It turns out Raj Kondur never really got cured of the venture capital bug. Back in 1998, a 28-year-old Kondur had teamed up with Harvard Business School batchmate Ashish Dhawan to raise a venture fund for India. They succeeded, but Kondur quit three years later to launch a Bangalore-based BPO, Nirvana, where he continues to be the Chairman & CEO. Now, Kondur is said to be mulling raising a fund of his own. "At this point of time, these are only some ideas in my mind," is all that he'll say for now. While Dhawan may have become the face of ChrysCapital over the years, Kondur was a driven dealmaker himself. In fact, ChrysCapital's turnaround investment in Raman Roy's Spectramind (Wipro bought the BPO and helped save ChrysCapital's first fund, which was ravaged by dotcom investments) was due to Kondur's aggressive wooing of a professional in two minds. Therefore, at least some entrepreneurs would be happy to have him back as a VC.

Final Goodbye

India's feisty old "milkman", Verghese Kurien, is hanging up his boots-for good. In March this year, Kurien, 84, was forced to resign from GCMMF (read: Amul), the Gujarat-based milk marketing federation he built from scratch, but had retained his position as the founding Chairman at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA). He's now quit from that post, too. "It is an 84-year-old machine and so must come to a halt," he says from Anand, his home for decades now and where he plans to remain for the rest of his life. Incidentally, Kurien was appointed Chancellor of the Allahabad University in April this year. So is Kurien planning a busman's retirement? "Nothing in life is permanent," he philosophises. It may be an octogenarian machine, but its control driver seems to be in top shape.

A Man For All GoMs

In an administration where getting a consensus on anything is a Herculean task, one issue seems to get swiftly settled. And that is of picking a Chairman for the government's series of groups of ministers (GoMs). Increasingly, it seems, the preferred candidate is Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, 70. The man from West Bengal's Birbhum district has headed at least eight GoMs, including most recently the panel on reservation, another on special economic zones, and yet another on spectrum allocation. What makes Mukherjee a hot favourite? He couldn't be reached for comment, but you'll find a clue somewhere in this trivia: He's the only minister to have held at least 10 different portfolios, although he fought his first election just two years ago. How long has he been in politics? Only 33 years.

Sun Shines On Him

Whe are pretty sure the irony isn't lost on Bhaskar Pramanik either. Even as critics continue to write off Sun Microsystems in the us, its India business, headed by the 54-year-old Pramanik, is doing better and better. So much so that Sun India's Managing Director of eight years has been promoted as Corporate Vice President, reporting directly to the global CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, who recently replaced Co-founder Scott McNealy. In those eight years, Pramanik, who used to report into Singapore, has grown local revenues seven-fold to Rs 1,100 crore. The electrical engineer from IIT Kanpur, whose name incidentally means sun in Sanskrit, wouldn't comment on the move, but it is reasonable to expect that he feels flattered. After all, at Rs 1,100 crore, Sun India accounts for less than 2 per cent of Sun's global revenues.

Now, It's Insurance

India's best-known experimental retailer is pushing the boundaries. In a tie-up with Italy's Generali Group, Future Group's Kishore Biyani has planned a foray into life and general insurance. "We have (committed) a total capital of Rs 200 crore to this venture, with Rs 100 crore each for life and general insurance," says the 44-year-old retailer, whose claim to popular fame is his Big Bazaar chain of hypermarkets. An application is to be filed with the insurance regulator soon. But how does insurance go with retail? Biyani's plan is to target "young customers" for life, and malls and distribution companies for general insurance. Customers walking into his Big Bazaars may not come looking for insurance too, but in emerging industries like retail and insurance, Biyani's plan seems to be to first get a foot in the door. Not a bad strategy, but only if you are a man with unlimited ambitions like Biyani.

India Sally

When half of Citigroup's revenues come from outside the us, and 15.6 per cent of those from Asia, you'd expect CFO Sallie Krawcheck to be doing her fair share of globetrotting. And if Citi is focussing on non-US markets, it's because spreads there are wider, and credit scenarios brighter. "The competition, though, can be fierce, as in Western Europe; and in India, where credit cards is a very competitive sector," says Krawcheck, 41, who completed her second visit in a year to India last fortnight. A former research analyst (and before that a journalist) who earned her spurs for her integrity and rigour, Krawcheck is known not to shrink away from bad news. "Earnings have gone up 63 per cent over six years, yet our stock is flat. I guess we need to report better earnings." It's as simple as that.

-Contributed by Venkatesha Babu, Aman Malik, Amit Mukherjee, Ahona Ghosh and Brian Carvalho