The World is your play ground

Pranav @ St. Mary's, Mumbai

Kids were growing up and we felt it more starkly when Thejas started going to school @3. It was a play school called ORT India, but how they change when their world expands. Suddenly there is a new go-to person, the teacher, who is absolutely supreme. And a few weeks in we noticed Thejas would completely switch to conversing only in English and not entertaining any talk in Tamil –period. We had applied for Pranav’s admission to the renowned St. Mary’s School, Mazgaon. One of the better schools in Mumbai, with good infrastructure, like what any school should have (these days most schools don’t even have a proper playground). Walking in for the interaction with the principal we had butterflies in our stomach, but Pranav was cool. The principal asked Pranav “what does father do” and he started saying “he goes to office and works” and then to our surprise, turned and walked to a world map in one side of the wall (we don’t know how he noticed, as we had just walked in) and he continued pointing to places in the map “he goes to his Muscat office, Cairo office, Singapore office, Dhaka office and sometimes Australia…”. We don’t know what the principal thought of the interaction, but he got through. However, for me, it was a revelation how the world had got into our lives and without our efforts or knowledge mapped itself in our 4 years old son’s mind. The world was coming to India and India was wanting to go to the world. While work was developing international business, my immediate family too was international. Brother Ram @ east coast and Brother-in-law Bhaskar and sis-in-law Divya on the west coast in US. Both my sisters were out too Anandhi in Kuwait and Sandhya in Singapore.

Tata Tea acquires Tetley - thrice its size!

Brand equity @2000

Sep 11 2001

2000 had seen one of the boldest acquisition by an Indian firm when Tata Tea took over Tetley three times its size. For an India that grew on Taj, Lipton and 3 Roses, Tetley was unknown and such a leap was truly inspiring. As a fledgling team at work, a lot was being attempted to become global. Experimenting with identities, brands, structures, innovation with a single belief that 'from little acorns grow mighty oaks'. Got my maiden coverage in press as one of the few efforts then at going global. Limited only by thought, we were still dreaming if we can become a Billion Dollar enterprise and top 5 in emerging markets – even that needed courage. Any emerging market in Africa or Asia was of great interest – Vietnam, China, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, East Africa, the Gulf took all the time. From chasing small firms to

Team pops to celebrate - Govindan, Ashish
Rajesh, Anirudh, Shailesh, Anand
(not in pic - Nirmesh, Rahul, Ashutosh)

mega listed entities, private / public companies, the spread was exciting.Cold calls, connected calls, wild calls to get to acquire family owned companies was a huge challenge.Especially when one had nothing to show from the past and was trying for the first time. Hope was driving it. How else could one have survived visits with uncertain agendas, iterative discussions, business plans with limited market info., inexperienced team and limited success year on year. Compounded by Sep 11,2001 which made anything International look different and difficult.

SCIB @ Egypt

Berger @ Singapore plus 11 countries
- nothing to with Berger in India

notice the circled figures!

M&As, like they say, are like a marriage. There is love at first sight or arranged (through bankers) marriages. And they happen only if there is a meeting of minds and succeed with confluence of people and cultures. All the chase of the last few years from 1999 - 2002 suddenly seemed to bear fruit with 2 major acquisitions taking shape contributing close to additional 15% of the company, a big leap by any standards and probably has remained so till now. An investment of over 80 crores crores added business of over 350 crores (read the links below). I saw this from a later report on Acquisitions out of India from 2000 in manufacturing and their ticket sizes. Looking at it these were standout when India was watching and constituted almost half of Indian manufacturing investment overseas in 2002. 

SCIB Acquisition

% of World GDP - Historical. China is red, India Orange

 Berger International Acquisition

There is this interesting graphic that shows how big India was historically and how the last few centuries changed the narrative for both India and China. The latter has bounced back and India looks forward to...

Inorganic growth had arrived and it was a totally new phase. The acquisition of SCIB was swift. It was small and beautiful, the meeting of minds and future purpose was excellent. In flat 3 months (Jun- Aug 2002) the deal was done and signed, a record of sorts. And then came the suggestion that I should go to manage it, something far from what one has ever done before. Managing acquisitions was always considered messy and past experiences was just not encouraging. That somebody was reposing faith in me making it happen was great. Life was good - settled @ Worli sea face, a new Hyundai Accent had just arrived in July, Pranav had settled well @ St. Mary’s and we were the only ones to support parents in India. Another to go or not to go decision.  Vidya said if I wanted to we will go – that was a big leap when almost everybody we met used to ask her – ‘are you sure Vidya about going to Egypt? Have you been there?'. Think she and family blindly trusted me. Looking back for such moves there are just two things important – hope and trust. By end of Aug 2002 the decision was made to move based beginning Oct. Don’t know how we went through stuff then but that was frenetic speed. 

@ a studio in Worli before leaving Mumbai

One of the most dramatic departures took place as we left Mumbai. We were leaving Mumbai via- Chennai to see parents and then leave for Cairo. We attended our farewell that evening, came home by 10pm to leave for airport to take the late night Air-India flight at 1230. Those were days when Air India offered promotional fare in domestic sectors in its International flights. It was a steal till they stopped it in 2007 when they merged with Indian Airlines. The next day Shiv Sena had called for a Bandh so we had to leave else we get stuck. There was lot of luggage so, I said I will be with all 4 of us in our car and asked our driver Muniyappan to accompany luggage loaded in kaali-peeli to airport. He was to follow us but zipped ahead. Could not spot him anywhere and we reached the international terminal with no sight of him. Those were days where I had a mobile but others did not – certainly not drivers. No way to contact him, we were frantically trying to call various people in case he called but with no success. The flight was at 1230 midnight – Thejas 3 & Pranav 5 were asleep in the car. Absolutely helpless we waited at the ramp to the international terminal departure, literally twiddling our thumbs. And then at 1205 we see the taxi come in. The driver had gone to the domestic terminal and after waiting for long thought of coming here and just happened to catch us. Rush we did and went to the counter and I said 4 passengers to Chennai (luckily had booked business class for more luggage and that was cheap too in late night fares). The lady took the tickets and said open the check-in and then she was shocked when she saw Vidya follow with 2 trolleys full of luggage and the kids. Lucky for us she grudgingly checked us in, with 15 minutes for scheduled departure of an International Air India Flight. Phooh! That was some excitement, even when I recollect today and I don’t think many would have had such experiences – something absolutely unthinkable today. It was bye for now for Mumbai in 2002…