers, ranging
from the tiny (12 cm) African dwarf
kingfisher to the large (40 cm) giant
kingfisher. At the edge of a lake, we
see an appropriately named Shiny
Blue Kingfisher in the air, its wings
brilliantly iridescent in the sunshine.
There are multiple species of bee-
eaters, with richly coloured plumage
and elongated central tail feathers.
There are turacos (literally ‘banana-
eaters’), with their prominent crests
and long tails, and massive hornbills.
A pair of striking Abyssinian Ground
Hornbills saunter on the side of
the road. We watch beautiful grey
crowned cranes, Uganda’s national
bird, perform their courting dance.
A fruiting tree yields a flock
of African grey parrots. Their
intelligence and talking ability have
made them prized pets, with over 3.5
lakh birds being traded on the global
market between 1994 and 2003. They
are now classified as endangered.
birds of Prey
Birds of prey are everywhere. We find
a hobby—a small, slim falcon—near
one of the President’s residences,
near the town of Jinja. Our binoculars
attract the attention of armed soldiers
who tell us to move on. There are
eagles, including long-crested
eagles with their punk hair-dos, and
buzzards and goshawks. We get
excellent views of several martial
eagles, the largest of the African
eagles, with a wingspan of nearly 2
metres. They hunt large birds and
small antelope. We hear but are too
late to see a crowned eagle, the most
powerful raptor in Africa. There are
monkey bones from recent kills near
its nest site, a testimony to its strength.
Tree-climbing lions rest on trunks during the hottest part of the day
At Murchison Falls National
Park, we stake out the cliffs, hoping
to spot a bat hawk, a specialised
raptor that preys on bats. While we
are waiting, an African harrier hawk
appears, searching the rock crevices
for bats and flying off with prey.
Nocturnal birds are present
even during the day. We see
several Verreaux eagle owls,
their eyelids pink. On a boat trip,
the boatman surprises a pair of
roosting Pel’s fishing owls. At
night, we see the pennant-winged
nightjar; during breeding season,
the male acquires pennant feathers
up to twice its body length.
Uganda birding is sometimes
ridiculously easy. A beautiful Ross’s
turaco turns up in our Entebbe
lodge’s bird bath; a flock of white
helmetshrikes flies across the road,
close to our car. But some birds are
more difficult to spot. It takes us
three weeks to get a decent view of
two black-billed turacos. Although
we have heard their calls, their bright
green feathers camouflage them
in the forest. We hear a chocolate-
backed kingfisher call, but a two-hour
search does not provide a sighting.
for How Long?
The remaining forests, such as in
Kibale, yield rare treats. There, in
pitch darkness, we set off in search
of the green-breasted pitta. About an
hour later, we spot the bird on the
path, rummaging for insects. Even
in the dull light, it is spectacular.
The array of wildlife may suggest
an idyllic wilderness. But that would
be misleading. These forests are
isolated patches in a sea of humanity.
Much of our birding is done from busy
roads, and in and around villages. We
spot the elusive papyrus gonolek, a
stunning crimson bird with a bright
yellow cap, in a tiny patch of swamp.
The nearby village has created a
small reserve to earn tourist dollars.
Near the Bwindi Impenetrable
National Park, in south-western
Uganda, we are on the lookout for
wrynecks, a small woodpecker, only
to find that a small copse where they
were often seen has been cut down.
We try an alternative spot, which
turns out to be a single tree standing
amidst farmland. The guide has seen
a single bird here occasionally.
Uganda’s population growth is
Brina l. BunT / shuTTersTock.coM
around 3.25 percent, among the
highest in the world. The needs of
a poor rural population to look for
agricultural land is rapidly destroying
forests and wild places. Uganda may
be Africa’s overlooked jewel, but it is
unlikely that future generations will
get the chance to see its wonders.
july 7, 2017 forbes india | 87
 thoughts The glory of each
generation is to make
its own precedents.
oN thE NExt gENERAtIoN —Belva loCkwooD

The young do not

know enough to be
prudent, and therefore
they attempt the
impossible—and
achieve it, generation
after generation.
—Pearl s BuCk

If I were given Each new

the opportunity generation is a
to present a fresh invasion
gift to the next of savages.
generation, it —hervey allen
would be the
ability for each
History is the present. That’s why individual to learn
every generation writes it anew. but
what most people think of as history to laugh at himself.
is its end product, myth. —Charles
—el DoCTorow M sChulz

Every generation laughs Parents

at the old fashions, but often talk
follows religiously the new. about the
younger
—henry DaviD Thoreau The philosophy of
generation the school room in
as if they one generation will
didn’t have
PEARL s BuCK: EVEREtt hIstoRICAL / shuttERstoCK.CoM; KAPIL DEV: FAyAz KABLI / REutERs

be the philosophy
DoCtoRoW: LEV RADIN / shuttERstoCK.CoM; thoREAu, LoCKWooD: shuttERstoCK.CoM;

anything to of government
do with it. in the next.
—haiM —aBrahaM
Each generation There is always
imagines itself a heavy demand GinoTT linColn
to be more for fresh
intelligent than mediocrity.
In every
The next generation has
the one that generation the always been and will be
went before it,
and wiser than
least cultivated better than the previous
taste has
the one that the largest one. If it is not, then
comes after it. appetite. the world would not
—GeorGe —Paul be moving forward.
orwell GauGuin —kaPil Dev

88 | forbes IndIa July 7, 2017

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