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Two
years ago, Chennai-based Sujata Pai launched a women's western wear
brand, Natalia (the company is called SM Fashions); in five years
time, SM's vice president, G. Shankaranarayanan plans to make Natalia
available through 80 outlets across 40 cities. The potential market
for women's western wear in India is some Rs 150 crore, but there
are few national players. ColorPlus has a limited range, Scullers
has met with limited success, and Raymond's Be hasn't really taken
off. ''There is no strong brand; no value proposition,'' says Prakash
Nedungadi, President, Madura Garments, who is extending the Allen
Solly brand to women.
Natalia has an advantage: it is further down the
learning curve and knows how to survive in a business when the inventory
has to be completely changed around in 45 days (''A new collection
every 45 days," says Shankaranarayanan). And it plans to stay
focused on women, and on western wear. Could this be the distaff
equivalent of ColorPlus?
-Nitya Varadarajan
EX
LIBRIS
Harper's Comeback
HarperCollins' new JV.
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| Ashok Chopra: Publisher & Dir, HCI |
Ever
since it decided to part ways with Rupa, Harper-Collins had been
on the lookout for a JV partner. This July it found one, the India
Today Group (which publishes BT) and forged a 60:40 alliance, HarperCollins
India (the India Today Group holds the controlling stake). ''HarperCollins
is one of the leading publishers in the world and we will endeavour
to make their books available to a larger audience," says Aroon
Purie, Chief Executive, India Today Group. ''We will also be expanding
HarperCollins' Indian publishing programme.'' Added distribution
muscle will come from the India Today Book Club with its over 200,000
members who order books directly. "The group has an enviable
reach through multi-media operations and it is natural that HarperCollins
leverages this,'' says Ashok Chopra, Publisher & Director, HCI.
P.S: the venture's first publication will be The Carpet Wars by
award-winning scribe Christopher Kremmer.
-Moinak Mitra
INC PLOT
It Could Have
Been Worse...
The ignominious exit of Infosys'
point man in its biggest market is no doubt a big setback for the
company, but would it not have been worse if he had hopped ship
to join a rival?
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| Phaneesh Murthy: A career come unhinged |
Last
fortnight on a visit to Bangalore, over a drink with a management
consultant, we were discussing Phaneesh Murthy and how the exceedingly
talented manager could now run the risk of jeopardising his future
as a software professional. Murthy, as we all know, has become infamous
after being accused of sexually harassing a former colleague at
Infosys' US branch. And even if the suit against him is settled
out-of-court (that seems to be a likely finale to the scandal) few
believe that the high-profile and go-getting manager will get another
shot at resurrecting his career. But as we were both lamenting Phaneesh's
fate, my friend popped a quirky one. ''But look at it from Infosys'
point of view,'' he said, ''at least it is much better to lose valuable
talent in this manner rather than to lose him to competition.''
There was a touch of gallows humour there, but my friend certainly
seemed to have a point. True, the exit of Phaneesh Murthy, who was
the point man for the company in its biggest market-the US-is a
big blow for Infosys but would it not have been worse, for Infosys
at least, if Murthy had hopped ship, say, to Wipro or some other
competitor of Infosys? To lose Murthy to a scandal is perhaps better
than to lose him to competition. What if Murthy had left to set
up his own venture and take on Infosys in the marketplace?
A celebrated example of how costly the loss
of a senior manager can prove to be for a company is that of Tom
Siebel who quit Oracle to set up Siebel Systems, which offers eBusiness
applications and services in direct competition to Siebel's old
company. Such examples are becoming more frequent in India as well.
True, the more common exits are the ones where a company's high-flying
manager quits to join an arch rival. Recently, Arvind Brands' CEO
Govind Mirchandani hopped across to Weekender, a direct rival. In
foreign banks, that sort of thing happens all the time, the most
recent being Naina Lal Kidwai's move from Morgan Stanley to HSBC.
Examples of the Siebel kind-one or more senior
executives quitting to form a venture that is a rival to their former
company-are growing. And, interestingly, they aren't just in the
infotech sector, where setting up independent businesses may be
somewhat easier than, say, in manufacturing or consumer goods marketing.
Thus, Sriram Srinivasan (former CEO of Madura Garments) set up Indigo
Nation, which competes with the Madura brands, Vasant Nangia led
a group of managers from Titan's jewellery division to quit and
set up Oyzterbay, which has products similar to Titan's Tanishq,
and Raman Roy of GE Capital's call centre operations left to establish
his own highly successful it-enabled services company Spectramind,
in which Wipro now has a substantially large stake. For their erstwhile
employers, the loss of executives like Srinivasan, Nangia, and Roy
was more pronounced because after leaving their companies they became
direct competitors. When highly talented managers do that, it can
spell bad news for the companies they quit.
But this is a phenomenon that is as ancient
as the hills. Growing up in Kolkata in the 1960s, I remember a street
with a row of goldsmiths' shops. All of them claimed to be 'Lakhi
Babu's Asli Sona Chandi ki Dukan', each with a slight variation
in the way they named themselves. Our childhood curiosity was quelled
when we learnt that over the years the asli Lakhi Babu's dissatisfied
partners used to leave and set up their own shops, audaciously positioned
on the same street and, what's more named almost like the parent.
Till a time came when no one knew which one was the real McCoy!
The moral of the story: if a star performer leaves to set up a business
that can rival is old employer's, it could mean much more than just
losing a talented manager.
-Sanjoy Narayan
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