NAINA LAL KIDWAI: New place, new deals

When the international media toasts you as one of the most powerful businesswomen of the region (if not the world) any move you make is certain to be noticed. Just ask Naina Lal Kidwai, the fortyish Vice-Chairman of JM Morgan Stanley, who has just announced her move to hsbc as head of its investment banking business in India. Kidwai, a graduate in economics (from Delhi University) and a chartered accountant to boot, has several firsts to her credit: in 1982, she became the first female Indian citizen to graduate from Harvard Business School, and in 1994, she became Morgan Stanley's first Indian recruit. Morgan Stanley's first Indian offering, a mutual fund, flopped, but by 1999 the firm, which had since forged an alliance with Mumbai-based JM Financial, had become India's leading investment bank. "There is a certain sense of satisfaction in leaving a stable ship when it is right at the top," says Kidwai. Well, the lady, largely responsible for JM Morgan's technology and privatisation practices, played no small part in that. The move to HSBC, where she will also oversee the firm's securities trading and research practices, will necessitate relocation to Mumbai, a city that Kidwai, a Western Classical music buff, says she loves. "But I'll miss Delhi," she adds. Notch up another first for Ms Kidwai.

The Other Side

SYEDA IMAM & SAMIR MODI: Aiding a cause

Addressing a social cause can do wonders to a company's image. Only, Samir Modi, Modicare's prez and MD, maintains the cause is more important than anything else. The cause is aids and Modi is the moving force behind The Positive Side-described by the man himself as "the first coffee table book on aids in the world". A product of the Modicare Foundation, the book, created and designed by Contract Advertising, "brings a feeling of empathy and humaneness to an issue cloaked in secrecy", says Modi. Adds Contract's Executive Vice President Syeda Imam, "the illiteracy about aids is dangerous." The Positive Life is the first in a series by the Modicare Foundation to probe into the positive side of life. The next book, intones Imam, "may deal with children". Meanwhile, preparations are on at Modicare to launch the 134-page book by the end of the month. Preview: it is a designer's treat. Now, if people can take this coffee table book seriously...

VIJAY JINDAL: Can he change DD's karma?

All For A Good Cause

Surely, Vijay Gopal Jindal, the 44-year-old former head honcho of Zee and Bennett, Coleman & Co, must believe in karma. One, his company is called Karma Networks. And two, the man explains his Doordarshan connection-splashed all over media last week-simply as an effort ''to give back to the nation in my own way''. For the record, Jindal heads a honourary 10-member marketing advisory committee that is changing the way Doordarshan markets itself. Among the typical VG recommendations: bundling of airtime, flexible tariffs to offload inventory, even the hiring of a pr outfit. All this, the man reckons, should be enough to ''unleash the power of DD's platform''. As for the buzz about Karma and Videocon coming together to launch a channel, Jindal believes his ''commercial plans'' can wait another two-to-three months to go public while he helps the public service broadcaster clean out its stables. Now, if that isn't altruism, what is?