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PEOPLE
 Winds
of Chang
He is at the crossroads of his
career. Nevertheless, Ashwani Windlass is characteristically
phlegmatic when confronted on his resignation from the Vice-Chairmanship
of Reliance Telecom: ''I told them (the Ambanis) about it early this year
and I ceased to be an employee of the company on June 30.'' ''What's the
fuss now?'' asks Windlass, 44. He also laughs away rumours about his
return to the Hutchison fold. The man, who has a journalism diploma from
Punjab University, had successfully given business scribes the slip at the
time. Well, after a long and interesting career, Windlass is striking out
on his own with a venture that would piggy-back on communication
infrastructure on the ground and web-enabled technologies. ''There is
cyber space and real space. There is a space between the two, which is
where I want to position myself,'' he says rather cryptically. Well,
Windlass may have found his true calling, albeit a trifle late. Like many
others of his generation, he first joined DCM as a management trainee in
1978. Subsequently, he worked with Ranbaxy and Max India, where he managed
the company's foray into electronic equipment and cellular telephony. He
also masterminded Max's sell-out to Hutchison Whampoa, before joining
Reliance Telecom. Somewhere along the line, he was also the marketing
agent for Teachers' scotch whiskey. And now, of course, he has left it all
behind to be on his own.
Now, will it be entrepreneurship all the way?
No, Windlass will also revive his journo avatar with a technology column.
Different codes or different strokes...
 Banking
Baron
Happenstance landed this soft-spoken
Sikh into the banking hotspot. As the Regional General Manager (India) of
Standard Chartered Bank and CEO, Standard Chartered Grindlays Bank, Jaspal
Bindra now has the dual challenge of running the largest private
sector bank and orchestrating what could be the biggest merger in the
financial services industry. But Bindra, who has worked at the Union Bank
of Switzerland and Bank of America before joining StanChart, is unfazed.
''The challenge of integrating the bank with a Rs 20,000-crore
balance-sheet is mitigated by the abundant talent and complimentarity of
businesses on both the wholesale and the retail side,'' says Bindra, 40.
His brief includes moulding the India operations into a processing hub and
making it one of the more profitable units of StanChart. Life, thus, has
changed for this 'auto-pilot' manager with the mandatory socialising that
comes with the turf eating into his pastime-watching movies. So what does
he do? He installs screensavers of his favourite leading ladies, Marilyn
Monroe and Aishwarya Rai. Talk of mixing business with pleasure...
 Woman
of Many Parts
Call her multi-faceted! The
25-year-old Sargam Bajaj packs a lot into her average workday. As
Senior Manager (Marketing) at Bajaj Auto, she has overseen the launch of
three trendy models-Spirit, Spice, and Saffire. She is also the brains
(and hands) behind the soon-to-be-launched two-wheeler portal, tentatively
named 'Rider Zone', which will have "everything that a two-wheeler
enthusiast would like to know'', she says. She is bolstering the Bajaj
Auto web-site as well. In her spare time, she learns Latin American
dancing. That is, when she is not busy with 'Maiden Venture', a club for
young women like her who have active roles in the family enterprises. What
gives? Good genes-she is the elder daughter of Madhur Bajaj and the niece
of Rahul Bajaj, the Executive Director and Chairman of Bajaj Auto,
respectively-and loads of passion for the wheels...
 It's
(life)Springtime
Lifespring could easily belong to
Oxford Street. But this upscale health-and-beauty store choc-a-bloc with
imported brands, first among the five slated to come up in Delhi, is
located in the unpretentious environs of Delhi's South Extension market.
And Proprietor-Director Mahesh Patel is depending on just
word-of-mouth publicity to make it a success. "This is only the
beginning. Soon we will spread across Delhi and its suburbs and touch
other metros," says Patel, 41, whose company, Bodium Enterprises,
operates super-stores worldwide and has just tied up with the Jatia Group.
The range and the ambience are his USP, claims Patel, who thinks nothing
of wrapping packages and running errands for his customers. Now that's a
true retailer...
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