This is the story of the nameless faces at some of India's most respected companies that are on the growth path-faces that you wouldn't usually encounter in business publications (and certainly not on Page 3). But it's these unknown faces that have over the past decade done their crucial bit in getting their organisations into shape and, most importantly thereafter, playing a key role in transforming a germ of an idea, or a hint of a need, into products and services that fit consumer expectations. And it's precisely this responsiveness to rapidly changing markets, highly-discerning consumers, and new opportunities in the marketplace that have earned these managers of change and growth their place in the sun. If 2002-03 was one of the best years in a long time for Corporate India, it's thanks largely to the efforts of these carefully nurtured and handpicked elite.

By profiling a key manager at a particular company that has turned around operations, consolidated, and grown, BT is in no way implying that just one person made the difference. Rather, the endeavour was to identify areas of change, and then zero in on one of the many managers who would have played a vital role in that revamp. For instance, at Tata Motors, which was smarting from a Rs 500-crore loss three years ago, there were at least four factors that contributed to a turnaround. BT chose to focus on the hr front, where little is known about how General Manager (HR) V.K.Verma transformed the Tata Motors workforce into a customer-driven, market-oriented multitude.

BT's list includes managers right from the DGM level to a couple of coos to one MD. But don't read too much into it, as some companies are more conservative in doling out promotions than others. What's more, today's DGM could well be tomorrow's CEO.

COMPANY: M&M BT'S GROWTH MANAGER: PAWAN GOENKA, Chief Operating Officer, Automobile Sector

The Man and the Machine

Till a couple of years ago, pride wasn't something you'd be overwhelmed with if you owned a utility vehicle from the Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) stable. Then, last April, the Scorpio hit the roads. With a 110-hp turbo-charged engine for a high-performing UV that's exquisitely-styled, the Scorpio has done wonders not just to M&M's UV sales volumes, marketshare and span of coverage, but also to M&M's brand image.

The man behind the machine: Pawan Goenka, who returned to India in 1993 from General Motors to join M&M, and who today is the Chief Operating Officer of M&M's automotive business. The brief Vice Chairman Anand Mahindra gave him was clear-cut: M&M needs a product that will be relevant to India five-to-six years down the line, taking into account changing customer expectations.

Six years ago Project Scorpio took off, a year-and-a-half later the design was frozen, and today the Scorpio accounts for roughly 20 per cent of M&M's revenues (and almost two-thirds of UV sales). Some 20,000 have been sold since launch, at an average of 2,200 per month, and significantly close to three-fourths of these buyers never thought of buying a UV until the Scorpio arrived. M&M will soon ramp up to 3,000 per month in a bid to deal with-surprise-a four-week waiting period that's built up.

Goenka sees scope for many more variants of the Scorpio platform, too. For instance, the Euro III norms, which will be effective from April 2005, will be an opportunity to build an even more powerful engine. Does M&M need to begin work on a new platform? Goenka says it would make sense only at volumes of 3,000-4,000 a month, which today appear unlikely in segments above the Scorpio. But he's the first one to realise that a new platform will take at least four years to make, and in that time consumer expectations could be very much different. But Goenka has been there before. "We now have the confidence to understand the market needs five years from now." Don't believe him? Check out the Scorpio.

The Turnaround Touch

COMPANY: TATA MOTORS BT'S GROWTH MANAGER: V.K. VERMA, GM, Corporate Human Resources

Ask Praveen Kadle, CFO, Tata Motors for the significant factors that contributed to the wiping out of the huge Rs 500-crore blot of red from the company's balance sheet, and without blinking he'll spell them out: "The Indica, the turnaround in commercial vehicles, cost reductions, and a change in mindset, which made employees customer-focused and market driven." Whilst the Indica success and the financial engineering at Tata Motors have been well-documented, what's not so well known are the efforts on the hr side that contributed to Tata Motors' turnaround. "Till we made that Rs 500-crore loss, we always considered ourselves to be a part of an enormously successful company. The loss dented our pride, but that also fuelled the desire to bounce back," explains V.K. Verma, General Manager (HR), Tata Motors.

The first step for the badly-shaken monolith was to create a performance-oriented culture. Rewards from now on would be heavily linked to performance. Some 1,000 "high-potential" managers were identified, and put through a programme titled "Winning Ways of Work". Over a year-and-a-half, 40 such programmes were conducted by the EDS in rotation, which dealt with case studies in areas such as cost reduction, new product introduction, external orientation, team working and Six Sigma quality.

Performance-orientation also meant getting rid of non-perfomers. All of 800 from the managerial workforce were "deselected" (sacked, in case you didn't get that one), and the A-rated managers-who formed 15 per cent of the workforce-were now getting 35 per cent of the salary increases. To put it another way, the difference between the salary increase of the best performer and the non-performer was nine times. Yet, one of the banes at Tata Motors was its huge workforce, all of 38,000 people at one point in time. This called for a substantial reduction. In two-and-a-half years, via two rounds of retirement schemes, Verma shed 5,500 people. Verma points out that the payback period for the vrs investment of Rs 240 crore is less than three years.

Ask Verma how he did it, and he'll give you a simple answer. "People cared for the company." They'll care even more for it from now on.

COMPANY: CEAT BT'S GROWTH MANAGER: PARAS K. CHOWDHARY, Managing Director

Burning Rubber

He's the only managing director on our list, and despite the avowed objective of steering clear of CEOs and MDs, Paras K. Chowdhary squeezed into BT's list of growth managers because it would be quite impossible to talk about the turnaround at tyre maker Ceat without bringing him into the picture. What's more he's a man who eats, drinks and breathes tyres, having spent all of 22 years at Apollo, from where he ultimately called it a day in 1997 as CEO. That's when Chowdhary was pitchforked by Harsh Goenka into RPG Enterprises' it and telecom businesses. After three years in those "new economy" activities Chowdhary was back to what he knows best: Tyres.

When Chowdhary slipped into the hot seat in 2001 January, things didn't look too good at Ceat: Many of the company's products had outlived their lifecycle, product innovation was unheard of, and the big boys like Apollo, MRF and JK were turning on the heat with aggressive strategies. The financials were in a mess, with the interest burden as high as 10 per cent of sales at one time, and growth as well as profits were elusive.

Chowdhary's kicked off with a four-pronged plan: Increase capacity- with minimal capital expenditure simply because there wasn't much capital to play around with-by making existing assets more productive, outsource the lower-value two-wheeler tyres, storm the market with product innovations, and bring down the interest burden.

Ceat may still not be in growth mode, but Chowdhary's achievement is that he's managed to hold on to his No. 4 status in the tyre industry, grow the topline, bring the company back into black-all in two years, and without any significant capital expenditure. "We should be able to make investments by 2005, and by 2006, we should be able to take on the industry." It's a long road, but the first few laps haven't been bad at all.

Right Medicine

COMPANY: NICHOLAS PIRAMAL BT'S GROWTH MANAGER: VIJAY SHAH, Executive Director & COO

Since the nineties, Ajay Piramal, Chairman, Nicholas Piramal, has been on an acquisition binge, the primary objective being to attain critical mass in the pharma space. But the decade-long diet of frenzied M&As, alliances and joint ventures did create its own problems: The pharma giant had become too unwieldy and complex. And organic growth was proving elusive.

Three-and-a-half years ago, Piramal pulled off a masterstroke of sorts by bringing in Vijay Shah from group company Gujarat Glass as coo. "We had to clean up the company, and get organic growth," says Shah. After spending six-to-eight months to understand the pharma market, Shah got cracking by revamping the top team. He picked up two key head honchos from Wockhardt, as well as one from Coke and another from Accenture. The businesses received a hard relook, as a result of which two alliances were called off and three JVS disbanded. The marketing and sales network was beefed up, half of the production would now be outsourced, and by bringing a supply chain head from Heinz, those costs were halved. Even as the fieldforce was beefed up by 10-12 per cent, the old brands were being given a makeover and new launches were focused on the high-growth segments of cardiovascular, diabetes, respiratory and central nervous system.

For the past seven quarters, Nicholas has clocked double-digit organic growth, with last year's figure being all of 12.8 per cent. Shah is now gunning for leadership in the domestic market. In true contrarian fashion, Nicholas is betting most of its chips on the domestic market. "It has more potential and will grow at 8-10 per cent." It's also the fourth largest market in the world, and Nicholas is today well placed to grow along with it.

COMPANY: HPCL BT'S GROWTH MANAGER: S.P. CHAUDHRY, Manager Executive Director (Retail)

Powering Ahead

A chat with S.P. Chaudhry throws up, amongst several other things, two of his primary concerns: One, BT should spell his name correctly. And, two, retail accounts for 58 per cent of HPCL's business, as against just 51 per cent for the entire industry. "So we are better placed than the industry," the Executive Director (Retail), triumphantly makes his point.

In January 2002, a few months prior to the deregulation of the petroleum sector, Chaudhry took over as retail ED-a crucial period, and, logically, a crucial appointment. Chaudhry's first task was to listen to the customer. And what he heard was pretty revealing. The consumer was expecting a lot. Truckers, for instance, were keen to receive a quality product, spot credit, conveniences and electronic dispensing units. The two- and three-wheeler riders felt neglected, and the car segment expected many more value-added services. "Our focus had to be on outstanding customer and vehicle care," says Chaudhry.

The Club HP concept was created in a bid to meet most of these needs. Out of the 5,000-odd HP retail outlets, 850 are Club HP pumps, and by March 2004, that figure will go up to 2,000. To create consumer loyalty, HP also launched branded fuels. The Power brand of petrol-with multi-functional additives that improve engine efficiency-will soon be available in 500 outlets.

What's encouraging for HP is that the conversion rate from common petrol to Power is as high as 25-30 per cent. Chaudhry has also launched TurboJet, India's first branded diesel. By March 2004, Chaudhry hopes to have a card base of 1 million consumers.

The big question of course is: Will all this be enough to meet the challenge from private players (at least till as long as HPCL stays a public sector unit)? Chaudhry proudly reveals that HPCL has been able to arrest the slide in marketshare between 1999 and 2001, and as of 2003, marketshare had inched upwards to just over 24 per cent. The company is also growing faster than the industry, but clearly the real test of Chaudhry's appetite for growth has yet to come.

COMPANY: INDO RAMA SYNTHETICS BT'S GROWTH MANAGER: SHAILENDRA TANDON (R), President & CFO SASHOK K. CHADHA, President (Polyester)

WHY HIM: Restructured shopfloor practices, improved productivity and prepaid high-cost debts. WHAT TO EXPECT: Doubling of production capacity by 2005. MOST LIKELY SOUND-BYTE: "There was a time when nobody tracked textiles, but things have changed."

Back in the High Life

Circa 2001: Delhi-based polyester manufacturer Indo Rama Synthetics was trying to come to terms with a book loss of Rs 255 crore after being in red for the three preceding years. The share price was trading at Rs 4-5, a far cry from its all-time high of Rs 170 in 1992. Employee morale was low. But Chairman Om Prakash Lohia wasn't ready to give up. After all, there were signs of a turnaround, with the company reducing its losses. What he required were people who could build sustainable profits. Enter Ashok K. Chadha, a polymer whiz and then Chief of Marketing at Haldia Petrochemicals. Lohia's headhunters tracked down Chadha and offered the job of heading Indo Rama's polyester business. Chadha agreed to join. He immediately got down to restructuring operations right from shop floor practices to marketing. Result: the company's sales grew by about 18 per cent in volumes in the last two years in an absolutely flat market. This also meant the company's marketshare in the 3.5 lakh tonne Indian polyester market went up from 15.6 per cent to 22 per cent over a two-year period (2000-01 to 2002-03).

What also boosted Indo Rama's bottomline were the efforts of Shailendra Tandon, who had come on board as the President and CFO around the same time. Tandon embarked on a massive cost-cutting, pre-paid high cost debts and resorted to foreign currency loans, besides re-negotiating high interest loans. In 2000-01, the company got back into the black with a net profit of Rs 18.7 crore, which grew to Rs 41.3 crore in 2001-02 and Rs 124.8 crore in 2002-03. Let the good times roll.

-P.V. Sahad

On Full Throttle

COMPANY: BAJAJ AUTO BT'S GROWTH MANAGER: PRADEEP SHRIVASTAVA, General Manager (Chakan Plant)

Around 2000-01, only 53 per cent of Bajaj Auto's pre-tax profits were coming from its operations. The rest was accruing from a thriving treasury operation. This, of course, was at a time when Bajaj Auto was hurting since it didn't have a good-enough motorcycle portfolio. By 2000-01, operating margins had dipped to a low of 9.8 per cent, and return on capital employed to 18 per cent. That's when Rajiv and Sanjiv Bajaj, the sons of patriarch Rahul Bajaj, began the process of an organisational change. A core "team of believers" was created of some 15 people. One of them was Kevin D'sa, Deputy General Manager (Finance). "From there on product profitability became the priority, and cross-functional roles began to be played. Engineering would talk to finance and finance would learn engineering," says D'sa.

By 2003-03, Bajaj Auto was back in ship-shape. A good 86 per cent of pre-tax profits now comes from operations, ROCE has climbed to 64 per cent, and operating margins are in the vicinity of 20 per cent. But as another member of the team of believers, S. Ravikumar, DGM (Business Development), points out: "The effort really began in 1995-96." That's the year when Bajaj Auto-with Ravikumar as a key participant-began rebuilding its relationship with Kawasaki. At the same time, with help from Kawasaki, Tokyo R&D, and a couple of German and Italian design houses, Bajaj put together a hand-picked R&D team of 15 people from all over the world. "That was the most critical step in the reversal of our fortunes," explains Ravikumar.

With the R&D team in place, the core team now felt that Bajaj Auto needed a third plant-not just to augment capacity but to create a new work culture and set benchmarks for the other units. That's when the plant at Chakan came up. And that's where the R&D group built the totally indigenous platform for the Pulsar, Bajaj Auto's biggest success to date, what with the Pulsar selling 30,000 per month.

The biggest challenge for Bajaj Auto though is to crack the largest segment-the executive or the mid-segment-which Hero Honda towers over. Already efforts have been made to slice that segment with the launch of the Caliber 115 and the Wind 125. Another product, codenamed K60, is in the works. Much of that responsibility of growing marketshare rests on the shoulders of Pradeep Shrivastava, GM (Chakan). The man responsible for rolling out the Pulsar-he can make up to 1 million a year if needed-is encouraged by the response the bike is getting from international markets. Bajaj Auto has to do something extraordinary to regain pole position in two-wheelers. The good news for Rajiv Bajaj is that he has the men to do just that.

COMPANY: APOLLO TYRES BT'S GROWTH MANAGER: SUNAM SARKAR, Chief (Strategy & Business Operations)

WHY HIM: Responsible for revenue and margin growth by broad-basing offerings to include much more than just truck tyres, setting up exclusive dealerships and focusing on employee and customer-satisfaction. WHAT TO EXPECT: Launch of radial truck tyres MOST LIKELY SOUND-BYTE: "It's simple, really. If truckers do well, we do well."

Keep Truckin'

Till not so long ago it was a sick company. The turnaround at Apollo Tyres has been dramatic, and many attribute this change to the leadership of O.S. Kanwar and his son Neeraj Kanwar. However, there are more people behind the scenes at Apollo, and one of them is Sunam Sarkar, Chief (Strategy & Business Operations).

Sarkar began by broad basing Apollo's offerings. From being a pure-play truck tyre maker, the company now generates 25 per cent of its revenues from other segments: LCVs, tractors, passenger cars and two- and three-wheelers.

However, Sarkar himself thinks that the credit for Apollo's success is something that the entire company, "every employee", has to take credit for. With Apollo now ready to enter the radial truck tyre business and with the Golden Quadrilateral Project well underway, times haven't looked better.

Another thing Sarkar and his team looked at was studying the consumer-the trucker. "Truckers, for example, have their livelihood depend on our product, a blown tyre can easily mean a delay of a day or two for a trucker, which can mean the difference between a profit and a loss," he says. "It is a very simple philosophy, if a trucker does well, we do well," he added.

-Kushan Mitra

COMPANY: VOLTAS BT'S GROWTH MANAGER: M.M. MIYAJIWALA, Executive Vice President (Finance)

WHY HIM: Improved Voltas' quality of finances by bringing down interest costs, made most businesses EVA-positive, improved fund flows, and beefed up credit rating to A1+. WHAT TO EXPECT: Sharper focus on cash generation. Sales and profits are fine, but free cash flow is king MOST LIKELY SOUND-BYTE: "Our situation was so bad that nobody, not even group companies, wanted to lend to us. Today, we are lenders in the market."

Cash, and the CFO, is King

The three years between 1995-96 and 1997-98 were easily the worst ever in the history of Voltas-and in the 23 years that M.M. Miyajiwala, Executive Vice President (Finance) spent at the engineering major. Losses started piling up, borrowings were up to Rs 326 crore by 1998, by when the company had reached a near-default situation. So much so that one big financial institution, when refusing to reschedule and stagger interest payments, ridiculed Voltas as a "white circus elephant". "Our funds flow was horrible," winces Miyajiwala.

But restructuring was inevitable-of businesses, finances and human resources. For Miyajiwala, the task was to improve Voltas' quality of finances, improve funds flows and convince lenders that the company was not a lost cause. He's done all that, and more. Today, the interest costs stand at just Rs 2.5 crore, down from a peak of Rs 45 crore in 1997-98. Last year was the best ever for operations. All the businesses, barring one, are EVA (economic value-added)-positive, and today, with an a1+ credit rating-the highest-Voltas is lending to other companies. "The one lesson I have learnt is that cash generation is more important than turnover and profits." That lesson should stand Voltas and Miyajiwala in good stead as they step on the gas in the years ahead.