The metrosexual industry: Unleashed!

Whoever said "to be beautiful is to be a woman" wasn't around when the metrosexual-that tribe that compulsively exfoliates, waxes, and then waxes vainly about it all-took shape. Globally, the metrosexual industry is worth billions of dollars and consumer product mega-corps like P&G and J&J are respositioning many of their skincare and haircare products to appeal to this species.

Back home, the fast-moving consumer goods marketers might have not yet begun consciously targeting the metrosexual, but slowly and surely sundry beauty products targeted at women are being whipped by men. For instance, some 45 per cent of cold cream users are men. But that's just on the surface, or rather, skin-deep. Vinay Paharia, an equity analyst at K.R. Choksey Share & Securities, reveals the percentage of male clientele at the Marico-owned Kaya Skin Clinics has touched 17 per cent from just 9 per cent a few months back. "The market perception that skin care services are only for females is undergoing a change," is how Paharia puts it. He couldn't have put it better. According to estimates arrived at by Hindustan Lever, roughly 20 per cent of users of Fair & Lovely are men. What's next: Face foundation, concealers, blush...

-Narendra Nathan

Goodbye To Baby Blues
Why women drop out midway through their careers.

Company creche: Employee support!

Doubtless the single biggest reason for women quitting their jobs is children. And, finally, a handful of Indian firms, including ICICI Bank and Wipro, is addressing this issue in a bid to hold on to some of its brightest talent. "As we grew as an organisation we realised there were various issues we would need to tackle to cater to our growing workforce (currently over 11,000 in Bangalore) and we asked for feedback from employees on the problems they faced; this was one of the issues," says Anil Jalali, Group Manager for Talent Management, Wipro Technologies.

Surprisingly, both Wipro and ICICI Bank have just about 20-40 children in their respective centres at any given point, despite the fact that Wipro employs in excess of 10,000 people in Bangalore, while ICICI Bank has over 4,000 in Mumbai. ICICI Bank currently charges Rs 5,000 per child for the service, which includes food, educational and sports activities.

Meanwhile, companies are working on interesting models to provide the much-needed support system to working parents. Says Namrata Bachani who with a partner, Aparna Mangaonkar, runs Child and Care Consultants: "We are currently talking to companies, which are actively exploring a shared services model where a couple of them get together and run the centres for their employees." Those companies better respond fast if they want to retain some of their more efficient employees.

-Priya Srinivasan

Changes In The Locker Room
Testosterone levels are decreasing in the finance sector, what with more and more women closer to the top than ever before.

Goldman Sachs' Roopa Purushothaman, Oppenheimer India Fund's Punita Sinha, and J.P. Morgan Stanley's Radhika Haribhakti (L to R): Occupying the financial arc lights

During my summer at Merrill Lynch, I was repeatedly struck by how closely an investment banking group resembles the chimp tribes you see in documentaries... Jane Goodall didn't need to go all the way to Africa to watch apes thump their chests...When you think about it, it's hard to blame the guy who told you to buy Enron, when he's delusional enough to buy his own BS.
Posted by Jane Galt, on www.janegalt.net

This portrait of male investment bankers caught in the quicksand of their own testosterone-drenched primitive culture isn't the first to be created, and it certainly won't be the last. Such images of arrogant, condescending, abusive, downright bad-ass traders strutting around in bulge-bracket environs, creaking under the weight of their oversized pay packets, will probably persist as long as investing banking continues to be guy-dominated. But then what if investment banking doesn't continue to be dominated by chimp...oops... the male species? It certainly seems to be heading in that direction, both globally and in India. Consider:

At HSBC, you have the highly-experienced Naina Lal Kidwai at the No. 2 position, as Deputy CEO. At J.P. Morgan India, there's the 36-year-old Vedika Bhandarkar as Managing Director & Head of Investment Banking. It gets better. At another Wall Street firm's Indian arm, J.M. Morgan Stanley, three of the seven executive directors negotiating deals and closing them out are women-Radhika Haribhakti, Cheryl Netto, and Dipti Neelakantan. The last named is also designated chief operating officer, making her No. 2 in the decision-making rankings after Chairman Nimesh Kampani.

J.P. Morgan India's Vedika Bhandarkar (L) and HDFC's Renu Karnad: Two more top women in finance

To be sure, women occupying the arc lights in finance isn't exactly a new trend. At ICICI Bank, for instance, the ratio of women across the organisation has hovered around 30 per cent for years now (and it probably gets higher at the senior-most level, with one of them strongly tipped to take over at the helm). Even in the global finance space, women of Indian origin like Priya Sara Mathur-who became the first woman to be elected to the board of CalPERS (the US pension fund) in 40 years, and also, at 29, its youngest ever member-and Punita Sinha, Managing Director/Senior Portfolio Manager, Oppenheimer India Fund, have carved out a nook for themselves on the top rungs of the ladder.

More women in finance isn't surprising simply because you're more likely to find them in a service-oriented sector (it and hospitality are two other industries that come to mind) than in manufacturing, of, say, refractories or sea water magnesia. Yet, let's get real: An ICICI Bank is largely an exception, and in most organisations men outnumber the women by obscene numbers. What's more, when negotiating a deal for a corporate, the only woman in the room invariably is the banker herself-as most Indian corporations (as you will discover somewhere else in this issue) are frightfully male-dominated.

PepsiCo Inc.'s President & CFO Indra Nooyi: Making an impact

The women have come to live with that. "When we were at IIM-A, we were just six girls in a batch of 180. So right from those days we've learnt how to deal in a roomful of men,'' says Haribhakti of J.M. Morgan. Adds Bhandarkar of J.P. Morgan: "The nice part of being the only woman in the room is they might tend to listen to you more. But then there are those who don't take you seriously." The good news, though, as Bhandarkar adds is that fewer women are dropping out in mid-career, thanks to support from both organisation and family. That explains why there are more of them in a position to reach for the top.

So does all this mean there's going to be many more arrogant, condescending, abusive, downright bad-ass women bankers around in the near future? Now that's another story and (fortunately) this one has to end here.

-Brian Carvalho

More Of The Same?
Not really; the new Foreign Trade Policy finally gives agriculture and services their due.

Union Minister Kamal Nath: Is the trade policy good enough?

On the face of it, there is little to distinguish between the new Foreign Trade Policy (ftp) of the United Progressive Alliance and the existing Export-Import Policy (2002-2005) of the National Democratic Alliance. Both speak of loosening controls, simplifying procedure, reducing transaction costs, neutralising the incidence of levies and duties on inputs in export products, and facilitating technological and infrastructural upgrades.

Yet, there is a difference, and a big one at that: a subtle shift in focus. For the first time, agriculture and services have been given their rightful place under the sun (rightful because agriculture accounts for 22 per cent of India's Gross Domestic Product and services, 51 per cent) in the export-promotion framework. Ergo, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath was well within his rights in maintaining, as he did that the "ftp goes much beyond the exim policy and take an integrated approach to the developmental requirements of India's foreign trade". Well, it was a long time coming.

By focussing on services (through the creation of the Services Export Promotion Council,) Nath hopes to parlay the promise of one of India's fastest growing sectors into a global competitive advantage. And by focussing on agriculture, he hopes to strengthen the rural economy and generate employment. That could explain his twin-strategies of boosting the exports of fruits, vegetables, flowers and forest produce (through the Vishesh Krishi Upaj Yojana) and creating Agri-Export Zones. There are other strands to the trade policy, but much of these are similar to those in the previous government's exim policy.

Does the policy do enough to achieve Nath's target of raising India's share of global trade from the anaemic 0.7 per cent it is at now, to a more healthy 1.5 per cent by 2009? At a disaggregated level this would mean raising India's annual exports to $170 billion in the next five years (from $63 billion today). That (a growth rate of 20 per cent), is highly unlikely, say experts such as Subir Gokarn, Chief Economist, CRISIL. There is little Nath can do, says Gokarn, to increase the competitiveness of Indian products, reducing transaction costs, making labour laws more flexible, or providing world-class infrastructure. "Trade policy is one of the most redundant policies till the commerce ministry is given overarching powers over other ministries."

Gokarn is right. The country may need a ministry to advocate the cause of exports and free trade, and to also ensure that domestic policies are in sync with regional (bilateral) trade agreements and World Trade Organisation (WTO) guidelines, but unless this ministry is empowered to do whatever is necessary to achieve these objectives, the trade policy is something that will continue to look good on paper, and nothing else.

-Supriya Shrinate

Manning The Firm
Anita Ramachandran wants to take her HR consultancy to a place no man has gone before.

Anita Ramachandran: Time for a change

When Anita Ramachandran quit A.F. Ferguson & co 10 years ago, the only thing she was sure about is she wanted to so something that would encourage more women to enter the workplace. That's how Cerebrus Consultants, an all-women hr consultancy firm-all 52 of them across three cities-was born.

She hasn't done too badly in her initial endeavour but, a decade down the line, Ramachandran has hit a roadblock of sorts. "Today we are a mid-sized organisation and if we want to grow further, we need a very high level of ambition and a certain killer instinct, which women beyond a point tend to lack in," she shrugs. One major drawback Cerebrus faces is that networking-an absolute imperative in this field-is virtually non-existent.

An all-women organisation has its pluses, right from informality and comfort levels, to the unquestionable dedication. Cerebrus is in fine fettle, having grown five-fold over 10 years in terms of employee numbers. Ramachandran is a bit sad about giving up on her all-women dream but, what the heck, a few good men may actually be worth the fringe headaches.

-Priyanka Sangani