They aren't mutants, but they change roles faster than you can say Patrick Stewart. Meet India's own EIR (Entrepreneurs In Residence) who move from one new area their firms are venturing into, to another, with consummate ease.

By Suveen K. Sinha & Seema Shukla

N. Arjun still remembers his first day in his new job. It was just over seven months ago-June 1, 2000-that the man drove past the building in Delhi's Okhla area that housed the swank office of Mantra, the Bharti-BT joint venture he was leaving behind. His destination was on the same road, a mere 18 buildings away: it was a small office located on the first floor of a marginally run-down building that housed a garment manufacturing unit. But the 41-year old Arjun wasn't leaving the group. He was, like he had done twice before in the 18 years he spent in Bharti, moving on: from a business that had put its teething days behind it, Mantra, to one that was still very much on paper, Bharti Telesonic, the company heading the group's foray into the domestic long distance telephony business. Arjun's brief was no different from what it had been in the previous two instances: get the new business off the ground.

They call people like Arjun EIR (Entrepreneur In Residence) in Silicon Valley. You won't find too many Indian execs moving around with EIR printed on their business cards. Still, with opportunities opening up in businesses like insurance, healthcare, telecom, and financial services, India Inc. isn't without its share of entrepreneurs IR. Not executives who leave their company to head a start-up, not sons or grandsons the patriarch trusts, not even heirs-in-the-making out to prove themselves, but professional managers who, time and time again, display their abilities in converting the germ of an idea into a dream of a business.

Like the Max Group's Vivek Jetley whose mandate is to convert the group's ambitions in the insurance-, healthcare-, and infotech-space into reality. Like HDFC's Deepak Satwalekar who has overseen HDFC's diversifications into the areas of banking, consumer finance, and mutual funds, and is now heading its foray into insurance.

Like ICICI's Shikha Sharma, Madhabi Puri-Buch, and Chanda Kochhar who've been at the vanguard every time ICICI has sought to tap emerging opportunities. (Today, the first heads ICICI Pru, the second, ICICI Webtrade, and the third, the personal financial services and the e-com groups of ICICI). Or like HLL's Dalip Sehgal who, as Executive Director, (New Ventures), is looking at new businesses or new ways of doing business.

There may be something unique about these executives, or there may not be, but there's no denying the fact that playing mother-hen to a new business takes that special thing. ''A lot of our work relates to helping incumbent (Editor's note: this is the average consultant's adjective of choice to describe existing brick-and-mortar companies) companies identify growth opportunities and, in some cases, build these businesses,'' says Ashutosh Padhi, an Associate Consultant with McKinsey & Co. ''We avoid identifying people, but we do tell them what kind of person is required (to head the show).''

There's reason enough to pick an internal candidate. Not too many companies have an organisational fabric resilient enough to bear the strain of entering an hitherto untapped area and getting used to a new senior executive at the same time. And anyone who has warmed a seat in a company's senior ranks has a fair understanding of the organisation's unique internal processes and how to get things done. A new face may have no idea of how things work in a company, leave alone that of the 12 power centres he'll have to pacify to get things moving. ''If you have the bandwidth to spare senior executives, there's nothing like an internal candidate,'' sums up Uday Chawla, a partner in search-firm Heidrick & Struggles.

What It Takes To Be An EIR

The inability to identify start-up DNA has been the fall of several new ventures. The best of ideas and an excess of capital mean nothing if the man chosen by a company to head its new business doesn't have what it takes. Scratch every new venture that hasn't worked as well as it was expected to in recent times and you'll discover that in each case, the man (or the woman) on top didn't have the characteristics requisite in an EIR.

Even in this age of enlightenment, there are people who believe that managers are either born with entrepreneurial skills, or without them. Devinder Chawla, a principal at Kearney, accepts that there are execs who work on acquiring skills that'll help them in a start-up situation, but that at the end of the day, ''there are those who like the uncertainty and ambiguity that is very much part of heading a start-up, and there are those who do not.'' Shikha Sharma of ICICI Pru-someone who would fit into Chawla's first category-believes it is a function of whether the person is driven by the desire for power or creativity: ''Those motivated by the urge for power would not normally prefer a start-up.''

The propensity of an executive to take risks-that magic quality highlighted in pre-placement presentations and performance appraisal exercises (and nowhere else)- is a desired characteristic among entrepreneurs in residence. As is the ability to work with incomplete, often imperfect, information. Most Big Ideas are nebulous and the chief executive officer of a company that wishes to enter a new area often knows little else apart from the fact that the company has to be in that business.

The best of the species also display the aptitude to live with a pace that can vary from gruelling to pedestrian. And you won't find an EIR running to his CEO complaining about how having to do too many things at once is having an impact on his productivity.

Start-up artistes feed off the stress and hyperactivity involved in building a business up from scratch. ''It's the constantly evolving nature of new ventures that is so absorbing,'' confesses Sehgal. And much like Sergio Zyman who rose from the debacle that was New Coke to become the red cherry's head of marketing, they display the ability to bounce back.

The trappings that come with heading an established business are irrelevant to executives who take on the challenge of heading a new venture. But don't focus too much of your resources on identifying or breeding entrepreneurs, cautions Sanjay Jain, a partner at Accenture. Organisations either have what it takes to create intrepreneurs or they do not. ''Entrepreneurial organisations beget entrepreneurs,'' says he.

...The Upside And The Downside

If the best start-up execs are born, not made, there's little someone who wishes to be an EIR can do. Little, that is, apart from jumping at opportunities and acquiring as much cross-functional expertise (whatever that means) as possible. Still, being a company's favourite new ventures manager does have a downside. ''I may get branded as a start-up guy,'' worries Arjun. ''That isn't necessarily a good thing.''

That is a valid concern: it certainly isn't. Post the EIR-phenomenon, executives are increasingly being categorised as either start-up people or operations people. And the popular perception is that the skills required for each are mutually exclusive. As headhunter Deepak Gupta, the CEO of Korn/Ferry's Indian operations, puts it: ''If I were looking for a stable person to oversee a company's maintenance-phase, I'd be loath to hire someone who's concentrated on start-ups all his life.''

Gupta would be right to do so: stability isn't something most start-up artists can live with. Structures and systems choke them, and the adrenaline tends to dry up when there's no major fire to fight. When things work out and the venture succeeds, they last for between three and four years. When they don't, they move on (or out). If the position of an EIR is still a desired one, it is because of the excitement that comes with the job and the opportunity it provides an individual to create a name for the self. A run of successes in launching new businesses could ensure a shorter (and undoubtedly faster) path to the top.

Not every story has a happy ending. ''The CEO could pull the plug on the venture at any time,'' warns U.R. Bhat, Chief Investment Officer, Jardine Fleming. And chief executives have demonstrated that it isn't just unsuccessful new ventures they exit: in this age of arbitrage and consolidation (almost) every new venture has a price. The luckier entrepreneurs heading these businesses go back to the parent company. And the others are left wondering how to put their careers back together. The media glare associated with new businesses cuts both ways. Boot-hill it is for failed gunslingers.

Continues

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